Chapter IX (9)- The First Day of Classes

Despite his best efforts, Kizu did not sleep that night. He tried. He lay in bed and stared up at the ceiling. On top of the sheets, under the sheets. Pillow under his head, over his face, shoved to the side, thrown off the bed entirely. He did push ups until his arms felt like lead weights. He tried reading. He tried having the orb read to him. Nothing worked. He finally drifted off just an hour or two before sunrise. When the orb woke him up, it felt like no time at all had passed.

Kizu decided to forgo breakfast in exchange for an extra hour of sleep. Even still, he felt decrepit as he trailed after his orb on the way to his first class. History F.

Other students in the class looked fresh and ready for the new semester, while he felt as if he had crawled out of a grave. He recognized almost every student from his day of testing.

“Hey,” Harvey plopped down in the seat next to him. “What’s happenin’?”

“You tell me. I’m probably sleeping through this class.”

“Yeah? You go back out for the afterparty? I just heard about it, pretty bummed I missed out. And where’s your monkey at?”

“I let Mort sleep. No point in making him suffer too,” Kizu said. “Afterparty?”

“So you didn’t go? Yeah, it was over at another villa owned by some dude named Braxton. Crazy night. Apparently, the guy ended up cutting off his arm on a dare.”

“Cutting off his arm? You mean, like, metaphorically?”

“No, he had someone hold him down while another person sawed it off.” Harvey noticed Kizu’s obvious horror and laughed. “It’s not that big a deal. Us Tainted can regrow a limb easily enough. Just takes a week or so of discomfort.”

Kizu stared in disbelief. “Is that all he felt when he had it sawed off? Discomfort?”

“Oh, definitely not. Never done something like that myself, but it wouldn’t be much of a dare if it was easy.”

Before Kizu could ask any more questions, the professor walked into the classroom. He was a small, bookish looking man, wearing spectacles and parted black hair. He dropped a stack of tomes on his desk and grimaced as he looked up at the assembled students.

“I always thought the professors would be a bit more intimidating,” Harvey muttered to Kizu, scratching a scale on his cheek.

“You are the dregs of this academy,” the professor announced. Kizu and Harvey glanced at one another. “Don’t fool yourselves into thinking otherwise. Perhaps that won’t always be the case - my job as your professor is to make scholars of your sorry minds. Rectifying your ignorance will be the greatest magic ever performed within these walls, a grand ritual that will take every second of the coming year to complete. However, even I cannot accomplish the impossible.”

His gaze swept over them all, slowly examining each of them with varying measures of disdain. When he locked eyes with Kizu, he shook his head in plain disgust.

“My name is Professor Krimpit. I have spent my life studying artifacts from around the world, and am known as one of the most accomplished archaeologists of the modern age. I have precious few peers of my caliber. It is your privilege to be studying under me, a privilege none of you have earned and few of you fully grasp. If given the choice, I would not have you. But to teach the brightest and the best, I must also do my part to salvage the worst of what this academy has to offer. So here I am, wading into the filth so your brighter peers may have the proper guidance. Those of you who are repeating my class, know that you are nothing more than empty seats to me. You failed the most basic testing not once, but twice. You aren’t worth your classmates’ time, let alone mine. Do not raise your hands. Do not ask questions. You are ignorant specters haunting this hallowed place of learning, and I will banish you the instant that you make yourselves known to me.”

“I take it back,” Harvey whispered. “He’s terrifying.”

The professor continued his monologue. He looked furious, as if working himself up into a cold frenzy.

“- and as if that wasn’t enough, one of you had the plain audacity to waste my time with fairy tale fiction about the annexation and exile of the Hon region’s witch covens. Let this be your one and only warning: I will not tolerate tall tales about real history.”

“It wasn’t a tall tale,” Kizu said, breaking into the lecture. “The crone told me about it, and she was there when it happened. It wasn’t an exile to the basin - they just stopped living in the towns and cities because they didn’t want to submit to the emperor’s new regulations. And even if it was officially labeled as some sort of exile, it was hardly an effective one. The witches there still come and go as they please to this day.”

