From the journal of Madeline Le Torneau: “Truth was, we deserved the detention. It’s hard to complain about something you know is just.”

  Gradually, the din of the shuffling of papers, bags then finally feet quieted, leaving Talia and Madeline alone with Professor Herbert who didn’t stop smiling once.

  “Your detention is set,” Professor Herbert said without preamble. “Ruthann sent me a note. It appears you will be sharing your detention with a gaggle of unruly boys, none from our affinity so please do try and represent us with grace, yes?”

  Madeline nodded her assent and Talia mumbled a muted “Yes, Professor.”

  Professor Herbert’s face turned stern, her smile vanishing as though wiped away. “You will report to the stables after dinner where you’ll be mucking out the stalls among other things. A little physical labour should do you well. Don’t be late. And girls? There’s more than enough hours in the day to send whatever post you may need to send without violating curfew. See this doesn’t happen again. Run along now.”

  Both Madeline and Talia recognized the dismissal, clear as their impending punishment. Mucking out stalls? Madeline shook her head in annoyance, she had the callouses on her hand to prove her no stranger to manual labour nor hard times, but this felt like punishment for punishment's sake.

  She also didn’t love horses.

  They exited the classroom in a hurry, still not fully confident of their directional ability in the castle and desperately not wanting to lose the sound of their classmates, or worse, be unable to find where Professor Walcotte led them.

  “How am I supposed to look cute in front of unruly boys when I’m mucking out stalls? What even is mucking out stalls? Is that like…cleaning out shit and stuff?” Talia said, realizing what they intended her to do after dinner.

  “Sure is,” Madeline confirmed. “Cleaning out shit is not that bad. You’ll survive.”

  Talia paled. “But I won’t look cute.”

  Madeline smirked. “I mean, you will at the start…”

  Talia just pouted.

  “Ah, I hear them up ahead, I think they’re heading to the practice grounds. Oh, do you think we’re going to try and conjure some stuff finally?” Madeline asked, excitement in her tone. She’d wanted to become a Death Dealer, true, but the Warriors did some pretty dang cool stuff, too.

  “I sure fucking hope so,” Talia cursed, the stall mucking very much at the front of her mind.

  The girls walked toward the shuffling of students a little faster, their boots clicking against the stone at an accelerated rate, torchlight getting smaller as the wind from their speed passed, then increasing again. They caught up with the rest of the group as they entered the grounds, boots switching from clicking against stone to imprinting onto the freshly cut grass. The practice grounds themselves seemed wholly unremarkable to Madeline, their only defining characteristic being its largeness. There were benches with water stations scattered around the grounds, a small spectator section on each end with short bleachers that sat unoccupied and …that was it. Only grass. Even the smell wafted overwhelmingly of the fresh clippings and nothing else.

  Madeline and Talia easily spotted Willow’s auburn hair from the rear and sidled up next to her and Hayden as quietly as they could without drawing attention to themselves.

  “The difficulty is in your mind,” Professor Walcotte spoke to all of them at once. “Your talisman is simply a way to focus the energy from the wells that I’m sure Professor Herbert taught you about ad nauseam in her lesson. She loves those wells. It is an apt analogy, though, as knowing the way things function can often be the key to unlocking the doing of that thing. Now I should get the boring part out of the way before we get to stuff you all care about. You have talismans. I, along with the rest of the magical faculty, have scepters. It’s obvious why this is so I’ll not explain it. You may have seen us use our scepters to cast a multitude of things, most likely mundane. You’ll notice we don’t say anything while doing so.”

  This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

  Madeline had noticed this. New as she was to the way the magic worked, she tried to keep her eyes as open as possible and file away as much information as she could.

  Professor Walcotte held her scepter out in front of the group as though daring them to inspect it. The entire time, her symmetrical features screwed into a look that demanded everyone’s full attention.

  “We do not shout spells here. There are no verbal cues, firstly because it’s unnecessary. Secondly, telling your opponent in advance what they’re going to be facing once you’ve stupidly finished shouting is a great way to find yourself cleaved in half. This is war. Not a dance class.”

  The Professor’s face remained intense and Madeline looked at the grass.

  “If you wish to think about the thing you are doing and give name to it, you may. You will keep it to yourself. That is an order, mark me, not a suggestion. From this point forward, you will think in terms of war. Every time you use your talisman to cast anything, you will ask yourself how it applies to defeating the Rot. Every time you leave campus, every time you sneak out after hours-,” Walcotte looked pointedly at Madeline and Talia, “every time you leave class to use the facilities. War. I hope I have made myself clear.”

  Nobody said anything, Madeline thought Professor Walcotte’s speech had made the class afraid to breathe, much less ask exploratory questions.

  “Do you understand?” Professor Walcotte demanded.

  “Yes, ma’am,” the students responded.

  “Good. Now, I know you’re all eager to begin offensive magic and we will get to that but offense must be built upon a foundation of defense. There are those who may disagree with that sentiment but I’m here to tell you, fuck them. Those who believe in attacking first, foremost or only have never been inside a Rotden, they’ve never faced down a raid, they’ve never battled Rotmonsters.”

  Professor Walcotte paused for effect, letting the implication hang in the air, thickening it. Her inability to hold her tongue from the rougher language added to the point she pounded like an anvil rather than diminish it. If a Professor as serious as Walcotte took her own words so seriously she abandoned all propriety, then they were worth taking seriously.

  She continued, redness appearing in her complexion as the pace of her words increased. She began moving among them. “When you’re in a Rotden and it’s the third hour of the Rotspawn battle and you’re tired and you’re hungry and the Life Wizard you’re with is about to get crushed like a tick, or the Storm Sorceress is so fucking drained they can’t conjure a raincloud what does an offensive spell do for you then? Huh? The grand sum of complete and total fuck all. Do you understand me?”

  Madeline’s eyes hardened. Survive long enough to get my revenge, she thought. A shield would be useful for that.

  “Yes, Professor,” the class answered.

  Walcotte raised her voice, on the verge of a shout despite their close proximity to one another. The heat in her cheeks reddened them even further. “There will be a point where all you can do is defend and pray to the ghost of Saku Hellfire that you’ll get the chance to regroup. You’ll need something simple yet powerful and easy to cast. Enter the force shield. The shield is a fundamental spell in any Warrior’s arsenal and in most cases it’ll be the one you cast more than any other. Typically, we’d take this slow, allow you time to get the cast right in a low pressure environment. But as the Prime said at last night's address, the brazen antagonism by the Rotforces necessitates speed. You will be pushed. For this exercise I want you to break out among the grass in singles, leaving about ten meters between you and the person beside you.”

  After waiting for the briefest of seconds to ensure compliance, Professor Walcotte left the training grounds without another word. Madeline looked at Talia who looked at Willow who looked at Hayden. All confused. They silently agreed that not complying with Walcotte’s request held consequences far worse than looking stupid for a moment and broke out among the grass as directed. Madeline used the time to stretch, to touch the toes of her boots, to reach her hands to the sky, to try to touch her elbows behind her back and finally to do a couple high knees in place.

  Professor Walcotte returned with an approving look on her face. Well, for a normal person she looked angry enough to stare down a bear. Compared to her mood before she left, she looked positively pleased. The source of her newfound pleasure became immediately apparent when she looked down at the box she carried, a medium sized wooden crate that overflowed with … eggs? They had to be eggs, dozens and dozens of brown and white eggs, they could be nothing else.

  She placed the crate down, its wooden bottom displacing the green blades then with a wistful look at the overflowing crate, she addressed the class.

  “Yes,” she said. “That’s a crate of eggs. And yes, I will be hurling them at you.”