Rielle stood in her living room in front of a large chalkboard. She wore her usual attire but had on a pair of blue-rimmed spectacles. In one hand she had a ruler and in the other, she had a piece of chalk. Before her were Artorius, Maira, Erica, and Gowan. 

“Now that I’ve fully recovered today we’re gonna be learning about magic!” Rielle states.

Everyone claps except for Maira who groans.

“Ugh. I hate studying…” she mumbles.

“It won’t be that hard,” Rielle says. “90% of magic is application anyway, so don’t worry.”

“So what types of magic are there anyway?” Gowan asks.

Rielle lights up and begins writing on the chalkboard.

“When it comes to basic types of magic, there is Fire, Water, Wind, Earth, Light, and Dark,” Rielle explains. “When it comes to learning magic, these are among some of the most basic.”

“Can I use all of them?” Maira asks.

“It depends, we’ll have to test your capacity for them,” Rielle explains.

Rielle prepares 5 candles and places them on the table before them. With a snap of her fingers, each of the candles alight.

“What are we doing with these?” Gowan questions.

“You’re going to pour your ether into them,” Rielle states. “Depending on what happens, will determine the types of magic you can use.”

“Question. What is ether exactly?” Gowan asks.

“Ether is one of the fundamental building blocks of life. Every person has it. While not every being realizes they have it, it affects them, more or less the same. Having extremely low ether can affect your mental and physical state. While having none could potentially kill you. Being able to sense the ether around you takes great effort or talent. However, being able to use it, is much easier to do.” Rielle states. “Take off your shirt.”

“Huh?” He questions.

“I need direct contact with your back.” He states.

He takes his shirt off and stands up. Rielle stands behind him and takes a deep breath. She gathers her ether into her fingertips, causing them to glow a bluish color. She begins to massage Gowan’s back causing the ether to seep in. Gowan spaces out and feels the energy entering his body. He can feel the ether tracing his muscles and wrapping around his organs and it begins connecting with the ether already in his body. He didn’t even notice Rielle stop massaging his back.

“I can feel it! Guys, I can feel my ether!” He exclaims.

“Not bad,” Erica says. “Your ether is more stable than before.”

“Now that I’m aware of it, I feel like I can control it.” He says.

Maira jumps up and starts pulling her dress up.

“My turn!” She shouts.

“The hell are you doing? Pull your skirt down!” Erica responds.

Rielle places her hands on her hips and smiles smugly.

“This was a great success!” She exclaims. “If it went bad all your ether could’ve been forcefully ejected from your body, killing you instantly.”

“That’s scary as hell!” He exclaims. “Also, I’ve been curious, but how do you guys all know each other?”

“We’re her exes!” Maira states proudly.

He peers over at his brother, who looks away.

“It’s complicated,” Artorius states.

After getting back on track, they each sit before their candles and begin pouring their ether in. The flames begin to flicker as they channel their ether into the candle.

“Here it goes.” Rielle thinks.

The flame on Artorius’ candle begins to change color. Shifting between blue, green, white, cyan, pink, and yellow.

“Woah,” Artorius says with a smile.

“You have an affinity for light magic,” Rielle says. “And your candle isn’t melting either… So that means it’s earth. So Light and Earth.”

Maira’s candle began melting incredibly fast as the flame grew gigantic, tripling in size before completely burning out.

“Wind and Water for you, Mai,” Rielle states.

Erica’s flame began burning hotter and hotter, until it burned a hole through the center of the candle, continuing to burn inside it.

“That’s fire, Eri,” Rielle says.

Rielle points her ruler at Gowan’s, whose flame begins to disappear, leaving nothing behind.

“So I have wind right?” He asks.

“No, bring your hand closer to the tip of the candle.” She says.

Gowan does as instructed and can still feel the heat coming from the candle.

“What the—?” Gowan mutters.

“You have darkness. It's not surprising that you brothers have light and dark.” Rielle says.

“None of us got more than three, so how do you have almost all of them?” Maira questions.

Rielle sits down on a stool before them and sets the ruler down.

