Xenron rushed forward across the artificial grass and terrain. It crunched organically underfoot, beads rushing away at he ran, zeroing in on the illusion of a Lucerna man. Light blue skin was adorned with thick runic armor, and the man thrust a spear at Xenron as he approached. Too slow. Xenron exulted in the feeling of speed in his body and perception as he stepped to the side, then lunged in to strike down the foe. At least by physique, weeks of drastic Survival Gauntlet training had caught him up to the level of his Tier II peers. He froze as a ring of light appeared on the ground around him, commanding him to remain in place.
“Aslear!” he called out, but before the words escaped him, a shock of white hair flashed past as the girl heeded his call. She lunged ahead, where another soldier had appeared, leaping over his slash as if it were a choreographed dance. The simultaneous slash of twin daggers followed.
“Amber!” the girl called out, and Xenron hurried.
76 seconds later, the duo reached the end of the course, and the holographic projector relaxed from its labors. The oblong corridor returned to a simple grensteel chamber, black metal glimmering under the LEDs high above.
Xenron felt happy enough with the completion. Bruce had brought his students down to a series of advanced training rooms in pairs to practice working around other fighters, and they had cleared the course without getting hit. However, when he turned to his partner, Aslear returned his gaze with a quizzical expression, holding her chin.
“What do you restrain yourself for, Amber?”
“Restrain myself?” Xenron said, furrowing his brow. He mentally patted himself on the back for not stuttering. Aslear’s energy made her… a lot, but she didn’t seem to be a bad person.
“Yes, holding out! You didn’t even have your aura up that round.”
“I’m sorry, you’re right,” Xenron conceded. “I’m a little distracted,” he said, which wasn’t untrue. He couldn’t very well elaborate that, at his age, he still hadn’t settled on a comfortable aura technique. There were a few he liked, but none fit intuitively.
“Understandable, I suppose,” Aslear said, shrugging as she leaned back against the metal wall, putting a foot on the wall. “Not everyone has a well-suited aura, like my light half and I,” she said, grinning. She wreathed herself in a cloak of flowing shadows for effect, then let it dissipate. “But if you don’t, you should at least pick something so no one freezes your blood. And… surely you have some arcane secret weapon to smite our enemies?”
Xenron raised an eyebrow. He wasn’t sure if Aslear was making fun of him, but given how she talked around her twin, he decided it would be overly paranoid to take it personally. Probably.
This kind of training, which was open-ended an encouraged the use of magic, was probably where Xenron should have bowed out of Bruce’s sessions. However, his mentor hadn’t even brought up the issue. To Xenron, it felt like a test. Would he reveal specifics of his weaknesses to his peers, some of whom were political rivals or uneasy allies? He couldn’t take back anything he said. Xenron closed his eyes and examined Aslear’s soul. Her jubilant yellow glow betrayed nothing but earnest curiosity - and, perhaps, infinite energy. Putting aside her implausible excitability, Xenron felt she could be trusted. In the first place, his father had allowed him to continue training closely with these people, despite the risks. They would see the cracks in Xenron’s abilities - but if he withdrew like a hermit to hide those cracks, he would progress too slowly to be of consequence, and possible allies would become indifferent or even enemies. With that in mind, his choice was easy.
“No arcane smiting, unfortunately,” Xenron said, smiling. However, his gaze was downcast, not meeting Aslear’s eyes. He sank down, punching the floor with a slightly glowing fist, creating a small rumble. He thought back to the court mage who had privately assessed his mana. Leo hadn’t been as surprised as Xenron expected - and, Xenron guessed, it made sense. Even to the eye, his mana was so damn thin. “My mana’s kind of… off. I can’t convert it into elemental spells, so I’m stuck with-”
“Sorcery,” Aslear said, nodding sagely, her black eyes meeting Xenron’s. “That’s a tough lot, Amber. Stuck with all the toolkit spells optimized for pure mana, but without anything that really packs a punch…” She sank down against the wall as well, as if to keep eye level with Xenron, and her tone was serious for once.
“Can you stop calling me Amber? No titles, of course, just my name would be great.”
