Dawn awoke excited for today, as Morris would be returning to teach her. Until then, however, she could tiudying the books they had picked up; after breakfast, of course. She tinued ihoughts as her stomach rumbled, going over the information she had learned yesterday.

  Turning to find Niphru awake on the pillow beside her, she scooped him up and headed towards the kit. After searg through the food she had picked up, she decided to try cooking some meat with her fmes instead of using the tools. After her experience cooking soup, she hoped she could manage a steady temperature long enough to cook it properly, though she expected some difficulties on the first few tries.

  Fortunately, it only took a couple of tries to get it fully cooked, and Niphru was fih mostly-cooked meat as well as fully-cooked, so she didn’t waste anything. Upon finishing their meal, Niphru made it clear that he wao keep w aining his strength while she read, so she set him down beside her chair after petting his head and scratg behind his ears for a moment.

  Since fire magid ice magic both ended up being so simir, Dawn was curious if the other types she knew shared a simir trait, and began reading the most basic book she had picked up. While a good portion of it was simple mana exercises, towards the end, it described that most of the differences between different forms of magic were actually simply in how fine of a trol you used, but all had their base in force magibsp; Fire used a bination of moderate power and trol to produce heat, while ice used the same in opposite fashion. Wind magic was low force applied over a rge area with high trol, while earth magic was high force with low trol. Water seemed quite odd, talking about something called surface tension, and maniputing that more thaual liquid itself, and thus did not o be actual water.

  Being curious about her mother’s light magic, she tinued reading, only to be disappointed with what she found, or perhaps what she didn’t find. Instead of a description of how it worked, ihere was a simple warning. “All attempts to study the ws of light, dark, or mind magic have led to an inability to perform those forms of magibsp; Only one exception is known, and it took signifit effort to fiween a light mage and a mind mage w together to erase knowledge that caused problems. Do not attempt to uand these cepts if you practice these forms of magic.”

  Displeased with what she read, Dawn shut the book a back to the one about fire and ice magistead. Resuming where she had left off to experiment before, she tio read as it described several methods of improving both forms of magibsp; Apparently, a deeper uanding of how something funed made magic using it much more effective, and thus a rge portion of the book was dedicated to expining fire and ice.

  After reading about over a dozen different forms of fire, Dawn found herself equally shocked and amazed, unaware that there was so much variety in fmes. Wood fires she was familiar with, but apparently some stone burned, aain binations of metal powder did, too! Even more shog, to her at least, was that with certain substances, you could even have a fire that burned uer! Simirly, it appeared there were many different forms of ice, depending on the speed and situation in which it froze.

  While she found the information oeresting, she felt far more attuo the fmes after her time using them and even being burned by them. Due to this, she focused more on the fire side of things, learning about how fire was actually a rea between fuel, heat, and air. Further text indicated that the previously mentioned substahat allowed it to burn without air was called an oxidizer, named after oxygen, a part of the air that was all around. This sounded quite iing, so she made a mental o try to find more information on it ter. Flipping back to the ice se, it turned out that ice was made of crystals formed from water, and that the space between the crystals was rger than the space between water, so it expanded when it froze.

  For some reason, the book then switched to talking about fire instead, saying that heating water into steam also forced it to expand, potentially explosively. This sounded like something she wao try, and even as she was thinking that she should ask Morris about it, the door chimed and she remembered that she hadn’t unlocked it after waking up.

  Dawn quickly jerked to her feet, nearly stepping on Niphru as she had not expected him to be right in front of her, then rushed to the door. As expected, Morris was the one oher side, and after entering, he quickly notiiphru, nodding as he did so. He then excimed, “It is good to see he is trying to build up strength again. I’ve known too many who just gave up when they were weakened, and it took far longer for them to recover.”

  After another quice around, his eyes settled on the books, and he remarked, “Likewise, it is good to see you w to improve yourself even without help, that will be very useful, especially if you keep that habit up. If you have not already, I reend reading ‘The Fuals of Mana’ and practig the exercises it tains, though I will be going over some that I think are better. Do you have any questions before we begin, Dawn?”

  Nodding, Dawn searched through the books, finding the oioned aing it aside as she queried, “Is there ao safely try dangerous magibsp; I was just reading about steam explosions, and I’d like to see if I mahat eventually.”

  “Certainly!” Morris replied, “We wouldn’t be mages without magical experiments, after all! I get you access in a few days, it is below the spire, simir to the dungeon from your testing. We’ve found being below ground is much safer when things g, and having a warrie present has saved lives several times.”

  Satisfied with this response, Dawn responded, “That was the only question I had. You said you had some better exercises than the books?”

