The unforeseen discussion with Sindri about what currency was, how it was acquired, and why hunting random animals and monsters in the wild was not going to work long term to keep Sindri fed once he got to a certain size was interrupted by Ewan dramatically bursting into the room.

  "Greetings, my dear students! It is time once again for another breathtaking lesson about magic and other such things!"

  "Am I a student?"

  "Did you have a good dinner with Helix?" Dryth asked wryly. He assumed that was the reason for the pep in his mentor's step.

  "I did! But that was the night before last, turns out we both had an opening. Anyhow, time for a lesson I now you've been waiting for."

  "Hey, hey!" Sindri poked Dryth with the end of his tail. "Ask if I'm a student too!"

  "Sindri wants to know if you're counting him, since you said 'students' as a plural."

  "I am indeed young Sindri!" Ewan spun around from where he'd been about to write on the chalkboard. "You've formed a quite permanent partnership with my student and are similarly young and inexperienced, so I see no reason not to include you as a student of mine!"

  "I can think of a few." Dryth muttered.

  "Hey!" Sindri poked him in the cheek again, harder this time.

  "But speaking of you being my student..." Ewan continued, ignoring the byplay as he shuffled through his pockets. "Where did I put... Aha!" He pulled out a card, surprising both Sindri and Dryth. "A recommendation for the two of you, always keep a few spots open in your deck. You never know when you might need to slot something in quickly. One moment please." Ewan's eyes went glassy and empty as his shoulders slumped. The card vanished from in between his fingers and then his eyes went back to normal as he straightened up. "There! Now we just..." He flicked his wrist, bringing the card back into reality and tapped his forehead with it before letting it vanish. "Wonderful. Sindri, if you could please try and send a thought at me similar to how you communicate with Dryth, please."

  The contract with Dryth had made is so Sindri could understand the language Dryth spoke, which was the same one Ewan was using, so he had no trouble understanding the request. "Uh, okay. Can you hear me Ewan?"

  The older mage smiled widely. "I can indeed! Fantastic, now we can start our lessons."

  "Wait, wait, is that a card I can use to talk to anyone?"

  Ewan shook his head. "Sadly, the card I just used is one that makes me more open to telepathic communication that is already in use. It's an eavesdropping card in truth, I'm just using it to cheat a little. True telepathy cards are rare and it'll take me some time to acquire one you can use, let alone acquire it. That is, if you don't beat me to it!" He added with another big smile and wide eyes.

  "You're energetic today," Dryth commented, "And what does that last bit mean?"

  "Of course I'm energetic, interesting things are happening on multiple fronts! As for my comment, well, you'll find out eventually I'm sure." Ewan snatched up his piece of chalk and wrote the words "Pure Casting" on the board. "Now, lesson time. Dryth, I've already learned that you've been criminally under-taught and have never heard of pure casting, though your interest in the subject after learning about it does you credit! Don't think I haven't noticed you trying to subtly nudge me about it." He winked at Dryth, who refused to make eye contact. "However, Sindri I know nothing about your education up to this point. What do you know about pure casting?"

  "Those words don't mean anything to me!" Sindri replied energetically. The emotional bond between him and Dryth was sending waves of excitement into Dryth. Apparently Sindri was just as happy to take classes as he was to go hunting prey.

  "Oh, for shame! Actually, wait, you could use a different term where you're from couldn't you? To be clear, when I say 'pure casting' I mean using magic without a card."

  "Oh sure! My parents can do that. They were going to teach me but then the summoning thingy from Dryth came and I had to leave."

  Dryth himself gaped at his mentor. "That's possible? Everyone treats that like it's a tale out of the story books."

  "Are you telling me that the Association is actively working to make young potential mages think that it isn't possible to pure cast?" Ewan asked with a harsh frown. "Because that's significantly worse than just not teaching you about it."