“You wound me!” Aslear said, face faux distraught, resuming her prior tone. “I only thought you would like to know how I noticed your pretty amber eyes.” Instantly, Xenron blushed and looked away. He wasn’t used to anything like that. “But, that limitation shouldn’t hold us back from piercing the heavens!” the girl said, pointing dramatically upwards. Clearly, she had already forgotten the compliment and had entirely missed Xenron’s reaction.
It took Xenron a moment to realize she was pointing directly at the course’s best time - 15 seconds. It was no doubt the team of Aruna and Johan - both of them had powerful ranged attacks, so they could probably just blast the illusions back and forth until they won. That kind of time was out of reach. The second lowest time of 40 seconds should be beatable if they were both serious. Still, the fact that he wasn’t even thinking about the top took Xenron aback. This program was full of people striving for number one. The best jobs went to high ranking graduates, and the lowest ranked were periodically dropped from the class. It was a matter of course that Xenron would hold his classmates back if he didn’t give everything he had and then some. Aslear was a serious talent, despite her quirks. Xenron wasn’t powerless anymore. Despite what he had said to her, he had recently discovered his strange distinction - the ability to see souls. Still, Xenron was getting used to the ability, and it was completely useless when fighting holographic, nonliving enemies, which didn’t even register in his closed-eye vision. Aslear had drawn a real blank in him.
“Xenron?”
Xenron shook his head. Still thinking, he turned back to Aslear, who was smiling at him patiently, dark eyes watching with interest. Bless her. He had been hesitant to be honest about his severe limitations, but now, he felt better sharing it.
“I’m just thinking about how to get out of your way,” Xenron said candidly. “I’ve been working seriously on spellcasting since I’ve had the option - and for a while before, though I didn’t really expect to be using low level sorcery. I’m confident with Knock, and I can use basic Strengthening, although my amplified limbs still end up being pretty rigid. It wouldn’t be any help here. Then there’s Celebrate, but I also don’t a spray of Confetti helping us.”
“The door opening spell and the birthday spell?” Aslear said, laughing lightly. Xenron frowned, and she continued, “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t jest at your expense. I’ve always adored the spells, but simply haven’t made the time to learn them.”
“I wouldn’t rush… Celebrate is mostly useless,” Xenron said, trying to recover from his unreasonably wounded pride. “But the more I think about it, I think I have a game plan. You can hit from a range with Blackheart, right?”
“No more than 3 meters, and it’s hard to strike true while running, especially if my target is also moving.”
“That’s far enough.” Xenron said. “And the only restriction is that each of us need to strike in turn, not moving until the other gets a hit in, right?”
“You are emphasizing very specific words that I don’t see the point of,” Aslear said, tilting her head. “Zekain is more adept than I with wordplay and mysteries.”
“I’m saying we have a way to break the system and get you a good score,” Xenron said with a grin. As he explained his plan, Aslear returned it, not to lose in enthusiasm.
The two lined up at the starting line again, and designated that Aslear would be the first to move. As the field of battle formed around them, Aslear took off immediately, and Xenron started chanting Knock. Fortunately, it wasn’t the extended chant - he could evoke the spell with just its name and opening and closing the spellcast - but it did take the full phrase’s duration to focus his mana, so he couldn’t get it any shorter. He held the readied spell as Aslear closed the distance with her target in a few strides. Her mana, converted to a dense darkness, coated her hand in a roughly diamond shaped blade, firing off of it a moment later. The projectile was fast - cutting through the illusion and continuing until it hit the ultra-dense wall and dispersed into a dark mist. Then, it was Xenron’s turn. The new target, an identical Lucerna soldier, materialized instantly, and almost that same instant it flinched back, blade hand wavering, as the “Knock” spell hit it.
