I sat in the moving carriage, wincing each time a cobblestone made it bounce, rubbing my clothes against the burns from the lightning bolt spell.

“You going to be ok there?” Primrose asked.

“Yeah, I’ll just whip up a quick healing potion when we get home.” I told her.

“Why not use healing magic?”

“I’m not any good at it.”

“Oh?”

“I’d say healing spells are the one type of magic I’m terrible at. It has to do with the fact that having a large mana core makes my magic difficult to use that way.”

“Not enough fine control?”

“Too much pressure. Hmmm... imagine it’s like a hose, to do a proper healing spell you need a gentle stream. Doesn’t matter how narrow or wide the focus is, it just needs to be applied lightly. My oversized mana core is like having an overinflated water balloon attached to the hose, making it difficult for me to emit a steady slow flow of mana. I can’t reduce the rate of flow to something gentle,” I explain. “Luckily for me, healing magic was an elective course I could replace with alchemy classes, so that particular problem never hurt my grades.”

“Since you are talking about magic,” Primrose said, “Mind telling me how you pulled in those brass poles across the ward? Shouldn’t the ward have blocked your spell?”

“It should have, had that idiot not cast a wide area “dispel” just moments prior. Those guild mages were struggling to rebuild the ward after he flattened it, so I was able to push through it fairly easily. That’s probably why he thought I cheated, since I shouldn’t have been able to do that normally.”

“You cast that telekinesis spell, three times, and so quickly, considering you didn’t have a staff…” Primrose mused, “You cast it faster than he cast his lightning spell, how is that possible?”

“It was just one spell. I cast it silently before the duel even started, then just maintained it the whole time. It created an invisible hand of force that I can control like my own limb. There’s no way to cast that fast without a staff, unless you’re using an existing spell framework, like how I did with the invisibility spell using my robe. And I couldn’t just hit him with the telekinesis directly, his staff would have absorbed it.” I explained.

“Isn’t that cheating?” Primrose asked disapprovingly.

“Good thing I have an anti-scrying spell set up right now so no one can hear me admit to it,” I said with a wry grin. “Besides, he cheated first by forcing me to fight without a staff, and it’s his own fault for not noticing I went into that fight with a spell pre-prepared. He could have checked for that, he just was overconfident since I didn’t have a working staff.”

Primrose examined me carefully, then laughed ruefully. “Well, I guess a win is a win. Good job. You’re a lot sneakier than I originally thought you were though.”

“Yeah, I guess,” I replied with an awkward smile, unsure how to take that compliment, if that counted as a compliment.

“Well, our next task is to figure out how they stole your staff so fast. I know the princess has agents working among my staff, but the speed at which they set this whole thing up was a bit too fast for my liking. I’m thinking there's some communication device hidden somewhere. Given that the old owner of that house is working with the princess, I think a thorough search of the whole place is probably warranted. Then you might want to set up some wards, don’t you think?”

“Yeah,” I said with a sigh. “Tell me about the princess, what does she want?”

“To be queen? I’m honestly not sure. Our country isn’t that progressive, a queen on the throne with two older male heirs is unlikely to happen. Openly, she seems to be helping the second prince rally support against the crown prince, but I have my doubts. I don’t think she actually likes either of them. It’s more likely she plans to play them against each other until she’s the only one left. That or she has multiple contingency plans, because for someone so young, she’s surprisingly devious.”

“So her plan to get rid of me failed, what do you think she will do next?”

“Oh this wasn’t her plan, this was a spur of the moment play. She must have learned you didn’t have a staff and launched this little ambush within minutes. This was just a test, or an opening gambit; an impulsive low-risk gamble. Her real plan will be much more difficult to deal with.”

“Great,” I say, leaning back in my seat and closing my eyes. We spent the rest of the ride in silence.

Upon reaching my mansion I met with the gardener, an ancient old man whose skin was leathery from exposure to sunlight, and told him what herbs I wanted. The man was efficient, and by the time I’d sat down at my alchemy bench, limping my way upstairs, he’d already sent one of his assistants, a young lad of no more than fourteen, running into the house to hand me the requested herbs.

It was the work of about fifteen minutes to prepare a healing potion and a ointment. Infusing the two with magic was another couple of minutes, and after that, blessed relief as the burns quickly healed.

“You should really carry a healing potion with you at all times. Maybe two,” Primrose observed.

I was currently only wearing my burgundy pants, which were part of the uniform, worn under the overcoat like robe. I grunted in agreement and reached for my robe, but Primrose had already picked it up. “This is burnt, you can’t possibly be planning on wearing it again.”

“Ah well, the enchantment on it is broken too. Some of the threads melted, I guess I’m down a uniform.” I said with a sigh. In truth it had been the thin strands of molten gold that had burned my skin, the electric discharge had overwhelmed the gold thread.

“I’ll send for a generic casual wizard’s robe from the market if you want? I can send this so they’ll know what size to give you.”

“I thought no one sells pre-made wizard robes.”

“No one sells pre-made wizard robes fit to see a king. A plain black cloth robe is pretty commonplace. If you are planning to mass produce enchantment into wizard robes, I can even buy you them in bulk.”

I nod, “Maybe in a few days, once things have calmed down. For now I guess I’ll go take a nap.”

“We need to find that communication crystal and secure the estate with wards.”

“I need to recover my mana by taking a nap and work on finishing my staff first. Hire a couple of guild mages as extra security for the next few days if you're that worried about it.”

Primrose thought about it, then nodded. “Alright, will do.”

Heading towards my room I found Lily waiting with a bucket of hot water.

“Oh hi,” I told her, “What are you doing here?”

“There’s not much for me to do when I’m not sewing clothes, so I volunteered to help with your bath,” She told me shyly.

“Um, you don’t need to do that… I’m sure there’s someone whose job it is to do that.”

“What if they’re the same person who stole your staff?” Lily said with a shudder, “You can not believe how much of a commotion that caused, everyone’s room were searched. I’m worried that whomever it was is still around and could try to hurt you while your bathing! Better to trust me to do it… unless you don’t trust me?” She asked.

“I don’t need help taking a bath.” I also hadn't really been planning on taking a bath, but now that the idea had been suggested, it did sound like a good one. I had dried ointment and flecks of gold still stuck to my skin.

“I’ll just wash your hair… relax, you can keep your undergarments on.” She said with a chuckle. “Besides you look so tired, aren’t you worried you might accidentally fall asleep?”

“Ah, ok,” I said with a soft sigh, too tired to fight. It wasn’t so bad to be pampered right? I just had to think pure thoughts the whole time, I told myself.