Waking up with a swiftly cured hangover

As your eyes open you clean your brain with magic. Thankfully you are quick enough that you only feel a faint queasiness. Edin is curled up beside you still asleep. You cuddle him a bit as you try to recall some of the things you don't quiet remember yesterday. Parts remain a blur and you doubt you'll ever get those memories back but others are very apparent, such as Vatarie's face as you fucked Edin.

You'd really hurt her last night and while you vaguely remember things being, if not resolved at least smoothed over, you should talk to her today. You think everything is ok between you and Anastasia, she was annoyed at you but you don't recall it being anything more. You couldn't even broach the topic of Asune's feelings so didn't bother.

Your body felt stiff. And not in a way that Edin could satisfy. Missing your morning routine yesterday had left you feeling tense, missing it today would bug you. You look over to Edin's sleeping form cuddled against your side. He was safe. One thing you remember from last night was Blue's parting words. Even without your involvement to rescue Edin you doubted that ship would have left the dock. Anastasia might have taken longer to find him but she would have.

You slip out of the bed leaving Edin to curl up into your warm patch. You felt an endeared smile on your lips as your pulled on your uniform and left your room. As you walked you remembered Stephanie telling you she had a solution to your imbuing problem, that put a bit of a skip in your step. Before you left you looked for Wilfred by only saw an empty booth. He must be helping some other student, or maybe it was his day off. The man seemed to work here fourteen hours a day, or at least whenever you needed him. Hurrying to the training field you fail to interrogate that last thought.

When you reach the training field there is a distinct lack of metal meeting. You don't recall Asune being all that drunk last night but maybe she had enough to be hungover. As your view of the training field opens up you see Stephanie standing in the middle of the arena with a bucket filled with swords next to her, no sign of Asune.

As you enter she glares at you. "Are you going to continue disobeying my instructions?"

"I, ah ..." You haven't a clue what she is taking about.

"I seem to recall tell you to not interfere with Lady Asune's training and yet here we are." She looked around at the empty arena.

It takes a second to click. "Hang on that's not my fault, if anything it's Princess Anastasia." You say defensively.

"And I'm sure you had nothing to do you with her not attending the morning training session." She raises an eyebrow.

You remember pouring wine in Asune's glass over and over again. "Maybe a little." You relent sheepishly.

Stephanie shakes her head. "Obeying your teacher is vital to your training, if you don't respect me enough to follow even basic instructions I am wasting both of our time."

"I, sorry." You say again sheepishly. You weren't mainly the one at fault her but Stephanie's disappointment makes you feel bad.

"Take a sword." She say walking to the viewing stand and taking a seat as you obey. Holding it in your inexperienced hand you can tell it's a crap sword. The blade is too heavy their are pits and scuffs all along it, the handle is plain wood and not even sanded. "Send a line from the hilt along the core of the blade to it's tip."

You look at the metal and then at Stephanie. You really hope this one doesn't blow up. Focusing as much as you can you whittle your magic down to the finest sliver you can and push it along the blade's spine. A sudden flash leaves you blinking and looking down you see a stub of molten metal slough on the ground where the rest of the sword had fallen. Only the metal touching the hilt had melted rather than the whole thing so you think that was progress.

You put the hilt down by the rest of the sword and look at Stephanie. "Again." She instructions so you take up the next sword. Then the next. Then the next.

Each time you are left with a hilt and a chunk of metal in the sand slowly cooling in the morning sun. "This isn't working." You say in frustration as the next sword falls apart.

"There are more sword. If you fail that is your choice." Stephanie says.

"I can't use any less magic I'm already barely feeling what I am using." You complain dropping the hilt. Normally you aren't bothered by slow progress but this both doesn't feel like progress and provided you a visual account of your failures.

"Then try again." Stephanie says.

You take up the next sword and out it to your side. You don't even bother trying to focus on this one, just letting your magic out and liquefying the metal. "I can't." You say.

Stephanie stands up. "Then you have no business being at this academy." She walks off. "You are still trying when I get back I will know I am wrong, if you are not you should pack your things and leave."