Xenron grinned as the constraining ring of light shifted from Aslear to him, freeing her once again to act. She hadn’t even broken stride. Knock was developed to breach locations distantly, but at its core it was basically a small telekinetic pulse of energy. Not enough to be considered a conventional combat spell, it was in the same class as a shove - but Xenron was pretty sure it would be sufficient to switch partners. Luckily, he was validated as a wildly grinning Aslear fired off a second bolt of dark energy, not even delaying to aim - there was no way the stumbling Lucerna could dodge. Xenron fired a second Knock spell, prepared as she had gotten into range and attacked. Attacking with ranged attacks meant she never had to slow down to dodge the enemy’s counterattacks, and the aura of shadows propelled Aslear all the faster as she quickly closed on each target. Xenron briefly ponded what a terror it would be to have to fight her seriously, but changed threads as he approached a problem. Aslear was now more than 30 meters ahead of him - well outside the normal range of Knock. He had lunged forward each time the light around him briefly lifted, flooding his muscles with mana to keep pace. Even still, he was hitting a limit.
A damn stupid limit.
Knock was a spell learned by mages in an afternoon, sometimes as a simple matter of convenience. No one really took it seriously, and so, few augmented the parameters of the spell. Perhaps longer-ranged stock versions were well-kept secrets of thieves or the military, who had a good use for them. Xenron wasn’t sure. But he did know one thing. Most limitations of spells could be overcome with practice and a lot of excess mana. It wasn’t efficient, but right now, it was his only path to success. Digging deep, Xenron flooded knock with mana. 40 meters. 50. 60. 70. At more than double the max range, Xenron roared, his control of the mana slipping. The illusion sailed back through the air in surprise. Fortunately, Aslear adjusted in an instant, sending a black blade through the foe’s heart. The two panted before looking up, thoughts hopeful. And…
Their time came in at 26 seconds. It wasn’t a glamorous moment of triumph. But it was better than middle of the pack. The plan had worked, and Xenron allowed himself the wave of satisfaction that followed. That Aslear ranked that high while having to deal all the killing blows herself spoke volumes of her mana throughput, but at least he hadn’t ruined her.
Now that they had in a good time, Xenron and Aslear burned out the rest of the time in the chamber running a few subsequent attempts with different abilities and strategies. Unsurprisingly, they didn’t get close to their best time, and a couple of people passed them, especially since Aslear had burned up most of her mana with 10 casts of Blackheart in such close succession.
At the end of the hour, they made their way back to their normal training room. Bruce greeted Xenron at the door, asking him to hold there for a moment while others filtered in.
“I saw the recording of your best attempt,” Bruce explained.
“Did I do something wrong?” Xenron asked, shifting his weight anxiously.
“Not at all. You did technically do well within the parameters of the task given. That said, while I do not understand the parameters of your father’s training, I expect there will be trials he expects you to face alone.”
Xenron sighed. “You’re right, of course,” he said, shoulders sagging. “I’m working on that.”
“I really do not mean to chastise you, Xenron. You thought outside of expectations with a toolset ill-suited for combat. I encourage you to do more, not less, of that going forward. The Tier II Intramural Exhibition is coming in less than a month.”
“You mean where the various Tier II training sections fight it out?”
“It’s as much a test of the trainer as of the students,” Johan said, joining the conversation. “We must work hard to reflect well on Corporal Fernaux.”
Seeing Xenron tense and nod, Bruce added, “it’s not my intention to force you into fights you’re not comfortable with. However, Tier III trainers each have one direct challenge they can force, as well as other limited forced-challenge conditions.”
“Such as?” Xenron asked, before adding, “sir?”
“There was a fool in the Tier III exhibition a few years past,” Bruce started. “He slandered a stronger classmate - messy romantic entanglements, I believe - and thus gave the other the right of challenge. It ended about as well as you might expect for him.”
“These exhibitions determine who’s going to represent the crown in the season’s fighting tournaments,” Johan added, “so they have a lot of upper-crust eyes on them. Making a fool of oneself in this space would be social suicide, challenge implications aside.”
So Leo will be going all-out, Xenron surmised. “Thank you, Apprentice, Corporal,” Xenron said with a small bow.
"Not at all. I hope you’ll be in top form,” Bruce answered.