  “Ihey are not bad or anything, but there is always room for improvement. Some of them also earn you money, and I reend those, of course. While you could simply focus ily as you charge mana stones, I would reend instead fog on the leakage, and try to simultaneously draw that into another crystal. This helps both your sensitivity as well as your fine trol. Since you are ied in things that involve water, this will help with wind magid drawing moisture from the air around you, eventually. As you get more used to this, I would also add a third crystal, and alterween them, without moving. That helps break the habit of only w with things you touch, which is an immense weakness,” Morris expined.

  “I suppose that makes sense, and it would be a good way to make money. How do I get uncharged magic stoo try with?” questioned Dawn, looking at her bracelets and w if she should use the stones in them before quickly dismissing the idea.

  Notig her gnce, Morris chuckled before responding, “No, don’t use those unless you o. We provide recharging for the ey, so we have a rge stockpile. Well, not us, specifically, but all the mage spires together. If you go up several floors, you will find the storehouse. We used to have it closer to the base, but it is easier to siphon mana from higher up, and no one wants to travel a dozen floors over and ain, so instead we do bulk transfers up to that floor every week. While fire mages work on ing the sewer systems, earth mages move ptforms around the tower. Both are good training, and solve problems, so it is a win for everyone. Anyways, you won’t be able to miss it, the entire floor is devoted to it, so there are no rooms or halls. You only take out smaller stones, however, as rger ones be explosive if overloaded, so they are reserved for more experienced individuals. We don’t enforce this, it enforces itself. Do not try before someone skilled deems you ready.”

  “What do you mean it enforces itself?” Dawn asked.

  “Someone always tries to get ahead of themselves and overloads something te. The results aren’t pretty, nor is healing those that survive easy. Everything else we’ve tried results in worse outes, though; people try to bypass any security we put up, and that gets ugly fast. It is unfortunate, but this is what we found works best,” Morris answered, sadly shaking his head.

  “But what about demonstrating with smaller, safer stones in a trolled situation? That seems to make a lot of seo me!” Dawn excimed in shock.

  “Sadly, that attempt ended in people thinking we were exaggerating the danger. We also tried rger ones, but ohe tai failed, and we lost half a dozen apprentices. It was a disaster, and in the end, we lose less by letting people learn the hard way after a warning. I do hope you won’t be that foolish, will you?” Morris responded, fixing her with a pierg stare.

  Still shocked, Dawn shook her head, she certainly didn’t want to explode… again… She still remembered the fireball just before she passed out during the Bck Tide bae. She had been incredibly lucky once, and didn’t want to see if she would still be lucky. Instead she replied, “Absolutely not, I’ll wait like you said, I already got exploded ond was lucky that time!”

  “Good, good,” Morris excimed, smiling again before tinuing, “I believe your mother mentioned you do it already, but anood exercise is to try to trol several smaller spells at onbsp; In your case, two or three balls of fme would be a good start, or even light in case you mess up.”

  “That isn’t needed, I’ve been doing that for a while now, watch!” Dawn procimed proudly, quickly creating over a dozen small balls of fme and weaving them through a plex pattern around herself, careful not to touything with them.

  “Well now, that is certainly impressive. It appears you skip quite a few steps in improving your trol, several of those on higher floors have worse trol than you,” Morris said approvingly.

  “ht, I fot if I told you or not, but I also do this, which Mother said you could be trusted with knowing,” Dawn stated before bringing the fmes ba, pg them on her head like a circlet and stig her hand into the fmes as well.

  After a quick jolt of shod expression of fear and worry, Morris noticed she was still calm and not in pain, and instead his expression shifted to one of pure shobsp; Dawhe fires fade out and waited until he finally spoke, “That is absolutely something you should keep secret. I will tell those who should know and be trusted, then give you a list of who knows. I hought I’d see someone able to do that…”

  “Well, hopefully I live up to expectations after that. I guess I’ll just have to keep doing my best, right?” Dawn remarked, getting a nod iurn.

  Morris shook his head before stating, “This is going to cause all kinds of issues for me… I suppose I should leave to get started, and you get to work on the basic exercises while I’m busy. Do you have any other surprises before I go?”

  Shaking her head, Dawn replied, “Not that I know of, I didn’t know it would get that kind of rea, though! I am sorry to cause problems for you, but I keep learning, hopefully it isn’t too big an issue?”

  “No, just going to be annoying trying to get those people alone and talk to them. Nothing you o worry about,” Morris expined before he turned and headed towards the door.

  As he left, Dawn sat down beside Niphru and pulled him into her p, petting him to rex for a few minutes, feeling his tehrough their bond. She did, however, want to get started with practice, so she eventually got up and removed the pouch taining Niphru’s mana stone from her clothes and pced it around his neck, remembering how important it was for him to keep nearby. Following this, she exited her residend begarek upstairs to find the mana stoe floor.