For a magic school, especially a magic school with a name like Sappho's School of Sorcery, the classes were actually pretty damn boring. In fact it was a lot like what I expected college must have been like in my old life, although I couldn't remember if I ever attended that or not.

The classes all had very impressive magical sounding names, but by the end of the first day I'd basically sat through an hour of math, an hour of history, an hour of this world's equivalent of French or Spanish, and finally there was ninety minutes of chemistry. With a one-hour break in the middle for lunch.

Of course they weren't actually those mundane subjects. Math, aka Magical Formulae, was really about arcane sigils and symbols and the relationships between them, how to put them together and take them apart to achieve different effects. History was actually Foundations of Sorcery, it covered the legendary sorceress Sappho herself, and included the basics of seeing and understanding those magical lines of force things.

The not-French-not-Spanish language class was officially Magical Languages. That's where we learned various arcane tongues, which is what a lot of the more complicated spells used. And chemistry was actually Alchemy. It covered potions, salves, and tinctures. And despite all that, they still managed to make it kind of boring.

Even the knowledge that every one of my fellow students was going commando in our knee-length plaid skirts wasn't enough to make the classes interesting. And thinking about that stuff too hard just distracted me, which didn't help since I needed to pay attention. Being a month behind everyone else, I really needed to try and catch up.

By the end of the first class I'd done Info on every other student around me, and the teacher as well. Every last one of them was human, only one girl other than Candi was level two. Everyone else was level one like me.

The profs were all way higher of course. Math was being taught be a level twenty wizard, history by a level eighteen sorceress, the language class was a level twenty-one witch, and we had a level twenty-four wizard for chemistry. Like the students, all the profs were women. And they were all hot. The oldest couldn't have been more than thirty, though I realized there was probably some magic at work there.

Happily none of the profs seemed to hate me, or at least not yet. They all just acknowledged I was a new student then got on with the lessons. Another nice thing was the classes weren't too big. Including myself there were fewer than twenty first-year students.

Candi and I sat together in all our classes, and we stayed together at lunchtime too. Then after class the two of us spent the rest of the afternoon hanging out in the break room.

I found out she was on the third floor in the dorms, in fact first-years were all supposed to be on the third floor. Second years got the second floor, and third-year girls got rooms on the ground floor.

It felt backwards to me in terms of hierarchy, but it made sense in a world without elevators. It meant the more experienced girls didn't have to go up and down so many flights of stairs, and they were closer to the break-room and the snacks and stuff.

I also found out the rooms and beds and washroom facilities all got better the closer you were to ground level. On the third floor they had three students in each room, the beds were smaller, they had a shared table instead of private desks, that sort of thing.

Me getting assigned to a second-floor room was a bit of a coup in the sense that I was enjoying nicer facilities than all my fellow first-year girls, but I knew it wasn't done for my benefit. Based on what I learned this morning, that administrator pretty much served me up on a platter for Evelynn.

Fourth-year girls and higher weren't in the dorms, they got to live in some of the little cottages around the campus. Depending on the cottage and the student, there were between two and four girls to a cottage. Other cottages were home to some of the staff and faculty.

As me and my pink-haired friend talked, I learned more about her too. Her dad was a well-off merchant who made his money through hard work and good business choices, and maybe a little good luck. He could barely afford the tuition to send Candice here, but he knew if she graduated she'd come out with all the advantages and talents to make the most of her life.

That kind of impressed me, like I thought it was cool her folks were investing in her future and stuff. She told me other students didn't see it that way. They looked down on her because her family worked hard to earn their wealth, instead of being born into it.

I didn't actually have much of a back-story to tell, so I made some stuff up. I was a commoner who won a scholarship, I said I was an orphan since I had no idea who my folks were or if I even had any. And I was ostracized because I was different, so I didn't have any friends to leave behind when I left my home town to come to this fancy school.

Lying to her made me feel bad, I was hoping me and her would be good friends. But I obviously couldn't tell her I only reincarnated here yesterday, so I had to come up with something else instead.

Candice was sympathetic, and with her pink hair she knew what it was like to be bullied for being different. I actually wanted to ask her about that, I assumed at first she dyed it that colour but now I wondered if it was natural. Like I assumed my green hair came from being part sprite, I wondered if she had anything similar.

'Candice, Human, Sorceress, Level 2'

Oh right, I looked at that before. So she's a human, but with pink hair. I'd have to ask about that at some point.

Me and Candi sat together at dinner as well, and by the end of my first full day I finally felt like I was starting to get a handle on things. I still had a ton of questions about the way the world worked and what the rules were, but in the meantime I had one friend I felt I could trust, and one enemy I could control.

I found out that the school didn't have a sports program, but I also figured out how my new friend got those bruises on her legs. In just the first day I saw her walk into two chairs and the corner of a desk. And at dinner she nearly knocked her drink over twice. I wasn't sure yet if she was inattentive, accident-prone, or clumsy.

After dinner Candi and I finally parted ways, we each went back to our own rooms to study. Though I was confident my study methods were going to be different than hers.

I read some more of the student handbook, and glossed through the volume-one sorcery textbook, but mostly I was waiting for my roomie to return.

Fortunately she didn't keep me waiting too long. I was only alone for thirty or forty minutes before the door opened and Evelynn stalked in with a scowl on her face. That melted to a soft happy smile as soon as the door was closed.