“Is that so, boy?” Professor Krimpit asked with a voice of black ice. “You believe you have access to a primary source? Then let this be your first lesson in my class. Despite what some old bog hag might have told you, Philosopher Stones don’t exist. Nobody still lives from that age.”

“Let it go,” Harvey muttered.

“Or maybe,” Kizu said, ignoring his friend. “You need to actually visit the basin instead of reading books written by people who also weren’t there.”

“I have given you the option to see reason and submit to education, and twice you have refused. Begone from my class.”

Kizu stood up and started marching out of the room. “So, you just kick out anyone who challenges your beliefs? How wise.”

“As I said, those who do not learn and refuse to simply listen will be banished from my class, like the haunting specters they are. I will not have false information spouted in this class. All students present are far enough behind as it is without further muddying the waters.”

He might have continued his lecture about the dangers of fake history, but Kizu couldn’t hear it after slamming the classroom door. His blood pumped in his ears. He walked, letting the movement burn off some of his irritation and frustration. It was the crone all over again. Telling him to listen. Still, he wondered what the crone would have done in his shoes. Probably cackled at the professor for his big head and left him to wallow in his ignorance. Or maybe hexed him into a toad. At first, those seemed like the two most likely options, depending on her mood. But then again, perhaps she would have just sat there in silence and listened smugly. She likely would have found the professor endlessly amusing.

A bell eventually rang, and he tore his mind away from his musings to figure out where his feet had taken him. He brought out his orb and told it to direct him to his next class. Unfortunately, his day didn’t seem like it would be improving anytime soon. He exited the hallways out into the courtyard to join the assembled group for Combat F.

Professor Arclight already stood front and center, a smile on her face. Kizu glanced around at his peers and noticed the quill-faced girl who had failed her attempted summoning during the combat test.

She noticed him looking at her and edged closer to him.

“Hello,” she said, so softly he barely made the word out.

“Hello,” he replied. “I’m Kaga Kizu, nice to meet you.”

“Evie,” she said. Her eyes were hidden behind a veil of brown needles, but he still got the impression she was looking down as she wrung her gloved hands.

“I’m sorry your conjuring went poorly the other day,” Kizu said, trying to think of something to fill the silence between them. He winced at his own words as soon as he said them. That was a painful icebreaker.

“I forgot the binding marks,” she said miserably.

Kizu didn’t know anything about summoning, but the creature she summoned during the test definitely didn’t seem bound by anything. So it checked out.

“Okay!” Arclight said to the gathered group. “It looks like you’re going to be my F’s for the year.”

Kizu braced himself for another lecture about being a member of the worst students in the academy.

“You’re so lucky!” Arclight said with enthusiasm. “You all have nowhere to go but up! In all of my years as a professor, the F Class students like yourself have always improved more than any other class in the academy. It’s like drowning in the ocean. All of you are underwater, battling your way up to the surface, but where your peers must flail about in the middle of the open sea, you all get to push off from the rocky bottom! And it’s my good fortune to be the one who teaches you how to swim.”

Stolen novel; please report.

Kizu found himself smiling slightly. Morbid as it was, the speech felt a bit more uplifting than Krimpit’s.

“Today, we will be discussing the backbone of combat - defense. Certainly, you can survive an encounter using nothing but a sword as your shield, and yes, you can dodge almost anything if you have the proper conditioning and experience. But depending on pure brute strength or perfect evasion is a dicey prospect at best, and a fool’s venture in most situations.”

Arclight enraptured them all with her speech. In complete contrast to his last class, Kizu glanced around and noticed every single student listening with hope and excitement, rather than frightened into silence by intimidation. Both professors enraptured their students, but Kizu found he preferred this method.

“Thankfully, we can make our own shields. There are two main types. Kinetic shields, to stop physical threats from reaching you, and antimagic shields, which obviously defend from the arcane.”

With her left hand, she summoned a wall of pure stone from the earth. It crusted over into a half-dome, protecting her left side. Then, with her right hand, she created glimmering metal-like panels that linked together. It completed the dome around her. Then she allowed both to collapse.

“Now, a witch attempts to hex me, which shield do I use?”

Hands slowly rose, and the called-on student replied with antimagical.

“Good, now let’s say a troll heaves a boulder at me. Which shield do I want?”

