“Tovar!” Felton called after me, panting desperately as he tried to keep up. “Wait for me!”I slowed my pace as my best friend caught up, gasping for air. This felt... familiar.After an impassioned plea, I decided to help Felton get into shape. The twig of a boy was incredibly unused to physical exertion, so we were starting with some of the basics. I put off any talk of him learning the sword until he could do a single push-up, for starters.“What is the point of this,” Felton whined between bellowing breaths.“Stamina. Endurance,” I said, thinking. “Mental fortitude, even. Have you seen how long those high level grimoires are? You’ve got to be able to memorize and recite those things. That takes willpower. If you can do that, you can put one foot in front of the other.”“Completely... different... things,” he wheezed, before chugging some water from a flask I handed him.We were meeting up for running after I finished up with Byron’s morning training, and we planned to do that a few times per week moving forward. It wouldn’t leave much time to prepare before school once classes started back up, but then again, Felton couldn’t run for very long. I was also teaching him some bodyweight exercises, which he was going to do on his own while waiting for me to get through my sword training and run over to his place. On days of worship, we’d meet up and do a full workout, and I’d teach him new progressions as needed.Although, looking at his red faced exertion just from a short run, I wasn’t expecting much. I wouldn’t hold it against him if he couldn’t commit, especially once he learned to infuse his invocations and started seeing real progress with his magic.Still, I was proud of him, and his determination helped me strengthen my own. In the few days off that remained before school resumed, I had started working on doing everything with my left hand. Practicing (...)