Every day started the same way for Durin. He woke up in his tiny room, drank some water that he left himself from the night before, and read a book until he felt the grogginess fade from his mind. Then he would stretch, wash up, and get dressed to head out. Usually, on his way out, he would grab some biscuits and cheese from the kitchen, the easy staples he and his dormmates kept in stock for late nights and early mornings. Usually he had a class scheduled for first thing in the morning, but when he didn't he still spent time studying in the academy's various archives and libraries.
For his first year there were few opportunities to learn magic. Continuing students got first pick of available classes, and there were few of those classes that year. Many of the academy's magic instructors were conscripted by the king to defend the border with Arestria, as the regional conflicts over there threatened to spill into Fionne again.
As much as Durin thought the study of magic would be interesting, he also didn't mind the delay. Some of his classmates were livid at the lack of opportunities but he was content to learn just about anything at that time. Besides, as long as he stayed in the school and studied well he would receive a stipend which far exceeded what he had been able to scrounge up on the streets. Even if he couldn't study everything he wanted it was still a huge improvement over begging and stealing.
He also had the advantage of being the youngest in the academy by far. If he waited five years to get started he would still be on par with most of his classmates.
Instead he took courses on the sciences, the way things worked without people mucking about with magical circuits and mana transference. He learned history, most of which was focused on Fionne and its surrounding regions but a few of his classes reached out to the distant parts of the Etherlands. He improved his reading and writing by studying literature and music, his mathematics through his sciences and more theoretical classes, he even honed his athleticism in extracurricular sports. Durin took full advantage of the opportunity Docet Howitzer provided him.
In his third year Durin was finally able to enrol in a class on practical magicks, although he hadn't fully read the syllabus and ended up in an advanced class. The professor, one Abigail Penwrought, was aware of this odd kid with a thirst for doing anything and everything and decided to give him some supplemental lessons on the very basics of casting magic. How to sense mana, how to make it flow, how to channel it outside of the body, how to activate circuits, even how to manifest basic circuits for ad hoc casting. He took to the basics quickly, surprising no one.
What did surprise people was how quickly he took to the subject of the advanced class: Fundamentals of Gravity Magic. The course was based on the work of Septimus Quattuor a century earlier, and it built from that on to the specifics of how it fit in with Nonal Octavian's universal circuit framework. The students learned all there was to know about gravity magic in a single semester - mostly because no one had been able to take gravity magic very far beyond those fundamentals. Even a simple gravity-based levitation spell was well beyond most mages, and no academy would spend time on it when there were several other ways to solve the problem.
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Durin, was different, somehow. When he first activated a gravity circuit - the most basic circuit that slightly reduced the weight of whatever it was applied to - he felt a chill go through his body. He believed all the explanations that Professor Penwrought gave about the extent of gravity's usefulness, but his intuition screamed at him that there was more to this than anyone else thought.
It became clear very soon that Durin had an immense well of mana within him. People had an innate amount that could be expanded, but that amount never started nor ended anywhere near what was held in Durin's core. In introductory courses this would have been noticed, as students typically took part in simple evaluations to get a baseline on what their mana cores could support, but Durin had jumped ahead and this was only noticed when a demonstration on the difficulty of activating gravity magic went awry.
Abigail Penwrought had taught this class on gravity magic a fair few times. She quite like playing with gravity despite how impractical it was, or maybe because of how impractical it was. Whereas most magic was cast for a purpose, gravity was an arena where she felt she could play. So she had a few purpose-built circuits ready to go, designed to have a fun effect with the amount of mana even a genius could provide, but no more. Her favourite was a circuit engraved on a plate, and when activated the plate would float and spin. Most students failed to even get the plate to lift off the desk, though some could get it wobbling in the air a bit. Abigail, with her years of experience and training, could get it a couple of inches off the ground and rotating slowly. It demonstrated just how much effort it was to achieve a simple effect by gravity when forcing a vacuum under the plate, or applying an electric charge to it, or repelling the plate's atoms from the object under it all had a similar effect with less mana required.
When Durin stepped up to try the circuit nothing seemed odd. He activated the circuit, and the plate floated up and started a stable, fast spin. Penwrought was amazed - she had never seen it activated so flawlessly before. But then it kept going up, kept spinning faster. She opened her mouth to tell Durin to stop, but it suddenly shot up and shattered on the roof. He looked stunned; it was neither his intent nor his expectation to send the plate so high, nor so fast.
The basics he learned from the professor to prepare for the class had him performing supernatural feats, igniting the air and throwing furniture around the room like nothing. But this was the first time he felt true power.
The possibilities of magic remained unclear to him, but Durin was beginning to realize that gap in his knowledge. Likewise, the professors of the academy were beginning to realize just how far outside the norm this student was. He sought more instruction, they sought to grow him into an incredible mage. From then on he was welcome in any class, even if it was theoretically full; his stipend was increased to grant him greater leniency with his expenses; he received extra guidance from faculty whenever he had questions; Durin even received invitations to networking events to build up his social sphere and expand his contacts beyond his immediate peers.
Docet Howitzer saw that Durin was not only motivated and bright, but a generational freak who could bring a new level of prestige and fame to their academy. They would do whatever they could to hold on to him.
