I closed my eye and turned my sight inwards. Feeling my mana inside me, I directed a tiny amount of it up through my arm. I carefully lined up my wand to point at a largish rock in front of me, still not used to only having one eye, before pushing the spark through the wand.

The rock shattered.

Damn it.

I sighed. While I had tried to practice controlling my blasts, it was difficult to get them any weaker than this. I had made progress, given that the rock was still recognizable as having been a rock, but I still needed to get better. While huge explosions could be very useful in combat, unless I wanted to kill literally everyone in the area I hit I would need to practice with smaller blasts.

Still, it felt amazing to see rocks break like that. The sense of power I got from it, and the knowledge that it was my power, made me feel unbeatable.

I tried to concentrate in order to fire another blast, but a throbbing headache made itself known. I tried to think of how long I'd been at this, but came up blank. That was probably a good sign to take a break, I decided and headed back to the caravan.

After my display with the boulder earlier, the other recruits decided it might be a good idea to start training as well. After all, as Driver had said, the five of us were technically soldiers. As I crested the hill between me and the caravan I saw two of the other recruits, Heather and Max, sparring.

At first glance the fight might have seemed unfair. Heather towered over her opponent, probably more than two meters tall, and built to match. Her blonde hair was tied back into a ponytail and she had an expression of concentration on her face as she readied her spear.

In contrast, Max was tiny. He was well over a foot shorter than Heather, and probably only half as wide. His face showed a determined, but notably more relaxed expression, and he held his dagger at his side.

However, while the fight might have looked skewed toward Heather, the reality was anything but. I didn't know much, but I was pretty sure that was not how to use a spear. I guessed that due to a spear's length keeping one's distance was a must, but Heather was swinging it at her opponent. As I watched she hit Max under his arm with the shaft of the spear, making him wince, but he responded by grabbing it and and using it as leverage to put his dagger to her chest.

"Oh come on! That's like the sixth time you've won!" Heather said after Max had disengaged.

"No offense, Heather, but I don't think you know how to use a spear," Max replied.

"What are you talking about? You didn't know how to use that stupid dagger when you started either!"

"That's different. Yeah, I didn't know how to use a dagger when I woke up, but once I started practicing it was like I'd been using it my whole life. Which I probably did, before. You don't seem like you've ever used a spear."

"But I must've used a spear before, right? Why else would I have one in my bag? I just need some more practice!"

"Fine. Your funeral, I guess. You might want to learn before we need to start properly fighting, though."

"I will! And then I'll beat your sorry ass!" Heather said before flinging herself at Max, spear at the ready. He sidestepped her, used her momentum to push her to the ground despite her far larger build, grabbed hold of her by the hair, and held his dagger to her throat again.

"That's exactly what I'm talking about, Heather! I hardly even needed to think about doing that and I still beat you."

"Shut up! I just need to train more!"

"He's right, you know," I interrupted quietly. "I didn't even know how to hold my wand at fir-"

"Shut up!" Heather shouted at me and stormed off.

Max sighed and turned to me. "You're Matt right? Pleasure to meet you."

He held out his hand and I took it.

"Nice to meet you too," I said.

"Hey, what's got her so mad?" I turned around to see the two bowmen, Ava and Drew, come out from the copse of trees where they had been practicing their archery. They were both rather short, with Drew being the stockier of them. Ava had her long black hair tied in a braid.

As I turned around, Ava flinched.

"Have you guys had any luck relearning archery yet?" Max asked.

"Yeah, loads. Why?" Ava replied. I caught her eyeing me. Or more accurately, the right side of my face.

"Heather hasn't made any progress on relearning how to use her spear, and she's being too stubborn to realize it," Max told her.

Ava chuckled. "Sucks to be her, I guess."

"I don't think it's that she's bad at it though. She seemed to have good technique, but her spear really didn't complement it."

I added, "We think she's gotten the wrong weapon somehow."

"Huh. Hope she manages to fix that," Drew said. He looked thoughtful for a second before cracking up. "Would probably be funny to watch though."

Max frowned, but kept silent as Drew and Ava headed off toward the caravans where Driver was snoozing. He sighed. "Great. I don't have a sparring partner now." He turned to me. "Do you mind filling in?"

I winced. "Sorry, I'd kill you."

Max laughed. "You could try!"

"No, seriously. I haven't figured yet out how to properly control my attacks. If I hit you, you'd die."

Max's laughter dies down. "Ah. You meant it like that."

We stood there in awkward silence until I decided to follow Drew and Ava, leaving Max alone.

"Hey, kiddo!" I looked up to see Driver walking toward the carriage I was sitting in. "You doing okay?"

"Yeah," I replied, not looking up from Introduction to Magecraft.

She laughed. What was it with her and her laughing? "Just checking up on you. We're setting off in an hour, so be ready to leave by then!"

Then she walked off. I would have been more polite, but I was currently reading about healing magic, which I felt trumped pleasantries in importance. I was trying to learn a healing spell the book told told me was very simple, but if too much mana was funneled into it... there was an illustration of the effects. They were not pretty. I thought I had the theory down, but I really didn't want to try it out unnecessarily.

A few minutes later I decided to try something else. I wouldn't make any more progress on the spell without practice, but that was out of the question at the moment. As I flicked through the book, looking for something useful to learn, I glanced up and saw something lying on a shelf. An idea came to mind as I grabbed it and headed out. I needed to talk to Max.

Heather was practicing with her spear in the forest. She was holding it wrong and she knew it, but no matter how much she fiddled with it the spear never felt right. She tried a stab, but it just felt awkward.

This wasn't right! She was a warrior! She knew how to fight, she just needed to figure it out!

In frustration, Heather tried to throw the spear at a tree. It flipped around in the air and hit the tree sideways, clattering to the forest floor.

Heather screamed her anger at the sky.

As her voice was running out, she heard a thunk behind her. Turning around, she saw that something had somehow been dropped there without her noticing anything. She went to see what it was, and was surprised to see it was a small metal hammer.

Heather tried to pick it up to look at it closer, but as her fingers closed around the handle, something clicked. Heather marvelled at the feeling, swinging the hammer around. She knew what Max had been on about now. This felt, while not perfect, far better than the spear had been.

She laughed with delight.

Further away, Max and I watched her swing the hammer around with a look of absolute glee on her face. Max gave me a thumbs up and we both slipped away back to the caravan, leaving Heather to enjoy her newfound weapon.

Half an hour later, the caravan was ready to leave, but Heather hadn't come back yet. We were just about to go get her when she came out of the forest, still holding her hammer. The spear was nowhere in sight.

"What's got you so happy?" Max shouted.

"Shut up!" Heather yelled back before getting into a different carriage. With that, we set off toward Wynn and whatever lay there.