The first week of the term was largely relaxed in nature, reserved for general orientation, the pupils looking for their places in their new ecosystem, the teachers empathetically guiding them on and letting small things slide. But that wasn’t about to last. Four years passed faster than you'd think. Only three of them had formal classes, and the amount of information needed to take in to even get a decent start at magic was enormous. When it came time for the real work to begin, they didn't hold back on us.

  The ride started at eight on Monday morning. And who to better give us our reality check than Professor Couren, come to share the basics of Arcane Theory.

  The man mechanically took attendance, and then unloaded the lesson contents on us like a concentrated naval bombardment.

  “I am pleased to see no one is absent today,” he remarked, not looking pleased at all. “Before we get into a discussion about the possibilities of magecraft, we must first define what precisely we’re talking about, when we talk about magic. Many of you believe you already know and that this isn't a topic worth talking about—and many of you are wrong. Due to the elusive nature of the phenomenon, there remains much widespread confusion and misunderstandings regarding the exact nature of magic—even after thousands of years—liable to only further increase, unless your views are sufficiently aligned. That said, due to the sheer significance of this lecture, I was prepared to fail anyone who missed it. But everyone in class B appears suitably motivated, thankfully.”

  The class recoiled in horror at this sudden reveal, heated whispering bubbling up here and there.

  “Failing you, just like that? Can he actually do that…?”

  “What is he, the Demon Lord!?”

  “And I almost took a sick day too...”

  Here I thought the class was pretty easygoing, compared to his usual.

  “Silence,” the Professor continued. “Speak without permission and you will be removed from the classroom. Naturally, your record will then be revised as ‘absent’ and points are deducted accordingly.”

  Those words eliminated sound faster than any spell.

  Unfazed, his tone entirely unchanged the whole time, our teacher returned to the topic.

  “We are here to study magic, but what is ‘magic’? A rhetorical question, you don’t have to answer. It’s a question both too grossly simplified and too complex to be meaningful. If you were to ask the same question of a hundred different witches and wizards, you’d get a hundred different answers, and each would insist all the others are wrong. Certain elitism is an inescapable part of the industry. Many of us hold the ungrounded belief that we've been ‘chosen’ by this power, and that it must hold some larger-than-life significance simply for us having it. Disregarding the reality that roughly 60% of the human population holds potential of some degree for either mana or prana. It is, as a matter of fact, nothing special.”

  Many looked dumbfounded by his words.

  Our Professor himself seemed a prime example of an elite who held many special qualities, but still openly declared that magical ability made nobody exceptional on its own. That was the sort of man he was. It was easy to take his blunt presentation as a sign of arrogance, but it was an illusion. All he cared about was being effective, regardless of how that made him seem to others.

  Paying no heed to the reactions, he continued,

  “You’d also find wizards who would refuse to answer altogether. Magic is shaped by cognition; then won’t that make its potential virtually limitless as long as it remains undefined? In the very act of telling you what magic is, I’m inadvertently steering your understanding of the phenomenon and setting boundaries on it. I’m cruelly clipping the wings of your imagination. For that reason, there are factions that vehemently oppose magical education and consider it deliberate, malevolent sabotage of the Art. These factions actively target prominent pioneers in arcane fields, undermining our community by any means they can, and are not above murder. To walk the path of magic is to walk with Death. I want you to understand that from our very first hour together.”

  Everyone else shuddering and looking grim, I glanced across the room to see the headmaster’s granddaughter asleep at her desk, face down. I could hear the soft wheezing of her breaths from all the way here. Couren had to have noticed it, but simply ignored the child.

  “‘There is no right or wrong. Go do whatever you please.’—As much as I’d like to tell you that, the unfortunate reality is that we mages are only mortal, and most of us need food and shelter. I’m sure you’ll agree that having clean clothes is pleasant as well, as is taking a bath once in a while. Rare few can afford to be dreamers and philosophers and pursue goals purely of their own choosing. The rest of us have to find real-world value for our abilities, to justify our place in human society, or else risk falling under persecution by it. That necessitates assigning magic clear definitions that can be commonly understood, taught, and applied in a practical context. And that is why the Magic course of Belmesion and other similar institutions exist.”

  The nail that sticks out gets hammered down.

  Everyone loved a good, helpful wizard, while those who didn't play along became villains to be slain to make material for thrilling stories. I didn't particularly covet that role for myself either.

  “Therefore, what is magic? For most uses, it suffices for us to know it is a power to manipulate natural forces. In this effort, scientific knowledge becomes an invaluable asset to us, expanding our awareness and thereby the extent to which nature may be modified. Yet, magic itself is not considered a natural force.”

  The Professor glanced behind him at the blackboard, where a stump of chalk leapt up to work on its own. Even as he faced back to the audience, the chalk kept on capturing the key points of his speech in flawless cursive.

  That guy. He always loved to show off his mastery of Telekinesis. Pretending to write blind, while actually he had the board well in view with Third Eye.

  The less trained students simply switched off their brains and told themselves it was magic being magic, and they weren't even meant to understand it, while those who knew a little more stared on, dumbstruck. Was it more incredible to know how the trick was done, or not knowing?

  “It exists, yet it’s not treated as a part of existence. We’re magicians, and magicians have done much to advance human science, but we are not considered scientists. Why is that? Can anyone answer?”

  Was he seriously asking? Heads spun around, everyone checking if their peers were as confused as they were. Very few dared raise a hand.

