The first morning of the next week, Pria practically leapt from her bed and threw on her clothes for the day. Even if it was a lesson in necromancy with dreary Nour, Pria couldn't help but be excited. No more fumbling around in the library for anything that made the slightest bit of sense. She would have an actual teacher and learn some actual magic.

She asked the tower to bring her to Nour and got a slight shudder in response. Opening her door and stepping through, she found herself in a small, dimly lit room. She blinked, waiting a moment for her eyes to adjust to darkness. It was a little strange, she thought, considering that nearly every other place in the tower was well-lit and spacious. The only other room that hadn't was the tower's heart.

Looking around, Pria almost wished her eyes hadn't adjusted. The walls were hidden by shelves lining the entirety of the room with glass jars crammed into every available spot. Strange objects and creatures hung suspended in each one, slightly discolored by whatever sickly colored liquid was used to preserve them. Throughout the rest of the room were tables covered in papers and a single sink right next to the door.

Illuminating the far corner was Nour, hanging just above one of the tables. The light of his body cast long shadows across the room, and when Pria walked in, he slowly drifted over to her.

"Sorry about the mess. I don't care about cleaning it," he muttered. Pria watched the shadows in the room shift. When they moved over the jars, it almost made their contents look like they were moving. She shuddered.

"What's in those jars?" she asked, morbidly curious.

Nour let out a pulse and murmured, "Items for experiments. Wanna see one?"

"Uh, no thanks." Pria took another step into the room and shivered at the sudden chill. Was it kept so cold to help preserve the dead things? "What kind of experiments does Rahu do?"

"A bit of this, a bit of that," Nour sighed. "My job is usually to run trials for them, but he hasn't done much work with necromancy lately. I get to just do my own thing most days now, so I won't complain."

Pria nodded, shuffling toward one of the tables and peering at some of the pages there. She was fairly certain it was some kind of spell to manipulate dust, though its true purpose and execution was lost on her among the page's diagrams and cramped writing.

"I was thinking you could start by using one of the jars," Nour said in that droning, whiny way of his. He floated toward the shelves to the left of the room. "It should be pretty easy. You're kind of reminding it what it means to be alive, and using that to control it. I think a lot of mages imagine it more like you're puppeteering something. You know, bonding with it and using that bond to move it."

Pria pursed her lips and nodded. Picking a jar with what looked like part of a tentacle in it, she began trying to shift it from outside its glass, listening as Nour gave her tips and smiling when, after nearly half an hour, she managed to get the thing to twitch.

"That's a good start," Nour sighed, and she grinned.

The next day, the tower brought her to a balcony when she asked it to bring her to Qwo and Dree. She hadn't even known the tower had balconies, and this one was near the tower's top. She crept toward its stone railing, gripping it as she peered down at the spires and ocean so far below.

"Hi, Pria!"

"Greetings, milady."

She jumped, clutching the railing as the sudden motion hit her with a wave of vertigo. Swallowing hard, she glanced over her shoulder to where Qwo and Dree floated.

"Oh my fates, we're like, so totally sorry," Dree pulsed, zipping closer to her. "We didn't mean to scare you. Are you afraid of heights?"

Pria shook her head. "Not really. It's just..." she glanced back over the edge of the balcony. "Really high up."

"Oh good, you're not afraid of heights. That makes this, like, way easier." A pale platform of light appeared below Dree, and she bobbed. "Get on, girl, we have places to be!"

Pria blanched. "What?"

Qwo drifted closer. "We'll be flying to the town that needs our help dealing with some monsters. Dree will keep up a shield to bring you with us, and we'll explain a little about the basics on the way."

Pria swallowed hard. "This is safe, right?"

"Completely! I've only lost like three people doing this." Pria's eyes widened, and Dree's light fluttered with a giggle. "Kidding! I'm kidding. This is perfectly safe."

