Ma'ar works very hard on it, asks to practice specially with her, and gets the hang of it by the next day. It turns out that putting spells into artifacts is harder than it looks, but he's so so determined to get good at it.

They attend the second day of illusions class together. Azabel is apparently a natural at it and gets considerable praise from the teacher. Ma'ar is very much not natively talented in this area but, again, he works extremely hard, and is pretty sure he can get caught up with the rest of the class by the next week if he practices a lot in his free time.

She can try to help, if he wants.

Ma'ar would appreciate her help! They're both very busy now, with other classes in addition to the magic ones, but time to practice can be squeezed in. 

He tells her that he did have fewer nightmares last night and he's grateful.

He gets the splint off his arm two days later and is pronounced fully recovered by the Healers, though it still takes another couple of days before he moves with as much energy as before.

Aza applies herself to all her lessons with fervor.

And life goes on.

Illa shows up to thank Ma'ar in person for saving her life, blushing very red and stammering, and she gives him some nice flowers. Ma'ar is confused about the right social response, here, and settles for 'you're welcome'. It's not like he's going to see much of her, at this point, she's not in either of the other classes.

Both of them get caught up in their magic lessons. Azabel continues to be significantly ahead with illusions, but by putting in a truly absurd quantity of practice, Ma'ar is somewhat better than her at the artifact work by mid-session.

They don't have a discussion class this session, but Urtho drops in every so often to watch bits of their practical classes. He smiles at Azabel in particular, and makes no comment to Ma'ar about the fight incident. Adept Liora does seek him out mid session, again, to ask if he's made progress on his plan to be less jumpy. Ma'ar has to confess that he isn't there yet, artifacts are really hard, but he thinks he can join by the next session. Adept Liora encourages him to register anyway and then talk to her the week before, he can always defer at that point if they don't think he's ready.

He finds books in the library on shielding set-spells, and tries to design his own that does exactly what he wants.

They both pass their end-of-session tests with flying colors. Ma'ar has a prototype of his shield-artifact and is very pleased with himself on both counts.

"- I think maybe I feel happy right now?" he says to Azabel. "I can't tell for sure if it's that."

"I'm not an Empath. We could find one but we might have to hurry in case it doesn't last!"

"I guess I don't care that much if it's exactly the feeling you were talking about. It's a nice feeling. And if I work a lot on my shield-artifact over break I can probably have it done for when I'm meeting with Adept Liora about taking the class again."

"That's great!"

"And I've got space for a second one but haven't decided which yet. I'm - thinking about taking the seminar class about magic and ethics? Apparently they have interesting discussions and it might be more okay to say slightly controversial things. But it'd be less scary if you wanted to take it too."

"I'm going to do weather magic but I can fit both."

"I want to take weather magic at some point but I think next session, it'd be really tiring to have it and the combat magic class."

"Yeah, that makes sense. Do you want me to wait on weather magic?"

"No, I don't mind if we take that one at a different times." He smiles. "You can tell me about it and then I'll have an easier time when I do it."

"Sure thing. And if you learn anything I can use in combat magic you should tell me about that, I bet it's not all how to kill people."

"I'll definitely show you anything good I learn," he agrees.

Then when it's time to register for their next batch of classes that's just what they will do.

Ma'ar is pleased to report back after his first combat class that the teaching assistant was very attentive to student discipline and it seems like he gets along with everyone in the class this time. "How was weather magic?" he asks her.

"It was exhaaaaausting," she says. "You have to move around so much stuff to see ANYTHING happen to the actual weather, did you know clouds are enormous, they're ENORMOUS."

Ma'ar almost giggles. "Oh, really, they look so small and fluffy from here."

"They're high up! So you need a lot of range and you need to do a lot of stuff. The teacher says it gets easier though."

"That makes sense, there are probably tricks to doing it efficiently. I wonder what the seminar will be like?" Unlike their previous classes, it's only once a week, but double the usual length, four candlemarks long.

"Don't know! I hope it's not all lecture, that would be a long time to just listen to a lecture."

When they sit down in the class together, the next day just after lunch, it's immediately apparent that it's not going to be four candlemarks of lecture.

There are only nine students, a wide range of ages from fourteen to nineteen; unlike their previous classes, this one seems to mix up students from different age cohorts into the same block. The main instructor is a grey-hair, shriveled-looking old man who introduces himself as Adept Egark.

"Ideally," he says to the class, "I am not going to be talking very much at all! I will explain each class's topic and then, hopefully, I will not need to open my mouth again. Here are the rules of debating civilly..." He lists them. They're fairly common sense: no name-calling each other, arguments of the nature 'but that's just wrong' or 'but that's gross' will not be taken very seriously, etc etc.

Today's topic is explained: mage-gift and gender dynamics! Specifically, currently Tantaran law allows a wartime draft. Of men. Not women. Mage-gift, however, appears equally in men and women, and unlike with, say, upper body strength, men don't tend to be more powerful mages. There's been talk in the past of making a separate draft law for mages, but it was politically unpopular and never passed. Anyway. What does the class think of this? Is it unfair that mages will be drafted for war only if they happen to be men? Or would it be unfair to change the law to be different for mages and non-mages? Discuss!

This seems very complicated and also like the sort of thing where people have strong feelings and get upset. Ma'ar doesn't immediately raise his hand.

"What was the original justification for the law being this way? Is it just that when you're drafting people to swing swords you do want upper body strength and that was most of what they had in mind at the time, or was it something else?"