I placed my hand over Lily’s hand and pressed it against the golden runic threads. “Alright, I want you to imagine what it’s like to wash clothes, really visualize it, the feel of it, how freshly washed clothes smell, anything you can think of to make the image vivid.”

Lily’s cheeks were heated, tinged red as I stood close beside her in the workshop. “Ok, I’m thinking about washing clothes… but why do you need me to do this?”

“Believe it or not, I’ve never washed my own clothes, even as a lad, my chores were to help my father with the crops while the womenfolk did the household chores. Then at the academy they had a service for that. It’s a lot easier to form an intent when you fully understand what you intend to do.” I explained.

With one hand against her back, I pressed my mana into her body, drawing a gasp from Lily. Carefully, gently, I circulated my mana through her conduits, into her undeveloped mana core, then with my mana filling her to overflowing, I guided her mana out through her hand into thread. With her intent for a self cleaning spell filling the threads, I wove a microscopic piece of my soul into the weave to fix it in place and added a lot of extra mana to ensure it was stable.

“What was that?” She said breathlessly. The sensation of having your mana mingled with another was quite intimate, but not painful. As students we’d been taught how to do it mostly as a means of recharging someone who was suffering from mana depletion, but it was also a technique used for helping non-mages awaken their power.

“I just helped you cast your first enchantment,” I told her with a chuckle. “You actually have enough of a mana core that you could learn to be a mage,” I told her.

“Really?” She turned eager eyes to me, “You could teach me to do magic?”

I thought about it, “Well, don’t get too excited,” I told her, “Your mana core is a little on the small side, but it’s enough to learn some basic spells. Or I could focus on teaching you enchantment so you could help me mass produce these self cleaning enchants.”

“Any magic would be amazing! I’d be happy to help with these enchantments if you teach me how to do it,” Lily gushed.

“Alright,” I said with a laugh, “I’ll look for some training manuals to get you started with basic mana cultivation techniques, and once you get good enough to make the self cleaning enchant on your own, I’ll give you a share of the profits when we start selling these.”

“Promise?!” Lily said with her heart in her eyes, practically bouncing up and down with excitement.

“Yeah,” I told her. Though of course, it was a bit of a problem if I made her my apprentice, since it would be even more unethical of me to take advantage of her if I did. A master-student relationship was sacred, not to be contaminated like that. I’ll just have to keep restraining myself, I told myself with a small mental sigh.

A knock on the door interrupted my thoughts. “Come in,” I said, taking a step back from Lily so as to not look suspicious.

Primrose walked in holding a sealed envelope with the royal seal. “Looks like the king has a job for you,” she opined, handing me the envelope.

I tore it open, using a pulse of mana to authenticate myself to the magic hidden within the royal seal.

Reading the letter, I summarized it. “Looks like the king’s nephew, son of his younger brother, managed to get himself in trouble in the dungeon,” I told Primrose and the listening Lily, “The king is dispatching me and a squad of royal knights to help the Adventurer’s Guild with the rescue operation.”

“Ah the Adventurer’s Guild is going to love that,” Primrose said with a wry chuckle.

“That sounded sarcastic.” I point out.

“Hmm, well, let’s just say that the Adventurer's Guild likes to pretend it owns the dungeon and dislikes it when the crown interferes in anything related to the dungeon. As the court wizard, you shouldn’t ever be allowed to set foot inside the dungeon, if they had their way. Sadly for them, the king can do whatever he wants inside his own city.”

“Great,” I sighed. In the academy I’d been taken to a dungeon exactly once and I’d not enjoyed the experience much. Now I’d have to join a team of adventurers who were going to resent me for being there. Didn’t sound like much fun.

“I don’t like dungeons,” Blackwing said grumpily.

“Do you want to stay here with Primrose and Lily?” I asked the fickle raven, who spent so much time silent on my shoulder that I sometimes forgot she was there. I sometimes noticed that she was feeding off my excess mana, but that was normal for a familiar. I had set up a bird perch with a feeding dish with an assortment of fruits and seeds for her, but her preferred perch continued to be my shoulder.

