The phoenix disappeared in front of a door, searing an afterimage into his eyes. Jay shook his head, clearing it out, then opened the door. “Hello, I was told I had a lesson for the School of Change in here?”

Onyx sat behind a desk, smoking a pipe. “Diamond’s tried to kill me like three times already since I’ve gotten here,” he complained. “Can’t even leave me alone and let me teach the class.”

Jay wanted to laugh, but kept it inside. Onyx leaned back in his chair. “Are we going to start class, sir?”

Onyx waved his hand. “Sure. So, the School of Change. It runs off Mana. Everything produces Mana.” He raised both of his hands as if to encompass the world. “You may have heard of Entropy. Mana is Entropy, or chaos. However, it is far more controlled, and instead of causing chaos, it causes Change. Mana drives the processes of the world, and if you harness it? You can Change anything.”

Onyx held up a block of wood, obtained from a drawer in his desk. “This cube currently has mana in it.”

He dropped the cube, and it fell to the ground. Then he picked it up again, releasing it once more. The cube stayed put, hanging in midair. The man poked it, and it flew across the room, hitting the opposite wall. “That’s the cube when I remove the gravity mana from it.”

It floated back over to Onyx. “With Mana, you can change the world. Your first job. See the energy of Change. This class is over.”

Jay nodded, leaving. He knew when someone had shut their mouth and wouldn’t open it again, and this was one of those times. Leaving the room, he looked around. Concentrating, he tried to see further, but nothing happened. Change. How does one see change?

Moving out of the teachers’ dorms, Jay stared at the surrounding air. It was always moving, changing. Was that what he was supposed to see? Do you know what I should see?

Yes. I can give you a method to gain the correct sight, but it would be best if you see for yourself, as you did before.

Jay nodded. Alright.

The air continued to move, and he just looked around, spinning in a circle. Nothing popped out to him as being ‘change’.

Reaching into himself, he grasped a spark and pulled it into his palm. This might be better. He traced the flow of energy from himself into his palm, and found a small stream running from the fire in his chest to his hand, powering it. As it did, the fire in his chest slowly grew smaller as it gave its power to something else. Jay surveyed the energy. It was heat, light, energy, all transmitted in a compact form. It caused a change in the world directly above his palm, generating heat and light using the energy. “Fire Mana?,” Jay muttered out loud.

“Very good,” a voice rumbled behind him. Jay almost jumped, turning around. Onyx stood there. “I was about to throw you into a fire so that you would see. Now, look at the world around you, not just inside of you.”

Jay turned his vision to the air, looking for the flows of Mana. He instantly recoiled, tangled streams and globs of mana absolutely everywhere, though the Mana didn’t remain stagnant for long, if it ever stopped. Immediately, he shut if off, the cascade of colors getting to him. “Wow.”

Onyx chuckled. “That was my first reaction, as well.”

He turned it on once more before looking back at Onyx. “Can we continue?”

A devious look appeared in Onyx’s eyes. “Yes, we can.”

Ruby glared at him as he entered, almost late, and sat down. This was the Fire affinity class for the School of Thought. Ruby soon turned back to the board. “Class, what is fire?”

“Light, heat, and energy. Particles moving fast,” a know-it-all looking student said from the front.

Ruby shook his head. “Science does not matter in this class. We are practicing magic. Leave the science to the scientists. We get to burn eldritch beasts, shoot fireballs. What do they do?” Ruby scratched his beard. “Sit around and play god, launching baby-sized streams of fire from those things they call flamethrowers. Let me return to my original question. What is fire? Jay?”

Jay answered, though he hadn’t raised his hand. “There are many different types of fire, but in all of them one thing is common. A hunger to burn something.”

Ruby nodded. “Correct. And as an introduction, you could do worse. That’s our new student, Jay. He’s a first year, but deserves to be in this class. We will not be reviewing topics for him.” Ruby cleared his throat. “By many types of fire, you don’t just have different colors of flame. Does fire have to burn normal fuel? No! We’re working with magic, students.”

The child at the front raised his hand once more. “But fire requires heat, fuel, and oxygen to burn.”

Ruby gave him the death glare, and the student shut up. A icy flame appeared on his hand. “This is frostfire. It burns heat and gives off cold. Are you done now?”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

Without waiting for an answer, Ruby started speaking again. “Fire can burn anything you want. Memories. Heat. Light. Darkness. Just, if you want any of the more special ones, you need to use magic.”

The student raised their hand again, but Ruby didn’t let them speak. “We’re in a magic class. Leave your science out of it.”

