Chapter 4 #2
I thought about the antipaladin watching and listening to this conversation. “I don’t know that I feel in control of anything, at least not yet.”
“Magic is different for everyone. Are you okay?”
“Yeah, why?”
“You barely touched your food.”
I looked down at my plate. “I guess I got really into talking with you, but I have to get back. I’m due to meet the legendary Joseiah in 5 minutes.”
Lensis chuckled softly. “Have fun. See you tomorrow.”
“Don’t you mean tonight?”
“Huh?”
“I was going to leave my blinds open to make the stalking a little easier for you. Be warned, I sleep nude.”
She pushed me away from the table as I walked by. “Don’t be surprised if I poison your food tomorrow.”
“Are you asking me out on another lunch date?”
“Get away from me, asshole,” she joked, pushing again.
“This one has her guard up, but you’ve slipped right by,” Byron remarked as I exited the cafeteria. “She’ll look even more beautiful with makeup running down her face from the tears she gets throating you.”
I was at the library door before I noticed my own reaction, or lack thereof, to Byron’s comment. It didn’t repulse me the way earlier, similar comments had. Instead, I unconsciously agreed with him and then enjoyed the visual in my mind.
“Fuck this guy.”
Joseiah would have done very well in Nazi Germany. He had the sharp, Aryan features of an ubermench–blue eyes, sandy blonde hair, chiseled jaw, perfect teeth–and he oozed charm. His smile was like a tractor beam, and his easygoing, humble confidence made him endearing.
I suspected that even without his impressive exploits, Joseiah would have been naturally popular. He was too nice and too good looking not to be.
But Byron hated him immediately.
“He is untrustworthy, and he is dangerous.”
“We’ve known him for 15 minutes.”
“He wreaks of lawful good. If he learns what you are, he will swiftly become your enemy.”
“I’ll be careful.” But really, Byron was just being paranoid.
“Latin can be really intimidating at first,” Joseiah explained as our lesson began. “The first few days are the worst of it, so don’t let how much it sucks now discourage you. Everyone feels that way, and you’re a smart guy. You’ll get the hang of it.”
As you can see, Joseiah was obviously a massive threat to my very existence.
He continued to demonstrate as such by being patient, encouraging, and creative for the totality of our tutoring time.
Learning a second language had always been difficult for me.
I could memorize vocabulary for tests easily enough, but I fell apart as soon as grammar was involved.
That jump from connecting a picture of the library to the word in Spanish–which I don’t fucking remember–to verb agreements and whatever threw me, and I never recovered.
Like most things in my life, once it got hard, I gave up.
Mrs. Derbin, my Spanish teacher, stopped calling on me entirely because she knew I didn’t know the answer and had no interest in learning what the answer was.
So, she left me in the back corner of the room with two other slackers who were just as hopeless.
But after an hour with Joseiah, I felt like I was truly understanding the material. He was that good of a teacher.
Eventually, we transitioned into dexterity exercises, which were all designed to prepare me for the gesture component of spell casting. Frankly, I felt like someone who lied on their resume and ended up doing the deaf translation for a major speech despite knowing nothing about sign language.
“I know this works, but it's hard to imagine wiggling my fingers can turn into a spell,” I mused.
“Do you play video games?” Joseiah asked.
“Yeah, sure.”
“How about speed runners? Ever watch those?”
I nodded. “A little bit. They try to beat a game as fast as possible.”
“Correct, and they typically ‘break’ the game in some way. They might clip through a wall to get out of bounds, or they use a glitch to get infinite quantities of items. The set ups for some of those are so elaborate and convoluted that it seems impossible anyone ever figured it out.”
“With you so far.”
“That's how I think of magic,” Joseiah explained. “We exploit weird quirks in the fabric of reality so that it works how we want it to instead of how it's supposed to.”
“Or like using console or admin commands.”
“Exactly. A spell is like one big code. Gestures, incantations, intention, and components are all inputs to break reality for our benefit. Now, some people get really mystical and spiritual about it, and that's fine. Their inputs end up being the same, but the pageantry makes it easier for them.”
