"Oh yeah, sounds good to me, I'm in. It seems like the thing to do."

"It's a pretty straightforward pipeline they've got going on here. Learn the basics at the Academy, register at Eden, turn in some bounties, build your rep and powers."

"And then maybe Wizard Mara will finally deign to speak to me."

Snort. "Good luck with that. Gotta catch her in a good mood."

Plus get Bjorn's approval, Vallynn doesn't say. All of the other mages had been around for at least a week before Vallynn got here, and Magnhild and Astrid got promoted to the Guild proper and are leaving for Geffen together tomorrow, while Inga and Georgina... well... weren't doing well enough that Bjorn felt like recommending their names to Wizard Mara and they decided to go do something else instead—Georgina decided to become an elemental monk and Inga gave up on adventuring altogether and went back to Payon. Vallynn has the impression that she never really wanted to be an adventurer, her family pressured her into it, and she picked the mage path out of knowing that it's the hardest one to advance in so that she'd be able to fail easily.

Vallynn, Pierre, and Natalya all got Bjorn's recommendation, though. Natalya first, after she managed to get Lightning, Ice, and Fire Bolt down, then Pierre and Vallynn a couple of days later, together, when they managed to get Pierre's hybrid lightning spell working, which Bjorn felt was sufficiently impressive Wizard Mara would be fine with it.

So now they're waiting for her to actually want to see them, and Bjorn suggested that they take some bounties in the meantime to start getting some field action. They've clearly all gotten everything they could get out of proper instruction at the Academy; they have Skills and Stats down, they all know basic field first aid, they've memorised the map of the surroundings, so on so forth. So it's time to start moving on.

"Let's make this an outing. There's a couple rogue kids and an archer who have been thinking of registering, too. Annika's already registered and Georgina hates your guts, though, and they're the only monks currently around."

"Why does she hate my guts."

Shrug. "I think you know as much as I do."

Sigh. "Yeah. Alright, I'll grab the mages after lunch and we meet up at the bounty boards?"

"It's a date."

So after lunch there's a small crowd waiting for the mages when they arrive: one archer, one rogue (plus Taharqi), and two other people (a swordsman and an acolyte) who seem to be bickering about nothing at all.

"—and I told you to wait—"

"Well you were taking too long—"

"—oh, hey, the mages. Hi, mages!"

"...hi. More people than I'd thought."

"These are Du Lian and Mark Esha," Taharqi says, gesturing. "Du heard we were going to Eden and decided to come and drag Mark with him."

"Yeah! We'll finally go on a proper adventure!"

"I think it's a bit too soon to call it that. It's a pleasure to meet you all."

"And these are Vallynn, Pierre, Natalya," gesturing at the mages, "Tamarin," an archer, "Victoria," a rogue, "and Alph."

"Holy shit where did you come from??"

"I was here the whole time."

"Alph is very good at not being noticed."

"It's nice to meet everyone."

"Hi."

"Nice to meet you too."