Yeah she's going to head back to her room and take a shower and crash.

The forthcoming week proceeds as inevitably as time itself. She learns to cast cantrips. She learns to cast Fireball at the very end of the week, and is regarded as quite talented by her teachers. Some of her acquaintances seem to regard her as standoffish but impressive due to the very heavy workload.

She's done this before. Never subjected herself to it deliberately, but this grind of necessary work is no stranger to her. She gets up, she spars, she showers before lunch, she eats, she does her control exercises, she listens to her theory classes, she eats late, she does a second round of control exercises. She half-dozes through her last evening class and falls into bed afterwards. 

It's not all bad. She's learning magic. Some of the afternoon and evening classes are quite light. She's losing weight from all the sparring and her two-meals-a-day diet, and her Levels in sparring have brought her a kind of physical confidence she had only had in the bedroom before.

She's still miserable. She coils it up inside herself and stores it as resentment. She has it under control. It's only been a week, after all. 

Some of her acquaintances stop talking to her, as she steadily acquires the reputation of an ice-cold workaholic. The Winds of Magic class goes over the mysterious forces of Light and Dark, broadly associated to Selflessness and Selfishness, and other common forms of magical energy that are not the eight classical Winds.

Flaming Sword of Rhuin is an interesting spell. It conjures the item in its name, ephemeral and weightless but quite intimidating and deadly-looking, and perfectly able to slice a straw dummy in two while also setting it ablaze. The first cast of a new spell is always the most dangerous, as even to an iron-willed sorceress the Winds are capricious and whimsical, but she successfully aborts the magic the first time it threatens to tear free of her grasp, and it works on the second.

Oh, yes. This? This is what she meant by "reclaiming her birthright."

(And now she doesn't have to buy a sword!)

Her theory classes have much to teach her on the Winds' tendencies and structures, and common mistakes to avoid when casting. Her schedule has to be adjusted slightly due to how quickly she's advancing. The student advisor wonders whether she wants to slow down any? She's burning through theory, too, and placed in a higher level swordfighting class, and more of her time now spent on those exhausting control exercises with less on theory.

The next spell on the list is Hearts Afire. Far more metaphorical an application of magic than before, but aqshy is nothing if not passion, and it will empower her and her allies with courage and fighting spirit, as well as potent resistance against fear and terror effects, of which there are a considerable number. The problem is, the structure of magic must hang upon her very breast and radiate outward from there, without being disturbed by the roiling fire that builds within as she casts. This proves... Problematic. It takes two extra practice sessions above and beyond the ones she has daily to finally nail down, and multiple times there is nearly a conflagration within her, saved only by hastily expelling the Winds and creating a few new scorch marks.

It's been three weeks, and her focus has been suffering under accumulated background resentment. She masters it in the end, though her extra practice sessions cut into her sleep. She makes up some of it by eating quickly in her food breaks and snatching naps before her control exercises. 

She wants to hurt someone.

Her professors are mostly happy to keep supervising and teaching her as she presses ever onward, despite her clear strain.

The Aqshy's Aegis would be the final tool in her basic sorcerous toolkit: A defense. A shield of flame made solid, able to block blows and harm that which dared to attack her.

...Maybe it's her increasing strain and distraction, her desire to hurt at odds with the purpose of protection. Maybe it would have happened anyway as a sheer matter of luck. Regardless, the first time she casts the Aegis for real - it all goes horribly wrong.

Instead of forming the fifteen beautiful strands that together project a smooth shell, the magic tangles inside her. Her professor's eyes widen and he reaches out to grab at her sternum where the energy is twisting, turning into a vortex, but it's too late already, as aqshy does what it always wants to do - and becomes fire.

Her insides are on fire. For four long seconds until the professor grasps the errant energy and tears it free, straight into the ceiling, she burns.

Even once the miscast is removed, the damage remains. It is... Excruciating. She can't move. She can't breathe. Her windsight is full of pain.

She doesn't black out until the professor starts performing CPR. Then, she wakes up in a hospital room.

