This story takes place some time (generations) before the Rin/Girey tales.

“There is more that we do not know about the sira than we know.”

Instructor Birtelnyū was a short woman, with steel-grey braids longer than her spine. She was also one of the most terrifying instructors in the Edallee Acadamy; she had spent much of her life flinging sira.

“What we can say, definitively, about the sira would fill this cup.” She held up a tin mug. “And what there is left would fill the room. But I will teach you what I know, and that cup should be enough to fill your minds.”

Instructor Birtelnyū was not a kind woman, not by any definition, but the students still leaned forward at their tables.

“The sira,” she began, “is the force that powers all magic, and perhaps all life itself.

“It is found in the rocks of the earth – not in all rocks, but in certain ones – in currents in the ocean and the wind – and in certain living plants. Humans and animals sometimes have a current of sira within them, too, but we do not use that sira.”

She paused. Inevitably, a student raised their fingers. “Why not, Instructor?”

And just as inevitably, another student answered. “Because it’s forbidden.“

“We do not use that sira,” the instructor raised her voice, “because it is as wild as the wildest of the natural sira, and it burns to use it.”

“What about the sira of fire?”

“That one burns a little more literally. And yes, there is sira in many other things I have not named yet today. But you will begin as all students begin, with the sira in rock.”

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