Gale woke up from the sounds of Sofia getting ready, when the sun was starting to shine through the window of their room. It had been quite some time since she had had such a deep sleep, the night having past in an instant for her. As she yawned and stretched, she could see that Sofia was finishing putting on her light-gray uniform, which Gale could appreciate it looked great on her. She, in turn, had slept with hers on, so it looked a bit wrinkled, which along with her bed hair gave her a slightly unkempt look.
As Sofia turned to look, Gale got a bit embarrassed of her appearance so she looked away. Sofia just giggled a bit and offered to try and tame Gale’s hair for her, which she accepted while getting a bit nervous. Sofia clearly had experience handling hair, Gale guessed it was from her own, and she expertly combed it down until it was much more even, then tied it up in a high ponytail, perfect to keep it out of her way while training. Gale felt the situation quite intimate and got red in the face, she was not used to feeling this way towards anyone, much less someone she just met and not had talked to much.
“I really like your hair color, Gale”, Sofia told her just after finishing, while she started combing her own hair. “Its very unique, specially with the red strands. Did you dye it yourself?”
“Oh, no”, Gale replied while trying to get rid of some of the wrinkles in her uniform, “I was born like this. I’ve always wondered about it, because my family members have brown-ish hair and eyes, and yet I look so different. In my vilge everyone found it quite interesting. Nature is weird sometimes”, she finished saying.
“Wait”, Sofia started as soon as she finished tying her long braid, “your eyes also look like your hair, including the red strands?” She then got closer to Gale to stare deeply into her eyes. Gale consciously knew it was to be able to distinguish the red lines, but she felt she could stare into her soul. After a few seconds she could not handle it anymore and just turned around. “I’ve never met someone with such different eye colors before”, Sofia ended up saying while smiling at Gale.
After finishing getting ready, Gale and Sofia went out into the hallway, where they could see that the boys were almost done too. Except for Saku, who seemed terribly sleepy and was still halfway dressed. He got quite embarrassed as he saw the girls looking at him in his underwear. Both girls went downstairs to the kitchen to have breakfast, which they had to prepare themselves. The kitchen had a nice variety of ingredients for various meals, but for breakfast they simply had some milk and bread with cheese and some sausages.
After breakfast they went to the entrance to the courtyard, just to pass time until they could start the csses properly. Gale decided to try to know Sofia better, so she asked her about her life.
“So, Sofia, what brings you here, to Professor Aberyth’s academy?”, Gale asked her.
“It’s part of the path to my dreams.” She sighed, then continued. “I come from a very rich family in the neighboring country. But I never wanted to live the life of a rich heiress, with so many social events and business decisions. I always wanted to explore the world, and see many things that I’ve never seen before!” Her face was getting brighter by the minute, talking about her dreams. “My parents almost colpsed when I told them, but after my third escape attempt, they decided to send me to a nice magic school, and this one was the closest. My goal is to learn how to properly use magic, and then pass the license exam fro the adventurers guild, in two and a half months. If I’m able to get a C rank, the highest they can give away from headquarters, I would be allowed safe passage to all countries in the continent. I really hope I’m ready by then”, she finished, looking a bit sad this time. Clearly, she was not progressing at the rate she would want to. “And what about you?”
Gale could not really tell her that she was here because Professor Aberyth wanted to teach her after seeing her magical potential, so she started expining what her goal from here on was.
“I… I want to become stronger. I want to be able to protect the people I care about. And I want to be able to crush whoever threatens my people.” She remembered for a moment the instant in which Zack was struck down, and the sight of the burning vilge. Never again.
Sofia could tell something had happened to Gale in the past, but felt it would be a bad idea to bring it up. In that moment, Professor Aberyth entered the main building.
“Good morning, students. As usual, everyone should continue training on their own trying to accomplish their goal of the week”, he started. “Not you, Gale, you stay with me for more basic training. If anyone needs help, please come find us inside.”
A couple of minutes ter, everyone had left the building and were training on the courtyard, just like the day before when she entered the first time. Professor Aberyth and Gale were sitting cross-legged in the center of the room, looking at each other.
“Normally, a student would start their training with 3 months of physical training, necessary to handle the power involved in our lessons.” He stopped for a second, looking at Gale intently. “You seem to have that part done on your own, with your excellent physical form. Which means, we can move straight to the magical lessons proper.”
