Magi's Path (Aether's Revival Book 3) by Daniel Schinhofen (motivational books to read txt) 📕

who can do that are physical enhancement magi. I never thought of it before, but she probably knows I don’t have that magic by now.”

“Do you think she told Lightshield about you, and that’s why he was so interested?” Yukiko asked him.

“Possibly? He sent her to be the proctor of that part of the fringe before my birth, though. My mother also talked with her after having a vision of me as a magi... I need to ask Bishop about that.”

“Do you think she’ll level with you,” Yukiko asked, “or would it give more away?”

“I can ask her about it, having recalled it from a memory,” Gregory said. “I don’t think it’ll give anything away to ask that way.”

“What if she knows?” Jenn asked.

“She can’t know, but she might suspect,” Yukiko said. “Greg is right; his approach is sound. Besides, maybe he can glean some information from her.”

“You burned aether on your arms just after becoming a novice?” Jenn asked after a moment. “You didn’t mention that in your story.”

“Huh...” Gregory thought about it. “I didn’t. Weird.”

“Or you had some subconscious knowledge that it shouldn’t be said,” Yukiko added. “Darkness helping guard you, maybe?”

“Could be.”

“Do you think you could do it again?” Jenn asked.

“Not sure I want to try,” Gregory admitted. “I remember a lot of pain when the flames vanished. I didn’t think about it, but now that I think back, it was both of my arms that hurt, not just the one that got bitten.”

“Oh...” Jenn said.

“Lack of channel from the body path, maybe?” Yukiko suggested. “We have channels now, just not as deep or wide as Jenn’s.”

“Hmm... Maybe. Something to check later, but I don’t want to rush it and hurt myself, either. They did tell us there would be pain for pushing aether through our body and not following the body path. I felt the edges of it last year when we ran, but it wasn’t like the flames.”

“That’s a good point,” Yukiko agreed. “Something to test eventually, but we don’t need to test it right now.”

“And I thought he was special before all this...” Jenn said with a soft smile at Gregory. “I’m not sure I would have had the courage to approach you if I had known all that.”

Yukiko giggled. “You would have. Like me, he called to you, as we talked about. We know it might have been because of our past lives, but all that matters is that we’re here now.”

“Yes,” Jenn smiled.

“Agreed,” Gregory said, touching their hands briefly.

“Tomorrow is our last free day,” Gregory said after another few minutes of silent walking. “We need to ask Dia what our schedule is going to look like. If she knows who the instructors are, she has to know when the classes are.”

“And how that will impact our schedule,” Yukiko nodded.

“We also need to find out what our new arrangements at the clan hall are,” Jenn said softly.

Gregory smiled and nodded. “Maybe we should jog?”

“Yes,” Yukiko and Jenn said together before going faster.

Gregory laughed as he hurried to catch up to them.

Chapter Twenty-five

 

When they arrived back at the clan hall, the three lovers were in high spirits. Dia watched them approach from where she was sitting on the porch smoking her pipe, the purple smoke trailing away from her.

“Dia,” Gregory greeted her with a smile. “We had a few questions, if you have the time.”

“Sit,” Dia said, motioning to the benches. “What did you wish to know?”

“First, what’s our schedule going to look like?” Gregory asked.

“Ah, a good question, and the answer to it is complicated,” Dia replied, exhaling a smoke ring away from them. “Tactics class starts at the sixth bell, so your morning schedule should be fine. However, depending on what is taught that day and whether or not you have a game, things will change drastically. Some days, the instruction will run into the late afternoon, and others, it will end by midday. If you have a game, well… as I said, you are there until it is over.”

“How do we train, then?” Yukiko asked.

“Around it, as we can,” Dia replied. “If class is out by midday, you will come back here and we will have Gin train you before your magic training. If class runs late, we’ll push dinner back so you can train both, but it does mean your meditation will need to be after dinner. When one or more of you have a game running, we’ll have one of the staff waiting for you to cook you a meal if it’s after dinnertime, but you will have to miss training that day.”

“Our games will be on different days?” Jenn asked.

“Possibly. The academy can run a dozen games at once, but that’s not even half of your class. All games to start are one-on-one. As the year progresses, they will run more complex campaigns with three or four players against each other, or even teams.”

“So we won’t be training together, like the end of last year,” Jenn sighed.

“For the first month, you will,” Dia said. “The first month is all instruction, most of which you’ll already know since you’ve been playing. You could challenge your instructor to a game and, if you win, you’d be excused for that month.”

“We can do that?” Gregory asked.

“Yes, but be warned— most instructors hate being challenged just so you can avoid the lectures,” Dia said, blowing out a large smoke ring before puffing a smaller one through it.

“Egil would be peeved,” Gregory nodded. “I don’t want to antagonize him.”

“The first month, we’ll train together. After that, we’ll do as much as we can together,” Yukiko said.

“Do we still get our days off?” Jenn asked.

“Not as such,” Dia smiled. “You will have five weeks off, set in one-week increments