POV - Azra'il
One week.
Seven days since Roxy Migurdia had arrived with her disproportionate bag and her professional expectations, which Rudeus and I had dismantled in approximately six minutes. In terms of adapting to new circumstances, she had managed rather well. In terms of preparing for what was to come, she had no idea.
The question of the bedroom had been resolved with Zenith's characteristic directness: she had looked at the available space in the house, then at Roxy, then at me, and arrived at the obvious conclusion that two people of roughly equivalent size could perfectly well share a bed without drama.
Rudeus had disagreed with that conclusion.
"This is completely unfair," he said, in the corridor, in the voice of someone presenting a serious argument to a jury that was clearly not paying attention. He was literally on his knees on the wooden floor, palms flat against the planks, with the expression of a man who had lost something precious and wanted the universe to know it. "She gets Azra'il's room and I'm left on my own? Why?"
I looked down at him with the serenity of someone who has witnessed things considerably worse than a reincarnated adult throwing a tantrum on the wooden floor.
"Because you are a chronic and documented pervert," I said. "And Roxy is an adult woman who deserves to sleep without keeping one eye open."
"I wasn't going to do anything—"
"Lilia's knickers disagree."
Rudeus closed his mouth.
Roxy, who was standing beside the door with her bag still over her shoulder and the expression of someone trying to determine whether to laugh or to be concerned, looked from Rudeus to me and then back to Rudeus.
"Lilia's knickers?" she asked, in the careful tone of a professional. "You know what, I would rather not know," she answered herself, before either of us could respond, and walked into the room with the composure of a woman who had made an executive decision regarding her own mental health.
[Her decision was wise.]
〈I agree.〉
The rhythm of the lessons had established itself with the inevitable naturalness of things that simply find their level. Roxy taught with the genuine competence of someone who had learnt well and knew how to convey it. Rudeus absorbed with the speed of an adult with decades of background reading and the additional enthusiasm of someone who had personal motivations for impressing the tutor, which I preferred not to analyse in any depth.
I asked questions.
Not ordinary student questions. The kind that made Roxy pause, furrow her brow slightly, and reorganise her reasoning before answering, which I considered a healthy sign that the conversation was happening at the appropriate level.
That particular morning, we were in the study room that Zenith had arranged with a table, chairs, and the only available slate board in the village, which Paul had obtained from the local merchant with the enthusiasm of a father who had decided to support his children's educational process with all the vigour of a man who did not need to understand the content in order to buy the equipment.
Roxy was explaining the structure of elemental magic circles, drawing on the board with chalk with the precision of someone who had done so hundreds of times.
"The intersection of elements in the circle is not arbitrary," she said, tracing the connecting line between the water and wind quadrants. "Each element has a natural affinity with some and a natural tension with others. Water and wind complement one another. Water and fire oppose one another. Combining elements in tension without precise control results in—"
"Phase instability," I said.
Roxy paused. She looked at me. "Correct. How do you know that?"
"It is implicit in the geometry of the circle," I said. "If you observe the angle of intersection of the elemental vectors, the tension appears as asymmetry in the structure. Elements in opposition form angles of 180 degrees. Elements in affinity form 60 or 120."
Roxy looked at the board. Then at me. Then at the board again with the expression of someone verifying whether what they had just heard was correct.
It was.
[She is reprocessing the explanation she had prepared in light of the fact that you arrived at the conclusion before she had finished stating the premise.]
〈She will grow accustomed to it.〉
[She has not grown accustomed after a week.]
〈It is a process.〉
"That is correct," said Roxy, with the composure of a professional who had learnt to accept surprises from this particular source. "Which brings me to the next part." She returned to the board. "When two elements in tension are forced to interact within a circle without an adequate containment structure, the instability can—"
"What happens if you invert the vector of one of the elements during the interaction?" I asked.
Roxy stopped writing.
"Invert the vector," she repeated, slowly.
"Instead of aligning the opposing elements, forcing one of them to operate in the direction contrary to its natural one. The tension still exists, but the direction changes. In theory it could create a state of unstable equilibrium that—"
"That could result in a completely uncontrollable chain reaction," said Roxy, in the tone of someone closing off a line of reasoning before it goes too far. "It is an interesting theory, but it is not something one practises. It is dangerous and the risk is—"
〈Eos, probability of success of a vector inversion experiment with the current channels.〉
[Low. But technically fascinating.]
〈Sufficient.〉
"I can try," I said.
"Azra'il—"
I had already raised my hand.
[Wait. This is a terrible—]
What followed was instructive in several respects.
The mana left the channels, found the structure I had sketched mentally, and then did exactly what any unstable system does when forced beyond its equilibrium point: it collapsed with considerable enthusiasm and volume.
The explosion was not large enough to bring down walls. It was the specific kind of explosion that falls between "laboratory accident" and "questionable decision," sufficient to send the papers on Roxy's table flying, erase the slate board entirely, and coat all three people in the room with a fine layer of damp dust that smelt of ozone and other people's regret.
The silence that followed had texture.
Rudeus was covered in dust, hair askew, looking at me with the expression of someone who had clearly seen that coming and had not managed to do anything about it in time. "I was going to warn you," he said.
"You said nothing," I said.
"I was going to."
Roxy was standing in the same spot she had occupied before the explosion, covered in dust, eyes closed with the particular patience of someone performing a breathing exercise they had learnt for situations exactly like this one. When she opened them, there was in her eyes that quality of a professional who had arrived at a new level of understanding regarding what it meant to have me as a pupil.
"Did you hear the part where I said it was uncontrollable?" she asked, in a voice making a considerable effort to remain in the calm register.
