Thrand was gone, the spot where he’d landed was already being repaired by groundskeepers. Students were expected to continue their studies as if what had just happened was normal. Matthew and Julie were mortified, and several of the non-wendigo students looked the same. The wendigo students had already started mocking Freja for being a failure of a noble who was kicked from her family, calling her something Matthew had never heard before: a Shai.
“What was that?” Matthew said. “Why didn’t anyone do anything?”
Julie's eyes were as wide as dinner plates, and she still had a hand over her mouth. “I-I don’t know, Mat.”
“What you all just witnessed was called a shiagaunt,” Ms. Dimii said to a small group of stunned girls a few feet away. “None of you have to worry, it is a wendigo tradition.”
The Dorm Mother’s voice instantly gained the two shell shocked student’s attention. Matthew and Julie looked at each other for a moment as the initial surprise gave way to questions they wanted answered. Nearly all of the students that huddled around Ms. Dimii were also human, with a smattering of elves and a single goblin. They were all worried about what they’d just seen, and obviously shaken by the fact that the Lord of the domain let his son terrorize his daughter out in public.
A tall elf girl asked, “Can that happen to us? I mean, he just abused his daughter in front of all of us.” She looked more and more like she was going to hyperventilate. “Can the Lord of this place just show up and…”
Ms. Dimii cut the girl off before she worked herself up any more. “No-no, the shiagaunt is a tradition to disown a family member who has dishonored their family and was in line to become an heir. It is a form of public shame on the individual that has caused the disgrace. It may have appeared brutal to many of you, but I can assure you what the Lord did is completely legal and an accepted practice only under those extenuating circumstances. Everyone here is completely safe.”
“What’s going to happen to Freja?” Matthew asked.
The crowd all nodded along with the question, many of them still shaken by the brutality of the Shiagaunt.
“The rules around the shiagaunt are pretty clear,” Dimii said calmly. “ They will give her money and some stipulations about not using the family name, and then she will be released to start her life over. The fact that she was the daughter of a noble means she will be given enough money to travel wherever she wants and place down roots easily.”
“So, she’ll be fine?” Julie asked.
“Yes, there shouldn’t be anything to worry about,” Dimii said with a small but reassuring smile. “If you all have any other questions about the Shiagaunts you can read about it in the library, in the cultural section.” She placed her hands on her hips. “Now I know that this was more excitement than usual in the morning, but you all need to get to your classes before you’re late. I will not be writing any excuse passes for you all.”
The crowd that had gathered slowly dispersed. The girls felt assured that at the very least the shiagaunt was not something that could happen to them. A few students stayed to ask the Dorm Mother other questions related to their rooms, but they were quickly answered and moved on. Matthew and Julie were the last students around the Dorm Mother. They were Freja’s best friends and had more questions as to the safety of their friend and her whereabouts.
Dimii kept her tone light, but there was obvious worry behind her words. “I understand you both want more information, but there is no set location for where a family has to take a dishonored family member. Freja should be fine, though. They will give her money, and when she settles down I’m sure she will send you both letters.”
“Is there nothing else we’ll be able to do but wait?” Julie asked. “Please, Ms. Dimii.”
Ms. Dimii looked them both over. “Right now, no. All we can do is wait to hear back from her. Just remember that wendigo can lose track of time quite easily; it comes with the longer lifespan. Now all students need to get! I was serious about not writing any passes today.”
The two students felt there was more to the story, but just like Ms. Dimii said, if they wanted to find out more about the Shiagaunt they needed to look it up for themselves. They dropped the subject and hurried to their classes.
Dorsehal Academy was one of the most prestigious magic schools on the continent. Matthew was a little less than enthused when he’d first found out he would be attending. He didn’t know what to expect from the wendigo people other than the stories he’d heard growing up about people with antlers that eat only meat. Up until the Shiagaunt he’d had no issue with the wendigo people. They respected magical prowess no matter who had it; well, as long as they weren’t druids.
Stolen story; please report.
Still, while he was worried about his friend who was taken away from the academy so cruelly there was nothing he could do. Aside from visiting the mail room every day to see if she’d sent him or Julie a letter. Time crawled at first, his classes going by at a snail’s pace, but soon life just continued on.
“As inspired young spellcraft mages, you all are at the forefront of magical research and development,” Professor Dainius said from the front of the classroom. “Where other magic casters simply move a wand and chant a spell they don’t understand, we quantify that magic into its base component parts.”
