The room where the class on life magic was held wasn't large by any means, but it was enough for the small group of attending students. The room itself was relatively plain, the grey floor and white walls reminding Valar of the Lyndale infirmary he had woken up in just about a week ago. Perhaps that was even intentional, as institutions like the infirmary were a common workplace for life mages. Valar had an increasing suspicion that his path wasn’t leading to that kind of life… I need to keep an open mind. I’ve got months to think about my options..

  Even the furniture of the room was very similar to the operation room. A large bed meant for patients was set up in the middle of the room and shelves full of books on life magic sprawled on the walls. The only difference was the amount of seats, as ten of them were prepared in a circle around the operating table for any arriving students.

  Valar wasn’t the first one to arrive, nor was he the last. Four women and two men had picked out their seats already, leaving 4 chairs empty for the rest. Valar picked one next to a blonde girl that reminded him of the Livren entourage, although he was sure she hadn’t been one of the nobles on his caravan trip.

  Looking around, Valar saw a certain pattern with all the students in the room. They looked generally a bit closeted in, refraining from talking between themselves during the wait. They generally seemed much meeker than the elemental students.

  The class filled bit by bit, the last students arriving just before the class was due to start. The only person they were missing was their teacher… She’s late isn’t she? Elaine didn’t seem like the most punctual person based on the interview, so maybe I should’ve expected this.

  After a few minutes, the young woman next to him spoke up. “Hey… Does anyone know where the professor is?”

  Silence fell back down on the class, no one speaking up after the young woman’s shy question. Valar just looked around for quite a bit, waiting for someone else to answer, but had to finally speak up himself when the awkward mood reached its zenith.

  “Elaine was even late for my interview… I think this might be the norm for her.”

  “What is the norm for me, young man?” Elaine’s voice cut down the silence, the professor rushing to the classroom with some books in hand. “I’m never late! Where’d you get that in your head?”

  Valar looked at the professor dead in the eyes. “You’re almost 10 minutes late even now… Just like you were for my interview.”

  “Useless semantics! As the professor, I say the class starts now!” Elaine grinned, scratching the back of her head with slight embarrassment. “Anyways, you all seem to be here! That’s good. Today we will be learning about the very basics of life magic. Even if you learned the basics with your families or outside tutors, this class is meant to bring everyone to the same page. Understood?”

  Elaine’s question got a lot of shy nods in response, the brown haired woman sighing with apparent disappointment. “Each and every time… Why are all the life mages the shyest people in the nation?”

  She walked to the operating table and sat down on it so that she was able to look around freely. “Can somebody tell me what life magic actually is?”

  Complete and utter silence followed her question. Valar was almost sure that some of the students were even holding their breath just to avoid the scary chance of having to actually speak up. Am I actually the social one here? Me?

  “Life magic is the magic used to heal people?” Valar had actually no idea, but figured out to speak out anyway. He wanted to actually learn something, and the lesson had to move forwards for that to happen.

  “That is certainly one of its more popular uses. However, your answer doesn’t tell me what life magic actually is. Come on everyone, speak up,” Elaine smiled encouragingly. “You can just tell me the answer. No need to wait for your turn like in the lecture hall.”

  “Life magic is the magic of manipulating lifeforce inside any living being,” The Livren girl squeaked out. “It doesn’t have to be a human. Even plants and such have lifeforce to manipulate.”

  “And that’s our answer,” Elaine beamed at the girl. “Life magic deals with lifeforce in all its various and beautiful forms! Be it with healing—its most used application—body enhancement, plant manipulation, animal husbandry or anything else, as long as life flows through something, we can cast magic on it!”

  All of this was completely new to Valar. He had always thought of life magic as just healing, but Elaine had blown that perspective to pieces with just her opening statements. I think I’ll like this course…

  “Now, some of you may be wondering why you haven’t heard of these applications of life magic before… Let me ask you, are there a lot of healers wandering around?”

  This time one of the male students, a slightly round young man with black hair, dared to speak up. “No… My home city near the northern border had only two life mages. That isn’t a lot for a city of twenty thousand.”

  “No, no it isn’t,” Elaine nodded. “The truth is that healers are in extremely high demand year after year, be it in adventuring teams or city infirmaries. That means that the other applications of life magic have been tossed to the wayside. Most people won’t like a life mage that specializes in body enhancement when they could be healing their party members instead…”

  Valar cringed a little. Body enhancement sounded like a useful discipline to him, as protection from his fire sounded amazing. Hearing that it was not a well-liked branch of life magic put a small dampener on his mood. I can still learn it. Being a healer does sound useful too though…

  “That leaves us in a peculiar situation as an academy. We seek to offer knowledge, but healers are in steep demand in the nation. Our solution is this: Every life mage gets trained to heal at iron rank,” Elaine’s tone was disapproving, suggesting that she hadn’t been to make that decision. “After iron rank you are free to specialize in other disciplines, but the basics of healing are mandatory for life mages.”

