[center][img]https://img.roleplayerguild.com/prod/users/dd1dfa33-b8c0-444a-8561-58aa2eea9b45.png[/img][/center][right][sub][@Scribe of Thoth] [@Achronum][/sub][/right]
Funny, Lienna could have sworn she’d told Auberon [i]not[/i] to wake her up at the crack of dawn for some Saints-forsaken training exercise. In fact, she was quite certain she’d made herself clear. Which, of course, begged the question: Why was she up with the sun anyway?

If she wanted to be charitable, she supposed she could admit that it wasn’t [i]really[/i] Auberon’s idea to tear the Rose Unit out of bed before the sun was even up. And sure, that knock on her door before the light was probably just Auberon trying to be courteous. But Lienna wasn’t feeling particularly charitable, so it didn’t much matter to her whether it was Auberon or Professor Michael behind subjecting the Lions to this. In this case (and most others), one cocky blond could be substituted for another. 

She did try her best to shake the last vestiges of a drowsy scowl from her face as the professors droned on, but chilly in the damp morning air and tired to boot, it was proving hard to stick to her newly-committed-to resolution of trying her best to be pleasant. Hells, she could probably count the hours of sleep she’d managed on one hand, having spent the night tossing and turning, unable to banish the strangeness of her meeting with Tomai from her mind. Try as she might to remind herself that all this “Crest of Indech” nonsense was the result of a broken Hanneman machine and nothing more, dread and doubt still managed to creep into the back of her mind, like icy winter chill worming its way through the boards of an old door. It snuck back up on her even now. The professors wanted demonstrations of ability, but what if that Crest symbol popped up again? What if her classmates noticed—or, Goddess forbid, the faceless chaperone watching over her in her fiancé’s stead—and they dragged her as a liar? She’d be ruined, never to show her face in Gautier again, maybe even arrested the moment she set foot back in Faerghus for the crime of faking her way into a marriage contract with a Count! And “attractive Crest” or not, she somehow doubted her chances of finding an Adrestian nobleman to take her in after nearly impaling their future queen.

[color=baa7c7][i]Stop it. Everything is fine,[/i][/color] she scolded herself, hauling herself out of the spiral she swore she’d tumbled down a dozen times by now. Whatever was going on, it was obviously out of her control, and fretting over it would only make her look more suspicious. 

[color=baa7c7][i]To be strong is to be flexible,[/i][/color] she reminded herself, her Oma’s old words echoing in her mind. [color=baa7c7][i]Be like water. Water always finds a way.[/i][/color]

Easier said than done sometimes. 

Lienna drew a shaky breath, her throat tight with bittersweet memories as yet too painful to recall—but at least they’d gotten her mind on something else. Blinking away the pricks in her eyes, she turned to her classmates for a distraction, where a diminutive boy in heavy robes was just about to hit his target with something she could only paradoxically describe as “bright darkness”. She looked on in naked fascination as he created the… thing between his hands like it was nothing, and followed it as it shot forth into the target like an obedient beast. She couldn’t help but stare; she’d never seen anything like it! Was that magic? Well duh, of course it was, no earthly thing looked like [i]that[/i]. What [i]that[/i] was exactly, though, she could hardly even fathom.

The girl she’d traded rooms with—Cassandra? Clarissa!—was next, fabricating a matrix of runes in the air before her as easily as if she’d drawn them there in charcoal. A flick of her wrist was all it took to complete the spell, and her target was bathed in light, Clarissa herself showered in a shimmering glow when it was finished. Unlike the boy’s magic, which in retrospect had an air of malice to it, Clarissa’s felt strangely benevolent. A healing spell, then? White magic? Once more Lienna was taken aback by how foreign it all seemed; she obviously knew on some level that white magic was a thing, but she’d never seen it in person, and whatever the boy had done was beyond her words to describe. By contrast, she had always believed (apparently foolishly) that magic was a command of the elements—her own proclivity for ice, for example, or her Oma’s trick for lighting fires. Not… whatever she’d just watched, at least at any level below the most esoteric of masters. Were these two that much more advanced than her, then, or was this just another example of all she’d missed?

Suddenly self-conscious, it was her turn to demonstrate, and Lienna used Clarissa’s attempt to start a conversation with the boy as her chance to do her bit without the eyes of more refined mages on her. But when she closed her eyes to take a breath, as she’d seen others do, the magic within her barely bothered to stir, and her breath turned into an irritated sigh. It always did this! Fortunately, as she’d seen at Luin, her magic deigned to move when it really counted, but Oma had often teased that her spirit was like a bear—it only bothered waking up when it had a reason to be angry. 

Remembering Oma was painful, but if calm focus wasn’t going to help her, then perhaps her thoughts could lead her to something that would. Given the least allowance, it was easy for her memories to turn from her Oma to Hima at large, the harsh, rugged landscape of Northern Gautier, and of course, to Sreng. 

Soon enough, the daunting glare of fire raged in her mind, choking black smoke muffling villagers’ screams and shrouding the monstrous forms of Srengese barbarians as they cut and tore their way through the settlement. A familiar flash of anger roared up inside Lienna to meet them, and when she opened her eyes, she set a murderous look on her target as if it were one of those monsters in the darkness coming for her. 

In sharp contrast to the careful movements of her peers, Lienna threw her arm unceremoniously out at her target; a thin column of icicles burst out of the ground in response, zig-zagging its way across the arena like a jagged bolt of lightning under the sand. At the other end, the icicles only clipped her target, stabbing up under one leg with such force that they launched the target into the air, spinning until it landed on its side a few feet away. Not content to rest, the column of ice took a hard left and ripped into the neighbouring target, stopping only once the wood was reduced to a grotesque sculpture of frozen splinters. 

With eyes as big as apples, Lienna carefully resisted the urge to gasp at the display, straightening her posture as casually as she could as she did her best not to look as shocked as she felt. She didn’t need Tomai’s critique to see the problem: the spell was impressively large and powerful, sure, but it was wild—the only sign that she had any control over the spell was the fact that the ice went [i]forward[/i] and not into the line of students beside her. She swallowed self-consciously, suddenly acutely aware how lucky it was that she’d been able to get away from the Luin bandits in one piece—and not accidentally dismember a princess in the process. 

Clearing her throat, she looked over to the unfortunate bystander whose target she’d shredded, and it turned out to be the short boy who made the darkness. [color=baa7c7]“...I’m sure they have more targets,”[/color] she offered weakly, hoping that the lack of a real apology would make it look like her spell was more intentional than it really was. 

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