The School of Tomorrow

I learn how to defend myself

I spent most of my night reading Merlin's book and trying out any of the spells that didn't require imploding the world or something like that, so when our first class of Hate Magic began, I was pretty confident that I wouldn't misspell anything, in the contrary, since Hate Magic probably needed, well, hate, I could just imagine Anatoly and the spell would come very quickly.

"Good Morning Sadie, looking good today! Howard my man! The Lakers lost again, tough huh! Janko...it's wednesday in Finland too, I think!" I said, sitting down and immediately writing in my new conversation notebook for talking with Estrella without sacrificing my notes. "Hey Estrella, lovely day right?"

"Mr.Chopsticks, you seem quite enthusiastic today." Mrs. Wallace said, unimpressed with my optimism. "I assume that you had a good night of sleep after studying spelling thoroughly."

"You bet that I had no time of sleep at all." I replied happily. "I only know that today we only have one class!"

"Who told you that you have just one class today?" Mrs. Wallace asked, arching her eyebrows. "As far as I'm concerned, you also have Defensive Spells this noon."

"Then I'll rock defense too." I said optimistically. "This is gonna be easy!"

"I hope that your enthusiasm will be proportional to your skill." Mrs. Wallace said, then she walked back to the board. "Overconfidence leads to the downfall of a mage."

After writing writing the notes of Hate Magic, which were all diagrams of how someone could channel hate throughout their body, good thing that I had studied that just 6 hours ago.

"Hate Magic, or Crimson Magic was forbidden for a long time, until in 1812 a Mage managed to convince the Royal Magic Council to reinstate studies of Hate Magic." Mrs. Wallace said calmly. "Can anyone point to me who the mage was?"

"Magnus Grimshaw, who was also responsible for the creation of the Iron Maiden Spell, the Dagger of Brutus Spell and for lobbying for the protection of the Lancaster Coal Raven." I said, taking Mrs. Wallace back. "Magnus is also a Persona non Grata in several countries in Europe for his liberal use of torturing spells."

"That is...correct, Mr.Chopsticks." Mrs. Wallace said, not really knowing what to do with me. "Continuing, you are now going to learn your first Hate Spell. The Burning Spell, Hate Magic functions similarly to Life and Love Magic in the sense that the power of the spell depends highly on the caster's feelings, in this case being, of course, hate."

Mrs. Wallace then gave all of us some straw dolls, presumably for us to burn, although I did know that this spell probably would only give the sensation of the target being burned, as most Hate Spells didn't kill, nor were they made for that, but mainly for causing pain.

"Now you will do something different than normal, visualize in your head something that you hate a lot, does not need to be a person necessarily, just something that causes you a lot of hatred." Mrs. Wallace instructed, I focused a lot on beating up Anatoly. "Now repeat with me: You will now sow what you planted, let my hate burn you!"

the doll on her desk started to shriek and contort itself as if Mrs.Wallace had just forced him to watch a very bad movie, maybe she made him watch Cats the Musical. I took a deep breath for focus and then I chanted what Mrs.Wallace had said without missing a beat, and when I opened my eyes the doll was rolling around, trying to make it stop.

"Does the spell have a time to end?" I asked her. "or do we have to make another spell to end it?"

"That is another particularity of Hate Magic, the spell draws its strength from the hatred of whoever cast it, so as long as you're still focusing on that hate the spell will last." Mrs. Wallace said. "The only other spell that I can think that does something similar is Chaos Flames, but that's very advanced magic."