~Chapter Twenty-One: The Midterm Exams~

Eola woke up with a bad feeling in her gut.

She was used to those feelings, and did what she usually did—make the trip to breakfast and work on a bowl of porridge until the feeling went away. Only, this time, it didn’t go away after a few bites. “I could have been studying,” she moaned to no one.

The bowl sat, mostly uneaten, on the table, and after twenty minutes, the smell of apples faded, and the last warmth went away. Eola cleared her place and made a longer, and much colder, journey. Then she sat down in the Ideograms classroom for the first time in a very long while.

“Your exams are being passed out now,” Instructor Tarik said, waving his hand. Twenty-five small sheafs of parchment flew across the room, landing on the tables in front of each student. “Begin.”

Eola stared at the test for a moment, the feeling in her stomach finally letting up a bit. The test wanted her to draw, from memory, the First Order rune for Smith’s Breath. Eola had first drawn that rune when she was twelve.

She sketched the two shapes—the anvil and the bellows, both stylized in Old Alemic runes—and then ringed them with Forsooth Script. The modifying marks in Smith’s Breath were clever enough that Eola hadn’t tried to locate them yet, but that was fine. Instructor Tarik wasn’t asking for that.

Then she flipped the page over.

Three minutes later, she did it again. Then again. When she got to the third page, a request for a Second Order spell confronted her. She’d never seen that spell before. She hadn’t seen the one on the back of the third piece of parchment, either; it was a Second Order spell called Light Lance.

The right thing to do was turn in the pages she had. Instructor Tarik couldn’t expect any of his first-years to know Second Order spells by heart at the midterms. But…

But there was another option. Light Lance sounded like a more advanced Bright Ball. If Eola used the principles she’d learned, it shouldn’t be impossible to string together the modifying marks she knew and create something that, just maybe, imitated Light Lance.

So, for the next thirty minutes, she lightly sketched different modifying marks in different places, experimenting as student after student finished their exams and brought them up. At last, she was the only one left, and Instructor Tarik cleared his throat. “Light Lance, Miss Lemiene?”

“I’m close,” she said.

“Prove it.”

“I won’t be able to. Too much Mana. You’ll just need to trust me.” Eola brought her exam to the professor’s desk, then spent two minutes walking him through what her spell-chain would do.

And, at the end, he shook his head. “It’s a solid attempt, but I’m not convinced this would replicate Light Lance.”

Eola deflated. Her shoulders slumped, and she turned, leaving the test on the desk.

“Wait a moment.”

Eola froze in place and turned as Tarik shuffled through the other tests. It took him almost two minutes to nod slowly. “Only four other students made any attempt at either of the Second Order ideograms. Of those, only one other student produced something acceptable—and even then, her work has flaws that would be dangerous if she were to add Mana to it. Your spell wouldn’t replicate Light Lance, but it would likely be safe to cast. Congratulations.”

“Thank you, sir,” Eola said. She fled the classroom, hurrying to her next class. She had a new feeling in her stomach, and not even the Mana Studies exam could possibly change that.

“This examination will consist of two steps. In the first, you will use the Heavy Haul spell, without modifying marks, to test your Mana lines and soul’s attuned Mana efficiency,” Madame Reyanna said. Eola hid her rolling eyes; the Mana Studies professor was already testing the good mood she’d left the Ideograms midterm with. “As you cast Heavy Haul, remember that, while it is Child’s Magic, it can—and should—be used with your attuned Mana. For this test, we are testing your attunement. All students will take this examination at the same time.

“The second part, in accordance with the best teachings of Ordered Magic and Varin’s Academy’s policies, will be to measure the depths of your soul.”

Madame Reyanna pointed to the fifteen chromite bars on her classroom’s wall. Each matched the other, with the exception of the massive fifteenth bar. Eola still didn’t know what that last one was for, but she had a feeling she’d find out before the rest of her classmates. “The test of bars is an ancient form of Mana measurement, but one that is still considered accurate. Magic reacts interestingly when poured into a structure of silver cores and chromite shells, with silver’s pro-magic and chromite’s anti-magic siphoning Mana from the caster at an increasingly rapid rate.”

“So all we have to do is cast at them?” Catrine asked.

The professor nodded from her podium. “Use Mana Mark. It’s a harmless spell, but one that maintains itself like Heavy Haul. It’s also Child’s Magic, and the purpose of the test is not to measure attuned Mana. Now, prepare yourselves for the first test.”

She waved a hand, and an hourglass appeared mid-air. “Begin.”

Eola did nothing. She simply watched as the other students sketched their anvils and filled them in. This part of the Mana Studies exam was guaranteed to be a disaster, and it was better to fail on her own terms than humiliate herself. She had no attuned Mana, and she’d been ignoring Mana lines the whole term. The professor’s eyes passed over her. She flushed almost as red as Madame Reyanna, but kept her eyes locked on the gnome. “I’m finished.”

“You’re finished? Three seconds? Less? That’s almost impressively poor, Miss Lemiene.”

There wasn’t a good response to that, so Eola just waited as the other students dropped out, one by one. Over the next fifteen minutes, all twenty-four of them gradually ground to a halt. When Garreth finally stopped channeling his Heavy Haul, Madame Reyanna clapped her hands once. “We will now take fifteen minutes to recover our Mana. Food generally helps, as does the academy itself. Please eat.”

She pulled a tapestry away, revealing a nook—a nook filled with sweets. Eola wasn’t first to it, but she was close. The mostly-untouched porridge felt like days ago, and she snatched a pair of cookies and a square of a smooth, dark brown cake, then returned to her spot.

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The cookies were delicious, but the square? It was creamy and rich, and it almost seemed to melt in Eola’s mouth. Even better, it reminded her of something she’d eaten back in Greenarbor, before she’d started living with her uncle. Something her father had made. She ate half of the tiny square before she even realized it, then spent the next ten minutes slowly working on the rest, unwilling to finish it and let the nostalgic taste fade.

Fifteen minutes later, on the dot, Madame Reyanna looked up from her notebook. “The second test will now begin. Even a child can fill a single bar. Therefore, the line to achieve a score of two on this exam is three full bars. Journeymages should be able to fill the first four, and I expect some of you may reach five or even six. Mr. Tremory, you’re up.”