  "Well..." Stopping and thinking it through, really giving it the seriousness that Ewan seemed to think the topic needed, Dryth went back over every time he could remember the idea being brought up. "I don't know if the Association is deliberately suppressing the concept or trying to make us thinks it's fake. I remember it coming up a few times when we were younger and new to the school that some of the kids asked about it, and the teachers just laughed, or scoffed, or made an obtuse comparison to something else fantastic from a children's story. I don't think they ever answered though, they just implied things."

  "Which doesn't tell me anything about what I really want to know, but it is good information to have. Pieces of the puzzle are better than an empty table." Ewan muttered as he stared into the distance while squinting. "Good to see that you're already benefiting from an improved memory. They did teach you about that, yes?"

  "They did. All three colors of Soul Cards give everyone passive bonuses to different parts of the body, blue Soul Cards often get bonuses to cognitive processing and memory."

  "Good. Now then, it's up to me to get you taught correctly and make up for the criminal treatment your previous teachers have subjected you to, so let's get back to it." He tapped the board with a finger. "Pure casting is the properly defined term for using magic without a card. Other common terms for it are 'free casting' and 'cardless casting', but the technically correct one is 'pure casting'. I don't care which you use in day-to-day conversation, but I'll be sticking to pure casting during lessons." He turned and underlined the word on the board. "Now, to be clear, although you I fully believe that you've made the connection already, pure casting is completely possible for any sapient being that can already work magic. So you, a mage, can do it Dryth, but your parents cannot because they lack basic magical capabilities. On the other hand there are many species of sapients in which every member of the species has some form of magic innately, thus all of them can pure cast magic. Am I clear so far?"

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  Dryth nodded. "Yes. Pure casting is still using magic, so you still have to be able to use magic at all to do it."

  "I get it!"

  "Good! Continuing on, the difference between card based casting and pure casting." He quickly erased the largely written 'pure casting' then wrote it again in smaller letters with 'card casting' next to it. "Dryth, can a person who isn't a Farmer by class still till a row to plants crops in?"

  Dryth's eyes went wide as the full enormity of what Ewan was trying to get to through the Socratic Method. "Oh shit."

  Sindri whipped his head between Dryth and Ewan. "What? What?"

  "Ah, I see you've gotten where I'm going. Please elucidate for your fellow student."

  "There's nothing physically stopping someone without a card from doing a physical action that you could do with a card. That's why materialization is even a thing in the first place! People do something a lot and then get a card for that thing they've just done a bunch of." Dryth slammed his hands into the desk he was sitting at and leveraged himself to his feet. "There's nothing stopping me from swinging a hoe a million times and doing the same work as someone with a 'Hoe a Row' card, or whatever it might actually be called, can do! There's might be better, especially if they have practice in it, but there's nothing stopping me. The only reason I wouldn't get a card for it is because my Soul Card isn't green."

  "Very goo-"

  Dryth kept going right over Ewan's compliment. "But someone with a green Soul Card and Class could get a card for that! Or never get one at all, but that doesn't matter. Anything that can be done physically has a corresponding card to it, but you don't need the card for it. Which means that the reverse is also true, and therefore applies to magic!" Dryth looked up from where he was staring down at his hands, his breathing a little unsteady.

  "Excellently reasoned." Ewan told him a little gently. "You're off by only a tiny detail that doesn't change anything about your conclusion but is good to know."

  "What?"

  "You said that 'anything that can be done physically has a corresponding card to it', but that isn't totally true. There aren't cards for anything that your body does automatically." Ewan pointed at his chest. "There is no card for my heart beating, my blood flowing in my veins, or my stomach digesting what I eat. You might encounter cards that interface with things you can switch between doing automatically or by choice, such as breathing or blinking, but those aren't cards for the actual process of drawing oxygen into our lungs and protecting our eyes."

  "Are there automatic magical things that we do that there are no cards for?" Dryth entreated him.

  Ewan's calming tone and serene expression melted away into a heady, almost Cheshire grin. "Damn, if I could make every mage like you we could make the world and entirely different place. The answer is yes, there are, but we can talk about that later." He wrapped the board with a knuckle. "You're entirely correct and you covered all of the basics quite nice- Wait, apologies, Sindri did you understand what Dryth was saying!"

