Thomas was making his way through the college hallways, he was escorting a young woman named Victoria to a meeting scheduled with Master Telis. She was pretty, well dressed and far too confident for her age. Her unnatural blonde hair was a definite sign of wealth. A noble, no doubt.

"I'm sorry, what was your name again?" She spoke with extreme emphasis on vowels. Thomas was slow to respond as he considered what sort of family teaches people to speak like this, but he got to it eventually.

"Thomas, Ma'am. Thomas Alson."

"Mr Alson, do you expect I shall have to wait for Master Telis when we arrive? I do hate to seem so impatient, but I'm afraid I have a meeting shortly hereafter elsewhere in the city, I don't suppose you have access to his schedule?"

"Master Telis is Master of resources. He's a very busy man so I wouldn't be surprised if you had to wait, but I can't imagine he'd keep you waiting for more than a few minutes."

"Very well, thank you, Mr Alson."

She asked a barrage of other mostly benign questions to fill the air, Thomas was beginning to expect she just disliked silence. He had learned that she was indeed from a noble family, house Aimlee to be precise. He didn't know much about their house, but he vaguely remembered something about transportation, probably why she was meeting with Telis of all people.

He left her outside of Telis' office, complaining about something to do with the chairs. He vaguely acknowledged her concerns, bid her a good afternoon and went on his way.

He travelled to one of the common rooms, where Bradley and Mariah would probably be. Sure enough, he found Mariah sprawled out on a rug in the middle of the common room, face down. A discarded book lay open at her side, he couldn't see clearly but it was something about aspect theory.

Bradley was consoling her, simultaneously patting her on the back while stretching out his other hand to rescue the book, which she'd tossed precariously close to the fireplace.

"I hate this so much. Whoever this "Master Vetrian" was, he was an ass. Why can't he just explain things clearly?!" she spoke muffled words into the very high-quality fur rug which she had a decent mouthful of by now.

"You'll get it, you just need to keep at it." Bradley retrieved the book and cradled it safely away from any exposed flames.

"You sound like the Masters." she chastised, spitting out a loose hair.

"Trouble in paradise?" Thomas chimed in merrily.

Mariah propped her head upon her hands to look up at the newcomer. Tom always thought Mariah was fun to be around. She was hot-headed, which fit her long auburn hair nicely. She was the type who wore her emotions on her sleeve, with a flair for the dramatic. She had impossibly thin eyebrows, he'd always wondered if that was on purpose.

"Long time no see, Tom. How was Admin?" Brad asked, standing up and putting the book he'd rescued aside on a nearby tabletop.

"Dull. I'm finally off of it for a few months now, so I thought I'd stop by before I head off campus." He waltzed over and made himself comfortable by the fire. He noticed it was getting a little low, so he flicked a finger out to the side and caused a piece of firewood stacked in the corner to lift into the air and fly over, into the flames.

"Thomaaaass." Mariah stretched out his name as she clawed herself over to him, the very picture of dignity. "How do you do that? I can't shift to wind mana. Show me. Bradley can't do it either, and he isn't learning."

With a sigh, Thomas conjured a small ball of ambient mana, then held it up to her. "I learned by spending time in heavy winds on stormy days. It helped me get a solid picture of what I wanted. For me, I think of wind as a pushing force. It's violent, all-encompassing and invisible. It follows some unseen whims but can be impeded by pretty much anything. In my analogy, I supplant those unseen whims with my own willpower. That's really it."

He focused on the little ball of mana, trying to perform the shift at lower speeds had actually become harder, now that it was second nature to him. The mana began to swirl around in a circle, changing colour and opacity as it went. It became more translucent and began to strike against his palm. It was like the wind mana had come to life and sought to attack him, though it could not penetrate his skin.

"I know some students who visualise the wind as calm, but that never worked for me. My wind mana is like a storm."

Mariah and Bradley were both first-year students. Thomas was halfway through his second year and he had already condensed his first mana core - fire, he hoped wind would be his second.

Mariah sat upright next to him, clinging onto his arm, staring at the busy air mana charging around in his palm. She tried to copy what he'd created, she could cause the mana to stir, but she couldn't get it to actually change.

"You know, you are actually affecting the mana, see how it's moving? That's good, you're on the right track. You need to experiment and observe the results until you figure out a way to push through. Master Elijah always tells us that it's a bit different for every person. How're you getting on, Brad?"

"I Can do a fire aspect shift. Sometimes."