  “Is this a limitation the students of other affinities suffer from?” The Livren girl asked. “Do water mages only train ice magic at iron rank or something similar?”

  Elaine sighed. “No… They do not.”

  That got a rise out of the whole group of new students, some even voicing their displeasure towards the unfair rule. Elaine just sat, listening and taking in everyone’s comments with a frown on her face. After some time, she raised her hand, the group going silent practically instantly. No matter how angry they were, not a single soul would challenge the gold ranker like that.

  “Trust me, I have heard similar words to yours for every single semester I’ve been teaching here. Abyss, I’ve even uttered the same words when I studied in Rosthorn’s academy! Still, that ruling is made by royal decree… I have walked to the royal palace and pleaded with the king to remove that mandate personally, and even that didn’t work. The point is that I’ve done everything I could.”

  The frustration in Elaine’s tone was clear as the sky on a sunny day, every aspect of her expression showing that the woman was truly frustrated with the current predicament of life magic students. “That being said, life magic students tend to be shyer than most other young people, so this topic is a good start to the first lesson. It usually gets everyone’s blood boiling…”

  “That’s mean auntie!” The blonde girl sitting next to Valar blurted out, her face going beet red right after.

  Right! Elaine was introduced as one of the Livrens in the first class! Now that I look at one of her family members, the faces have some similarities. Maybe just looking at peoples’ hair isn’t the ultimate way to discern family ties…

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Julie, I believe I told you and the other house members that you were not to call me auntie while in school? My status as a Livren is by no means secret, but I don’t want to give you unfair advantages…”

  “Sorry, aun-... Elaine!” The girl seemed to curl up under her aunt’s stern gaze, but Elaine let her out of her misery after only a short few seconds.

  “Now, I hope that you realized that you can essentially speak freely in this class. I want you to ask questions and talk between yourselves. We life mages are few in number, so knowing your peers is always useful. This class will end a bit earlier because of that. I want you to get to know each other after the actual lesson.”

  Another one of the students, a thin dark skinned young woman, raised her hand. After a short while of not getting attention, the young woman spoke up instead. “Does that take away from the actual learning? I know there’s a lot to learn…”

  Elaine turned to her and gave her a kind smile “There’s always more time to learn. What’s your name?”

  “Brenda Ghirol, ma’am,” The young woman answered with a hint of confusion on her face.”

  “Well met, Brenda,” Elaine extended her hand for a handshake. “Your family is not a noble one, but now a well respected gold rank member of house Livren knows you by name. What would your family think of that?”

  Brenda’s eyes went wide for a moment. “I think they would be ecstatic.”

  “Just think of every student in this room being a potential gold ranker,” Elaine directed her advice to everyone in the room. “Treat them well and form connections. Most of you will probably never reach those heights, but treat everyone around you kindly nevertheless. You never know if somebody will reach much higher than their lot in life.”

  Valar took those words to heart. As long as the people around him would treat him well, he would return that courtesy. He had been treated badly in his life, but that didn’t mean that that treatment wouldn’t change in the future. I’ll try to reach out to at least this small group of people with an open mind. The least I can do is try…

  “That talk is something I give to each new lot of life magic students. They usually enjoy the next part much more,” A wide grin emerged onto Elaine’s lips. “Next up… Runes!”

  The professor of life magic snapped her fingers, four brightly glowing green runes appearing on the room’s back wall. Valar and the other students looked at them with awe.

  “These four runes are the basis for all iron rank healing magic and a lot of other spells too. Does anyone recognize one or more of these runes?”

  A few hands went up, Elaine’s niece’s raised up high like the rest. The professor waited patiently for the students to realize that raising their hand was useless. The first to realize was the boy who had spoken up first in the class. “The leftmost rune is the one for life! It’s the most basic rune of the affinity!”

  “Great answer, young man. What’s your name?”

  “Timothy Steinmor, ma’am!”

  “I’ll keep that in mind. Now, that rune is indeed the most basic symbol for life itself. It works as the basis for almost all life magic spells, although higher rank spells use more advanced versions of the same rune as their baseline. Does anyone know what the other runes are?”

  All hands were lowered and the room went silent. Valar grabbed that chance to look at the rune for life more closely, imprinting the image of the rune into his mind. It wasn’t a hard rune to memorize.

  The rune depicted a leaf. Valar didn’t know what plant the leaf belonged to, but it was quite basic. Still, he could sense intricacies within the rune. He suspected that those intricacies were the ones that made the rune so difficult. I know that I can memorize it. A nick in the leaf, a bend in the stem…

  Heedless of his surroundings, Valar poured all of his attention to the leaf. It reminded him of the forest. It reminded him of the first time he had seen it. It reminded him of his awakening, the feeling of overwhelming life mana flowing through his veins.

