Like most of the magic instructors who came before him, Frinnol began by asking him a few general questions about his magical abilities. Vin surprised him by revealing the sheer quantity of different affinities he had spells for, without revealing exactly what spells he had. As friendly as Frinnol and the avisul seemed, there was no need to tip his hand just yet. When asked exactly what he was hoping to get out of their lessons, Vin already knew his answer. It had been the number one thing he wished he knew how to do ever since getting rescued from the World Eaters.

"If at all possible… do you have a spell that would allow me to fly?"

"Why would I have something like that?" Frinnol chuckled, shaking his head. "My people are capable of flight without the aid of magic."

"I can use wood and tools to start a fire, but that doesn't mean I didn't bother to learn Create Flame," Vin shot back, summoning a dancing flame in the palm of his hands.

"Fair enough… In fact, we do have a spell that would grant you a basis of flight. Though it is of the fourth tier, and by your own admittance, you don't even have any spells of the third tier as of now, correct?"

"I don't," he admitted, clenching his hand into a fist and smothering out the flames. "Do you have anything similar? Something that would let me float, maybe? Anything at all to stop me from falling back down into the darkened depths."

"Ah, you're the one who came face-to-face with one of the World Eaters, aren't you?" Frinnol asked, giving him a soft smile. "It's impressive your mind managed to recover in such a short amount of time. When I was young and far more adventurous, I ignored the warnings of my predecessors and poked my head down into the darkened depths as well. The things I saw down there…" Frinnol shuddered, and while the thought of Vin aging thirty years and still being bothered by what he saw down there should have scared him, strangely, seeing how Frinnol was still affected by it actually made him feel a bit better.

Almost as if seeing the scars those epic monsters left on others made it easier to accept his own.

"Needless to say, it took me almost two weeks to wake after I flew back to the village at top speed," Frinnol chuckled. "It was shortly after that I chose to devote my life to the study of the clouds and become a Cloud Whisperer. That way I could ensure our village was never at risk of collapsing and sending anyone down into the darkened depths, their very own tents acting as cages and preventing them from flying away."

"Yeah… I saw what slithers within the darkness," Vin said, barely managing to contain his own shudder. "So you understand why I want something that will keep me out of there. I can't fly like you guys can."

"Luckily, I think I can help you. For starters, what air spells do you already know?"

"Sense Air and Whispering Wind," Vin said. "Though I'm a pretty fast study."

"Let's not go fluffing our own clouds, alright?" Frinnol said, tapping one of his taloned feet on the ground. "First things first, allow me to show you the spell I think you should work towards." Raising a hand, he spoke. "Create Cloud."

New spell witnessed! Tier 2 Air Spell (Create Cloud).

Just over Frinnol's hand, a large, fluffy cloud swirled into existence, forming within a split second. It was small, only about the size of a seat cushion, but it looked surprisingly sturdy. A fact that was soon proven to be true when Frinnol hopped on top of it, standing on it as if it were a stone pillar rather than a cloud drifting a few feet off the ground.

"Create Cloud is the foundation for much of our magic," Frinnol explained, smiling down at him as if he knew just how much Vin wanted that spell. "Once the cloud is formed, if done so correctly, it will only require a small amount of mana to repair every now and again. At your level, your mana regeneration should easily outpace this cost, meaning you'll be able to remain floating long enough to starve to death if you so wish."

"That's exactly what I need," Vin said, nodding eagerly. "Out of curiosity, how do you make them permanent? Like for your buildings and tools I've seen around the village?"

"That is a secret I'm afraid I'm not willing to part with," Frinnol said, hopping down and sending the cloud drifting off into the sky with a sudden gust of wind.

New spell witnessed! Tier 1 Air Spell (Create Air).

Well, that would save me the hassle of having to create that one myself, Vin decided, making a mental note to cross that spell off his list of spells he was planning to try to create. "What are the rootspells I need for Create Cloud?"

"Create Air and Create Water," Frinnol said, already beginning to sketch out the runic formation in the air between them. "Most of our young tend to be surprised to hear that water is such a vital ingredient in clouds, but it is true. You'll need both these spells before you can progress any further."

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"I actually already know Create Water," Vin admitted, earning a surprised look from his newest mentor.

"Do you now? Well, perhaps we'll make more progress today than I expected." Finishing the runic formation for Create Air, Frinnol folded his arms across his chest once more, wrapping himself in the membranes the avisul used for flight. "Start with this. It is a tier 1 spell, so we can reconvene tomorrow and see how much progress you've made with it."

Rather than correct the avisul, Vin simply grinned, memorizing the formation with Iron Mind. Once he'd slipped into Introspection, he got to work.

As he'd originally suspected, Create Air shared countless similarities with his other 'Create Whatever' spells. All he needed to do was make a handful of minor tweaks to spells he already knew before he was rewarded by the System.

