Determined, a young woman marches down the hall. Her expression is implacable and her gait is inexorable. Without hesitation, without fear, she is the vision of a modern day Amazonian, poised to march into battle. Walking through the school, she makes her way to a classroom and ducks her head inside.

With a faux smile she says, “Hey Mr. Memely, the office sent me to pick up Bella. Can I steal her for a bit?”

In the classroom, the teacher pauses his lecture and stammers out, “Ahem, yes well go ahead then Bella.”

Pushing her glasses into place, Bella bounces excitedly out of her chair. Racing over to Hailey she whispers in an excited voice, “Is it time for my first lesson!?”

Pushing her past the doorframe she flashes a quick smile to her other friends in the class before closing the door and shoving Bella against the closed door, whispering to her as she does, “Not here! Just follow me and don’t say anything.”

Grabbing Bella by the hand, she begins to drag her down the hall. Quickly, she realizes that Bella has plans of her own as she begins dragging Hailey within a few steps.

“Slow down! You don’t even know where we’re going,” Hailey admonishes her friend.

Whining, Bella replies, “But I’m excited! I’ve been waiting for this for what feels like forever. Plus I was really worried-” stopping abruptly she whirls about and says, “oh my God I forgot to ask about Becca, how did-”

“Shut up!” says Hailey, grabbing her friend painfully on the upper arm. “You can’t talk about this stuff here. Can’t you just wait until we get to the library first?”

Wincing at the force behind her friend’s grasp, Bella nods and begins walking again. Silently the pair makes their way through the school to the library and back behind the stacks until they reach an abandoned room with a broken altar, dusty bookshelves, and scorched table. Soon as the door closes behind the pair, Bella bursts out, “I knew we were coming here, I just knew it!”

Sighing, Hailey says, “Yes, okay you got me.” She begins to ready another complaint about her friend’s enthusiastic attitude but falls silent when she turns around and sees the serious expression on Bella’s face. “Bella?” she asks in an uncertain tone.

“I heard you fought Becca,” her friend says in a quiet voice. “I was worried about you. I thought about going to the hospital but I knew that would be a mistake but…” trailing off she hesitates before saying, “How are you?”

Silently, Hailey lifts her shirt, exposing the bandages underneath. With morbid curiosity, Bella runs her hands along the wrappings. Gently she checks the wounds, pity welling in her eyes, before stepping back. Quiet builds between the pair for one minute, then another, as both girls struggle to find the right words.

Bella breaks the silence, timidly asking, “Who… I know that she asks, I mean that she asks you who you saw,” but she falls silent once more upon seeing Hailey’s expression.

“Please,” Hailey murmurs, looking away and pushing her sweater back down, “I can’t, I won’t talk about it.”

“Okay.”

Swallowing lightly, Hailey puts on a smile and says, “But that’s not what we came here to talk about, right? Wanna learn some magic?”

Brightening, Bella responds with enthusiasm, “Yes! Are we going back to Belinda’s home?”

Shaking her head, Hailey answers, “I was thinking we’d bring her here instead.”

“Cool!” says Bella, then she wrinkles her nose as a thought occurs to her, “Will she be, you know, like naked and stuff?”

“No,” says Hailey, giving her friend an odd look.

Relieved, Bella smiles, “Thank God, that was the strangest thing. So can we get started?”

With a smirk, Hailey pulls her dagger out of thin air and rights the table before slamming it into the wood. A second later, the metal begins to twist until it takes the shape of a woman clad only in a flowing robe.

“Hmph, it is about time child,” says Belinda as her miniature form walks across the table with a regal aura towards Bella. Stopping in front of the suddenly cowed girl she adds, “Well girl, shall we begin?”

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Promptly sitting down on the floor, Bella intones breathless and wide eyed, “Oh absolutely!”

Sniffing at the display of unbridled enthusiasm, Belinda cocks her head and glares at Hailey until she sits down with a roll of her eyes. Looking down at the two pupils, she waves her hand and a light appears. “What is magic?”

Bella’s hand rockets into the air. Sighing, Belinda waves in her direction and says, “With just the three of us, it will be far easier if you simply speak when appropriate girl.”

Blushing slightly, Bella begins to stammer out an apology but abruptly stops when she sees Belinda’s expression. Quickly changing focus to her answer she says, “Magic is the energy of the universe, the primordial force that powers life.”

Snorting, Belinda says in a contemptuous tone, “Incorrect. Hailey?”

Uncomfortable at the attention, Hailey answers with, “Ummm, like the energy of everything else maybe? You know like all the not-alive stuff?”

Belinda closes her eyes and counts backwards silently before speaking. “Again, incorrect. Magic, as I have told you before child, is the fundamental expression of reality.”

“What does that mean?” asks Bella inquisitively.

Waving her hands in a mockery of Belinda, Hailey answers, “Something about inventing the universe if I remember correctly.”

Belinda shoots her a sharp look before continuing in an unfazed voice, “It means that magic is the purest expression of reality, the fundamental building block of the universe. What most casters call spells are simply shorthanded ways to describe specific phenomena.”

Halfway raising her hand, Bella sheepishly puts it back down before saying, “I don’t get it, sorry.”

Belinda considers the lost expressions of her students for a moment before asking, “What is a statue?”

Ever ready with an answer, Bella promptly supplies, “A stone man,” frowning she clarifies, “well like more of a stone person, but like you know a carving in the shape of a person.”

“Are you certain?” asks Belinda, “have you ever seen a statue in any other shape or made from any other material?”