“Years and years of practice,” Rielle states.

“So how do we use magic,” Gowan asks.

“Well, it's not a good idea to try it here. All sorts of things could go wrong.” Erica says.

Maira leans in and smirks.

“What’s progress without a little sacrifice?” Maira asks jokingly.

“If you damage my house, then you’ll have to find someplace else for me to stay,” Rielle states.
“That’s all?” Maira says. “Then come live with me, I’ll burn this place down in a heartbeat!”

Gowan leans in near Artorius.

“Are all your friends this unhinged?” Gowan mutters.

“Not particularly… Also, why are you here?” Artorius asks.

“To learn magic.” He says.

Artorius stares into his eyes with a deadpan expression.

“Alright, sheesh. Mom and Dad pressured me into taking the class. They told me to try it out and let them know how it went.” He mutters. “Then Dad wants me to teach him so he can light his smokes.”

“That sounds like him...” Artorius mutters.

They turn their attention back to Rielle who had Maira on the floor begging for mercy.

“I promise! I won’t burn down your house! It was a bad joke!” Maira exclaims.

Rielle was standing over her shooting frigid air down her dress.

“Great. It’s not good to joke about that.” Rielle says. “Now then, let's have a nice little field trip.”
“Where to?” Artorius asks.

“You’ll see,” Rielle states.

The group leaves Rielle’s home and travels through the city, Rielle’s group passes by a demon man with red skin and a woman with brown hair as they continue. They arrive at the west gate and are allowed to pass by the guards. Beyond the gate was an expansive flower bed complete with millions of flowers. Petals of all colors danced on the breeze as they looked on in amazement. Once they were a good distance from the city Rielle had everyone stop. 

“Alright, we’re out here because we’re gonna begin our training for real,” Rielle states. “As I’m sure some of you are aware, using magic successfully requires good imagery. Now there are several ways you can do this. The first and the easiest being is to dedicate a string of words to the spell as an incantation. This is the simplest way, but it is time-consuming, as you’d need to recite it each time you use the spell. Number two would be shortened incantations, a more advanced version of the first, but you would be associating just one word with the spell in question, to shorten cast time. Finally, there’s casting from imagination. Envisioning the spell you want, to use it. This is much tougher to do but is the fastest form of casting.”

Rielle conjures an orb of water in her hand and blasts it at a tree behind the others. Only Gowan flinches when she does this. 

“Waterball,” Rielle conjures the orb of water a bit slower than before.

Then she holds out her other hand. “Oh, gentle brook of the burbling waters, gather here so that you may smite my enemies.”

The water then gathers much more slowly than before. While holding water in both hands she claps, causing the water to spill out from the gaps before her hands made contact.

“Incantations are okay to start with, but I’d recommend doing the shortened ones. It becomes a hard habit to break once one becomes accustomed to doing it that way. Whereas shorter ones are just one step away.” Rielle explains.

“Sheesh, there’s a lot that goes into magic,” Gowan says.

“Well, it is among one of the most complex subjects. With the amount of people that practice and research it, every mage’s findings are often debated by others.” Erica explains.

“What a headache,” Maira states.

  “Alright, now to teach you all the basic spells,” Rielle says.

Meanwhile, Lyxene was strolling around town with her arms behind her head. She was trailing behind Debolas while looking around.

“What’s the plan exactly?” She asks. “We’ve been walking around for a while now.” 

“Just a few nights ago, there was a clash between two mages. I’ve been collecting some of the ambient ether and using that to try to pinpoint the location of the fight.” He says.

“Sheesh, the poor fool probably had no idea they were against a mage killer,” Lyxene states.

“I’m not so sure. I sensed them when they first entered Aitura, but they quickly realized how strange the lack of magic was. So they hid themselves.” He states.

“Wow. Not bad. Thinking on it, if I were a mage curious about the lack of other mages, I would question it myself.” Lyxene says.

“Exactly. So we need to find this mage and quickly, before they become another victim.” He states.

“We also need to talk about something else.” Lyxene begins. “I’m not sure we can even trust the council.”