Gilai’el’s mind raced as she tried to understand the meaning of this lesson. When she thought she understood it, her eyes narrowed. Heldryn nodded knowingly as she let her arms down to her sides.
“Where are the study materials?” asked Gilai’el angrily. “How are we to learn to control magic in this manner?”
Heldryn shook her head. “This College is not meant to instruct in the use of magic,” she explained bitterly. “We are here to become that which the Empire wishes us to be, prior to releasing us into the world.”
“They mean to appeal to our ambition,” concluded Gilai’el, “and by tying our fates to the general conduct of the group as a whole, we become our own police.” It was a clever method of control since any Student who upset the upward mobility of their fellows would likely find themselves a victim of the entire class’s vengeance.
Heldryn nodded. “Do you know him?” she tilted her head toward Jon, who was apparently also having the rules of this new classroom explained to him.
“I do,” replied the black-haired girl, who was less thankful than she had expected to once again be in the company of a fellow Listoh Student. “He defended me from a Tyrdren and threw the boy out the window to his death.”
Heldryn shook her head piteously as she eyed the red-head, who was clearly larger than any of the other men surrounding him. “His kind does not fare well in this room,” she said under her breath. “Within a fortnight the others will likely determine he is too dangerous to their own ascension, at which point it is merely a matter of time before his life is ended.”
Gilai’el felt her throat tighten at the thought of Jon being killed by these people. She held no conscious interest in him, being more frightened by the hulking young man than anything else. Still, he had saved her from the Tyrdren boy, as well as helped her decipher the key to passing the Entrance Examination.
She knew she owed him for his past assistance, and she decided it was necessary to repay that debt at some point, likely in the near future.
“If you can, then protect him,” whispered Gilai’el.
Heldryn sighed. “If you wish to ask something of them, you must provide equal value in return,” she explained.
Gilai’el cocked an eyebrow. “Equal value?” she asked warily. “What do you mean by that?”
“You could not understand yet,” replied Heldryn. “Ask again in a week, and I can explain that which you still do not understand.”
Gilai’el heard a chime of some kind and the lights dimmed slightly. Wordlessly, the Students went to their desks and as she watched, those desks transformed into beds as each Student withdrew a thin, rolled up mattress from the lowest drawer of their identical stations.
After placing their food trays on the floor in front of their desks, the mattresses were placed on top of the desks by the members of the class. A few even did so for the unconscious, pig-faced woman before lifting her onto the makeshift bed.
Heldryn gestured for the raven-haired girl to return to her own desk, and Gilai’el did so to follow the other Students’ example. After a few minutes, all of the Students were lying on top of their now padded desks, and not long after that, another chime sounded, signaling the extinguishing of the lights.
Gilai’el’s heart pounded in her chest as the blackness of the room almost seemed to crush her. The violence she had witnessed since entering Veldyrian’s Wizard’s College was like nothing she had been told to expect or planned for. She wondered why her Matron and the other Magos’ of House Listoh did not reveal the truly savage nature of this ordeal, and bitter thoughts crept into her head as she lay there silently.
Before long, the room was filled with snoring Students, and Gilai’el’s sense of dread quickly transformed into annoyance.
She had never been able to sleep in the same room as a snorer, and it seemed as though she now shared a room with at least a dozen of them.
* * *
Gilai’el got no sleep that night, so she was relieved when the chime sounded as it had the previous evening. The chamber was lit by a soft glow whose origin she found difficulty in pinpointing, but as soon as she had heard the chime, Students began to remove the mattresses from their massive desks.
Shortly after the last of the Students completed stowing their mattresses, the iron-bound doors through which the Professor had left opened, and a handful of Custodians came into the room bearing meal trays.
The raven-haired girl actually hoped for more of the foul gruel she’d had for her previous meal, and the Custodian placed the new covered tray on her desk before collecting the one she had already used. She wanted no part in a power struggle over a piece of fresh fruit.
She held her breath as she lifted the metal lid of her tray, and breathed out a relieved sigh when she saw it was the same, malodorous muck she had eaten the previous day. She began spooning the awful stuff into her mouth since she suspected she had limited time to finish it.
When she had nearly completed her meal, the chime rang again, and the Custodians re-entered the room, collecting the trays from the back row of Students before doing likewise with each of the other four curved landings until the trays were completely removed, and the Professor entered through the door immediately after the Custodians had completed gathering what remained of their morning meal.
“Good morning, class,” greeted Profession Danyel as he approached his lecturers’ podium.
“Good morning, Professor,” replied the class in unison. Gilai’el had scarcely believed that these people could come together for anything, but she quickly realized that appealing to these people’s ambition was proving to be an effective method of behavioral control.
“Today’s lesson begins as follows,” the half-bald Professor explained as he waved his hand at the massive, white wall behind him, causing every inch of its surface to be covered in complex diagrams and patterns, unlike anything Gilai’el had ever seen. Every possible color and shape were present within those diagrams, and they almost seemed to blend together and swirl into a giant, meaningless mass which made Gilai’el’s head ache within moments of study.