“What we know as magic is the manifestation of our wills. The act of casting a magical spell consists precisely on imposing our will onto the world, overriding its own will of refusing the change. This is specified by the magic formu we use, describing the way the magic will modify the world.”
With this, he created an orange magic circle on his hand, and a small ball of fire appeared on top of it, static in the air.
“As you can see, the magical circle appeared as I wanted to cast the spell. You need to know that we are not the ones to create the circle itself. It is created automatically via unknown means, and the letters inside are also part of an unknown nguage. What we do know, though, is that they describe the ways the effects of the cast magic.”
“If you look at it, you will see that it is composed of three concentric circles of words, and it is orange in color. The outer ring, the only one we have been able to transte, describes the element employed. It also gives the coloration to the circle, corresponding to its element. Orange to fire, teal to wind, bright yellow to lightning, blue for water and light brown to earth. The second circle describes what change do you want to make. In this case, it should say something like “Ignite the air”. Finally, the innermost circle describes the specifics of the spell. In this case, something like “static fireball on top of the circle”. Remember, though, that we cannot properly read them, this comes from research on the variations of spells.
“When we are done with your training, you too should be able to perform these kinds of spells. Before we start, though, I wanted to ask you something. Have you ever done something that you could not fully expin? Jumped too high, blocked too big a hit…”
“Cut something too easily… A couple of examples come to mind, professor”, Galen answered.
Professor Aberyth looked confused for a couple of seconds before continuing. “Cutting too deep too, I guess… Anyway, all these were examples of you using magical power unconsciously. More specifically, what you were able to use is most likely wind aura, in which you cover a part of your body or weapons in elemental magical energy to amplify their abilities, in a way that is dependent on the element and the use you give it. In your case, wind is great at boosting mobility, allowing for big jumps and fast movement.”
“Our first css will be about applying your magical aura, both to a part of your body and to an object. The magical aura is the physical manifestation of our magical power, and takes the form of some kind of invisible mist or fire surrounding us at all times. Applying it to an object means that you shape it to take some part of it and concentrate on your target. Ironically, in your case your absurdly big aura will make the task much more difficult, since going overboard might destroy the object or, worst case scenario, the target part of your body”.
“You should know that raw magical aura is mostly useless, except to interact with magical technology and such. Still, the elemental auras, which are the ones that have proper uses, are built on the foundation of this training. Today, you should focus on trying to feel your own magical aura, and shift it towards your hands. While I cannot expin to you how to do it anymore than I can expin how to breathe, I will be sending waves of my own aura so that yours would move around and feeling it will be much easier. Take your time, rex, and concentrate.”
Gale took a deep breath, and closed her eyes. For the first few seconds, she did not feel anything unusual. But slowly, she felt some kind of rhythmic disturbance on her surroundings, like a gust of wind but not entirely so, she could not really describe it. She could feel it around her, every 5 seconds or so. She tried to focus on it more, following the rhythm with her fingers. There. There. There.
After a couple of minutes, suddenly one of the waves did not come. Still, the feeling came, as if she had moved it herself. Professor Aberyth spoke up to her.
“Great! Not only were you feeling the disturbance in your magical aura, you were able to cause one yourself! Remember how it felt, and focus on it!”
Gale spent the next couple of hours trying to replicate different movements on this surrounding, her magical aura. By lunchtime, she was able to move it side to side slightly, most noticeably on the furthest part from her. The twins were making lunch today, so they enjoyed together a nice meal consisting mainly of a meat and vegetable stew. Gale felt quite happy when she was able to tell Sofia that she was making actual progress by now.
As afternoon csses started, Professor Aberyth gave Gale a final exercise to practice. She was to try to reduce the width of the aura on some point, and increase it in another. This would make it look like someone was squeezing cy, which was a useful mental image for Gale.
It took her hours, but she ended up being able to make a bit of the squeezing, although she could not avoid moving also the magical energy, making the change more diagonal than expected. It was already getting te, but at least she was starting to get it a little.
“OK, Gale, let’s finish for today.” Professor Aberyth said, standing up. “This week, I want you to train this few exercises inside until you can do them as if it was natural. I know you can do it. In any case, don’t worry if you need to take more time than that. You are doing great.”
Gale promised to practice earnestly during the week, eager to move onto the actual infusing of magical aura. She could not wait until she was able to replicate the freedom of movement of her unconscious use. But before that, she still had a lot of work to do.
