Magical Death Wish (Fractal AU)

Chapter 1.3 - [Alex] Familiar Faces

A moment after Veera snapped her fingers, we appeared in a classroom. It was a pretty normal classroom with a blackboard, a teacher's desk with a spinoak wood top and dwarven obsidian making up the rest of the body. Those are some really expensive materials for just a teacher's desk. This just seems like a waste of precious resources. For some reason, the desks for the students were all piled up on top of each other at the back end of the room. Same goes for the chairs.

"Where'd my jacket go?" Daniel exclaimed. He was looking down at his outfit and I realized that we were no longer wearing our usual clothes. We were instead dressed in what looked like a uniform. All of us were wearing white suit pants, that seemed to be enchanted with something. They looked pretty normal, excwpt for the black dragon embroidered on the left leg. The school logo, I thought. We were also wearing white button-up shirts with sleeves that were lined with two long, black pieces of silk wrapping around them.

That's an unusual choice for a school uniform. Though what's even more unusual is that your entire uniform is enchanted with some sort of detection magic.

Maybe it's to alert the authorities if someone is upto suspicious behaviour or is in some sort of danger?

I don't think so. Those kinds of magic are easy to identify. Your uniform seems like it's reading the wearer's mana and making a report on it. That's not any ordinary detection magic.

Well it's a school for mages. It's not like outsiders know anything about what goes on here. And all the ex-students are bound by a contract. We checked, remember?

Yeah, I do. Still don't like how he was hitting on you though. Some people really have no shame.

Let's just forget that happened.

As you wish.

"My precious black jacket is gone. I want my jacket back. Can I get my jacket back? Please lemme have my jacket back." Daniel started mumbling out of habit, sulking. It was starting to get a little annoying.

"You'll get your jacket back later, Daniel. I think you have more pressing matters to focus on." Max stated, trying his best not to slap Daniel in the face.

Daniel snapped out his world, and noticed his surroundings. His eyes landed upon the teacher's desk and he immediately made a beeline for it. "Fascinating. A table composed of obsidian and some kind of wood." He tapped the table top a couple of times, before kicking the table.

"Hey, what are you..." I began, but was interrupted by Daniel, "It's mostly hollow. But it still managed to remain intact after I kicked it. So it can't be ordinary obsidian, since regular obsidian is as fragile as glass." He turned to us, before asking, "Is this some special kind of obsidian? Or is it just strengthened with some kind of magic?"

We were silent. None of us knew what to make of Daniel's analysis. I mean, he's technically correct, since Dwarven Obsidian is a rare kind of obsidian that's denser than most materials known to humans and is usually found near the entrance to a magma chamber inside a volcano. The risks in obtaining even a handful of Dwobi (as most people call it), is why it's so rare. Most people can't even tell the difference between obsidian and Dwobi by just kicking it once.

Gotta give him credit. I didn't even know that obsidian is fragile until last year.

I decided to break the silence. I put on my usual scowl I use when talking to Daniel, and said, "Well at least you seem to have gotten smarter since we last met, Markham."

Daniel just gave an innocent smile, "No I didn't. You just finally noticed it. You should really learn to pay attention to your surroundings."

"Attention?! You're the one that sleeps through class half the time!" I exclaimed.