  Valar’s gaze was hooked onto the leaf as the class continued talking about it. He didn’t hear Elaine explain its basic shape and the intricacies within it, nor did he hear about the basics of its utilization. He just saw the leaf, and he thought that he could draw it too.

  His thin finger rose in the air, tracing the shape of the leaf upon the blank canvas of the world. The first time he traced it, Valar instinctively knew that his work was sloppy. The same happened with each and every following attempt. He knew that he would need to draw that same rune countless times to get it right. To most iron rankers, that kind of undertaking would have been an insurmountable mountain, but Valar didn’t mind. That’s why they were in an academy. The students wouldn’t have to train by themselves, exhausting their young and weak wills upon the undertaking. The teachers could point out missteps, give encouragement and help the new mages learn.

  Many of the students were smarter than Valar. Almost all of them knew more about magic than him too. Some were even savants of their own affinity—iron rank runes not even a challenge for those exceedingly talented and extremely rare young men and women.

  In one aspect though, they all lost to Valar. The youngest student of the academy was the supreme uncrowned king of one singular aspect of mind, and some would have argued that it was the most important one of them all.

  Strength of will.

  The thirteen-year-old boy was a self critic of the highest order, lacked knowledge on basic things and couldn’t even be considered particularly smart. All of those things could be fixed with time and effort. Strength of will was harder to come by.

  Will didn’t have its origins within the opulent halls of nobility, nor did it grow during the leisurely life of a merchant’s son. Will was seized through adversity. When one feared for their life, but still fought to the bitter end.

  From the day Valar had entered the walled off building that was the orphanage, his will had been growing with small and steady steps. Those same days brought him trauma, self loathing and anxiousness, creating a highly dysfunctional teenage boy. He was socially inept, didn’t know about the most basic things and bashed himself over the head for the smallest mistakes. Still, the boy had will in spades.

  The class moved onto the next rune, this one symbolising restoration, but Valar didn’t notice the world moving around him. There was only him and the rune. The very essence of life, if only an iron rank version of it.

  Valar knew that he wasn’t even close to comprehending the rune. Every iteration only brought new details to his attention, the very rune itself becoming more and more complex within his mind. He didn’t mind. That was only natural. Just like his escapes from the orphanage, every attempt brought him closer to success.

  These mistakes weren’t like the ones he had made in the interview with Elaine. Those had been soulcrushing, as Valar had thought that he had ruined his chances of getting into the academy. These mistakes were only a sign of progress, and the self critic inside his mind didn’t appear even once. Even that part of his mind bowed down to his will. Everything he learned would benefit him. Mistakes were natural. He would not lose as long as he pushed on.

  Elaine was the first to notice Valar’s attention on the rune. She continued the lesson as normal, shaking her head slightly before she turned her attention back on the small class in front of her. She knew that look. It was the look of utter focus, and she wouldn’t take that away from the boy.

  In all honesty, Valar hadn’t seemed particularly impressive when she had first met him. If you ignored the peculiar fire that made him special, he seemed like a perfectly average student. His young age gave him more time to learn, but that was pretty much all of his strength. Or so she had thought…

  Elaine hadn’t considered the orphan boy’s traumatic childhood and its possible benefits. His peculiar fire and young age had made her ignore the mind within the bundle of strange circumstances that was Valar.

  Before the lesson, Elaine would have thought that the girl sitting next to him, her niece Julie, had much higher chances of doing well in her class. Valar had his strengths elsewhere, and they didn’t relate to life magic as much as fire magic.

  Now, she thought differently. The boy’s aura was the calmest it had ever been, the green glow around him mimicking his state of focus. He would need special attention but if she gave him that, he would become a monster of life magic. Maybe that monster would drive the others forward too… Julie was a young noble needing motivation more than knowledge, and her auntie would give her just that.

  “Everyone listen up,” Elaine was certain it was time for a learning opportunity for the whole class. “What do you think makes for a good student?”

  “They need to be smart and work hard,” Brenda answered her question.

  “True, those are good aspects among others. Which of those two options do you think is harder to come by? And which is more important?”

  “Being smarter makes learning much easier,” Brenda’s tone was much more nervous, the short haired woman not sure if her answer was right.

  Elaine shrugged with a smile on her face. “The truth is that I don’t know. I’ve seen countless talented and smart students come to this classroom. They asked the right questions and listened to my every word. Each of them progressed through the iron rank classes with no grand difficulties.”

  “What are you trying to say, professor?” Her niece asked.

  Elaine smiled, pointing her finger at the young life mage next to Julie. “I’ve seen many things in this classroom, but this…”

  When Valar’s finger moved through the air, it left a green outline of a leaf with it. It wasn’t perfect by any means, still requiring days, maybe even weeks, of work to truly be perfect. Still, it was a rune.

  It was a rune that was conducting Valar’s magic through it.