“Wow, what a feat! So you use your mental chaos to create magical results, then use mental peace to control them! Amazing!”

“Seems risky in my opinion. What if you can’t calm down once you get all riled up? What d’you do then?”

“I think it’s cool! You can use magic without having to stay calm like a monk this way!”

“But what if you’re doing dangerous magic and you lose control? Can you blame it on the technique if you murder a bunch of people by accident? Seriously…”

Evidently, there were mixed opinions of the technique of shadow magic that everyone had brought to this lesson, and they’d only been strengthened by Romy’s display of skill.

Abrial turned back to look at her desk. It reflected the bright sunlight on its polished wooden surface, not a drop of shadow in sight.

A feeling of uselessness floated up into her chest like fog. She forced it down.

“I’ll just try again, harder this time,” she muttered fiercely to herself. “That’ll do it for sure.”

She tried again, many times. But no matter how hard she tried, nothing came of her efforts. Not even a single speck of shadow materialized before her. Up at the instructor’s table, Bi Chanjuan lazily played with a ball of darkness, tossing it between her hands like a plaything and occasionally smirking over at Abrial’s display of helplessness.

Abrial deliberately increased the chaos within her mind by repeatedly visualizing different horrible attacks of panic she had experienced over the years. Her hands shook, and her mouth went dry as a desert. She visualized the appearance of shadows before her on the desk so fiercely that drops of sweat actually began to drip from her forehead, like little diamonds. But they were the only fruit of her suffering. No shadows came.

A spot behind her right ear began to itch slightly. She ignored it for a while, continuing to conjure up horrible, furious memories and inky shadows in her mind with a contorted brow. Eventually, the itching became too unbearable, and she reached behind her ear to harshly scratch the itch away. It subsided a tiny bit, but it continued to burn.

They moved other activities: slicing blocks of wood to bits with sharpened air, turning wooden daggers to silver. Finley succeeded in creating shallow slices on her block after much concentration. The students in the back row marveled at how Shu Romy sliced their block to shreds with a few strikes of sharpened air, as though it wasn’t thick wood, but paper.

Abrial couldn’t make a single mark on the surface of the wood.

She was pale as a ghost by now. Finley had encouraged her to stop and rest a few times, but Abrial was adamant on producing a result, and continued to torture herself mentally. That spot behind her ear continued to itch irritatingly, and she scratched it frustratedly each time it became unbearable, until the skin felt raw.

When given a wooden dagger, Finley was able to transform the outside layer of it into silver, creating a usable weapon, though rather light and not as effective as a pure silver dagger. In the back row, Romy transformed their dagger to pure silver with a gilded handle using just a single touch of their deathly pale finger, creating a precious battle tool — though of course, smelting blades is always the most accurate method if resources allow. They went paler than usual and turned the dagger back into wood immediately when they noticed students crowding to marvel at it. Disappointed, everyone returned to their seats.

Abrial tried every approach of visualization she could think of, every metal she could remember the name of, every memory of panic and fury that she could pry out of her brain. Sweat dripped down the sides of her face, and her head began to ache from squeezing her eyes shut so tightly. But she noticed neither the pain nor the cold sweat. She continued, as though she was in no pain at all.

And yet, despite her iron will, every time she opened her eyes, the wooden dagger was still, infuriatingly, only a fucking wooden dagger! It sat innocently on the desk, unmoving and plain. Not a single gleam of metal in sight.

It seemed to be laughing at her.

Abrial’s hands twitched, longing to snatch up the dagger and snap it to bits. She restrained herself, wincing as she held the right side of her head. That patch of itchy skin had begun to actually hurt, rather than just itch. A headache seemed to be spreading out from that point, which was right beneath her ear, like the curling arms of a thorny vine.

Finley noticed, her brow creasing deeply.

“Abrial,” she said seriously. “You should stop. That is enough. You are going to harm yourself, both mentally and physically. Please take a break.”

Abrial shook her head, pulling her hand away from her ear.

“I’m fine. I don’t need a break. Just watch, I’m gonna do it! I’ll make something happen, for sure. I will!”

Finley sighed. She had been watching Abrial struggle for almost an hour now, the pain in her dark eyes increasing exponentially. Abrial had never been one to back down from a challenge. But, being practical, if she hadn’t been able to produce any results at all up to this point, how could she when she was this exhausted? She was only going to torture herself into exhaustion at this rate…

At that moment, Bi Chanjuan announced the final activity.

“Thank the immortals, time's almost up. Shit, I was about to fall asleep. Let’s all do one more activity, shall we? This is a fun one. Who hasn’t heard that shadow magic is the best technique for creating scorching fires?”

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Bi Chanjuan waved her pale hand through the air.

On each student’s desk, there appeared a small tree the size of a vase. Each tree had small blossoms and leaves tiny as berries, sprouting endearingly from thick, short mossy limbs.

“Unless you’re an idiot, you shouldn’t need visualization instructions by now. Try and burn these trees. Make a fire. Have a blast. Burn it to ashes. Don’t kill anybody. There’s five minutes left in the lesson time, and I’m leaving as soon as it’s over, so be quick about it. Oh, and don’t be a jerk. Put away your desk when the lesson’s over.”

Bi Chanjuan yawned, lying down next to the instructor’s table. She held her golden nails up to the sun, sharpening the nails on one hand with those on the other.

“Aw, but these trees are so cute…” someone whined. “Do we really have to burn them?”

