On the first day Hannah was already becoming pretty skeptical of all this magic training. What was she going to accomplish by sitting alone on a cold floor? Clear her mind. That made no sense. How does one even begin to not think about nothing? She did try her best for the first few hours. Really focused on not focusing. But then she started to get mad. Nothing was happening other than she was now cold and her legs had started to cramp. By the time she was excused she was beginning to wonder if she could leave and sneak into a different guild.

The next two days, though, really turned everything around for her. Who needed to clear their mind when Hannah could see spirits? Clearly everyone else was too busy being empty, Hannah was spotting the spirits. And the next day was a test, which Hannah had no problem with. This she could do. As soon as she saw the first spirit she had dedicated her time to reading and studying everything she could about magic and now she got to prove that she knew it all. She was definitely riding that high all night.

However, the next three days are reminiscent of the first. Everyone else was finally about to see the spirits, but then they started to get them to do things. Hannah, though, was stuck just catching glimpses of them. For two days she tried to stay calm and focused, to clear her mind and work with the spirits. But nothing was happening. The harder she tried, the harder it became to stay clear. The fifth day ended with her storming out of the classroom and punching a wall. That night she nursed her anger and sore hand.

On the sixth day, Hannah’s anger shifted. When it was burning and bubbling over and right on the surface, she could barely even see the spirits. But then something changed, her focus shifted from trying to clear her mind into sharpening her anger. She focused on the one thing she could and turned that anger inside herself. She felt it growing hard and cold inside of her, making her mind sharper and seeing the spirits better. Eventually she let the anger fully engulf her and that was when it happened. Magic Arrow. And many Magic Arrows followed that. She was over the moon excited. Who needed an empty mind when she could just be angry? If her teachers had told her that, maybe she wouldn’t have wasted two days.

The seventh day was graduation and Hannah was quite smug with her new black dress and pointed hat. One of the professors tried to tell her that anger was not a great source of focus; that she would have to let go of that rage. But the little fire spirit flitting around her head was essentially proof that she didn’t need to listen to him. She walked away from the school with the feeling of flames licking at her hands and a smile on her face.

The smile dropped fairly quickly though, when Hannah saw the rest of the group. She wasn’t even looking for them, yet here they were. She sighed and walked up to them, a sour look on her face.