Ah, Bradley the poet. Always so eloquent. Bradley was by far the biggest of the three, he was only 18 but had worked at his father's leatherworking shop for most of his life. Turns out, leather gets heavy. Thomas always liked to think of Brad as some sort of barbarian warlord because he had long, unruly brown hair and had a voice far deeper than his age should permit.

Mariah stuck her tongue out at Brad in indignation.

"That's great, Brad. Pretty fast, too."

"Ta."

"Thomas, did you hear?" Mariah's voice came full force at him from the side. She'd moved on, apparently.

"Hear what?"

"An Imperial Inquisitor is coming through the city next week. Apparently, word reached the capital of the outlaw incursions out in the mess. They're sending a real big shot to come and clean up the problem."

Imperial Inquisitors were part of the emperor's personal magical retinue. They consisted of some of the most talented Arcanists in the empire and were specialised in information gathering, reconnaissance and worked under the authority of an Imperial Mandate. They were judge, jury and executioner all wrapped into one.

"Must be bad for them to be sending an Inquisitor, where'd they hit?"

"Oh, a bunch of places. Ervis, Pallanten, Wethermane, Pelville. All over, really. It was over a month ago now, I think. Maybe two, I'm not sure."

Thomas vaguely recalled that Wethermane was where Vance said he was from. Poor guy.

Fortunately for Thomas, Mariah had the attention span of a gnat. Moments after he started thinking to himself, she extricated herself from him and floated over to Brad, demanding that he explains the fire aspect shift to her in more detail.

Thomas was very tired, and the warmth from the fireplace wasn't doing much to help. He closed his eyes for just a moment.

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Elijah sat in his study, he had just finished going over his notes on his time spent with Vance for the hundredth time. He gathered those notes together and placed them in a lockbox by his desk. He'd been sat for hours and went to stretch his legs, doing a few laps of his office. Afterwards, he opened another lockbox and flames immediately burst outwards from inside. He stepped back and used wind mana to levitate the feather inside out, sending it to hover in the centre of the room.

As it got further away, the flames decreased. As far as he could tell, it reacted to the proximity of his fire mana core. The feather didn't react when Vance was in the room, but both he and Thomas caused this reaction.

He got this feather a few years ago, and only got around to properly examining it now. He'd recovered it as an artefact of magical interest from an archaeology site to the south of the empire. He hadn't been able to identify the creature the feather came from yet, but he suspected it would be an avian creature, likely a bird with a very strong fire aspect. This wasn't anything particularly out of the ordinary for Elijah, many of the masters at colleges across the empire are responsible for individual research tasks of this scale.

The feather reacted violently to the application or even the presence of fire mana. When Elijah conjured fire mana outside of his body the feather reacted even more violently. It practically exploded, he had to fight back the flames more than once.

When this thing got going, it really got going.

Yet, when he extinguished the flame, the feather was entirely unaffected. There were several practical applications for such an object. It was effectively amplifying the energy provided to it. It reminded him of a simple firestone charm, but vastly more powerful.

He was testing the distance to expelled fire mana ratio when his vision was abruptly and utterly engulfed in searing flames.

Thomas was shocked awake by the sound of an enormous explosion coming from somewhere inside the college. He was shocked onto his feet by Mariah, who let out an extraordinarily loud shriek, as she jumped halfway out of her skin.

"What's going on?" Thomas made his way to the door of the common room and opened it out to the hallway, he could see that smoke was already making its way down the hallway towards them, fortunately, the college had tall ceilings.

"Both of you, get out of the building, I'm going to see what's happened," Thomas commanded back into the room, then without another word he darted down the hall.

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Vance was in his room, a fair distance from the masters quarters but not entirely out of reach. The sound rang heavy in his ears and he stood up, knocking over his table in the process. An instant later, his mana sense picked up the heaviest concentration of fire mana he'd ever perceived, it was overwhelming. He felt like he was hovering inches over a pit of molten lava. He could feel his skin drying up and he had a sudden, desperate urge for water.

Yet he could tell it was distant, in the direction of Master Elijah's room. He was worried and opened his door to leave. He was immediately pelted by a wall of thick smoke that he wasn't ready for. He reeled backwards in a coughing fit and dropped to his knees to escape the cloud. He crawled his way out into the hallway.

He could hear the sounds of heavy footfalls to his left and people screaming, coming from the direction of the explosion, it was roughly in the direction he was already going so he followed the sound, he collided with several other people as he went, but none of them seemed to really care, they were in a rush, so was he.

