Master Tosk took them to an open air practice area behind the guildhall. There were a dozen colors of square and rectangur patches of dead grass scattered haphazardly across the fenced in field. In the corner of the field was a small shed the size of a modest cottage.

  “Alright then d”, Master Tosk paused for emphasis, “I construct our foundation”, he paused again, “I have a guess, but do you need any materials?”

  “Not necessarily, but my magic doesn’t py will with grass, I can do simir things with stone, gravel, or sand if you have it” Vicktor said pinly

  “Okay lets start with a demonstration for my apprentices, after that's done, they'll grab some sandbags from the shed”

  They nodded in unison and took their pces beside Master Tosk as silent observers of the test.

  “BEGIN” the voice commanded.

  Vicktor adjusted his stance, his bare feet spread just wider than his shoulders. He exhaled, trying to calm his nerves. Drawing air back into his lungs he pulled from the mana coursing throughout his body and stored in his Ruakh, the pea-sized organ nestled between his lungs and just below his heart.

  Wordlessly he channeled his power down into the sweet smelling earth. He commanded the world and it obeyed without hesitation, two yards before him a pilr of soil rose into prominence, leaving the dead grass underneath unmoved and unaffected. The final cube stood around a yard in each direction. With a final decration of will, Vicktor rent the voids from the soil and shrank the pilr ten percent in each direction. He released his breath and looked towards the appraiser.

  It had taken only a second from the beginning of his working to when he cut the flow of mana from his body.

  CLAP. CLAP. CLAP.

  Master Tosk broke the silence, walking forward as he cpped.

  “Excellent work d, a cubic yard of compacted soil, a quick working and that level of control? How many of those can you do before running dry?”

  “About four more, Master Tosk, an hour's rest and I can do another five. After that, I could maybe push a few more if needed, but that's more about mental and physical strain of using so much mana” Vicktor responded in a mostly steady breath.

  “Don’t sell yourself d, a cubic yard is two thousand pounds, no mundane would hope to move twenty thousand pounds of soil in a day while also compacting it as tight as you” He beamed.

  Vicktor swore he heard Ar hoot a ‘Trwhooo’, but again, it really must have been the wind.

  Master Tosk continued, “You also have plenty of room to improve, maybe one day you’ll be able move an entire city”

  Vicktor nodded. “That's the pn. The Academy was very forthcoming with information about understanding the fundamentals, but they explicitly offered no guidance in improving my capacity”.

  "Yes Vicktor, advancement progression is directed only by a Master to their apprentice. There are quite a number of ways to cripple yourself permanently. You will be told about those risks after you are unable to make those missteps"

  “Now my curious apprentices, you must have some questions for our new friend?” Master Tosk’s eyebrow rose. Well, the dark emerald scales around his yellow eyes rose, the man didn’t seem to have an ounce of hair anywhere Vicktor could see.

  Ar gestured to the pilr with a cwed hand, “Material guidance right? You may still have asked for other materials to demonstrate the breadth of the materials you can affect, but it seemed that the material rose out of the ground instead of being created.”

  “Correct, I don’t create or destroy, only construct or remove” Vicktor responded warmly. Magic was spread between two axis, material to immaterial and creation or guidance.

  Ar replied, "Hmm, I noticed that the grass was torn, but not lifted along with the dirt. Why is that?"

  "My foundations are unable to impart force directly, for example, I couldn't raise you by pcing a foundation underneath you."

  Nora spoke next, her tail swishing and her crooked to the side, “Does it matter how far away the material is?”

  “I have to be able to see a target location as of now, I think all I actually need is to know its there, but that's an issue with my current mental framework. After all, I didn’t create a visible cubic yard hole. The main limitation for me is the distance the material has to travel. It's harder to make that pilr twice as high when compared to making two of the same pilrs.”

  They all paused for several more moments until Master Tosk threw Vicktor a sly grin. “Good one Vicktor, excellent control, now reverse ALL compaction magics you did”

  “All?” Vicktor asked uncertainly, but with a reciprocal grin.

  “Do it!”

  Vicktor obeyed with a quick flick of his thoughts.

  “Wait, where did the dirt–” Nora tried to finish her sentence, but her breath caught in her chest as Nora's and Ar’s legs fell away into the yard deep hole.

  Ar reacted quickly enough and raised his wings from under a hidden fp in the back of his robes, taking to the air as the robes fluttered in the wind. The man quickly rose a dozen feet in the air and –thankfully– the apprentice was wearing some undergarments. Vicktor was treated to a quick view of his hose and loose codpiece before Ar’s and his robes settled back in pce.

  Why am I so interested in that man's biology? Vicktor thought to himself. He had been too focused on his studies to ask anyone out on a date. He should learn to live a little after all. This was his new life.

