35th of Sifdras - 5th Ivora

  Alchemy has become much less practical as Professor Greenborrow wants to make sure we can articulate the science of the art for our exams in a few weeks. It seems hard to believe that we are already halfway through the term. While I am a bit anxious anytime a professor mentions our exams, mostly because I’ve been floundering in most of my classes, it still seems far away.

  The lecture drones on with semi-familiar jargon, formulas, and known techniques that I should know, having grown up with them, but never really utilized or understood fully. My head is spinning, my heart deflated once more at the gaps I need to make up for as the lecture ends. Professor Greenborrow tells us to get into our groups for a study session to answer some essay topics and calculative analysis on the board.

  Munsa joins Cira and I first and I hear her chatter excitedly to the elf. “Cira, do you know a guy named Lamruil?”

  “Doesn’t sound familiar.” Cira responds absently and greets Natsumi to the table.

  “Oh,” Munsa sounds disappointed, like when I told her that Calas doesn’t change shapes. “Okay, I guess, it doesn’t matter, then.”

  I smile softly to myself as I copy the first question from the board, thinking that will be the end of it. But a moment later, it seems that Munsa literally cannot keep anything to herself.

  “I just figured that even though he is a third-year, you might know him.”

  Cira still isn’t looking toward Munsa, though she is responding to her in the same dull tone. “What makes you think that?” She follows suit with me jotting down some of the questions.

  Munsa shrugs, “Oh, no reason, I just heard that you were from the same town and thought you might be able to tell me more about him.” Her voice sounds hopeful, almost eager as if she hasn’t picked up on Cira’s obvious disinterest. Or perhaps is simply ignoring it.

  Cira shakes her head while flipping through our text for a specific passage. “Not that I know of, but it’s possible. I don’t know every single person living in Ambervale.”

  I interject before Munsa can comment. “I’m on page 342, if you are looking for the first question.”

  “Ah! Thanks, Serea. I was.” Cira glances up at me with an appreciative, pointed smile. I know by her expression that she isn’t only thanking me for the page number.

  “I just heard that he was trying to date two scribes at once. Both second-year girls and now they are in a rivalry for his heart.”

  I sigh heavily and cannot keep my frustration in check. “Munsa, will you give it a rest, please? I’m trying to get some work done.” I try to go back to the text, pretending to read while my cheeks burn with the anxiety of having said my feelings so plainly out loud.

  Glancing up at her tentatively, I notice that Munsa’s usually pale, blue-tinted complexion is also showing a bit of color. Seeing it there leads me to believe that maybe she was just oblivious after all and actually might feel embarrassed for prattling on like that.

  “Geez, sorry, I wasn’t trying to be distracting.” She starts defensively and if she left it at that, I would have believed that it was all accidental. But she goes on, “I’m just chatting to pass the time. Have some fun while we work, ya’know?”

  My face pinches reflexively at her words and I experience the heat on my face from a much different emotion. “Fun?” The word comes out more harshly than I anticipate. “How is spreading lies about people you don’t know considered ‘fun’?” I think about the rumors about me that Natsumi said are going around Unio Luminae and all over Court. I can feel my blood boil as an image of Liddy snubbing me flashes into my mind.

  In Munsa’s stunned silence, I continue in a softer yet more vehement tone. “Even if it is fun for you, some of us have a much different perspective on your idle gossip.” My eyes bore into her crystal blue ones for a moment before my focus shifts to a hand on mine.

  It’s Cira’s and the touch brings me back from all that anger that threatens to bubble over like our cauldron last week. I meet her eyes too, though with a muted, almost sheepish expression. I find her smiling softly at me though, and just like the week before, the expression seems to douse that raging fire, which propelled the volatile reaction in me. I find myself breathing easier and I smile back in response.

  For the rest of class, we all four work on the assignment and there is blessedly no other mention of people outside our immediate friends.