Xenron went through grab exercises in a haze. They were important, he understood. Network armor was difficult to cause harm through, and so criminals without weapons of commensurate quality often resorted to grappling and repeated strikes to beat armored opponents. This became dangerous when they had a significant numbers advantage, as was often the case with malicious groups of bandits or local rebels. Magical creatures could offer the same kind of threat, and with an obvious weight and leverage advantage in many instances. The exercises were important and yet, Xenron was focused on how he could improve his magical repertoire. It only surprised him for a moment, then, when he found himself twisted around into a headlock for taking too long to escape a simple hand-grab. After struggling through countered escape attempts, Xenron tapped out.
“My mistake,” Xenron said.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
“No worries,” Ken said nonchalantly, letting him go. “I’ve been reading about the whole Alexander thing, by the way. Just seems strange to me that people would be so up in arms over a guy who’s a little out of shape.”
Xenron had paired up with Kenneth without noticing by habit. He answered, “Xexens need to be lead by example - if you wish your soldiers to be strong, you need to be strong yourself.”
Xenron’s grip tightened on Kenneth’s hand. It was past time for the boy to escape, meaning Xenron should advance his grip, but Kenneth simply kept his golden eyes on Xenron, a playful curiosity in them.
“Are Xexen leaders allowed to be hypocrites in other areas? It just seems strange to me, your father.” Kenneth said.
“What about my father?” Xenron said, an edge to his voice.
“He forsook the title of Emperor for a plain ‘King’, a thing that hasn’t been done since Xexherre ascended to the role. But for an espoused anti-expansionist, he sure seems to be trying pretty hard to conquer those Lucerna on Garom. Not that it’s working.”
For some reason, the jab dug into Xenron like a physical sucker punch. He ground his teeth, burning mana as he yanked Ken’s hand and wrapped an arm around his neck. To Xenron’s surprise, Kenneth didn’t resist, instead grabbing around the arm as it tried to ensnare him. He threw Xenron over his shoulder - but with a word, a slight pulse of force on Ken’s hand triggered it to reflexively release. Xenron scrambled free and rolled to his feet in a fighting stance. His hard eyes met Ken’s, but the other boy was grinning.
“Nice Knock spell. I didn’t expect that.”
“I didn’t either,” Xenron admitted, relaxing slightly. He’s completed the incantation and summoned his mana in the space of a word. He’d done this once before, when he was fighting with Leo - but that was driven by adrenaline and has mana had already been collecting. This was a far more impressive quick-cast, all told. Had he developed faster than he realized, and held himself back subconsciously? Or had he grown even in his short time limit-testing with Aslear? “Still, I don’t see why you insist on getting me riled up.”
“Because every time I do, you do something cool. How’s the shiny new ability coming along?” Ken asked. Against his better judgment, Xenron had told him about the distinction.
“Slowly,” Xenron replied. “I need to find something else to focus on for now.”
“Suit yourself. I’d like to show you something after class, if you’re good for it,” Kenneth said, before calling behind him. “Vex, you stay too.”
The young woman’s pink eyes disengaged with Aslear to glare back at Kenneth, her white training robes and red hair flaring out under telekinetic force. “You shouldn’t just assume I’m available.”
“But you aren’t doing shit, right?” Ken said with a broad grin. “And you said his sloppiness is bugging you, right?”
Xenron looked down, cringing internally.
‘That’s!… correct, I suppose.” She sighed.
“Do I have a say in this?” Xenron said in a vanishingly small voice.
“Corporal, can we have the room after class? I want to do a little special training with Xenny, since today was more about technique. We need to work up a sweat.”
Xenron turned, expecting some admonishment for Ken. He just got raised eyebrows, in a bemused expression. “As long as the prince is interested.”
“Oh, he’ll be game, right?”
Xenron realized that all eyes were turned on him. Before he could say anything sensible, Aslear chimed in.
“Amber’s holding a special training camp? Of course, my divine counterpart and I will play our role~”
“We’re not on mom’s TV show, sis,” Zekain groaned. “You can lose the crazy act.”
Some further banter and laughs went around the room, and even Johan let a half-smirk show. Xenron had been hesitant to give in to Ken’s unknown scheme, but now the room’s mood had turned. He couldn’t help but shrug his agreeement.