Bi Chanjuan’s cold voice immediately carried over in an almost murderous whisper:

“Burn yourself instead for all I care. But don’t you dare make a mark on your desks if you do, or Bi Gho will be angry with me. And if I get in trouble with her because of you, I’ll be more than happy to slit your throats as compensation.”

Suddenly, all complaints about burning such pretty trees seemed to have evaporated.

Abrial examined the tree in front of her, feeling fatigued. It was a nice little tree, budding with sweet little flowers and leaves that shimmered slightly in the end-of-summer breeze passing through the clearing.

She took a deep breath, steadying herself.

You can do this, Abrial. Just a little fire. Not even a fire; a spark. That would be enough. Surely, you can make a tiny little red spark! A teens-tiny one! Like, like an ant!

As she was about to re-visualize a torturous memory of panic, she choked.

Her hand flew to her right ear as she doubled over.

“What is it, Abrial? What is hurting you?” Finley was crouching by Abrial’s side in mere moments. She reached out to touch Abrial’s shoulder. “Is it a headache? Stop visualizing, take a few deep breaths, and — ”

Abrial shook Finley off roughly. When Finley had steadied herself enough to look at Abrial again, Abrial was glaring at her scaldingly. Her eyes gleamed with fire — that dark fire of shadows that crackled in her eyes only when she was utterly furious, or determined to the point of being unstoppable, or both.

“I’m fine,” she hissed, her words dripping with icicles. “Leave me alone.”

She returned to staring intently at the small tree, her brow contorting with concentration and pain.

Finley was about to reach out for Abrial’s shoulder to tap it and put her to sleep before she could exhaust herself to death, when a blinding light flashed throughout the clearing.

Abrial’s face was seared by a wave of heat that sucked her eyes and mouth dry. She closed her eyes momentarily, sensing an unbearably bright and hot light shining right behind them. Her hair that was tied up in a loose bun behind her head came free, flying out behind her pale face like many shining black rivers of ink in the boiling hot wind.

When she opened her eyes, her vision was filled by a raging, roiling fire.

In fact, all anyone in the now-silent clearing could see very well right now was this hot, white and red column of fire up near the instructor’s table. It rose high up into the sky, like a furious cylindrical bonfire, flaming out over many heads. At the center, where it was burning the tiny tree to a crisp of ashes, it glowed white. Around the edges, it turned a pale yellow, then a bright orange, then a flaming scarlet red that licked out at the air, stealing the moisture from the mouths of anyone sitting within ten desks of it.

Abrial sat there, stunned by the deafening crackling noise and blinding heat and light consuming the small tree in front of her. The smell of burnt bark filled her nose.

Suddenly, an enormous, glowing grin broke out over her face, glittering in the light of the demonically hot fire. She vaulted to her feet, pointing and whirling to Finley.

“Look! Look, Finley!” she cheered emphatically, as though Finley wasn’t already staring at the fire with a look caught between awe and deathly pale shock. “I did it! I told you, I knew I could! If I just tried hard enough, I’d be able to — to…”

A loud sputtering noise emitted from behind her. A spark flicked out onto her hand, burning it. She paid it no notice. As she watched, the fire flickered, coloring in from hot white to blood red. It shrank in an instant, sputtering out to nothing.

All that was left was the crisp, skeletal remains of that cute little tree, crumbling to ashes along with the pot.

Abrial stared.

“But — where did it — ? The fire, it just — ? Gah!”

She crumpled over. Finley rushed to her side in a flash, trying to bend down to get a look at Abrial’s face, which was obscured by her arms that reached over to cup behind her right ear.

“What is it? Abrial, take your hands away for a moment. I can ease the pain, just let me touch the spot…”

But Abrial was in too much pain to even hear Finley at all. The pain shooting through her head was like the striking of lightning bolts, fierce and swift, making her utterly blind to the world around herself. She crumpled to the ground, moaning and covering her head. In the grass, she began to twitch like a wounded animal.

“What’s going on? Why’d she fall over? She get burned?”

Students were beginning to rise to their feet to get a look at Abrial as she convulsed, groaning and panting.

“What the heck?” someone gaped, pointing. “There’s smoke coming out of her hands!”

Indeed, escaping through the gaps between Abrial’s fingers, which were pressed desperately to the patch of skin behind her right ear, were wisps of thick gray smoke.

“Her mouth, too — look, look at her! Her mouth is smoking!”

As Abrial twitched and jerked and curled into herself, hot clouds of reddish-gray smoke rose from her lips, puffing up into the air. Finley reached out to touch one of them after a moment’s hesitation. She recoiled, face paling. The smoke was extremely hot. She looked at her own hand to find that a red blister had already formed on the finger that the smoke had brushed.

“Everyone stand back!” she commanded, anger swelling in her voice. “Get back, it is not safe, and you are crowding her! Someone fetch the emergency healers from the infirmary, and instruct them to bring a stretcher!”

Abrial did not hear any of the commotion going on around herself. Her vision flashed blood red, then hot white, then red again as pain coursed through her body at such a level that she couldn’t even comprehend how much it hurt any longer, only that her body was contorting and her head seemed to have shot into the clouds, carrying her far, far away. The only thing she could feel clearly was the erratic, impossibly loud beating of her heart, and a strange heat in her chest that radiated outward, like her body was a raging furnace.

For a brief moment, she opened her eyes and brought her hand to her face, struggling to see through the blood red fog. Her vision doubled, showing wet, dark blood on her pale fingers.

Finally, the pain and blistering heat erupting from within herself was too much for her body to sustain any longer. Her vision tripled, then quadrupled, then faded into a blinding white.

She seemed to be floating away, even the calm whiteness around herself melting into shadows…