The Academy always stressed the dangers of magic. Humans weren’t meant to draw on it, they said and had no natural way of accessing it. Some long dead precursors to the mage corps discovered how to artificially tap into the lines crossing the continent, however, our bodies were ill equipped to handle the primal flows. Other races, such as the fey or elves, were able to weave delicate strands of mana, pulling from the lines as though it were molten glass and they skilled craftsmen creating beautiful works of art. The humans method was more akin to stabbing a hole into the lines, reaching in with bare hands, and flinging that same molten glass all over the place. Describes our race pretty well, of I’m being honest.

It was eventually discovered that by linking multiple mages to the same working the damage became diluted and burnout was less likely. I’m told that the early days, before they figured that little tidbit out was pretty gruesome to say the least. Academy standard operating procedure calls for a minimum of five mages per working, with the optimal number for normal war workings being nine. Classes are organized around groups of thirteen, however, to account for loses during training. Whether through idiots burning themselves out working outside of class, people unable to keep up with the curricula, or normal training accidents, there were always some who didn’t make it.

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Your class was your entire world. You ate together, slept together, trained together. They were your friends, lovers, comrades. You learned the idiosyncrasies of those you worked with and your castings became tighter, with less slippage coming through, less damage accumulated through repeated workings. And when training was complete that became your troop, and off to some posting you went. Academy trained mages were the best warmages on the continent, the unique way of mana control humans had developed lending itself to raw destruction and nothing more. Every year someone attempted to figure out a way to work magic like the other races could, and every year there was another memorial service for some unlucky bastard.

My class ended with eleven mages, and we counted ourselves blessed for that. Meant we could have some downtime or sick days, with two members able to be off at once without effecting our effectiveness. Of course we got stuck deep in the Crystalvein Mountains guarding the nations mining operations, so options for R&R were severely limited. But we made due, and considered ourselves lucky to be far from any of the fronts, only occasionally clearing out some monsters den or warding off a curious fey. Looking back now, we were damned fools.