Sighing, Pria stepped onto the platform and crouched down, gripping the edge of the shield with one hand to steady herself and holding onto her cap with the other. When she nodded, Dree took off, Pria lurching into motion beside her. Qwo took up Pria's other side, and they zipped away. Pria clung to the shield, blinking at the harsh wind as they swiftly left the tower behind them, moving northwest along the countryside. After a few minutes, Pria risked a glance back, eyes widening when she saw the tower was just a distant sliver standing along the dark horizon.

If only she could have flown like this when she was travelling to the tower. That would have been nice.

"Oh, I almost forgot," Dree said, barely audible over the rush of wind. A moment later and a shield rose in front of Pria, blocking the wind. Pria sighed in relief, ruefully rubbing at her ears. She bet if she really was human, that probably wouldn't have hurt so much.

"So, Lady Pria," Qwo said, drifting a little closer to her, "I imagine you're wondering where, exactly, we're going. As Master Rahu's aspects of weapon and shield, it's our job to handle any threats to the towns around the tower. That includes anything from bandits to monsters."

"And we're, like, really good at our job, too," Dree said.

"Yes," Qwo said, a little exasperated. Pria smiled. "But seeing as you are accompanying us on this mission, it only makes sense that we explain how you could use magic to help the townspeople, just like us. You see, Lady Pria, weapon and shield magic are two disciplines that are most potently opposites. My magic, weapon magic, is all about the desire to inflict harm."

Noble Qwo, desiring to inflict harm? Pria had a hard time wrapping her mind around that.

"Shield magic is all about the desire to protect," Dree chimed in, shifting closer. "Like right now. My desire to keep you from falling to your death makes a totally great shield."

Pria swallowed, gripping the shield a little tighter.

"By practicing weapon and shield magic, you can learn to control the way both disciplines manifest," Qwo continued. "Just know that you must be careful, milady. The bigger the spell, the more it will exhaust you."

She thinks of a column of flames conjured by one man and can't help but be a little impressed again. The man looked tired the next morning, but he still managed to pull off not only that spell, but a dozen others. Pria grimaced and nodded.

A few more moments and Pria spotted a town up ahead. They began slowing down, and when they were directly about the town, they lowered straight down. Pria noticed people milling about, some of them glancing up and waving at their little entourage. She pulled her cap down, ears itching.

"Okay Pria, me and you will head around town and warn people about the monsters. Just in case, like, we pick a fight and a couple of them slip away, we want everyone to stay safe. Qwo will go find the things."

Dree dismissed the shield, then, and Pria dropped the last foot to the packed dirt of the town square with a yelp. "A little warning, next time?" she muttered, picking herself up and dusting herself off.

"Oh my fates, that's totally my bad." Dree flitted about her. "Sorry, sorry. Come on, let's get everyone inside."

Pria trailed behind the aspect as she roamed around the streets of the town, shouting for people to get inside. Pria watched them anxiously, clinging to the hem of her shirt if only so that she didn't constantly pull on her cap. Her ears were covered. It was fine.

She was a little surprised that people obeyed Dree's orders. She couldn't imagine anybody in her old town doing something like that, but then, she hadn't lived in an area with many monsters. Measures like this weren't taken very often, but from the sound of it, the storms attracted a lot of monsters. The townspeople here were probably used to hiding from anything nasty that came their way.

After a few minutes, Dree took off, telling Pria to wait beside a closed shop. She came back just a minute later proudly proclaiming that word had quickly spread, and all the townspeople were in their homes. They could go meet up with Qwo.

He was waiting for them when they walked and floated, respectively, back to the town center. "The monsters have made a nest about half a mile east of here. I should be able to make quick work of them but Dree will make sure none get past us. Pria, you can go ahead and just watch us this time around."

Pria nodded but couldn't help but feel a measure of disappointment. She wanted to try her hand at some of this magic.

Dree made another shield for her to ride to the nest, and it took barely a minute to get to there. Pria really wished she had this power when she spent two years traveling to the tower.

The lands stretching around the tower were arid and dry, but the spot the monsters made their nest was a small, wooded area likely fed by some type of underground spring. Dree and Pria waited at the edge of the woods while Qwo ventured inside. It only took a few moments before inhuman screeches filtered from the depths of the woods. Pria shifted uneasily, watching the space in between the trees for any movement.