New spell learned! Tier 1 Air Spell (Create Air).

Coming out of Introspection and discovering he'd learned the tier 1 spell in only a few hours did little to dampen his disappointment when he realized he didn't seem to get any experience for learning new spells anymore.

Though that might not be entirely true… My prestige class seems to be all about discovering magic for myself. Maybe I just don't get experience for largely copying runic formations. I'll have to try creating my own spell again and seeing what happens. It had been creating his own Fireball spell that had tipped him over into his prestige class, after all, so he felt as though that was a fairly safe assumption to make.

Raising a hand, he tried casting his newest spell. "Create Air." True to its name, a gentle breeze began flowing out of his hand, and he smiled as he took in a deep breath of the fresh air. This was potentially his first step toward finding a way to breathe underwater and visit Lumel's fragment as well, something that was always on the back of his mind.

"You figured it out already?" Frinnol's voice rang down from above. Vin flinched as the avisul dropped from the sky and landed right in front of him, clearly having leapt out of his window for the second time that day. Staring closely at him, Frinnol made a noise that sounded halfway between a grunt and a shrill squeak. "Perhaps you weren't fluffing your own cloud after all."

"I'm pretty good at low-tier magic," Vin admitted with a shrug. "Now, could we move onto Create Cloud? I am very excited to have a method of preventing myself from falling back down into the darkened depths."

"I may have gotten a tad ahead of myself," Frinnol admitted, clearing his throat and having the decency to look a tad embarrassed. "To be honest, I'm not allowed to teach you the cornerstone of our magic without discussing it with the others first. I don't believe they will have any issues, but I still need to check in with them before I can show you the runic formation."

"Then why offer it in the first place?" Vin snapped, surprising himself with his own tone. He knew he was desperate for a spell that would keep him away from the World Eaters, but it would seem even he hadn't realized just how deep that desire truly ran.

"I thought it would take you a solid day to learn Create Air. I hadn't expected you to get it within a few hours," Frinnol said. "Tell you what, why don't I teach you the next best thing in the meantime? You saw me slowly descend from my window earlier, yes? If I teach you Slow Fall, you'll at least have more time to think of a solution in the event you find yourself falling again. By the time you learn that, I should have gained permission to teach you Create Cloud."

"I'd appreciate that, thank you," Vin said, reining in his annoyance and taking a deep breath to try and calm himself. Here he'd found someone willing to teach him some new magic, and all he had to do in exchange was keep an eye out for their wayward avisul and deliver a message. He was obviously getting the better end of the deal, he didn't want his own nerves to damage this new relationship.

Just as before, Frinnol drew out the runic formation for Slow Fall before retreating into their building and leaving him to his own devices. Once again, Vin dove into Introspection and got to work. He had to admit he was curious as to why the spell was only a tier 1 spell, and he quickly figured out why that was the case once he got started.

Rather than build off of Create Air, Slow Fall actually used the tier 0 Sense Air as its rootspell. From what Vin understood as he analyzed the runic formation, Slow Fall didn't create a gust underneath the caster to slow them down like he'd originally assumed. Instead, it actually harnessed the surrounding air, bringing it in closer and packing it under the caster, drastically increasing the density and slowing them in their descent. It utilized the already existing air in the same way Whispering Wind did, meaning technically, if he were to ever find a fragment that was a pure vacuum, the spell wouldn't do a damn thing to stop him from falling to his death.

With that in mind, Vin got to work. While slightly harder to learn than Create Air, he already had Whispering Wind to build off of, meaning he already knew how to imbue his mana into the surrounding air and ask it to do his bidding. It still took him the whole rest of the day, but he managed to complete the new spell before it got too dark, without so much as a single runic backlash for his troubles.

New spell learned! Tier 1 Air Spell (Slow Fall).

The moment he saw that message, a chunk of the invisible dread that had been resting on his shoulders ever since escaping the World Eaters crumbled away, and he let out a shaky breath that carried a shocking amount of tension with it. While Slow Fall wouldn't completely save him from falling back down into the World Eaters' domain, it would certainly buy him a hell of a lot of time to think and come up with a plan in the event another one of the clouds crumbled away beneath him again.

Seeing as night was already falling, Vin spent the next half an hour playing around with the spell while he waited for Lumel to come pick him up and warp him back to the main island. He was curious to see just how much he could alter the spell with Runic Recalibration. One of the silliest discoveries was learning that he could almost make the air beneath him dense enough for him to actually stand on. But regardless of how much mana he pumped into the spell, it simply wasn't designed for that level of density. It did, however, give him an idea for a potential spell to try creating in the future, which he eagerly added in his journal.

If Frinnol came back and told him that his hands were tied and there wasn't any more he could teach him, Vin would create a spell to solve the problem all on his own if he had to.

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