Son of a slave

Alistar also tended to direct basic combustion spells with movements of his hands, though his tweaking of the candle lighting spell wasn’t something he felt he should share with his teacher. Mr. Albeck had been very stubborn about their curriculum and insisted that they not stray from the simple, everyday magics that were prevalent throughout society, promising to move on to more advanced material once Alistar was older. Countless of these simple spells existed, which made Alistar anxious about whether he would ever get to learn more advanced magic in the year and a half that he had left before he planned to return to Crystellum. "It might just be a basic spell, but you’ve gotten to the point where you don’t need to move at all in order to cast it. This is rare, even for full-fledged mages, though not so much for arcanites. Much of their spellwork is done while multitasking, after all." Next, Mr. Albeck pointed at the ground. "Now, draw about a pitcher’s worth of water from the soil."

"Can I use the snow?"

His teacher nodded.

Alistar invested a slight amount of magic to carry out the request, heating the snow beneath him with a subtle blanket of his inner energies. A short while later and a sizeable sphere of undisturbed water sat floating in front of him, which he was then asked to manipulate into different shapes. Following this, he was told to return the water to a spherical shape and then freeze it, after which he had to revert it back to liquid form. All of these tasks were completed with a single casting, up until he was asked to manipulate the water into different shapes and then freeze them.

"Is...did I make a mistake?" He could have shown better results if he hadn’t been diverting a bit of focus towards maintaining his swordsman’s aura, but he was confident that his previous results weren’t beneath his teacher’s expectations.

Mr. Albeck frowned at the sword of ice that Alistar had subconsciously created, pensive for a few moments before he picked it up and turned it back into water.

Suddenly short on breath and feeling a bit ill, Alistar raised an eyebrow at his teacher. He momentarily lost control of his swordsman’s aura, though he was warmed by a constant gust of hot wind that Mr. Albeck casually sent his way.

"You did fine." Without explaining the cause for his frown, the magus said, "Reading about it is one thing, but experiencing the backlash of having someone forcefully take control of your magics can be quite damaging, sometimes crippling. I saw fit to make the demonstration because we’re only dealing with basic magics here, but if you had cast a more complex spell then the consequences could have been quite severe."