"I want to practice my offensive spells!" (Nix)

  "I had a feeling you would say that." (Camity)

  The older witch snapped her fingers, causing everything to go dark for an instant. When the light came back, we were all standing inside a fairly normal-looking training room. There were a dozen training dummies scattered about the rest of the room along with other equipment which I couldn't identify.

  "There you go, you can go practice on one of those dummies." (Camity)

  I watched as Nix excitedly ran up to a dummy. Once she got close, she used a spell and sent a pretty sizeable lightning strike straight at her target.

  "Yay! Kaboom!" (Nix)

  Seeing that she was having fun, I turned back to Camity. This was, after all, a great opportunity to learn.

  "So, what am I supposed to do now?" (Dragonfly)

  "Try to use your magic, I will help you. I do have a couple good tips." (Camity)

  I decided to try fire magic this time. My skills with it were in dire need of improvement at the moment.

  Trying to focus on the mental image of fire, I used my mana. It did make a couple sparks, but not much more.

  "Stop trying to force fire into a shape. It's chaotic in nature, so trying to force it to obey will not produce results. You need to find where your fire comes from." (Camity)

  I followed her advice, of course. I concentrated on the sparks that I had summoned and tried to understand where they had originated. I couldn't quite tell. Was it from my feelings? That did sound somewhat correct, for some reason.

  I closed my eyes and turned all of my attention to how I was feeling at that exact moment. It was a strange experience, but I eventually discovered something in my mind. It was a strange orb that was shifting between red, grey and white. I wasn't seeing it with my eyes, but I somehow just knew that those were it's colors. In fact, it felt like what I was feeling was myself. It was extremely strange.

  "Judging by your expression, I assume that you have found your soul. It's normal to feel weirded out when sensing it for the first time. Your soul is the core of who you are, after all." (Camity)

  From what I knew, the soul was central to using mana. I tested that out by trying to use fire magic while still sensing my soul to see how it worked. I could tell that I was doing something wrong, but I couldn't tell what. The mana was passing through the orb just fine, but only a small fraction of it would change and behave like fire. In fact, what little mana was affected seemed like it was... annoyed at being forced to take that form?

  To attempt to fix that problem, I tried making a less precise mental image to the mana, giving it more freedom as long as it was fire. That did not help, however. It felt like my mana was stubbornly refusing to obey my authority.

  At that moment, I felt something petting my head. I did not want headpats right now, I was trying to concentrate! Plus, it's not like I liked headpats in the first p-

  At that moment, the fire magic actually started to work, creating a small fmme in my palm.

  "Check what your magic feels like." (Camity)

  Looking at my soul again, I instantly noticed that the mana wasn't resisting my efforts anymore. Was it because I was maniputing it with my emotions? Was that the key to my fire magic?

  I would've asked Camity to stop giving me headpats, but it was helping my magic. I could tolerate it for now.

  "I get it. I think I need to guide the fire with my emotions, somehow. It seems to work." (Dragonfly)

  "Good, now use your magic to attack that training dummy over there. Nothing like good old practice to get better at stuff." (Camity)

  I was about to head over the the dummy she had pointed at when I saw a fsh of light that was quickly followed by a loud explosion sound. Taking a look at the origin of the disturbance, I saw that Nix had somehow completely fried her target with a lightning bst.

  "Yay, I destroyed it!" (Nix)

  "No, you did not. Careful there, Nix, it seems that you made it angry." (Camity)

  I was about to ask about how an inanimate object could get angry when the dummy started moving. It stood up and looked like it wanted to fight back. I somehow wasn't even surprised.

  "Oh, nice! A real fight!" (Nix)

  Her enthusiasm was quickly diminished when the animated dummy tried to punch her face.

  "What? Why is it trying to hurt me? Help!" (Nix)

  I wondered if Camity would help, but considering the fact that she was casually leaning back against the wall while eating something out of a bowl she was carrying, my bet was on no.

  "Hang on, I'm coming!" (Dragonfly)