Our class was given a much-needed breath of fresh air when we had our first practical lesson in the early second week. Instead of the shadowy Arcane department, our already dark-adapted eyes had to confront the bright light of day again, the upcoming exercise taking place in the open field behind the school buildings. My classmates were excited to finally get into action, while I was less than thrilled about it, for clear reasons.

  On the way, we passed a group of second-year fencers training under Instructor Kenway. My gaze drifted to the girl at the end of the line. She stood out, even from a mile away, in every sense. The others in the group trained in pairs, rigidly clashing, while she practiced forms by herself, a short distance apart.

  She’d raise her wooden training sword high overhead and bring it down in light, aesthetic arcs, her movements quick as thought, but controlled and calm, without the slightest wavering or stiffness, and the wood sang.

  “Is that her?” the classmates walking ahead of me gossiped.

  “D'Arnos? Yes. That’s her.”

  “Why doesn’t she have a pair?”

  “They say she’s so good nobody in her class can match her. She only spars with third and fourth-years.”

  “Really? She’s even better than the guys?”

  “That’s what they say.”

  “They’re just all going easy on her, right? Like, there’s no way…”

  You try swing a sword and see what it's like.

  Our own training area was deeper in the greenery, out of sight behind the sports arena. There we found an elderly female professor waiting for us, hands behind her back, with two lit braziers set on low granite pedestals in front of her. We gathered around and waited, but she wouldn’t make a sound, only answering greetings with a nod. Until it was time.

  “Good morning, everyone,” the grayed lady at last greeted us, politely smiling, a cunning look in her eyes. “It is now eight o'clock. Welcome to the course, Basics of Casting, where we will examine various real-world applications of magecraft. My name is Helen Woodrow. I've been a professor at Belmesion for twenty-seven years now, and serve as the current director of the Arcane department, as well as the supervisor of the current freshman class C.”

  Emily's class?

  The students were very awed by this resume. As glamorous as her qualifications were, she seemed a lot easier to deal with than Couren, and many probably wished Woodrow had been our supervisor instead.

  “My hobbies are knitting and tea,” the Professor added, before turning to the braziers. “I will take attendance at the end of the class, but for now, would you please have a look at the two fires we have here. Do come closer, if you can't see well from back there. Plenty of room here.”

  The students gathered in a loose circle around the twin flames, a little uneasy, silently questioning what they were expected to see. For a time we did nothing but stare without a word at the dance of heat in the cast iron pots.

  “Magic, as you may have found, is a very complex phenomenon that can assume many wildly different forms, some of them exceedingly abstract. Hence, we humans like to split it up into boxes that are easier to deal with. Elemental magic is one such a box, and generally the easiest point of entry into casting. Since we all come into contact with different elements in our day to day lives, and manipulating said elements is the skill most helpful to us.”

  The students nodded along. The topic could be called childishly basic and easy to follow, so everyone was wary of a sudden twist.

  “Today’s subject is, as you may gather, fire,” Professor Woodrow continued. “Now, in regards to that, what do you suppose is the main difference between these two fires?”

  That didn’t become much of a quiz.

  The answer was clear to see even without special sensory abilities. In one of the braziers was piled a few splinters of wood, but the other lacked even a spot of charcoal, the flames springing out of nothing. While the rest suspected a trick, hesitant to speak, one male student, Henry Raynold, raised a hand and bravely risked embarrassment.

  “The other fire is magical, the other one is not.”

  “And which would be which, and why?” the Professor asked, as if there could be any doubt, and the youth pointed at the woodless brazier.

  “That one. The fire in it burns without fuel.”

  “You would be half correct, young man. The flames are indeed magical, but they aren’t without fuel. Not even magic can come out of nothing, you see, though it might sometimes appear that way. It requires mana. These flames burn without wood, because I have personally provided the energy for them to keep blazing. I know you know this, but you need to be careful with your wording. Wording is everything when it comes to spellcraft. What else do you see? Look carefully.”

  The class returned to staring into the flames, like expecting a genie within to reveal the secrets of the setup. I wondered if humanity in the elder days of civilization wore the same faces of confusion when they first stumbled upon live fire.

  Beyond the lack of burning matter, the fires were practically identical. Except for just one unnatural feature.

  “There's no smoke coming out of the magic fire,” Miranda Dillon pointed out.

  The number of “ooh!”-reactions made me want to shake my head. Did you really not notice any sooner?

  “True,” Professor Woodrow remarked, still holding onto the mystery act. “Why is that? Can anyone explain the reason in more detail?”

  A lot of head-scratching followed. But the answer was technically given already. Alice Silla finally put it impatiently into words.

  “Because there's no material in there that could give out smoke!”

  It was a pretty lackluster answer, but Professor Woodrow ran with it.

  “Yes. The obvious gets easily overlooked. Since there is no combustible material in the fire, pyrolysis cannot occur either. Thus, there is no smoke, which is made up of the particles and gases released from the disintegrating fuel material. Apologies for the poor show, let me fix that real quick.”