"I see one!" Dree chirped. "Oh ho ho, I love this part."

Pria squinted. A moment later, she saw something bound out from behind a tree, heading straight for them. Pria drew back, eyes wide, but the beast veered off to the side when it saw them. It burst from the tree line, and Pria couldn't help but gape.

It was about the size of a wolf but more resembled a lizard, skinny and covered in scales. It snarled, revealing a mouth of serrated fangs, its tiny eyes darting around. There was a wound along its flank bleeding sluggishly.

It tried to take off again, galloping in the direction of the town. Pria cried out, but it stopped suddenly, not more than ten feet from the woods. Dree cackled, and Pria could just barely make out the light sheen of a shield.

"Ha! What do you think of that?" Dree said smugly, bobbing from her spot beside Pria. Pria gave a shaky smile.

This was her chance. She tried to harness what Qwo spoke of— a desire to harm so intense that it created a physical manifestation. She wanted to hurt the monster. She wanted it to die. She fixed these thoughts in her mind and outstretched her hand.

Nothing happened.

Dree raised another shield as the monster tried darting off in a different direction. Qwo still wasn't here. She still had a chance.

Maybe her desire just wasn't intense enough. It was a monster and it would hurt people, but it was also frightened and already injured. The moment Qwo came back, it would be dead. She almost pitied it, but she couldn't afford to if she wanted to hurt it.

A thought occurred to her, and Pria smiled. She needed to hate this creature. She needed to see it as something or someone that she wanted to hurt more than anything else.

She imagined it was Rahu.

From her hand, three arrows shot forth, aimed straight for the monster. They looked almost like they were spun of glass, pale and with a ghostly shimmer. They flew just as any other arrow, singing through the air and striking right along the monster's shoulder.

Except that the arrows glanced off its scales, dissipating into nothingness. The monster turned, it's tiny, yellow eyes focusing straight on Pria.

It bounded closer, and Pria forgot every bit of her elven pride, yelping and throwing her arms over her head. She braced herself, but no great claws scored her flesh. Peeking one eye open, she found the beast stopped once again, soundless trapped by walls of shield magic.

"Hey, that was awesome! You managed to conjure some weapon magic. Qwo will be, like, so totally pumped," Dree said, drifting closer to her. Pria breathed out a sigh of relief.

Of course Dree would have her back. She felt a little foolish now for thinking that her attack would work and secondly for thinking that she was in any actual danger. Qwo and Dree's whole job was protecting people. So long as her ears stayed covered, that included her.

Qwo zipped out of the woods a moment later, wordlessly dispatching the remaining monster with a spectral spear that slammed straight through its skull and disappeared. The monster didn't even get the chance to cry out. It slumped over, blood oozing from its head, and that was that.

Pria still couldn't wrap her head around it. "Qwo," she called, and he zipped over. She furrowed her brow. "How do you do it?"

"What do you mean, milady?"

Pria shook her head. "I was able to use some weapon magic, but only because I imagined using it against someone I hated. How do you do it?"

Qwo let out a pulse. "Sometimes, to protect those you care about, you have to be willing to destroy any that would cause them harm." Pria stared at him, and he made a sound like he was clearing his throat. "Congratulations on using some weapon magic."

Pria couldn't help but smile at that.

That night, another storm tried to sweep up the tower in its howling rage. Pria still couldn't quite sleep through them, but she just went to the library while she waited for Rahu to deal with it, sorting some books and studying others that she could finally understand.

In the morning, she ventured onto the roof of the tower with Peven. The aspect had a deeper voice and requested to be called a he that day, and Pria was desperately trying to fix that in her mind. She didn't want to offend him.

"My job after every storm is to take some readings to see how bad it was," he told her as they moved around the edge of the tower's roof. "As your sensing becomes more powerful, you can determine some things about the environment around you. With storm magic, this includes moisture in the air, wind speeds, temperature, and the like. When your sensing becomes even better, you can sense things about the air that aren't fixed on your place in time. For instance, to measure the storm from last night, I'll be reading the air's past. If you or I were an elf, we would be able to read its future too, but unfortunately, neither of us are so strong in storm magic."