She blinks, stirs a little in her bed. She remembers... pain, incredible burning pain in the core of her... and then she blacked out. Did she die? 

... no, she's still in pain. She lived, then. This is... a hospital...?

This is a hospital. It's a fantasy-themed hospital, with glowing self-contained enchantments instead of  computer readouts, but it's a hospital. She's in a blue hospital gown, her chest - whole upper body really - is bandaged up, and her battledress is folded on the chair next to the bed. There is a call button next to the bed, too.

... It's coming back now. The miscast. 

She presses the call button.

It's barely thirty seconds before a nurse comes in - A Drake. He smiles at her.

"How are you feeling, miss Liath? You've had a miscast. Do you remember?"

"I recall. That was... the worst sensation I've ever felt. How long was I out?" 

And... "What do I owe for the healing?"

"You were out for about fourteen hours. It's the next morning now. You don't owe anything. Immediate treatment for miscasts are covered if they occur during supervised control exercises, it's part of the course fees. I'd say you're coming out of it remarkably well, actually - no permanent damage, no Arcane Mark. Not very pleasant, but hardly the worst result of a miscast we've seen. How's your pain? The burn treatments should have taken care of most of it, but your skin will likely be sensitive for a while now."

"I'm doing shockingly well all things considered. Like a five out of ten for pain. Can I have something to eat?"

She is pretty out of fucks to give at this point. She set fire to her insides and lived, everything after this is gravy. She's still flinching away from the searing pain in her memory but that can be dealt with later. She shoves it down again. She's starving. 

"Sure. Soup or sandwich? That's what we've got here. You should be good to head out soon, I'll have someone in to check and get those bandages off in a bit. Would you like to talk to the doctor or a therapist?

"Sandwich, please. I'd also like to talk to a therapist, thank you."

She needs an outside perspective on her plans going forwards.

She gets her sandwich.

Her therapist is a cat-woman. She gives the standard confidentiality-barring-life-threatening-situations speech then asks what Liath wants to talk about, if anything.

"Mainly I want to talk about what the best way to handle fear of miscasts going forwards is. Should I be getting right back on the horse, or do you recommend something more gentle?"

"That depends a lot on what kind of person you are. But one thing to remember is that for almost all sorcerers, especially those who push themselves, miscasts are not a possibility. They are an inevitability. What were you feeling when you miscast? Were there any outside conditions you could control to make it less likely?"

"I was feeling... Resentment, at the world for having put me in a corner where I'm forced to work twelve hour days. That'd been building for three weeks; I can handle it, I can deal with it, I just don't enjoy it. I don't think anyone enjoys that kind of workload. I had just about gotten to the point at which I wanted to hurt someone. ...recreationally, preferably... I'm just digging myself deeper here aren't I?"

"I'm not sure what you mean by digging yourself deeper, but I've seen that sustained high stress is not good for people in any number of ways. It's not just unpleasant - the stress makes you think confrontationally, irrationally, it makes you leap to faster and easier seeming answers, it makes you get frustrated with your work more easily and degrades creativity. In the long run, more hours worked does not even necessarily lead to more work being done. You may be able to 'handle it', but are you doing the same quality of work you would be doing if you worked eight hour days and took some time to relax and do things you enjoy?"

Liath... finds herself nodding. Oh, it's easy to nod along to someone saying she should give herself more breaks, that's just self-indulgence, but the quality of work argument is sound. And she doesn't need to be that hurried, does she? She's ahead of schedule already - in the advanced class for sword work and knows how to call up Flaming Sword of Rhuin - And she'll get Aqshy's Aegis, she's close -

"I think I should talk very seriously to my program advisor," she says. "And see if I can adjust my program to something closer to three months."

"I think that would be a good idea. As far as I know, you can adjust your class schedule at any time. If nobody mentioned this to you already, well, this place is full of workaholics." The therapist smiles wryly. "I wish more people listened to that advice when I give it."

"Having a brush with your mortality changes things. I'm not going to let this stop me. But maybe... I don't have to charge into it, sword drawn, you know?"