  "I did!" Sindri nodded his head in a human-like way. "I never really thought about it like that, but everything he said makes sense!"

  "Great. Then we can continue. As I was saying you covered the basic reasoning in its entirety and you're fully correct. You can cast magic without a card for the same reason you can run, or pick things up, or use a tool without the card for it. You need to learn how same as anything else, but it's possible as long as you're able to. Now the next part of the lesson is, what are the differences? Why does pure casting versus relying on cards matter?"

  "Because you aren't guaranteed to get a card for anything." Dryth answered first. "But if you learn to do something without the card you can still do it even if you never manifest, buy, or get the card some other way."

  "Deck limits!" Sindri added almost at the same time. "Everyone has a limit of how many cards they can have in their deck at once, and you can't use a card that isn't in your deck! If you had a full deck and wanted to do something you didn't have a card for in your deck, you'd have to take time to switch it out! If you know how to do it without the card you can just do it right then!"

  "Two excellent answers! Those are the two big reasons why it's an important topic, but there are more? Can you think of any?"

  It took a second for Sindri to think of another. "Oh! Dryth told me that you told him that there's a way to steal cards out of someone else's deck! You can't steal what isn't there! Also, also, if it's taken out of your deck you can't use the card to do it but you can if you can pure cast it!"

  Ewan waggled his hand. "That's more of a continuation of your first answer, but I'll take it. Anything else?"

  Neither Dryth nor Sindri could think of another answer.

  "There are two more that I think are important," Ewan informed them, "And one of them you don't have the experience or knowledge to think of on your own. The other is much more obvious. How are people supposed to manifest blue cards if they can't pure cast the spell or effect they want?"

  "Oh, duh." Dryth felt like facepalming. "What's the other one?"

  "The thing that I think makes pure casting important to learn, and why I'm truly angry the Association seems to be suppressing it, is the main difference between it and card casting. Variation versus repeatability." He pointed at the words "card casting" on the chalkboard. "When you use a card to do anything, you will always get the same repeatable result. A bolt of lightning called down from the heavens by a card will be the exact same every time you use the card. Also, just like doing something manually, card casting has a cost in physical or magical energy depending on the card. But! If you are too low on the energy you need to use a card, nothing happens at all. The card will refuse to activate." He moved his finger to "pure casting". "When you pure cast a spell, it's based entirely on your effort and will. You can swing your hoe harder or softer, to continue the same example from earlier, you can miss, you can be tired, and so on. If you're tired and run low on energy, whether magical, physical, or both, you can have a weaker effect or fail altogether. And throughout all of it your experience and hard work matters. Pure casting is affected by practice, while cards are not."

  "Which!" Ewan said dramatically as he spun to face both of them, looking Dryth and Sindri in the eyes with almost deadly seriousness. "Is a lie. Sort of. Because practicing something correctly makes you better at it both when doing it through a card or doing it manually, such as pure casting. But!" He declared with even more emphasis, "Only if practiced manually! Using a card over and over and only doing that will give you no improvement at all!"

  "So the Association potentially not letting anyone learn about pure casting..."

  "Could be a deliberate attempt to weaken all mages in the Kingdom, yes." Ewan took a deep breath. "Which is why I'm worried about it and why I spent this morning sending a lot of messages to people asking them what the hell they think they're doing. Now I'll be sending even more with emphasis after this little lesson. But thats for later." He said, snapping out of the thousand yard stare he'd gone into. "Right now we'll be continuing the lesson. The next part of it, after teaching you what pure casting is and why it's important, is telling you the steps necessary and then teaching you those steps so you can start practicing. I even have a wonderful spell to teach you to start things off!" He held up his finger and a ball of bright white light appeared at the tip.

  "Hey!" Sindri cried, "That's what my card does! That's awesome!"