No matter how hard she looked at it, she found it was nearly impossible to clearly see where one shape ended and another began, or at which point an orange hue became red, or a green color became blue.
She felt sick to her stomach and nearly vomited all over her desk as a series of abdominal spasms came seemingly from nowhere. Suppressed snickers came from the Students throughout the classroom, and Gilai’el felt her face turn beet red with embarrassment.
“Concentration and focus,” continued the Professor stoically, ignoring the raven-haired Student’s muffled gags. “They are not — regardless of what you may believe — the same thing,” he continued. “Concentration, for the purposes of controlling magic, refers to the ability of a mind to shut out all stimuli which does not pertain to the task at hand.”
Gilai’el saw movement from the girl sitting beside her in between retches, and when she looked, she saw the girl was silently mouthing every word the Professor spoke while she looked down at her desktop.
“Focus,” said Danyel as he leaned forward on his podium, “is the ability to bring one thing, and one thing only, into the center of the mind. Passing the Entrance Examination merely proves you have a rudimentary understanding of one or the other; to pass this class, one must have both.”
The Professor pointed to a section of the twenty foot by forty-foot collection of patterns which Gilai’el dared not look at. “Focus on one section, and it will appear to have greater clarity than when viewed as part of the whole,” he explained, and the upper right corner of the diagram expanded until it covered the entire surface of the wall. Gilai’el had never seen anything like this display before, and she found that when the Professor had expanded and magnified the smaller section of the greater diagram, she was no longer queasy or lightheaded.
She studied it intently as the Professor continued. “It is in this way which the unenlightened practitioners of m
agic outside the Empire learn their craft while staring into the entrails of livestock and conversing with the stars, under the influence of mind-altering substances,” he explained, turning toward the diagram and pointing emphatically. “Any fool can learn one small part of a puzzle,” he continued levelly, “but what is required of you is something greater.”
The curly-haired man turned from the wall, and immediately the entire diagram of swirling colors and patterns returned to the wall, prompting Gilai’el to finally lose the battle for control over her stomach as a wave of nausea overcame her.
There was a chorus of hoots and laughter as she did so, and she could not remember another moment in her life when she had felt so ashamed. But when she was finished with her violent abdominal spasms, she lifted her chin and wiped it defiantly, as she struggled to keep her features under control. She would not give these people the satisfaction of forcing her to tears.
“It would seem we have a winner,” remarked Professor Danyel mildly after a lengthy pause. “Norberto ‘Tangerine’ Three,” he called out, causing a Student in the second row to stand from behind his desk. The Professor retrieved a small parcel from beneath his podium and tossed it to the young man, who caught it in the air before tucking it safely away in one of his desk’s drawers.
“Study this diagram, regardless of the discomfort it might cause,” continued the Professor. Gilai’el saw Jon leaning forward on his elbows, staring intently at the massive, dizzying diagram on the wall with a look of determination on his face she had never seen. It was amazing to her than anyone could look at the thing for more than a few seconds without becoming violently ill.
“When you believe you have a firm grasp of both concentration and focus, you may elect to challenge for ascension to the general student body. However,” warned the Professor, “as young Kaven has learned, failure will result in a minimum of one year’s inclusion in this course, starting from the day of the failed challenge.”
The iron-bound doors opened in time with the last of the Professor’s words, and the blond-haired Kaven was brought into the room by a pair of custodians, each holding him under an armpit. He was clearly unconscious, and the Custodians carried him up the steps to his desk, which was the only vacant one in the room.
The obsidian-skinned men placed Kaven in his chair before leaving wordlessly through the door, and Gilai’el was beginning to believe their title of ‘Custodian’ was a lie. They were closer to a prison security force than a custodial service.
When the door closed, the Professor snapped his fingers, and young Kaven awoke with a start.
“Good of you to join us, Kaven ‘Cerulean’ Four,” said the Professor. When the young blond man’s eyes focused on the complex, multi-colored diagram behind the balding instructor, his expression quickly turned from shock to anger.
With that, the Professor sat in the chair behind the podium and opened a book which he began to read silently.
Gilai’el’s desktop was still covered in barely digested gruel, but she tried her hardest to study the diagram, even for a brief glance at a time. She failed to keep her eyes on it long enough to understand any of its meaning before her vision narrowed and she became lightheaded.
She looked back at the red-haired Jon, who was leaning back in his chair with his arms folded, a self-satisfied smirk plastered on his lips. He looked down at her and winked, which only served to strengthen her resolve to complete the task at hand.
* * *
Try as she might, Gilai’el found it nearly impossible to focus on the mess of images for more than a few seconds after nearly a week of trying.
As it happened, the lecture was precisely the same day after day, and at no time during lecture were Students allowed to move from their desks. During the brief period preceding their bed time, the Students were allowed to move about and socialize, but that period lasted only ten minutes, and it was the same ten minutes they were given to eat their food.
