“As I said earlier,” Beauty began. “Just pushing more energy into your magic isn’t the most effective way to make it stronger in the moment. Nor is the best way to train the muscle that is your magic. Focused enhancement is the first technique we will learn, and it will address both of those previous points. It will allow you to give your magic an unexpected advantage, while improving your magical control, and even capacity.

  “If you do it wrong—and you will at the beginning—you will feel like you just ran an uphill sprint, with a temporary exhaustion taking hold. It’s important to understand this feeling, and to train hard so you never have to experience it in the middle of a fight. That would not turn out well for you.”

  Trium’s hand went up, though she glanced nervously in Beast’s direction.

  “Yes, Cadet Trium?” Beauty said.

  “Why would it exhaust us if we did it wrong?” Trium said.

  “The energy you use for your magic flows through your body in what we call channels,” Beauty said. “Imagine them as something akin to your veins, though they don’t carry a liquid like your blood. Instead, pure energy moves through them. I should point out these channels are not physical in the strictest sense of the word. They can be damaged, but if you were to be cut open, they would not be found. They are within you, but not.”

  “What does that mean?” Trium said.

  “In your second year, there is an elective called ‘Applied ReSouled Biology’,” Beauty said. “While Medics must take it in their first year, it is an elective for the other five classes in second or third year. If you’re interested in knowing more about the specifics of channels, I encourage you to take that. We won’t be getting into the topic in first year other than to acknowledge it exists.”

  “Okay, thank you, sir,” Trium said, jotting the course name down on a notepad.

  “You’re welcome,” Beauty said. “Now, back to the original part of the question. What you will be attempting to do in the beginning will likely result in you pushing too much energy, instead of pushing it to the proper place. It’s the same mistake everybody makes. This will stress your channels past what they are currently capable of handling.

  “As you increase your Rank, both of your magic and your bodies, your channels will be able to handle more and more energy, resulting in stronger and stronger abilities. Until that point, pushing too hard will result in that temporary exhaustion. Other things will, as well, but more on that later.

  “This exhaustion is a good thing, however, for two reasons. The first is of course that it will teach you very quickly when you’re doing something wrong, and what your limit is. Secondly, like lifting a weight that’s slightly heavier than what you would normally work with, it will increase the strength of your channels over time.”

  “Can we just get to the lesson?” Beast said. “I’m bored of all the talking.”

  “… fine,” Beauty said. “While I prepare the necessary demonstration, I would like each of you cadets to continuously use your magic for the next ten minutes. During this time, you are to activate your magic with the absolute least amount of energy you can. Pay attention to how it feels when the magic leaves your body, and where it goes as your magic manifests.

  “Up until this point, I would estimate you all did it by instinct, without much regard to the minutia of the process. Let’s start by focusing on those details. Consider this, like the original fireball, finding your baseline.

  “For those of you like Cadet Neferan or Cadet Aria,” Beauty said, gesturing to each of the cadets. “If you can create multiple versions of your magical manifestation at the same time, keep at least one of them out at all times. You may never have inspected them before, but studying your own magic is an excellent way to understand how the energy flows within them. We will be spending more time doing exactly that later this week, and it will help immensely with the training. At this time, they will be there as examples for you to refer to.

  “Neferan, your goal this week will be to improve Two’s eyes, so it will only be him you are summoning over and over. Keep One around at all times, to see how they differ as you progress. Aria, keep a second spirit around while you work on your earth elemental.”

  The two ReSouled nodded.

  “For the rest of you, don’t feel like you need to be limited to one example. Create as many as you like, if your magic allows it. Especially if you can make them diverse.”

  Multiple, diverse examples? It almost sounded like Beauty was talking directly to Det. Those things were what his magic seemed to be best at.

  “One last thing,” Beauty said. “Please refrain from anything that would harm your classmates. Now, begin.”

  A small part of Det’s brain was tempted to check out what the others could do with their magic. Especially Sage and Eriba. But, the bigger part of Det’s mind told him to get his ass in gear. The sooner he mastered this focused enhancement skill, the sooner he could get stronger and move on to the next technique.

  Who knows, maybe this is exactly what I need to make my door home.

  No way Det was that lucky, and his head shook on instinct at the same time he uncorked one of the bottles of ink on his desk. Whoever had prepared things for him had lined up eight, full bottles, as well as brushes very similar to what he carried with him. Same shape, but better quality—also, treated—wood, and much nicer bristles. He’d have to ask about getting a set of them.

