Time passed as I continued to hone my talents in Forging. I split my focus evenly between infusing intent into materials and altering solidified Aether constructs from their rigid state into the more flexible variant.

After several weeks, I could reliably transform the material into something remarkably similar to leather. It remained coarse to the touch, heavier than the mundane variant, and less stable than I would prefer, but I found that it was extraordinarily mana conductive. It might not be much, but I measured my progress in steps, not leaps.

As my training continued, I began exploring other options. Forging could only take me so far, and it seemed best to prepare now rather than find myself flat-footed later if, or when, my growth stagnated.

I sifted through bizarre experiments on magical self-augmentation, trying to decipher which, if any, were applicable. Soon, I had a list of some particularly intriguing efforts.

There was one story about a wood mage who had learned to control plant fibers using their mana. They had woven these fibers into their muscles, allowing them to flex and adjust their limbs with superhuman strength using nothing but magic. Of course, they'd also not realized just how strong this would make them, and proceeded to rip off their own arm by moving it with too much force for their ligaments to withstand.

Another, a master of earth magic, had somehow...hardened his bones? The actual term he used was imprecise, as he wrote in an archaic dialectic offshoot of Old Ferren that even I could only partially read. Still, what I could tell for sure was that he'd somehow altered the material composition of his bones to increase their density and durability.

While this mage was smart enough to start with human and animal remains, he similarly ran into problems when making the jump to live subjects. Not only did the process tend to pulverise and mutilate the patient's bones, but even those that survived relatively intact found their bodies far too heavy as the strengthening more than doubled the weight of their skeleton.

Yet another mage, this one using water, had changed the composition of her blood. She'd done something to it, dramatically increasing both stamina and muscular endurance without any apparent side effects. I suspected there was some risk, as her journal cut off abruptly several months after performing the procedure on herself, but that was ultimately speculation.

I read through each and every crude, destructive, and reckless experiment and study, sorting out the ones that seemed promising while discarding those that were too dangerous to attempt. My strengthened body had given me an edge, but it would only take me so far, and I needed to consider what might come next.

Of course, I suspected I was still missing something about the greater process of strengthening my body, so perfecting my own primitive technique was the first step in that journey.

Time passed, and I continued to hone my magic. I hadn't made any great changes yet, but everything from my senses to my mana control to my overall stamina had seen marked improvements. But despite all of that, despite training and studying for nearly every moment of every day for several months, I still hadn't caught up to Flynn Sion.

We had sparred hundreds of times over, and those countless battles had fallen into a familiar pattern. I would make some improvements to my martial skills or my magic, enough to narrow the gap with the light mage. Then, we would fight, and Flynn would reveal a greater portion of his skills. Either he was holding back some skill, or he hadn't used a spell to its full potency, or he simply stopped taking our duels as lightly.

For all my focus on efficiency, Flynn wasted less stamina. All of my efforts at honing my magic faltered before the perfection achievable from generations of refinement. My body wasn't fast enough, my skills not sharp enough, and I never quite managed to catch him off-guard, regardless of what I attempted. Flynn was arrogant, but he'd never forgotten our first duel and seemed prepared for any trick or technique.

And all of this wasn't even considering that Flynn himself was continuing to improve. He wasn't as focused as I was, but he still trained and studied the majority of each day. I wasn't quite sure in what ways, as I still didn't have a perfect idea of his upper limits, but it was an undeniable reality.

However, it wasn't as frustrating as I had expected. I had always measured myself against, well, myself. Surpassing who I had become in my visions remained my goal, as did besting that swordsman from beyond the ocean, but those felt nebulous in a way. My memories had grown indistinct and distant, while Flynn was a more tactile trial. I could see him, challenge him, and, given time, best him.

More importantly, those constant losses had revealed new flaws in my magic.

The classic weakness of a battle mage was melee combat. Most needed time and space to transform raw mana into a spell, and the typical strategy to kill a spellcaster was to close the gap and cut them down. Sure, that required you to get through whatever magical defenses they might muster, but it was the best option available.

My skillset was uniquely suited for battling other mages because of this. However, if anyone knew how to counter my skill set, that advantage vanished. If anything, it swung in the other direction. My Flicker Step was quick, my body superhuman, and my Armor strong enough to withstand most attacks, but I'd still struggle against ranged opponents.

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I needed a way to deal with ranged or evasive opponents and, as luck would have it, the solution was one I had already begun exploring.

Force magic wasn't complex, but it was useful. I had practiced the basics enough to pull off some simple applications, but had set it aside in favor of direct control over solidified Aether. Now, that decision felt like it was a mistake.

Telekinesis had myriad applications. If I could master it, I could lock down evasive opponents such as Flynn, as well as deflect and redirect mundane projectiles or use that 'anchoring' trick I had already developed to hit much harder. There was just too much to gain from mastering the school.

So, I began spending several hours a day in one of the specialized training rooms. This one used runes and enchantments to break down and disrupt a mage's spells. Learning to overcome this effect had a dramatic impact on mana control, which was doubly useful for force magic.

It wasn't lost on me that this particular effect was similar to the famed Archmagus Lyrei, the Spell-Breaker. I made a mental note to look into it further, partially to satisfy my curiosity and partially to see if I could modify and adapt the skill for myself.