Pria very carefully did not adjust her hat. "Is that so? Does sensing a place's past and future also apply to earth magic?"

"I would think so," Peven said, "but I'm just not too sure, dear. You'll have to ask Aone when you see him. For now, try to imagine yourself as part of the air around you."

It was much easier to spread her senses through the air than through the earth. All she had to do was imagine she was part of the sky, and there it was, the feeling of the air dancing above her and yet also part of her, the droplets of moisture suspended beyond view of the eye. She could even feel the lingering rage of the storm from the night before, and she quickly dropped the spell.

"Do you feel anything?" Peven asked.

"No," she said. She couldn't help but feel a little bad lying to him, but she didn't want her ease of storm magic to be suspicious.

Peven bobbed in front of her. "Don't worry about it, dear. Just keep on trying while I collect my readings. Don't be afraid to come up here or to a balcony when you have spare time, too. It'll be easier trying to sense the air around you if you're surrounded by it like you are now."

Pria nodded, spreading her sense again and feeling weightless as they continued around the tower's edge. She couldn't help but think of how long it would be until she could simply jump off its ledge and soar away.

The next day she found herself back outside the tower among the spires, walking the paths of floating rocks between them with Aone.

He explained that one of his duties was upkeep of the spires. The storms damaged them sometimes, not to mention the effect of the ocean and the occasional monster that came to wreak havoc. Aone went through about once a week to maintain them and ensure their structural integrity.

"Have you been working on your earth sense?" he asked as they moved off of the rock path and onto one of the spires proper. Pria nodded, and he said, "Good. Why don't you sense this spire for me and see if you can find anything amiss."

Pria nodded again and crouched down, laying her hand flat on the spire's warm face. It took a moment for her to concentrate her magic and send it through the rock, but when she did, she couldn't help but feel a little surprised. The stone here was so different from the tower, the irregularities grating on her senses. She pushed through that, trying to find any spot that was actually damaged.

She couldn't get her sense to go very far, and after a few moments, she dropped the spell. "I couldn't sense much of anything," she admitted, eyeing the aspect.

He didn't sound the least bit suspicious when he responded, "That's alright. Keep working on it, and I'll do what I need to do."

She thought he was being surprisingly patient, considering. She still worried that her lack of progress was noticeable, but she hoped he chalked it up to her being bad at magic rather than her being an elf. Maybe that was why he was being so patient. All she wanted to do was learn magic, and he must think she wasn't very good at it.

So long as she escaped suspicion, that was good enough for her.

The potion lab was a sprawling room filled with various tables and countertops, each of those filled with an arrangement of various glass beakers and instruments. Something was billowing bright pink smoke in the back of the room, and Pria couldn't help but wonder if being inside there was even safe for someone with lungs.

"Well? Come on, I haven't got all day," Vix snapped, zipping past Pria into the room proper. She hesitantly followed, still eyeing the pink smoke and giving the air a cautious sniff. Smelled like roses.

"I don't mean any offense," Pria began slowly, waiting for Vix to jump down her throat. She didn't, merely flitting from bubbling cauldron to counter to table. Pria hoped she was listening, at least. "I was wondering, how do you make potions? I thought you had to pair them with another magic for them to do anything."

"Hmph. Well, you're right about that. I have to admit, I'm a bit surprised you even knew that much, but whatever, makes my job easier." She pulsed once, darting back to Pria. "I can't make most potions, but I don't need to. Rahu makes big batches of potions then it's my job to optimize their potency."

"You don't need to worry about that, though," she continued, drifting toward another cauldron. Pria joined her, watching the viscous, purple liquid bubble over a small flame. "You'll be making potions without any added magic. Those are referred to as mana potions, and they replenish your body's ability to cast spells. Good mages carry several with them at all times."

She moved to a table, twirling around a row of beakers. Pria followed and peered at them, but as far as she could tell, they just contained water.

