The city of Orshon was one of the few pillar cities that existed on the continent, and for a good reason as well. It was the capital city of the Relia Empire, the largest empire around, and was filled to brim with wonders. Magnificent shops of grandiose scale were scattered throughout the city, selling different specialties. There was a three story building that only sold bread, or a magnificent stone tower that breached the clouds above and sold all manner of exotic beasts. Weapon shops could be found on every corner, and there was even a red light district as large as some small towns. There was no shortage of strange shops, restaurants, or magical stalls, and those weren’t even in the actual magical district where the real wondrous places could be found.

  Whatever one could need or want was somewhere in Orshan, you just needed to know where to look.

  A young lady, freshly into her teens, rushed through the markets of Orshan with a brisk jog, carrying a basket in hand. Silky blonde hair coated in sweat stuck to her face, something she had to occasionally peel off herself so she could see where she was going.

  The early morning sun barely breached over the stone walls surrounding the city, sending a beam of cascading light throughout the area. Even though it was early in the morning, the markets felt just as busy as any other part of the day. It was crowded with folks doing their shopping, stall owners yelling about their product, and people haggling over prices.

  The young lady grabbed the last bit of her errands, a fresh couple of apples, and started making her way back home. She lived in the outskirts of the city, outside of the hustle and bustle, past all the buildings and into the green area of the city where the farms lay. It was quiet over on this side of the city, not many people were around.

  It took her a quarter of an hour of jogging until she arrived at an oddly shaped wooden building just a short walk from a dirt pathway that branched off the main road. The building consisted of three stories, the first floor being the smallest, then it got wider on the second floor, while its last and third floor was a little smaller than the second floor, but still larger than the first. An offshoot building was connected to the left side of the second story, with a gap between it and the main building, creating a pathway between them. The roofs were tall and pointy, and were overlain with reddish brown tiles that seemed a little worn down.

  A wooden staircase went up from the dirt path and led up to a small deck just outside the second floor entrance. The deck had fence railings surrounding it, interlaid with curling vines and flowers to give the mostly wooden building a splash of color. Jutting out of the right side of the building was a massive signboard as tall as the building itself that read, “The Wizards Orchard.” With its size, you’d be able to read it from quite far away without issue.

  “I’m home!” Kira yelled aloud as she burst through the entrance on the second floor. She hurriedly brought this morning's purchases into the back room where her master was preparing for work later in the day.

  “Welcome back.” Rynus greeted his apprentice without turning. “Come now, it’s almost time to open.”

  She slapped on her apron, washed her hands, then began helping Rynus with his preparations. There was a lot involved with running a restaurant, especially when there were only two people, but her master's magic solved a lot of those problems. Like almost everyday since she’s been here, she watched in fascination as food magically flew through the air with delicate control; being sliced, squeezed, or skinned in midair. Once the food was prepped, it would find its way to one of the various stations in the kitchen manned by her master's other magic; unseen servants is what he called them.

  Kira's job in the Wizards Orchard was a little mixed: she occasionally pitched in with the cooking, she helped the unseen servants serve and clean tables, but her main role was to interact with their customers. Unseen servants made things efficient, but restaurants, especially one with a more relaxed café-like atmosphere as their own, needed some social aspects to really thrive. Her master was the main chef and was busy using his magic to prepare and cook, he didn’t have much time to interact with his customers. That’s why Kira, someone not allowed to use magic yet, nor as efficient in laborious tasks as a magically made servant, was assigned to this role.

  But after today that might just change! She finally turned 13 yesterday, and after a spectacular birthday party that took up most of her day yesterday, she was anticipating her magical studies to truly start after work today. She had waited for 9 whole friggin years without being able to learn magic, and she was so close to it every day seeing her master's magic, that it almost drove her crazy at first.

  Rynus had explained countless times why they had to wait until she was thirteen, something about safety and allowing them to live as kids while they could— blah blah blah, that didn't matter anymore. She was going to learn magic if it was the last thing she did!

  She was allowed to read some very basic books about magic, and read is exactly what she did. The dozen or so books that Rynus let her read were practically worn out due to her having read them countless times, and she was soooo ready to start blasting magic already. The blossoming smile had yet to fade from her face since this morning, and she could feel an extra skip to her step due to the excitement.

  Time zoomed by and it was opening time. Kira popped out the front entrance, flipped the close sign, and comfortably greeted her early morning customers.

  “Morning Kira, today has to be the day right?” Albert, a larger gentleman with a curly mustache asked her with a friendly tone. He was one of their few neighbors here in the greener part of the city, and owned the largest farm around.

  “I hope so!” She beamed, “Rynus even said the shop is closing 2 hours earlier than normal.”

  Albert clapped her on the back with a joyful chuckle and congratulated her before he found his way over to his normal seat near the side windows.

  “Kira dear, you're glowing with energy!” An older lady who ran a potion business on the outskirts of the main city district said aloud. “Since I wasn't able to come to your little party yesterday, I brought you a present today. Use it well, Rynus will know what to do with it.” Before she could say anything, she found a large alchemical bottle filled with a glowing orange liquid in her hand.

