Fools Paradise

Sitting in his normal assigned seat for the first time in a month Loat is happy to see Wittorf feeling better. Like always the intimidating Steel is beginning class at the front by his desk.

"Today we will be having some fun with our mana."

Extending his hand out Steel creates a large ball of energy.

"We will be manipulating mana to create spells."

Jackpot! He already knew how to do this, kind of, so he was totally going to ace this section of the test. All he had to do was think of an interesting connection word."

"First create the ball of energy like you've been doing,"

Squinting his eyes he takes a deep breath and shouts

"Blade of light!"

The ball in Steel's hand begins to wobble a little before taking the shape of a blade. What the heck was going on this is not what he was taught to do.

"We will be casting spells using incantations."

Incantations? What was that I thought we had to use connection words and focus on them when making a spell. Wittorf raises his hand impatiently.

"Wittorf."

"Sir what about connection words?"

"Excuse me?"

"Aren't we supposed to imagine the image we want and attach a connection word to it in order to create a spell?"

"You must be talking about the Connectors way of casting magic. But you bring up a good point."

The sword dissipates into dust as Steel pulls out some chalk and begins writing on the chalk board.

"Magic is a very finicky thing. We don't quite understand how it works but we created academies like this in order to study it and learn how to manipulate it."

Steel continues tapping away on the chalk board with haste as he writes down words like connection, Incantation, Gestures and focus along with a list of other words

"As you can see there are many theories on how magic is casted. Some mages use connection words like Wittorf mentioned. Others, like this academy study using incantations and focus'."

Steel puts down the chalk and returns to the front of the desk.

"For now, let's continue with the task at hand. Everyone focus on what you want to create and some kind of incantation that goes with it. The more intricate the incantation the clearer the spell you create."

Everyone begins practicing right away. Wittorf is sitting in his chair still confused. Does he use incantations, or does he use connection words? Which one was the right way? He could not come to a conclusion at that moment, so he decided to continue the lesson but trying an incantation.

But what word or words does he use to make an image appear? Well what image did he want to appear first. Sword of light seemed like an easy go to, but he wanted to try something else on his own.

Wracking his brain until the gears in them started smoking he put his head down on the table in defeat. Loat noticed his friend struggling and decided to scoot closer to him.

"Hey Wittorf, you think of an incantation yet?"

"Not yet, this is harder than I thought it would be."

"What about ball of light?"

"But isn't that what we already create?"

"Yea its brilliant right? We just say that and poof the exam is over."

"I don't think he'll fall for that."

"Yea I didn't think so either."

Loat puts his head down next to Wittorf in defeat. Caiman walks up to both of them and laughs.

"What, is this too hard for you? Maybe you should just back out now."

Loat raises his head and looks irritated.

"Yea, where's your incantation?"

"Sword of Light!"

A blade of light appears in caimans hand. That was so predictable it even made Wittorf groan.

"Is copying the teacher all you can do?"

Frustrated Caiman raises his new sword in the air to strike at Wittorf. Quickly and seemingly out of nowhere the sword shattered into dust as a bolt of energy slammed into it.

"Caiman, to the headmasters office."

Huffing Caiman walks out of the room. Wittorf and Loat give each other high fives as they laugh to each other.

"How about something simple like a dagger?"

"Sounds easy enough but what kind dagger, do we just do a dagger of light like the sword?"

"No that is copying the teacher too much lets each find a fun descriptive word to give our blades."

They both grasp hands in a manly arm-wrestling pose and look each other in the eyes. No way was he going to lose this one. He had special training now!

"Sounds like a competition, I will win this one!"

"In your dreams Wittorf!"

Scooting his desk away from Wittorf, Loat turned away and began whispering words to himself and shaking his head at each one.

No way was he going to give him a head start! Quick think of something cool and interesting. But what, everything that came to mind was too similar to Steels example. Beam dagger, light dagger, holy dagger, aura dagger.

None of these sounded cool enough we need something better! Mega, ultra, massive, dagger of pure

energy! Perfect we can beat him now!

"Mega, ultra, massive, dagger of pure energy!"

Wittorfs hand begins to flash and the ball of energy turns into a wobbly dagger like noodle.

"What the?"

Steel slaps his face and waves the dagger away.

"Take this serious Wittorf."

"I'm trying teacher but this is harder than I thought."

"Just use a single descriptive word starting out. The more focused the word is the easier it will be."

"Yes sir!"

Fine I will stick to one word then. What's a good starting word. How about flaming? That could be cool.

"Flaming Dagger!"

The ball in his hand forms a dagger that has a white flame like appearance. It is not hot to the touch or anything and does not seem to do anything else except look cool. Loat looks at that and squints.

"I win!"

"But you haven't done anything yet."

"Ice dagger!"

The orb in Loats hand forms into a crystal shaped dagger made of pure energy it looks more stable than Wittorfs but again does not produce any cold.

"No I win!"

"Nope mine is clearly cooler!"

"Will both of you shut up!" Steel shouts as he slams his fist on the desk. "You both must have learned something from this experiment."

Learned something from it? Of course, he found out that if he yelled his command his magic would follow his orders. That seemed like a pretty big thing actually. Steel looks at both of their daggers and breaks them with his hand.

"You should of learned that elemental magic is not something you can just conjure up on your own."

"Elemental magic?"

"Using the elements to imbue into your mana to create fire or ice or anything else."

That was news to him, but it was also exciting it was another new piece of the puzzle to becoming a mage.

"How do we do elemental magic?" Loat asked quizzically.

"You first need to make a pack with an elemental."

"Elemental?"