Archmund gave his father a minimal list of requirements for a magic teacher.

  First, any teacher had to be competent both at theory and at practice. A purported mage who only knew theoretical gemology was useless; a pure practitioner who cast based on intuition wouldn’t transmit their knowledge effectively.

  Second, any teacher had to be good at teaching and not a jackass. He’d dealt enough with egotripping professors and gatekeepers in his past life, and though the scars of that psychic trauma had been mellowed by his rebirth, he was young again.

  Those scars could be inflicted anew. In his past life, he’d lost people — grandparents, friends, mentors — and yet the loss of his mother had felt wholly fresh and new. Some pains always did.

  Third — and this, surprisingly, was the point his father had argued with him the most on — any teacher had to be affordable. Magic teachers came at all price points, within the range of the nobility. Rich merchants who married into the nobility might arrange for a weekend’s worth of magic lessons for the cost of a fancy meal, without truly dedicating them to their craft, for the novelty of being allowed to “use magic”.

  These noveau riche would be lent Gems with flashy-but-useless Enchantments solely for the duration of the lessons— Gems to manipulate a wine glass’s worth of water, just enough to make fancy sculptures mid-air. Attuning these Gems was almost impossible, since they’d passed through so many hands, but that was fine. Attunement wasn’t the point. The point was to feel like a real mage or wizard, even if only for an afternoon.

  It was rather like adult pottery or painting lessons that urban professionals did in Archmund’s past life. Not meant to become a serious focus, just meant to be fun.

  On the other end of the spectrum, the Imperial Family had spared no expense in turning Princess Angelina Grace Prima Marca Omnio into a lethal military-grade mage. She’d been granted a shapeshifting Gem and an electromagnetic-spectrum-control Gem at very young ages, and now that she was Archmund’s age she could kill at a whim and commanded the authority of a hundred men. Immense wealth could buy immense magical power.

  His father could spend a decade of Granavale revenues on one magic teacher, but it would be an entirely selfish expenditure. It would equip him to do any of the jobs suitable for an Imperially sanctioned mage with little regard for the fate or well-being or provenance of Granavale County.

  Maybe his father had seen the writing on the wall, and known there was no true future for him here in Granavale County, and so wanted to empower him to reach “escape velocity” from his backwater home.

  He chose to ignore that thought.

  Two weeks later, he was surprised when his father told him he’d brought a suitable magic teacher back from the University of Imperial Mages at no trivial expense for such a short timeframe.

  He’d thought his father’s first priority would have been the Harvest Festival. But his father had simply smiled — no expense for his beloved son was too much, after all, and directed him into the sitting room.

  He was even more surprised when said magic teacher appeared to be a teenage girl, barely older than Mary, slouching in one of the red-velveted armchairs. She sprang up as he and Mary entered, and then awkwardly fell back into her chair as they sat down across from her.

  The teacher had shoulder-length straight orange-red hair, pale freckled skin, and wore large circular glasses that made her eyes look large. Beyond that, she was dressed in the standard regalia of the University of Imperial Mages — a long purple robe with a brimmed purple hat. She looked like the spitting image of a young witch who was looking for a lost cat in the Alps.

  “How old are you?” Archmund said, before she could introduce herself. He was pretty sure the University of Imperial Mages was post-secondary education, since it was a University — he certainly hadn’t expected to join before turning 20. Either she was petite, or she was young.

  “Didn’t your mother tell you it’s not polite to ask a lady her age?”

  “My mother is dead.”

  “Oh. Sorry. I’m fifteen, which makes me almost twice your age?”

  “One-and-two-thirds times.”

  He didn’t like being a pedant. Nobody liked pedants. But she was coming off really arrogant.

  “Oh, I was rounding. You never know if they teach fractions out here.”

  “We have money out here, you know,” Mary said. “You need fractions for that.”

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  “Is this your bodyguard?” the witch said, scurrying over to peer at Mary over her glasses. “Hmmm. Not bad, a bit on the malnourished side, but magic should backflow and fix that.”

  She tried to grope Mary’s muscles, but Mary shoved her away. The witch hummed inquisitively.

  “Very interesting. There’s definitely a sense of a magical bond, but you’ve got some surprisingly well developed magic of your own… hmmm…”

  “Is it too late to get you another teacher, young master?” Mary asked pointedly. “This one seems…”

  “Hey, I’ll have you know that I’m already a Master myself in the University,” the mage said. “I’ve been one for a few years already.”

  “No way.”

  “Is that supposed to mean something?” Archmund said.

  “Being a Master means you’re a full member of the college as opposed to a Neophyte or an Apprentice,” Mary said. “But—”

  “It’s true. Ask your father,” said the witch. “The name’s Raehel. I’m famous for being one of the youngest Masters in the past century — I achieved it at thirteen!”

  “I was going to say it’s not the highest rank,” Mary said peevishly.

  “The higher ranks are all politics, not skill,” Raehel said.