"I heard the part where you said it was interesting," I said.
"I said interesting and dangerous."
"I heard up to the interesting."
Roxy shook the dust from her blue hair with the dignified resignation of someone who had accepted that certain aspects of the work had not featured in the original job description. Then she looked at me for a moment with that expression she was developing specifically for situations involving me, that particular mixture of professional exasperation and genuine fascination that I had come to recognise as her default state during lessons.
And then she noticed.
It was not the first time she had observed my eyes with above-average attention. But this time, with the mana still echoing through the room following the experiment, the luminescence was visibly more intense than in its resting state.
Roxy looked at my eyes for one second longer than usual. She said nothing. She filed it away.
[She noticed the increased luminescence. She is correlating it with the level of magical activity.]
〈I know.〉
[She will ask eventually.]
〈Eventually.〉
The afternoon brought Paul with two wooden swords and the energy of a man who had been waiting for that moment with the enthusiasm of someone entirely certain he knows what he is doing.
Paul set the two wooden swords on the ground of the courtyard and looked at us with the posture of a swordsman in assessment mode. Then he looked at me for a moment with an expression I classified immediately: it was the specific hesitation of someone who has an opinion and is calculating how to package it.
"Azra'il," he said, in the careful tone of someone about to say something they know may not be well received, "how about you sit over there and observe first? I will train with Rudy, and afterwards, if you still want to, you can have a go."
I looked at him.
He held my gaze with the determination of a father who had made a decision and intended to keep it.
[He believes swordsmanship is a mutually exclusive category based on sex. It is medieval reasoning in every sense of the term.]
〈He wants to convince me that sword training is too demanding for a girl.〉
[Correct. Your strategy?]
〈Sit. Observe. Let the theatre play out. For now.〉
I sat on the low stone near the courtyard wall with the composure of an obedient child giving her father's suggestion genuine consideration.
That was not the case. But the performance was adequate.
Paul picked up one of the wooden swords and handed it to Rudeus with the gesture of someone conferring a responsibility. Rudeus received it in both hands with the expression of someone who was theoretically enthusiastic and in practice was calculating how to hold the thing without appearing completely incompetent in front of the tutor who was watching from the window.
〈Chubby little pervert.〉
[Consistent.]
"Stance," said Paul, standing beside Rudeus and demonstrating with his own body. "Feet like this. Weight distributed. Don't go all rigid, you need mobility."
It was a reasonable instruction. The problem was that Paul had demonstrated the stance without explaining the principles behind it, which meant Rudeus was attempting to copy a form without understanding the function, which produced an imitation that had the correct appearance and the entirely wrong structure.
〈Rudeus's centre of gravity is wrong. He has placed the weight forward rather than distributing it. If anyone pushed him now he would fall forwards with ease. Paul had not mentioned the centre of gravity.〉
[Paul has probably never consciously thought about his own centre of gravity. He simply has good instincts and assumes everyone does.]
〈Excellent pedagogical methodology.〉
"Like this," said Paul, adjusting the position of Rudeus's feet with his hand, but without explaining why that position was better. Rudeus nodded with the expression of someone who has received a correction and is uncertain of the reason but will accept it regardless.
I observed.
Paul was genuinely good with swords. That was undeniable. Every movement of his had that quality of something repeated thousands of times until it became reflex, the specific efficiency of someone whose body had fully internalised the technique. As a swordsman, he was excellent.
As a teacher, he was a study in how natural talent can actively hinder the teaching process. He did things he could not explain because he had never needed to explain them. He demonstrated movements that were correct, but whose principles remained entirely opaque to anyone who did not share the same physical instinct.
Rudeus attempted to reproduce the basic strike Paul had demonstrated.
The result was technically a strike in the sense that it involved movement and the wooden sword moved through the air. In every other relevant sense, it was the strike of someone who had watched someone else perform a strike and was attempting to reconstruct another person's muscle memory with their own body, which does not work.
Paul frowned. "Not like that. Like this." He demonstrated again.
Rudeus tried again.
The result was marginally better and structurally identical to the original problem.
〈If Paul explained that the movement originates from the hip and not the shoulder, Rudeus would likely manage it within two attempts. Instead, Paul is going to demonstrate the movement twelve more times and Rudeus will continue missing the fundamental principle.〉
I remained on the stone, watching the cycle repeat itself with the patience of someone who has witnessed far worse teaching methods, which was true, though few that combined such genuine talent with such structurally deficient communication.
The afternoon light was shifting angle. Rudeus had improved marginally across twelve repetitions, which was less than he ought to have managed given the time invested and more than would have occurred without any instruction at all. Paul continued demonstrating without explaining, his brow growing progressively more furrowed in the manner of someone who cannot understand why the pupil is not simply seeing what is obvious.
After a period I classified as sufficiently instructive for my purposes, Paul stopped. He breathed. He looked at Rudeus with the expression of someone assessing progress and arriving at mixed conclusions.
Then he turned his head in my direction.
"Azra'il."
I looked up at him.
Paul wore the expression of someone about to offer a way out with the veiled generosity of someone who expects it to be accepted. "It is quite a demanding sort of training," he said, in the careful tone of a father being simultaneously kind and old-fashioned, a combination he mastered with impressive consistency. "If you still want to have a go, you can. But there is absolutely no need to train if you would rather not."
〈Eos.〉
[Translation: he is expecting you to decline politely and go back to practising magic.]
〈I noticed.〉
[Your response?]
〈I am already getting up.〉
I rose from the stone with the composure of someone who had not been waiting for that moment for the past forty minutes, walked to the wooden sword Rudeus had left on the ground, and picked it up.