The site of my education in shadowy powers was, surprisingly, not that dark. The room, filled with an unusual amount of objects, was brightly lit by the evenly placed, square white ceiling lights. They cast clear and defined shadows beneath every item and form that happened to block the light. In fact, the darkness was strangely, even unnaturally distinct. As if the light shone only straight down, there was no blurring or mixing of the edges.

The furnishings of the room were, to describe them, weird. Rows and rows of desks, yes, to be expected. But also there were strange tree-like sculptures, and hanging grid-shaped sections of wooden beams, suspended on ropes at all angles and orientations. The walls leaned inward at the top such that the edges of the room were cast in darkness. In all, there was debatably more shade than clear floor.

The aforementioned desks were organized in four rows of indeterminate length. Each faced the same direction, toward a larger desk and the midnight black square situated on the wall behind it. They consisted of a small wooden square, maybe mahogany, attached to the front of a comfortable looking, low backed red chair. Complete with armrests. Each seat and small tabletop was set with a small black book, lacking in title and illustration, perhaps two fingers thick with pale white pages. The area looked vaguely full, but there were conveniently just a few open seats situated seemingly wherever I happened to look at the moment.

The chair was indeed quite comfortable. As I ascertained when I took a seat. It was near the back, but I don't think that mattered much against the odd spatial distortion. It was very plush, the kind of seat that you sit on and sink into like an enveloping cloud. Would be horrible for anyone with a spinal problem, though. Complete and utter lack of firmness. Praise be to whoever took it upon themselves to save poor nascent adults from the agony of classic educational seating. I also wonder where the funds came from for all the creature comforts of the institution. Not to look a gift horse in the mouth.

The black book was bound in supple leather. Firm but slightly flexible. Out of curiosity, I opened it to somewhat near the end. My eyebrows rose dramatically at the massive, geometric image that dominated the page. A circle, lined with dense strings of symbols and runes around the inside. Those were bound by another, smaller circle. Within that one was a mess of straight lines, angles and yet more symbols.

And then it changed. And again. Every few seconds, -about four-ish- the image flickered, replaced with something similar, but not quite the same. Angles ever so slightly different. Miniscule oddities in the style of writing. At least five separate arrays that I could make out. Possibly more.

The other page, the one without the circle, was dominated by a dense wall of black text. Lines upon lines with barely a hair's width between them. At a squint, I could just barely make out the words. Not that I understood more than every fifth. Formulae and equations regarding mana requirements, references to laws and principles, and frankly absurd Stat prerequisites. From what little was comprehensible to me, it was a storage spell of some kind. I caught the words 'pocket,' 'spatial,' and 'key' repeated several times. Not near as much as 'shadow,' though. It was nearly every other line, for Gods' sake.

My browsing was rudely interrupted as the tome snapped shut with a loud smack. It jerked itself from my hands and slapped down on the desk before me. There was a mental nudging, an impression that I should, if I was so inclined, look up. That it'd be rude not too, even. Seeing this entirely sound reasoning, I lifted my gaze.

And lo, I beheld a shadow made flesh. It looked like a human, but it so clearly wasn't. And that isn't to say it was another race, you pedant. In form, it was average in size, slightly round based on what was visible. The thing aas wrapped in a long and drooping thick grey robe that obscured all shape and nearly dragged the floor. Its skin was a healthy tan in shade and its blonde hair sat curled and wild upon its head. Eyes, a pale but entirely reasonable blue sat within a round, smiling face. Yes, for all intents and surely in an image it could have been a man, but it wasn't. Simply and unequivocally, it was no man or woman. Nor was it something else. It was a shadow and nothing more, nothing less.

"Hello! And nice to meet all of you." The voice at least was normal. The cheerful tone a welcome distraction from the wrongness of its image. "Sorry about the whole..." it gestured vaguely at its own false body. "This. I couldn't make it over today, so you'll need to make do with a shade. At least temporarily. I'll probably be back tomorrow. Nothing's certain though.

