When Instruktanto Miratova walked into class, it was hard not to notice the bright blue of Malas’ magic coating her entire hand, like she was wearing a disposable glove. I glanced at Kylie next to me, who shrugged.

I hadn’t seen either Kylie or Max since I’d stormed out on them on Friday, but she’d come and sat next to me without comment. Max was sulking over the other side of the room, sitting with some kid I didn’t know and not looking at us.

“All of you,” Instruktanto Miratova announced, “have completed your homework to a satisfactory level, so you have enough basic knowledge to continue. From next week, we will be exploring the basics of each type of spell one by one, so that you know what to expect from whatever spell you end up with. But first, we need to talk about spell safety.

“With the complement of spells available, there is a fairly high chance that any of you who do decide to go through the initiation will end up with a spell that is simply too powerful to cast regularly without danger to yourselves. Mages have developed systems to take the strain of these powerful spells and lessen the strain on their own bodies. Helena, how many of these methods do we have, and what are they?”

A girl who has been whispering to a friend down the back of the class looked up in surprise. “Um, that’s a trick question, right? Because there are new systems being developed all the time that only work for a few mages out in the middle of nowhere, and we keep finding new magical disciplines that have their own methods, so it’s impossible to categorise them all.”

“Very true,” Instruktanto Miratova said. “How many methods does Skolala Refujeyo teach?” When Helena looked clueless, she cast around for someone else. “Max.”

“Three methods,” he answered promptly, “chosen for their robustness, popularity and general applicability. These methods are by far the most common spell handling methods in the world, to the point where others are basically just rare curiosities now. The methods are familiarity, fetishism, and externalisation.”

“Thank you, Max.”

“Externalisation is currently the most common, probably because it pairs well with evocation spells which are high in number these days, whereas familiarity – ”

“Yes, thank you, Max. About half of you will probably find yourself in need of one of these methods, and as acolytes you will be taught extensively about your options. As Max eluded to, some types of spells work better with a certain method than others, but a lot of your choice will be up to your personal preferences and skills, and of course the specific quirks of your individual spell. For today, I’ve invited some highly accomplished mages who use each method, to speak. Fiore?”

The man who stepped into the classroom did not look like Simon. They shared similar thin lips, perhaps, and the same dark hair in the same shoulder-length style, but this man had darker skin, sunken eyes and the kind of bony, knobbly fingers I’d expect on an old man rather than the mid-forties gentleman he appeared to be. I couldn’t help thinking that if he hunched over a knobbly cane, put some kind of bird on his shoulder and leered at the students, he’d look just like a Disney villain – but he didn’t. He stood tall and confident, greeting the class with an open, friendly smile, although the smile and nod he exchanged with Instruktanto Miratova looked very forced on both sides. His blue master’s robes were as neatly tailored as anything Max ever wore, decorated with a white embroidered flower patten on the right side of the collar that looked a lot like the flowers on Simon’s party robes. A mage mark covered the inside of his left wrist.

“Good morning, everyone,” he said. Then he strode over to the empty student desk in front of Instruktanto Miratova, still covered in scorch marks and solidified puddles of metal, wiggled his fingers over it, and made a kissy noise.

The cutest cat I’d ever seen jumped up and forced her face against his fingers, purring. She was large for a housecat, but not Maine Coon large, with long white hair broken by small patches of grey. Her teeny ears, bright green eyes and little pale nose were the only features visible in the white fluff that seemed to make up a good half of her size. Her long tail and feet were all tipped in black.

“This is Socks,” the Fiore explained, scratching her behind the ears while she purred enthusiastically. “She has been my familiar for four years. Questions?”

A general feeling of hesitation permeated the room. Then Helena timidly raised her hand.

“Yes?”

“Uh… what does a familiar do, exactly?”

“Casting a spell puts significant strain on the body. A familiar outsources some of this strain. Now, I want to clarify that it doesn’t hurt Socks when I cast – the sort of ‘strain’ I’m talking about manifests as things a body is naturally equipped to deal with; small fluctuations in temperature or blood sugar, for instance. Generally, casting a powerful spell that would put me in danger were I to do it alone would instead make Socks and I both feel like we’ve just been for a run.” He switched from scratching Socks’ ears to rubbing her chin. She flattened her face against his hand.

“So being a familiar is safe for Socks?” Helena asked.

“For Socks, yes, because I know what I’m doing. But irresponsible mages kill familiars every day. There is always somebody who thinks ‘oh, great, this spell is a bit dangerous for me, but if I limit the danger by taking a familiar, I can use even more power’. Familiarity is sometimes looked at as the ‘soft option’ when it comes to managing power strain, because it’s easier to learn than externalisation or fetishism, but I’d recommend familiarity for only the most disciplined and competent mages. Familiarity is the only method of strain management where every time you cast, you risk a life other than your own.” The Fiore cast his eye over the room again, which now featured multiple raised hands. “Yes, you?”

The boy he’d picked swallowed, looking nervous. “So this is about sharing your spell, kind of, with an animal, right?”

“That’s a simplification, but yes.”

“Then can a – ”

“Can a person be a familiar?” The Fiore smiled. “Somebody always asks that. And the short answer is no. The long answer is… possibly, under specific conditions, and many mages have given their lives trying to find those conditions. But in general, I would recommend very strongly against trying. If you’re very lucky, your human familiar dies gruesomely.”

“And if you’re unlucky?”

“Then you both die gruesomely. There have been partial successes, under very specific circumstances, with very loose definitions of ‘familiar’ – that is, there are very complicated ways to take some of the strain of somebody else’s spell, but unless you’ve put a lot of years into learning to do exactly that, even those successes are usually due to a mix of luck and desperation. Spells just interact in fundamentally different ways with humans than they do with other animals.”

