I turned three yesterday. In celebration, I silently cast the 2nd Circle wind blade spell on a practice dummy. Over the last year, I had been going with my father to the Red Tower almost every day to train with my mom. "If you cast spells like that of course, you'll end up on your ass! Get up and try again!" "Yes!"

My mother had been teaching me magic the way my father wanted me to learn. I was taught as many 1st Circle spells as I could learn in the last year. My parents were stuffing my head with as much magical information as possible. Now it was time for me to start learning some of the more interesting spells. I finally got to start learning 2nd Circle magic. "Hearth is what we will be learning today. It's one of the most useful spells for a fire mage in the winter months. Any mage traveling with a group or by themselves will use some kind of variation of this spell at some point. Repeat after me. 'Oh, flame of the hearth, desperate and waning. Let forth your warmth to cover our weary souls.' "

Most of the 2nd Circle spells I was learning were boring spells like this.

I repeated the spell several times before getting a reaction. The air directly around my palm started feeling pleasantly warm. It took hours and hours of feeling my mana and chanting the spell, but when I finally succeeded both of my arms felt like they were next to a warm fireplace.

"This is the perfect spell for the winter months, providing immediate warmth when the weather gets horrid. The spell can be maintained for a long time, and it can save someone's life in the truly cold."

"When can I learn an actual combat spell!" Frustration was setting in. Even though I knew these spells were useful my impatience thought otherwise. "When you master all the spells I teach you. Do you think you can learn spells like Firestorm overnight? Setting up a foundation will make your learning easier, and will give you many tools that you can use in all kinds of situations!" Looking into my mom's eyes I quickly apologized, "I'm sorry, mom."

I sighed before getting in a lotus pose and practicing again. We practiced the Hearth spell for hours while sitting across from each other.

Every week I was learning two to three 2nd Circle spells. Occasionally I'd be taught an interesting Wind Blade or Rock Spike spell, but for the most part, I was learning a lot of support spells.

I learned more spells like Earth Tremor, Wind Messenger, Air Crawl, Fire of Life, and many more support type spells. If all I did every day was learn support spells I'd probably go crazy. Thankfully sparring was still part of my daily training. My mother, Tobias, Caspergers, Linda, and rarely even my father would be my training partners.

"You need to keep the air around you heated for as long as possible! Keep it warmer than you find comfortable, and maintain the spell for as long as you can." She sat cross-legged in front of me while using the same spell. It felt like a natural hot spring with how hot it became in the training room. "This isn't too bad, mom! It's kind of relaxing!" My mother just smiled at me before closing her eyes.

After about twenty more minutes the training room had grown so hot it was getting uncomfortable for me. The sweat first started dripping from my brow before my sweat started pouring everywhere from my body. My heart began beating incredibly fast trying to bring oxygen to my body to cool me off. I quickly closed off my thoughts and started using breathing techniques to slow my heart. Eventually, I felt the strain on my mana as my body and mind were shutting down due to tremendous stress. Struggling to make a sound, I squeaked, "Mom!"

A cool breeze formed a tornado around us as the hot air quickly dissipated. "Impressive son, I was wondering when you were going to quit!" When I opened my eyes the first thing I noticed was my mom covered in sweat from head to toe. When we first started practice she was barely affected by the heat, but now she looked just like me. "If you didn't quit in five more minutes I'd probably be the one to quit."

A powerful vortex of wind surrounded the two of us cooling us and drying us off at the same time. "Get up. Let's go eat, son." "I'm starving, mom, and thirsty! Very, very thirsty!" My mother laughed as she opened the door. We walked to the cafeteria to get some food and drinks before passing by someone we knew. Mr. Pinky himself was walking down the hall. Smiling, I waved at him and yelled, "Mr. Pinky! It's good to see you!" For some reason, he looked visibly upset. "Young master, for the last time, it's Lindt. L I N D T, not Pinky. I've never met a Pinky, nor have I ever heard of anyone named Pinky." My mother roared, "HAHA! That's right! It is quite an uncommon name, but Lindt I've heard that Pinky in Elvish means Lindt!" It may not have been that funny, but I still laughed. Mr. Pinky stormed away with a pout. "Nice to see you Mr. Pinky!"

