Chapter 8: Questions Unanswered (Elly)

The faint rays of dawn cast long shadows across silent halls of the Rem Magic Academy. Their warm light was a secret gift for their sole witness. Elly felt like she was the only person in the entire sky. There was no one to hide from, there were no dirty looks aimed her way, no cruel whispers just loud enough to hear. She was alone with her thoughts.

She was glad that she’d gone for breakfast while her roommates slept. Solitude was so much easier to find here than it was back home. Peace only came this early in the morning, like the sky was standing still just for her.

“Mrooowwerrr!”

A dark figure darted in front of her, and she screamed. The black tomcat looked at for a moment and then darted down the hall, disappearing around the corner before Elly could catch her breath. Mornings here weren’t only peaceful it seemed.

Settling down, Elly consulted the map in the student handbook. If she was following it right, then the first year classrooms were around the corner. She turned left where the cat had turned right, and arrived at another hallway. A sign with the picture of the sun hung above the first room. The next room was a crescent moon, and there, the third room down, was a star. Relieved it wasn’t locked, Elly entered the room where she’d be taking all of her classes this year.

Much to her surprise, in spite of how early she had woken up, she wasn’t the first to arrive. Sitting at a desk in the back row was Chloe Bellajean, head buried in her arms and snoring away.

What… what’s she doing here? How… how early did she get up?

Elly was curious, but she wasn’t the sort to rudely wake someone up. Or talk to people when they were awake.

Chloe definitely made the right call in sitting in the back. Elly sat in the back too, hoping no one would bother her. That was okay, right? There wasn’t any registered seating, right? There weren’t any nametags on the desks or anything.

She sat next to the window and set her bag down, pulling out a book and flipping it open. She buried herself in a story about a brave adventurer descending into an ancient ruin, hoping it would keep the attention off her.

…

Elly didn’t know how long she had been reading, but the sun had fully risen by the time the next student walked into the room. Elly peaked up over the pages to see Evangeline Moonshadow walk in. She met the blonde girl’s blue eyes from across the room and ducked back behind her book, surprised at how quiet her footsteps were as she walked closer.

“I thought I would get here first,” Evangeline said, Elly glancing up at her again. She didn’t seem mad about Elly being here… Her eyes were more generally dismissive than outright scornful.

“…I’m sorry?”

“Don’t apologize for something like that. Why are you here so early?”

Was… was Evangeline trying to be friends with her? Elly didn’t know how making friends really worked. Wendy and Melody had talked with her yesterday and they were her roommates now, so… were they friends? What about Blake and Amy? Were they friends? They had talked a little over dinner, but Elly didn’t want to presume that they were friends. She took a closer look. …No, those eyes didn’t say “friend”.

“I just, um, wanted to do some reading.”

“I see.”

That was the end of the conversation. Clearly, Evangeline wasn’t a social person. Elly looked down, turning red in embarrassment at misunderstanding her intentions.

“Eve.”

Elly blinked. She looked up at the girl. “Huh?”

“My name. Eve Moonshadow.” Her answer was brusque, and her eyes were still cold, but she’d given her name all the same.

Elly’s eyes widened behind her bangs. She wished she wasn’t feeling as hopeful as she was. She didn’t want to be disappointed again.

“Elly,” she timidly tried. Eve nodded, but didn’t say anything else to her. She turned and walked over to Chloe.

This time the conversation really was over, right?

“Why is she sleeping?” Eve asked.

Another surprise. Eve was still talking to her?

“Um… I don’t know… she was sleeping when I got here…”

Elly set book down and glanced their way. Eve didn’t seem fazed by the fact that Chloe was asleep. And she clearly didn’t share Elly’s reluctance. She reached out and shook Chloe awake.

“…Snrok… hrk… huh… wha?”

Chloe’s eyes were bleary with sleep.

“…What are you doing in my room?” Chloe yawned, glancing lazily between the girls.

“…You’re in the classroom,” Eve said.

Chloe blinked, looking around the room.

“…Huh. Must’ve come here in my sleep… tired now…”

Still yawning, she rested her head on her arms and fell back asleep.

Eve took a seat next to her without another word. She took the oldest book that Elly had ever seen out of her bag. It was a worn tome, the pages cracked and yellowed with age, bound within a dark leather cover. Eve was too far away for Elly to see what sort of book it was, and she wasn’t bold enough to ask.

…

Over the next half-hour, more students filed into the room. Amy waved her way and plopped down next to her, a big smile on her face. Elly gave a shaky smile back. Wendy and Melody sat near her, too, and she felt herself starting to relax a little more. At least she and her “friends” were together… right?

That hope was dashed when the professor walked into the room, and told them that there was, in fact, assigned seating.

The structure of the seating was organized so that each column alternated between boys and girls.

On the one hand, Elly was still in the very back of the classroom. On the other, her friends were all in the front now, and she wasn’t next to the window anymore either. Blake had that seat now, and she sat beside him, which was kind of reassuring at least. Chloe ended up in front of her, somehow managing to get across the room in her sleep. The boy on the other side of her had ebony skin and his dark hair was so short he was practically bald. Elly remembered that his name was Morgan. She glanced his way and he gave her a warm smile, which she cautiously returned before whirling her head back to face the board. A stranger!