The student sheepishly lowered their hand as Ruby went on talking as if nothing had happened. “Make a list of everything you think a flame can burn, and show me in ten minutes. That is your assignment for today.”

The other students started furiously scribbling as Ruby stood, tapping his shoe and waiting. Jay tapped his chin for a moment. There had to be some sort of trick here. How would you make a list of everything in existence? Then he shrugged to himself. Do you think this is a good idea?

You have nothing to lose. Go for it.

Jay wrote a single word on his page, sitting back and waiting. The ten minutes seemed to pass by instantly, and Ruby picked up the paper from each desk before returning to the front. He looked at the first one, showed it to the class, and set it on fire. “Right, but not everything.”

He burned pages one by one until he got to Jay’s. Ruby smiled. “As expected.” He turned it around, showing the class the one word written on it. ‘Everything’. “Correct.”

Ruby reached a few more correct answers, which he dropped in a pile on the ground instead of burning. “Now, why did most of you think that there were things fire couldn’t burn?”

The student at the front raised their hand, and, seeing nobody else, Ruby begrudgingly picked them. “Because fire can’t burn fire, of course.”

Ruby snorted. “Really?’

Two flames appeared in front of him, one blue, one normal fire. “This blue one is waterflame. It burns fire and releases water.”

“But shouldn’t it release fuel if it burns-”

“This is magic. If you want to do science, leave the school.”

The two flames met in front of Ruby. Water pooled on the ground in front of him, the red flame slowly consumed and dropped as water. “Fire can burn anything, if you have the right type.”

Ruby waved his hands. “Where am I going with this? Well, your homework for this week. Next week, I expect you to have decided on a new type of fire. Choose what it burns, and what it releases when it burns that. We will each create a flame of that type next class.”

Then Ruby waved his hand. “I’m losing my patience. Get out.”

The rest of the class rose at the clear dismissal, but Ruby pointed at Jay. “Stay here.”

Jay sat, waiting for the class to leave. After the arduously slow process was over, Ruby walked over to him. “I expect you to have multiple types of fire ready for next week. Got it?”

If nothing else, Ruby was blunt, and Jay respected that. “I can do that.”

Ruby nodded. “If you wish, you may create a flame of a new type in your rooms. Just alter fire to burn something else and release something else. It’s that simple. For example, the commonly used frostfire is when you alter fire to burn heat, and release cold, compounding the effect it gets from burning the heat.”

Jay nodded. Ruby walked to the front of the classroom. “Out.”

Jay walked out of the classroom and to his next class. Psionics, also in the School of Thought.

Crystal met him there, a teacher wearing a gem Jay recognized as iolite standing at the front of the class. “Create a mental barrier. Defend yourselves.”

Jay put up a barrier, simply thinking of one existing in his mind, and Iolite bounced off. He could feel that she wasn’t putting much effort into it, however. After a few minutes, Iolite sighed. “Some of you cannot defend yourselves against me no matter how little effort I put into it, so I’ll just skip you. When you fail the tests, that’s on you.”

Iolite continued. “Next order of business. Stronger mental barriers.” The class groaned. “Yes, I know, but we have an entire year. We can’t do something new every day.”

Iolite held her hand up and a massive, glowing drawing appeared in midair. It showed a multi-layered barrier defending a city. “Your mind is the city. The barriers are your barriers. Many are stronger than one, for they have to break through all of them to get to your mind.”

Iolite tapped the drawing, and it changed. A barrier got destroyed, and an additional barrier immediately built itself at the back of the series of barriers. “Imagine how annoying this would be to break through. So, the use of this when you can have one strong barrier? Right here. Most psionicists have a multi-layered defense of different things to protect their minds, which this sets the foundation for. So, guess how you make these barriers.”

“By thinking multiple barriers into existence?”

Iolite beamed at the hapless student. “Yes!”

The class started imagining barriers into place, Iolite telling them whether or not they were up. “Why aren’t we learning how to sense these barriers for ourselves?,” Another student asked.

“A good question. That actually comes later, after the first test. Any hapless fool who entered this class would learn to defend themselves before dropping out because they couldn’t figure out how to sense mental energy.”

Jay raised a hand. “Isn’t this the School of Thought?”

Iolite put a finger up, then paused. “Yes. However, Thought uses Will to affect the world. Psionics is using Will to defend and attack the mind, and not everyone has the fortitude to do so, even if they have the affinity.”

Iolite continued a brief lecture before letting the students go, giving them homework for next week, just like Ruby, though hers was to form a multi-layered defense.

Jay bade Crystal a goodbye, for she was going back to their dorms, before continuing. He wanted to find Onyx.