The cafeteria was filled with knights and mages eating their meals as quickly as possible before leaving. The Tower had been very busy in the last year. Argon hadn't attacked since the battle one year ago. No one gave me information on what was going on. "I haven't seen Casperg in a while, where did he go?" My mother quickly responded while setting down her plate," Casper is on a mission in the South. He left two weeks ago." "Oh. Did he go to Ayes?" "I'm not sure." I frowned at my mom while squinting my eyes, "Is that so?" I could tell when my mom was lying. She had some pretty obvious tells. For one, she never looked at me when she was lying. I left the subject alone before looking around the cafeteria again. While looking around there were a few knights I recognized, but Linda never showed up while we ate. A few knights and mages came to our table to talk with us while were eating, but my two favorite knights never showed up.

My mother took me to see my father and Mr. Keller after eating, and we spent some time with them and talked for a bit before returning to the training room.

I practically lived in the training rooms over the past year. My memory was strong, but I had learned so many 1st Circle spells over the last year that I had already forgotten at least a quarter of the more boring ones.

I got back into the lotus pose on the floor with my mother. She shouted, "Let's begin!" and the room heated up again. We continued our practice session until night had arrived. We had to take breaks two more times during our practice because of physical limits. When the sun was setting, and we were preparing to leave I asked, "Can we spar?" My mother laughed and said, "Sure, son! You always complain if you don't get to spar. You're more of a battle maniac than your father!" I had already prepared two Wind Step spells, and an Air Compression spell while she was talking and charged at her. My mother didn't even flinch as the wind covered her body, and she threw her hand at me. I met her fist with my own before getting blown away in the opposite direction, but not before casting a spell in response. "Wind Blade!" Wind surrounded my mother's hand, "Slice!" Her hand cut through my spell like a blade cutting through butter. "Wind Walker." My mother flew at me at a speed that would be normally difficult for a human to react to. I forced Qi into my eyes and covered my body with an Air Flow spell. She yelled, "Air Grasp!" while arriving directly in front of me. I tried to counter her spell with Air Flow but lost the tug of war. She snatched me out of the air, and said, "Let's get your father, I'm hungry!" I lost again.

We went home with father, and had dinner as a family. One of the few nice things that happened over the last year was that my family and I were always together. Everywhere they went I went. My father occasionally left for the capital for a few days, but for the most part, I got to see him almost every day. While eating dinner we often had magic discussions. "How would you use the spells Steam, and Dig together, son?" My father always asked weird and impossible questions. "I could use those two spells as a diversion to make the hole I dig out to seem like some sort of geyser spell, but I have no idea how I could use those two spells together otherwise."

"I've used that exact combination of spells together to escape encirclement. My water magic is horrible so I superheated the surface of a lake and used dig to make a hole to escape through. I scurried away like a trapped mouse!" "Hahahaha! I can't imagine you running away, father." My father smiled as he replied, "Of course, I'd escape! Being able to escape danger is an essential skill for a mage! The last survivor gets the last laugh!" We laughed and talked about our training session with my father. He asked some more questions, and I asked him about the current situation with Argon. "Not now, son. You're too young to know about certain things." When dinner was over Rhea came to clean up and I went to bed with my parents.

My mother threw me in the bathtub like a sack of potatoes. I worry that the way my mother handles me might rub off on her other future children, and that frightens me. I don't want to see my mom toss a sibling out a window or something to learn the fly spell or something like that.

I took a quick bath before going to bed. Over the last year, I had been forced to sleep in my parent's room. Ever since the assassination attempt, neither of my parents let me sleep on my own anymore. This was the most annoying part of the last year.

I enjoyed my own territory! Sleeping with my parents was suffocating especially getting hugged for the entire night! Every night as we went to bed I tried to use the time it took me to fall asleep as cultivation time. I couldn't stay awake for too long due to my age, but I still cultivated my Qi whenever I got a chance. Whenever I was eating or resting was the time I allotted for my cultivation.

I gathered my Qi, and tried to get it to interact internally with my mana. Mixing them together never worked. Qi was like oil, and mana was like water making them impossible to bind together. There were cultivators that I knew in the past that had mixed two foreign energies and gained tremendous power from it. That bastard Zhou was a prime example of that mixing Qi together with demonic energy. I tried to experiment for as long as possible, but at my age, I had very little control over my tiredness. I could hear the shallow breathing of my parents as it lulled me into unconsciousness.

I'd just have to experiment again tomorrow.