"A space mage's teleportation cannot be predicted if they have genuine control over the element. What I mean by that is casting speed and the manipulation of teleportation points. If the teleportation is executed faster than the opponent can process, it is already over. Martial artists actually have an inherent advantage here because they do not need to form a spell circle at all. They just think the destination and move. Mages have to cast, and that casting window, however brief, is the vulnerability."
Then she blinked.
She was simply gone.
"I am here."
Her voice came from behind me. I turned and felt a presence for a fraction of a second before it was already gone. When I turned back to face forward Viserys was standing right in front of me and I nearly stepped backward from the shock of it.
"That is what I mean by casting speed." She said. A glowing purple magic circle faded out from behind her as she spoke. "So fast that your opponent cannot establish where you are before you are already somewhere else."
I had not seen a single movement. I had heard her voice, felt the briefest flicker of presence and then she was just there. Standing in front of me like she had never moved.
"Now, manipulation of teleportation points is a different concept." She continued. "It is about misdirection. Fooling your opponent into committing to the wrong location."
I frowned slightly. "How does that work?"
"Let me show you."
A purple magic circle formed above her, noticeably larger than the one from before. That made sense. It was a second circle spell. Two origin runes were embedded in it, both shaped like an elongated S with a tail curving under the base. (S). The Spatium rune.
"The reason I am using a second circle spell rather than first is because a first circle teleportation spell only supports a single exit point. As the rank increases and more origin runes are added, the number of teleportation points the spell can hold increases as well. At this rank I can create two exit points simultaneously."
That opened up something interesting. At higher circles with more runes you could potentially create five, six, seven exit points and force your opponent to split their attention across all of them with no way to know which one you would actually take.
"The mechanic is straightforward in concept," Viserys continued. "You create two exit points. One where you will actually arrive and one where you will not. Your opponent can feel both forming, which means they have to choose. And if they choose wrong, you are already behind them." She paused. "Executing it cleanly is another matter. You need real concentration to hold two points at the same time without letting either one collapse."
The magic circle above her pulsed once with a soft light.
"There. Both points are active right now. Before we move on to anything else, I want you to try finding them. Stretch your senses and locate them. This is also a lesson in itself because being able to detect other people's teleportation points is just as important as being able to hide your own."
She reached out and tapped the tip of my nose lightly with one finger.
I had a very strong and completely unreasonable urge to bite it.
I held that impulse where it was, closed my eyes and spread my senses outward alongside the space element.
I scanned in front of me first. Nothing. Then left, right, behind me. Nothing anywhere. I tried again, slower and more deliberately this time. Still nothing, just the general texture of mana floating in the air around the room.
Either my senses were genuinely terrible or she had hidden them well enough that I simply could not reach them with what I was working with.
I opened my eyes. "I cannot feel anything, Instructor Viserys. I can sense the mana in the air but not the points themselves. It is almost as if there are none."
She shook her head. "You are sensing but not searching. There is a difference. Do not just spread your awareness passively and wait for something to register. Actively look for them. Think of it the same way you form your own teleportation point when you move. You know what that feels like from the inside. Now try to feel for that same texture coming from somewhere outside yourself. Use the space element as the tool rather than just your natural perception. Try again."
I closed my eyes and went back in. This time instead of spreading my senses and waiting, I pushed the space element outward like a hand reaching into a dark room, feeling for something specific rather than just registering whatever it touched.
And there it was.
A slight disturbance. Then another, both faint, both distinct once I knew what I was actually looking for. One above my head, maybe five meters up. The other off to my left, further away.
"Ah."
"Found them?" Viserys asked.
"Yes. One is roughly five meters directly above me. The second is about seven meters to my left, slightly east."
With the space element engaged I could pinpoint them cleanly. Without it they had been nearly invisible.
Viserys smiled, and there was something genuine in it this time rather than the playful edge she had been wearing since she arrived. "Good. You pick things up quickly. That makes this easier."
She straightened up. "Now we do this properly. I am going to create multiple teleportation points around the room in different locations and at different distances. Some will be within comfortable range, some will be near your limit. Your job is to find all of them."
I got ready.
She began placing them around the space in a radius of roughly forty meters, starting with two and building from there. The first few were manageable. I could feel them without too much effort once I knew what to reach for, each one a faint pull in the fabric of the space around it.
Then she started hiding them. Behind the stone pillars. Behind training dummies. Tucked into corners where the shape of the room created a kind of interference.
