CH539 Thera’s Perspective

“Still struggling with it?” Vasta asked her as the older woman watched Thera try and fail a spell again as the hours of her practice wore on, with scrying seeming completely out of her grasp.

“I just can’t get the knack of it,” She admitted, feeling every bit of her failure as she reflected back on her last month and a half of practicing.

Since she’d started her lessons, it had become pretty obvious where her strengths and weaknesses lied when it came to using her non-affinity magic, with best results coming from areas she was already good at.

It wasn’t hard for her to move things with it or shape it into a solid form, nor was it too difficult for her to use it in a mental way, feeling emotions or provoking the sort or responses in a target that she could get by just using her dark magic instead, but that left plenty of other options she was struggling with.

Scrying and clairvoyance were spells she just couldn’t grasp, both ways to see from afar and both practically doomed to failure when she’d try, and trying to do something like corpse song was a non-starter when that was essentially just scrying through time.

And then there was magic nullification, something she’d felt so proud of when using against her uncle but had been quickly shown how much she’d overestimated herself when trying it against the archmage in practice. Uliel had made it clear that she’d only done so well at the time since she’d known exactly what was being thrown at her, and worse, that Thera didn’t seem to have much skill in using it in a general way, despite how powerful she’d be if she could, leaving the entire experience humbling after the way her goddess had talked her up.

Vasta, seeming to sense all of that and more, chuckled as she patted Thera’s arm. “Considering you’ve only had the skill for a month, it’s not exactly shocking it’s turned out this way, don’t worry too much about it. People are always going to start out strongest at the aspects of the magic that it awakened from, not to mention that the ones you had were all rather compatible with your affinitied options too. At this point, it’s really nothing to worry about.”

“Maybe I’d be less disappointed if I could use it like all of my affinitied options,” She sighed. “I guess I can at least buff with this but healing is still impossible.”

That got a laugh from her teacher. “Now that’s something you really shouldn’t be worried about, even I can barely heal anything with it. As flexible as the magic is, the difficulty spike that comes with it compared to the regular ten options seems even greater than normal when the goal is using it to repair a body instead of breaking one down. With your level of life magic and the mana at your disposal, I wouldn’t worry too much about it for now and instead we’ll look at this another way. Thera, why did you first try to gain a non-affinity option? You originally had telekinesis, yes?”

“Yeah, but originally I just got it to help with my earth magic and my control as a whole,” Thera admitted, feeling embarrassed to be saying such a thing to a person who’d devoted their life to wielding that sort of power, even if Vasta took it in stride.

“A reasonable goal and one you can keep up with. There’s no reason not to keep using it to empower your main options just because it’s grown so much. Of course, you should still try and improve in the areas you’re lacking, there’s no such thing as a mage with too many spells, but if you become accustomed to using your non-affinity magic in tandem with your affinitied spells you might find yourself having an easier time wielding the option as a whole when you’re attempting other spells with it.”

“Alright, if you think so then I’ll give it a try.”

With the power she already had, she didn’t think she would feel or see much of a difference when using it with her earth or dark spells, but if Vasta thought it would be useful then there was no reason to decline, especially when she wanted to get better at it. She now had one of the most flexible forms of magic there was, not doing anything she could to improve would have been ridiculous.

“Good, so with that out of the way, come with me for a bit, there’s something else I’d like to discuss.”

She followed along, going outside and away from the practice of the other two non-affinity mages to find a different scene, one of Jake being mercilessly pummeled by the spells of Uliel as he did his best to defend himself in his training for his own non-affinity magics.

“Are you really trying?” His teacher tsked as a spear of earth stopped just short of skewering him. “We’ll never get another level out of you at this rate if you don’t try harder.”

“You’ll never get another level out of me either if you beat me into a coma!”

“Then aren’t we all lucky about the number of healers you know. Speaking of, take a ten-minute break while I talk to Thera.”

“Wait, really? Thera, you’re a lifesaver!”

“If you try to escape you won’t enjoy what’s going to happen after I hunt you down!” She yelled at him far too late. The second he’d been told he could have a break he’d teleported away, leaving just the three of them with all eyes on Thera.

“So what did you both want to discuss with me?” Thera asked politely, getting tired looks for her trouble.

“It sure would be nice if our idiot managed to keep his focus like this,” Uliel muttered.

“We’ll just count our blessings that our other students actually have some work ethic, but that’s not what we’re here to discuss. Thera, considering that you have four awakened magics at your disposal, we’ve wanted to talk about something it seems like you haven’t done. Have you given any mind to creating a signature spell for yourself?”

“Um, honestly, no.”

She’d read about the spells of plenty of others that Ben had recreated from his time in the library, spells of great mages who’d grown powerful in multiple varieties of magic and had devoted their time to creating something that would leave their marks on history, but if she were to be honest, she’d always viewed the idea as a little pompous. It wasn’t against the idea of creating great spells, but instead the reason that seemed to be behind it. Thera wouldn’t deny that she desired the respect and admiration that seemed to come to some people when they achieved great power, but she’d be able to get the same thing by focusing on learning and training in spells that had already been created and known.

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The response didn’t seem to bother either though, instead, Uliel just nodded before going on. “It’s not exactly a necessary thing, there are many great spells that have been discovered and developed throughout history, it’s fine to learn and work on those, but we’d like to suggest you still give some thought to how you’d design a spell that could incorporate all of your magic options.”

“Even if it goes nowhere, that doesn’t mean you won’t get anything from the experience,” Vasta added. “It might help you look at your magics in different ways and it can make you really consider how you use your magic as a whole. Even if you just give it a bit of thought each day, that can be the start of re-examining your approach to magic.”

Re-examining my approach to magic.

She wasn’t really sure if there was anything for her to re-examine. For the longest time, magic to her had been just as much of a curse as it had been a tool, but with her charm gone it was now solely a resource to use for solving her problems. She didn’t know if there was any other way she could look at it.

But if they’re my teachers right now then I should properly listen to them. Maybe it will go somewhere.

“Alright, if you both think I should then I’ll do my best.”

After her practice for the day came the walk home, which she spent on two things, doing a bit of training for her dark magic and working to get an annoying skill under control.

It hadn’t taken long to finish her high dark mage job and move onto the master branch so she needed to constantly work at it, keeping a small shadow ball flying around her head on the way back to Stonewall while using the mind and debuff aspects of that power the only way she could while passing through both Allfaith and Anailia, using it to attract and scare away and of the small creatures she could see in an urban setting.