For some people, sleeping until noon was supposed to be the height of decadence, a lifestyle only the idle or seriously wealthy could afford. For others, it was simply the norm, brought about by the rigours of working shifts and scheduling, forcing them to be awake, and hopefully aware, while others could rest. And yet, when it came to people wanting to contact one another, the assumption was automatically a roughly normal schedule, regardless of circumstances. Or, in this case, just a few hours after my companions and I had been given the room to prepare our bedding, a gentle but fairly insistent knock was disturbing our sleep. For a moment, I considered whether the appropriate answer to that disruption was a Mind Magic blast, nothing deadly only debilitating, but somewhere deep within me, I knew better. Even if I wanted to blast whatever fool dared disturb me, I had to be an adult about this.

Growling under my breath, I pushed myself from the comfortable nest made of pillows, Luna and a pair of sleeping bags and, after making sure that I was adequately covered, opened the door.

“What?!” I growled out, before even taking in just who had been trying to knock in the door. It was teenagers, I really should have known. A tag-team of boy and girl, maybe fifteen or somewhere thereabout, I wasn’t sure and, frankly, didn’t care too much. They looked a little too puny and soft to become melee fighters or archers or something along those lines, and the shirt worn by the boy, saying ‘Roll Initiative’ with a many-sided die on it spoke of certain geek-creds. Most likely, they had heard that the mysterious Traveller offered magic training, or something along those lines, and their enthusiasm had overcome all common sense. Which, in turn, caused them to try knowing in my door at this sun-cursed hour of the day. It was cursed noon, why would I ever want to be awake at this time?

Something about my posture, or maybe my tone, must have quenched some of their enthusiasm, But only some, not all of it. Rallying, the girl spoke, her voice filled with excitement.

“I…, We…, They said that you’d be able to teach magic? Like the thing where you made it so we could shower?” she babbled, quickly rallying after a bit of a false start. Still not fully coherent and fairly grumpy, I only grumbled, wondering for a split second just how well these two would go with ketchup.

“Can you teach us?” the boy now asked, his own excitement getting resurrected by his partner-in-annoyance.

“I can do many things, boy,” I replied, feeling a small spark of sadistic amusement when I took his question literally, just to be annoying.

“Would you please teach us magic, Oh Pale Lady?” the girl asked, trying her best to speak formally, and with as much respect in her voice as she could. In contrast, the boy simply repeated his earlier query, only with a little whine in his voice.

By now, I was feeling fairly annoyed and decided to see just how well the boy could swim. Or if he’d sink in the tides of the Astral River.

“Well, lesson one, boy,” I felt a vicious grin split my face, “Don’t drown,” I ordered him, before flicking my finger against his forehead while launching a powerful Mind Magic strike at him, dragging his mind into the Astral River with only a sliver of my attention to make sure he wouldn’t perish. Hopefully.

His body, unable to remain upright without his mind and instinct to perform the many subtle adjustments needed to stand simply crumbled like a puppet with his strings cut. There was a reason I usually had the people who got this sort of lesson sit comfortably, his body would be quite sore given the way he had crumbled against the wall until he was mushed against it.

“What did you do?” the girl now looked at me with fear in her eyes, she obviously hadn’t expected this. If not for the visible breathing of the boy and a few involuntary muscle twitches in his body, she’d be a lot more agitated, maybe thinking I had casually killed him.

“I’m teaching him a lesson,” I grinned, amusement radiating from the part of my mind that was watching the boy’s mind struggle with the Astral River. Without knowing what was going on, without having anything to give you perspective and a point to start, it was incredibly difficult to keep yourself from getting lost. And yet, this silly boy actually started to make progress, making me wonder if he had managed to find a stable stream he had an affinity with and used that to centre himself.

“You could even say, I’m teaching him two lessons for the price of one, aren’t I generous? He’s getting a chance to earn his magic, though he’s taking the hard way, and he learns that you don’t disturb people who fought all night before they get up voluntarily. Normally, I’d say until the second cup of tea but I have no idea if you people have that divine drink,” I felt my smile soften, thinking of the stupidly expensive and incredibly delicious tea I had in my backpack. No way was I risking that stuff in the beta-version of my magical bags, not while I wasn’t certain they wouldn’t accidentally unravel and dump all the stuff stored within into the shadows, never to be seen again.

Realising that the boy was quickly reaching his limits and would drown without help, I activated Overflow to make sure I had enough power for what I had in mind, before dragging him out of the Astral River with my Mind Magic. The small, blue box informing me that I had gained a level in the skill, bringing it to fifty-two, only added to the size of my grin, making me think that maybe this was a good way to train students and idiots. Maybe especially for idiotic students, quite literally a sink or swim moment.

“What was that?” the boy groaned, holding his head as he flopped around like a landed fish.

“That was your first lesson, boy,” I grinned, my eyes flickering to the girl who was crouching down next to the boy, helping him right himself and get his limbs back under control. It was fairly difficult to get up when on arm was behind your back and squeezed against a wall, especially when every part of your body hurt.

“You could also say it was a dual lesson, magic and decorum,” I added, now feeling a little curious about what the boy had achieved in the Astral River. “If you want, I can explain to you what the notifications you most likely received just now mean, I might even give you a few ideas to work with,” I offered, hoping that the young fool would simply tell me.

“Earth Magic and Earth Rune Mastery, both level one, and also a trait, Natural Mage,” he added, looking fairly confused. Now, it was my turn to struggle to keep my face placid, the Natural Mage trait was a stupidly powerful one, one I had gained during the creation of my Avatar in the capsule.

“Oh, my, impressive, boy. The magic is useful, but the trait is the real kicker. There should be a few sub-traits and such, you can look at those later. But the more important part would be to know whether you have more than just an affinity to Earth Magic. More affinities mean you have a bigger bag of tricks and for spellcasters, the size of your bag of tricks is directly linked to your power and thus how long you will survive,” I explained, wondering if my somewhat callous method of simply throwing the boy into the Astral River and having him struggle had helped him to get that trait. When I eyed the girl, wondering if it would work with her, too, she suddenly shrunk back, clearly wondering just how bad of an idea waking me up had been.

“Do you want to try what I did to him, hoping for some massive rewards or do you want the soft, tried and gentle method?” I asked the girl, hoping that she had some balls, even if that was a fairly disturbing image. Sadly, she only shook her head, clearly uncomfortable with the idea of getting knocked out and flopping about the hallway. Oh, well.

“You know, maybe you should get all who want to learn magic together, that way I only have to explain some things once. Would make it easier on me and give me more time with my students. Why don’t you set that up, and I make sure that my kids are awake, fed and watered?” I asked, giving them their marching orders. Amusingly, the two complied immediately, leaving me to retreat back into the room, where my comfortable bed was trying to seduce me.

Alas, there was only one pair of true pillows for me and those were sadly out of reach. Someday, I would have my beloved Sigmir and her heavenly pillows back.