"The tricky bit about making potions is the fact that they're not like enchantments. With enchantments, you're just trying to make something contain magic, maybe make it release that magic at specific times. With potions, you have to make it so that the magic inside will be released when it's ingested."

Pria frowned. "How do you do that?"

Vix huffed. "The same way you use any magic. It's about intent more than anything. You have to want the magic to be released when someone drinks it. When you get better, you can even make potions that can only be drank by a specific person."

"I see," Pria said, even if she really didn't. "But how do you put the magic in the liquid?"

Vix sighed. "How do you do anything with magic? You will it, and it happens."

Pria nodded, staring down the beakers of water. It sounded a bit like weapon and shield magic, trying to make something happen by sheer force of will. But it was also, apparently, about the intent behind the will.

"From my understanding, most mages envision a towel. Water is soaked up, but it can also be wrung back out. Not all of it will come out, but if you put enough water in, you'll get what you need at the end."

Pria blinked. "And my magic is the water?"

"Yes," Vix snapped. "Keep up, will you? I have things to do. I can't spend too long lecturing you."

"Fine." Pria stepped forward and picked up the first beaker. Vix pulsed and zipped away, leaving Pria to her practice. Huffing, she turned the object around in her hand and scrutinized its contents. She was nearly sure it was just water. Was that all a potion was? In stories, it was always some disgusting concoction of monster parts, herbs, and magic. The other cauldrons in the room certainly weren't just water; by the divines, one was smoking and the other was purple.

But Pria trusted Vix. Sort of. She trusted her enough to not audibly doubt what she made Pria do. Staring hard at the beaker in her hand, Pria tried to imagine it was a towel and she was feeding it her magic. After several moments of absolutely no reaction, the water suddenly flared blue.

That ended up being surprisingly easy. She grinned, turning to find Vix, but as she did, the color blinked out of the liquid. Pria frowned, swishing the water back and forth, but no more colors burst forth. It looked like clear, regular water again.

"Vix," she called, scanning the room until she found the aspect hovering over a counter to her left. "It turned a different color for a second then became clear again."

"That means you did it wrong," the aspect said. "You enchanted the water, but without a function in mind, it just used up all the magic you gave it at once. Try again."

Pria sighed and envisioned the towel again. She worked for nearly an hour more, but all she got for her trouble was flashes of blue that burned to transparency in the blink of an eye. Vix wandered over after a while, and Pria knew she was watching her even if the aspect had no eyes to train on her.

After another blip of color shot through the beaker in Pria's hand, Vix said, "What are you, an elf? You shouldn't be this bad at this." Pria flushed, ears burning under her cap. "Keep at it, but call it a day soon. You'll just exhaust yourself."

"I don't think the towel trick is working," Pria said. The metaphor was stupid.

"Then come up with something else," Vix bit, darting away again.

Pria sighed. Well, she hadn't been quite this bad, but necromancy had taken a while to figure out, too. She couldn't be immediately good at every magic, and that went double for disciplines she wouldn't be as skilled at as an elf. As long as Vix thought she was just inept, it was fine.

Shaking her head, she focused back on the task at hand. Come up with a new metaphor? She could try. No, she would figure this out. She didn't have a choice.

"Oh, no," Sive said when she stepped through her door the next morning. "If I have to teach you, it's not going to be in something so drab. Go put on your dress from last time. That was very pretty on you, if I do say so myself."

Pria rolled her eyes, but the least she could do was go along with Sive's antics. So far, they were the only one that even gave her stipulations, as asinine as they were. She went back to her room and quickly changed back into the dress from the last time he made her dress up. The blue, silk gown didn't feel as strange to wear now, and Pria didn't know how to feel about that.

"Much better," Sive said when she came back. "Doesn't that just feel better? You look like a proper lady now."

Pria did not bother responding, peering around the room she found herself in instead. It looked like an infirmary, the entire place clean and orderly. Cots lined the left and right walls with drawn curtains between each one. Large, wooden cabinets rested at the back and front of the room, no doubt containing bandages and other such items.

"So, have any luck with your healing magic?" Sive asked.

