Orrin tried to not run as he made his way back to his room. He locked the door and pulled out the secret message book that Anabella had given him. Pulling out the stylus, he scratched a message.

Emergency. Finley left school. Daniel pushed your son’s army back to the border and he’s throwing a hissy fit. People are getting drafted.

Orrin sat on the edge of his small bed, willing Anabella to write back. It wasn’t the right time but she had to know. He needed to know what to do.

He went over his options for the hundredth time. Orrin wasn’t dumb enough to try and run with the collar on. He needed it off before he could escape. His hopes of finding some way to do that had hinged on the library but each late night so far had been a bust. He’d spent hours pouring over any book that might have a chance at containing that kind of information. The last message’s request to get into the second floor was a desperate attempt in what Orrin was beginning to think was a hopeless quest.

If I can’t get the collar off, I can try to contact Daniel. He’d already written three letters and dropped them off in different mailcollector boxes around town. He didn’t know if he was being watched. He didn’t know how long it would take for mail to reach Lord Catanzano in Dey. He didn’t even know if Silas would read the letter.

Each one was the same. I’m alive at school. -O.

Orrin cast [Calm Mind] on himself when his hands started to shake. There were another twenty minutes before his next class but Orrin considered laying down and taking a nap. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept a full night. His next class, Mana Signatures, was supposed to be a second chance to connect with Finley. There was no reason for him to go if his target was out hunting his friends.

He reopened the book to the same message, laughing at him. He slammed the book shut and shoved it back into [Dimension Hole].

I will find a way out. He worried he was lying to himself.

Daniel and Madi were probably fighting along the border of Odrana right now. Ellis’s report mentioned elves fighting with them. Orrin wondered how Daniel convinced them to leave the forest.

Orrin let himself wallow for five minutes and then gathered his things. “If you trap me here, I’ll get as strong as I can. Don’t underestimate me.”

“Mana Signatures will be a lot like Sensing Magic but with more practical application,” Professor Wren announced as she entered the room, pushing a cart with blocks of colored metal. The six students, including Orrin, quieted immediately. “Kieran, be a dear and grab the other cart right outside the door.”

The guy sitting near Orrin jumped up and disappeared out the door. He was the only one who’d introduced himself to Orrin when he entered the room. The rest of the class knew each other from the prerequisite course they all finished a few weeks before, but Kieran was a repeat student. He hadn’t passed Mana Signatures the last time he’d taken it.

Kieran struggled to push the other cart in. It held a diverse array of objects. A glass bottle with something green floating in the middle. A blackened claw suspended in an open container of clear liquid that bubbled. A small bonsai tree. A solid metal box with no holes or clasps.

Kieran was short but stout. Orrin heard one of the other students call him the dwarf. He’d met an actual dwarf. Kieran was human. He wasn’t a little person, either. Just a shorter man. The cart placed, Kieran rubbed the top of his close-shaved head and made his way back to his seat. A half-dozen small desks were set up in a semi-circle. He sat back down next to Orrin.

“What is all that?” Orrin whispered as Wren began moving objects off the carts. She placed them one after another down the long table that ran the length of her room.

“Same as she used for the last class,” Kieran muttered back. “Magical items charged with different types of mana. I’m just glad she didn’t try to bring in live animals again. She made me clean up the droppings last time.”

Orrin shook his head as Professor Wren took to her lectern.

“If you are here, you can see the flow of magic. Congratulations. You are already better than nine out of ten idiots in the world. This class is about doing more than seeing. It’s about understanding. Each of you was able to pinpoint a flavor of magic in our last class,” Wren stopped and smirked at Orrin. “That won’t be enough in this class. You will learn to recognize every type of magic I can throw at you. You will learn to manipulate those you are proficient in. You will never speak of the things you learn here outside this classroom, or I will hunt you down myself. Are we understood?”

Orrin was a moment delayed on the quick “Yes, Professor Wren” that the other students recited in harmony. He could feel Kieran hold his breath next to him.

“Casimir here wasn’t in your class last semester. He received a special dispensation to skip Sensing Magic. Since he is better at this than all of you, we should make him go first, yes?”

Orrin regretted not skipping class as he felt the other students staring daggers into his back. A few grumbled. It wasn’t his fault. Wren was the one who let him skip the class.

“Casimir, come up front.” Wren smiled and waved him forward. “You should all feel lucky. You are taking this class with an actual prodigy. Casimir learned to read the magic after only one hard day of work.”

The grumbling got louder. Kieran’s eyes were downcast.

“That’s not true,” Orrin spoke up as he shuffled around the side of the desk. “It took me a few hours one night.”

Orrin’s plan to be quiet and not draw attention to himself was pointless if Finley wasn’t here. He didn’t know what kind of game Wren was playing at but he could guess. She wanted him to be the class target. The person who was naturally good at the subject that the teacher would point to and say, “Why can’t you all be as good as Timothy?”

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

Most of these students were college-aged or older but none of them had to endure the torture of modern-day education. None of them had a different teacher every year of their lives until middle school. None of them had to survive the fresh hell that was multiple changing teachers, teaching styles, and grading systems that arrived with sixth grade until high school graduation.

Orrin almost felt sorry for the five men and women in front of him. The first teacher who used this method of comparison teaching on Orrin was Mr. Loubet. Seventh-grade math shouldn’t be a competition. It shouldn’t have a list of grades from top place to last posted over half the blackboard. Orrin usually hovered near the middle of the list but those at the top pulled some underhanded crap on each other to try and be number one. Those on the bottom… well… Orrin was glad he was good enough at math to not be a target.

