by Bob Dattolo
“Umm, okay? I was warned not to go into town because I could run into people from the other years?”
She spared me a glance, “That’s a possibility. Be careful if you go?” We hit the huge shelves, and she led me through them to a semi-secluded table. “Another recommendation? If you can do it? This should have what you’re looking for.” She pulled a gigantic book down that has to weigh a solid 30 pounds. It oozes age. “This has a decent cross-section of what magic can do.” She flipped pages, seeming to know exactly where to go, then stopped on one in particular, “And here’s your draining spell. Good luck with it? I hate that these things are needed in our world…but they are.”
She left without waiting for me to respond, and I was alone with the huge tome.
Let’s get to reading.
I swear, what’s with this? All too often in our world, fights break out and it is necessary to protect yourself, your loved ones, or your friends.
Then it gets more random.
I’m not looking for a history on why the spell exists. At all. And, what the hell? This keeps going. Page after page as I skim mounds of useless crap. Times it’s been used. More histories and personal opinions on everything including the crop rotation cycle for their fields.
I kid you not.
The spell doesn’t come up for nearly 20 pages of close-printed handwriting that was probably done with a quill based on the ornate lettering. Let’s not even get into the imaginative spelling of words. I’d fully expect any English teacher to bitch slap a student that wrote a paper with the same spelling variations.
Then again, all of that fades behind me as I read and reread the actual spell itself. It’s…simple. Deceptively simple.
Fine. What else does this book say about spells?
It takes too much time to flip through everything, so I start jumping and looking at things at random. Then move to another, smaller book. This one has less opinion and more spells. More discussion about what’s possible. Somewhat.
Then another book.
Then another.
Then one more.
That puts me close to the end of lunch, with a ton of information floating around in my head that makes me think people don’t really know what the hell magic can do. One book flat-out said that you can’t do a spell to kill a living thing. The next one had a spell to kill vermin in the field. But it won’t work on anything larger than that. The last book had one about killing attacking bears. Why? No clue. Oh, there was a history about why the spell was developed, I just didn’t care to read it once I saw something about savage attack and then some kid losing an arm.
Does that mean that magic can be used to kill someone directly? Can I make them explode? I can’t, at least according to the books, yet…why am I thinking there’s something more to it?
My reading let the draining spell settle into my head more. I think I can do it. I can’t practice it, in the slightest, but I think I can do it. Especially since there are two variations. One of them is much, much harder to manage and not get caught. Yet it’s cleaner, if you will. The other is easier to do. And way showier.
Let’s let that settle more and head to affinity focus and see what that’ll do for me.
Since I wasn’t in lunch, I’m the first to the classroom. Other than the teacher.
He smiles at me as I walk through the door, “Ahh, Maddie Stricken. Wonderful to meet you.”
I can’t tell if he’s being serious or not, so I decide to assume he’s serious. “Hi. Mr. Foster?”
He nods, “That’s right. Edwin Foster. Now, my understanding is that you don’t know what your affinity is, correct?”
I fingered my hair, “Right. No clue. The police and a bunch of others tested, but they couldn’t nail it down. They can’t even tell if I’m a dragon or a mage. No record of white eyes. They’re sure they’re not just light gray or a crazy light blue.”
He looked between my eyes and my hair, “That’s fascinating! Have they thought that maybe you’re a new affinity?”
“They talked about that.” I shrugged, “They couldn’t tell at all and were thinking about ways to test it. Since I wasn’t able to cast any spells, that didn’t help any.”
“I see. That would help narrow things down.” He gestured across the room, which is much larger than I expected it to be. It’s all workstations, but they’re separated out into groupings. “As you see, this is our space.” Kids started coming in behind me, heading to the various stations without stopping. “We’re broken up by affinity. Each affinity will work with specific spells that tie to their base of power. So the fire group? They’re working on lighting fire at the moment. Plus fire balls. That one always seems to be a hit with the kids.” He smiled again. “The others work on their own spells.”
“How can you do all of that at the same time?”
He shrugged, “It’s honestly easier than you’d think. There’s no difference in creating a ball of fire than there is a ball of ice, no matter how impossible it is for a fire mage to create the ice ball. Reaching our affinity is the same. Using it is the same. Only what we can achieve is different.”
I had no idea that was the case. I sorta thought they’d have different ways of doing things, yet…that doesn’t make sense based on what I read.
He cleared his throat, “If you don’t know where you’d fit, how are you at basic magic?”
“Umm, we were told to make a ball of light today? Then to make it a different size, change the color, and then make it move. I made my hair light up. Barely. That’s it.” How’s that for skirting the truth in case any of the kids nearby smell a lie?
“I see. In that case? We have one workstation over on the side here that you can work at? You’ll be by yourself. Will that cause a problem? You can work on the same light spell?”
“Umm, no? That won’t cause a problem. I can do that.”
“Then good luck. Please let me know if you have any questions?”
Hmm, “Any chance you have any spell books that I can look through? Maybe I can get something else to work?”
“I do, actually? That station has a basic set of spells across all of the affinities? Give one a shot? Maybe you can get it to work, and we’ll be that much closer towards finding where you fit in.”
