by V. St. Clair
“Masters, were you planning on haunting my classroom all day?” Master Kilgore interrupted his thoughts. “Because if not, then get out.”
Asher looked up and realized that the entire room was empty, save for him and the Master of Elixirs. Class must have ended without him even noticing.
“Sorry, I didn’t realize class was over.” He stood up and began packing up his things. Kilgore glanced down at the blank page of paper that Asher had laid out to take notes on at the beginning of the lesson.
“I see you couldn’t even be bothered to write the date on your notepad today,” he commented drily. “Why bother coming to class at all if you intend on daydreaming the entire time?”
Annoyed at being misunderstood, Asher scowled and said, “I wasn’t daydreaming…I just have a lot on my mind. Contrary to popular belief, I actually do make an effort in my classes.”
“I know that, Masters, or you wouldn’t have attained mastery-level in so many of your subjects by now,” Kilgore said in his usual gruff tone. “Speaking of challenges…I suppose you plan on trying for a spot in Abnormal Magic soon?”
Surprised by the change of subject, Asher said, “Sir? I didn’t realize there was going to be an Abnormal Magic class anytime soon.”
There were traditionally ten subjects taught at Mizzenwald at any given time: the five major arcana of Powders, Prisms, Wands, Elixirs, and Conjury, and the five minor arcana: Healing, Herbalism, Scriptures, Charms, and Abnormal Magic. For the last seven years, there had only been nine areas of study at the school, as the others hadn’t found anyone they deemed qualified of teaching Abnormal Magic.
“Didn’t you hear?” Master Kilgore arched an eyebrow. “We’ve accepted a new Master of Abnormal Magic: Master Laurren. Since, despite your best efforts at hiding it, I know you have a natural love of learning and of challenges, I was sure you’d be the first one to apply for his class as soon as he gets settled in.”
Asher did enjoy an intellectual challenge, and had a general passion for learning new things, mostly to offset his lack of bloodlines and fortune. He had long since learned that there were only three ways to gain a competitive edge in the magical world: be from a Great House, be obnoxiously wealthy, or be smarter than everyone else. He would have to settle for the third option.
“Well, you’ve got me figured out,” Asher smiled. “I’ll certainly consider whether it’s worth my time to take Abnormal Magic, depending on this Master Laurren. Most people are worthless at the subject, since it’s all abstractions and there are way more questions than answers.”
Kilgore gave him a knowing smile and said, “Very true. Most of us prefer to teach subjects that have distinct answers. However, I think you’ll be pleased with Laurren’s qualifications on the subject of Abnormal Magic. After all, we would hardly pay someone the exorbitant Master’s salary if they weren’t capable of doing the job justice.”
That, at least, was true. It was why the post had remained vacant for so many years—not for lack of applicants, but because of the harsh standards that the Masters of Mizzenwald upheld for their peers. Only a handful of people—Masters of the Great Nine schools and the ten members of the Council of Mages—were permitted to own or wear Mastery Charms, which enormously amplified their powers and abilities as mages. Since nearly everyone in the Nine Lands coveted a Mastery Charm, the competition for such a nomination was fierce.
Well, at least I’ll have something interesting to do today…
“I’ll look into it,” Asher answered vaguely, not wanting to seem too enthusiastic. Curse the man for realizing that knowledge and the unexpected were his greatest joys.
“Good. Perhaps during class tomorrow you can compel yourself to pay attention long enough to take the quiz.”
We have a quiz tomorrow?
Asher almost asked the question out loud but barely restrained himself. The answer was obvious, and it was unexpectedly nice of Kilgore to point it out to him when he hadn’t been paying attention all hour.
“I’ll see what I can do,” he answered instead, smiling and earning a faint chuckle from the Master of Elixirs.
“Run along to Prisms then, before Antwar sends out a search party.”
Asher only just realized how late he was for Prisms, and took off without another word, walking as fast as he could without actually running down the halls. Fortunately the Prisms classroom wasn’t terribly far away from where Kilgore taught Elixirs, so he got there in record time.
When he entered the classroom it was to find Master Antwar waiting for him, apparently alone. The Prism Master was leaning against his desk, staring pensively off into space, as though prepared to wait there all day.
“Sorry I’m late,” Asher’s apology broke the silence. “Kilgore was talking to me after class and I only just got free.” That was technically true, and would hopefully keep him from landing in too much trouble, as long as Antwar took this to mean that it was Kilgore’s fault he was late.
“I see,” the Prism Master answered neutrally, not looking particularly bothered by his tardiness.
“Where’s Aleric?” Asher looked around the classroom a second time, despite knowing that his friend wasn’t there. “Don’t tell me he’s late too…” Aleric was never late to anything. That sort of behavior was unbecoming of a member of the illustrious House of Frost.
“No, he’s already come and gone,” Antwar explained. “After the first few minutes of your tardiness, I told him I was calling class for the day and suggested he enjoy the free time.”
Then why in the world were you standing around in your classroom waiting for me?
Asher didn’t bother asking the impertinent question. Instead he said, “Oh…well, sorry about that. So class is cancelled?”
