The Aurelian Blue mage class, or at least the first one, is an outdoors lecture hall, with a dirt field, a wooden stage with a podium and a backboard, and widely spaced lecture seats with a variety of designs to fit the vast array of blue mage body types. Most of the students here were kids, likely just having received their powers, though there were two or three teens and adults, and not a small number of those whose appearances were so far removed from humanoid that their ages were impossible to determine.

The area was quiet besides the ramblings of my fellow students, specifically placed at the outskirts of the Aurelian school grounds. Two adults, an orc and a human, stood at both sides of the seating arrangement.

I get the feeling the Aurelian academy doesn’t trust us as much as they would other students. One of the students, an orc with the head of some sort of wolf monster, was already fidgeting, cradling their head between their arms as they swayed back and forth.

What must it be like to live with the head of a monster? Does the voice constantly whisper into their ear? Have they experienced even a moment of silence since their powers manifested?

I recognized one of the students. The merman from the mysterious waters sect, still within their water slime. He had some sort of off-beige paper that didn’t turn soggy like most parchment or paper would.

He’s already D rank, I’m pretty sure. How is he only now taking his first class? I stood up to make conversation, but it was at that moment a shadow cast over the area.

A figure of a man, with wings of gold that stretched out forty times as long as them, flew in from above. They wore armor — or perhaps it was their skin — that shined in the sunlight.

They crashed down just behind the podium, cratering the stage and sending shards of wood flying around them.

The stage somehow rebuilt itself as the professor stood up from their crouched position and furled his wings. Someone must have installed a wood enchantment to rebuild the stage when damaged. I wonder if the enchantments were always there, which let the professor make his grand entrance, or if they had to install it since he would do it regardless.

“Students!” The man bellowed, sending ripples along the merman’s slime with just the sound of his voice. “Welcome to Blue mage class 1. My name is Draxus, but you will all be calling me sir. To those of you who aren’t summoners, you will be learning from me for your entire stay at Aurelia Academy. For the rest of you, someone else will be taking over at the end of the month.

Now, just to get a feel for those of you who have any schooling whatsoever, who can tell me why we’re called ‘blue mages’?”

About a third of the class raised their hands.

“You there, in the back. Speak.” He said, pointing at the merman.

The merman’s voice was a bit gurgly, but still intelligible, and much more clear than one would expect to hear from inside a slime. “It was thought for some time, from what we know about the time before the age of armies, that blue mages were a type of specialization that regular mages received. The first blue mage, a water aligned summoner like me, had a specialization that was rather similar to a traditional water mage. It was only after Alexandra established haven that enough research was done to determine that it was a class in and of itself. But at the time, the first proto-powered was widely considered a blue — as in water — mage already, so the name stuck.”

“That’s the gist of it. Now that we have that out of the way, let’s dispense with the actual notes. I’m not here to teach you history or whatever. I’m not going to bore you with the ‘how do monsters work?’ questions that I’m sure you’ve already figured out. This is not going to be that kind of class.

You’re all a danger to yourselves and those around you. Of those of you in this class, 90% of you will die within the next ten years. Of those, roughly half will be because you succumbed to the voice and killed someone, then were hunted down like the raging monsters you became.

What I’m here to do is to make sure you can control yourselves, and can handle yourselves in a fight. For most of you, I will fail. For this, I am sorry.” Draxus paused to let that sink in. “Before we move on, does anyone have any questions?”

I raised my hand. “For those of us who can’t speak for any reason, how do we identify ourselves as blue mages? I’m getting a bit tired of being attacked.”

“Excellent question. Normally we would cover this topic at the end of the day, but let’s use this as a segway to talk about enchantments. For most, enchantments are a tool. But for us, they can be a lifeline. Aurelia Academy provides its blue mage students with two single-use enchantments to use in emergencies.

The first one is a sound and light enchantment that will flash red and blue and emit the words ‘I am not a monster’ on repeat. If you drop this and someone continues to attack you, well, there’s not much else you can do besides defend yourself.

The second enchantment is a sleep enchantment. If you ever feel yourself at risk of losing your sanity, use it while you still have the chance. Has anyone here not used enchantments before?” No one raised their hand. Even powerless would use enchantments during class for menial labor. One student however, the wolf-headed orc, rushed up from their desk and charged Draxus.

“Sooner than it usually happens” Draxus sighed. The wolf-headed orc grabbed onto Draxus, and attempted to take a bite. Draxus didn’t even flinch as the wolf’s teeth scraped against his metal skin, leaving no marks and dealing no damage to it or him. Draxus grabbed the orc by the throat, and raised him. “First lesson, and the most important. What do you do when yourself or another blue mage is currently unable to control themselves?”

Draxus slammed the orc head first into the wooden stage below him, and his fidgeting ceased. The human attendant ran over, and started healing them.

“The first, and easiest solution should be to make them lose consciousness. It functions the same as sleep or leaving monster form, giving the person time to recover from the monster voice. Assuming they’re not so far gone that this doesn’t help, it’s usually enough.

The second solution is to prevent them or yourself from getting so far gone in the first place. Consistent rest, calm spells, or mana deficiency can help with this. Generally, the best solution is to avoid any major triggers like combat, and find a way to spend as much time as possible with the least powerful voice as you can. For you summoners out there, this just means keeping your summon count low, and unsummoning them. For you temporary shifters, this means unshifting often, and using lower rank forms when possible. For you permanent shifters, this means that under no circumstances should you ever transform your head into that of a monster, like this poor soul here.

The third solution is death. There is no fourth solution.

Now, I’ve been told that we’re supposed to go over greetings for our first class, even if it’s a waste of time. I don’t care about your names, so let’s make this interesting. Raise your hands if you’ve ever been as far gone as this guy” He gestured to the wolf-headed boy, now slumped against the podium.

I was the only one to raise my hand.

“You don’t seem like a permanent shifter. What’s your specialization?”

“The details are a bit complicated, but essentially I can transform my whole body into that of a monster.”

“And how did it happen? What made you snap?”

“I was in the form of a monster above my rank, and badly losing a spar with someone who reminded me of… The Norbury massacre of 5673.”

“Ah, I heard of that one. Elves, was it?”

“Indeed.”

“Now, tell me, how do you feel about it?”

“Terrible, obviously. I’m working at it, but —”

“Not making any progress, right?”

“Yes, that’s right. I’m training with someone who can help, but progress hasn’t been coming in the way I’d like. I can keep myself steady, but that’s only by avoidance and having him calm me down through our mind bridge.”

“Then let me tell you a secret: It only gets worse from here. The voice only gets stronger as you progress, and even if you don’t feel it now, it weighs on you. Soon enough, you’ll start to feel it, even when you’re not in a monster’s form.

You can get by with a mind aligned or a mage willing to spend mana on your calm spell, but those are crutches that will eventually fail. If you can’t even handle a D tier monster, then I guarantee you will lose yourself the moment you try a C tier. With that in mind, give up on being an adventurer. Give up on growing your powers. It will not end well.”

Draxus turned away from me, and addressed the rest of the class. “And with that, our hour is up. Our next class will be Wednesday, then Friday after that.”