Xenron knew, logically, that Xexens assimilated fragments of nearby emotions into their own. The potency of this trait grew with power, and for Xenron, it was something of a new sensation with his awakened power. He knew it was coming… and still, he was stunned by the intensity. He’d figured the new information would sit at the back of his mind - and often, it did. But as the mood of the room lightened with banter and excitement, he took a full breath as he realized he’d been sympathetically feeling a weight of immense anxiety, piled atop his own worries. It was natural - everyone was worried about making a good showing at the Exhibition. He couldn’t imagine how anyone managed the day-to-day in these conditions. How intense would the radiant emotion be in a battlefield… or even a lovers’ bedroom? Xenron hadn’t been nearly that intimate with anyone, and while the idea of finding a partner filled him with curiosity and excitement, he couldn’t help but think feeling an extra person worth of intense emotions would make his head burst.
No time for that now.
Refocusing on what mattered, Xenron smiled. Peers anxious for the coming trial had turned to excitement about the chance to throw that energy at something. Xenron thought so, at least - soul vibes weren’t terribly specific. Xenron turned tentatively towards Vexera.
“I’m sorry to bother you with my poor technique. Would you do me the favor of training with me?”
“Perhaps, for a short while,” she replied.
“Hell yeah! What’s the plan, boss?” Ken said, leaning closer to Vexera.
“I only agreed to fix his form,” Vexera protested, jabbing him with an elbow. “We’ll discuss shortly.”
It was about time anyway, so Bruce called everyone to attention, gave a few words of encouragement, and dismissed the group. Waiting a respectful several moments, Vexera then moved to the front of the room to give directions to those who remained - most of the group.
“Everyone can keep working on grab exercises. Front grabs only, any magical enhancement is acceptable but force should be kept to a minimum. Xenron, partner with me and try to break my grips.”
She went through a series of free form grab exercises with Xenron, her scowl deepening by the minute as they continued. Her grip was strong and unyielding, forcing Xenron to use bursts of aura use and the Stengthening spell to enhance his muscles just to pull free. He could tell she was using her own force of enhancement, but what, he couldn’t be sure of. He could only tell that the intensity increased as they went on. He started practicing what he’d tried on Ken - well-placed knock spells to apply direct or counter pressure and assist his escape. At first this startled her grip, but Vexera adapted as he trained, and soon he needed multiple enhancements just to escape. Finally, one simple grab - same side wrist - was packed with so much unseen pressure that Xenron couldn’t get free. It was then that he recognized it as telekinesis, so perfectly executed that it overlaid perfectly with her hand’s pressure. Almost.
All in all, Xenron was finding the exercise well worth the while. Contact with a pretty young woman aside - this excitement was dulled, but not erased, by context - Xenron was continuously forced to adapt his escapes, twisting his body more fluidly, sharpening his control of his mana. He realized he wasted too much mana with his current skill level - mana efficiency was as important as more flashy attributes like power. He hoped Vexera was learning something from his unconventional approach as well. However, looking up at the sharp lines of her face as she held his hand fast, the glare in her emerald eyes sent a shudder through him.
“When are you going to get serious, Xenron?”
Aslear turned towards Xenron and Vexera, her face confused as she broke a sinister-sounding incantation. A portal between her and Zekain dropped a fuzzy creature missing a head, the thump of its fall breaking a sudden silence.
“I am serious, Vexera,” Xenron said.
She scowled at the sound of her name, confusing Xenron.
“We all understand you’re not going to show us all your secrets. But you need to stop going around pretending we’re all something special.”
“But we are quite special!” Aslear said cheerily. “Vaere has said as much.”
“He says that of every class,” Zekain groaned. “If you want to distinguish yourself, perhaps you should take this program more seriously.”
“And so we come back to the point at hand,” Vexera said, seizing the derailed conversation. “Xenron, perhaps you do not mean offense. You mean to boost our confidence. This is an insult to us. Test us against the power of his Highness’ son. We have been told by the man himself to treat you merely as a peer. You won’t last long taking us lightly.”
