The next morning I rise with the sun. Then I do my morning exercises before packing up all of my supplies. As I haphazardly toss everything together into a bag, the sound of clashing silverware wakes up Katherine. She groggily worms her way out of her sleeping bag. Yawning, some of her hair goes one way, some of it another, and the rest doesn’t know what to do. She looks completely disheveled and out of it. It’s quite the stark contrast compared to how she had looked yesterday. I guess even pretty girls don’t always look so good in the morning. “Good mornin’ Master,” she says still out of it.

“Good morning Katherine,” I reply. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

“Forty-five,” she yawns.

Yeah, not quite. While she gets herself together, I take to the woods for a potty break. When I return she’s not entirely up to speed, but she is more of her normal self than before. “Where’s the bathroom?” she asks me.

I point to the trees behind us. “For real?” she whines.

“Yep.”

“Ugggh,” she groans, stomping off towards the trees.

Okay, note to self. For the next three months, I’ll need to stay in a town. I’m not going through this routine every morning.

I wait for an eternity for Katherine to return. How is it that a girl can spend forever in the bathroom when there’s not even a bathroom? Once she finally does come back, we pass through the woods on the other side and return to the dirt road.

While walking down the road, there’s not really anything to do, so naturally Katherine starts talking. “Master teach me magic,” she asks.

“No.”

“Please.”

“No.”

“Pretty please.”

Fed up, I finally shout, “Katherine be quiet before I cast the Silence spell on you and make you quiet!”

That works. She trails behind me pouting, but quiet. Truthfully, I don’t even know the Silence spell, but she doesn’t need to know that. We continue walking for another twenty minutes. It sucks that with every passing minute, we’re missing more of the festival, yet we’re making good progress. At the rate that we’re going, we should make it to Magali by sunset.

I look behind me to tell Katherine the good news. Her brown eyes stare off into the distance at something. I turn my head to see what she’s looking at. “Look Master! Water! We can freshen up over there!”

Before I can stop her, Katherine runs off and leaves my side. “No, Katherine! Wait!” I yell. But it’s too late. She runs recklessly towards the water.

I chase after her, but she makes it to the water before I can reach her. Kneeling over the little pond, she splashes some water on her face. Immediately, something in the water senses her movement. I can clearly see its large shape moving through the water towards her. Yet somehow, she fails to see it despite being right at the edge of the pond. The shape reaches Katherine’s position and a large cetus monster springs up out of the water biting at Katherine’s legs. The cetus is a reptilian creature with spiky carnivorous teeth, webbed paws, and a long tail. As it continues to snap its jaws at Katherine, she screams and backpedals away from it. Quickly, I summon forth my petrified staff. Then casting the grandmaster level Lightning Strike spell, I blast the cetus with such a powerful bolt of lightning that it goes sailing through the air. By the time that it splashes back into the water, its body is a smoking hot sausage. It sinks for a second and then floats back to the surface belly-up.

Katherine runs to me and throws her arms around me. “Oh Master, I was so scared!”

I grab her by the shoulders and hold her at arm’s length. “Katherine you’re a village girl. You should know that monsters hang around open bodies of water. I think that you did that on purpose.”

She gasps in horror pulling away from me. “Master I’m shocked! I would never intentionally put myself in harm’s way just to make you feel guilty enough to teach me magic so that I could defend myself and not be eaten by monsters. Never!”

She stares at me blinking innocently. I also stare back at her blinking. I can’t tell whether or not she’s being sincere. Is Katherine screwing with me right now?

I start to open my mouth to condemn her, but end up closing it without saying anything. Actually, if something were to happen to her, then I really would feel guilty for the rest of my life. Crap, Soul. She got you. She got you again.

I inhale deeply and exhale slowly in yet another sigh of submission. “Fine Katherine. I’ll teach you the basics about magic, but just the basics.”

“Goody!” She wraps both of her arms around my right arm and rests her head on my shoulder. We then return to the road and continue towards Magali. Now I have to tell her about magic. At least it will be a distraction during our long walk. But where should I begin? Well, first things first I guess.

“Listen Katherine because I’m only going to explain this once. There are 13 Magic Disciplines: Elemental Magic, Illusion Magic, Sound Magic, Status Magic, which is also called Curse Magic, Life Magic, Support Magic, Craft Magic, Summoning Magic, Shape Shifting Magic, Martial Magic, Nature Magic, which is actually two sub-disciplines – both Beast and Plant Magic, Script Magic, and the forbidden magic known as Death Magic.”

I look down at Katherine, who still has her head pressed against my shoulder. “Got it?”

“Got it,” she answers.

I continue, “Each magic discipline has four levels: Debutant, Novice, Master, and Grandmaster. With each increasing level, the power of the spells increases. Most dedicated mages are able to reach the grandmaster level in two or three disciplines during their lifetime. Yet some exceptional mages are able to go beyond that.”

Katherine looks up at me in wide-eyed astonishment. “Has anyone ever reached the grandmaster level in all of the disciplines?”

“No, never. The most ever recorded was eight. But I think that Arch Lord Aerolyso, the head of Winterspring Academy, may have passed that already.”

“Wow, he must be really powerful.”