  Afternoon

  Magic Studies has finally shifted to a familiar method of magic today as Professor Moonshadow explains the basics of elemental aspected manifestation. I finally feel like the professor is speaking my language. I am comfortable for the first time in this class as she talks about the different elemental types and other lesser known hybrid forms. Interestingly, though, she talks about imagery being the primary factor to manifesting elemental magics; not the impression of will upon them.

  Trying to understand her perspective, I stare at a wayward thread of air near the large windows in the room. The gray, wispy strand swishes lazily from side to side in front of the windows, its shape hard to discern from the blending of colors in the overcast skies beyond it. Every so often it banks off the glass as if trying to escape the confines of the lecture hall to join the open air on the other side. I cannot help but feel a kinship to this lonely, outcast thread.

  It comes to me then that the stress on imagery must be because they do not know the threads by sight. Like Liddy and my first School Mistress, they have never seen them. Even though the scribes here aspire to become mages, they are learning to do so totally blind. A pang of emotion resonates within me with the understanding and I am filled with awe and guilt.

  I have an unfair advantage in this instance, simply for the fact that do not have to imagine anything. I know the shapes, the colors, the habits and movements of these threads as if they were my siblings. I have grown up with them. Learned to abide and work with them. And suddenly, this makes me feel like I am cheating somehow. Have I always taken this for granted?

  Searching my mind I only find one instance in which I did not use my eyes to create a weave. I remember clearly the exercise Calas had me go through in creating my barrier of light for the first time. I chuckle to myself, recalling the frustration in his voice when he told me to close my damned eyes. I do this now, thinking that there might have been some truth to what Fara had said about testing his limits.

  Instead of calling the threads to me and weaving them, I am determined to try this exercise like any other scribe might do. I take a calming breath and try to imagine how to achieve the objectives that Professor Moonshadow has listed for us. First, we are to light our candle as we did with incantation by using the elemental method this time. Then, without physically affecting the flame, we are to douse the candle, putting out the flame by magical means.

  The first part is easy to imagine. Though the fire aspect is something I have struggled with, I am well practiced in doing this. The weave, the motion, the rush of the threads to the snap of my fingers is what I envision in my mind. I rub my fingers together, preparing for the trigger, while simultaneously reaching out with my consciousness, not my eyes, to the fire threads near by.

  I exhale, snapping my fingers, willing the threads to weave. When I open my eyes, the candle is lit and flickering softly in front of me. I give a stunted laugh, but cut it short. I shouldn’t be surprised or excited by the prospect of lighting a candle. But I am all the same.

  I press my hands together in front of my mouth, staring into the flame and contemplating how I want to snuff it out. There are several options here, all using the remaining three major elements. Air to blow it out. Earth to smother it. Water to douse it.

  Closing my eyes once more, I try to discern all the threads in the room, not by sight, but by the feel of them, as if they are already connected to me by that invisible line. This proves very useful and feel a small surge of joy having discovered something new for myself. I find that there are much more water threads and so naturally I start to form an image of an orb of water engulfing and swallowing the flame of my candle.

  I internalize the weave and the motion to form it, setting my trigger as the opening of my hands, the final motion of the weave. I take a breath, thinking of the orb, and open my hands. As if I had performed the entire weave, the threads came to form the watery prison around the flame and snuff it out. I exhale and open my eyes in time to see the fluid sphere pop, splashing water over the table in a small puddle around my candle.

  I smile, thinking the flame from my candle just transfered to my heart for all the warmth I felt inside me. This is why I came here, to discover my magic in new ways. To know it more deeply. To understand it more intrinsically. I feel the emotion start to well up, but I swallow it back down, not wanting to show this joy to anyone.

  Though all this elation, for some reason I am reminded of a dusky voice that echoes in my mind, “Incantation would be useless for you, little mouse, but other methods might not be.” Is this what he meant? That that golden-eyed beast understands the nature of my magic?

  I furrow my brow and start to contemplate the arguments he made while my body was hijacked by the magic of the lectern. It is really the first time I have truly tried to understand his words that day as the sheer panic of that moment had consumed me so thoroughly.

