Chapter IX

Despite his best efforts, Kizu did not sleep during the night. He tried. He lay in bed and stared up at the ceiling. On top of the sheets, under the sheets. Pillow under his head, over, to the side, off the bed entirely. He did pushups to try to wear himself out. He tried reading. He tried having the orb read to him. Nothing seemed to work. Until, just an hour or two before sunrise, he finally drifted off. And it felt like the orb woke him up immediately after.

Kizu decided to forgo breakfast in return for an extra hour of sleep. But even still, he felt zombified as he trailed after his orb to his first class. History.

Other students in the class looked fresh and ready for the new semester, while he felt as if he had crawled out of a grave. He recognized almost every student from his day of testing.

“Hey,” Harvey plopped down in the seat next to him. “What’s happenin’?”

“You tell me, I’m debating sleeping through the class.”

“Yeah? I didn’t see you at the afterparty last night, what kept you up so late? And where’s your monkey at?”

“I let Mort sleep. No point in making him suffer too,” Kizu said. “Afterparty?”

“You didn’t know? Yeah, it was over at another villa owned by a dude named Braxton. Crazy night. Guy ended up cutting off his arm on a dare.”

“Cutting off his arm? You mean, like, metaphorically?”

“No, he had someone hold him down while another person used a saw.” Harvey noticed Kizu’s obvious horror and laughed. “It’s not that big of a deal. Us Tainted can regrow a limb easily enough. Just might take a day or two of discomfort.”

Kizu stared in disbelief. “Is that all he felt when he had it sawed off too? Discomfort?”

“Oh hardly. Wouldn’t be much of a dare if that was the case.”

Before Kizu could ask any more questions, the professor walked into the classroom. He was a small bookish looking man, wearing spectacles. He set down several tomes on his desk and grimaced as he looked up at the students in his class.

“I always thought the professors would be a bit more intimidating,” Harvey muttered to Kizu while scratching a scale on his cheek.

“You are the dredges of this academy,” the professor announced. “Don’t fool yourselves into thinking any differently. Perhaps you won’t forever be the worst ones here, my assignment as your professor is to attempt to somehow boost your education and rectify your ignorance. However, I cannot accomplish the impossible.”

His gaze stopped over and slowly examined each of them with different measures of disdain. When he locked eyes with Kizu, he shook his head in disgust.

“My name is Professor Krimpit. I have spent my life studying artifacts from around the world and am known as one of the most accomplished archaeologists of the modern age. I have precious few peers of my caliber. And you’re privileged to be studying under me. If given the choice, I would not have you. But to teach the brightest and best, I must also examine the dimmest and worst the academy has to offer. Those of you who are repeating my class, know that I will spare you no attention. If you failed the most basic testing a second time, you are truly not worth my notice or time. Do not raise your hands. Do not ask questions. If you do so, you will be asked to vacate my classroom.”

The professor’s monologue about how great he was and how despicable Kizu’s classmates were droned on. Kizu was on the verge of dozing off, when the professor’s words grabbed his attention.

“One of you even had the gall to go on with fake history about the annexation and exile of the witch covens in the Hon region 378 years ago. I will not tolerate tall tales about real events.”

“It wasn’t a tall tale,” Kizu said, breaking into the lecture. “The crone told me about it. She was there when it happened. It wasn’t an exile to the basin. They just stopped living in the towns and cities because they didn’t want to submit to registration. And even if it officially was some sort of exile, it hardly was an effective one. The witches there come and go as they please.”

“Excuse me, boy?” Professor Krimpit said with a voice of ice. “You believe you have access to a primary source on the event? Despite what some old hag beggar on the side of the road might have told you, Philosopher Stones don’t exist. Nobody still lives from that age.”

“I’d let it go if I were you,” Harvey muttered to him.

“Maybe,” Kizu said, ignoring his friend. “You need to actually visit the basin instead of reading books by people like yourself who also weren’t there.”

“I have given you the option to quiet down and submit to education, you continue to refuse. Exit the class.”

Kizu stood up and started marching out of the room. “So you just kick out anyone who challenges your beliefs? How wise.”

“As spoken before, those who do not listen and disrupt, will be asked to vacate. I will not have false information spouted in this class. All students present are far enough behind as it is without the further confusion of facts.”

He might have continued his lecture about the dangers of fake history, but Kizu couldn’t hear it after slamming the classroom door. His blood pumped in his ears. He walked, letting the movement burn off some of his irritation and frustration. As he wandered the halls, he wondered what the crone would have done in his situation. Probably cackled at him for his big head and left him to wallow in his ignorance. Or maybe hexed him into a toad. Those seemed like the two most likely options, depending on her mood.

