Professor Woodrow urged us to take plenty of space, not burn each other or ourselves, and give the task our best. Everyone moved out to occupy a spot on the spacious field decently far apart from the rest, but not too far, like atoms held on the loyal tracks around their nucleus by the unseen powers of the universe. Meanwhile, our teacher went around watching everyone’s efforts, handing out free critique and practical advice.

  “Even a tiny flame will be fair, if conjuring a fire such as mine is very difficult for you. Or you may describe your impression of fire to me, if you will. However, be forewarned, this is only fine in our first casting class, while you are still novices. Though mastery cannot be demanded, this is Belmesion. We expect you to have at least a basic level of control over all primary elements by the end of your second year.”

  Great.

  I took a spot in the outer fringes of our scattered constellation, with nobody behind me, and wondered what to do.

  To my left, a couple of yards off, stood a lanky, pallid male student, constantly chuckling to himself, like some invisible devil was telling a riveting tale in his ear. What was his deal? I accidentally made eye-contact with the boy. He leaned towards me, covering his mouth with the back of his hand, as if to make sure nobody could read his lips and whispered, frequently interrupted by zany laughter,

  “You know, the orthodoxes are right. This world is a sham! All of this…” He gestured broadly across the field. “...Everything you see, is just so much lies.”

  Don't talk to me, you goddamn freak.

  I ignored the boy and tried to think. My ability put strict limitations on what I could conjure.

  A regular fire was not going to happen. I could visualize flames well enough in my imagination and thought I'd seen every conceivable angle of the phenomenon, but when I tried to manifest it…

  The air above my outstretched palm blurred and wavered, irregular bursts of heat lashing out radially, crackling and whistling. When anything fulfilling the criteria of an “object” materialized—that is, anything my mind could recognize as having dimensions and coordinates—it was set off. The Schemata’s amplification made sure I couldn’t lower the speed value enough for the mana to hold the shape of visible flames, as long as it had enough energy to be visible at all. It was hopeless. Not even a tiny flame was going to happen.

  Another student further away glanced back at me, alarmed by the bizarre noise I was making, and I terminated the spell in a hurry.

  I couldn’t show this abortion to the Professor.

  If I used my faux telekinesis to ignite friction, a witch of her level would see through the trick. That wasn't what the lesson was about. Trying to fool a professor was toying with fire in another sense.

  Would I have to use my affinity as an excuse and talk my way through the task? But I couldn't use that excuse in every class. Fire and wind were pretty much the only elements the likeness of which I could conjure, to an extent. Damn it. Fail enough assignments and I’d fail the course, and fail enough courses, and I’d be out of this place. Even if the headmaster intervened to keep me in, everyone would eventually start to wonder why a student could fail everything and still be here.

  I looked around the field. No one else seemed to share my struggles.

  Even those without affinity could at least manifest a small, sputtering candle flame, or a faint imitation. Then there was the other extreme. Looking immensely bored, the headmaster’s granddaughter shot a bright, 20-foot tongue of flame up to the gray sky out of her palm, and the Professor didn’t ask for seconds. The next time I looked, the kid was asleep in the grass, curled up like a kitten.

  “Brilliant. That is a very beautiful fire.”

  Alice Silla’s demonstration received glowing praise from Professor Woodrow.

  Her spell had a clean, round shape and blazed with appropriate colors, creamy in the middle and dusky orange towards the edges. Heat radiated realistically and the effect was in every respect indistinguishable from authentic fire. She even appended it with illusory smoke, the way the Professor had done, which swelled upward in a long, opaque column before fading. A layman might not have thought much of it, it was just plain fire, but maintaining such a complex construct of varied effects in real time took considerable strength of will and potent mana. The praise was deserved.

  But after the Professor had moved on and she thought no one was looking, Silla dispelled the fire and cradled her hand close to her chest with a grimace. She’d made her show too extravagant and burned her palm.

  Tsk. How clumsy.

  What was I going to do?

  I hated losing. I decided to try a gamble.

  The problem with faux telekinesis was that the air motion was too obvious. But maybe I could make it faster and more constricted, fast enough that Professor Woodrow's senses couldn't pick up on it and disguise it with heat? As practiced before, by bending my mind a little, I could impose a curve on the trajectory and have air run along a closed loop—or an open-ended spiral. The radius expanding, going to the middle, and shrinking again towards the top, the interval of loops as close as possible. Tunneling air along the path fast enough for inertia to build heat produced a nice, hot tulip of flame.

  In theory. But there weren’t enough particles in the air right now to create a good, mellow blaze. I had to intensify the acceleration to make the nitrogen radicals recombine and add some light. The resulting tongue of flame was ghastly bluish purple in color and buzzed like the welder’s torch. It was nothing like requested, but still fairly fiery and definitely better than a mere candle flame. Because the current was funneled strictly upward, it didn't burn me, though I could only pray no birds would fly over.

  That was how I presented it to the Professor when her inspection round reached to me.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  The lady examined the livid bulb from every angle, rubbing her chin, frowning hard, while I kept my expression in check and waited without a word.

  Finally she asked,

  “It...it does looks like fire. But why is it like that?”

  “Like what?”

  She twirled her finger. “Spinning.”

  Her sensory magic was quite sharp to detect the trajectory. But that was as far as it went. It appeared her Third Eye hadn’t evolved to the stage where she could observe events beyond the molecular level. Then again, civilian mages could rarely acquire such capacity, without their senses pushed to the limit, bombarded with magic day in and day out.