  That was generally how the rest of her day went. Familiar faces came in, wished her well, maybe gave her a present, ate and drank their normal meals, then left while congratulating her once again. She didn’t even realize she was closing until she had already flipped the open sign back to the closed side.

  Patting her hands together, she shut the main entrance doors and watched as plates began to hover back to the kitchen while wet soapy rags scrubbed the numerous tables on their lonesome. She bobbed and weaved through the chaos until she stood a few feet in front of Rynus, who was currently sorting through today's revenue. He sat on a large plump chair located in their ‘employee’ break room (there were only two of them so it was more of a second living room) with his head down counting out the coins.

  Kira didn’t want to be a nuisance so she sat across from him, anxiously waiting with fidgeting hands for him to finish up the last few of today's tasks. Her legs bounced up and down while the rest of her could barely stay still.

  There was a brief few minutes of silence before she heard Rynus chuckling. Her attention snapped back his way, wondering why he was laughing.

  “Sorry sorry, I’ve been finished for a minute, but I couldn’t help myself from watching you unable to sit still.”

  “Master!” Her face turned red from embarrassment and she crossed her arms angrily at him.

  “Hahaha, well they do say patience is a virtue.”

  “You can’t say that after teasing me!” She yelled at him, which prompted Rynus to laugh even more.

  “Alright, I apologize for teasing you.” Rynus stood up and walked out the backdoor, leading to their expansive backyard behind their house, and turned around as he was halfway outside. “What are you waiting for Kira? Let’s get started.”

  All previous animosity she held for the teasing dispersed in an instant and she rushed after Rynus onto the grassy yard. Behind their house were two main things; a massive grassy field that filled most of her vision, and a fruit orchard further away with gigantic fruit trees. Most orchards run by non-wizards made sure they pruned their trees to keep them from growing to massive sizes, but Rynus had no issue picking fruits from 50 feet up, so he let them grow. Of course he still needed to monitor the tree's health, but there was plenty of magic that could prevent damage from diseases or over-fruiting.

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  Rynus led her to the halfway point between their house and the orchard where a decently sized dirt training ground was found. There wasn’t any equipment laying around, but for wizards, they really only needed themselves and their wands.

  “Come sit right here.” Rynus pointed to the middle of the training ground, to which Kira swiftly complied.

  “I know you've read through those books on basic magic, magic history, and some interesting stories over and over, which is great, but now comes the real thing. You’re going to be using magic for the first time today— at least intentionally doing so.”

  Various scenes flashed through her mind from times her magic flared up, something that a child of Thorn was supposedly prone to doing. Blowing up a table, blowing up a chair, blowing up the deck, blowing up the kitchen— now that she was thinking about it, she had blown up a lot of stuff by accident.

  “Today will be simple and short, you'll see why in a minute, but the following days I’ll slowly begin to teach the fundamentals of magics while we wait for the school year to start.” Rynus finished his earlier statement. “But first, we must take some precautions.”

  He pulled out two amulets from his robes, put one on his neck and one on Kira’s neck. “These are protective amulets as you might know, they’re quite a standard piece of jewelry to enchant. The ones we have here are on the higher end of power, they should protect us against a good amount of magic.”

  Kira raised her hand and spoke after Rynus gave her the go ahead. “You’ve never had me or you wear one beforehand, because I shouldn’t be hurt by my own magic, and you're much stronger than me, right? Why wear one now? ”

  “Good question, do you understand your condition as a child of Thorn?”

  She nodded, reciting what she remembered Rynus had explained to her some years back. “A child of Thorn is born with more mana in their bodies than normal wizards, which tends to eventually build up and burst out as young wizards can’t effectively control their magic. A child of Thorn also wields magic more chaotically and has less control in general. Those two factors will lead to more magical accidents occurring.”

  “Correct! We’ve experienced your flare ups numerous times over the years— and I’m not blaming you, that’s just how it is. There are ways to prevent this flare up, but it comes at the cost of stunting your natural magical growth as you develop as a child, which is why I just let the explosions come.” He smiled at the mildly embarrassed Kira.

  “These flare ups come from the excess mana you have stored in your body leaking out because your physical body can’t contain any more. This means the power is weak, because it's just what's naturally built up and leaked out. But say, what would happen if you flared up with all of your mana?”

  “A bigger explosion?”

  “Mm.” Rynus nodded with a smile. “Remember how I’ve told you, whenever you feel that energy, that thrum inside of you, to try and ignore it and push it away? Well I’m incredibly proud of how well you did for the last nine years, however frustrating it was for you. But in just a minute, I want you to do the exact opposite and dive right into it!”

  Kira's eyes lit up.

  “That’s right, I want you to embrace the magic in you, don’t hold back anything. If anything goes wrong, we have these just in case.” He held up the amulet. “The gap between our magic is large enough that I could probably defend myself, but better safe than sorry.”

  Rynus took a few large steps back, then said. “Okay Kira, you can begin whenever.”