"Anyway. My name is Constantine. Or Professor Constantine D. Archer, if you must be so formal. I hope to build good and stable relationships with each and every one of you over the course of your stay at the Academy."

Constantine's shadow was very excitable in its speaking. Energetic. Friendly, even. He reminded me of the kind of person who associated with the 'cool' group at primary school in a genuine attempt to be friends. Or the annoyingly sociable stranger who tried to strike up small talk in line at the local grocery store. Though so far at least, he'd yet to prove himself so intolerable, so I was probably over reacting.

The black book shivered and flipped open again. This time it was merely the cover and first page that lifted up. There was no spell circle or formula that I could see. Simply a block of text over half the page, titled 'Foreward: A Shadow Is Not Dark,' in a larger and fancier font. The title was interesting, if a bit ridiculous. What does that even mean? A shadow is quite literally darkness. By definition. Sounds pretentious. Maybe philosophical. I hate philosophers. Just don't be a jerk. It's that simple.

Anyway. Sir smiley shadow person swiveled dramatically as he sat in the tall office chair behind his large, dark spruce desk. He pulled a long thin rod from his cloak and pointed it at what I realized was a drawing board. He flicked his wrist as he spoke, drawing white lines on the black.

"Some people might like to waste the first day on introductions and what not," he drawled, "but I think that's lame." He sketched a rough humanoid diagram on his board, then doodled a simple smiling face on it. "Instead, I'm going to teach you the most basic and essential spell you'll need if you're taking this course. Which you are, clearly.

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"Anywho, if you're dealing in dark, it's better to be able to see what you're doing. Not that you specifically will have much trouble with that, but we'll get to that later. The best and easiest thing to do is like so."

He drew a small dot in the center of the diagram. On the sternum, just below the ribcage. Wavy lines radiated out from the spot.

"As you probably know, mana comes from here-ish. It flows out from the core and suffuses the rest of the body equally. The concentration increases in various areas as you improve you stats and Level Up. A spell, which is a Skill activated solely through mana, is performed by consciously moving the energy in a specific manner. Some are complicated, but this is one of the simplest possible spells. This one isnt actually a shadow spell, but it's still a requirement just for practicality. Take hold of your mana," he said, glancing over his shoulder at the students.

I did as instructed, grabbing one of those smoky tendrils. He waited a bit, presumably for confirmation or just so anyone who was going to do it, did it.

"Pull it up through here," he said, slowly tracing a winding path up through the chest. "You should have enough Will even at Level one for this." I followed along as he went. It was hard. The vaporous energy wanted to slip from my mental grasp. It slithered and writhed, leaving a sharp cold feeling in its wake. It shoved unrelated thoughts into my head. Like how interesting that sculpture was, or how insignificant life was against the endless emptyness that was the infinite universe. I metaphorically wrapped my mind around its length, holding it still as I inched the snaking thing along the path.

Constantine said something about a hard part as the line split in two, each path curving symmetrically up through the chest. A second diagram appeared, this one a side view. It showed the lines weaving and twisting about in all three dimensions. Just wonderful. I gritted my teeth as I wove the cold numbness around and around at a glacial pace. Or so it felt. It could certainly have been faster on the outside. I wouldn't bet on it though.

I pulled the loops tighter and tighter. One grazed its own tail by accident, and the whole thing collapsed back to that point. I had to wrench it back into shape, then work it along the route while still holding the other in place. Once I finally finished the complex pattern, it was a simple stretch up the neck and head, and finally I plunged them into my eyes. Which I'd closed at a point apparently. A deep chill filled the area, which wasn't entirely unpleasent actually. My unseeing sight seemed to intensify, somehow. The black grew not darker, but... more vibrant? Saturated? I kept them closed still as a notice rudely invaded my metaphorical view.

Acquisition of Spell "Darkvision" pending.