I hesitate to answer that. “Yes and no. He should be around 92-years-old I think. You see Katherine, by the time that a mage becomes that well-versed in magic, he’s usually really old. A mage that old can’t channel very much mana, and even if he can, then he can’t do it for very long. The one who would be really powerful is a mage that was still young and yet knew multiple disciplines at the grandmaster level.”

“Ooh! What about you Master?”

I walk silently for a few paces with her. “It’s really none of your business, but I guess that I can tell you. I’m at the grandmaster level in Elemental Magic, Life Magic, and Illusion Magic. I’m also at the master level of Summoning Magic. Once I completely master Summoning Magic, then I’ll start a new discipline. Probably Martial Magic.”

Katherine is now looking at me starry-eyed and amazed. “Wow, so you’re like really powerful?”

I scratch my head not sure how to explain. “Well I would be, but…”

“But?”

“I don’t have a class.”

“What’s a class?”

“Classes are what make the mage world go around Katherine. There are groups of mages who form classes, which are like guilds. Each class requires that a mage meet certain criteria to join. Most of the time, it’s reaching a specified level in three magic disciplines. The disciplines emphasized depend on the class. The advantage of belonging to a class is that each class has unique skills and spells not known outside of their group. In fact, teaching class unique skills to someone outside of the class is so taboo that some classes will even send assassins after someone who leaks their secrets.”

I check to see if my lecture is boring Katherine, yet she hangs upon my every word. We continue following the road to Magali as we talk. Far away in the distant hills, I can see the great walls of the king’s city. I point out the city to Katherine, who cheers excitedly. We should arrive in another two hours or so. But in the meantime, we continue our conversation. “So why don’t you have a class Master?”

“Because I’m an idiot.”

“What do you mean by that Master?”

“I mean when I was a kid, I was arrogant and naïve. I only respected Elemental Magic. I thought that all of the other disciplines were stupid or for girls. So I never bothered learning any of the others. When it came time for the students to take class exams, most of the others went while I didn’t. Instead, I tried to do something ridiculous to show off, but all that I got from it was an introduction to the petrification curse.”

Katherine mulls over my words in a short silence. Even though this is only my second day knowing her, I can already anticipate her next question. “So what exactly happened that turned your staff to stone?”

Yep, I knew it. I stop walking so that I can focus all of my effort on speaking. Despite how hard I struggle, I can’t bring the words up from my chest. I try swallowing, I try sighing, I try forcing myself to shout, but no words escape from my lips. Eventually, I just give up and let my head hang low. Katherine gently places her hand on my shoulder. “It’s okay Master. You don’t have to tell me.”

I accept her mercy. Together, we begin walking again. The city of Magali draws ever nearer with each step. I can even feel a tinge of excitement starting to well up inside of me at the thought of soon being in the greatest city in the world. I love Magali. Well honestly, I hate Magali too. But mostly I love it.

“Katherine there’s one last thing that I need to tell you about classes,” I say. “Like all things in the mage world, there is a certain hierarchy to classes. At the bottom of the hierarchy, you have your basic classes. These are what are known as the ‘unique classes.’ Almost any mage that you meet will fall into this category. Yet, there is a tier beyond the unique class called the ‘ultra class.’ Any ultra class mage is someone not to be trifled with. A single ultra class mage could wipe out an entire group of unique class mages. The difference between the two is that huge. Being an ultra class mage implies having already reached the grandmaster level in at least one, but usually more magic disciplines. But even crazier, Katherine, is the fact that there’s a tier above ultra class mages. Those are the ‘ultimate class’ mages. Most of the ones that I know of are Arch Lords.”

Katherine starts to ask a question so I answer it, “Each major country has a leading magic academy. The headmaster of said academy is the Arch Lord or Arch Lady for that country.”

“Oh,” she says. Katherine and I are now in the home stretch. In just about fifteen minutes, we’ll be at the gates of Magali. But before we arrive, I have a question for Katherine. “So Katherine tell me, just why is it that you want to learn magic? Is it for money, power, or fame?”

“To help people.”

“To help people?”

“Yes, to help people! You met Hilda back in the village. If I were a great mage, then I could have helped her. Or I could have dealt with the goblins myself, and you never would have been hurt. There’s so much good that I could do for the world if only I had magic power!”

Katherine’s words caught me by surprise. This is the first time that I’ve ever heard of someone wanting to acquire magic power to help people. Generally, people pursue magic for profit or any number of selfish reasons, but never to help people. I’m starting to realize that there’s more to Katherine than I thought. She’s not stupid, she’s not naïve, and she’s not seeking magic for selfish purposes. In short, she’s not like me. Katherine is sincerely and legitimately, deep down to her a core, a good person. My initial objections were all misguided. There’s nothing wrong with teaching Katherine magic. She won’t become power-crazed like I did and ruin her life or get herself killed.

I find myself so caught up in my thoughts that I barely notice when the dirt road ends and the paved road begins. I lift my eyes and see the outer walls of Magali right in my face. Excitement consumes me and I take off running. “Come on!” I shout back towards Katherine. She’s obviously not used to traveling for long hours like me, but she’s young. She’ll make it. After a brief clearance check with some guards, the front gate opens and I enter into Magali.