The floating clouds overhead shift and churn with magic, releasing a gentle rainfall that patters against the surface of the pool. Steam rises in thick clouds around me, giving the illusion of privacy as other first-year waters strip off bloodied training clothes and descend into the communal bath. I got over undressing in front of other guys pretty quickly, because these showers feel like the only thing keeping me standing most days.

That, and it already seems like nearly everybody is sleeping around as much and as often as they can here. Prudishness is for those who don't face death every day, I guess.

We spar every morning, physically beating one another into submission after drilling forms with the instructors. On good days, nobody even ends up dead when the matches are over. After sparring, it's straight to weight training and endurance. Endless lifting, pulling, jumping, running, and sweating. There's a brief break to stuff food in our faces for breakfast in the grand dining hall, then it's on to academics.

We're taught field medicine, survival skills, battlefield tactics, history, and, most of all, information about the elemental plane and the magical creatures we're going to risk our lives to tether. I already know things like how to stint a broken bone with nothing but branches and weeds, edible and poisonous plants, and historical facts that never would’ve mattered to a girl like me from a fishing town—things like how the empire is ruled by three, two women and one man, based on a tradition that started with a pair of triplets eight hundred years ago.

Our lessons on elementals are my favorite, though.

The other classes make my brain feel like it's aching from information overload, but I find I can't learn enough about elementals and the elemental plane to satisfy my curiosity. I already know, for example, how rare it is for second generation and older elementals to tether to humans. The young elementals, which are under a hundred years of age, can only take one form and tend to look like beasts from our world. Older elementals can take more forms. Some of the oldest, like the ones I saw during the elemental trial, can even take humanoid forms.

Last but not least, there's channeling class, where we're divided by affinity and taught how to harness the essence needed to craft magical spells. Unfortunately for me, none of the methods we're learning seem to work for me. Being "unbound" must mean I channel magic differently, but I can't exactly ask someone for tips and tricks, so I've been utterly failing and drawing the anger of our channeling instructor every day.