That explanation helped me immensely. I still struggled with the dexterity and coordination for many of the movements, but Joseiah said that was normal. Wizards moved their hands in ways that an average person would never need to.
“I recognize some of these gestures.”
“Does that mean spells you learned manually in your world would work here?” I asked in my mind.
“Possibly. I'm not sure how I would teach you the motions with words alone. If you allowed me access to your body, I could show you.”
“No, that's okay.”
Give Byron of Zaglis the keys to my body? Absolutely not. He would have no reason to ever cede control back to me. Nope. Nope. Nope.
He ultimately didn't press the issue, but the fact that he suggested it at all was concerning. He was like a thief walking down a street checking for unlocked cars. If one didn't open, no big deal, on to the next.
But if someone was foolish enough to leave a door unlocked, he took everything he could carry.
I wasn't a dumbass. I locked my doors.
When we finally finished, Joseiah flashed a big, warm smile and offered me his hand.
“Well done, David. That was a phenomenal start.”
“Thank you.”
“Do not trust him.”
“Clearly has it out for me. I thought he was going to swing on me any second there.”
“My judgment is more refined than yours. Do not be foolish.”
I started packing up my things.
“Your next appointment is not for an hour, and you do not need to eat. Study and practice.”
“My brain is still tired. I need to rest for a few minutes.”
“Do not squander this opportunity. Practice.”
“30 minutes of Instagram, and 30 minutes of studying.”
“Very well.”
Dean Pernel was dressed as she was the first time we met, except her pencil skirt was navy blue and her button up was light pink. She opened the door for me.
I followed her and her swaying hips, the fabric pulled taut from the curve of her ass. She sat and scooted her chair into her desk. Behind her, through the living stained glass, the sun set.
“I agree with everything you're thinking.”
That was probably true, actually.
“How was your first day?” she asked.
“Good. A lot of work, but good.”
“Wonderful to hear. These lessons won't be as mentally taxing, but they are even more important, so please, listen closely. Any student who didn't, failed out or died.”
“Died?” That seemed like an extreme jump from failing out of a school.
She nodded. “Magic is a powerful tool, but it is not a toy, and it is not your friend. A moment of irresponsibility, one minor lapse in focus, can have dire consequences for you and everyone around you.”
Dean Pernel put a grainy photo on her desk in front of me. It had the yellow-orange hue of a 70s photograph and showed a smiling blonde posing in front of the Farrun library.
“Teresa McCormic got drunk at a party and attempted an advanced gate spell. 2 students were never seen again, and she lost both her arms when the gate closed. She was trying to pull her roommate out but wasn't quick enough.”
The next photo was from around the same time period. Two boys held up a trophy and smiled.
“JT Klein and Shin Nakamora. They were roommates and had an argument one night. People on the floor heard shouting and fighting, but when the RA finally got the keys to open the door, they were both frozen to death. We still don't know exactly what happened.”
The next photo was from the 80s. A young man with a massive hair metal perm sat at his desk, reading.
“Ethan Fernseith. He summoned a glittersand, which is like a fae succubus, because he was lonely. She said, ‘Give me that dick’ while they fornicated, and he replied, ‘Take it.’ So she did. He killed himself when we told him there was no recovering or replacing his manhood.”
And on the examples went. We must have looked through 20 photos of students who either died or suffered injuries so horrific that dying would have been a mercy. The Dean would throw a photo on the desk and tell me what awful thing happened to them.
Turned herself to stone.
Melted her roommates eyes out of her head.
Lost his soul in a fae pact.
Boiled herself alive from the inside.
Summoned ravenous imps during his birthday party, killing himself and 7 guests.
Communed with the underworld and had his body stolen by the soul of a dead wizard. Threw himself from a bridge during a rare moment of control.
Wait. I had to pause her on that one.
“Do those kinds of possessions happen often?” I asked.
“That’s too relative a term for a wizard to remark upon. A more specific answer to a more specific question would be ‘six.’ That’s how many times something similar has happened.”