  Ar’s smile broke Vicktor’s contemption with a start. He looked over to find Nora jumping straight out and clear above the hole, the fur on her tail puffed fiercely. She had jumped easily two yards in height. The inch thick formerly reinforced ground y crumbled in the excavated hole.

  “It’s not dirt by the way" Vicktor spoke towards the frazzled catkin, "It’s soil. Soil is generally composed of cy, silt and sand. There’s usually some organic matter and water, but I’m quite bad at controlling that if its in any real percentage of a given soil. You know, 'dirt' is just something considered unclean, anything from dust, debris, soil, or excrement. I can show you the soil diagram if you want, there are a lot of variations on sandy loam that have different use cases for civil or military engineering.” Vicktor said with a heated face. "Maybe over a drink?"

  “You wanna talk of shit and another woman on our first date? You sure are an interesting fellow.” She smiled and adjusted her spectacles, a spec of soil falling from the lens. Her tail was on high alert for more traps.

  Those spectacles really highlight her sky-blue eyes, don't they? Do they stay when she fights? What about other activities? They really do frame her furry face so well...

  Vicktor felt more heat rush to his faces, equal parts from Nora’s remarks and his own internal monologue.

  “Well then d” Master Tosk chuckled and outstretched a green hand. “I’ve seen enough to see potential and would like to offer you a probationary position under me in the ‘Engineering Corps’, a military aligned division of the builders guild. You would get hazard pay when leaving Allium. Your downtime would involve hands-on training with simir magics to you as they improve the built environment of our city on a hall”

  “YES, easily yes”

  Vicktor swore he heard Nora mutter something about being 'too easy', but it really was quite windy.

  “That's it?” Master Tosk asked. "No concerns?"

  “Yup, it makes housing easier and I'll have a wonderful breadth of work. I really didn’t want to end up doing the same tedious thing every day. Stars above, a bloody battlefield is simpler than the designing and permitting the same drainage structure for the rest of my magehood.” He smiled wryly, “Assuming I don’t perish in said bloody battlefield”

  “It’s not unheard of", the lizardkin noted, "But you will have to trust us and others. You magic isn't offensive, not yet atleast. We will be forced to defend you from all manners of beasts”

  “That's fine with me, I doubt we will start with prolonged sieges from dragons or liches”

  “Probably not, d, probably not” Master Tosk smiled.

  They continued for another thirty minutes or so, learning the intricacies and limitations of Vicktor's magic.

  He was able to join ft stones together as well as compress sand into limestone. He could create small voids and channels for water to flow or drain. The added difficulty made the process take longer and was more delicate and easy to disturb, but as long as he was physically unharmed, he was mostly able to finish his workings.

  Vicktor was shocked to learn that the shed on the field was actually a form of dimensional storage. The shed stored close to a thousand tons of material, sand, gravel aggregate, even some concrete mix and buckets of cement.

  After cleaning up, Vicktor left with Master Tosk in order to finalize the agreements of his apprenticeship. He would be paid a signing bonus of 10 gold and a base rate of five silver per day when not on duty and one gold while on hazard pay away from the city.

  He would be staying at the guildhall's barracks during his apprenticeship. He was told about the facilities, functional but offered little privacy.

  After signing the required paperwork provided by Mx. Reshka. Vicktor joined up with Ar and Nora.

  They guided him around the facilities, Nora would be sleeping in a different section of the barracks and Ar would be sleeping on a cot to his left. Apparently, it was less to do with gender or impropriety and more about the complexity of the undry. His side of the barracks were a lot more comfortable with general sizing while the other side of the barracks had more stringent requirements.

  Vicktor had taken anatomy and a detailed if brief lecture on male and female reproduction. He didn’t think it would be polite to talk about such things to his new fellow apprentice, he didn't want to start things off on the wrong foot with either of them.

  Or talon, I guess in Ar’s case.

  He learned that the showers, simirly to the barracks overall, were not private in the slightest. It was a significant difference from his cramped Academy dorm room, with its singur bed and small private bathroom.

  Vicktor was trepidatious of the facilities. They were not segregated by gender, or sexual orientation. He remembered Reshka’s words and listened with an attentive ear as he was led around. The tour did not include a physical inspection of the showers, and that night he decided that he would forgo them.

  They talked of simple things in the common area as night fell. All members of humanity bustling in harmony. Beastkin, hybrids and ordinary humans wandered past in a slow endless weave of different features, gear and goals. The living tapestry ughed and squabbled in the soft magical light.

  This is what Vicktor had missed from his childhood. It was why he had started down the path of magehood all those years ago. It was what he wanted to protect and nurture.

  He would construct a foundation for all humanity.