  “I don’t know, Professor. Maybe my head is spinning.”

  “I'm not joking now. If you look at the braziers over there, the flames are burning normally upright when there is no wind. Heat has the tendency to rise up, cold air being heavier and pushing it away. I understand wanting to show off in front of your classmates, but when you’re asked to create the base form of a phenomenon, then you are expected to deliver, to the letter, or as closely as you can. There is no place for tomfoolery, then. You would not bring an elephant when your employer asked you to find a cat, would you? There's nothing worth a laugh about that.”

  Preaching to the choir, ma’am.

  And why didn’t you say the same to the Archmage’s granddaughter?

  “I'm sorry, Professor,” I confessed, “but this is all I can do.”

  “What do you mean? Are you being a git now? How can you do something so much more complicated and consuming, but not the simplest form of the very same element?”

  “I don’t know. I must be brain-damaged somehow.”

  “You're not ‘brain-damaged’, young lady! Suit yourself then. But I will deduct points for your cheek. Do make an effort to polish up that attitude.”

  Better deducted points than a complete failure.

  Professor Woodrow went on, mumbling something about “the kids these days.” But for our poor elements teacher, that was only the beginning of her hardships. The deranged male student to the left of me refused to cast anything, smugly saying it would've been blasphemous to share even a crumb of “true magic” with the misguided drones of the false gods. He was suspended for three days and sent for counseling.

  The exercise wrapped up, we returned to the Arcane department for a feedback session, with notes and a list of recommended reading, and that was that. I was packing my stuff away, everyone else slouching out of the hall, when an unexpected disruption showed up.

  —“Hey.”

  A female student climbed the stairs to the back row and came to stand in front of me.

  It was Alice Silla. Judging by the stern look in her icy eyes, she wasn’t there because she liked my face.

  “I’m not saying this to insult you,” she prefaced, “but I think it would be best if you sought immediate medical attention.”

  So she said. In perfect seriousness. I stared at her for a beat, nonplussed.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I felt your mana earlier in the field,” she said. “Your channel is in an incredibly imbalanced and chaotic state. If you attempt to cast more spells in that condition, you’re certain to hurt yourself or somebody else before long. I can’t tell why the examiners ever let you into the academy, or if something happened after the tests, and that isn't my concern. But under no circumstances should you use magic in such a state. You need professional treatment, as soon as possible. If you want, I can give you the contact information of a physicist associated with my family.”

  So that was the rub.

  It seemed this girl had unusually high sensitivity to mana. She had to have noticed my failed attempt at a regular fire, when I wasn’t controlling the Schemata’s effect. Of course she’d interpret that badly. But to confront me about it in person…Being too compassionate in this industry was an ailment more terminal than energy imbalance. Was she maybe the fabled “honors student”-type I’d read about?

  “I appreciate the concern,” I said, picked up my bag, and stood to leave. “But mind your own business.”

  I went past her, down the stairs. Silla didn’t appreciate my attitude.

  “Hey!” she raised her voice. “I’m serious! I’m saying this for your own good! You won’t make it through four years as a mage student without using magic. But if your control of it is that poor, you could overload yourself every time you open your channel. Don’t gamble with your life!”

  The students left in the hall paused to see what was going on. It appeared that ignoring her was only making things worse. I clicked my tongue and turned back.

  “Alright. I can see you’re serious. In exchange, let me give you a piece of advice of my own. Probing another magician’s abilities is something everyone does, in secret, but if you’re stupid enough to confess it to my face, I’ll have to take that as a declaration of war. If you won’t drop it, I’ll be forced to demand a duel with our lives on the line, to guard my arts and family name. That’s where it gets dangerous for real. Is that what you want?”

  I held the girl’s gaze and let her have a sample of my fighting spirit to lend some mass to the words. Silla tensed and didn’t immediately answer. I took the silence as a concession and turned to go on.

  “Have a nice day.”

  But after three steps down, her voice interrupted me again, its tone gone colder.

  “—Then so be it!”

  I turned back, dumbfounded. No effect!? Did she have no survival instinct whatsoever?

  Alice Silla strode over to me, stopping half a foot away from my face, her eyes angrily flashing.

  “If you insist on being an idiot, then we’ll have ourselves a duel! Rather than having you randomly self-destruct in the middle of class, it’s better I bring you down in safe, controlled conditions, where you’ll hurt nobody else. We’ll have a match tomorrow. I will file the request to the faculty myself! Prepare yourself, Ruthford. And don't do anything stupid in the meantime.”

  The girl breezed past me and out of the lecture hall, trembling with agitation.

  “...”

  It seemed I underestimated her spirit. But a duel, in this day and age? And for such a trivial reason? How did it ever come to that? Was this event unavoidable by any means?

  I still hadn’t come up with any non-lethal techniques. It was going to be difficult to avoid seriously injuring a student as capable as Silla, when I didn't even know her specialty. No, no, let’s be reasonable now. The world wasn’t completely mad. There was no chance whatsoever that Couren would approve a duel between a novice and a Cardinal Mage. He’d stare the girl out of his office and this incident would never be mentioned again. Yes. Calm down. Clear your mind.

  Wipe that smile off your face. I always got too damn excited when the talk turned to fighting.