Pria nodded. "I was able to repair a torn leaf," she said. It was probably a good idea to keep her ability past that to herself. Sive didn't seem like the suspicious type, but Pria wouldn't take the chance.

"Oh, guess I am a good teacher," Sive replied, shining with gold. Pria decided not to risk their ire by disagreeing. "Well good, we can go to the greenhouse and you can just keep on practicing that. It's not like we ever really have injured people in the infirmary anyway. No one around here can get injured, or if they can, it's never anything too bad."

Pria rubbed at the crook of her arm before she realized what she was doing. She hadn't even known the tower had a greenhouse, but now that she thought about it, she wouldn't be surprised if they had some rooms with farm animals too. They had to get supplies from somewhere, and she doubted the local towns shared their goods. The climate of the Sea District wasn't conducive to large harvests or plentiful food.

Sive went back through the door, and Pria followed them into the tower's greenhouse. It was just like any other room except that the far wall's usual stone was replaced by large, glass panels that fed sunlight into the room. In the middle were large, leafy plants set into their own separate clay pots, but along the sides of the room was long planters, stacked up along the walls with just enough room for the plants to grow between them.

"Just pick any plant and do your practice. I'll be in here too, harvesting what I can and making the plants regrow," Sive said, drifting to the planters on the left.

"I did have a question for you, Sive," Pria said slowly, approaching the leafy plants in the middle. They looked more like herbs than fruits or vegetables, and the large leaves would probably make for better practice. "Why not heal Viris's wing?"

Sive sighed. "I would if I could, sweetheart," they replied, subdued. "I would if I could. Unfortunately, Rahu wasn't too great at healing when Viris first came to the tower, and by the time he studied it up and made me, the wound was too old. I imagine an elf would be able to heal him now, but they'd need to be a master and well..."

"There aren't any of those," Pria muttered.

"Aren't any elven mages, period." Sive flitted over to her and let out a pulse. "We do what we can, but unfortunately, giving Viris back his wing is beyond the scope of anyone here."

It didn't need to be, not for long. Pria could hone her skills and heal Viris one day, try to make up for some of the things her people did to him. But then he'd know she was an elf. No, that wouldn't work.

She wished it could, though. She wished she could help him.

"Well anyway," Sive said, perking up again, "go ahead and practice. If you're already getting the hang of it, you can always go to the library and read up on more complicated spells too. That goes for all the disciplines you're learning."

Pria smiled. "Thank you, Sive."

"Of course, sweetheart."

After practicing for a while with Sive, Pria decided to take their advice and head to the library. She'd already studied with the aspects for a week and now had some idea on the basics of most disciplines. Illusion and madness were still outside her range of understanding, but then again, she had some idea of how she was supposed to cast illusions. That would just have to wait for her own spare time.

In any case, she might be able to make sense of some more complicated spells in disciplines like healing and storm magic. She should also try to find out which disciplines she was supposed to be better at as an elf and look more into celestial magic. She still had no idea how she was supposed to cast it or what purpose it really served. It seemed to bring things to life—made them exist—but what limits were there to that kind of power? Viris said creating aspects was a weak type of celestial magic, but how did that compare to the tower? To the storms?

Asking anyone more about celestial magic would be suspicious, she was sure. She supposedly couldn't even use it, so why should she know anything past the fact that it made things exist? She'd just have to figure out what she could on her own.

She asked the tower to bring her to the library and stepped through the door of the greenhouse. After closing the door behind her, she froze, watching Rahu's back as he looked through a book on the third level of the library. Nine floated beside him, their smooth core giving the occasional ripple. They let out a pulse as Pria stopped, and Rahu looked up.

"Oh," Rahu said, barely audible from his spot halfway up the room. He put the book away and frowned. "There you are."

Pria cautiously moved forward, stopping beside the wooden table in the middle of the room. "I've been helping the aspects with their duties during the morning and sorting the library afterwards until dinner."

Rahu placed a hand against the railing, and Pria watched in muted amazement as the wood curled away from him. He stepped past, and Pria took a sharp breath when he casually floated down to the ground floor, his clothes rippling in an unseen wind. Above him, the wood curled back, shifting and reattaching to the rest of the railing like it had never moved in the first place.