The third eye upon my chest rattled. I felt as the thing snapped open and a presence slithered out from the corners of my mind. Just the barest hint of whispers gracing the edges of thought. It metaphysically poked and prodded at the spell. Observed it. Judged and found it... acceptable.

A piece of the presence broke off. Stripped away from the main mass and coiled tightly around the Skill. It dispersed and suffused itself within the magic, fading to barely a purple tint to the thought. The presence nodded, theoretically and shrunk away. It broke apart into wisps of meaning that writhed into the dark parts of the mind they came from and vanished. A last hissing word echoed through before the eye snapped shut.

"Delicious." Because that wasn't ominous at all. A completely normal occurrence, this whole ordeal surely was. The whole process took a scant few seconds before yet another popup appeared.

Spell Acquired

Seek Through Shadow

Mana Cost: 1/1 minute

Description:

Gaze into the black, and its darkened eaves shall not obscure your sight, vessel. See that which light does not touch and scent the taste of mind and thought on which to feast.

Oh. Seems it writes the Skill descriptions too. That's just great. The effort of maintaining the mana-structure faded into the background as the System took over. I felt the quality go down slightly, the position drifting and the straights less so. But it held. A constant stream flowing ever so slowly. The strain no longer on me, I opened my eyes.

It was slightly underwhelming, honestly. The shadows were just as dark and opaque as before. I could simply... see better. It wasn't as if they'd been illuminated. I could just suddenly perceive the details of objects despite there being no logical explanation. But that, of course, wasn't all there was.

Thin, whispy tendrils of purple vapor curled through the air. They snaked and coiled, twisted and writhed. Radiated out. 'From where,' you may ask. To which I'd tell you: people. They trailed from the heads of students -notably not from Constantine- fanning out like the arms of a spider, moving only slightly with the motion of the individual. Most had just a few, four to five, extending maybe a similar number of strides in length. None had less than three, while some had up to seven, meters long. Those were people who looked particularly focused on something, and the smoke reflected that, stroking and twining around a book or a device or the person themselves. I clearly saw at least one reaching obviously for another student's bosom. Ugh.

If I looked directly at someone, they faded from view. I could trace its path, and it remained plainly there, but if I settled my gaze on someone it'd vanish. When not focusing on them, despite still being obvious, they were surprisingly unobtrusive, relegating to the outer parts of my periphery.

I could feel a miniscule pull on my mana. A small, uncomfortable but not intolerable tugging at my core. A full one point had already gone away, but not quite two. Instinctively, I felt the moment approaching -the second minute mark- where that final bit would tip over. I canceled the spell just before that point, then, out of curiosity toggled it on again. A bare few seconds passed before the number changed. Continuous cost then. Not repetitive.

I left it off and looked at Constantine. He was sprawled across a chair, legs over one side while he hung his head over the other with a book in hand. It wasn't the book I had, though. Looked to the of the entertainment variety, though I couldn't make out the title. After a while he peeked over the edge and swept his gaze over the students either still working at the spell or various killing time. His eyes met mine and he waggled his fingers before returning to the tome of mysterious secrets.

I occupied myself for a bit. Messing around with some of my Skills and such, browsing the textbook-slash-grimoire, etcetera. Waving a hand in the deep darkness under the desk, I found that I could activate Walk' on only certain parts of the body. So that's fun. Focusing closely while I did it, I could vaguely sense the mana in the Skill. Four things tendrils branched out from the core toward each limb, exploding into bloom when they reached it. They branched and split and intertwind, suffusing the muscle and flesh completely. Definitively not anything I could replicate. I tried, briefly, but the second I had more than two lines the entire thing would collapse.

Evocation was the only other I felt comfortable using at the moment, and it was even worse. The energy expanded out sphericly from the core and then just... vanished. Gone into thin air. Well, not air, technically, seeing as it's inside the- you get the idea.

And thus did the bell toll, the shade bid farewell, and the Warlock eagerly anticipated the end of the excruciatingly long day.