  A task for later, as he slid a piece of paper off the top of the stack. For taking prepared images with him, scrolls were much better, in that the didn’t fold or, crease, or wrinkle. Then again…

  Det had never been able to make or buy blank books back on Radiant. The Mistguard had to be able to get those for him. The pages would be smaller than a scroll—definitely a downside—but he could also carry a lot of smaller renditions within the pages. Worth looking into.

  Also, something for later, and he dipped his brush into the ink. First, he’d…

  “Det?” Eriba whispered to him from her desk. “Could you make me a turtle? It was relaxing.”

  With his brush paused above the paper, Det glanced over at Eriba, an upended box of Wordless parts strewn across her desk. Everything from small legs and heads, to more of the waffled internal components Det had spotted inside the ants. Beauty really had smuggled broken Wordless into the classroom, and convinced most of the class they were nothing more than the artificers’ trinkets. Then again, with the mistships being the things most people would think of when they saw the equipment, it was easy to associate the components with some secret technological group.

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  “Sure,” Det said, also quietly. “One ink-turtle coming right up. Hey, Sage,” he said a touch louder. “Got any requests?”

  “A kitten I don’t have to chase around,” Sage said without looking up from what appeared to be some kind of Wordless monkey. Small, only about a foot tall, the thing made very simple movements on Sage’s desk, before it drooped like it had its power cut. A second later, it reactivated, repeated the motions, then slumped again.

  Sage using and canceling his power? I should probably get started on that myself. First, the turtle, since Eriba asked first.

  Having painted the turtle recently in the past, Det recreated the image with supernatural speed and efficiency. It barely took him thirty seconds to fill the page, and he placed the tips of his free hand on the paper.

  Like Beauty had said, Det very nearly let his instincts take over to push the energy from his body, through his fingers, and into the paper. His hand even tingled from the energy as he held it, paused there. The sensation wasn’t uncomfortable, and sitting like that gave him a feeling for the energy he’d never noticed before.

  It was warm. Not hot, and not cool, but warm. Like sunlight dappling his skin through the canopy of a tree on a late spring day. It was also familiar, and comforting. And, even though it wasn’t something he’d had back on Earth, he knew he could count on it like he’d had it the entirety of both his lives. Where it had come from before it wound up in his hand, though, he didn’t know. His instincts had guided it from wherever it originated, and brought it right to his fingertips when he needed it.

  Was that how it had worked the very first time he’d used his magic? Thanks to having full access to his mind—and the forty-seven years’ worth of knowledge and wisdom—since just a few days after he was reborn, he could remember the answer to that question.

  He’d been four the first time he’d used his magic. Since coming to Elestar, he’d been drawn to… drawing. Painting. The ink-wash style he’d picked up in his later years, partially as a hobby with his wife—even though Yumi had quit after two months—had called to him here on Elestar. At night, in between the dreams of getting back to his family, it was what he thought of. When he woke up and his new parents made him leave the house—he had one toy, and it was called ‘outdoors’—he’d avoided the other kids around his age. Instead, he’d gone to draw in the dirt.

  Finally, for his fifth birthday, his parents had gotten him a bottle of ink and a single brush from the traveling merchant that only came twice a year. A small bottle, but it had still looked like liquid gold to his small eyes. As soon as they said he could—he tried to listen to them, even though he had more years of experience than both of them combined—he’d popped the cork and painted… a pretty bad bird. His mind and body remembered the motions, but he was just too small at the time to control the brush the same way.

  His fingers couldn’t hold it right, and the angle was all wrong, since he was so much smaller. It didn’t matter; he’d finished his abomination of a bird and immediately reached out with his other hand to slap his fingers on the paper. As soon as he had, it was this same feeling. His arm and hand warmed like he sat it in the sun, and then, two seconds later, the bird had flown from the page.

  And promptly fallen to the floor in an agonized mess, since Det had butchered its wings, even with magic.

  That part didn’t matter. What did was how his body had known what it was doing, just as easily as breathing. And, just like breathing, Det could control it to an extent.

  With the energy in his hand, he coaxed it down his fingers, like slowly relaxing a muscle. Held taught, the magic stayed in place. Not that completely relaxing would let the magic simply flow right out of him. If he relaxed too much, the energy would spread back out in the rest of his body until he needed it. No, what he had to do was simultaneously relax one muscle while engaging another. The first to give the energy a place to flow, down his finger. The second was to push it in that direction.

  In a lot of ways, it was like squeezing a tube of half-empty toothpaste. If he just squeezed it at the top, he might be lucky and see some come out the end. Or, it might all just push back down into the tube itself. Det had to squeeze from the bottom, slowly condensing his energy and pushing it toward its exit.