  The old woman snapped her bony fingers. Not because the magic required it, but to draw our attention to the rapid change. Black smoke started to billow of the magic fire and now, save for the missing wood, the two braziers were superficially identical.

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

  The students laughed at the show, but the Professor quickly wiped those smiles from their faces.

  “The actual difference is that, strictly speaking, what you see here on your right isn’t really fire to begin with.“

  Many made weird faces at her declaration. How could it not be fire when it looked like fire? To answer their unvoiced confusion, Professor Woodrow explained,

  “Mana burns because I instructed it to burn. However, its fiery appearance is but a sham. There are no reacting components, no gases released, no oxidization. No carbon dioxide, no monoxide. The potential energy we call mana is converted directly into clean light and heat in a form visually resembling fire, as per my mental instructions. Can it then be called fire at all, if it displays none of the physical characteristics of combustion? Well, you probably would call it so, but the scientific community would tear out their hair in frustration every time you did. ‘It is not real fire!’ Now let me confuse you even more: the fire on the left—is also made with magic.”

  Everyone looked at the burning logs with new eyes. The magic fire had been easy to recognize, but the other one seemed, by all means, perfectly ordinary campfire.

  How could its artificial nature be discerned?

  But the Professor had fooled them.

  “The logs are from a real tree, but I set them on fire with a spell. It is a standard exothermic redox reaction, but ignited by paranormal methods. Here’s a question for you then. In which box would you put such a fire: ‘natural’ or ‘unnatural’?”

  Mouths hung wide open in the ring of spectators. I was impressed Professor Woodrow could look at that silly lineup and not even crack a smile. Suppose she was used to the view. As no one was willing to take a shot at this quiz, she began single out victims and pointed at Rupert Meldow.

  “Young man, what do you say?”

  “Uhum!” Meldow nervously tested his voice. “I-it’s unnatural. Isn’t it?”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know, ma’am!”

  “Yes, you do, since you said it yourself.”

  “...Because it was started by unnatural methods?”

  “Indeed. It would make sense that since the fire started unnaturally, it’s unnatural by definition, the same way as a person murdered is considered an ‘unnatural death,’ even though death by itself couldn’t be more natural as an event. Don’t we all agree?”

  Everyone nodded. It made sense. Then the Professor took the air out of them once more.

  “But that’s wrong. It’s considered natural fire, actually.”

  Once the groaning and swaying had subsided, she continued,

  “Witches and wizards have heatedly debated this matter for a thousand years, before it was finally ruled that the origin doesn’t matter. As long as the fire fulfills the physical characteristics of fire, it is a natural phenomenon. And the only unnatural kind of fire would be this.”

  The elderly Professor held out her hand and above her palm was lit a blazing globe of flames.

  “If there is anything at all left in your heads from this class after you leave for lunch,” she said, “it’s the concept of ‘three states of a phenomenon’. The natural base state; the preternaturally instigated yet all the same physically valid state; and pure fabrication, the conjured state that does not meet the physical definition of the phenomenon it imitates. It is important that you understand the differences between the three, because the technique you use will also determine the effects it will have. The consequences. Smoke, or no smoke. So you won’t end up like poor Circes, who burned down the legendary library of Camberia, playing with the wrong kind of flames.”

  Professor Woodrow put out the fire on her palm and paced a short loop in the grass between the braziers, as she continued the lecture.

  “What is real and natural, and what is not? That is the question we constantly come back to. Our power, merely by existing, casts doubt on the very underlying essence of reality. In the 8th century, the orthodox sect of mages presented that one must deny observable reality altogether to understand the grand truth behind existence. They argued that the world we live in is an elaborate deception cooked by nefarious gods to distract us from becoming their equals, and that only perfect isolation and denial of senses could free us from the trap of the mind. This theory still has followers to this day. However, time has failed to lend support to the orthodox world view. It did not help bring about great wizards, but rather, led to a dark age of magic, which almost caused knowledge of the Art to be forgotten entirely. The benefits of being very seclusive are typically short-lived. When an individual dies, all that he or she knows is lost together with her, but a united community that shares information is quite a bit harder to eliminate by its enemies. So don’t be a lone ship at sea.”

  The old woman gave us a silent moment to chew on her heavy words. But in contrast to her words, nobody made eye contact with another, mostly only staring at their own shoetips. We were still too fresh a class to be a community. The charring wood in the left brazier broke with a crack, releasing a puff of embers.

  The Professor then resumed,

  “The consensus in the modern magic society is that magical proficiency is rooted in our understanding of reality. And understanding may only be gained through sustained, objective study. Observation, analysis, and inference. The better you know what real fire is like, the more convincing a magical fire you can conjure. Magic and science are two inseparable parts of the same coin, aimed in the same direction towards understanding the cosmos we live in, even as a line must be drawn between them. One day, perhaps, you will understand why. But not today.”

  She came to stand in front of us, the two fires behind her, and clapped her sinewy hands together.

  “Now, I would like each of you to try and conjure some fire and demonstrate your current understanding of the element. Then, when your graduation day comes around, you may recreate that same magic again and see how your ability and comprehension have developed—and whether you agree with the orthodoxes or don't.”