"If my form were good enough I wouldn't be here," she explains patiently.

"...fair enough, honestly. Have you guys been here long?"

"Coupl'a days."

"Two weeks and three days."

"Anything to tell the newbie?"

"...about what?"

"There's instructors all over the place and representatives of a number of guilds. Training is kind of freeform but there are so-to-speak graduation criteria at least for some of the guilds. Basically, you get fast-tracked into a guild if you look competent enough."

Some of that he knew, yeah.

"How does instruction work, exactly? Like, freeform in what way?"

"You can use a training dummy if one is available, you can ask an instructor to look over your form if one is available—"

"I'm gonna be a mage."

"—you know, I have no idea what mage instructors do? I've seen people practising magic on the porings but I don't think I've seen any magic instructors out on the training grounds."

"I guess it's obvious enough if you're succeeding or not as a mage?"

Just then the boy from earlier that had been trying to concentrate really hard on the marin walks into the mess hall, his clothes and hair looked mildly singed.

"...and that is an example of 'not'," he adds in an undertone.

Annika smiles a bit into her food.

"—hey, wow, you managed to make her smile in less than an hour's acquaintance, that's impressive!"

Aaand now she's scowling again.

"Anyway, I imagine the instructors have all retired for the night by now so I should go find the mages in the morning?"

"Yeah. And afterwards tell me about it, I'm really curious how that goes."

"What are you two aiming for?"

"Monk."

"Rogue."

"Hey, that's a party."

"No healer."

"No?"