An ancient bell rang its toll from the oldest and tallest of Storm Acres Academy’s many towers. It was a welcome sound to the students there because its three resonating bongs signalled the end of the school day. But Piper Cloudwater was not an ordinary student. To her, the ancient bell signified a beginning rather than an end. After the regular classes that all fourth year students at the Academy were enrolled in, Piper's extra curricular learning began. With the help of a few Professors, she had put a plan in place that would allow her to graduate from Storm Acres a full two years before the rest of her classmates. The immense workload didn't leave her much time for socializing, but if there was anything that Piper truly despised, it was the udder time-suck of frivolity.
The students on either side of the young miss Cloudwater scooted their seats back and away from their wooden desks and then began shuffling books and parchment and various pieces of typical juvenile minutia into their school bags. Piper shut her worn copy of This and That, a meticulous look at magical botany by Earnest Toole. Because Piper couldn't see, in the traditional sense at least, she didn't need to keep the book open in order to surmise its contents but, in a losing battle to stand out just a little less, she always kept her textbooks open during class. Whether it was open to the correct page at any given time was anyone's guess.
Professor Journey looked up sharply, the commotion finally pulling his attention away from the pair of many tentacled plants waving slowly, almost imperceptibly, up at him from his desk. He stood to issue a warning to his students that there may or may not be a quiz when they returned on Monday, and then resumed his seat to continue observing the flora on his desk. Piper slung her book bag over one shoulder and followed her classmates out of the room.
The halls of Storm Acres Academy were nearly always chaotic but after classes on Friday afternoons, it felt more like a drunken circus performance than a place of learning. Because she was blind, Piper didn't see the group of second year boys bewitching a swarm of fruit flies to pester first year students. Nor the seventh year prefect, Alexi Morgen, as the school's disciplinarian, Mr. Sweet, placed the boy under the Parson's Hold spell and then carried his rigor frozen body into the detention hall. Nor did she see Peter Swearweather attempting to enchant Kelly Blather's book bag behind her back. Piper didn't see any of it, but she was very aware of her surroundings.
The lady Cloudwater, Piper's mother, called the sense with which Piper was able to observe the world 'divining'. Piper didn't find it to be a completely accurate term, but divining was as close a word as any. Magic, as abundant as it was on the Great Plateau, left its mark on everything it touched. The touch left against surfaces was something akin to erosion, albeit without causing any physical damage, creating an outline that Piper could sense. The only things that Piper was unable to sense at all were those that had never been touched by magic. On the Great Plateau, very little fell into that category.
The way she sensed other people was a little different. Like an ordinary school desk, she sensed every person's skin and clothing, outlined by the touch of magic against it. But because human's skin replaces itself so frequently, the outline that Piper was able to sense was very thin, almost entirely transparent. What really made living beings stand out were the mana cores within them and the vein-like channels reaching out from their core like the branches of a tree. Like a fingerprint, every person had a unique core and mana channels, making it as simple for Piper to distinguish one person from the next as easily as recognizing their face. Instead of a bipedal, muscle-powered skeleton wrapped in a flesh sack, she saw floating orbs with tentacle-like appendages sprouting from them. By 'divining', Piper was able to perceive the world - only, it was very different from the world that everyone else perceived.
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Less than five minutes after her Advanced Botany class, Piper was sitting at her preferred table in the study hall. It was a large room designed and decorated to accommodate and assist several hundred students in their learning efforts at any given time. In her three and a half years at the Academy, Piper couldn’t recall a single instance with more than ten students to keep her company in the high ceilinged room. The reason for the room’s lack of usage, she intuited, were the noise cancelling enchantments placed on every panel of the well polished dark wood walls. The only exception to the enchanted walls were the enchanted work tables. Each of the long bamboo tables throughout the study hall were enchanted to emit a sound frequency that was meant to help students focus. To Piper, the study hall was a godsend.
She pulled a trio of nearly identical belt buckles from the bag she had set on the table in front of her. The silver metal they had been forged from was polished and gleaming, each with identical dimensions. The only way to differentiate one from the others was the design etched into the front. Her final project for the sixth year Enchanting class was to enchant a ‘small’ item, 3 by 3 inches or less, with a Rank 5 or higher enchantment. It was no easy task, to be sure. A large amount of mana expenditure and concentration were required in order to enchant an item at all. The smaller the item, the more difficult it became to imbue it with the intended attributes. Only one final product was required to satisfy the final requirement, but Piper Cloudwater was not a minimum-effort type of student. She fully intended to enchant and turn in all three belt buckles with three different Rank 5 enchantments, and then pressure Professor Clooney to give her extra credit for the extra effort.
She had already completed the time consuming portions of the project, forging and then engraving the buckles with the proper lines and spacing. All that was left was the dangerous part, providing the mana to power the enchantment.
Almost every injury ever sustained during enchanting was the result of a mistake while filling the intended item with mana. If an enchanter provided mana too quickly, the item would explode. If an enchanter provided mana too slowly, the enchantment’s Rank would end up lower than intended and, depending on the chosen enchantment and the material of the item itself, there was a chance that the item would explode. If an enchanter’s mana was incompatible with the item itself, or their chosen enchantment, the item would explode. If an enchanter lost focus for even a split second, the item would explode. That was why Piper smartly chose to take the final step in her project in the best place on the Academy’s campus for silence and concentration.
Piper scooted her seat close to the table and slid the first buckle into place directly below her chin. She took a deep breath, consciously directed to the very base of her diaphragm, to begin her concentrated breathing technique as she prepared to power the enchantment. The dim, grey mana core at her center flared with energy as her breathing intensified, pumping oxygen and mana through her veins and mana channels. A small, but fast moving flicker of color approaching her from the left broke Piper’s concentration. She turned to face it, dropping her concentrated breathing technique and glaring irritably at the small creature that scurried across the table toward her.
Piper did not know what a mouse looked like to most people, of course. But she had learned to recognize the mana signatures of many common creatures, especially those frequently used for various purposes within the Academy. The tiny creature standing on hind legs before her was nearly invisible to her senses, but the rolled parchment it held out to her in offering was brimming with magic. Piper sighed, and then accepted the parchment. She unrolled it and held it up for closer inspection. The elaborate letters were not scratched onto it with ink, but were instead imbued onto its surface, resulting in a bright red font that Piper could easily decipher.
Miss Cloudwater,
Your presence is required for an urgent meeting in my office immediately.
Headmaster Deane
Piper Cloudwater frowned as the mouse scurried back across the table and then promptly disappeared over its edge. An urgent meeting with the Headmaster? What could he possibly want from me?