Training started bright and early the next day. Zann had been so excited that I agreed he started to cry, and Enri had to usher him away with a brief apology.

I was restless in bed, trying to get into a comfortable position. It took a while, but eventually, I fell into a hard, dreamless sleep.

I jolted awake at the sharp knock on the door. Enri called through, “It’s time to get up. Shower quickly.”

If I hadn’t agreed yesterday, I would have ignored her and rolled over. Instead, I threw the blanket off and staggered to the bathroom.

When I was done showering, I saw a set of clothes on the bed. They were tougher than the clothes I had worn the past two days, rough-hewn and tailored to fit me. Pulling on my boots, I headed to the door where Enri was waiting.

Enri was in the same type of clothes, although hers were more worn, clearly having seen combat. She stood tall; her friendly demeanor was replaced by one more suited for the soldiers she commands. She didn’t say anything, just headed down the hall in quick strides.

We took a different route, heading deeper and down several sets of stairs to what I could only assume was a basement of some sort. The halls were long, doors posted every ten to fifteen feet along either side of the walls. Between each door were sconces that, at first glance, looked like they were filled with candlelight. As I looked closer, I realized they were too bright and too steady to be candles.

“Mage lights,” Enri said. “They’re powered by the ambient magic we leave behind.”

We stopped at one of the first doors and she finally turned to face me. “Today will be the first day of several long months. You will meet the rest of your teachers and start to gain an understanding of magic. I will teach you the basics and then you will be taught more specifics. Do you understand?”

“Yes.” I felt like it was my first day of college again with the way my heart was racing, but this time all eyes would be on me.

She left no time for questions and opened the door, revealing four people sitting around a table. Their conversations stopped when we walked in, and I felt myself start to sweat.

Each of them looked either curious or irritated, but they didn’t say anything as they looked me over. Enri cleared her throat and said, “This is Kaiya. She’ll be your student as of next month. This month, she’ll be studying with me to learn the basics of magic.”

One of them stood, an older woman with grey hair and a look of intense disapproval. She would have been beautiful if it wasn’t for the ugly look she gave me. “Where are you from, Kaiya?”

I looked at Enri before saying, “I’m from Earth.”

She frowned, her irritation deepening. “I know that, child. Where are you from? What is your clan? You are Kaiya of what?”

“Of nothing. I don’t have a clan.” If I was going to have a choice in my last name, it sure wouldn’t be my dad’s and I didn’t know anyone else’s I wouldn’t mind taking. Sayla and I had planned to change our last names at some point, but we never decided on what to change it to.

She huffed. “You must have a clan. Everyone has a clan.”

“That’s enough,” Enri said. “Introduce yourself before you continue your interrogation. Remember your manners.”

She looked soundly embarrassed before sitting down again. “I am Shippa of Nesh. A fire elemental mage.”

The younger man next to her sat up and said, “I am Ikae of Sytorii. I’m a water elemental mage.”

Next to him was a young woman who looked close to my age. She smiled and said, “I’m Evada of Mandine. I’m a wind elemental mage. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

The last person to speak was a man who looked old enough to be my dad’s age and just as arrogant. He even looked like him. I was sure he and Shippa got along swimmingly. “I’m Iljana of Jamno, terra elemental mage.” So, this was who Zann kept talking about when I first got here. He looked me up and down and turned away. “I’m sure you’ll be a pleasure to teach.”

“And I’m sure you’ll be a wonderful teacher,” I said, matching his energy. “Is there anything you need to know about me before I start with Enri?”

Iljana looked appalled that I gave him any attitude, but it was Evada who spoke up and said, “I don’t believe so. Once you begin your training with Enri, she’ll give us any information we need. Thank you for your time, though.”

“Thank you all,” Enri said. “You can go back to your meeting.”

“Well, that was pointless,” I grumbled. “What was the point of me meeting them now when they won’t even be teaching me until later?”

“It’s better to give you a small understanding of what they’re like now before you’re blindsided with it.”

“Is it because half of them are unlikeable?”

Enri kept walking forward and didn’t say anything to that. I could only assume I was correct.