That was harder. I failed a handful of times, my senses stopping at the surface of whatever object was in the way instead of finding the path around it.
She told me to stop trying to push through and instead go around, to curve my reach the same way water finds its way past a stone rather than through it.
I tried it and after a few attempts it started working. The points behind obstacles became findable again, just with a slightly different approach.
Then she pushed the distance out further and things got difficult again. The points at the far edges of the room were faint to the point of being almost theoretical. I found some of them. I missed others entirely. The ones I did find at that range required a level of concentration that left a dull pressure building behind my eyes after a few minutes.
We moved into the second part of the lesson.
Now I had to track where Viserys actually teleported to, in real time, as she moved.
I thought I was ready.
I was not ready.
She was too fast and too unpredictable. Every time I committed my focus to a direction she was already somewhere else, the only evidence she had been there at all being a fading trace of purple in my peripheral vision. In the entire hour I caught her once. One clean read out of what felt like dozens of attempts. I cursed a few times under my breath throughout, which I was not proud of but which also felt completely reasonable given the circumstances.
When the session ended I sat down on the floor and let myself stay there.
My whole body was damp with sweat and the headache that had been building from the extended sensory work had settled in properly behind my eyes. But underneath all of that there was something else running alongside it. Something that felt a lot like enjoyment. It was frustrating and it hurt and I had failed far more than I had succeeded, but it was also genuinely interesting in a way that most things were not.
Magic. Even when it was kicking me around, it was cool.
Viserys looked down at me from her full height with an expression that was somewhere between pleased and entertained. "You did better than you probably think. Finding the points the first time in that timeframe is not something every student manages. And you caught me once, which is more than most beginners can say after a first lesson."
"Once." I said flatly.
"Once is not zero." She shrugged. "Your senses just need sharpening. Push them every day and it will come faster than you expect. You can also use the special dummies for that when I am not here."
I looked up at her. "Special dummies?"
"The training room has dummies that can be configured to mimic specific registered individuals. Their movement patterns, their abilities, their tendencies. You pick whoever is in the registry, which includes most of the royal household, and the dummy behaves accordingly. You can use a version of me for practice if you like." She said that last part with a smile that I chose not to read too much into.
I had no idea those existed. A dummy that replicated a real person's combat behavior, their abilities and patterns running on something like an advanced magical program. It was close to the AI training simulations I had read about in my past life, except built from mana and runes instead of code.
"Those are expensive to produce," Viserys added, "which is why only certain facilities have them. I am actually a little surprised you do not have your own personal training room yet. Someone in your position usually would."
I scratched the back of my head. I had genuinely never thought to ask. There was a lot about the palace I still did not know despite the years I had spent in it. The place was enormous and most of what I knew about the royal family came from books or from whatever Alexandra, Sephira or my brother had happened to mention at some point. Clearly there were gaps.
"I will ask the Empress about it." I said.
Viserys nodded, apparently satisfied with that answer.
Then without much warning she stepped forward, wrapped both arms around me and pulled me against her with a grip that had absolutely no give in it whatsoever. My face went somewhere that I will not describe in detail and I made a sound that was not quite a word.
"It was a genuine pleasure meeting you in person, second prince. You have a very interesting future ahead of you and I am looking forward to seeing it." She said, sounding perfectly relaxed.
"Nmmfh wuh hmm." I said, into her chest.
She held on for slightly longer than was strictly necessary and then released me. I stepped back and breathed actual air again.
She gave me one last wink and then her figure disappeared without a sound, leaving behind only the faint trace of a purple shimmer in the air where she had been standing.
I stood there for a moment.
They were very soft though. Like marshmallows. I acknowledged privately, gave a single slow nod to confirm this assessment to myself, and then firmly moved on.
I pulled out a mental list and started going through everything I still had to do before the day was over.
The sword technique Arthur had shown me this morning needed practice, both that and Virgil's techniques. Speaking of Virgil, I still had to absorb stellar energy at some point tonight. Mordredt's spells needed another run through and the second circle ones he had assigned required actual study time, not just a glance. Viserys's sensory exercises needed daily work. And there was still one more instructor coming, the one for light, and whatever they had planned on top of all of the above.
I breathed out slowly and stared at the ceiling for a moment.
"Magic is basically school. Except school was never this interesting." I said to no one in particular.
I thought about it for another second.
"Fuck school."