Once again, Xenron was reminded of his father’s constant tests. He needed to find a place in the group’s social dynamic. Vexera was an important piece of that - a member the esteemed Emmerson family and master of telekinesis, she would grow immensely in both magical and political power with time. And she had decided that he couldn’t possibly be an underdog within the group - that he was faking his current ability. That’s… an unexpected pain. If Xenron had chosen to keep his limitations secret, it would have been an unexpected boon, but the cat was already out of the bag. Besides, he thought, I’ve already driven Ariel away by lying to her. The taste of her betrayed anguish was still bitter to him. So Xenron nodded to Vexera, shoring up his stance.
His mana was already low - he’d used some on basic enhancement to get through training, and some more on small sorcery spells. He’d even overcharged many Knock spells while training with Aslear, and while Knock itself wasn’t taxing, the repetition could make it so. Still, he saw the way Aslear and Zekain looked at him - heads cocked, anxious but curious. He confirmed his suspicions, he thought, blinking a couple of times to see their souls. When the soul’s light wasn’t drowned out by the noise of everyday lights, Xenron could see an azure glow that he thought was curiosity. They weren’t challenging Vexera - it seemed only Kenneth implicitly believed him about his limitations. If he had decided to give them the truth, Xenron also had to make the truth unmistakably clear. He reviewed his memories of Vexera’s magical abilities - if he judged wrong, this could go badly.
“Fine, then,” Xenron said, musing on how he would have run from the challenge some short weeks ago. He had made a promise. “Hit me with everything you’ve got. One blow. The only constrain I’ll ask for is a blunt force attack, in case anything goes wrong.”
Vexera nodded seriously at the constraint. It was well known that it was hard to kill someone with Xexen constitution without severing something important. Even more so for some species - Lucerna were rumored to be impossible to keep down without decapitating them in folktales. Setting her stance, Vexera built her mana for several seconds. During this time, Xenron muttered a spell, stacking it on himself. He used the full incantation for Strengthening, drawing out every ounce of efficiency to stretch his mana further. The incantation and the sensation of power gave Xenron courage that fought back against the dread and unwholesome images flooding his mind at the use of so much mana.
“Let my body be as stone, and my blood as magma, my bones as steel, and my heart as diamonds. I will not yield.”
The spell made his body rigid and clumsy, but that wouldn’t matter here. His durability would skyrocket alongside his strength, and his aura flared as an outermost layer of protection. By consideration or coincidence, Vexera’s blow came a moment later.
It was slow, by magical standards, but invisible. At least, it should have been. Vexera was a psychic, and a powerful one. Her techniques all came without warning. And yet, Xenron saw the technique as a solid, unstoppable crimson wall in his closed eye vision. Not just souls, but magic? His pondering was cut short as he was struck as if by an invisible truck.
Force crushed into Xenron’s core, radiating out in lesser proportion to send the rest of his body reeling. He sailed back into the far wall in a moment, sending a wave of pressure through the grensteel. As his ribs cracked, he idly wished it was a softer material. Even normal steel would have been fine. His body screamed with reverberating pain.
He groaned, the others looking on in horror. The pain was excruciating, and he felt unbidden tears at the corners of his eyes. This was according to plan, though. He wasn’t dead or critical. A healing chamber would take care of this, as it went beyond a normal training injury. And while he’d spent a lot of time hiding from it, his father had acquainted him with physical pain in their tests. He could face it. No, this was ideal. Xenron guessed that attack was stronger than his projected father’s in their last meeting. Sure, it wasn’t a temple blow, but he still would have been completely destroyed by it only two weeks ago. But compared to an unstructured aura, Strengthening was much stronger - it wasn’t even a contest. He’d never stacked the spell up this solidly - and he would push that limit even further in his training to come. Grimly contented, Xenron staggered unsteadily forward, holding his ribs, Vexera meeting his grin with a grimace.
