Radiance - The Alight Archives Book #1

30. Building Blocks

With the first week of their semester well behind them, the professors weren't as insistent on tasking them with challenges or surprise tests as they once had been, much to the relief of everyone in class.

Rather, they engaged in more traditionalized lessons one would come to expect at a normal teaching institution, whether it was designed for mages or your everyday civilian. They'd start their lessons with lectures, read a few chapters of a text, and maybe close out by answering questions from the professors, and Elaine much preferred it this way, though she was uncertain how long it would last.

After how difficult her first two days had been—as well as whatever had happened to her during the Fulcudo game—Elaine had spent the rest of that weekend either sleeping or catching up on her studies, only leaving her dorm room when it was time for them to get a bite to eat or when she needed to use the ladies room. By the time Straize rolled around, Elaine felt rejuvenized and ready to fill her brain with the knowledge Professional Sorcerers had to offer.

Potion Making wasn't anything special. Professor Lurgs advanced in their syllabus by going over various terminologies as well as identifying and explaining the kinds of apparatus they'd be using in their preparation of certain concoctions, all of which Elaine was already privy to. Having spent so much time helping out at her parent's potions shop, there was fairly little of what Lurgs was teaching that she didn't already know. Nevertheless, the sorcerer's bubbly and lively personality kept her from being bored, all the while Simon—who was now her permanent lab partner—and his constant muttering made her wish for someone to place a lock over his mouth.

The Arts of Abjuration class was challenging, to say the least. There was a lot of statistical information and hard-to-read phrases they were required to commit to memory. But with Fearne's help, Elaine managed to get through the class well enough. As for her Study of Spirits class, Professor Altair hadn't instructed them to Summon any more spirits like during their initial lesson. Instead, she educated them on the vast and exciting history of the Celestial Realm, and the societies the spirits on that side had forged for themselves.

The end result was a class that felt to Elaine oddly like Magihistory, instead as a substitute for learning about famous sorcerers and duels in Incante's past, they were being taught about the societal hierarchy of spirits, and the way Altair described them made them come across far less alien as Elaine originally perceived them to be. From a particular perspective, humans and spirits weren't all that different from one another, at least, in regard to their civilizations.

Most of the week flew by like a summer breeze, but what was most surprising was how mundane Professor Marsh's lessons were. After being trapped in a pocket prison, she reckoned her entire class had grown anxious about what he'd left planned for their syllabus. Conversely, though, Marsh spent the majority of the class sitting behind his desk reading from a textbook. He expected everyone present to remain utterly quiet, and those that didn't—or even made the slightest fraction of a sound—would be dealt with appropriately. In spite of how sluggish his lessons were, Elaine was determined not to be captured by one of his dry glares.

"And so it was stated in the Year X356 that any and all practice of Black Magic would be considered illegal, and should any sorcerer engage in it regardless, they would be charged with a lifetime in prison, or, in more severe cases, an immediate death sentence," Professor Marsh continued perfunctorily, wiping his eyes after every other sentence. "As the years moved on, the amount of Black Magic-related crimes have decreased drastically, however, there are still warlocks and other rogue mage organizations such as Eclipse that practice it in spite of what the law dictates. Magic is dangerous; Black Magic even more so."

Black Magic terrified her, but she couldn't deny that it was interesting. People feared what they couldn't understand, Elaine was no exception. However, the more she learned of Black Magic, the more horrified she became. Some of the most heinous incidents in Incantian history, such as the Aetherium or the Grand War between Incante and the neighboring country of Ekenthall that she learned about in Magihistory or even the ever so mysterious Bedlam—a blank period in history that hardly anybody knew about in much detail—were catalyzed from the act of Black Magic.