“If you’re teaching her basic elemental magic, then why water? That’ll be quite difficult for her considering that she has an affinity for fire.”
As if forgetting her former sadness, Anice sat up with sudden pride and began to brag. “What do you know? Teacher says that I have an affinity for water, too!”
“Really? Congratulations then.”
This wasn’t too surprising, since it was fairly common for nobles to have more than one affinity, not to mention that many people didn’t awaken to their first or secondary affinities until years after they had come into their magics. Take his friends, for instance. They were all thirteen or fourteen years old and none of them had fully come into their magics yet—which was on the late end of the spectrum—let alone any possible attributes. Since Anice was a Silverkin, it made sense that she had a natural compatibility with the energies that lived within water. As for her innate compatibility with fire, she had inherited this from her mother just as he had from his father.
“That’s it? You could at least show a better reaction.”
He forced a cough. “You’re my cousin. Of course you have two affinities.”
“Hehe, exactly. You should buy me some sweets at the market tomorrow to congratulate me.”
“I just congratulated you though.”
She kicked him in the shin from underneath the table, which was wide enough that she had to sag into her seat in order to do it.
“Okay, okay. But it’ll have to wait until after my lessons.”
Lessa brightened up at a sudden thought. “Oh, you can come with me to the collegia tomorrow, Anne. Then we can wait for him.”
Anice crossed her arms. “Since when were you a part of this?”
“I…do you not want me to come?”
“That’s not what I meant. I just—”
Mr. Albeck slapped the book against the table, encouraging a sudden silence. “Will you three take this seriously? It might just be review for you two, but Anice still hasn’t managed to use any spells aside from the basic conflagration one that we use to light candles.” Looking at the pupil in question, he added, “At this rate you’ll be stuck as an apprentice mage forever.”
Face reddening in embarrassment, Anice picked up her cup and pointed at the bowl of water in an unimpressed manner. “What’s the big deal? It’s just filling a stupid cup.” Closing her eyes, the water in the bowl suddenly exploded out in all directions, covering everyone present in a spattering of wetness. “Ahem. Time for me to get serious.”
At some point, Mr. Albeck gave up on the lesson and allowed the kids to play around with the water, though only after Anice managed to raise it about a hand’s length above the bowl without causing it to burst apart.
They eventually cleaned up and prepared for dinner, which the kitchen staff had been cooking during this time. Stason, Madeline and Patricia joined in on the hearty meal, along with a less hesitant Janine who dropped into a chair the moment that Alistar extended the invitation to her. After sharing dinner with him and the other members of the household Lessa ended up staying over for the night, with Stason promising to notify her parents on his way to meet up with Caedmon and Alder at the collegia.
“We’re going to Anne’s room to sit around and chat. You should come with us!”
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Standing by the main doors to the dining hall, Anice rolled her eyes and averted her gaze. “Who wants him to come?”
Lessa grabbed Anice’s shoulders from behind and peered over one of them. “She’s just shy because of what happened this morning.” Looking at a small stain on Alistar’s tunic where a bit of soup had splashed onto it, she added, “If you have to go change, we promise we won’t peek!”
Alistar stared at the ground as he felt his face heating, while Anice whirled around and chased a panicked Lessa out into the hallway. Seizing this chance to escape the awkward situation, he hurried back to the main table and helped to clear it, offering to wheel the dirty dishes back to the kitchen area where he cleaned them alongside the servants that had cooked their meals.
Now that all of the troublesome thoughts had been cleared from his head, Alistar retreated down to his room and set about studying the ocular alteration technique, unexpectedly impressed at the versatility of the spell. So long as he gained an acceptable level of mastery and maintained proper focus, it was possible to change his irises to any colour that he desired. Although the spell was quite cost-efficient when it came to energy consumption, once mastered it could be maintained for long periods of time. This meant that Alistar could, in theory, take off some of his limiters and rely on the passive use of this spell to occupy some of his excessive inner energies. On one hand, he would become more familiar with using alteration magic, while on the other he wouldn’t have to wear so many annoying rings and bracelets while he practiced swordsmanship with Tramon or his friends.
Staring down at all of his jewelry—five rings and three bracelets between his hands and wrists—Alistar wished nothing more than to be able to take them off without inconveniencing those around him. Not only were they distracting during sword practice, but they made it uncomfortable to write, something that he spent at least an hour doing each day.
He stared past his hands at the notebook that now sat at the centre of his orderly desk, thinking of all of the work that he had done in recent years and the multitudes that he still had yet to do. Touching a hand to his mother’s locket from over his tunic, he simultaneously glanced at the worn handle of his practice sword which was leaning up against the wall beside his dresser. This was the replacement that Caedmon had provided for him after Tramon had broken his previous one out of spite for the damage he’d done to the man’s favourite cane.
Day in and day out, he had been working hard ever since he had first arrived in Distan. Even though he was far from where he wanted to be, his progress in his studies, swordsmanship and the arcane was difficult to ignore, and he couldn’t help but allow himself a bit of pride when he thought about what he had accomplished to date.
Tramon still hadn’t promoted him to a third-tier apprentice swordsman, but he knew full well that he had long since reached that level. As for his magics, Mr. Albeck’s most recent evaluation had categorized him as an apprentice mage of the second tier, which was quite impressive by his teacher’s standards. It was important to note that there were six tiers in each classification—the equivalent of a stratum—on the magical hierarchy of capabilities, and that most practitioners required at least fifteen years to become a full-fledged mage. At his current pace, he was on course to accomplish this in half that time.
“Wait for me, Kaila,” he thought aloud, glancing at his bed.
He had hidden an old grimoire beneath one of his pillows, which was essentially a record of a deceased magus’s spellwork, in this case an arcanite’s. He’d found it by a stroke of luck when he had been wandering around the collegia’s library and happened to knock over an old pile of forgotten works only to spy the book of battle magics mixed in with the rest of its dusty, yellowing counterparts. After giving it a brief inspection, he had been delighted to learn that the contents had a focus on ice-based spells, a sub-attribute of water. He was fully intent on studying the old arcanite’s spellwork once he managed to master the advanced ocular alteration spell that he was currently tasked with studying.
I promised Uncle that I wouldn’t practice magic on my own until he found a suitable teacher for me. Now that he has, then I won’t be breaking my promise if I start training on the side, right?
Alistar spent the remainder of the evening locked up in his room, reading and then rereading the notebook that his teacher had given him until he could more or less remember all that it detailed. More than just memory, by the time that he went to bed it was with an in-depth understanding of the spell that his uncle so desperately wanted him to learn. This made him even more excited to practice it in the morning, as putting a spell into practical use was quite different from studying records and magical theory.
He was truly looking forward to tomorrow.