It… it could be worse, right? She wasn’t sitting anywhere close to the prince or any of his friends, which was good. And Sabine, Jasmine, and Mindy were all on the other side of the room. So yeah, it certainly could be worse.

Now she just had to keep her head down for the rest of the year, and hope that she didn’t make any more enemies than she already had.

Elly tried to pay attention to what Professor Darkflame was explaining about the cohort, she really tried. But she was distracted by the duffel bag sitting beside her desk, the one Blake had lugged in behind him. It had those… those eggs. Reed Rivers had said they were dragon eggs, but… that couldn’t be true, right? There were no more dragons or eggs. She had to have been mistaken; they must have belonged to a beast of some sort.

But Blake was a member of the Harker Family… the noble house of dragons… so was there a chance? While she would never be rude enough to ask, Elly couldn’t stop her curiosity. She just… she had to know, she just had to! That was why her thoughts were so jumbled. The idea of dragons was something she couldn’t keep out even if she tried!

If only someone else had put the thought in her head besides Reed Rivers. Elly had kind of looked up to her the last few years. They were talking about her even as far as the capital! While Elly hadn’t ever wanted to BE a mage (she would need talent for that) she had envied the prodigy. Reed could do so much that Elly couldn’t, she had skills and talent that Elly didn’t, and meeting her in person? It had been amazing. She was so cool, Elly couldn’t imagine ever being able to compare to someone like that, and Elly actually knew her now? It was like a dream. If Reed said they were dragon eggs, they were dragon eggs.

“…But I see Ms. Elaindra is more focused on her seatmate’s bag than on discussing our cohort’s schedule.”

Elly froze at the sound of her name. She was staring right at the duffel bag. She raised her head to see Blake glowering at her, and slowly scanned the classroom. Everyone’s eyes were focused on her, including those of a particularly stern-looking Professor Darkflame. Elly felt her face heat up with shame and she slumped in her seat.

She didn’t say a word or look away from the professor for the rest of the Cohort Meeting. After they got through the syllabus, the professor cleared his throat and glanced at a large hourglass sitting on his desk.

“We still have some time left, so I think we’ll be starting your Fundamentals of Magic class a little early today.” As their Cohort Leader, Professor Darkflame was handling the Fundamentals of Magic class for the Stars Cohort, and he was also the professor for Intro to Combat Magic. Elly would be seeing him a lot, and she’d already started out on the wrong foot! This wasn’t how she’d wanted her first day to go…

The professor took another hourglass out of his robe and set it on its side beside the larger hourglass still trickling down. Did he not know this room had a clock in it?

“As the name implies, ‘Fundamentals of Magic’ is an intro course to learning the fundamentals of magic. How we use mana to cast spells, and exploring the question of what magic really is. To start this, I’m going to administer a test.”

A chorus of gasps rang out across the classroom, Elly’s voice included. A test? Like, a test test? Before now, Elly had never taken any formal education or gone to school. She had been taught to read and write by a tutor, one of the few kindnesses her father had shown her, but beyond that she had no experience. That she could use magic at all was thanks to her mother showing her. Elly didn’t know a damn thing about magic, she hadn’t studied at all, it was her first day of class! Was this normal?

“You don’t need to be so worried,” Professor Darkflame assured them. “This isn’t a test I’ll be grading you on. I just want to assess how much you are capable of, what you know about magic, so that I know where you are.”

Well, Elly could answer that question for him right off.

Everyone else sighed in relief, but she was still tense. The professor passed out the tests, and with them, quill pens. Elly was confused, there was no inkwell on her desk. She looked around the room, but it didn’t seem like anyone else had one, either. How was she supposed to take the test?

She hated to draw attention to herself, but she was more scared of failing. She raised a shaky hand.

“The test hasn’t begun yet, Ms. Elaindra,” Professor Darkflame said, raising his eyebrow. Elly dropped her hand. She wanted to ask him to call her Elly, but she didn’t want to make an even bigger scene

“Um… professor… I don’t have an inkwell…” She managed to get out.

The professor stared at her, and she swallowed. Then she heard snickering. Elly glanced to see Sabine looking at her, whispering to her tall friend. Elly’s ears perked up, and she caught “what a surprise, she’s never used a magic pen before.”

Magic pen?

“Ms. Elaindra, that’s a magic pen,” the professor informed her. He walked up to the black board and withdrew a quill from his robe. He held the feather’s tip against the board, light shining out from it as it touched. He wrote his name in shining script.

A magic pen. A pen that wrote with magic. How stupid! How obvious! This was a magic academy, after all! Elly felt ashamed at having asked such a stupid question. But… but she hadn’t known any better. Her face heated up and she slumped down in her seat.

“Thanks.”

Elly’s ear twitched and she glanced to her left, to see Blake looking her way.

“…I didn’t know what it was either,” Blake admitted, averting his eyes from her. His face was red too. “Thanks.”

Elly’s heart fluttered with relief. She wasn’t as big a fool as she thought.

The professor turned the other hourglass over.