  “Is Raehel your whole name?” Archmund asked. He was used to more elaborate names, even though his own was rather simple: Archmund Granavale. But next to names like “Mercy Stirstredecim di Omnio” or “Angelina Grace Prima Marca Omnio” or “Mary Alisdaughter di Granavale” a name that was just “Raehel” felt hard to imagine.

  “Oh, I had other names before I joined the University. Raehel Janusbastarddaughter, or Raehel Urchin. But these days I prefer to go by Raehel the Genius, or Raehel the Magnificent, or Master Raehel.”

  Archmund winced at hearing that. He wasn’t sure whether her detached arrogance or implied sad backstory worried him more.

  “And if you need someone to teach you magic, there’s no one better than me!” Raehel said.

  “Hmmm,” Archmund said slowly. “Raehel, you strike me as a genius.”

  “You wouldn’t be the first person to call me that.”

  “And I specifically remember telling my father that any teacher I had should be good at teaching. Which geniuses often have trouble with,” he said.

  “Hey, I’m great with kids!”

  “I’m more than half your age!”

  “Which makes you a kid,” Raehel said smugly, as if that settled anything. He couldn’t tell if she was serious or if she was toying with him, as if it mattered either way.

  “Were you really the best he could get?” Archmund said, a bit more harshly than he’d intended.

  Her face fell instantly. She recoiled, as if physically struck. He genuinely didn’t realize people could do that.

  “I… I get that a lot.”

  Raehel seemed a lot less bubbly than she had before, and Archmund felt a pain of empathy.

  It was never easy being a precocious kid. He knew that better than anyone else. Yet here he was tearing at someone in the same position.

  “Well, he already paid you and brought you out here,” Archmund said. “You might as well teach me what you planned.”

  Mary gave him a reproachful look, her mouth opening and closing. He knew there was a chance Raehel might be an abrasive teacher, but she couldn’t possibly be worse than fumbling through things alone until he started another wildfire.

  “Really? I mean, I hope you’re ready for this!”

  “What is magic?” Raehel said, in a melodramatic theatrical voice. “The shifting of the tides? The divination of the future? The sacred words of the dead?”

  They were starting with theory. Raehel had switched out her witch hat for a hood that cast her face in shadow, though the effect was muted somewhat by her fiery hair. She had also laid a perfectly spherical gem, far larger than any of the raw gems that he’d harvested from the Granavale Dungeon, on the table of the sitting room.

  She’d also insisted on drawing the curtains, to “set the mood”. He thought it was rather silly, but Mary had obliged, saying it would be fun.

  “It is all of these and more,” Raehel said, “the power to master the self and the world, to rule heaven and earth in a way no king or Emperor would ever dare… but it’s also control of the five elements.”

  “The five elements,” Archmund said flatly.

  This was simplistic.

  “The five Omnio elements,” said Raehel. “Fire, Earth, Air, Water, and Numen, the divine spark in all things, were first declared by the Emperor and great natural philosopher Alexander Omnio I, over two thousand years ago.”

  “Uh huh,” Archmund said, nodding dumbly.

  This was depressingly simplistic.

  This was also far too much of a coincidence to actually be a coincidence. She’d said the word “numen” outright, the Roman word for the concept of divinity that permeated the universe or something. The elements, of course, aligned with the five western classical elements, with Numen taking the place of Aether.

  Alexander Omnio I had almost certainly been a reincarnated Roman.

  “Of course, that’s the beginner level,” Raehel said. “Now, once you really start digging into the matter — and we’ll leave out Numen for now, because it really is something a lot more complicated — you realize that Water and Earth relate to the manipulation of gross matter, while Fire and Air are akin to the transmission of energy.”

  That got his attention. “Air is matter though,” he said. “Gas, specifically.”

  “Mmm, you know more than I thought you would!”

  He raised an eyebrow.

  She didn’t elaborate further.

  “Mmmm,” she said. Then she blew a stream of air from her mouth and it lightly brushed his face, even from several feet away.

  “Air is so diffuse that any disturbance of it might as well be control of energy rather than matter,” Raehel said. “The magical schools treat it as a medium through which power is transmitted, instead of form outright. I can manipulate it so easy even with this form of flesh and blood.”

  Who talked like that?

  “Does anyone actually think of magic in terms of the four classical elements anymore, or is it just a useful teaching tool?” he said.

  “Oh, you’re really quite clever! It’s a teaching tool.”

  “And… why is it necessary at all?” he said. “Because with Gems, you just give them power and they just do things. You don’t need all of this theory.”

  He suspected there was more to that, because his knowledge of the electromagnetic spectrum had been very useful in drawing out the potential of his Ruby, turning it from a Ruby of Light to a Ruby of Light.

  “Because natural science reveals how the world works and lets you draw more power out of Gems than is first obvious!”

  Alright, he was right on the money with that one.

  “You’ve completely lost me,” Mary said.

  “Ah,” Archmund said. “Do you think…”

  “Ahhhhh,” Raehel said. “You want her trained up too. I gotcha. But if we’re doing that, we’ll need a full syllabus.”

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