  “Wheeeeeew.” She took a deep breath out and closed her eyes. It was hard to focus when her heart was beating as loud as a dragon's roar and her mind was continuously fantasizing about the possibilities of her potential magic in the future. But all it took was a hint of her magic to be felt, then she knew she had a choice; push it away like she’s been doing for the last decade, or grab ahold of it and not let go.

  ‘Here we go.’ She chose the latter and pulled the dormant magic lying within her to the forefront.

  Like a comforting thunderbolt, the mana shot through her body, making her experience a brand new sense that she never knew she had. It’d be impossible to describe what she was feeling to someone without magic, like it wasn’t possible to explain sight to a person born without vision.

  It was almost akin to being born anew.

  She smiled and her instincts took over. The mana itself felt like a warm mist caressing her, but this mist was special. It wasn’t intangible like normal mist, more like a liquid that she could move throughout her body. It loosely gathered itself together into a ball that swirled rapidly in the center of her chest, until suddenly, the mana was gone with a flash.

  ‘Huh? What happened?’ She tried to reach for the mana but it wasn’t there anymore.

  Slowly she opened her eyes and saw the landscape around her was a little different than a few seconds ago. A crater about the length of a wagon cart was a few meters in front of her. Sparkles of mana glittered around above the crater.

  “Fantastic! That was quite powerful for an apprentice.” Rynus cheered from the side as he approached her. “So how did it feel?”

  “It was… amazing.” She said, trying to grasp the fading sensations, but to no avail as her mana was clearly spent. “What happened? Was that me?” She pointed to the crater.

  “Indeed. I’ve noticed over the years that most of your flare ups are mana blasts. It seems you may have a particular affinity for that magic.” Rynus explained. “Even though today's session was short, that will be enough for now. It's gonna take you a while to fully recover your mana due to it being your first time really using magic after all. We’ll continue tomorrow again, but in a more controlled manner.”

  Kira nodded, even though she was a little disappointed today was over so soon, she was still elated that she had actually used magic. And she knew it would only get even more exciting from here on!

  She went to stand up and realized that she simply couldn’t. Her muscles just wouldn’t move.

  Rynus chuckled at her, “It’s mana exhaustion, don’t worry. A filling dinner and a good night's rest will get you back on your feet.” He bent over and scooped her up into a princess carry then headed back inside.

  After an early, but delicious dinner that ended with Rynus’s famous apple pie, she had just enough strength to walk upstairs into her room. She plopped onto her bed face first and closed her eyes, letting the softness and warmth of her mattress sooth her oddly immobile muscles.

  ‘I’ll just take a quick nap.’ She said to herself. The sun was still out as evening had only just come around the corner and she didn’t want to sleep her entire day away. Alas, her body said otherwise and she ended up sleeping until the afternoon of the next day.

  Luckily, today was Sunday, which meant the restaurant was closed, giving Kira more time to spend learning magic. She wondered what her master had planned for today as she ran down the stairs, all the while smelling the aroma of her master's breakfasts. She almost found herself drooling from the smell alone.

  “Today I have some special plans since it's our day off work.” Rynus announced to Kira who was furiously munching on her food like she hadn't eaten in weeks. “First, we're gonna swing by the markets and purchase your first starter wand.”

  Her hands stopped shuffling food into her mouth and she sat there, mouth agape, staring at Rynus with fervent eyes. A wand? For her? She flung herself out of her chair, ignoring the breakfast she was just enamored with, and began to put on her shoes.

  “Wait wait! At least finish your breakfast first Kira!” Rynus shouted from the kitchen. “She hasn't even heard what else we're doing today.” He whispered the last part.

  With one shoe on and the other still in her hands, she tossed the loose shoe aside and ran back to the table and immediately began eating once again, but this time, twice as fast. Rynus wanted to say something, but he could only watch her with a small grin, lovingly laughing at her actions in his head.

  “Done!” She yelled then repeated her previous movements and dashed back to the front door. Once her shoes were tied and her favorite floppy black wizards hat was on her head, she was ready to leave. Turning to see where Rynus was, she egged him to hurry up and threw herself through the front door and down the stairs to the pathway below.

  Rynus of course hurried along, he didn't want to keep his apprentice waiting any longer. He knew how much she longed for her own wand, it's what most considered the first sign an apprentice was readily learning magic.

  While not having a wand didn't mean a wizard couldn't use magic, it was an important tool that every wizard needed if they wanted their magic to flourish. Wands could do many things; increase a spell's power, speed up the casting speed of a spell, help control a spell, and much, much more. There were an infinite number of wands that could be made using different woods, different supplementary ingredients, different sizes, and different shapes. All those aspects went into making a wand. Creating the perfect wand for oneself was one of a wizard's greatest tasks, something that could take decades to do— and for some it could even take a century.

  Kira was getting a starter wand, a premade wand without any supplementary ingredients, usually made to help with control and mana efficiency. It was mundane in terms of wands out there, but it would still be a wand Kira could call her own. Now that she was actually able to start using magic and no longer needed to continue pushing it away, she wanted to fully immerse herself in the world of wonders that it was. From now on, her life was about to completely change.