Fire Magic (Not Oratory)

The rest of the first day passed quietly, and without incident. Olivia and I ate dinner in the student dining hall, then took a light turn around the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠grounds — half a stroll, half a bid to walk the meal off. I was beginning to understand why the girls back in my school days used to lap the athletic field the moment they finished eating. Back at the dormitory, we each drank a cup of tea she brewed herself, insisting the leaves were something precious.

Watching her, though, a question started to nag at me. She looked every inch the shrinking, introverted outcast, and yet she had a quiet knack for getting along with people. A young lady of a noble house was supposed to keep her distance from commoners as a matter of course, wasn't she? Not that she was the sort of villainess who would snap, Hah? I have nothing I wish to say to a lowborn commoner, so would you kindly step away? Even so — an unscalable wall of rank! A distance ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠that could never be closed! She had essentially none of that, and the lack of it felt suspicious enough that I asked her outright.

"A-among mages... th-things like status don't... really mean anything. After we graduate, anyway... you become a c-court mage, or join the Magisterium, or... do research in a magic tower... and all of that's... the s-same as being a noble..."

"...Mages are that rare?"

"Y-yeah... Even across the whole Empire... they say fewer than a h-hundred students enroll in a year.... A-Anastacia, you're... probably the first Ecclesial Scholarship Student in years, too......"

"Oh. So that's the setting?"

"H-huh...?"

I got the gist.

"It's nothing. Just talking to myself."

At any rate, tomorrow was the first day of the term, so even though it was still a little early for sleep, we decided to call it a night.

"Speaking of which, our other roommate still hasn't shown up. Even at this hour."

"Y-yeah.... M-maybe there was a carriage accident......"

On the way to my room, I passed the empty quarters of the roommate who had yet to arrive. The nameplate on the door was carved in clear, unmistakable letters.

...Was that the name last time, too? I could have sworn it had been something more common. More ordinary. Well, it hardly mattered.

What mattered was something else entirely. This black magic grimoire, for one — the one I'd stuffed deep beneath my pillow!

Over dinner, and again while we looped the grounds, I had spent a long while turning over what to do with the book.

(1) I could always take the easy route and dump the whole thing on the Bailiff. The Faculty Guild, wasn't it? March in with There was a black magic grimoire in my luggage! This has to be the work of those wicked heretic mages! and leave the investigation entirely in their hands. Me, washed clean of it.

But that sort of passive approach was a long way from my taste. Who was I? Anastacia, professional headbutt dinosaur, sworn enemy of spoilers. Now that I knew failure only meant starting over from the beginning, what could I possibly gain by playing it that safe?

And besides — last loop, Olivia had been murdered the day after she made her report. Whether the school could be trusted at all was very much an open question. They had pinned the informant down perfectly and killed her on the spot. Was there any guarantee the Faculty Guild didn't have an accomplice on the inside?

Even if the school hadn't leaked a thing — even if the culprit had known from the start exactly whose bag they'd slipped the grimoire into — that was all the more reason not to tuck my tail and hide behind the faculty, but to face them and find out who they were.

So this method, the kind of option only a beta would pick, was out.

(2) Leaving it hidden under the pillow and doing nothing, just as I was doing now, could also be a method.

Wasn't that even more passive? Even softer? No. Doing nothing is still a kind of response, isn't it?

If you can plainly see the enemy jungler sitting in the bush, come to gank you, then it's only human nature to juke forward and back, wag your tail, and bait them until an angle almost — almost — opens.

And this approach had a real advantage: it would give me more clues with which to guess at the culprit.

One. If someone came to kill me tomorrow night, or at dawn the morning after, that would mean the culprit had already pinned down exactly whose hands held the grimoire.

Two. If I waited a few days and nothing happened at all, then the culprit didn't know who had ended up with it. And, retracing what had happened last loop, it would also mean the odds of an accomplice inside the Faculty Guild were very high.

Good. I could feel it in my gut — the decision I was making right now, whether or not to hide the grimoire's existence, would be the watershed between success and failure this loop.

If this had been an actual game, a choice would have floated up at the bottom of the screen.

Hide it. I choose you!

That night I fell asleep with the black magic grimoire tucked beneath my pillow. I didn't dream at all — just dropped straight into a dead, blissful sleep — so for something calling itself a black magic book, it apparently didn't come with any mind-attack abilities either.