“Okay, thank you.” I went for upbeat still as I took my place. Every kid in here has an easy view of me. Still the same people from my earlier classes, so that’s fun. Colin is with other water-affinity folks. Needless to say, he has the best glare in the group. Well, Levi’s a close second.
The metal dragons are all with metal mages. Even though dragons have a subset of bronze, steel, or gold, they’re still metal mages at heart. Except for the shifting.
Mr. Foster waited for the bell to ring before calling out, “All right! You know where we left off yesterday. Let’s go for it. If you have shown me that you can cast the spell you were working on, please pick up the next in line. Let’s see if we can make some progress today.”
Colin’s hair lit up as he held out his hand, creating a ball of water in about 30 seconds. He looks like he’s straining, but that’s still a good showing of what he can do. He laughed as it dissipated.
Lovely.
Fine. What all do we have here? There are a number of spells noted, so let’s flip through them. They’re pretty cool, making me wish I knew how to do them. I like the fireball idea. There’s something visceral about that. Being able to coat something with ice. Pull water out of things. Some of these have very practical applications, which I really like the idea of.
Can I do any of them?
With everyone watching me, I’m not sure I can really try to do one without giving away that I can move power better than I’ve been letting on. Can I, though? Let’s try and see what happens.
Umm…how about a tiny fireball? I want something the size of a pencil eraser. That can’t take a ton of power, right? I also don’t want it to be visible to anyone. Sooo, let’s try to mess with them. That gets me to hold out my hand and mutter ju
st loud enough to be heard, “C’mon, fucking light. How hard can it be? Water boy can do it, I have to be able to do it!” The room’s pretty big, but every dragon heard it. That means that Colin was told what I said a moment later. He laughed the loudest as I struggled to blush as my hair began fizzling with light.
My focus went in, and I squinted at my hand as I envisioned what I wanted. The size. Where I wanted it. That part’s key. I want it behind the desk, where none of them would be able to see it. At all. I also need my hair to barely show that I’m moving power.
The concentration part is easy. Relatively. Pretending to try to cast a spell above my hand is easy. Trying to keep the glow in my hair down is way harder. That makes me wonder if I can do something to somehow make it look like my hair is fizzling, when it’s not. I know you can’t dye your hair and masking your hair is difficult, but you can block the light if you have a darkness spell around you. So can I cast something just above my hair that simply blocks it? It’ll look like my hair, but will really be a façade? Something to think about and maybe check into.
It takes more effort than I would have guessed to keep the glow down to failure mode. It also took long enough that I cursed semi-quietly about failing, then pretended to try the spell again.
Then the spell triggered.
And I have a tiny fireball hidden behind the table. It’s exactly the size I was aiming for. In the exact position.
I created a fireball!
That means I’m a fire mage!
Except…umm, white hair? White eyes? Why would I have that?
The next spell in line caught my attention. Ice ball. Hmm.
You know what? Fuck it. Let’s throw shit against the wall until it sticks. That starts more concentration and pretending as I act my way through three more attempts to cast a light spell. It’s harder to stop my hair from glowing and showing that I’m moving power, yet I feel like I’m learning something. Like I’m getting more efficient at it somehow. Like it’s easier to hide it. Just a little.
As the last failed attempt to cast light puts me to leaning against the table in defeat, I can’t help staring down, looking lost. It’s so easy to do when I have matching balls of affinities behind the table. Things that one mage should never be able to cast. Fire mages cannot cast ice spells. They can barely cool a drink. Ice mages cannot cast fire. They can barely heat something. Both of them can accomplish it, but it’d be due to other things. Hitting the drink with a light breeze. Causing friction to warm up whatever they were aiming for. They can’t work the other affinity.
I just created two.
What does…what does that mean?
More focus. More pretending. Hidden success.
More focus. More pretending. Hidden success.
Then again.
Over the next 15 minutes, I ended up with matching little balls of impossible power. I now have tiny balls of fire, ice, water, whirling air, stone, and metal.
The stone and metal were by far the hardest to pull in without my hair going crazy, but mainly because they’re somehow pulling in actual stone and metal. How? No clue. I could have gone for dirt as part of the earth powers, but stone felt like a better option.
Mr. Foster headed my way, so I killed the spells while still looking upset, leaving the metal and dirt ones there until I could crouch down and grab the little marbles. Those got tucked into a sock as I retied my shoe, then stood back up. He just reached the table and leaned against it. “Any luck with light?”
“No.” My voice was still pitched loud enough to be heard, while trying to sound like I’m not doing it on purpose. “No light. I don’t…I’m so confused.”
“That’s okay,” he patted the spells, “you looked through? Did you try anything else?”
“Yeah? I just…light is always the most basic!”
“It is. You’ll get it at some point.” He looked over at the clock. “Do you want to try again? Walk me through what you’re doing?”
Okay, that’s harder. “I can try?” He smiled and nodded, going for reassuring. My hand went out as I had been doing it, “Okay, the book talks about the building blocks. So I’ve been working on…” I walked through each piece in a bit more detail and at length, eating up the majority of the time. Then started to pull power, keeping it way down.
