“I don’t think I’m going to start like that,” she chuckled as she fished through her crate, retrieving a blanket and her nightgown.
“Oh, already changing things on the first day?” I walked around behind her and grabbed her around the waist, catching her midway through changing for bed. “Tell me, professor,” I said, speaking softly into her ear, “what could I have done better?”
She spun me around and shoved me backwards onto the mattress, then followed up by throwing a pillow into my face. “You could have not started with fifty repetitions of every basic swing.”
I put a hand to my chin and considered her statement with exaggerated care. “Yeah, you’re probably right,” I concluded with a laugh.
After slipping into her nightgown, she joined me on the mattress and spread a heavy blanket over us. “Thanks for the advice, Lux,” she said, giving me a quick kiss on the cheek. “I feel a lot better about tomorrow now.”
“Anytime, love,” I said, pulling her close. “If you’re ever feeling overwhelmed and need some help, I’ll be right here. We’re in this together.”
“Together, forever,” she murmured, curling up against my chest.
I smiled, but I felt a heavy pang of longing deep in my heart as I heard the promise echo in Amaya’s voice a thousand times in my memories. Forever, I thought sadly. I don’t think I know what that means anymore.
***
9. CURRICULUM
“Lux, where did you get that?” Lia asked groggily, nibbling on a piece of hardtack with jam. She sat down at the bottom of the stairs and watched me as I worked on my new project in the center of the empty living room.
“I made it this morning,” I answered, not looking away from my work, “after you decided to sleep in. An hour ago.” I spun to shoot an amused glance in her direction. “That gave me plenty of time.”
“I was tired!” she whined, waving me off. “I need to be in top form for my first lesson with Marin this afternoon.” After another bite of breakfast, she hopped up and walked to my side. “So...what is all this?”
“This,” I said, stepping back to admire my work, “will be our curriculum for the foreseeable future.” Before us stood two newly constructed pieces of furniture: a large wooden signboard with blank sheets of paper nailed to its face in five organized columns, and a long table that held a small assortment of my personal effects.
“Our...what?” she asked, running her hand across the various items on the table.
“This is what we’ll be studying every morning,” I explained. “I’ve learned more about magic in the few months I’ve been in this world than all of my previous lives combined, but somehow I still have more questions than I started with. I always told myself they were questions for a later time, when we weren't in mortal danger." I paused and looked around the room for effect. "It seems as though now is finally that time."
A smile spread across her face as her hand stopped on the final item on the table: the giant onyx blade that once belonged to the King’s Sword. She pulled the blade off of the table and laughed as she felt its full weight for the first time, then gave it a quick two-handed flourish before returning it to its resting place. “I understand why some of these are here, but why are your socks on the table?”
“There’s a lot of different types of magic out there, Lia,” I chuckled, picking up the quill and ink from the small shelf on the signboard. Reaching up to the single sheet of paper at the top of the board, I wrote the word “magic” in large letters. “We typically interact with three different types on a daily basis: enhancement magic, elemental magic, and mana manipulation.” As I continued to explain my thoughts, I wrote each of the categories along the top of each column of paper. “There is also enchantment magic, like the latent abilities of that sword to shift form, or the self-cleaning properties of my underclothes.”
I couldn’t see her face behind me, but I could hear the eyeroll in her inflection. “You made all of this up, didn’t you?”
“Of course I did. Somebody has to!” I laughed. “Apart from those, I have one more category that I’m calling ‘miscellaneous’ for now. It's all the random quirks of magic that I don’t understand and can’t fit into the other categories yet.” I stepped back from the board to stand beside Lia. “Every secret of magic is hiding somewhere within these five categories, and we’re going to find them and figure them out.”
“Alright, I’m in,” Lia said confidently. “Where do we start?”
“Our first step is to list every idea we can think of to investigate, no matter how crazy or impractical they sound.” I stepped up to the board and began to write underneath the elemental column. “Let’s start with something easy. There are eight Elemental Primevals in the Unity religion, right?”
“Right. Fire, Ice, Earth, Water, Wind, Light, Dark, and Life,” she listed.
“If I remember what you told me about the church’s teachings correctly, people pray to one of the eight major Primevals, and if they’re lucky enough to be ‘blessed,’ they would be granted the ability to use the magic that Primeval governs. That means, at some point, people have used things like air magic and ice magic.” I stifled a laugh as a memory played out in my head. “Just like the wizard in that story you told me back in the dungeons. How did it go again?”
She crossed her arms in front