I could have trained force magic the typical way, holding small objects up through pure mana control before moving to larger, heavier loads. That was the safe path forward, but it wasn't quick. Slow and steady was an axiom favored by most.

Instead, I decided to speed things up, which involved filling the room with heavy iron ingots. Each weighed around thirty pounds, which would be hard enough to lift on its own. When combined with the disruption effect, it was an exercise in frustration.

I tried innumerable times to lift even a single bar, and each attempt went about the same as the last. First, I'd wrap the metallic block in a shroud of pure Aether. I would ensure it was as tight and controlled as possible to limit waste or inefficiency. Finally, I would slowly, carefully lift the entire thing, being careful not to move too fast or use too much 'muscle' in the process.

And just like clockwork, that was the point where every attempt failed.

My Aether had always been rebellious, a destructive and chaotic energy that yearned to move and shift. I had worked for years to gain control over my power and felt no small bit of pride at the results.

All those warm feelings vanished like water in a forge as I struggled to lift even a single iron ingot off the floor.

I couldn't say precisely how the room worked, but its effects were easy to perceive. My mana felt...slippery, for lack of a more accurate term. It was as though the energy was hard to grasp, and every action became magnified tenfold. Minor adjustments became wide, sweeping movements. Tiny manipulations turned clumsy and fumbling, leading me to throw bars around the room like a half-blind drunkard.

My first few days of practice ended in failure. I attempted dozens of changes, from using as little mana as possible to flooding the shell with as much Aether as I could manage. Both resulted in the same degree of improvement, which is to say none, and I discarded those strategies after just a few tests.

Ultimately, I opted for the long and slow approach. The point of this chamber was to improve control, after all, and I might as well learn to do this the proper way.

But before that, there was one final thing I wanted to try.

I sat in my personal quarters, a suite of rooms just down the hallway from Flynn. It was larger than the ones I had enjoyed at the Academy, but with fewer of the explicitly arcane amenities. For a noble family that all but radiated magic, the Sions preferred to avoid frivolities in favor of more practical uses.

The cold iron dagger sitting on my lap remained an unpleasant reminder of my mortality. I had escaped the specter of death several times, and this small blade of metal had come within a hairsbreadth of claiming my life. It was the greatest weakness of any mage, and conquering it was the dream of all spellcasters.

My readings suggested extraordinarily powerful mages could flood their barriers and spells with enough mana to affect even cold iron, but this was the stuff of Archmagi and the greatest of masters. It was hardly an option at the moment. But that didn't mean I didn't want to try.

I closed my eyes and reached out, enshrouding the dagger in my Aether. Ordinarily, I could wrap the mana around whatever object I lifted, creating a translucent green shell, but even as my power brushed against the metal, it melted away. The very touch of cold iron was anathema to magic, breaking apart the energy as was its nature.

My mana faded, and I picked up the dagger with my hand, turning it over and examining it in the sunlight beaming through a nearby window. It was amazing that such a small thing could slay almost any mage in the kingdom.

The simplest solution was to wear a set of mundane armor underneath my magical protections. That would stop a cold iron dagger in its tracks, but it felt like admitting defeat. There had to be an answer. I just had to find it.

I remembered a wind magic spell I had read years earlier that involved trapping air around a person to crush them into red paste. Apparently, the sheer pressure and weight of it was enough to qualify as a weapon.

Could I do the same thing with my Aether? I couldn't manipulate the wind directly, but maybe forming a large, airtight barrier and shrinking it over time would work? That might be a workaround to the cold iron question, since it wasn't my mana affecting the metal.

I discarded the idea after only a brief consideration. Even if I could form an airtight barrier and learn to compress it with enough force to create the necessary pressure, the precision and control needed would likely never be feasible in combat. At best, it'd be a novelty.

Were there other options? Water required less control, but was even less viable. I could use force magic on something like steel plates, which was even better as a defense, but felt as though I might as well go back to armor and call it a day.

As my mind turned over the question, something else occurred to me. The idea was a strange one, but I couldn't help wandering back to it over and over again.

Alteration allowed a mage to shift the properties of a material. The simplest of these was shape, but more skillful experts could go further, changing the weight or making it appear as a different state of matter entirely. And one of the more specialized applications of this was improving the mana conductivity of objects.

But what if I went the other way?

Could a mage instead somehow create a material that resisted or broke down mana by decreasing its conductivity? And if so, was it possible to narrow that effect even more, such that it only blocked some mana? Say, all elements but one?

What if I could alter my Aether-forged materials to resist all variants of mana save my own? And what if I could then somehow take those anti-magic enchantments used in the training rooms and layer that on top of the same effect? Could I create mage-killing weapons of my own?

I let out a snort, realizing I had wandered far from my original experiment. I had wanted to find a way to extend force magic to cold iron, and here I was trying to replicate that same effect I wanted to sidestep. Despite that, I was already retrieving a notebook before I realized I had moved.

Bypassing cold iron was a puzzle no mage had solved. I would succeed some day, no matter how long it took...but finding a way to best Flynn in a duel sounded more promising at the moment.

After all, I wasn't entirely devoid of pride.

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