Henry was directed by Chen-Thai through the many winding corridors of the massive castle surrounded on all sides by black walls that stretched to the sky to a small room nestled against them. A horizontal window spanned the length of the classroom at the bottom of the inclined room, but from the angle Henry entered from he could not see the other side. He took a seat at dining-hall style benches with no materials.
As others slowly poured into the room, none sat near him. Most of the occupants were human women, which he assumed was abnormal as the mix of those he saw in the grand hall were perhaps 65-35 male. Of the women in this room, all were conventionally attractive.
The others were as far from attractive as Henry could imagine perceiving. Most were demi or semi-human, and of those Henry could tell were mostly human and male, they were… not outside the expectations of smell for a bookworm in medieval times with access to food but not to showers. The room stank with a mixture of heavy perfume, rancid body-odor, and rotting corpses, but with the wave of a petite hand, the middle-aged woman that was their teacher vanquished the putrid smells to leave only perfume.
She was tall and thin, clad in a tight black dress with pink and red trim. The sleeves were surrounded with pink lace, and she wore a hot pink boa scarf that faded to burnt shades of orange and red toward its tips. She contrasted heavily with not just the human men with her long, pointy ears that implied she was an elf, but also to the demi and non-humans, who somehow defied Henry’s expectations more than his teacher dressing like a fashion model and all his female classmates dressing like they weren’t there to learn.
There were twelve of them, but it was likely impossible to know for sure if most even had binary genders. First and most notable was the floating neon-blue jellyfish made of eyeballs. As its tentacles slowly pulsed with what he supposed was a heartbeat, they made a sickening squishy sound like wet meat sliding against itself. Every eye shined softly blue, casting shadows on the mass of tentacles whose bumpy texture looked like a mass of tongues that sat next to the floating jellyfish. This one didn’t move as it sat, but Henry noticed a trail of slime leading to its desk.
The rest of the males, demi-humans, and nonhumans were not so far outside normal for a fantasy setting, except one. There was a werewolf, a short, fat elf, a tall thin dwarf, a vampire, a bonzai-treant, a demi-human cockroach that Henry flinched at seeing, a morbidly obese man, a marble-like greek god with his shirt off, and a cherub that looked like it was strangled at birth. Its face was blue and its chest was seething in open wounds, and though its wings were huge and dwarfed its body, they did flap. It just floated in the air as if by magic, which made Henry wonder what the purpose of even having wings was in that circumstance.
None of these were that weird. The weirdest of them was the floating skull with a brain inside. There was a drooping half-dead face attached to its left side, but it was more like a drape of skin than anything resembling the outside of a living head. Its right side was a mass of bone-spurs as one might see in a cancer patient whose tissues had been removed. Worse than all this was the two-foot tongue sticking out of its right eye socket, and spinal cord made of eyes floating from behind attached to the back of the head rather than its base as one might imagine a pony-tail. Henry didn’t audably wretch, but it was close.
“So, now that we’re all here, let’s get started, shall we?”
“Um, Ma’am, can i like, go to the restroom? it was like, a long walk and i don’t, like, know where it like is.”
“Ok,” the teacher began, “so, first of all, you’re here to be eye-candy. I don’t expect you to do well.” She looked around at the human women in the room as the words left her lips.
“Make sure you come to class though, ok? Not much point in you being enrolled if you aren’t here, but if you show up I’ll pass you.”
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
An audible sigh of relief came from the thirty women present. Henry chortled, but it didn’t seem to be noticed.
“Just make sure you don’t talk in class,” she added sternly, “you’d distract the ones who are here to learn.”
Zi-Lor introduced herself and instructed the blonde woman dressed in modern western jean-shorts and a cutt-off white top where the restroom was.
“Don’t ask next time.” The student with an expectation of an easy A and full bladder left, returning a few minutes later to Henry’s surprise. He supposed she did actually have to attend class to pass, but he still assumed she’d ditch the first day after hearing that.
As the minutes passed, Zi-Lor began the lesson.
“As you should know,” she looked to Henry, though did not address him in particular, “this class is not focused on any one school of magic.”
She snapped her fingers and a projection appeared behind her with no projector, though the image still flickered like it had one. It was a wall of text whose language Henry could not… no? It turned into English after a few-second delay. It was a syllabus.
“Instead, we’re focused on advanced practical application with an emphasis on causing maximum possible effect in battle.”
“What does that mean?” she asked rhetorically.
“A battle is won by routing the enemy, but it doesn’t matter how that happens. You can kill them all in one spell, you can make your own troops more effective, you can transport troops behind the enemy, carve the landscape beneath their feet, drop a river on their heads, throw a fireball to kill their general and break their magic shielding, cut off their logistics, kill their leaders at home, and the list goes on.”
“There are many ways to skin a horse, and indeed many ways to extract information out of a man that could lead to his army’s defeat. This course isn’t about combat per se, it’s about extracting your existing potential to lead to more effective combat and non combat outcomes. If that means espionage, you’ll learn how to better gather and extract information. If that means one on one honorable combat, it means making your spells bigger, stronger, and faster. If that means leadership, then you’ll learn how to augment your allies and debuff the enemy.”
The human women weren’t paying attention as they didn’t have to. Some were doodling, some were softly chatting in the back, some were playing with wands and little sparks of fire at their tips. The teacher didn’t seem to mind as those there to learn were still paying attention and thus all those in class were serving their purpose. She was a very practical woman that way, it seemed.
“Now, let’s get the biggest question I’m sure you all have out of the way.”
“Why am I, Zi-Lor, the best research mage in this academy and greatest magician of our time, teaching you all in particular?”
She looked at Henry and her message was clear.
“You all are the best and brightest students the academy has seen in a long time, but of course I don’t care about you personally. In all likelihood you’ll end up above average at best.”
No one dared interrupt her with an objection to their talents. It seemed this was known.
“I’m here because he’s here, and you’re here because the higher ups think it would be beneficial for him.”
“So, that being said, I don’t want to be here, but I’m going to teach you to be the best damn magicians this side of the Great Scourge for the next century to come. Sometimes we have to do things we don’t like and don’t want to. I’m not saying that to make you or him feel bad, I’m saying that because you’d better help him learn, ok?”
“If he asks you to tutor him, do it.”
“If he needs help, help him at your own expense.”
“If I say to talk amongst yourselves, what I mean is help him understand.”
“Got it?”
A murmur of understanding passed through the class.
Henry was conflicted. On the one hand this was obviously good for him, right? The whole situation had been arranged for his benefit and everyone here was there to improve him or help him in some capacity. On the other hand, it meant he wasn’t going to beat the allegations of special treatment.
“So, uh,” Henry finally decided to interrupt, “why are things set up this way?”
“Because Chen-Thai and the Ultra-Grand-Supreme-Omega-Undefeated-Heavenly-Zenith-of-All-Creation-Absolute-Master-of-Quintessence Chad Anderson said so, and he’s my boss.”