The professor was a gruff dwarven man with a long black beard that seemed to be perpetually on fire, or at least smoking. While he talked a mechanical hand floated into the air nearly, every available surface covered in intricate patterns of magical circuitry. The hand moved to the chalkboard and created a beginner-level magic circle, inscribing the proper formula around the perimeter and encasing it all in a dodecagon.
“Enchanting, Technomancy, Artificing. These specializations make up the study of the building blocks of magic research,” Dainius stated with pride. “Anyone can wave a wand around but-”
“Excuse me professor, but you skipped one,” Matthew stated, although he knew the professor knew he skipped it on purpose. “Invocation is my specialization.”
Dainius looked at the student with a glare. “Ah, yes, invocation,” he said with annoyance. “These four specializations make up the foundation of magical understanding. Matthew, please stand and tell the class what this magic diagram is.”
Matthew looked around at his fellow classmates who tried not to make eye contact. Matthew didn’t expect anyone would help him in this situation, no one wanted to be on the professor's bad side. He signed, stood at his desk and looked over the diagram as the floating metal hand finished the last symbols. The inner ring was just a simple circle, the representation of a magic core. Meaning that this was a spell that would be directly connected to the mage who performed it.
The inscription along the perimeter was divided into four parts. The first was the activation sequence for the spell. In all other disciplines it would be the spoken words, but for spellcasters it was a series of code that had to be empowered by their mana. The second section was the command sequence that would take the mana if the conditions for activation were met, and ensure the mana was stable before passing it along to the next part. Stage three was the saturation pushing the mana in the right volume to empower the full diagram before the spell effect activated. Lastly was the activation portion of the diagram, which connected directly into the second shape of the dodecagon, increasing the potency and longevity of the magical effect.
“It is a Cast Light enchantment,” Matthew stated with certainty. “It would cause the object it was inscribed on to produce a light based on how much mana was inputted. It would continue to shine even after the mana was cut off for a short time.”
The professor clapped and motioned Matthew to sit down. “Right, this is the basic enchantment of Cast Light, but it has a twist to it. I added a variable to it that would allow the mage to change the color of the light.” The professor looked around the class. “Your homework tonight is to take a beginner level enchantment and create a variable. You may use the Cast Light enchantment, but you will have to add two variables since I have already shown how to do one.”
The professor continued his lecture on how the variables work and where students can place them in beginner level enchantments without causing catastrophic failure. On beginner level enchantment that would look like a short, or possibly just a sudden release of mana. On higher level enchantments catastrophic failures were at best the destruction of the item being enchanted, and at worst a sudden explosion.
Matthew knew the professor didn’t quite like him because, unlike everyone else in the class, his specialization was invocation. It was the rarest of the spellcraft specializations and the one most unlike others in his discipline. He could use a wand and speak words of power. From what Matthew found in his research, the invocation mage used to be called ritual mage or shaman caster. He guessed the name had been changed to make it sound less crude.
The difference between him and other magic casters was the fact that he drew on ambient mana to empower rituals, not mana from his core. His core would only be used to start the ritual, after which ambient mana could keep the effect going. It didn’t require him to use inscribing tools like the enchanters, or to build out complex machines like the artificers or create magic circuitry like the technomancers.
After class Matthew walked to his usual meetup spot in the courtyard to wait for Julie. He was surprised to see her fiery red hair stationary amongst the crowd. She was already there, sitting cross-legged on a raised rock platform. He shook his head in disbelief, she’d never been early in the entire four years he’d known her.
The pillar of earth she was on wasn’t real rock; stone wouldn't be able to break through the enchantments on the brick walkways. Instead it was a magic construct, essentially just solid mana that took the form of her geokinesis specialization. Julie smiled wide when she saw him and jumped off of her pillar, which crumbled into sparkles and dissipated.
“Mat! Finally you’re here. I thought you might have fallen asleep at your desk or something,” Julie said with surprising seriousness. “We have to go to the mail room right now!”
“Why, what’s going on?” Matthew asked.
“Ms. Dimii told me that she got a letter from Freja and we probably got one too!” Julie said with a wide smile. “So, she has to be alright! Apparently she changed her name to Tanisha and she is living in… Wait, no, I am not going to spoil everything for you.”