He smiled and nodded through it until the bell rang. “Honestly? You seem to understand the structure pretty well. Keep up what you’re doing. At a guess, you’re not accessing your power enough. Practice pulling power. If you can keep up a steady, strong pull, then I’m thinking it’ll work for you.”
“Thank you, Mr. Foster.”
“You’re welcome. Good job today.”
“Thanks.”
Colin laughed from where he grabbed his books, “Don’t bother trying to practice. You’re pathetic.”
“I’m gonna break you with my bare heads, Colin.”
The guys began laughing, with Levi nudging them towards the door, “You know what? Good luck with that. Beat her down and fuck her, then drain her dry. That’s all she’s good for.”
More laughter as they left, leaving me behind. I think my forced blush was pretty good.
Kaylee stopped by my side, “C’mon, gym’s next.”
Parece, Paige, and Riley were still together near the desks as we left. I swear Parece wanted to say something to me.
Kaylee stayed plastered to my side all the way to the locker rooms for gym. “What’re you gonna do? You can’t fight him and win.”
“I challenged him. We’re fighting whether I decide to change my mind or not. I don’t have anywhere to go, so it’s not like I have any options. I’ll know if I’m successful by dinner.”
She stared at me for a moment as we stopped at a locker, then looked around at the other girls as her voice dipped, “I might be able to help you.”
“How? Teach me a spell?”
“No. I don’t know many, but I know some. I can cast one on him?”
Wow, she’s willing to help? “Yeah, no? I’m flattered you’d offer, but that’s a death sentence if you’re found out even if I win. Or especially if I win. So please don’t do anything.”
“I don’t want to see you die!”
“I don’t want that either. I’m willing to risk it, though. Now…time to get changed?”
Tears filled her eyes as she nodded and started changing. If followed suit, and we ended up out on the floor as the rest of us came together. This is another period where everyone’s together, at least somewhat. The dragons are all doing their dragon thing, so they’re apart, with all of the mages together again.
Coach Walters, at least that’s who I think she is based on the paperwork I saw, comes out maybe a minute later and blows her whistle, “All right! Everyone, gather ‘round.” That gets us all to move in closer. “I think we’re all here, so let’s get moving. You’ve done this before, so get rolling. No magic to help you. I want 20 laps around the space. Go!”
The group took off running around the rather large space as I fell in with the crowd, at least a little. Colin and Ryan are leading the pack up ahead, with some others that I haven’t been introduced to being in with their little group. They’re pulling away from the main body of runners, while I fall towards the back. Kaylee stays at my side.
“You have to run faster than this!” She sounds freaked out. She lasted a full lap before practically begging me to run faster as we dropped behind the main group.
Is it wrong of me to pretend to be panting? “I was a pet for more than four years, when do you think I got to do any running in that time?”
She groaned, “Oh my God, this is bad. So bad.”
“Why? I’m just…slow…” more panting.
“She’s kinda vicious. She’s gonna hit us with spells at some point. She does it with all of the slowest if they get lapped twice.”
“What kind of spells?”
“Pain? To make us run faster.”
“Then don’t worry…about me…I’ll be fine…�
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“No, you won’t! We’re gonna be lapped in like seven more laps. If even that. The faster kids know that the slow kids get hurt, so they like to do it as quickly as possible to make life for the others a living hell.”
Yeah, I’m not shocked by that. At all. “Then go ahead. Please don’t worry about me. Just go.”
“Please, you have to run faster!”
It hurts to pretend to be out of breath to her, “Just go. Leave me behind and be safe.”
Tears started falling, trailing down her cheeks, so I pushed her shoulder, forcing her to go faster. My breathing got more labored, and I tried to work some magic on the sly. My practice earlier helped keep the glow down to the point that I’m not even sure it’s visible. It required way more focus than I would have expected while also pretending to be exhausted, but I managed to pull water in and make it look like I’m sweating up a storm.
Rather sudden sweating, but still.
As each lap passed, even the slower runners made it in front of me. Unlike her estimate, I was only on lap seven when the front group lapped me, an entire lap earlier than she thought it’d happen.
Colin laughed like crazy, “I hope you get ready for the pain, stupid stricken! You get a taste of what I’m gonna do to you later.” The people in his group laughed hard as he started running faster, pushing the group to eat up more ground.
My staggering run did go up a little, making it a tiny bit harder for them to make it around again, but I continued on anyway. The next slowest person is only like 20 feet up there, so I’m hoping I can be the primary focus for things when this does happen.
And it’s going to happen.
Coach Walters calls out to me on my next pass, “Get a move on, stricken! You get lapped a second time, I hit you with magic to make you run faster!”
“I’m going…as fast…as I can!” More panting. The other runners laughed like crazy, maybe a half lap back from me as I put on a tiny bit more speed.
“We’ll see about that! I have no room for weaklings in my gym class! There’s no room for weaklings in the supernatural community! Sink or swim! I’m not even sure why they let you in here. Fucking stricken…you shoulda been killed when you were found.”
