Wait, what? Did I hear that correctly, cause I think she just asked me to be her student?

“Sorry, but could you repeat that? I think I heard you wrong”

The woman smiled at that. I should probably get her name.

“My question is simple. Do you, Jack Sigel, accept my offer of being my student”, the woman said, in a sarcastically over-formal tone.

So I don't have malfunctioning ears. That's good. What's not good, is this offer. While I want to accept it, I don't really think I can. My job here for the next year is being Elora´s full-time bodyguard. Okay, maybe not full-time, and more like half-time. Maybe there is a chance after all.

“If I were to say yes, at what hours would I be expected to be here?”, I asked, with a formal tone, which I regretted immediately. I had been surrounded by nobles for too long and had gotten their speech impediment. Need to work on that or its gonna drive me mad.

“The time you get here doesn't matter. I don't really get that many visitors around here. Morgan does swing by, every few weeks, though. Need to buy her something for that favor, now that I think about it. What were we talking about? Oh, yeah, the time thing. While it doesn't matter which time of the day you come, I would prefer it, if it's a time where you will be able to stay for at least one hour. Maybe the afternoon would suit you, seeing as that's when the person your guarding gets off classes”, the woman explained. Seems that she and Morgan are friends, seeing as Morgan shared some details about me.

While I'm still not sure if I want to accept, her points do make sense. With me only having to bodyguard her half a day, I can use the rest over here. Well, almost all the rest of the time. Still have to sleep, somewhat. Also, if I only have to be here in, at least, an hour, I will have plenty of free time to do other stuff. I think… I think I should accept this deal.

“I accept the offer of studenthood under your guidance”, I said, doing a small bow. Not enough to be formal, but just enough to be polite.

“Straighten your back, please. Wouldn't want you to get spinal problems before you can fix those things”, the woman said, before taking a swig of something I could only assume was alcohol. Where she got it from, I didn't know. My eyes had not left her figure for a single second since she first revealed herself.

I did as she said so, and straighten my back. She wasn't one for etiquette.

“Good. Now, then, let's go over a few things. As my student, you will be learning, from me, many secrets from your talent. Some I will ask you to keep secret, while others I want you to spread knowledge of freely. If you ever try to cross me, though, telling any other living being of my secrets, I promise you, you won't be able to tell another person anything ever again. Don't doubt my wisdom, for it has been gathered over many years. Many more, than it seems. As we probably only have a year to work with, I won't be able to teach you much. That forces me to compress years of teaching into a single year, which only makes me capable of going over the basics. This year will be mostly focused on changing your physical appearance. Anything more than that would be impossible. I won't say anything more, though. That would spoil the fun of revealing it. That should cover what I wanted to explain. Oh yeah, one more thing. I expect you to begin coming when the girl your begins going to classes herself. Not before, as I have a few things to prepare. With that said, I need to get going. Toodles!”

And with that, she shapeshifted into a bird and began to fly off.

“Wait!”, I shouted. “What's your name?!”

The bird didn't look back at my question, nor did it open its beak to answer. Yet, I still hear an answer resonate within my ears. I seemed to come from everywhere, yet, also from nowhere.

The answer was simple. A simple word. A single name.

Metis

The next week went by fast. It wasn't boring, by any means, but there wasn't anything really notable that happened. No sneak attacks, no plot-twists, and gigantic revelations. Nothing like that happened.

Most of the time was spent training. With no access to a real training facility, though, we had to train out in the open, which forced both of us to hold back. Eros didn't want anybody to know of his enhanced strength, and I didn't want anyone to know of my special Talent. Because of that, most of the time was spent training our muscles. With my enhancements, they were quickly beginning to show.

We didn't spend most of our time strength training, though. On day three, Elora decided to show up and join us. She didn't want to spend her time training her muscles, though. She wanted to practice her Talent.

With her Talent being Illusion, she would get the most out of it, if she had somebody to test it on. With Eros could see any illusion she could currently produce, I was that somebody she had to test on.

And test we did.

We started out with something simple. Something she had already shown herself capable of doing.

Turning herself invisible. When we first met each other, she had been making herself invisible, waiting for an opportunity to strike. Then, I didn't see her because I didn't even know such a possibility. I wasn't looking for it. What I thought was perfect invisibility, could probably just have been me overlooking obvious signs.

Because of that, we needed to test her current limits in turning herself invisible out, and push them even further than they already.

When we started out testing, we quickly came to one of her limits.

The room we had met it was dark, making it almost impossible non-enhanced eyes to see anything. When she had to turn invisible there, she hadn't met very much resistance. There wasn't any light directed at her. When we had to train though, she had light directed at her. AKA the sun itself.

It had been midday with not a single cloud in the sky. Elora had finished the spell that was supposed to make her invisible and moved herself a few meters from her original position. We were playing a game, in which I was supposed to attentively look around my surroundings, carefully studying every centimeter, until I finally noticed something irregular, which I would then call out in the hopes that it was her. I didn't need to do that, though. Instead of her going completely inv, she was more see through. After doing a bit of investigating, we, of course, found out the reason for this. The spell itself had a safety-trigger which would limit the amount of Mana it could take from her, making it possible to use the spell for a prolonged time. While this in itself sounded completely reasonable, it also limited the efficiency at which the spell could operate in. It could only do so much with its small mana-usage. Sure, when it was dark, she could make herself invisible, but in midday, the safety-trigger made it impossible to become invisible.

After a little study, we removed the safety-trigger while giving Elora the control on how much mana was used. With this technique, it should have been possible for Elora to be completely invisible in direct sunlight.

Again, though, it didn't go as planned. You could still see her, no matter how much her Mana-usage was. It actually became easier to see her, when she increased it.´But how could it have gone wrong?!´, I hear you say. Well, the answer to that is easy to find out. All it took was a simple game of elimination. It wasn't the spell itself, and it wasn't the mana-usage either. That left only two things it could have been. It was either some external forces playing tricks on us or something was wrong with Elora´s mana-reserves. We tested out the spell multiple places, sometimes walking for way too many hours to just check it out someplace unlikely, yet, it never worked. That left only one thing.

Something was happening to her mana-reserves. Elora and I myself included, were worried about this. If what was wrong was something serious, there was a chance she needed to drop out before they even officially began.

Luckily, it turned out to not be the case. We had gone to the Headmistress, or Morgan as she wants Elora to call her, asking for answers to our questions. After getting these answers, we were both calmed down.

The reason for the spell failing to make her invisible in broad daylight wasn't because of some rare disease, or something. It was simply something called exhaustion. Her Mana-reserves simply couldn't handle that amount of mana being expelled in such a short amount of time. While I surely could do so, that was only because of my constant depletion of my mana-reserves, which helped me familiarize with large amounts of mana being expelled quickly.

After learning about this, Elora began another form of training. Instead of training her Talent, she was training her mana-reserves. Every time it would become full, she would deplete it, as fast as she could. She would do this multiple times each day, not falling asleep due to exhaustion even once.

She did this for the rest of the week, and on the last day, she had shown significant improvement. While she was far from true invisibility, she had become much more see-through.

The time for training had ended though. The time for classes had begun.