It would be nice to have some free time to work on his research project for Prisms—he’d decided to stick with underwater light-bending after all. He was finally making some tangible progress on the subject, though he suspected he was still far from any sort of workable solution. So far the only time he could get his casting to work properly was when he was surprised or scared, channeling intuitively without focusing normally, like when Tricia had interrupted him weeks ago.
“Not for you,” Master Antwar interrupted this line of thought.
“What?” Asher looked at him in surprise. “You cancelled class for Aleric but not me? Is this some sort of obscure punishment for being tardy? I honestly didn’t mean to be late…”
The Prism Master smiled and said, “Not a punishment, exactly. I just thought it was a good opportunity to test a theory I’ve been working on with you.”
Confused but intrigued, Asher asked, “You’re working on something with prisms and you don’t want Aleric to know about it?” That was strange, though also flattering…if his mentor thought Asher’s insight would be more valuable than his biggest competition in the subject…
“In a manner of speaking…and I’d prefer that this stay between the two of us,” he confirmed obliquely. “Let us adjourn to the translocation circle.”
Now Asher was extremely puzzled.
“The translocation circle is only used for our arena challenges…or so I thought.”
Master Antwar grabbed a sealed box of something from his desk and then led the way out of the classroom and through the rear exit of the school. Asher, perforce, followed along.
“That is correct,” he confirmed again, still being maddeningly vague.
“So we’re going into an arena for something?” Asher pressed, wondering why the man was refusing to explain things properly. Perhaps he got some sort of weird pleasure out of piquing Asher’s imagination, though since Asher loved surprises, he wasn’t at all upset by this diversion from the norm.
“What’s in the box?” he asked when Antwar didn’t respond to his last question, wondering if the Prism Master would answer this one.
“Prisms,” Antwar said without hesitation, leading him back to the columns of light that marked the boundaries of the permanent transl
ocation circle that Mizzenwald had set up, almost perilously close to the cliffs that overlooked the Gawain Sea.
When they arrived at the circle, Asher was even more intrigued to see Master Willow standing there, apparently waiting on them.
What in the world is going on?
They must be experimenting with something terrifically dangerous if they had to go inside an arena to do it. That was the only good explanation that came to Asher’s mind, because experimental magic could sometimes have disastrous consequences if performed incorrectly, up to and including the death of the caster. If they died in an arena, they would just return to their bodies in the real world, though spells were less effective when cast within an arena for that same reason, and if you managed to damage your Source in an arena you retained the damage even in the real world...
“Master Willow, what’s going on?” Asher tried the older Master, hoping that he would be a little more forthcoming with information.
“I am here as a control, in case Master Antwar becomes too injured to pull you both out of the arena,” he explained. “Otherwise I will simply be an observer; I must admit, I am quite curious about how you’ll do.”
How I’ll do with what?
Asher stopped asking questions. At some point they were going to have to tell him what they wanted him to do, especially if they expected his cooperation. He was beginning to get the impression that this was going to either involve experimental magic or combat, since not a lot of other things would be cause for injury.
The Masters clasped their Mastery Charms with one hand and Antwar took Asher’s arm with his other as the translocation took hold. Asher experienced the familiar sensation of the world blurring slowly around him, as though he were moving very fast and his surroundings were standing still. Everything flickered out of existence for the briefest moment, almost immediately replaced by the manufactured world of the arena.
Asher looked around with interest as Antwar released him, wondering why the Masters had chosen this particular setting for them. They were standing in the middle of a dusty expanse of plains, completely barren and brown. It almost looked like the same place as the field full of glass shards that they encountered two challenges ago, but without all the glass and with no clear end in sight.
Master Antwar clasped his Mastery Charm again, and a horde of monsters burst into existence, forming a wide circle around the three of them. There must have been hundreds of them, far too many for Asher to count easily, though they stayed far enough back not to be an immediate threat, and none of them showed signs of attacking just yet.
“Uh…sir?” Asher asked hesitantly, becoming thoroughly alarmed and forgetting his resolve to ask no more questions. “What exactly are we doing in here?”
“I want to know the limits of your power and resourcefulness,” Master Antwar explained bluntly. “In your most recent arena, you proved that you’ve got even more potential than what you’ve been demonstrating to us for the past few years, and I can guess why you’ve been holding back.”
That’s why he doesn’t want Aleric here, Asher realized with displeasure. He knows I’ve been modulating my power around him…
Was there anyone who hadn’t figured out his secret yet—besides Aleric? He immediately regretted being so free with his use of power the other night, even though it earned him praise from Maralynn.
“I see…” he said softly, doing some fast thinking. “So you want to see how many monsters it takes before I keel over from exhaustion or get maimed to death, since your arena didn’t do it last night?” He didn’t really look forward to being murdered in an arena. Even though it wasn’t real, it still felt real, which meant it would hurt like hell to get torn apart. In his entire student career, he had only died in an arena once, and had no desire to repeat the experience.
“I want to see what you can do with virtually limitless weaponry and no reason to hold back,” Master Antwar corrected, and Willow nodded fractionally from beside them.