We went a few doors down before stopping at another much smaller room. It looked like a classroom with a board at the front and a few desks scattered around the room.

“Sit,” she said. I sat at the closest desk, and she leaned against the chalkboard. “I’m going to be very open with you. You will not understand most of what I’m going to teach you at first. You come from a world without magic and thus don’t have even a basic understanding of what it is or how it works. I could show you something and explain it down to the atoms, and I’m sure it would go over your head. But I’m going to try anyway. We need you and we need you to understand this.”

“I will try my darndest then.”

“Good.” She took a piece of chalk and drew a cross on it before writing something in each quadrant. It was then I remembered I couldn’t read any of their writing.

“Um, Enri?”

“What is it?”

“I can’t read that.”

She stopped mid stroke. “What do you mean, you can’t read?”

“I can read. I can’t read that. My language doesn’t look like that.”

“But you—” She stopped, staring into the distance as she started to put the pieces of whatever puzzle she was solving together. “I knew we needed that component,” she muttered. “We had everything but that. I knew we needed it.”

Stolen novel; please report.

“Is there any way to work around it? Or just teach me?”

“It would take too long to teach you how to read this. I can work on a way to help you understand, but for now,” she erased the words with the side of her hand before drawing pictures instead. In each, she drew a symbol for each element: fire, water, terra, and wind. “In this world, we have four types of magic that stems from each of the elements. If you have an affinity for magic, you can only use one type of magic. We have tests to determine which one you’re suited for.” She paused for a moment. “In your case, you’re going to be attuned to all of them.”

“Is that what makes me different from everyone else? I can use all the elements?” Just like the avatar, I thought. Childhood dreams do come true.

“Yes. For reasons we’ve yet to discover, humans from Earth can use all of them without much trouble. The way you can become a Suriqi mage, though, is to have a sorcerer change the fundamentals of your physiology to allow you to use them all at once and in conjunction with each other. That’s where I would come in.”

“So, what makes you a sorcerer and everyone else a mage? Is it a type of schooling? Is that something I’ll be able to do, too?”

She looked away and turned back to the board. “It’s not something you’ll be able to do. It’s something you have to be born with and not many people are. You can spot a sorcerer by their hair.” She gestured to her pale blonde hair.

She circled the wind symbol and said, “I’m going to teach you about the wind first. It seems to be the one people understand the easiest. We’ll meet here in this classroom every other day, an hour before sunrise. When we’re not here, you’ll meet me on the training ground at the same time. Physically, you’re weak. We need to change that.”

I couldn’t even be upset at that when I knew she was right. I didn’t exercise in part because I hated being sweaty and in part because I didn’t have time. If I was going to be in combat of any sort, that would have to change. Just looking at Enri, I could tell she was leagues above me, and it would take a while before I caught up with her.

“The first week I will wake you and take you to where we need to go. After that, you’re on your own. Understand?”

“Clear as day.”

“Good. Let’s get to the training grounds.”

° ° °

“There’s no way you’re this out of shape.”

My hands were on my knees as I panted, trying to catch any breath I could. Enri was ruthless, telling me to keep up with her as she jogged around the training field. I couldn’t even walk the training field, let alone jog it in the time she was trying to keep.

The training field was behind the castle and at least two football fields long. In the middle was an obstacle course and several weights and other workout equipment. It looked like it had seen better and busier days, but it was empty today as she tried to kill me.

“I can’t stress enough,” I gasped. “How little I exercised.”

“This is pathetic.”

“I’m—” My response was cut off by a loud, hacking cough. “I’m so very aware.”

She shook her head. “Catch your breath. As soon as you have it, we’re doing another lap.”

I wanted to fall to the ground and swear at her, but I kept myself mostly upright and tried to take control of my breathing. I had never played sports much, but Claire was an avid runner, and I witnessed her training for marathons before classes got hectic.

“How do you do that?” I’d asked. I had timed her running a mile around the campus and she came back rosy-cheeked and full of energy. “I get winded walking up stairs.”

“Well, it’s about your physical ability as well as your mindset,” she said while whipping her hair into a ponytail. “If you believe before you even start that you won’t be able to do it, you won’t be able to. Getting started is always the hardest part, especially if you don’t like exercise. If you don’t like something, why would you do it? You just have to find a reason to keep going or start liking it.”