  His fingers, right where he touched the paper.

  Already longer than the usual two seconds it took him to activate his magic, his heart still sped up in excitement as the first dregs of energy slipped into the ink. A faint glow emerged from the previously black lines, then slowly built. It was just like when Det used his magic normally, albeit at a glacial pace.

  That was fine. Every second allowed Det to monitor, control, and refine his manipulation of the magical energy. He could feel it pulling from deeper in his chest, no, down in his gut and up through his chest, before traveling down his arm and out his fingers. Just like when he purposely held his breath and felt his lungs, normally something he didn’t notice in his day-to-day life, he could sense those channels Beauty talked about.

  Wide tunnels that traced a consistent path from his gut to his hand. Vaguely, he could feel others, a mirror image on the right side of his body, as well as down his legs to his feet, and even up his neck and across his head. These were the freeways for his energy to travel.

  More than that, there seemed to be a kind of node in his shoulder, another in his elbow, and then one more around the palm of his hand. The energy gathered the fastest in those locations, pooled from where it sped down the freeways. Using the energy from those locations would probably be the quickest, and would likely let him throw more energy overall into a rendition.

  Might be why the ink-flames I painted on my palms worked so well.

  Finally, while the freeway-channels and the nodes would be the fastest way for energy to move, or get stored, that didn’t explain how he was pushing energy out through his fingers. If the channels were the freeways through his limbs, torso, and head, the energy moving through his fingers was like taking an offramp onto sideroads.

  There was a path there, but it wasn’t made for the same volume or speed. Yet. Holding the energy in his fingers, and flexing to slowly release the energy through his fingertips was getting easier. Not quickly by any stretch of the imagination, but slightly. More practice like this, just like Beauty said, would increase his ability to work his magical muscles.

  If he kept…

  Eriba coughed gently, still clearly waiting for her service-turtle.

  Unsure how long he’d been staring without blinking at his hand and the paper—but it had to be way longer than the two seconds it normally took him—Det carefully pushed more energy through his fingers. Doing that, he watched the lines of ink filling, just like he’d watch a glass of water under a running tap.

  Soon enough, the level of energy reached the point where it would either overflow or…

  The black, ink-turtle rose from the paper, a little bit longer than Det’s hand, and looked up at him with its expectant black eyes.

  “Keep Eriba company, and help her relax,” Det told the turtle, then picked it up and placed it over on Eriba’s desk.

  As soon as it was free of his hands, it looked up at its new charge, Eriba’s eyes going saucer-shaped and practically sparkling behind her bangs at its inky cuteness.

  “Don’t forget to practice your own magic,” Det warned her. “No playing unless you need to destress.”

  “Just one small pat for the cute, little, best boy,” Eriba said, running one finger across the top of the turtle’s extended head. It leaned into the attention like it was the best thing in the world, then pulled away and fixed her with a ‘you better get to work’ look.

  Coming from a small, ink rendition, it was impressive just how much that look conveyed. Most importantly, Eriba understood it, and finally got to work herself.

  While that had been going on, Det had only half paid attention, most of his mind on his next painting. The kitten for Sage.

  Like the turtle, this one only took thirty seconds to paint, but then another dozen to activate, as Det practiced his energy control.

  Soon enough, even more closely accurate to the ‘just barely enough energy’ level Beauty had asked for, Det brought his second rendition to life. The ink-kitten stretched in possibly the most adorable way possible as it rose from the page, a small chorus of “awwwww” sounding from around him as more than one of the nearby cadets watched his rendition manifest.

  “Go keep Sage company,” Det told the kitten. “But don’t let him get too needy. If he isn’t working, you have my permission to leave him until he’s made some progress.”

  “Hey!” Sage said. “How come Eriba didn’t get a restriction like that?”

  “Because,” Det said. “Somehow I can feel she doesn’t need it.”

  “I’m very responsible,” Eriba said in her usual, quiet voice, the words somehow like a slap to Sage’s cheek with the implication he was not the responsible type.

  “Either way, doesn’t matter now,” Det said. “The instruction is given.”

  Just like that, kitten hopped off Det’s desk and playfully wandered over to Sage, passing Eriba and rubbing along her leg as it went. Half-a-dozen sets of eyes followed its every loveable step. One set of eyes in particular had a fierceness to them none of the others could hope to compare to.

  “Give me one,” Beast said, leaning forward on Det’s desk. “Now.”