“You are not on trial,” Fillibuster waved the flunkies from the room, impatiently, probably thinking he was punishing me to make me stand. With my height, it put me at eye level of anyone sitting at the table and with my strength and constitution, I could stand here all day. “You are being privileged with an entrance exam to our highest level of magical education. You would think you could be just a little more grateful.”
“I should be grateful?” I crossed my arms over my chest. It was like he just couldn’t hear my words over his own interpretation of the events.
Subtlety +1
Exp +10 (1,400/788,209)
“Grateful that you aren’t being tried for treason!” Fillibuster slapped his papers on the table.
“Treason?” I laughed outright. “Is that the charge against me? I’ve acted against the crown? Really? By practicing magic without a license?”
The door behind me opened to admit two laughing figures that I also recognized. One was a girl my age, the example of a peer that made the proceedings appear more fair for the student. She was blond, pudgy, and had her nose ALL the way up the butt of the professor next to her. How was her hair still blond?
Perception +1
“Did I hear someone say treason?” the professor asked on a careless laugh. This was Angel Hammock and she’d been promoted to professor in this world. She’d only been a lab coordinator back in the old world.
“He’s saying that my use of magic is treason,” I remarked calmly.
Will +1
Subtlety +1
Exp +10 (1,410/788,209)
“Absurd,” Fillibuster stood to shake hands with Angel.
“Of course,” Angel responded to Fillibuster, ignoring me almost completely. “It’s good to see you Fill.”
Angel Hammock – Level 30 (Health 1920/1920) (Mana 3480/3480)
Identify +1
Exp +10 (1,420/788,209)
I watched pleasantries exchanged, imagining a sheet of fire scorching them all down to their bones. Did you know that you cannot skip a lab class, even if you are disabled and have an accommodation that allows for absences? I had an accommodation for one and a half the normal absences for any class due to a physical disability. Labs allow zero absences. Angel Hammock slapped me with a Code of Conduct violation because I showed up sick for one of those labs after being denied an absence. The lab instructor took that day off because of a migraine. Angel took a day off to care for her sick mother when she was scheduled for a meeting for the Code of Conduct violation against me. Did you know that there’s a line in their “award-winning” Code of Conduct that states that a student’s disability cannot be used as an excuse for bad behavior? Did you also know that if you stagger out of the lab after taking the quiz and you pass out in the hallway, that a student is in violation of said Code of Conduct because it’s deemed a disruption to the other students? Did you also know that it doesn’t matter how many students disclaim it, only a professor can determine if something is a disturbance to the class?
Angel Hammock was that lab coordinator who decided that I’d slammed my quiz on her desk in a fit of anger and that if it ever happened again, I would be administratively removed from that lab class. Even after it was explained to her that it wasn’t anger, but rather a desperate attempt to stagger out of the classroom before the closing darkness knocked me out, Angel insisted that it was indeed a violation because it had, in her opinion, disrupted the class. And why had I tried to take the day off? My representative from the Disability Center had told me that I could take days off even if the syllabus said you couldn’t. Turns out, you couldn’t.
“I’m sure we can clear all this up,” Angel winked at Fillibuster and sat next to him, facing me. I resisted rolling my eyes. I did resist. Mostly. “How was your trip to the Capital? Was it exciting?” she finally turned to me to ask in that voice adults use when addressing a small child. I ground my teeth.
Will +2
“Not particularly,” I nodded, arms still crossed over my chest, feet planted wide. “I was kidnapped away from my husband, locked in a room, and have had my possessions stolen. I haven’t seen the Capital at all. Just injustice.”
“Don’t be silly,” she waved off my complaint with a laugh that was sickenly echoed by her toady. “You’re here as our guest to be tested to see if you can be a mage!”
“Guests aren’t locked in,” I protested, but only mildly.
Charm +1
“For your own protection,” she scoffed, flopping a huge black braid over her shoulder. “We know how disorientating those first few moments can be when you arrive. Wasn’t the bed comfortable? Did we not have a chair for you?”
“I tried to fix the chairs,” I started, but Fillibuster talked over me.
“She refused to be seated,” Fillibuster shared a condescending head shake with Angel, who pursed her lips in a knowing smile that ate my stomach with anger.
I had to keep telling myself that I wasn’t helpless to these people. I had burned half of it down the first time and they’d still talked to me like this, but their justification for binding my powers for two years had been that burning. I’d spent a year in the kitchen working as a sludge with no magic to pay it off before they’d unlocked my powers and let me become a student. The maddening part was that they wouldn’t let me cook. While my mind pictured the burning buildings, I also remembered the endless piles of dishes that I couldn’t clean with a spell. They’d laid out a punishment that also included two years of work for the college as a mage to pay for the damage to the college. That hadn’t happened.