A bell eventually rang and he tore his mind away from his musings to figure out where his feet had taken him. He brought out his orb and told it to direct him to his next class. Unfortunately, his day didn’t seem like it would be improving anytime soon. He exited the hallways out into the courtyard to join the assembled group for Combat F.

Professor Arclight already stood front and center, a smile on her face. Kizu glanced around his peers and noticed the quill-faced girl who had failed her attempted summoning during the combat test.

She noticed him looking at her and edged closer to him.

“Hello,” she said, so softly he barely made the word out.

“Hello,” he replied. “I’m Kaga Kizu, nice to meet you.”

“Evie,” she said. Her eyes were hidden behind a veil of needles but he still got the impression she looked down at the ground as she wrung her gloved hands.

“I’m sorry your conjuring went poorly the other day,” Kizu said, trying to think of something to fill the silence between them.

“I forgot the binding marks,” she said miserably.

“The marks that keep the summoned creature bound?”

She nodded.

“Okay!” Arclight said to the gathered group. “It looks like you all make up the F Combat class.”

Kizu braced himself for another lecture about being a member of the worst students in the academy.

“You’re so lucky!” Arclight said with enthusiasm. “You all have nowhere to go, but up! In all of my years as a professor, the F Class students like yourself have improved more than any other class in the academy. It’s like swimming in the ocean. Most of your peers are underwater, battling to the surface, but where they flail about in the middle of the open water, you all get to push off the rocky bottom. And my job is to make certain you streamline as far as possible upwards.”

Kizu found himself smiling slightly. The speech felt a bit more uplifting than Krimpit’s.

“Today, we will be discussing the backbone of combat. Defense. You can survive an encounter using solely offense or by strengthening your body to move faster allowing you to evade. But depending on solely brute strength or being able to dodge every ability sent your way is chancey at best, and foolish in most situations.”

Arclight seemed to enrapture them all in her speech. In complete contrast with his last class, Kizu glanced around and noticed every single student listening with full attention.

“Thankfully, we can create shields. These shields can be divided into two main types. Physical, to stop objects from reaching you. And antimagical. Which obviously stops magic from getting to you.”

With her left hand, she raised up a wall of pure stone from the dirt. It crusted over into half a dome protecting her left side. Then, with her right hand, she created a glimmering glass-like panel. It completed the dome around her. Then she allowed both to collapse.

“Now, a witch attempts to hex me, which shield do I use?”

Hands slowly raised, and the called on student replied with antimagical.

“Good, now let’s say a troll heaves a boulder at me. Which shield do I want?”

This time a student replied with physical.

“And if a fellow mage creates a fireball and hurls it in my direction?”

This created a stir. The students muttered amongst themselves. Evie slowly raised her hand.

“Yes?”

“Wouldn’t either work?” Her voice came out as a squeak.

“Exactly correct! Since the fire was created by magic, antimagic would disperse it just as well as a wall of stone. Perhaps even more efficiently in certain situations. I would want to use whichever one I felt more confident in my abilities with. Now, pair up and space out!”

Evie and Kizu glanced at one another. He motioned, requesting that they move over to the edge of the courtyard. He wanted to be out of sight of most of the other students. Evie agreed readily.

“Size up your partner,” Arclight’s voice boomed, allowing her to be heard across the courtyard. “Seek out strengths or weaknesses. When you advance to higher classes, I’ll teach you to recognize the subtleties to look for. But right now, I want to instill in you the habit of examination.”

Kizu looked at Evie. Her uniform also had brown quills bristling out in several places. There was no sign of areas with less quills, which probably meant he wouldn’t want to physically strike her with any part of his body. Or be struck by her. Other than that, she held herself tightly. Her gloved hands were balled in nervous fists, thumbs tucked between her fingers. Her legs looked locked, as if she forced herself to stand in front of him. To be honest, he thought a strong breeze might knock her over.

“First, we’re going to create physical shields. The easiest of these is done by using elemental magic like I demonstrated earlier. If you’re unfamiliar with the concept, touch the dirt under your feet and do your best to expand on it. Build it up in front of you.”

Kizu kneeled on the ground and buried his fingers into the soil. He closed his eyes and focused. He opened himself internally to the flow of magic like the crone had taught him. He tried to morph his magic and will the dirt pile on top of itself. Create more of it. When he opened his eyes, a pile of dirt the size of an anthill had formed over his hand.