"Hi Abby," she grinned at me. "How was your first day of classes? Did you fit in ok? Did you run into any trouble?"

She was so concerned and worried for me, I had to smile. "It was ok, thanks Evelynn. I made friends with another first-year girl, she's been showing me around and helping me get used to the classes."

My roomie pouted, "I saw. That pink-haired girl."

I had to struggle not to laugh as I told her, "Don't be jealous. She's just a friend, she couldn't ever come between what you and I have together."

That brought a smile to her face and Evelynn sat down on her bed facing me. She got a naughty smirk on her face as she asked, "Are you going to make her yours? I could help with that, if you let me."

She added, "Honestly if you got a head start, you could be miles ahead of the other first-year girls before second semester even starts. They'll all be just finding out about that facet of school life, and you could already have a couple girls under you."

That kind of stopped me in my tracks. I was trying to be friends with Candi, I didn't want to enthral her. But if I didn't, someone else might. Or worse, she might try and do that to me. Fuck, this was stuff I didn't want to think about. I decided to steer the conversation away from Candice while keeping it on the topic of 'getting girls'.

"You mentioned this morning about an Obedience spell, you said there was some nuance to it? Could you tell me how that works? And how you learned to cast the spell?"

"Of course!" she seemed so happy and eager for the opportunity to help me, it really was cute.

We wound up sitting crosslegged together on her bed while she gave me a little lecture on how the key was to not let girls know they were under the spell in the first place. Like if they knew they were doing stuff because you'd enspelled them, they'd know it was all compelled, artificial. So however you wanted it to play out, you did it in such a way they thought it was natural. And if you kept that going for four or five weeks, then it just became habit for them and you could drop the spell. It was like the suggestions just became stuck in their heads, without needing magic to hold it in place.

I couldn't help wonder if it was a coincidence that I happened to stumble onto that exact formula this morning with her. From the sound of it, I just had to renew the obedience spell every six or seven days for the next four weeks, and Evelynn would just get used to it and stay on my team after that.

She went on to say it was a good idea to switch stuff up and customize it for each girl. Like if they all thought the same things and acted the same way that might tip one of them off that something unusual was going on.

Evelynn described what she did to each of the four she had under her control. Becky was the first one and for her it started off by getting her to believe she was in love with Evelynn. Like head-over-heels crushing, desperate to impress, desperate to even be noticed. Over the course of a month Evelynn tweaked that into devotion, trust, and finally some unthinking obedience.

Her second was a girl named Trina, who became Evelynn's 'best friend'. She loved and admired my roommate, and came to trust her implicitly, and once again by the end of the month there was that unthinking obedience. Her third was named Rosie, and she followed Becky's path with a few variations. Then last month when the new year started, Evelynn picked up a first-year named Michelle. I recognized the name, she was in my classes today.

My roomie tried a different tactic with her, and she mostly picked the girl because Michelle made a stuck-up comment about having better lineage than Evelynn did. Something about her parents being higher-up the nobility food chain than Evie's.

So she went hard on Michelle and had her practically worshipping Evelynn, the younger girl was convinced that the self-proclaimed queen of second-year was descended from the gods. My roomie even giggled as she told me about Michelle grovelling on the floor in front of the bed where I was sitting, happily sucking my roommate's toes like it was the greatest gift ever.

By that point I was feeling all kinds of things that ran the full spectrum from very uncomfortable to kind of arroused.

"Ok," I said as I tried to push the feelings away. "Can you teach me how to cast that spell? Incase I want to get a head start on my fellow first-year girls?"

She got her notebook out of her desk and showed me the spell, she'd actually copied it out of the text she found in the library. I dutifully wrote it all out in my own notebook, and in doing so I was both surprised and disappointed as I got a new notification.

Apparently adding a spell to my notebook was enough to let me learn some of its secrets, and in this case what I learned was you needed to be level three or higher to cast Obedience.

I pouted, "Thanks Evelynn. This is amazing, but I think it's way too hard for me. It's only my second day here, after all. I wonder if there's another way you could help me?"

"Of course!" she replied enthusiastically. "I'm pretty sure I can cast it for you? Like so the target would obey you instead of me."

I flashed her a wide, happy smile "Oh my gosh Evelynn really? That would be so amazing!"

She pulled me into a hug as she grinned, "You know I'd do anything to help you Abby. I want to see you do well here, you deserve it."

As we hugged I asked, "I have another question? I guess two questions. Is it possible to steal someone else's girls? Like to get them to switch sides and be on your team instead of someone else's? And is that allowed? Like I mean, is it against the rules or anything?"

"It's totally allowed," she replied. "It's all part of the game, really. As long as you don't break the written rules, pretty much anything goes. However..."

She let go of me and sighed, "It's really, really hard to actually turn someone. I've tried. I think it's because you're not just fighting them, you're fighting their leader too? So you've got double the resistance."

"Oh," I said in a sad tone. "I see. That makes sense."

Except what if you didn't have to fight their leader? What if their leader was already on your team and handed them over to you on a silver platter? I decided we'd find those answers later.

For now I really needed to get my level up, and I had an idea that might work. "So Evelynn, what sorts of first and second year spells do you know?"

My abilities worked on that Control spell, maybe they'd work on other spells too. I just had to get someone I could trust to cast them at me while I used Dispell and Scrutinize.

In other words, it was time to do some grinding.

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