Will +1
“I see,” she sighed. “Let’s get the bad stuff out of the way, shall we?”
“That sounds reasonable,” I cut into the speech she obviously wanted to inflict on me. “How about telling me where I can file charges against the college for unlawful kidnapping, detainment, and theft?” I did actually know that these things were illegal in this kingdom. There were laws against such things.
“Honestly, you kids nowadays,” Angel rolled her eyes with Fillibuster who chuckled too.
“I was just saying that,” Fillibuster agreed. “The entitlement, right?”
Don’t you just want to barf in their shoes? Terra did it for you. Are you wondering why I didn’t call her to me? No. You’re too smart for that. You know I’m limiting my spell usage. The last spell I’d admit to having was the Summon Familiar one. I just had to bide my time and even I was getting bored with being belittled.
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Will +1
“Fine, I get it,” I blew out a breath. “You are all powerful and can do whatever you want while I’m just a nobody who should be grateful for the chance to lick your boots. Fine. Can we get to my trial?”
Charm +1
“It isn’t a trial, silly girl,” Angel scolded, placing thick hands on the table in front of her to press her point. “We’re inviting you to join our guild of mages. We simply need to assess your talents and make sure you take the proper classes before you are loosed on the world. No one wants a bunch of rogue mages. That would be bad for everyone.”
“Once you graduate from the Universal Neophyte Leveling Venue, you’ll make more money than you can spend,” the toady finally spoke up, her eyes urging me to get with the program like some informercial. Yeeeaaa – no. That wasn’t me.
I took out my purposely pathetic spell book and read off my spells. I then cast each of them like a performing seal at the zoo. When asked, I presented the spell book. As expected, Angel placed a stone on it, and I felt something tighten around me. There was a moment of panic, but I held it back. There would be time later to test how badly they’d messed me up.
Will +1
“Hey, you passed,” the student toady exclaimed. “You’re a student.” Were they trying to distract me from the loss of my spells?
Perception +1
“You bound my magic?” I asked, knowing the answer, but feeling like it might be suspect not to ask.
“Of course,” Angel and Fillibuster nodded together. “It’s for your protection and the protection of all the students here. We can’t have random Fireballs going off all over the place until you learn how to use them responsibly.”
“Don’t worry,” the student rushed to explain. I didn’t even remember her name. Was I as bad as them that I don’t remember her or was I just forgetting out of spite. She was a toady and a sell-out. I didn’t want to know her. “You’ll get your spells back in your third year.”
“Do you have an accelerated program?” I asked, my arms back over my chest. “I was told there might be transfer credits from my work in my previous realm.”
“We can look into that once you’ve passed your morals classes,” Angel nodded, eyebrows up and lips pursed. “For now, let’s get you a room! Isn’t that exciting?”
“Jooooy,” I stole Dom’s phrase and tone. “Does it lock on the outside or the inside?”
Subtlety +1
Exp +10 (1,430/788,209)
“Neither,” Fillibuster laughed as if my defiance was petty. “No one has anything to hide here and we don’t have thieves. Mages learn to respect one another completely.”
“Do your quarters have locks?” I drawled and if he had one ounce of self-preservation under all that self-importance, he’d have taken a second look and a gulp at my look. He did not.
Subtlety +1
Exp +10 (1,440/788,209)
“I look forward to conversations with you after you have learned a few manners,” Fillibuster lowered his chin as if he had glasses to look over at me. I took a breath and smiled, my eyes full of my thoughts of feeding him his intestines.
“I do too,” I replied sweetly.
Charm +1
Will +1
Subtlety +1
Exp +10 (1,450/788,209)
Toady-girl took me to my dorm room and started her infomercial with some gushy comment about how much I was going to like it here once I found a group of friends and some clubs to join. I ignored her completely. So far, all I’d seen of the college this time around were a few dank hallways, one trial chamber, and two dorm rooms, one with and one without locks.
“Am I allowed to go into the city?” I asked the girl.
I know what you’re thinking. This is where the main character makes friends with toady-girl and they become fast friends, finding out the college isn’t so bad. Or, another plot that’s popular is that this girl becomes the sworn enemy who competes for professorial attention in a race to the top of the class. This isn’t that kind of book. This is very subtle satire. I might have the body of a teenager, but I have the experience of fifty years. You get it. I can feel it. That’s why I like you so much. You get my sense of humor. If you had been that student that was escorting me to my room, I know the story would have been more like those up there, but I’m telling you this girl was just another of the brainwashed pawns of the powerful who bought into the cult that is college.