  The noble heirs could afford private tutoring and had been taught these things by more or less qualified mentors. But Couren had the talent to erode anyone’s confidence, and the raised hands were pretty shaky. One boy had brought his limb halfway up, only to get second thoughts, and hurriedly lowered it. But too late, he was caught.

  “Turing.”

  “Umm…”

  “Please stand and answer clearly enough for everyone to hear.”

  He was in for the guillotine now. Somewhat pale, the youth wrung himself up from his seat and delivered,

  “Sir. Is it because magic needs a caster? Otherwise, it…doesn’t appear. No?”

  Professor Couren held the youth with his dark gaze for an awkwardly long moment, before declaring,

  “Yes.”

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  Niklas Turing fell back down to sit, inflated but relieved. Acquitted on all counts.

  The Professor continued,

  “Somewhat redundant, but natural forces are called as such because they may occur naturally, as a consequence to the fundamental building blocks of the universe. They do not require intentional work to be done upon them, as long as the conditions are appropriate. However, magic does not and cannot exist naturally. Magic may only occur when a conscious actor catalyses ritual forms by channeling mana. You may come across famous magical phenomena out there in the world that have seemingly come out of nothing, and have been there for so long, it would appear they’ve been there from the beginning. But you can be certain there is always an organic instigator behind each and every one of these paranormal events. I cannot stress how important this is. Magic is a purely artificial, contrived phenomenon, which disregards the laws of physics. It imitates nature, yet is not inherently part of it. It is disruptive and alien in essence. And yet, magic can only ever produce what is already available and possible within the framework that the universe provides us.”

  He paused to take out a water bottle from his briefcase and a glass, set the glass on his lectern and began to pour while speaking,

  “Only that which is known, can be made. The First Law of Thaumaturgy. A mage merely gives shape to the knowledge that he or she possesses at the moment. Trying to will abstract entities like ‘world peace’ into being will yield no result, as long as the physical method is unknown. No god will come down to fill in the blank spots for you and make it happen. Are you confident you can keep all this in mind without writing it down?”

  Absorbed in his speech, the students’ pen hands had ceased to move long ago. They now resumed action with doubled vigor.

  Professor Couren gave them the time it took for him to drink his glass of water to catch up with the notes. But by the time he set the emptied glass back down, he resumed without waiting.

  “In review, we’ve established that magic is the power to manipulate natural elements. This power can therefore teach us many things about the surrounding reality by the way it influences things. Magic has been used to observe the structure of atoms and distant galaxies, which are currently beyond mundane methods. So why are mages not considered scientists? We can see sides of our world that no ordinary person can, yet we may not use this experience to pose as scientific authorities. Must not, under any circumstances. At best, we can present our findings as theories and leave them for non-magicians to verify, when technology has sufficiently developed to do so. Can anyone explain why our predecessors have found it necessary to draw such a strict line?”

  Now the reactions were absolutely horrified.

  The seat rows looked like cutting boards with lines of fresh fish squirming on them. The pupils could barely keep up with his speech, and he kept hitting them with such profound questions one after the other. What did he expect of freshman students in their first hour of theory? The bar was raised much too high. This wasn’t even class A.

  I had a hunch of sorts, but didn’t feel like raising a hand. I was supposed to avoid attention.

  When no one volunteered, the Professor began calling out names.

  “Raynold, try this one.”

  “S-sir, I can’t say!”

  “How about you, Veridian?”

  The male student in question shook his head. “Sir, I have no idea what is going on.”

  “Silla, the answer, please.”

  Alice Silla stood, less than confident. Her brow twitched, her brain hard at work shifting through everything said so far.

  “Sir. Is it because…the observations made with magic are not necessarily true...?”

  Everyone held their breath. It sounded like a joke answer. But it wasn’t.

  “Excellent,” Professor Couren said. “You get five points.”

  A brief smile flashed on the girl’s face, soon to die.

  “But if you knew the answer, how come you didn’t raise your hand? I would have given you ten.”

  Silla sat back down, obliterated.

  While the chalk worked, the man kept speaking,

  “Magic, as said, is a deliberate phenomenon, but that deliberateness also becomes its most significant flaw. The phenomenon imitates nature, but only as the caster's subjective interpretation of it. For that reason, it does not meet the scientific requirement of objectivity. We can create a telescope spell with a magnifying effect to observe very distant events. But we can't be certain if the light that passes through the spell is genuine anymore. It all came out of our imagination. So it could be that our magnifying lens actually shows us only what we want to see. Are we observing the result, or are we creating the result? That uncertainty can never be fully ruled out when it comes to spellcraft. Who among us could be so perfectly free of bias and desire and know their own self so thoroughly down to the unconscious level, that they’d be able to behold only the absolute, objective truth? I’d be very careful of individuals claiming to be capable of such. They are either delusional, or else have given up honesty, dignity, and morality. And a mage without morality is an abomination.”

  Some of his wrath seeped into the word “abomination.”

  The students flinched at it and even in the far back row, hair stood on the back of my neck. I could admit Couren's self-control was more practiced than my own, which was why it was easy to think he was utterly apathetic and without feelings, but that was not true. He had his own strange, manly code, and if there was one thing he loathed, it was mages who abused their abilities to gain power over other people.

  Even so, he would wipe out a town to catch one rotten apple.

  How to figure him out? No, I wasn’t interested enough to even try.