“Until recently, I couldn’t use a scrap of mana. It’s strange. My mana is a reasonably abundant, and looks flashy - but it’s thin.” Xenron forced out a small pulse of unstructured mana he didn’t think he had, the blue trail passing from his hand like an ethereal spirit. He flagged for a moment, but caught Kenneth’s eyes on his. The youth gave him a broad smile and a nod from his casual posture. “That’s the last of it, I think - unless I managed to tap into my life force. And I did only light training today before the section, though I’ve got more to do later once I’m back in fighting shape. 1st Tier Sorcery isn’t a style choice - it’s all I’ve got. You surpassed me years ago, so I need to give my all to catch up. I learned a lot today. So please-”
“That’s enough,” Vexera said coldly. But Xenron didn’t shudder at the words. There was something about her demeanor that closed postured didn’t quite convey. When he almost collapsed from pain, he felt himself floating. Did I go and die after all that? Shortly afterwards, Xenron was laid out on a small cloth stretcher, and his brain caught up - more telekinesis. “Aslear, go to the healing chamber down the hall and tell them they have a high priority asset requiring healing, but that he’s just a fool who taunted a Telekinetic Ram his way and isn’t urgent.”
The peppy girl gave a smiling salute before rushing off, a shadowy cloak flapping in a corny manner behind her.
“Zekain, give him a bit of healing.”
“Shimmer is a Tier 3 spell, Vex.”
“But surely you’ve been trying to learn a useful spell like that, right? Even an unstructured heal won’t make him worse… probably.”
“Probably?” Xenron asked dubiously, but Zekain shrugged and released a cloud of bright energy from his hands. Hovering around Xenron’s midsection where his shirt was torn and stretched from the sudden force, the cloud caused a tingling sensation, but not pain. This, at least, seemed better than the other way around.
“Kenneth, don’t be worse than useless and stay out of the way.”
Kenneth gave a thumbs up, showing no sign of offense, and crossed his arms behind his head. Where he lay, Xenron quietly apologized.
“I’m sorry to create trouble, Vexera-”
“Stop with the pretense. You don’t speak like an aristocrat, except perhaps to authorities, so you shouldn’t address us like that. It’s just Vex.”
“You prefer that, then?” Xenron asked shyly.
“Like hell I do,” Vex said, then cleared her throat, blushing at the apparent stumble. “But everyone addresses me as such, so you should.”
“What if I just called you beautiful?” Ken contributed, then looked about dramatically as he found himself unwillingly hovering. In moments, Vex had set him atop a shelving unit, facing the wall.
“What did I tell you about staying out of the way?” Vex asked, having held the same annoyed, arms-crossed posture.
“Sorry,” Ken said, facing the wall without turning around. He sounded anything but sorry.
Vex sighed, massaging between red eyebrows.
“My aunt never warned me the most taxing part of this program would be the people.”
“I really don’t mind whatever you want me to call you,” Xenron said, still not content. “I meant to use full names out of respect.”
“It’s not an issue,” Vex said simply. “More importantly, are you really just a Tier 1 caster overall? You mana quantity seems better than that based on Aslear’s accounting.”
“I believe so, yes. And my body should be tougher and my mana reserves deeper than the kids below our age group, if that’s what you’re asking. I’ve studied many higher level spell formulae for years, but vaguely understanding and casting are…”
“Yes, yes. That’ll be sufficient. About names… you’ll likely be addressing me with profanities by the time we’re done. Our training together isn’t finished for the day. I’m going to refine your basics until you hear the word ‘again’ in your nightmares.”
“I didn’t realize you were such a sadist,” Zekain mused. The pain had largely left Xenron’s ribs, though he knew the structure still had to be fixed. “You should show my sis. She’ll have a field day with evil witch Vex.”
“I’ve heard businesswomen in my family called demons, and I’m more fond of that,” Vexera said with bored tone. Then, Xenron’s stretcher floated up, and Vex started walking beside the telekinetic vessel into the hall. Part of Xenron wanted to cut and run the moment he was healed. He wondered where he’d gone mad. He was emotionally overwhelmed by the test and the following situation - but he really had learned a lot today, and the better part of him was invigorated by the buzz of excitement. He did his best to lean into that part of himself. If important people outside his usual circles attended the Intramural Exhibition, they would use it to gauge Xenron’s strength. He was going to give it his all to make sure he put on a good show.