“Begin. You have until all the grains have fallen.”

Elly turned the paper over and swallowed, looking at the first question.

“What is Mana?”

Relief washed over her. At least with this question she could work out the answer.

“Mana is the energy that exists in all things, living and nonliving, the force that unites us all,” she wrote. It was a quote from one of her favorite characters. Hopefully the author wasn’t being poetic.

The next question quickly took the wind out of her sails.

“What is the value of a person’s Mana Level as it pertains to their ability to use magic?”

Now that Elly did know the answer to, though she was loathe to admit it. Mana levels were a touchy subject where she was concerned.

“The higher a person’s mana level, the more mana they have in reserve. This means they can both cast more spells, and spells of greater power.”

Unlike me.

The third question was another easy one: “What are orica?” Elly briefly wondered if all the questions would be common knowledge.

“Orica are crystals capable of storing magic. When mana is sent through an orica, the orica channels the spellcraft and the spell is cast.”

The next question began to get into territory that Elly wasn’t fully assured of.

“Describe the nature of Elemental Magic to the best of your ability.”

Elemental Magic. Elly had no idea what Elemental Magic was. She was pretty sure “magic relating to the elements” was not the sort of answer that the professor was looking for. She searched the recesses of her mind for potential answers. What were the elements? Lightning was an element, and so was Metal. Growing up in the palace, these two were obvious ones. Fire, she knew that one as well, and Air, of course, but that was sometimes called Wind… Or were those different elements altogether? She thought she’d heard something about Water and Ice being different elements too, but she wasn’t sure.

“Elemental magic is magic that allows a wizard to control the elements of Lightning, Metal, Fire, Air, and Water.”

That was what she knew. She didn’t know more elements, maybe the ground? Was that an element? What about plants? Those were things that existed, sure, but were they considered elements? She added “Ground” and “Plants” to her growing list anyway. Those were all she could think of, and that was where she left it.

And that was just about the last question she could begin to develop an answer to.

She didn’t know different kinds of magic besides Elemental Magic, she didn’t know which spell of the options presented was a basic spell, or even what a “basic spell” was, or who the first known mage to develop Enchantments was, or which of the listed spells was “forbidden” magic. The only thing she could hazard a guess at was the amount of mana needed to cast a basic Fireball spell, and even then she guessed the lowest answer of 50 out of sheer optimistic hope.

…

By the time she “finished” the test, Elly felt woefully exhausted. She had gotten through all the questions, but she doubted she got many correct.

“Time is up, pens down and please pass your papers forward,” the professor said, tilting the hourglass over. Elly passed her paper forward. Chloe didn’t take it. Her head was down. She dropped it on the girl’s head, and she didn’t even stir.

Elly heard snoring.

She sighed and stood up, taking her paper and Chloe’s. Chloe’s paper was blank. She passed them both up to the next girl and returned to her seat, feeling like the idiot she was. That test told her what she already knew; she didn’t belong here. She knew nothing about magic.

“It’s okay if you didn’t know the answer to many of these questions,” Professor Darkflame assured the class, but it felt like he was speaking to her. She brightened, her ears perking up. “You’re all learning, of course. But by the end of this class, you’ll be able to answer all of those questions flawlessly.”

A student in the front row raised his hand. Elly was pretty sure his name was Ark Greenland?

“And yes, I’m sure that some of you have managed perfect scores already. That isn’t important. I’m trying to discover how much basic knowledge you have as a class. For those of you in need of some extra challenges, I’m sure we can find a way to accommodate you.”

The boy dropped his hand.

The professor set the tests on his desk and checked the hourglass. Elly squinted at the clock instead, estimating how much time was left in the class period. It wasn’t a lot, that test had taken longer than she’d thought.

“Your work for tomorrow is to read the first three chapters of your text,” the professor said, sitting down at the table. He didn’t even raise his head to look at the students. “Because we have another twenty minutes left, you may spend the time in private study doing your reading. Congratulations, it looks like you’ll have some free time tonight.”

Elly gulped. That didn’t sound like a joke. Like the other kids were doing, she began digging through her bag, finding the text “What is Magic?” by Sadie Maeventide. She flipped it open, but before she could start reading, a tap on her arm nearly made her jump out of her seat. She whirled around to see Blake looking her way.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you,” he said, looking a little embarrassed. It was an expression she knew well from her reflection.

“Wh-What?” She whispered, glancing at the professor’s desk. She wasn’t sure if they were supposed to be talking.

“I, uh… I kind of forgot my textbook back in my room,” Blake admitted. “…All of them.”

Elly’s eyes glanced at the duffel bag between their desks.

“…Grabbed the wrong bag, huh?”

…That was what Elly would have said if she was a girl like Amy who joked around and was easygoing. Instead, she just said “oh.”

“So, um, I was wondering… can I look at your book with you? You know, read together?”

Elly hadn’t been asked that sort of question before. It took her a second to think about it. She nodded.

Elly scooted her desk over and slid her book into the center so they could both read it. It was fine, right? If he asked that, maybe they were friends after all? Maybe Elly could hope for something like that. At the very least, he was asking, not taking, and she would like to make a friend.