Chapter 38: Familiar Training.
"I don’t think restorative arts is gonna work for me." Darrow groaned from next to him as they walked out of the lecture hall.
"The only reason I joined was I had a good chance at learning it because of my dual affinity with earth and water, since it had a chance at blooming life."
A pause, then a shiver ran through him that reminded Elian of veteran soldiers going through flashbacks.
"But I don’t think that..." He looked back at the lecture hall they were walking away from. "...Is gonna work for me."
"This class wasn’t really about the magic, if you think about it." Elian said, careful, quiet enough that it wouldn’t carry to the students filing past them in the corridor.
"Course it was! Healing magic and I just don’t mesh, apparently. Tragic, really."
Darrow’s voice stayed light, interrupting before Elian could continue.
But something he noticed was that it came a half-second too fast, the easy rhythm of it slightly off from his usual unbothered cadence.
"Some people faint at the sight of blood. I apparently faint at the sight of triage charts. A debilitating character flaw, really."
Elian gave him a reassuring smile, not saying anything.
Cordelia apparently, had other plans than giving him reassurance.
"That is because you don’t know how to sit still for more than three minutes at a time."
She shook her head, annoyed.
"I could see Miss Petra trying to actively hold herself back from casting a curse on you."
Darrow paused.
"I’ve been caught..."
"Of course you have, you didn’t even let me take my notes properly!"She opened her mouth, paused, then sighed.
"I have artificing next, so I’ll be taking my leave."
Elian nodded, waving her a goodbye as she walked away with the concrete determination of someone who had more ideas they wanted to test out than they could handle.
Then he turned to Darrow.
"What about you?"
"I got continental history," He deflated. "Definitely not looking forward to it."
Elian gave him a sympathetic smile.
"I have familiar training, so i guess I’ll be seeing you later."
"Good luck," Darrow called after him, already peeling off toward the history wing with visibly less enthusiasm than he’d shown for anything else that day.
Elian gave him a half-wave and turned the other direction, following the flow of students already thinning out toward the academy’s outer grounds, where the buildings gave way to open pens and low wooden structures that hadn’t been visible from the main courtyard.
The Familiar Training grounds sat past the sparring yards they went to for Vale’s classes, close enough to the tree line of the forest bordering Lucenhall that the air smelled faintly of hay and pine instead of chalk dust.
A low fence marked the boundary, and beyond it Elian could already make out a scattering of first-years standing in loose clusters, a few actual creatures visible among them—and something that might have been a small group of drakes dozing in the sun, a cluster of birds too large to be entirely natural perched along the fence line, and the faint outline of something snake-like resting in the wild grass next to the training grounds.
He found a spot near the entrance to wait, staff in hand, and hadn’t been standing there more than a minute before a familiar voice cut through the low ambient noise of the yard.
"You look lost."
Elian turned.
Milena stood a few feet away, posture rigid in her usual manner, though something in her expression shifted slightly at the sight of him—the same brief flicker he’d started to notice from her lately, gone almost before it registered.
"I’m not lost. Just early."
He glanced past her toward the pens.
"You have this class too?"
"Apparently."
She said it like the coincidence mildly annoyed her, though she fell into step beside him anyway as he moved toward the gathering group, unprompted.
"I didn’t expect to see you here. Thought you’d be attached to that staff of yours permanently enough that a familiar bond would be redundant."
"That’s what I thought too. The curriculum insisted I take the class anyway, there was a note referring to something about learning to co-operate with a being that is not human."
"That makes sense."
Something almost like amusement crossed Milena’s face.
"It was probably Vale that had the note sent to you, she’s rarely wrong about that sort of thing, unfortunately."
Elian smiled.
"I figured."
The professor, a burly young woman named Talia Fenn, arrived a few minutes after the entire class had finished gathering into one group.
She had that certain air to her that every other teacher in the school had, but more wilder, warmer, like you were in the presence of someone who was infinitely more close to nature than yourself was.
She had a confident smile still stretched on face as she greeted the class.
"Morning, all of you," Fenn said, voice carrying easily across the yard without needing to raise it much, the kind of natural authority that came from years spent commanding animals rather than classrooms.
"Welcome to the one class in this school where showing up smelling like you rolled around in a barn wouldn’t end up with your grades being docked."
A few uncertain laughs.
She grinned wider, clearly pleased.
"Familiar Training. Most of you are here because it’s required, and most of you have absolutely no intention of ever using it seriously once you graduate into whatever combat or theory track actually interests you."
She said it without judgment, like it was matter-of-fact.
"That’s fine. I’m not here to convince you otherwise. What I am here to do is make sure that if you ever do end up bonded to something with claws, wings, or the general temperament of a very large housecat, you don’t get yourself killed by treating it like a tool instead of a partner."
She gestured behind her, toward the pens—the dozing drake, the oversized birds, the snake, and a low enclosure Elian hadn’t noticed yet that seemed to house something considerably larger judging by the reinforced fencing and runes he couldn’t understand.
"A familiar bond isn’t a leash. It’s closer to what some of you might already understand better than most first-years walking through that gate."
Her eyes swept the group, brief, unreadable, though Elian had the distinct sense the comment wasn’t entirely general
"Which is that the strongest bonds in this world tend to be the ones built on something being mutually seen and understood, rather than commanded."
Milena went very still beside him.
Professor TaliaFenn didn’t linger on it, already moving on with the brisk energy of someone with a full lesson plan and limited patience for dwelling.
"Today we’re going through the basics. It is the same basic principle as your affinity testing yesterday, just messier and considerably more likely to lick you."
A ripple of laughter, more genuine this time.
"Form a line. We’ll go one at a time. Try not to project too hard about what you’re hoping to bond with—the animals can tell, and frankly, so can I."