"I don't specifically know you to currently be making any particularly poor decisions? I think you'd have a better model of the world - not necessarily in structure but in, uh, texture."

Ma'ar nods. "I'll think about it. I - don't know if I know how to do that thing differently, but...it seems maybe important. So thank you for talking to me about it." 

"You're welcome."

Ma'ar nods to her, smiles a little, and heads off. 

And their lives fall back into the usual routine of classes and discussion seminars and magic practice. Ma'ar, if he in fact thinks about what Azabel said to him, doesn't bring it up with her again. He's maybe just a little bit warmer in his manner toward her, but it's hard to judge for sure. 

They both pass their exams, and move on to the course on Gates; Ma'ar is also taking a more advanced artifact-work class, and a combat magic one. The Gate curriculum is six months long, meeting twice per week plus extra practice and optional tutoring sections.

Urtho continues to be very slow and not the most communicative on the matter of the book, but eventually, a couple of months into the Gate classes, he signs off on the final draft, having added a few sections of his own. 

Actually publishing it is a matter of months more; another editor will review the manuscript for minor spelling or grammatical issues, and then Urtho's hertasi will start the long process of actually having it printed and bound. Still, he thinks it's going to be out for public consumption within another six to nine months. He invites Azabel for lunch and praises her warmly on all her work. 

Ma'ar also picks that session to have another impressive growth spurt. He's almost sixteen, and finally looks around his actual age instead of a few years younger than that.

They both get the basic Gate technique down by two months into the session, but neither of them are at their full strength yet, magically speaking, and it takes substantial efficiency improvements and tweaking to get to the point that either of them could Gate to five hundred miles away. When Ma'ar asks, though, the teacher thinks they'll probably get there by the final exams. 

"I'm excited. We could start planning in advance - we'll want to pack and should decide what, and should make sure we have planned check-in times by comm spell so people will worry if they don't hear from us and we can get bailed out, and we should have an itinerary..."

"I can get us a map from the library, I think. Probably we want to arrive near the village that's closest to the Plains, rather than right in the middle - we might still get harassed by bandits but at least we won't risk landing on top of some other clan... We should maybe pack a tent, with wards on it, I think it's more than a day's walk to get to Kiyam clan lands. And protective shields, and a comms artifact just in case we need to contact someone and we're both too tired to cast it directly over that distance..." 

"Good plan. I wanna invent a universal energy storage artifact - I'm not sure I can get it so you can tap it like a node but I think it ought to be possible to get it so you can recharge other artifacts with it."

"Wow! That would be really neat and useful - huh, I'm sort of surprised I haven't heard about or read about it already existing, you'd've thought someone else would've had the idea..." 

"Well, I guess it's possible they did and it just doesn't work but it seems like it should work so I'm going to try as my artifact class project."

"That makes sense. I can't think why it wouldn't work." 

"I'm going to run it by the teacher next time we have artificing."

"Sounds good!" 

And what does the teacher think of it?

The teacher is a bit surprised, and then says she can't see why it'd be impossible; all artifacts store power, when you think about it, usually just enough to power the set-spell for a few days but still. It might be very hard to do a general-purpose one; set-spells tend to be 'brittle', with limited flexibility, so it might be a lot easier to design a backup power reservoir for one specific artifact than to solve the general problem. But it sounds like an excellent idea for Azabel's class project!

She will try the general version and narrow her focus to a specific swappable power source if it doesn't look like she'll perfect the generic in time.

The generic one turns out to be incredibly hard, perhaps intractably so to stabilize a focus for more power than, say, what a shield-talisman needs to recharge. Doing less general versions is more feasible, though, and she can even reuse a lot of the design.

She pokes at it till she thinks she's working on the most ambitious thing she can in fact finish by the end of the term.

Ma'ar, for his part, planned out an artifact to replace having a tent entirely; it'll need repowering every day, but that should be feasible even from reserves, and it'll be much less weight to carry around and won't tear or wear out or get dusty. He thinks he can get it to both project a physical shield-barrier and an illusion to make their presence almost unnoticeable, and also to retain heat. He's making solid progress on it. 

He finds maps of Predain to look at. Wow, in hindsight he made a really long journey to, eventually, reach Urtho's Tower. 

"Hey, lemme see your specs, I can make a powerer for it."

"Sure!" Ma'ar is very impressed with how Azabel's project turned out, even if the general-purpose version wasn't as feasible as they'd hoped. 

And she comes up with a tidy little tentspell-battery.

They'll still need to recharge that, but less often and it'll give them wiggle room if they have a particularly tiring or eventful day. 

Both of them receive excellent grades on their projects, and do very well on their final exam in the Gate course; the teacher is confident they could both easily manage a Gate five hundred miles, if they know the destination reasonably well. And now they have the next two weeks conveniently off.