The sounds of wood slapping together echoed though the uphill estate. In the white walled training room decorated with holographic grid-like lines, a certain blue-haired woman pushing 30 was wailing away at a certain white-haired young man who had only turned 17 the month prior.
"Move your legs faster! Twist your body further!" Carthesia yelled.
In a white tee and, for some reason, suit pants, she swung her practice sword with an unmatched ferocity. Lightning hadn't even begun to spark from her body, but Morgan could still only manage to barely defend against each blow. Barely, meaning he still hadn't gotten hit yet. In his opinion, that was a victory all on its own, but how long could it last? Carthesia forced him back as they dashed across the room, blades clashing at every moment. No room was left for error, but there was still time to think. Since I'm wearing my glasses, there really isn't a way out of this, seriously…
That's right, he had all the time in the world to remember just how weak he really was. During this particular exercise, his mentor forbade the usage of any magic. This applied to herself, of course, so he wouldn't have to deal with her flash-stepping shenanigans, but the situation wasn't really that much better. Even without her magic, Carthesia Tempest was still a mage; despite her rather feminine and slim-fit physique, she was over ten times more durable than an ordinary human. Simply put, even without exerting herself, she and every other human capable of manipulating mana was still a monster.
"Raise your arms higher! You're not getting tired, are you!?" She berated, though their pace had not slowed.
The same did not go for Morgan, however, and the few like him. Eyes of Mana, or just EYEs for short; a form of magic capable of granting their hosts powers beyond the already unimaginable forces that had begun to inhabit the world 7 years ago. Whether it was setting fire to anything in their line of sight, turning anyone looking at them to stone, or distorting the very air before them, twisting even metal like a sheet of paper, these mages bent reality to their will. Researchers theorized that the abilities of each mage's EYEs could be attributed to their brains. They found through those tested that their minds all experienced or still carried some sort of mental illness or trauma before the Collapse. Morgan was no different, and when his mage screening was complete, he was told that he had a 'particularly detached worldview,' whatever that meant.
What really ended up sticking with him, only because it's the reason that he had to be where he is now, is the price for such power. It seemed almost natural that there would be a trade off for such reality altering powers. Morgan understood and coped with this better than most; it was as if the world itself were correcting a mistake, he thought. Those born with EYEs were unable to use mana in ways other than their eye-based craft. Physically, they were no different from the humans who held no aptitude for mana, despite having it quite literally rooted in their brains.
"That's it, move faster, even faster! You don't want to die, do you!?"
That meant when fighting in the mana corrupted lands, they had the highest mortality rate out of all combat operatives. It didn't help that not all EYEs were of the same effectiveness, either. For mages like Morgan, the situation was even worse. They needed to get up close and personal with their targets to make use of their eyes. He couldn't just sit back and stare his opponent to death, though it did often to irritate them.
Not all EYEs were offensive either, meaning they were still required to stand on the battlefield, albeit in a logistical position, with little to nothing to defend themselves relative to the monstrosities they encountered. For example, at the academy Morgan was recently admitted to this fall, there was a black haired girl he met at the reading club. He had been looking for a quiet place to spend the evening since he didn't feel like, no, since he was explicitly told not to come back to the estate before 7pm. Kids should be out and about, my ass.
The main library in the classroom building had more foot traffic than he liked, so he checked out what he heard from faculty was a smaller library that 'no one really cared to use anymore.' Upon sliding open the door, he was immediately welcomed by said girl as the new president of the reading club, not book club, reading club, that only had one other member, that girl, Claire, the vice-president. Wait, are clubs with only one member even allow–
"You're losing focus!" Carthesia noticed.
Taking advantage of the situation, she curved the arc of her blade, weaving under the defensive stance that Morgan had mechanically taken, and swiped at the left side of his torso. It was a clean hit, with the sound of beaten flesh having served as proof of contact. And maybe the slight smell of singed flesh as well.
"Oops, I used magic…" Carthesia admitted.
Morgan fell to his knee and clutched at his side through the burnt hole in his black and blue training jacket. His glasses had sunk just below his eyes, revealing his ghostly irises as he glared up at his mentor. For a moment, the black lines on her body became clear. Something might have happened if the tinge of pain in his head didn't remind him to fix his glasses.
"Hey, don't look at me like that~ This just means you should have been paying attention, yeah?" she continued.
Despite her adult and refined appearance, Carthesia often spoke like someone who forgot that she's old enough to have already made an entire household's worth of kids to bother.
"Well, I guess we could call it a day, I do have a meeting at 10. Let's see, we went at it for… Whoa, 3 hours! That's a new record, not bad!" she gave a thumbs up.
…Just kill me.