I still didn’t like it. I didn’t like the way my chest felt heavy or my lungs seized or the wobbliness of my legs. I did, however, have a reason to keep going. If I didn’t, I could die in the near future and I wanted to avoid that at all costs. I needed to get back to my sister.

I stood up again, trying to stretch out my muscles before looking over to Enri. She stood with her arms crossed and eyes squinted in the distance. Something about her seemed off since training started. We weren’t close, of course. We’d known each other for two days at most, but she was at least personable. Now she seemed lost in her head most of the time and pulled away every time I tried to joke or needle her.

I wouldn’t have minded so much if she’d always been like that, but I knew she had a sense of humor and could relax.

“I’m ready,” I said.

Enri looked at me for a brief moment before taking off at a light jog. I followed far behind, trying more to keep up a pace I could manage rather than trying to keep up with her. This was a bit more viable than the former, but it still didn’t stop me from running out of breath quickly or sweating enough to look like I’d been caught in a sudden downpour. Even with training, that probably wasn’t going to change.

I started eating by myself most nights. After successfully getting me on his side, Zann moved on to more pressing matters, which meant him working through dinner. I didn’t mind so much since I didn’t have to worry about getting more information shoved into my head and hoping I could remember it.

Enri was right about teaching me about magic. I could understand that magic came from the blood and the DNA makeup of mages was a little different, blah, blah, blah. But I didn’t have the first clue how it worked and her telling me it’s about the breath and rhythm of the air and the way the molecules interacted with one another—it all went over my head.

The only thing I managed to grasp was that doing magic was as physical as it was nebulous.

“Oh, so like language.”

Enri paused at the board. She’d been drawing a diagram of a person and how wind magic flowed in the body. “What do you mean?”

“Well, when it comes to language, it’s very physical. Like, we use our lips, teeth, tongue, lungs, and even our eyes to convey something as nebulous as intention, meaning, and feeling. You can’t hold a word, but you can say it. Language is physical, but intangible. Like magic.”

She had her eyebrows raised and said, “I don’t think I’ve ever heard it explained like that, but if that helps you understand, then it works.”

“I took a linguistics class a year ago. Never thought it would help me understand something like this, but if magic is like language, then that makes a whole lot of sense to me.”

“You know, it normally takes a new mage months to understand and internalize that concept.”

I shrugged. “I went to school for four years to understand and learn how to teach language. I guess I had a head start.”

“Well good. It’ll make this next part easier to get.” She went back to the diagrams, using different colors to represent the flow of magic, air, and blood of the person. “When we use magic, it first starts in our hearts, making its way through our blood stream and finally, to our brains. From there, what matters is our intent, focus, and which element you’re using—each element pools magic in a different part of your body. For example.” She placed the chalk in her hand and looked at it for a moment before it started to bounce up and down like it was being buffeted. After a few seconds, it landed in her palm with a small slap as it dropped from its position. “Air magic settles in the lungs, and my intention was to just make it float, but if I don’t focus, it stops. In worse situations, it gets dangerous.”

Even though I’d seen something much more powerful, looking at her make chalk float with no thought to it was like watching a master at their craft.

“When can I do something like that?”

“As soon as you can feel magic. It’s all around us always. Even here underground, there’s magic. Understanding your body is the first step to feeling magic. It’ll be different from what you’re used to feeling. At first it might feel alien, like you want it to stop, but once you start to use it, it’ll feel as natural as breathing.”

“That sounds like a scam.”

“It sounds like your own fault. I told you this training would be difficult. Don’t flake out on us now.”

From there I tried to feel the magic, but I hadn’t felt anything close to it since the Bright Dusk Festival. At the time, I was too overwhelmed by the change to realize it, but something had made my blood flow quicker and my heart beat faster than just being excited about it. It was only when I was in the bath by myself, relaxing from the hike back to the palace, that I noticed something was different. The water was moving in an odd way around me, like it was thicker than it was.

I had tried several times to tap back into that feeling, but I couldn’t nail it down.

Nebulous indeed.