The Headmaster's Apprentice

The bell rings. Classes now end early for apprenticing second years, so they can have more time to learn from their respective mentors. Most students are ecstatic, but one places her head on her desk and sighs heavily. A student with pale yellow eyes and bobbed cobalt yellow hair topped with a green beret. She’s wearing a KAV uniform: a near black purple long tunic with pale blue accents. Her staff, a bamboo handle topped with a tiger’s eye on top, rests next to her desk.

She’s a dedicated, straight A student with the dreams of becoming a magic scientist. She should be happy to be the apprentice of Headmaster Vitis, but she has already realized why she just so happens to be Pione’s first and only apprentice.

She gathers her things, knowing sitting here isn’t going to change anything. She just hopes that Pione has a sudden change to being a good teacher, now that mentors are finalized.

Lillian pushes open Pione’s office door. It only opens halfway as boxes are stopping it from going further. She sees Pione shuffling around in seemingly random containers. Pione suddenly springs up and opens a filing cabinet, taking a piece of paper out of an overflowing folder.

Lillian takes a deep breath, “Professor Vitis! I’m here!”

Pione raises her head, finally noticing her. “Oh?” She glances at the clock, ”you’re here early.” She smirks, “playing hooky or somethin’?"

“It’s the end of the month, remember? Classes end early now.”

Pione covers her mouth in surprise. “I completely forgot about that.”

Lillian isn’t surprised.

“Luckily for you, I already finished all my work I needed done today.”

She flicks her wrist and several pages fly off her desk and into an out tray outside of her office.

“...” Lillian can’t help but feel jealous. “Will you ever teach me that?”

“How to do paperwork…?”

“No! I mean how to do magic without a staff.”

“That’s… a tricky one. You need to be fully connected to your spells, for one. For two, I don’t know how someone can learn that in a normal 100 year lifespan. I’ve seen it, sure, but no idea how.” Pione hands Lillian a note with several magic circles drawn on it. “Could you draw these in the corner of the room? Oh! And don’t draw the ones that I crossed out.”

“Sigh. Alright.”

Pione pulls out a tall glass dome, making sure it was her newest version. She places it in the middle of all the magic circles once Lillian finishes drawing them.

“Alright! Activate those circles one by one!”

Lillian does as she says. She activates the electric circle, the ice circle, the erosion circle, and more. It’s only when she activates the soundwave circle that the glass cracks.

“Dang. Okay, stop there.” Pione scribbles in her notebook.

“Was it not supposed to do that…?”

Pione shakes her head. “No. Most ideally, it would survive each and every one of these spells without even cracking.”

“Why?”

“I need a structure that can contain something with unknown magical abilities.”

Lillian’s eyes light up, “I get it! That could be very beneficial to field magic scientists!” She knows Pione is a frequent contributor to many magic based institutes.

“Oh! You’re right! I didn’t think about that.” Pione adds that to her notes.

“What? Then why are you making–?”

“Onto the next version!”

She grabs Lillian’s hand and rushes to the academy’s enchantment room with a couple of boxes full of supplies floating after them. She grabs a numbered slip and goes to the marked enchanting cubicle.

“Alright! So, the last glass cover broke from soundwaves. To mitigate that, I should alter the resonant frequency, but only for certain parts of the glass. Siiigh, that’s going to be a little annoying to have to work on such a small scale…”

“Does it have to be a small scale? Can you not just make the frequency different for half the glass?”

“Nope! That would still make half the glass break under that soundwave. It would also introduce the problem of having half that can now shatter from a soundwave of a different frequency, making it weaker overall. No, instead I have to edit in teeny tiny sections so even if a spot hits its resonance, it won’t break.”

Pione’s staff lights up. A small area in space warps into a magnification. It’s a magnifying spell; a must have for any scientist, regardless if they are studying magic or not. With a thin, diamond tipped pen, she makes etchings into the glass. Crevices where the frequency enchantment will naturally flow into. It’s a slow, but needed, process. She doesn’t bother with adding all the other enchantments yet to save on resources if this glass still breaks from soundwaves.

“Alright. Let’s go try version 11.0 out!”

This process of stress testing and enchanting repeats itself over and over, across the next few days.