This time a student replied with physical.

“And if a fellow mage creates a fireball and hurls it in my direction?”

This created a stir. The students muttered amongst themselves. Evie slowly raised her hand.

“Yes?”

“Wouldn’t either work?” Her voice came out as a squeak.

“Exactly correct! Since the fire was created by magic, antimagic would disperse it just as well as a wall of stone. Perhaps even more efficiently in certain situations. I would want to use whichever one I felt more confident in my abilities with. Now, pair up and space out!”

Evie and Kizu glanced at one another. He motioned over towards the edge of the courtyard. He wanted to be out of sight of most of the other students. Evie agreed readily.

“Size up your partner,” Arclight’s voice boomed, allowing her to be heard across the courtyard. “Seek out strengths and weaknesses. When you advance to higher classes, I’ll teach you to recognize the subtle cues, but for now, I want you to get in the habit of examining.”

Kizu looked at Evie. Her uniform also had brown quills bristling out in several places. There was no sign of areas with fewer quills, which probably meant he shouldn’t physically strike her with any part of his body. Or be struck by her. Other than that, she held herself tightly. Her gloved hands were balled up in nervous fists, thumbs tucked between her fingers. Her legs looked locked, as if she’d forced herself to stand in front of him. Honestly, he thought a strong breeze might knock her over.

“First, we’re going to create physical shields. The easiest of these is summoned by using elemental magic like I demonstrated earlier. If you’re unfamiliar with the concept, touch the dirt under your feet and do your best to expand upon it. Build it up in front of you.”

Kizu knelt and buried his fingers in the soil. He closed his eyes and focused, opening himself internally to the flow of magic like the crone had taught him. He tried to morph his magic and willed the dirt pile to rise. Create more of itself. When he opened his eyes, a pile of dirt the size of an anthill had formed over his hand.

A look around at other students held his despair at bay. Nobody else appeared much more successful than he had been. The best of them had only managed a doorstop ‘wall’ of risen dirt.

“Remember this!” Arclight boomed. “Remember this lackluster beginning! Really take it in, appreciate the extent of your poor performance. Look at your partner’s failure as well!”

Kizu noted that Evie, instead of creating a wall, had somehow made the dirt stick to her gloves and was desperately attempting to shake it off. When she looked at him, her quills physically drooped.

“This isn’t fair!” one student protested, looking at her pile of dirt. “If you gave us back our wands, I’d be able to do more than this!”

There was a murmur of agreement, and for the first time Kizu noticed that none of the students held their usual staves or wands.

Arclight walked over to the student. She smiled at her, then held out the wand in question.

“Very well. Create a shield.”

The student snatched the wand up gleefully and pointed it at the dirt, gathering her magic for a mighty elemental effort.

Arclight slapped the wand out of her hand.

The girl stared blankly at her empty hand, then up at Arclight.

“What do you do now?” Arclight asked curiously.

“I… um…”

“Run after your wand?” Arclight suggested. “Waste precious moments summoning it back to your hand?”

“... no?”

“No! All conduits are crutches! Crutches that I wish the academy would do away with altogether. The only thing they're good for is transfiguring bright students into overconfident corpses. We will build up from the base!”

The student meekly retreated, leaving her wand in the dirt.

“Now, for anti-magic shields!” Arclight said. “This time, you need to focus entirely on repelling. At its base, an anti-magic shield will appear like a slightly muddled window. As you advance, the shields tend to take an aspect of the user. Conceptualize something now that resonates the emotional weight of safety. This can kickstart your success.” Again, she raised her prosthetic arm and the panes of metal-like shielding returned. “You’ve seen my own shield, which is a clear enough representation of steel. However, it doesn’t need to be something so direct. Another example of a dear friend of mine, perhaps the greatest defensive mage in Tross. Her shields appear as mirrors! Why? When she was eight years old she witnessed her first monster die - it was a gorgon, and her mother killed it with a mirror! Your anti-magic shield is yours. Find that shield within yourself, and turn it into something dense and tangible.”

