~Chapter One: Child’s Magic~

Eola Lemiene wasn’t very good at magic.

Child’s Magic? Sure, she loved it. She knew her cantrips, and she knew them well. She’d memorized every one she could get her hands on, even the ones no one learned. Their runes weren’t complicated—the basic languages of magic were simple, and they forgave mistakes easily. Cantrips were literally child’s play, though, and they didn’t count. Anyone could draw those.

But do real magic? Not so much.

Varin’s Academy was the perfect place to change that and find a way around her little problem with her Mana’s attunement. All she had to do was spend every free moment she had in the library, digging through the shelves for answers. That was where the real knowledge was, after all. Her classes were fine, but only for theory. She carefully avoided the practical work every chance she got.

But even if all the knowledge she desperately needed was in the library, Eola couldn’t eat it. She’d get hungry eventually. She tried to do it as little as possible—she had too much to do—but at least once a day, her stomach and tongue got insistent. When they did, she had to find food, even if it meant sacrificing her study time and risking the attention of a few less…kind…classmates.

And this morning, Catrine and her cronies had cornered her in the academy’s cafeteria, at one of the long, wooden benches and tables set up in the narrow, smoky room. As usual, her friends attacked first.

“Cast a spell, toddler!”

“One real spell, and we’ll leave you alone.”

Eola hesitated. Her stomach growled—she probably hadn’t eaten since yesterday morning, and the oatmeal had dried apple chunks in it today. It smelled almost too fruity, and it looked like just the right mix of sticky and milky.

This was such a waste of her time. She stared at her tray longingly, and in that moment, Catrine slid onto the bench next to her. “Hello, toddler.”

“I’m not—“

“Not what?” Catrine cut her off. She slid in even closer, grinning.

Eola shut her mouth and tried to scoot over, but Catrine’s arm wrapped around her blue-robed shoulder. “Just cast one spell. Show us you’re a real mage. If you’re not a toddler, prove it.”

Eola’s face went hot, not from embarrassment, but from frustration. She stared at the oatmeal for a moment, then took a deep breath and reached for the leather book on her lap. One hand pushed her tray out of the way, oatmeal forgotten, and she licked a finger and started flipping pages. Catrine’s arm stiffened for a moment, and Eola forced herself not to smile through her annoyance. Every student had a spellbook full of runes for different spells, but she’d be willing to bet no one had one quite as extensive as hers.

Inside, one to a page, were her spell-runes. Not just the few dozen that an actual child would have, either. She had those, yes. They were drawn in a shaky hand, then copied onto the next page over—when she was older, she’d cleaned up her errors. She flipped past the Child’s Magic section, and the spells’ runic symbols got more complicated. Sweeping lines, different thicknesses and pressures in the strokes, and precise crossing patterns. First Order spells.

“What are you doing?” Catrine asked. Her arm tightened around Eola’s shoulder, and she leaned in over her so her curly blonde hair blocked Eola’s vision. “My father warned me not to let people see my spells. They could use it against our house. But then again, you’re no noble, with no house spells or attunements. I’m not sure why Varin’s even let you in.”

Eola wasn’t stupid. She caught the other girl’s tone—and if Eola had been anyone else, she’d have been right. But Eola didn’t care what Catrine saw. She just wanted to finish eating and get back to her studies—or at least disengage from this waste of time. “I earned a scholarship, and I’m trying to pick a spell.”

“You’re past the toddler’s section, and scholarship cases like you are an affront to proper magecraft.”

Eola stopped, her fingers halfway through turning the page. “You asked me to show you a spell. I’m trying to find the right one to show you.” Her right hand ran a familiar pattern: lick finger, flip page, trace rune, repeat. It was almost mesmerizing.

But her left hand—her sketching hand—was still in her lap, hidden under a fold in her robes. She wasn’t good at real magic, but she was excellent at Child’s Magic, and she had a few advantages when casting it that her classmates never would.

The rune she drew was simple. A single phrase in Old Alemic—the simplest possible symbols in the complex language—with no other languages to modify it. One line entering a triangle and two lines leaving the other side; Child’s Magic wasn’t complicated. It also wasn’t what Catrine was asking for, but that was okay. It didn’t have to be. All it had to be was distracting. And it would be that. She’d been drawing Bright Ball since she was six.

It’d form empty, though—and most first-year students, even at a school like Varin’s, needed a second or two to fill a rune with Mana. Until it was full, the spell wouldn’t go off, and a hallmark of Child’s Magic—and Ordered Magic in general—was that everyone would see the spell filling up. That’d give Catrine time to figure out what was going on and stop it. She was going to be a spellsword, after all. If she wasn’t ready to stop Eola’s spell with an opposed one, she’d eat her shoe.

Either that or one of Catrine’s lackeys would punch her in the nose. That’d stop the spell in a hurry.

Most students needed a couple of seconds to fill an rune, but Eola wasn’t most students. Her soul was crammed absolutely full of unattuned Mana, and when she uncorked it like a champagne bottle, she didn’t even have to push it into the Bright Ball symbol. It filled instantly, burning out the rune and summoning a ball of light a foot wide right where Eola wanted it.

Which was in the lap of the young noblewoman sitting next to her.

Catrine jerked back, squeaking in shock and squeezing her eyes shut against the bright yellow-white light, and Eola slipped past her, spellbook in hand. Her knee hit the table painfully. Most of the oatmeal ended up on the floor, but that was fine. She could eat later. Missing one or two meals wouldn’t kill her. Her boots slapped the floor as Catrine’s cronies rushed toward their friend—and away from Eola.

Eola looked over her shoulder as her tormentors slowly identified the spell and Catrine used an opposed spell on it, just like Eola had known she would. The noble girl would track her down, of course, but for now, she’d gotten away with—

She hit something solid, found herself on the floor, and looked up. Standing over her was one of Varin’s professors—Instructor Tarik. He was one of the younger teachers, only fifteen or so years older than her eighteen. He brushed off his coat, then offered her a hand. “Are you okay, Miss Lemiene?”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

After a moment to check that the other girls were distracted, Eola accepted and got back to her feet. “Sorry, sir. I was leaving and—“

“Didn’t see me? It’d be wise to pay less attention to problems you’re running from and more to the ones you’re running toward,” Instructor Tarik said. His eyes shifted to Catrine’s cronies, and he stroked his short brown beard slowly, then nodded once. “I’ll have a chat with Miss Andrese, and then I’ll see you both in Ideograms. I have something special lined up today.”

Eola nodded and slipped past the professor. But as she pushed through the doors, she took one look over her shoulder. Catrine caught her eye, and she knew that nothing the professor said would matter. Catrine of House Andrese had smelled blood in the water, and like a shark, she was on the hunt.

“Today’s lesson is on a new Ideogram,” Instructor Tarik said a half-hour later. He started drawing a runic array in chalk on the board in front of the class as three dozen or so eighteen-year-olds looked on from the tiered, wooden desks looping around the room. Ideograms usually took place in the fifth of Varin’s six demonstration and lecture halls, a wide, echoing space made from stone, with every desk looking down on the demonstration circle beside the lectern. There was plenty of space in the hall—so much, in fact, that she only shared her desk on the fourth row with Colin Tremory because he was one of her suite mates, and some lessons required pairing up.

Even the large, stone-walled room reeked of eighteen-year-olds—the stench of body odor and hormones—but it was less noticeable here than in the smaller rooms.

“Notebooks open, please.”