Bella frowns. “Well yeah I mean technically but-”

“Understand me girl, you cannot have ambiguity in your spells. You cannot simply summon a statue without first defining the words you speak. If your definition is imprecise or inadequate, terrible consequences can occur and if you are lucky, the spell will simply fail. So I ask you again, what is a statue?”

Glancing helplessly at Hailey who simply shrugs, Bella tries to answer the question, each time failing as Belinda asks for information that is more specific. After a minute of the exchanges flying back and forth, she says with a weary sigh, “Okay, so a statue is a shape of an object, person, or abstract design made out of a wide range of potential materials that will retain shape under various states of duress, all of which exist in our physical plane and reality. Did I miss anything?”

Belinda nods and simply says, “More than you could possible comprehend. Spells must be perfectly specific. Consider if we wanted a spell to summon forth a horse, can you describe the animal down to its smallest pieces?”

“Like the cells?” asks Bella.

“No girl, like the atoms,” replies Belinda in a waspish tone. Then she softens and says, “And so on down to the pieces of matter that make up atoms and the pieces that make up those pieces until you reach the bottom. There, when you cannot reduce it any further, you have magic.”

“So it’s like the Legos of the universe?” asks Hailey. Seeing the expressions on her two compatriots faces she clarifies, “You know, like building blocks.”

Belinda sniffs with a hint of scorn, and then she speaks. “Setting aside the jejune quality of your example, you are fundamentally correct.”

Bella then asks, “So, how does magic work at all then? I’ve seen how big the textbooks get for med school, if you had to recite all that and more each time you wanted a horse you’d probably die of old age before finishing anything.”

Belinda nods. “Indeed, this is where knowledge of spells is important and why I am indispensable to this child,” she says with a gesture towards Hailey who shifts uncomfortably under her scrutiny. Turning back to Bella, she begins to speak once more. “You are made up of parts, each with their own name. You have organs, which in turn have cells, which in turn have atoms and so on. These are all just convenient terms to describe something far more complex in an efficient manner.”

Lighting up, Hailey chimes in, “I remember this, that’s how spells work!”

“Exactly. Ancient sorcerers far more powerful than ourselves grappled with this problem and found a solution. Instead of describing each piece of reality from the ground up, they bound together common meanings into phrases, words, and gestures that they then used to bundle more information together until a spell that once was a textbook became a simple phrase or movement. They had to create whole languages just to describe pieces the barest pieces of atoms. The result of all this is that when you utter ‘statue’ the spell knows to invoke a shape of an object, person, or abstract design made out of a wide range of potential materials that will retain shape under various states of duress, all of which exist in our physical plane and reality. Further, it understands the meaning behind ‘duress,’ ‘material,’ ‘object,’ and so on.”

“So we just learn the language and we’re set?” inquires Bella.

At the sound of Bella’s earnest tone, Belinda laughs for a full minute before saying, “So girl, you propose to learn a language so complex and extensive that no demon, spirit, or immortal being has managed just like that? No, such a thing is an impossibility. Imagine that you wished to memorize every dictionary on the planet, understand how to speak every language, and uncover all the lost languages, all while trying to comprehend words that have no translation. This task would be easier than what you propose.”

Grumpy from her chastising, Bella grouses, “You could have just said no.”

Moving on, Belinda explains, “These ancients understood everything. To decipher their language, first you must know the meaning behind each word. Simply mispronouncing one word or leaving out a gesture could cause a catastrophic change. So to understand but a word, you must first create the universe.” Her expression then turns wistful. “But yes, if you understood this language you could do anything magic is capable of.”

Exasperated, Hailey cuts in, “Or you could just learn the spells and ignore all this mumbo jumbo. Seriously, who cares about why it works? What matters is that it does.”

Frowning, Belinda says, “Fundamentals are critical. Especially for Bella’s situation, as she cannot use any spells. It is far more important that she understands how magic functions to help her control the ritual connected to her blood.”

Frustrated, Hailey asks, “Well I was hoping we could have a bit more of a practical lesson instead of all this theory. How about teaching her how to learn a spell? She can watch you teach me.”

Intrigued, Belinda replies with a question, “What did you have in mind?”

Her Amazonian expression flares back to life as Hailey answers, an implacable glint in her flinty eyes. “I want you to teach me how to cast a geas.”

Suddenly angry, Belinda’s tone promises that her position is exactly as immutable as Hailey’s as she intones in a severe voice, “No.”

The two lock eyes, staring one another down in a silent fight for dominance. Glancing back and forth between the two, Bella finds herself suddenly caught between two determined women. Hesitantly, she asks, “What’s a geas?”

Hailey is the first to answer, asserting, “A way for me to share my secret without fear of losing it.”

Belinda’s response is cold as the metal of her body as she cuts back with, “A set of chains to enslave and dominate.”

“But… what exactly is it?” asks Bella again, still lost.

Breaking the staring contest, Hailey looks at her and says, “It’s a spell, one that places a magical compunction on someone. With it I can tell Missy and Theo about Eldritch without worrying if they’ll share the secret, because they won’t be able to.”

Shifting her gaze to Belinda, Bella awaits her rebuttal.

When it comes, it carries an undertone of icy rage. “It is the same spell that enslaved my ancestor, the basis for all of the misery that snake Thorm Athow created.”

Timidly raising her hand, Bella squeaks out, “Thorm who?”

Poor Bella, caught between two angry lionesses with nary a savior in sight! Indeed, dear reader, the mystic bond between Eldritch and Belinda itself may be at stake next week in… “Costs and Benefits!”