“How so?” someone asked from the middle of the class.

The Fiore tapped the mage mark on his wrist. “This spell is a part of me. It’s buried in my form, mind, body and soul. The same is true of Instruktanto Miratova’s spell, and the spells of the other teachers and students who have passed their initiations. This is why spells are, in general, extremely difficult or impossible to remove from somebody.

“Socks’ connection to my spell isn’t like that. The spell is attached to her by the familiarity ritual, but it won’t put its hooks in her on its own, because she isn’t human. She has no control over its casting, beyond her physiological fitness being important for its success, and if I were to reverse the familiarity ritual, she would be free from it entirely. But if I were to use the ritual to attach my spell to another human, things would get… complicated.”

“Complicated how?”

“Spells don’t like sharing hosts. Some spells are ‘stickier’ than others, but in most cases, one spell shared between two people is going to cause power fluctuations that kill at least one of them. If you try to turn a commoner into your familiar, it’s like popping a light globe; the magic – magic that didn’t choose them and isn’t suited to their body or mind – is going to swamp right in and break everything. You could set up as many protective circles as you want to moderate the power for the actual ritual, but the second you both step out of them, your familiar is dead and the feedback probably kills you, too.

“A mage as a familiar is even worse. A mage has already proven themselves capable of handling spell strain by virtue of being a living mage, but they’re already managing the strain of one spell, and if you add a second under such artificial circumstances, the strain is likely to be too much. Furthermore, spells need to be compatible with each other when sharing a host – the usual result to making a mage familiar is for the two spells to, well, ‘fight’ is the metaphor usually used, inside the mage. Which kills them, of course.”

“But could you use that ritual to transfer a spell to someone?” the boy next to Max asked.

“How so?”

“Well, let’s say you have a spell that’s on the easier-to-detach end of the scale. You set up a good power moderating circle, find a fit and strong commoner, and do the familiarity ritual inside the circle. Then, before anyone steps out, you detach the spell from yourself. I know detachment is unreliable, but if you managed it, then they’d have your spell, right?”

The Fiore studied the boy carefully. “What kind of spell are you hoping to get at initiation?” he asked.

The boy shrugged. “It’s random, right?”

“In a sense, yes, but what are you hoping for? Everyone hopes for something.”

The boy shifted uncomfortably. “I want to be a healer.”

“And when you applied to this school and the initiation process was explained, I suppose you wondered why the school couldn’t simply give students the kind of spell they want?”

“Kind of, yeah. I mean, there are spells out there that have been passed down from master to apprentice for generations. It’s not new. It seems weird to just mix-and-match randomly.”

“Yes, there are. And those apprentices, under those kinds of teachers, have to spend a good thirty or so years in study before getting that spell. Not because their master is hoarding it; but to make sure, through careful analysis, that they have exactly the right kind of temperament for it. Usually, those kinds of masters will take three or four apprentices at once, and pick their successor after a few decades, and then use a process very much like the one you just described to transfer the spell. If they guess wrong? The recipient dies. The characteristics that make a mage and a spell a good match for each other aren’t well understood. Oh, we know a little – this spell might only like redheaded girls born under a full moon, that spell might require unusually high bone density to manage properly – but only generations-long lineages dealing with a single spell know its ins and outs well enough to reliably predict successors like that. Generally, the best method is to put spells and candidates in close proximity and let the spells find their most appropriate hosts.”

“Like the Initiation,” a girl said.

“Yes, exactly. Refujeyo has tried specific spell matching before, giving a student access to only a few spells they’re interested in, but it has a fatality rate of around eighty five per cent. The pick-and-mix mass spell method has a fatality rate somewhere between one and three per cent, depending on specific external factors. So to bring it back to the question, in theory your proposal is safer than having a human familiar, but in practice the new mage would probably die anyway. But we’re getting off-topic. Any other questions about familiarity? Yes, in the back there.”

“Can you make a familiar out of any animal?”

“Most of them, yes, but for insects or fish, there’s little point. The best familiars are animals with a physiology that responds well to their environment. Longevity and general physiological resilience are also bonuses, and of course you want one who can go everywhere with you. Technically, amphibians tend to have the best physiology for it, but mages tend to prefer birds, mammals, or in some cases, reptiles. If you’re a responsible mage who pays attention to your familiar, anything of reasonable size will do.”

There were no more raised hands. The Fiore nodded. “Okay. Now I have a question for all of you.” He picked up Socks. “Who’s a cat person?”

As people swarmed around to give Socks a scratch, Kylie leaned toward me. “Haven’t seen you about much.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Sorry. I just needed to think, you know?”

“You done all your thinking?”

“I guess. I have a new room with no annoying mage kids in it. Want to move in with me?”

She shook her head. “I promised Max I’d room with him to get the Magistae off his back, remember?”

“After he lied to us, you’re still siding with him?”

“I’m not ‘siding’ with anyone. It’s my room. And he didn’t lie to us, you know. He really thought we knew.”

“Ha. Yeah, like I believe that.”

She shrugged. “What’s between you and him isn’t my business.”

“You don’t owe him anything.”

“I know.”

“Kylie, we need to talk about – ”

“Okay, okay,” Instruktanto Miratova announced, “if everyone is quite done playing petting zoo, we have other material to get through today. Thank you, Fiore.”

“Any time, Alania.” Again, the smiles between the two were strained as the Fiore, cat trotting at his heel, filed out.