"Is that so?" Rahu asked, lips quirking up in a smile. "That's, ah, good."

Pria eyed him as his feet hit the ground then glancing at Nine as she drifted down next to him. She nodded and kept her head down, unsure how to respond.

They stood there like that for a moment, and Pria could feel Rahu's eyes on her. What was his ploy? Was he waiting for her to come back to the library?

"I just, ah, wanted to leave Nine with you for a while," he said after a long moment. Pria blinked and glanced up at the aspect. They didn't react. After another beat, Rahu added, "If that's alright."

"Yes, sir," Pria said, cursing internally. Why would he saddle her with Nine? Did he want them to spy on her? Was she supposed to just babysit the aspect for a while? Why?

"Okay," Rahu breathed. At the edge of her vision, she saw him nod. "Right then," he said after another moment before striding past her. She didn't move until she heard the door open and close behind her.

Biting the inside of her cheek, she glanced at Nine again. They just floated at the side of the room, edges rippling.

Pria swallowed and pasted on a smile. "Hello, Nine."

"Hello, Pria," they droned. Pria waited, but they still didn't move or otherwise react.

Pursing her lips, she turned on her heel and started her sorting again. The secrets of celestial magic were hidden somewhere on this level, and she would find them. It wasn't like the aspects could read, so she didn't have much to worry about in that regard. If Nine was there to spy on her, there wasn't much they could actually do.

She worked in silence for a few hours, reading bits and pieces of old history books. She found one that interested her—the biography of one of the first elven masters of illusion—which happened to mention that illusion was the discipline better suited for elves. There were also a few books that belonged on different levels, but the only one that made any sense to her was the one on necromancy. She still didn't know how to really do it, but it looked to be a spell that was used with madness and weapon magic to see a necromancer's bonds and sever them.

She would need to figure out how to use madness magic. Nine wasn't even alive enough to have an actual name—she wouldn't be able to help Pria for a while. How long did it take an aspect to mature to the point it could describe how to use its magic?

Maybe she could hold off on it for now. As exciting as it was to learn magic, she was going to be at this for a while. She could always learn magic from Nine and Geight in a year or two.

The very thought made her want to dance. How much would she improve in a year? When would she be able to fly? Slay a monster? Concoct a potion or heal a grievous injury? It couldn't be that long, but she also couldn't afford to get her hopes up. Magic was a difficult art—that was why there were so few mages. She was bound to hit frustrations and road blocks, just like she was currently facing with potions.

"What are you doing?"

Pria started, glancing up at Nine. She'd nearly forgotten the aspect was there. They'd gotten closer while Pria wasn't paying attention and now floated at the other end of the table.

Pria frowned at the book open before her. "I'm reading." Rahu had read in front of them before. Shouldn't they know about reading?

"Why?" Nine asked. With their flat voice, it was barely discernible as a question.

"People read to gain knowledge," Pria explained slowly. What, exactly, did the aspect understand? Were concepts like knowledge and learning lost on them?

"I understand," Nine droned and fell silent once more. Their core flared with a spike of activity before smoothing out again. "Thank you, Pria."

She didn't know why the aspect was thanking her, but she nodded anyway, smiling. It looked like Rahu really did just want her to babysit them. The thought of the ascendant soured her mood, but at least he was more tolerable than he was when she first came to the tower. He stayed out of her way and barely even seemed to pay her any attention. He hadn't even known she was working with his other aspects which told her two things: one, he really didn't care to see what she was up to even when he could just consult the tower and find out, and two, the aspects didn't talk to him about her. She wondered if Geight told them she wasn't a huge fan of Rahu. Hopefully not—Geight knowing was one thing, but the others were a bit more perceptive. Still, if they kept their mouths shut out of respect for her, she supposed it couldn't be too bad.

She looked around the library and couldn't help butsmile. There was still much to learn and many pitfalls to navigate, both insideof her lessons and outside, but Pria knew one thing. She could get used tothis.