I should have known. Willow’s always trying to push me into trying harder and caring more…
“What if I don’t want to dance on command for you?” he asked boldly, setting his jaw in anger. If they had simply asked him to do this he might have agreed, if he was in a good mood, but he didn’t like being maneuvered into things without his consent.
“Without a Mastery Charm, you’re stuck in the arena until we decide to remove you from it,” Antwar pointed out. “You’ll eventually get hungry…”
“I could just kill myself and pop back into Mizzenwald any time I want,” Asher countered hotly.
“Enough, both of you,” Master Willow interrupted, perhaps seeing that Asher was prepared to fight dirty if pushed further. “Antwar, you should have told him what we wanted him to do and gotten his permission first. Asher, if you want to remain at this school in our good graces, you need to learn to do what authority figures ask of you.”
He spoke with the air of one trying to corral toddlers, which shamed both Asher and Master Antwar into behaving, though Asher couldn’t help but mentally retort, When did I get back into your good graces?
“Fine, but you’ve already seen what I can do against a horde of assorted monsters,” the former shrugged. “It isn’t like the second hundred monsters you throw at me are going to die much differently than the batch I already defeated. Either I’ll slay them all until I fatigue my Source and get overwhelmed, or one of them will get in a lucky shot and take me out early.”
“What are you suggesting?” Master Willow asked before his colleague could speak up.
“If you want to know how strong I am, put me against another skillful mage. Let me fight you, Master Antwar.”
The Prism Master looked slightly taken aback by the prospect of dueling one of his students, though he didn’t outright refuse, which Asher took as a good sign.
“I’ve got a Mastery Charm and you don’t. It would be an unfair fight,” he said at last.
“You were ready to set me against hundreds of monsters, and you think I’m worried about your Mastery Charm making things unfair?” Asher snorted in amusement, folding his arms across his chest.
Come on…take the bait…
He’d been keen on testing his skills against the Masters for years now, though as a general rule they avoided dueling students. This could be his chance at last to see how he stacked up compared to his mentor, if he could only get the man to take the bait...
Shame I can’t tell Aleric about it.
The Prism Master was still thinking, though he looked uncomfortable as his gaze flickered towards Master Willow. He probably expected his colleague to object to him dueling a student as a matter of principle, but for some reason the Master of Wands was remaining silent on the matter.
He’s afraid he might lose, Asher realized in a sudden moment of clarity. He doesn’t want to risk fighting me in front of one of his peers because he thinks I might beat him.
So what? It wasn’t like Willow would fire the man and offer Asher his job; only weeks ago the Master of Wands had despaired for Asher’s character. The day they offered to let him join their ranks would be a sad day for the world indeed.
He was just opening his mouth to say as much when Antwar said, “I have no intention of dueling you, Asher. The last thing I need is you running around school bragging about your enormous sense of self-importance.”
Asher scowled at his mentor’s cowardice, though it wasn’t wholly unexpected. None of the Masters would want to take the chance of a student overpowering them in a fight because it would undermine—
“In that case, I’ll duel you myself,” Master Willow offered calmly from nearby. If Asher hadn’t seen the man’s lips moving he wouldn’t have believed it.
“Excuse me?” Asher asked at the same time that Antwar said, “Are you insane?”
“I’ve long been curious about the limits of Asher’s resourcefulness in combat,” the Master of Wands explained casually, completely at ease. “If you’d rather pass on
fighting him, then I’d like to take advantage of the opportunity. I have some lingering questions about his efficiency and control that can only be properly answered by testing him myself.”
For an old man he’s sure got a lot of nerve…
Asher had always admired that about Master Willow, and he grinned in appreciation and said, “Not worried about losing to a lowly student?”
Master Willow smiled calmly and removed his Mastery Charm, tossing it to his colleague to hold onto.
“On the contrary, I look forward to learning something, myself. I would consider it a salutary experience.”
The fact that he was comfortable enough to remove his Mastery Charm meant that he believed he could still compete against Asher even without it. Asher had never really seen Willow fight before, beyond very simple classroom demonstrations, so this would be a day of learning all around.
“Well then, let me load up some prisms.” Asher moved over to the box that his mentor had brought into the arena with them and began stocking up all of the empty slots on his belt, as well as his eyepiece. He opted for mostly violet and clear prisms; the former because it was a good catch-all and contained most alignments found in other tints, and the latter because it possessed the most generically useful combination of alignments; he didn’t want to be swapping prisms out constantly during a fight. He threw a couple prisms into his pockets as well, on the off-chance the battle went on long enough for him to burn through all the others.
Master Willow always had a fully-stocked belt of wands and a few instruments from the other major and minor arcana, though what he would do if he ran out was beyond Asher. It seemed wrong to attack a man three times his age after he’d been disarmed, but Asher had always suspected that Willow was tougher than he looked, and he had, after all, asked for this.
“Are you ready?” the Master of Wands called out to him, moving back several yards to put some distance between them for spellcasting. Antwar dismissed the monsters he had summoned to open up the playing field even more, and Asher nodded and lowered the eyepiece of his circlet in front of his left eye.
