A sneeze suddenly broke Mary’s concentration and her vision filled with flames as they rapidly climbed up her arm and began wicking the away the oxygen. Water washed over Mary, putting out the fire and leaving her and her clothes curiously dry.


    “Concentrate,” her instructor snapped.


    “Sorry,” Mary replied insincerely, mesmerized by the sight of her skin regrowing at an astonishing rate. When the feeling returned to her newly reformed hand, Mary closed her eyes and visualized her energy circulating throughout her body, imagining it gathering in the palm of her hand and igniting into fire. Her palm became warm as the energy gathered in her hand, making it tingle, and energy began radiating from her palm as hot mana. As the heat started to become unbearable, Mary focused on containing her energy and releasing it in a controlled manner. The air around her hand cooled as the mana ignited and turned into a continuous stream of fire. When the flame had become a stable size, Mary started manipulating her mana output, watching the fire increase in size and die down as she added and decreased mana. Satisfied, she began moving the mana flow around her hand, fascinated by the fire following the moving source of mana. By focusing intensely she managed to split the output of mana and produce two separate smaller streams of flame, until her concentration faltered and they both went out.


    “Alright, that’s enough for now,” her instructor commanded, after watching Mary spend the past hour playing around with her newfound command of fire.


    “Yes, ma’am,” Mary replied, in an imitation of Alex while also giving her a mock salute.


    “Whatever. You know what to do,” her instructor told her, clearly fed up with Mary.


    “Yes, ma’am,” she said once again, plopping down unceremoniously on the ground and pulling a study sheet of runes from her dress. Taking out her quill, she started scratching down the runes as precisely as she could onto another piece of parchment. After filling the parchment over a dozen times she set her quill down and watched the runes fade away and prepared to implement her learnings. Letting her energy exit from the tip of her index finger, she traced the first rune on the ground, leaving a faintly glowing imprint on the ground. When she had finished drawing the rune on the ground, it turned a faint warm orange color and a small fire sprung to life, quickly dying down. Mary repeated this process several more times with each of the runes until she was satisfied with her rune work having a ninety percent success rate. She decided to increase her mana output when creating her next rune, deciding that the rune for water would be probably be the least destructive, she focused her energy in the same way she did to create fire and drew the rune with a slightly increased mana output. When she finished her rune, it glowed a strong blue color and emitted a small torrent of water upon Mary, who had not retreated a far enough distance from her creation.


    Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.Mary was still in shock when her instructor started laughing at her uncontrollably, not amused and no longer wet as the water had already faded back into mana, Mary created another rune this time pointed directly at her instructor. Making sure to back away this time, she watched as the rune sprung to life and doused her instructor thoroughly. Water dripped from her instructor’s wide brim hat and vanishing before it could hit the ground, as she angrily pulled her wand out of her belt, various runes shining from underneath her hand.


    “Stop that, Dorothy,” Arthur exclaimed, seemingly appearing out of nowhere.


    “But, Arthur,” Dorothy pleaded, “she is undisciplined and has been getting on my nerves since the day she first arrived.”


    “It is not your job to discipline her,” Arthur replied, “she has only been given a month by the king and needs to learn as quickly as possible.”


    “That boorish oaf,” Dorothy cursed, “I should have just let her burn, it would have saved her friends from the trouble.”


    “Now, now,” Arthur scolded, “she still has three weeks’ time to make herself useful.”


    “Three weeks?” Dorothy blurted out, cheeks glowing a nonmagical red. “I suppose an apology is in order,” Dorothy said, suddenly turning back to Mary who had been watching in shock the entire time.


    “Um, what?” Mary replied, quite unsure on what had just happened.


    “It would appear that I have been a touch too hard on you,” Dorothy explained, “Most students would have already learned the theory by now and they would have …”


    “I’m sorry too,” Mary interrupted, “I haven’t been the best student either.”


    “Well now that that’s settled,” Dorothy continued awkwardly, “We should continue training.”