You shake your head at the melodrama. She wasn't going to have you kicked out. She'd already shown her hand when she said that training you was an honour. You couldn't see her going back on that, even if you had disobeyed pretty much every single order she had given you, and had acted like a kid just because you couldn't do something everyone else could, and hadn't really corrected her when she said you didn't respect her.

You picked up another sword.

As the sun came up to illuminate the now slag covered sand you held up the last sword of the bucket. This wasn't working and it felt stupid. You'd never tried to **** something this hard before whenever you encountered a problem you found a work around. Unless that problem was imbue when you gave up out of embarrassment of your misunderstood failure or your aura which you gave up on out of embarrassment of you good old fashioned incompetence.

Ok that is enough self-criticism for now, you have enough inanimate metal slag criticizing you without your input. Think of a way around the problem. You look at the blade in your hand and the blades on the ground, so far the point of failure had been at the core, the heat from too much magic radiating out. So try something else. Running magic on the surface would result in an explosion or melting. How could you get magic into the sword if you couldn't control the amount going into it.

You sigh and look down at your hand. You'd run magic into your finger without your skin exploding or burning, and your used that magic to touch Vatarie without anything bad happening. You run a finger along the shitty metal feeling the divots and roughness. Well you might as well give it a shot.

Running magic into your fingernail you touch it to the spine of the blade at the hilt and in one smooth motion drag your nail along it to the tip of the blade. You focused on just letting whatever magic leaked out to stay and as your hand came away you looked at a blade with a thin line of your magic running along the spine to the tip.

You blinked a few times in utter disbelief. Had that seriously just worked?

You vision went white as you felt hot specks jab into your face. Blinking a few times colour slowly returned. The blade was gone, the viewing stand in front of you was looking more than a little shredded as pieces of metal had torn through it and your ears were ringing.

Progress. Was all thought as you dropped the hilt to the ground and looked at decimated remains of swords you had left in your wake. You eyes feel on the still partly intact hiltless blades. Be a shame to waste them since you have a possible way to advance.

One by one you drew small lines along them. Never so long as the first one and never picking one up just to be safe, each one blew up but did so into the sand so aside from needing from to comb through it to recover the metal shrapnel it was almost neat.

"Still here?" Stephanie asked from behind you as you moved onto another blade.

You turned and nodded then felt awkward, "I do respect your Lady Stephanie and thank you for teaching me, sorry I keep breaking the rules I really don't mean too."

Stephanie glares at you for a moment then cracks a smile. "I wouldn't worry about it, teaching a man to fight is breaking quite a few of my own rules anyway. Making progress?"

"Yes." You say breezing past that first part. "Though I'm sure sure if you could call it imbuing so much as drawing." You say as you double check to make sure is at a safe distance and draw a small line on the blade. It lasts two seconds before exploding. "See." You grin at her a little madly as you excitement at progress takes over.

"Drawing came before Imbuing." Stephanie said walking over and drawing the sword at her hip. Running a finger along it a line of magic is left. "It is considered outdated and at best inefficient since you need to be slow and careful with your movements, a line needs to move through the strongest parts of the object. Imbuing however relies on your nonself-consciouness to function. You do know what is don't you?"

"Yes, I don't know her name but the Elf has explained it."

"Amber does always jump to the theory before laying the foundation." Stephanie mused. "Well drawing will take time, practice, the studying of metals and each sword you pick up to be useful. So you won't be learning this way." She says.

"But." You start before she cuts you off.

"In combat no opponent is going to let you sit there figuring out your sword. It may take time and lots more swords but utility in the long term cannot be sacrificed for short term gains."

"What if I can get it work quick and easy?" You ask not willing to let the only progress you had made go without a fight.

"You won't." Stephanie said looking at the shredded stand for the first time. "But I will not prevent you from try, so long as you do not forgo imbuing."

"Done." You say with a grin.

"Go eat, I will have your damage repaired." She says with a wave.

You thank her and hurry to your room hopefully Edin will still be asleep and you can cuddle with him for a bit. All your magic usage and activity had undone the sexual satisfaction you had still been feeling from last night. As you go you remember your plan to talk to Vatarie and look at your recently magically coated fingers. Bath first, one of Edin's holes after. The thought put a more than slightly pervy grin on your face as you hurry your steps.