Chapter 64

Training with Maddy was a lot more hands-on than with Sabina. Maddy went over academic topics as they cropped up, and was happy to indulge Zoey’s questions—or gently shoot them down when they could be too complex to answer in earnest—but Maddy focused on the applied side of spellcasting, overall.

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Zoey said. “I know you’re the expert here, but why am I still casting ice spikes? Shouldn’t I be working on new spells?”

They’d been going at it for about an hour. Zoey’s reservoir of mana was running low. Or, ‘lust’, more accurately, since Zoey’s spells didn’t operate on the more mundane resource available to mages. That would need to be taken care of, shortly. Some indeterminate distance away, Rosalie was carrying around the linking plate ... and when she saw Zoey harden, she would ‘recharge’ her.

That alone had been quite the distraction. How couldn’t it be? She’d had to focus intensely on the lesson, because accidentally letting herself harden meant Rosalie would think it was time for a recharge. Which would lead to an awkward few moments, having to scurry away from Maddy while Rosalie worked away.

Sheesh. What a situation.

Fortunately, distractions were easy to come by. Spellcasting was hard work. Even after just an hour, Zoey was drained, and not just in the sense of mana, but a less-defined way, like having worked a set of muscles to their limit that she hadn’t known existed. A sheen of sweat coated her skin from the effort.

“Oh, we will,” Maddy said. “But it’s important we catch you up to speed on the basics, first. Techniques and stuff. Easier to do when you’re casting the same spell over and over. I can’t believe you weren’t using a flourish!”

‘Flourish’ seemed to be the term that Maddy used for the physical crutch—the tracing of her fingers, or sometimes staff, in the air—for summoning spell circles and filling them with glyphs. While not strictly necessary, Zoey had found imitating Maddy made constructing the spell quicker. When Rosalie had taught her, Zoey had simply built the spell inside her head. It wasn’t immensely easier, using a flourish, but noticeably, for sure.

And Maddy’s argument made sense. Zoey was improving; her ice spike was coming to life more fluidly, and Maddy had even shown her how to make tiny modifications to the diagram to adjust the spell’s bulk or speed—which were inversely proportional to each other, seeing how the mana needed to go to one or the other.

It was odd, the modifications. Maddy demonstrated the changes, and Zoey could intuit what they would do, even before she implemented them. Like Maddy had said, her arcana rune gave her heaps of built-in knowledge. To be fair, that was the only way Zoey would’ve ever been able to cast an ice spike in the first place, seeing how Rosalie was no mage. Zoey was surprised she even knew some spells. Part of her tutelage, undoubtedly—her parents covering their bases, at least in a small way, in case Rosalie received a mage-type class. Or, that was Zoey’s best guess.

“But,” Maddy said, amused, “if you want to move on, we can get started on some other spells. It’s gonna be a lot of banging your head against the wall, though ... and a lot of wasted mana. By sticking with your ice spike, we could make some actual progress. I thought it’d help encourage you.”

“That’s fine,” Zoey said. “You don’t have to worry about me getting frustrated.” She paused. “Or, giving up, at least.” She might get frustrated. She was only human. “An ice spike is one of the easiest spells to learn, right?”

Maddy pursed her lips, then sheepishly said, “Yeah, kind of.”

“So a defensive spell like ‘ice armor’ would take much longer. More than an hour or two.”

“We’ll be hunkering down for a while,” Maddy agreed. “Er, it only took you an hour or two to learn ice spike?”

“Yeah? Why?” Was it a good pace? Rosalie hadn’t seem particularly impressed, back in the first shard. Then again, Rosalie would be impossible to impress when it came to competency.

Maddy thought about it. “Well, objectively ... I guess not really. But for a novice without any training? Faster than I’d expect.”

“Mildly above average. That’s me.”

Maddy laughed. “More than mildly. But yeah, sure, we’ll start on reading spell formulas, then work away at a first-circle ice armor. How’s your mana situation?”

Right. That. “I should probably top up.”

A pause. Zoey knew Delta had briefed Maddy on what exactly that meant ... if Maddy’s quickly coloring cheeks didn’t give it away.

“Right,” Maddy said, coughing into her hand. “Reconvene in an hour?”

Zoey had gotten so used to Delta and Rosalie’s easy acceptance of her class that Maddy’s awkward reaction—the reasonable, default one when confronted with Zoey’s class details—was twice as embarrassing ... a flush picked up on Zoey’s cheeks, too.

“Probably just a half-hour,” Zoey said. “That fine?”

“S-Sure.”

“Okay. Uh. See you then.”

Still blushing, Zoey left the training room, closing the door behind her. Did Maddy know exactly how Zoey would be ‘taking care of it’? Had Delta told her about the teleporting panties? If not, what did Maddy assume Zoey was heading off to do? Meet up with Delta or Rosalie in person? That would explain why she’d suggested a full hour break, despite how, with the convenient item Zoey was wearing, it probably wouldn’t even take the full half-hour.