A soft gong made Lance perk his head up: "I'll lead you to the classroom." He said as he led Cerlius out of his office and bedroom. Through the doorway was a hallway of other obsidian-like doors, all in the process of unfolding. Four other people walked into the hallway, all of varying degrees of adulthood and dressed in different colored robes.

Lance waited for them to go past his room before exiting. He put a hand on Cerlius's shoulder and said, "Best not to test the other instructors like you did to me. It won't end as well, for both of us." He had to whisper because no instructor was talking, not even a greeting, as if pretending not to notice one another as they marched all down the hallway.

Cerlius could tell that Lance's words were more of a warning rather than a threat by the clamminess of the three-fingered grip, shaking and weak, like being grabbed by a newborn hawk. Cerlius glanced at the instructor's other arm, which wasn't shaking at all.

'How does he write if he always shakes like this?' He scanned each instructor. They didn't have deformities like Lance. No visible weaknesses. 'I'll have to be more subtle when I test the boundaries.'

The hallway was constructed of a smooth tile flooring, dark gray walls, and a low white ceiling, as if fading to black the closer a surface was to the ground. Running along each corner of the claustrophobic hallway were long, uninterrupted lines of thin light crystal. It took some squinting but Cerlius quickly adapted his vision to the brightness. There was no furniture, no windows, nothing he could use.

The leading mage was a middle-aged man in a light blue robe with a short, greying beard and mismatched eyes, one black and the other yellow. The man held out his bracelet as they reached a door at the end.

The group emerged into a room with a stone stairway to the right and a door directly ahead. While Cerlius couldn't get a good look, he guessed each of the three floors overhead were near-exact copies of the floor he stood on.

He even heard three other doors clatter to the ground, all at the same time. Synchronous marching echoed as instructors entered the space, the shadow of their hoods stretching down to obscure the light.

Each and every group walked to the door on the opposite side of their respective floor, and Lance's group was no exception. Just before Cerlius was pushed through the doorway, he noticed that there was a stairway going down from their level, but one not as the white stone stairway to the right.

This one was layered in shadows. Rickety railing and cracked black stone stairs stretching into pitch-black. Something tugged at Cerlius besides Lance's grip. That something called to him, urging him to go down.

Lance shoved Cerlius along. "Keep up." He whispered as the instructors ahead sent stares their way. "I am patient but the other instructors are not." Through the door was a hallway, the same in its general layout but not an exact replica.

The square windows built into the right wall were the same clear crystal as the one in Lance's office. No escaping through there. Cerlius craned his neck to get a better view but the horrible sight only made his stomach sink. Directly below the window line was a sea of clouds stretching out to the horizon, buildings on top of mountain peaks like islands. The sun, which had barely poked out of the sea, made Cerlius flinch back.

With fleeting hope Cerlius looked left, where white stone statues of robed humans had been put into the wall's many niches. Light crystal had been built into the base, illuminating the plaques at the statues' feet.

In between the jostling, Cerlius managed to read a small inscription underneath a figure larger than the rest, one with a book in his hands. "Sir Marble: Immortalized for his contributions to healing magic based off the book he acquired from the library of a Lich the hero Arthur had defeated, whose origins were lost with time."

'A Lich?' Cerlius thought. 'What manner of being is that?'

The next niche had a statue of a woman with her hands spread out, faced towards the sky with a bright smile on her beautiful face. Her inscription read: "Gwenivier Botomon: For proving that hard work and effort can allow one to overcome any obstacle even against sexist opposition. Her historic feats have changed the world of magic."

The next statue was of a simple man with his hood over his face and both hands tucked into his brown sleeves, giving a slight bow. "Projen Lorick: Sorted hundreds of thousands of spells into individual elemental categories through painstaking effort and dedication to the craft. Developed the Lorickan theory of analyzing magic and developed standardized methods of instruction. Former head of the Draken Magic Academy. It was his decision to allow everyone access to magic, no matter their gender. Died of mysterious causes."

Cerlius looked to the next statue only to find a simple wooden door with the word "Basics" written on it. He stood to the side, expecting Lance to open it with his bracelet.

"Well go on," Lance urged. "Don't tell me you forgot how to open a door."

Cerlius chuckled and turned the handle. Inside was a scene he was very familiar with, a classroom. Walls, floor, and ceiling were all like the hallways, only without the windows and statues. The people sitting at the ten wooden desks were all around Cerlius's age, only instead of wearing a blue, hole-ridden shirt, carrying sheaths for weapons, and wrapped up in rags, they wore simply grey robes.

They turned away from the clear, crystallin billboard at the front of the classroom to send looks filled with curiosity, then shortly after, disgust. Cerlius sat in the closet free desk, the back corner. He might have forgotten a lot from whatever spell Lance put him under, but those looks he could never forget.