A look around at other students held his despair at bay. Nobody else appeared much more successful than he had been. The best student still only had a book sized wall formed in front of him.

“Remember this!” Arclight boomed. “Remember this lackluster start point! Really take it in how poorly you just performed your first shields. Look at your partner’s as well.”

Kizu noted that Evie, instead of creating a wall, had somehow made the dirt stick to her gloves and was desperately attempting to shake it off. When she looked at him, her quills physically drooped.

“This isn’t fair!” one student said, looking at her pile of dirt. “If you gave back the wands you took at the beginning of class, I’d be able to do more than this.”

There was a murmur of agreement and for the first time Kizu noticed that none of the students held staves or wands.

Arclight walked over to the student. She smiled at her, then held out the wand.

“Very well, create a shield.”

The student snatched the wand up gleefully and pointed it at the ground, likely preparing to create a wall of dirt.

Arclight slapped the wand out of the student’s hand.

The student stared dumbly at her empty hand then up at Arclight.

“What do you do now? Run after your wand? Use precious moments summoning it back to your hand? No. All conduits are crutches. Ones I wish the academy would do away with altogether. The only thing they're good for is making students faint from overdoing their physical capabilities. We will build up from the base!”

The student meekly retreated, not even bothering to pick up her wand from the dirt.

“Now, for anti-magic shields!” Arclight said. “This time, you need to focus entirely on repelling. Form that image into something dense and tangible.”

Kizu did as commanded. He forced his will into a condensed location in front of himself. When he finished and examined his work, he found himself surprisingly pleased with the result. It wasn’t more than a square of half a meter, but it was a result. And a quick glance around the courtyard told him that it was more of a result than the majority of the other students.

“Excellent work, a few of you actually have managed to surprise me!” Arclight informed them. “Now, have your partner attempt to break through it.”

Evie dropped her shield and looked at his. She put her palms together for a moment, then opened them to him. His shield cracked. Then it shattered.

Darkness stole his vision.

Irrationally, he felt a deep dreaded fear grip his heart. Since being bonded to Mort, he’d always been able to maintain night vision. It had been years since he had to be exposed to darkness.

His heart-rate rose and he instinctively lashed out with an illusion, concealing himself in the guise of what he hoped to appear to be a boulder. Kizu desperately longed to be hidden. To be safe and not exposed to the world around him. He grappled with his eyes, forcing his eyelids open and closed. It made no difference.

People spoke words all around him, but he didn’t let himself actually hear them. He focused on his problem. A hex. Evie must have used a hex on him to take away his vision. His shield had broken.

Hexes usually dissipated in time. He doubted Evie had the ability to place a permanent one on him. But his doubt didn’t completely remove the option. And that rattled him. Finally, after hundreds of rapid blinks, his vision returned.

With queasy relief, he dropped his boulder illusion. Evie kneeled in the dirt, head down and apologizing profusely to him. Arclight stood a stone’s throw away, watching the exchange with interest.

“It’s fine. I’m fine,” he said to Evie, trying to not sound too rattled. “Let's keep going. Put your shield up.”

Evie did as commanded. She created a shield the size of an apple. It glistened in the sunlight in front of her chest.

Kizu opened his hand and the illusion of a bird flew from it and flew straight at her. It slammed into the shield like a real bird crashing into a window, but instead of dropping to the dirt, it faded. He tried again, this time creating a winged snake. He put a bit more effort into the illusion, adding details like the fangs dripping with venom. It twirled as it flew and as it contacted the antimagic shield, this time it cracked it. His illusion didn’t fade, it just pressed itself up against the shield. Then the shield’s cracks spiderwebbed out. With a final push, the winged snake pierced through the shield.

He wiped his brow. The concentration it took to maintain the illusion while pressed against the shield had made him break out in a sweat.

“Do you know why she broke through your shield so easily?” Arclight asked behind him.

Kizu turned on a heel and looked at her. “Because she’s better at creating the shield. Or my illusion was not as strong as her hex.”

Arclight laughed. “On the contrary! While I’d say the little blinding hex she cast on you was pretty remarkable for this class’s standards, your mastery of illusions far outweighs that. But you spread yourself too thin! Her shield’s focus was tight and concentrated, where you attempted to create as big of a shield as possible. In mage combat, bigger almost never makes something stronger.”

A bell rang from a tower above them.

“With that, class dismissed! Good work all of you! I look forward to training you all!”