Blackwing thought about it. “I could start teaching Lily,” she suggested.

This surprised both the women in the room, but I nodded thoughtfully. Blackwing was actually a lot older than me, and her picking me to be her wizard soon after I joined the academy was another reason I’d managed to do so well. Despite her odd mannerisms and oftentime childish behavior, Blackwing was a better tutor than half my teachers in the academy; I was the third wizard she’d worked with. “If that’s what you want,” I told her.

“I don’t like dungeons,” she repeated. “I will stay here.”

“You’re going to teach me?” Lily asked hesitantly.

“Don’t worry, she’s pretty good at it, actually,” I told Lily.

Blackwing cawed, fluffing her feathers and preening them pridefully at my compliment.

Primrose gave Blackwing an evaluating look, “You think Lily can learn magic?” She asked. Primrose had always treated Blackwing with respect, even deferring to her more than she deferred to me. I wondered what Primrose knew about Blackwing that I didn’t.

“Of course, most any human can. It’s easy, but normally, your souls are too lazy. I know how to fix that. My human said she has a big enough mana core, I’m sure he’s right.” Blackwing explained cryptically.

The Adventurer’s Guild was built to look like a sprawling oversized tavern, an illusion assisted by the oversized windows and doors, and the outrageously enormous sign hanging from the third story covering the entire second floor. In reality it was mostly an administrative building, with the real work happening in upper floors while the adventurers received their missions in the cavernous main floor. There was a small bar tucked into one corner, but they only sold light beer, and no hard liquor. A drunk adventurer was bad for business so the Adventurer’s Guild actually tried to discourage it, while at the same time maintaining the facade of being nothing more than an oversized tavern in homage to their humble origins.

I walked inside, trailing a squad of six royal knights in fancy silver armor. I had briefly shaken hands with the leader of the squad, a thirty year old minor noble by the name of Lance, with an easy smile and roguish good looks, but I’d not had any chance to get to know them yet. These six men’s only job was to make sure I was kept safe, and the wall of armor they provided gave me a much needed confidence boost as I strolled past the hostile glares of the adventurers towards the back of the room. They’d already heard the news of me being assigned to “help” and were discontent; I was invading their turf and none of them liked it. The local guild master came out from behind the main counter to meet me himself.

“Wizard Jason, I’m afraid I must protest at this. It is not the crown’s place to send men into the dungeon, much less the court wizard himself,” he told me bluntly, getting right to the point, not bothering to even introduce himself.

“Guild master…” I drew out the title, making it clear I did not know this man’s name.

“Theodore,” he provided, reluctantly.

“This is the crown’s business because his nephew is the one in need of rescue,” I pointed out reasonably.

“With all due respect, when a noble joins the Adventurer’s Guild, he’s supposed to leave all that baggage behind him. He’s one of our own, as is the rest of his team, we’ll be the ones to retrieve them, dead or alive, if it is at all possible. Though, in all honesty, we normally wouldn’t bother sending an expedition like this if his majesty hadn’t insisted. Plenty of adventurers die in the dungeon, it’s a dangerous job, what sort of message does it send if this one adventurer gets this much attention?”

‘That the king cares about his family more than you care about your guild members?” I ask rhetorically, “I don’t see what the problem is, you are providing a favor to the crown by sending a rescue team, should the crown not also contribute to the effort?”

The guild leader frowns, “Fine, but if you or your men die down there due to your own inexperience with dungeons, the Adventurer’s Guild will take no blame for it,” he told me. “And if we do rescue this nephew, be aware that he might face expulsion because of the crown’s interference.”

“You would expel a man because his uncle organized a rescue mission?” I ask, quirking an eyebrow.

“We would expel him because the Adventurer’s Guild independence from the crown’s control is more important than any one life,” Theodore explained coldly, then turning away he added, “Let me take you to meet the rest of this ill-advised rescue team.”