Kizu did as commanded, forcing his will into a condensed location in front of himself. His mind drifted as he channeled. He tried to think of when he last felt safe. Never at the crone’s hut. Not at his family’s mansion either. His family’s villa where he spent his days with Anna were too distant to firmly get a good grasp on. Finally, his mind settled on the jungle. The canopy of trees stretching out overhead like a blanket. The insects chirping and birds singing. He latched onto the peace that the memory invoked. Then he channeled it out to cover the area in front of him.

When he finished and examined his work, he found himself surprisingly pleased with the result. It was only a disk, maybe half a meter in diameter, but he felt proud of it. While transparent, it had the veins of a leaf spreading through it. A quick glance around the courtyard told him that it was a better result than the majority of the other students had managed.

“Excellent work! A few of you even managed to surprise me!” Arclight praised them. “Now, decide amongst yourselves which partner has the better shield. The winner gets to keep their shield up. The loser gets to break it.”

Evie dropped her shield and studied his. She put her palms together for a moment, and then opened them to him. His shield cracked. Then it shattered.

Darkness overcame his vision.

Irrationally, dread and a deep, vile fear gripped his heart. Since being bonded to Mort, he’d always been able to maintain night vision. It had been years since he’d been exposed to true darkness.

His heart-rate rose and he instinctively lashed out with an illusion, concealing himself with an image of a boulder. Kizu desperately longed to be hidden in that moment, to be safe and not exposed to the world around him. He clawed at his eyes, forcing his eyelids open and closed. It made no difference.

People muttered words all around him, but he didn’t let himself actually hear them. He focused on his problem. A hex. Evie must have used a hex on him to take away his vision. His shield had broken.

Hexes usually dissipated with time. He doubted Evie had the ability to place a permanent one on him. But his doubt didn’t completely remove the option, and that rattled him. He did his best to steady his breathing, fighting the urge to hyperventilate. Finally, after hundreds of rapid blinks, his vision returned.

With queasy relief, he dropped his boulder illusion and saw his partner on her hands and knees before him. Evie knelt in the dirt, head down and apologizing profusely to him. The students closest to him all watched him with either amusement or concern. Arclight stood a stone’s throw away, watching the exchange with interest.

“It’s fine. I’m fine,” he said to Evie, trying to not sound too rattled. “Let's keep going. Put your shield up.”

It took her a moment, but Evie did as he said. She conjured a shield the size of an apple. It glistened in the sunlight in front of her chest.

Kizu opened his hand, and an illusory bird sprung from his palm and flew straight at her. It thumped against the shield like a real bird crashing into a window, but instead of dropping to the dirt, it faded on impact. When he pulled it back, only the back end of the illusion remained, as if it had been sawed in half. He tried again, this time creating a winged snake. He put a bit more effort into the illusion, adding details like fangs that dripped with venom. It twirled as it flew, and when it impacted the anti-magic shield, this time it left a crack. His illusion didn’t fade; it just wound itself around the shield, constricting. The shield’s cracks spiderwebbed out. With a final clench, the winged snake crushed the shield in its coils.

He wiped his brow. The concentration it took to maintain the illusion while pressed against the shield had made him break out in a sweat.

“Do you know why she broke through your shield so easily while you struggled so much?” Arclight asked behind him.

Kizu turned on his heel and looked at her. “Because she’s better at creating the shield. Or my illusion wasn’t as strong as her hex. Or both.”

Arclight laughed. “On the contrary! While I’d say the little blinding hex she cast on you was pretty remarkable by this class’ standards, your mastery of illusions far outweighs it. But you spread yourself too thin! Her shield’s focus was tight and concentrated, where you attempted to create the largest shield possible. When in combat, you need to determine the shield’s size based on the problem in front of you. I could hypothetically create an anti-magic shield that covered our entire academy. But even your first illusion would likely be enough to pierce it. But if I condensed that shield down to the size of a grape, I could stop a disintegrate beam at point blank without breaking a sweat.”

“But what if the attack is big?” Kizu asked. “Like a wall of flames?”

“That’s where your discretion comes to play. Find the most optimal solution.” Her smile widened and light danced in her single eye. “It’s really quite fun!”

A bell rang in a tower overhead.

“With that, class is dismissed! Good work, all of you! I look forward to training you all!”