The Past will Echo

“I still remember that day, five hundred years ago, when those gates opened to me for the first time,” Claire smiled. “The Human Kingdom of Veritta’s Institution of Magic.”

Two glittering blue gates swung open all on their own, metal creaking as they slid aside.

Eagerly waiting before the entrance was a young woman, roughly around high school in her age. She had strawberry-blonde hair and excited hazel eyes, and wore patterned robes.

“The prodigy, Clarisina Sylvai, had been invited to attend lectures in recognition of her magical talent.” Claire turned to me and chuckled. “I never knew, back then, that I had been born under weaker stars. I didn’t know my very existence lived slightly outside the tapestry of fate.”

The young Clarisina hurried inside the castle-like campus grounds, her footsteps eager. The scenery around us changed, like watching a dream. The next thing I knew, we were in a grand hall with arched windows, pillars towering high towards vaulted ceilings. Clarisina was surrounded by a crowd of robed students.

Clarisina held up a scrap of paper with a magic circle drawn onto it. She traced her hand along the circle's outline, then called out a spell. Blue flames burst forth to the wonder of those around her.

“No matter where I went,” Claire murmured, “things would change. If I joined a group of friends, their relationships would shift. If I complained about a teacher, their lectures would suddenly change. If I tried to study a magical subject, I would defy the magical rules as we knew them.” She frowned. “Back then, I thought it was because I was a prodigy. I thought it was a gift.”

Next, I saw Clarisina enter a classroom. It was a semi-circular hall made of stone, with seats rising all around. It looked more like an opera house than any classroom I knew. Yet, Clarisina hurriedly took to one of the benches near the front. She brought out a journal and quill, trying not to spill her ink bottle as she pulled open its cork.

“But there was one professor who never changed,” Claire smiled.

A man stepped onto the stage, laying scrolls on the podium. He had long auburn hair, and a bit of a wistful air about him. He struck me as rather young for a professor.

“No matter how many questions I asked him, and no matter how much my very existence defied known convention, he always assured me that everything had a reason. He truly believed that magic could be understood through observation and study. If I’d known about your world back then, I would’ve compared him to a modern-day scientist.”

The professor tried to grab a piece of charcoal and tie back his long hair at the same time. In doing so, he rolled the charcoal farther away, undid his hair, proceeded to trip, and scattered his papers in one swift motion. The classroom laughed, and the young professor picked up his things with an embarrassed smile.

Claire chuckled. “He was also very clumsy.”

The professor tidied his papers and started his lecture with a warm smile. He had an animated expression as he propped up a drafting journal, and began sketching magical circles.

“But truly, he was a genius ahead of his time.”

The young Clarisina listened to the professor’s every word, exhilaration in her expression, as she jotted down notes.

“I had no way of knowing,” Claire whispered, “that there was a reason he was immune to my defiance of fate. There was a reason why he shined so much brighter than anyone else.”

Holding up her hand, Clarisina raised her journal and showed off a magical circle she’d made. The professor invited her onto the stage. Together, they sketched a new drawing onto the drafting journal, both of them smiling together.

“Professor Janus Akaventus was a World Champion,” Claire stated somberly. “He was supposed to bring Farelle into a new era of magical understanding. But I…”

The young Clarisina gazed into her professor’s eyes, a blush upon her cheeks.

“...I fell in love with him.”

The scene of the classroom dashed away, as a library replaced it. Clarisia was scurrying around, bringing books towards Professor Akaventus’ desk. All around him were drawings.

Claire stepped towards the memory, and held up one of these scrolls: it showed a magical circle in intricate detail.

“Back then, human magic in Farelle was entirely focused on the study of shapes. Unlike elves, or beasts — humans were required to draw shapes to channel our magic. It put us at a disadvantage, and we sought to understand why we were different than the other races.” Claire lowered her gaze. “Professor Akaventus’ entire life work was devoted to bypassing the need for drawings. He believed that humans could harness magic through spoken word alone.”

At the library desk, Akaventus tried again and again to summon a spell by speaking it aloud, but to no avail. Then, Clarisina drifted closer. She peered over his writings, and tried the spell herself.

Light emerged from her hands. They stared in awe.

“And slowly, with my help, we proved that his theory was possible,” Claire sighed. “At the winter dissertation, he was granted the right to perform an incantation on a scale that had never been attempted before in history.”

The memory went dark.

“By the summer solstice, Professor Akaventus was going to perform a world-scale spell, to allow all humans to perform magic by voice alone,” Claire whispered, “and it was supposed to work.”

A small bedroom room came into focus, nighttime twinkling outside the window. Clarisina was seated at a desk lit by a floating flame. She poured over a dusty tome, taking notes in her journal.

“At the time,” Claire murmured, “I believed that love meant everything. Janus and I weren’t that far apart in age: I was in my late teens, and he was in his early twenties. I thought that if I could just get him to think of me as something more than a student, he would finally see me for who I was.”

Claire let out a long, long breath. She stepped towards the scene, passing through it like a ghost, and tapped on the tome Clarisina was reading.

“I decided to look into love spells,” Claire admitted, pained.

“I was young, Jun,” she groaned. “I was blinded by the idea of ‘true love.’ I thought that because my feelings were strong, they were surely right, and nothing would stand in my way. I chased after Janus, not stopping to think if I really knew him, or if I even knew myself.” Claire’s illusionary image glanced towards me. “Sound familiar?”

I let out a breath and nodded.

The background blurred again, like water smearing away a painting. A private study, surrounded by books and a warm fire, filled the space. Professor Akaventus was seated by the hearth, immersed in writing. The door to his study creaked open, but he was so busy with his writing that he didn’t notice.

Clarisina peeked through the doorway. She smiled, giggled, and held up a magic circle drawing. She then whispered a spell. Nothing seemed to happen, but Clarisina closed the door and ran away, grinning.

“It was supposed to be a small love charm,” Madam Claire informed, as the study faded away. “Just something to make him think of me fondly. Yet, over the next few months, as we prepared for the world-scale incantation, Janus only avoided me more and more. I thought maybe my charm had failed.”

Claire clutched her chest, her voice shaking. “That charm...if anyone else had cast it, it wouldn’t have done anything. But I was a magical prodigy — and more than that, I was a Faint Star, a person who defies fate.”

A looming, stone tower suddenly surrounded us. There were no windows, only the faint glow of magical flames on the distant walls. People in robes lined the edge of the room: hundreds of them.

I looked down to find myself standing on the largest magic circle I’d ever seen. The lines had been burned into the floor, spanning the entire ballroom distance and climbing up the walls. Even though I knew this was an illusion of Claire’s past, I still jumped so I wouldn’t step on the magical drawing.

“In the largest room of the Institution’s tower, on that fated summer day, Professor Akaventus was supposed to cast a grand incantation that would remove the limitation of shape-drawing forever. And, as his assistant, I was supposed to help him.”

Akaventus appeared through a large set of doors, with Clarisina by his side. Sunlight from outside the tower shone behind them.

Then, the doors closed behind them, and sealed off the warmth with a resonating thud.

“No one, not even myself,” Claire whispered, “knew that I had already driven him mad.”