The second night, Gilai’el realized that her desk also contained a small chamber pot, which could be stored in the bottom left compartment of her desk. Heldryn had taken pity on her and looked at the compartment holding it when she had noticed the black-haired girl’s obvious discomfort at not having used a toilet in over a day.
Thankfully, the compartment kept the pot’s odors locked inside, but there was nowhere to perform other basic hygiene, and they were rationed little more than half of a glass of water twice per day, which was barely enough to stay well-hydrated, even for a smaller person such as Gilai’el.
Surprisingly, Gilai’el saw that Jon appeared to be adjusting to their latest environment, forming a truce with some of the Students nearest him — including the pig-faced woman he had rendered unconscious on the first day.
On the eighth day, shortly after the day’s ‘lesson’ had begun, the door to the golden corridor opened and through it stepped the third member of her ‘class.’
It was one of her Housemates, a girl named Elena.
“We welcome our latest entrant to the College of Veldyrian,” said the Professor as Elena stepped into the hall, and the entire class stood to their feet almost before Gilai’el could get out of her chair.
The young, brown-haired Elena looked up at the class more meekly than Gilai’el had come to expect from her formerly brash Housemate.
“Who wishes to challenge this course?” asked Danyel as he turned to the class.
“I do,” came a voice behind her, and Gilai’el turned to see it was the androgynous looking woman with a large, v-shaped wound on her blackened cheek.
The Professor looked to her and nodded. “I have heard you, Nilora ‘Amethyst’ Two,” he acknowledged. “Who wishes to contest her claim to ascension?”
“I do, Professor,” said a familiar, heavily accented man’s voice from the back row. Gilai’el looked with shock to see Jon standing behind his desk.
A look of amusement crossed the instructor’s features. “Very well,” he gestured for them to come to the front of the classroom. “The challenge has been made, and the two Students shall now come forward to determine if either of them has learned the lessons of this class.”
Elena stood quietly as she watched with what looked to be the same anticipation as Gilai’el had felt when entering the classroom.
The two challengers accepted their proffered rings from the Professor, who was looking more and more like a gladiatorial announcer to Gilai’el and less like a teacher.
“The victor shall have the opportunity to advance beyond this class and into the general student body of Veldyrian’s College,” explained the Professor, and Gilai’el kicked herself for realizing that the entire spectacle was for Elena’s benefit. “The defeated must remain in this class for a minimum of one full calendar year before repeating the test.”
The Professor explained, as he had before, the function of the rings and the determination for victory. When he had done so, he stood with his hand placed directly between them. “Begin,” he instructed.
Before the word had left his lips, a beam of pale green energy burst from Jon’s ring and struck Danyel’s hand. The Professor looked to Jon’s opponent, whose face was contorted with the strain of activating the device.
Then, slithering from her ring was a dim, purple light that ponderously approached the Professor’s hand, which he promptly removed.
The battle began in earnest, and after just a few seconds it was clear that Jon would win. His beam was not only more potent, but it was also far more direct, while Nilora’s weaved this way and that in the air.
Nilora’s face twisted in panic as the beam approached her outstretched hand, when without warning her beam began to push back into Jon’s. A look of surprise crossed Jon’s face, and his beam collapsed as Nilora drove her sparkling, purple beam toward him, striking him in the chest and dropping him to the ground.
“Well done, Nilora ‘Amethyst’ Two,” congratulated the Professor blandly. “You have earned your place among the student body.” The bal
ding professor gestured toward the golden hallway, and the Student’s features were a mixture of glee and smugness as she strode toward the hallway with her chest puffed out proudly.
When she had disappeared into the hallway, the Professor turned to Jon with a disappointed look. “You must now remain for one calendar year within this classroom. Resume your station,” he instructed, and Jon did so wordlessly with a wink toward Gilai’el.
She was furious. He had clearly failed on purpose, and his reason for doing so was almost certainly due to some bizarre sense of loyalty — or love — toward her. Gilai’el had no need of his protection in this place, and that he insisted on providing it was a matter which she decided would be addressed during that evening’s meal period.
* * *
After that period’s class, when the Custodians came in with their evening meal, she stormed up to the back row and marched to Jon’s desk.
“You failed on purpose!” she hissed louder than she would have liked, causing the nearby Students to look at her condescendingly, but Gilai’el did not care.
“Of course, Gilly,” he replied with an innocent smile. “How else could I hope to stay close by?”
“I do not need your protection!” she snapped loudly enough for the entire class to hear, causing a chorus of catcalls and mocking laughter, including more than a few suggestions that this was little more than a lover’s quarrel.
Jon shrugged. “Then ye don’t need to take it,” he retorted with the same smile on his lips. “Just do as ye will, and I’ll do the same.”
Gilai’el leaned on his desk and glared at him. “I owe you nothing,” she said in a low voice. “Do you understand that?”
Jon nodded knowingly. “Aye,” he agreed, “but that’s not why I did it.”
“Then why?” she demanded. “You could have gone through that door and into the next level of this miserable place, but you stayed here. Why did you do it!?” she asked in exasperation.
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