The next morning, Olivia and I attended the Opening and Entrance Ceremony in the school's grand banquet hall.

Entrance ceremonies, in academy stories, are notoriously dangerous. Say academy and you're meant to picture an institution for the Empire's finest talents — the hope of humanity, a training ground for the leads of the next generation, a headmaster who is the strongest in the world. They build it up that grandly, and then the iron law of the genre is that the place gets thoroughly wrecked from the entrance ceremony onward, by demonkin and outer-god cultists and black mages and the rest.

Fortunately, our school was exempt. It was an utterly ordinary ceremony — which is to say, profoundly boring — beginning with an opening address and dragging on into the Headmaster's words of admonition.

"...Therefore, incoming students, until each of you has grown into a proper mage, you must bear in mind, and bear in mind again, that as members of this school you are to give your utmost in all things; and our returning seniors must not forget that they are to set a proper example for those new students; and the reciprocal contract between our Faculty Guild and the Student Guild, handed down these twelve hundred years..."

Well, this place wasn't officially an academy, was it? It was a magic school. Entirely different from those academies that get their teeth kicked in before the entrance ceremony is even over! The admonition from the Headmaster — who did not look particularly like a mage, what with no magnificent beard and precious little hair — went on for about thirty minutes. I let it in one ear and out the other, and when I came back to myself I was clapping diligently in the press of the other students. And with that, the entrance ceremony was over!

No time to catch my breath. Morning class followed at once, and according to the timetable it was Understanding Magic. Last loop I'd been thrown in a cell before I could do a thing and had missed every lecture. This time was different. Magic — I was going to learn all of it.

Full of anticipation, I headed for the lecture hall with Olivia.

The hall for Understanding Magic was built like an auditorium, the students' seats sweeping in a broad semicircle around a central dais. There looked to be about fifty of us, as if the entire first year were taking the class at once. Or maybe there were simply a lot of people retaking it...?

At the stroke of the hour, someone stepped up onto the dais. A middle-aged man.

"Welcome to Understanding Magic. I am Professor Pavic, the instructor for this course."

Pavic went on in a monotone. The seats sat a fair distance from the dais, and yet his voice reached us with the clarity of someone speaking right in front of our faces.

"I will not begin with complicated theory and scramble your little brains. Nor will you need to cramp your arms taking notes. More than half of you have likely never learned to read or write at all."

Here and there, snorts and mocking whispers broke out.

"Did you hear that? They can't even read. Pfft!"

"An illiterate mage. Don't make me ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠laugh."

"Enough. Illiteracy is nothing to look down on, nothing to mock, and nothing to be ashamed of. The student who was a farmer until last night and the student born to a distinguished house — to my eyes, they are all the same. Fledgling mages, nothing more. What matters is not the life you have lived or the learning you have piled up, but what kind of mage you grow into three years from now."

The laughter died away.

"What is magic? It may be defined in any number of ways. Magic is power. Magic is a miracle. Magic is divine authority. A devout believer will call it a blessing granted by the God of Magic; someone of a worldly bent will counter that it is an ability one is fortunate enough to be born with. Some might even call it a birthright inherited from one's ancestors."

Pavic thrust one hand forward and opened it, palm turned up.

Fwoom — a great flame surged up over his palm. The heat was so fierce ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠that even from this distance it felt as if my scalp might cook. The students stared at him with their mouths hanging open, and then Pavic curled his hand into a fist. The roaring fire died in an instant.

His monotonous voice cut through the settled silence, calm and unruffled, as if nothing at all had happened.

"Magic is the manifestation of will. It is bending the laws of the world to one's intent. Even a fool knows you need kindling to start a fire. But we mages have no need to indulge the rules of fools. The magic I just showed you is nothing more than a simple foundational spell — simple enough that even you will master it soon. That is what it means to become a mage."

I swallowed, throat dry. If I could only learn that — learn it, and come to wield it with that kind of force — then couldn't I stand against Olivia's murderer, whenever they came? And I could. I was more than capable. The status alert floating before my eyes was proof enough of that.

I took out the Journal and checked the first page. And smiled, satisfied.

Okay. Fire magic it is.

Good thing I put points into Knowledge, huh?