“We have free days on the last day of the week,” the girl answered me with an excited bounce. “We can go into town to attend temple or whatever you do. After that, we sometimes browse the stalls at the market, not that I can afford anything as nice as you can get here in the Capital.”
“Thanks,” I nodded, eying the room that was a little better than the one I’d had the first time. My first trek through this adventure, I’d been in one of those lockable rooms, so this was an improvement. Maybe it wasn’t worth not being able to kill every single one of those smug assholes, but I could do that anytime now.
“Did you want to go with us?” she asked, but she didn’t mean it. That was okay. I didn’t want to go with her. “It’s in three days. You’ll have classes the day after, I’m sure.”
“Yeeeaa – no. I don’t think so,” I told her, pretending that I was considering it. “It’s been a long day.”
Charm +1
“Oh, yeah, sure,” she said, happily finding her chance to dart back toward the door. “See ya.”
And it’s the oddest thing. That’s the last I saw of her in any loop. I never saw that particular blond braid bounce across a courtyard, walking away in a crowd at the market, or at any meeting or assembly of the college. It was like there were NPCs for a single purpose. Unlike Chester and Lily, they weren’t former players, but they also weren’t like Mabel or Beryle who could be counted on to appear in the same setting every time. These NPCs were more like walk-on parts in the movie version.
Perception +1
Here in the Capital, where there were so many characters to keep track of, the program took short cuts. I’m not being mean by ignoring them. It’s like saying you could be mean to an NPC in EQ who had a set program of information. If you ask something off script, they can’t answer it. I came to call these NPCs the Stepford people. That girl would literally be someone else tomorrow. I’d said yes to joining a party of them once, but they didn’t exist between the time I asked and the time they were to meet me. Then as I tried to start conversations, it wasn’t like Mabel. They just said their lines and disappeared.
Perception +1
It was eerie and creepy in a way that makes you think about clowns in the sewers. Seriously. I was never mean to any of them, any more than I’d be mean to my Alexa at home. I just couldn’t think about it without getting creeped out. All I could do was promise myself that I’d make it different. No one deserved to be a walk-on in life, even in a fantasy world like this one.
I’d tell you what my room looked like, but I redecorated the moment she left. I plucked out a deeply nested empty trunk and filled it with the contents of the room. With the room empty and the gnoblin trunk back into a nested spot in my inventory, I opened a blank spell book and tried to cast Summon Witch’s Familiar. The magic resisted me but only for a moment. Something popped and I felt the magic flow. Now I felt gratitude.
Name: Karma
Class: Mage-ish
Level: 20 (1,450/788,209)
Profession: Cook (Level 8: 3,330/6,075), Teacher (Level 7: 350/4,050), Alchemist (Level 6: 500/2,700), Blacksmith (Level 6: 350/2,700), Carpenter (Level 6: 220/2,700), Leatherworker (Level 6: 100/2,700), Mercenary (Level 6: 100/2,700), Merchant (Level 5: 800/1,800), Storyteller (Level 5: 200/1,800), Maid (Level 4: 450/1,200), Seamstress (Level 4: 300/1,200), Singer (Level 4: 240/1,200), Tanner (Level 4: 200/1,200), Bartender (Level 3: 350/800), Stablehand (Level 3: 200/800), Waitress (Level 3: 100/800), Woodsman (Level 3: 20/800), Butcher (Level 2: 20/500), Dancer (Level 1: 50/300)
Health: 18,762/18,762
Mana: 19,610/19,610
Intelligence: 90
Will: 95
Strength: 87
Constitution: 90
Charm: 89
Beauty: 14
Perception: 101
Dexterity: 99
Luck: 87
Skills: Identify (91), Dodge (83), Knife Fighting (83), Blacksmithing (70), Duel Wielding (66), Cooking (65), Grapple (62), Piercing (61), Disarm (50), Meditation (50), Multiple Foe Combat (50), Leatherworking (47), Flirting (45), Kick (43), Sneak (42), Bartering (40), Woodworking (40), Mana Manipulation (35), Barricade (32), Poison Resistance (32), Storytelling (32), Alcohol Tolerance (28), Backstab (26), Bashing (26), Intimidation (26), Hide (26), Slashing (26), Sewing (25), Singing (25), Teaching (25), Unarmed Combat (25), Comedy (21), Dancing (20), Duel Spell Wielding (20), Manic Charge (13), Swordplay (11), Subtlety (8), Tanning (7), Skinning (6), Mana Infusion (5), Disarm Traps (3), Milking (3),
Spells: Summon Familiar (49)