Until they’d moved to pre-algebraic equations. Orrin’s mind found the puzzles easier to grasp. He’d moved up the chart in a frightening hurry. Mr. Loubet had even pointed him out as an example of what you could do if properly motivated.

Thankfully, Daniel came looking for him when he didn’t show up for the bus. He listened through the small slates in the locker to the lock combination and opened the door for Orrin. He tried to get Orrin to report the other kids to the school but Orrin went a different route. He purposefully tanked his scores for that section and moved back to the middle of the field. Shining too brightly gets you shoved in a locker.

Orrin knew Wren’s reasoning for teaching this way. Competition breeds greatness. If even one person excelled due to wanting to one-up Orrin, she would count it as a successful class. If Finley was still here, Orrin would duck his head and be bashful. He would let one of the other students… probably the girl with the bangs who called Kieran a dwarf… bully him a little. It would be different in this sophisticated setting, he was sure. More verbal slings than the fists, lockers, and trashcans of Orrin’s past. He could engineer the situation to happen in front of Finley, too. He’d seemed like a noble kind of guy.

Except, there was no reason for Orrin to go through that. He was in a foreign land, surrounded by people who were going off to fight his friends, and unable to do what he wanted or even what he’d been ordered to do. In short, Professor Wren picked him on the wrong day.

It was disappointing. She’d been reactive and volatile during their first meeting but mostly compassionate compared to her brother during orientation.

“False bravado only gets you so far, my dear.” Wren smiled at the rest of the class. “Let’s see if you can tell me what kind of magic is coming from that small tree.”

The other mistake Wren made was not knowing Orrin better before picking him. He’d grown out of the stage from Mr. Loubet’s class of keeping his head down and purposefully tanking himself. Nobody in his high school would call him the best student but he did the work. He studied. He did the homework.

Anabella opened his eyes to the different flavors of magic almost a week ago. He’d been practicing.

Orrin stepped close to the tree. The obvious answer of wood or earth magic was too simple. He put a hand up, feeling the aura of magic. His hand warmed. Not like the fire magic of his [Fire Sword] but like the gentle light of one of Madi’s butterflies. He smiled as he remembered the feel of her magic.

“Light magic.”

Professor Wren hesitated before pointing at one of the rocks on the table. “That one next.”

“Ice.”

She moved him through several items, growing more agitated. “Sit down, Casimir.”

“Yes, Professor.” Orrin bowed his head and nudged his way back behind Kieran.

To her credit, Wren began teaching instead of pushing more. She described the waves of mana that came off all spells or magically-infused items, along with multiple ways people learned to sense them. She drew a long strand of shapes in a helix down one side of her board.

“This is the core magic equation. Almost every known spell can be traced back to here and those that cannot… we just haven’t figured it out yet.”

Wren began drawing more symbols off from different points of the original strip, pointing out the different elemental magics before moving to a few more that certain students in the class had.

She also drew complicated equations that supposedly showed how each mana signature of magic interacted with others. She talked for nearly an hour until the board was full of scribbles so small, Orrin was having trouble making them out.

One of the students, a guy who could be Orrin’s grandfather, raised a hand. After a moment, he coughed politely. Wren turned around.

“Yes, Noor?”

The man stood and clasped his hands behind his back before he spoke. “Professor, if these mana signatures all derive from the same core, is that not proof of an original magic? Something more powerful than all the rest?”

Wren’s smile was positively devilish. “And what magic would you call the core magic? Certainly not your light magic, Noor. I’ve already shown you where it fits in.” She tapped the board where a line of math that made Orrin’s head hurt stood.

“I do not know what it is, only that it must exist for all the other spells to exist around it.”

Orrin could tell there was some other argument being made underneath the spoken words here but he didn’t know the context.

“We can discuss that later. This next question is for anyone other than Kieran, who has so graciously agreed to retake my class. What is the common thread here?”

Orrin glanced around but only saw confused faces. Kieran’s fists were clenched under the table. She’s kind of a bitch.

“Kieran, I suppose this is your moment to shine,” Wren said, walking up to the small desk and tapping the wood.

“Each equation is a derivative of the core magic.” Kieran’s eyes were closed as if he were reading from his memory. His voice sounded like he was reciting from a book. “If a caster knows the equation, the variables can be changed upon casting. While the core magic cannot be obtained, various fluctuations and deviations can be achieved through careful manipulation of the mana signatures.”

What does that mean? Orrin wrote down what Kieran said and tapped his pencil on the paper. Various fluctuations and deviations… huh?

“Professor, how do you manipulate a mana signature?”

Wren waved a hand at the woman with bangs. “You probably can’t. It takes near-perfect understanding of a specific mana signature before you can try. It’s dangerous and not the core subject of this class. If you show me you have a deep understanding of one type of magic’s signature, I’ll graduate you from this class. Next semester, you’ll be able to take a redacted class.”

Orrin raised his hand and waited for Wren to nod in his direction. “Manipulate a mana signature. Is that like changing the spell?”

Wren grabbed a wooden staff from behind her lectern and held it above her head. “[Woodbolt] is not commonly considered powerful.”

She peered down the staff like sighting on a gun and pointed it over the students’ heads. A blast from the end of the staff erupted and a clanging noise sounded behind them.

Orrin turned and noticed a hanging metal circle was rocking. A piece of wood no bigger than his pencil clattered to the ground underneath it.

“However, once a mage understands the magic’s mana signature and learns to manipulate it…” Wren cast another spell.

No. It’s the same spell. Orrin realized as a piece of wood as thick as his forearm speared through the metal circle and pierced the wall behind it.

“You can change the spell in new ways. It’s dangerous. It’s unpredictable. But it makes our magic more powerful than you can ever dream.”