Chapter Twelve: Reia

Instructor Irvina taught them of reiaology and always had a way of making the class interesting simply with the sound of her voice. It was something the poets from the books Kilvic had read growing up would have describe as a subtle caress of an unexpected drop of rain under a blazing sun on a hot summer afternoon. A soothing reprise from the pain of everything else. Students were known to have said listening to her made them forget the ache in the muscles from the evenings of sword practice under Grunald and the morning’s unarmed training under instructor Haru.

Today, she taught on the second stage of reia evolution. A stage referred to as the condensation stage.

The first stage was the willed stage. It was the point when reia began reacting to a mage’s will. Most mages manifest reia by their eight year of age, at that point all it did was learn to react to the reia in everything else and, in time, to the emotions of the mage. However, an externally reacti