He went past where the commotion was, towards Elijah's room. He could sense that terrifying concentration of fire mana getting closer with each passing moment. He heard the sounds of crackling flames all around him, and what sounded like students combating them, he wasn't far from Elijah's office when he heard a familiar voice.

"Vance!"

"Thomas? What's going on? I heard an explosion, I think there's something wrong in Elijah's office." Vance blurted out everything that was on his mind.

Thomas looked around, grabbing Vance and bringing him closer to the wall, out of the way of the other students. Horror filled him when he realised the source of the explosion was Master Telis' office. Had the noble girl still been in there? Flames poured out of the room like tendrils reaching from the body of some terrifying flame beast, the hallway was practically raining embers. A handful of second and third-year students were already making progress in pushing the flames back into Telis' office.

He felt Vance worm his way out of his grip and carry on towards Elijah's office. "Vance, wait!"

He chased after him as Vance crashed into the door of Elijah's office. It was hot to the touch. He reached for the handle, which was hot enough to cause him to flinch backwards, and the door was locked.

Thomas came up behind him, realised his plight and said "I can help with that."

Vance felt Thomas conjuring what he thought might've been wind mana, he thrust the mana into the lock and caused it to go berserk. Thomas then wrapped his hand in his robes and gripped the door handle, pulling hard.

The door opened and flames poured out into the hallway.

Vance felt them moving the moment the door began to open and he pushed Thomas to the side, both of them tumbled to the ground, Vance earned himself a light singe on the back.

He felt that point of intense heat in the centre of the room grow even hotter for a moment. Once the initial burst of flames receded, Vance began doing the only thing he knew how to do. He began to transfer the fire mana into himself using transference, then began to shift its attribute back to pure mana.

He caused the flames to recede from the door a little enough for Thomas to get a look inside, but as soon as Thomas approached the doorframe, the flames burst into life once more, more violently than before.

Vance felt something flowing out of Thomas, something tiny. It was the smallest flicker of fire mana he'd ever been able to sense, but it flowed into the room towards the central point. He didn't know much, but Elijah hadn't been slacking as a teacher.

"Thomas, do you have a fire mana core?"

"Yes, why?"

"Back off for a moment, I have an idea."

Thomas did as he was instructed, but he was keeping a close eye on the situation, he knew Elijah was interested in this boy, but he was still new. And very, very young. Surely no more than 15?

The intensity of the flames began to lessen.

"Something in there is absorbing fire mana, you need to stay back or it'll feed on you."

"How can you-"

"Later."

Vance's voice sounded surprisingly firm. Thomas decided to trust him.

Vance continued what he was doing, siphoning portions of fire mana out of the air and converting them, he was doing so at a speed that put him just ahead of the propagation rate of the flames inside the room, though it was taxing.

He pushed a little further inside and nearly fell to his knees when he discovered the charred, ashen body of Elijah Werthing on the ground not a handful of feet from the object of his interest, the feather in the centre of the room, that feather was his enemy.

He pushed onwards, reducing the flames more and more but eventually, he began to run out of steam, there was simply too much, and once he lost his momentum, the fires began to spread again.

He could sense what the feather was doing, it took in tiny amounts of fire mana, bolstered its reserves with ambient mana and used the little sparks as catalysts to turn ambient mana into more fire mana, if left unchecked, it'd keep gathering momentum.

He wondered for just a moment, would it ever stop? He didn't know, and there were a lot of people here.

Thomas was outside, telling people who had fire cores to back off, which was mostly everyone. It seemed that fire cores were among the most common in this college. A handful of other students who had wind cores came and joined Vance in his efforts, he could hear them behind him, but they were also running out of steam fast.

It dawned on him that he could not sense any membrane around the object like he had around himself or magical objects tended to have around them, something to keep the mana inside. He reasoned that the object itself was in fact, a mana construct. One so condensed that it actually had a physical form.

Was that even possible? He didn't know enough to answer that for now, but it did present him with one idea.

A Really, really bad idea.

He reached out to the mana of the construct, all of it.

He prepared a mana shell inside his left hand and flexed his will towards the feather, he pulled and pulled, as hard as he could. After a few seconds, the entire mana construct shot towards him. It felt like he was prying a stubborn nail from a piece of wood, and it caused him to fall back as it had suddenly come free when he didn't expect it.

The feather brought with it an intense trail of flames that scorched his hand as the feather made contact with his palm, it vanished in an instant, into his waiting transference mana shell.