  My reverence is broken by Professor Moonshadow approaching my desk. “My, my.” she starts in an admiring tone. “That was impressively done, Miss Crowfoot.” She is gesturing to my saturated candle and I cannot help but smile at her praise.

  “This seems like it was rather easy for you, though.” She gives me a knowing smile back, her eyes glinting beyond the glare of her large, round glasses. “Perhaps you will be more willing to try other methods from now on?”

  She only quirks an eyebrow at me before she moves on to the next desk and the smile from my lips fades. Calas’ voice whispers softly in the back of my mind, “...but other methods might not be…”

  Perhaps they are both right in this.

  36th of Sifdras - 6th Emder

  This week is feeling much different than last week I muse as I enter Professor Lighthammer’s workshop. After doing a fair bit of research, I am confident that I can find a way to discover the stupid beetle’s enchantments today.

  Last time, I took an elemental approach, but after some careful reading in the more advanced chapters of our textbook, I realize that delving, or using mana to investigate an object, is safest when done through strands of raw mana. Since my breakthrough in Magic Studies class, I have consigned myself to the idea of using other methods in manifesting my weaving. So I retrieve the beetle with its little holding box from the materials cabinet on the way to my desk and vow to myself that it will be different this time.

  Thinking about the last time, I look up toward Vesa’s workstation as I ready my notes. She is also getting set up for her project today, placing a large tome on her workstation desk and flipping to a particular page. Her tail swishes with what I can only assume is anticipation as she reviews its contents. But then she stops abruptly, turning in my direction and I am mortified by being caught staring. She quirks a wide, confident grin and, despite the fangs she is showing me, I can tell it is a friendly gesture.

  I blush sheepishly and wave to her in friendly greeting to which she waves back. “Good luck, today!” She says over the din of students entering and setting up their own stations.

  I smile genuinely this time and respond, “Thanks. To you too!”

  I see Narin enter with Professor Lighthammer and the eccentric redhead who delivered us letters before classes began. She appears the same as I suspect she always does, with dark tinted goggles on her head and heavy leather apron over a dirty white shirt, the sleeves rolled up to the elbow. She is talking excitedly to both Narin and the professor but I’ll be pickled before I can understand a gods-be-gotten word out of her mouth. As other scribes start settling into their seats, the professor addresses the class to continue working on our term projects before following Narin and the redhead he calls “Wen” to his work station.

  Curious, but not enough to be nosy, I shift my focus back to my own project, taking the beetle out of its protective box. I set my quill down and prepare my mind for weaving pure aether. Father had always told me it is the hardest thing to master weaving and I have only had minor successes in doing so before coming here. Something about this place though, gives me the impression that it is easier to achieve here, at the Midnight Court, than probably any other place on the two continents. It makes sense being on intersecting leylines, making mana more abundant.

  This theory was proved correct when I practiced drawing down the mana while doing my research. To my great surprise, I was able to pull a piece off the line and managed to twist and elongate it into a proper thread, like wool being spun into yarn.

  Now, all I need to do is replicate the process and I will have the perfect delving thread to ascertain just what, in all of Akeroth, is inside this stupid beetle. Clearing my mind, I start by connecting with one of the leyline tributaries nearest to us. When I have a bead on it, my hands move in the familiar motions to draw out a small piece of it. Just as before, it comes away from the main body smoothly and I create the thread by pulling and twisting, elongating and strengthening the mana.

  Once satisfied, I push the thread into the body of the beetle and sense it is just mana, there is no resistance from the solid metal frame. I am rewarded almost immediately with a sensation that forms an image in my mind of an intricate lace pattern from inside. I gasp at the complexity of the beetle’s enchantments, embedded deep within the core of the small thing. How did they fit all this stuff into such a small casing?

  I grin, my heart racing with the excitement of achieving something new and I start tracing the patterns of the beetle’s complex lace into my notes.