With breakfast finished, Calci and I said goodbye to our friends and headed for our first class of the day, Magic 101. The hallway started off full of nervous students wondering what to expect now that classes had started, and we were both pushed and jostled as we walked. Well, actually I was pushed and jostled, Calci, who was built like a brick wall had people bouncing off of her.

The crowd started breaking up almost immediately as people took secret passages, or headed down different hallways and staircases. When we reached our own secret passage there were only a handful of students walking close to us, and of course one of them just had to be Garth.

“Petra, Calci, do you have magic class too?” my former pretend boyfriend asked.

He was smiling at both of us, but he actually grinned when he looked at me. It was difficult, but somehow I managed to resist facepalming. Most of his friends and my friends seemed to want to date each other, so as long as he didn't do anything embarrassing or too annoying, I'd smile and be friends.

“Yeah,” I said. “I couldn't get out of it, so I'm doing a little bit of everything.”

“I'm doing an all magic course, so maybe I could help you with your homework,” he said.

Calci squeezed my hand, accidentally grinding my bones together as she did. “That would be great. We can all study together. I'm focused on potions, but magic makes up half of that, so it will be really helpful.”

I breathed a big sigh of relief. I wouldn't need to deal with Garth alone, or come up with some lame excuse to avoid him. And having two people who were actually competent in magic, hopefully, would help make up for my complete lack of magical talent. “That's a great idea,” I said.

“Any idea what we should expect?” I asked.

“Not a clue,” Calci said. “Doom Valley is really different from how Dwarves are taught.”

“What's Dwarf school like?”

“In our last year as pebbles, I think you'd say toddlers, we get tested to see what we're best suited for. Then we're broken into small groups based on our future jobs and given to a mentor who teaches us the basics and life skills. It's hard, but they try to make it interesting, and we learn all kinds of things that are really useful to us and our Hold.”

I'd known that Dwarves had a different way of doing things than humans, but didn't know they worked like that. Garth seemed just as interested as I was.

“It's not much like my old school either. my teachers didn't actively try to kill us.” I paused, remembering something. “Although my language teacher could throw a piece of chalk clear across the room and concuss anyone that was speaking without permission. She'd fit in perfectly here.”

“I was home schooled,” Garth said. “My village is too small to have a proper school. My dad did most of the teaching, especially magic, and he believed in hands on learning.”

“So we're going in blind. YAY!” I said, feeling my stomach drop all the way to my feet.

We reached the classroom and stepped inside. I immediately wanted to run away screaming.

The room was a mix of black obsidian and blood red runes. The runes glowed faintly, turning everything into grim shadows. The light made my head hurt. The obsidian floor and walls cast disfigured reflections that didn't seem to move in time with the person making them. Everyone seemed to be talking in whispers, none of it quite clear enough to make out. It made my ears itch.

My heart raced, but I followed Calci and Garth further into the room. For a moment there was dead silence and I could feel all eyes on me. Then the whispering picked up, and I saw some of the shadowy figures pointing at me.

I was really, really glad I'd gone to the bathroom just before breakfast. I would have peed my panties, if I hadn't.

Trying to ignore the unwanted attention, we went to the front row and picked out three altars that were side by side close to the wall and claimed them. The surface was the same crystal that formed the walls, getting a close look at it, I realized it was obsidian. There were several small runes on the right hand corner that could be activated with a gesture. One was the rune of fire, another was for silence, air was the third rune, and healing was the last.

These were potentially very useful, but I didn't like how the healing rune was the largest one.

The bell rang signalling the start of class.

A robed figure stepped out of the shadows of the corner and walked to the front of the class. The figure pulled back its hood, revealing a pleasant faced middle aged man with greying temples.

“Why didn't anyone turn on the lights?” he asked, reaching back to hit a small rune on the wall.

Instantly the blood red runes became a much more welcoming yellow that reminded me a of the sun. The room was still kind of scary, but it wasn't pants-wetting terrifying. Looking around I saw most of the students were rubbing their eyes and looking nearly as relieved as I was. Only the fairy-succubus Blood Wing looked upset. But she usually looked upset when she wasn't looking gleefully crazy, so I didn't know if it had anything to do with the lights or not.

“I'm Mage Malacoda, I'll be your professor for Magic 101,” he said. “I know several of you think you don't need to take this class, because it's beneath you. If you can impress me in the first month, I'll see to it you advance to the next level.”

There was a fair bit of whispering behind me. I could actually make out what people were saying now, and they sounded excited at the news.

“Now, look at your altars. They need to be activated, linking them specifically to you. Once they're linked, you'll be able to store notes, spells, rituals and other things in them, and only I or another teacher will have access to them. There are other things they can do, you'll need to discover what on your own. To activate them, use a knife, your own or the one in your alter, pierce your thumb, and place your hand on the alter,” he told us.

Feeling around, I found a little door that opened with a gentle push. Inside was a compartment with a small brass cauldron, several glass vials, fountain pens, a chisel and hammer, brushes of various sizes, a ruler, a cutting board made of ebony, pestle and mortar, a large brass cauldron, a silver sickle, a silver knife, a silver sword, a silver axe, a silver great sword, an old fashion scale, a set of weights for the scales going from half a milligram to 500 kilograms, padded body armour, an anti-fire charm, a first aid kit, several needles and threads, about a dozen syringes, over a hundred different ingredients in clearly labelled bottles, at least one of which read virgin blood type O, a bottle of newt eyes, several meters of spider silk, a bag of dead spiders, a cage of live spiders, a dozen rats and mice held in a timeless circle, and several more objects I couldn't really make out without climbing into the compartment. Since something was clearly moving and breathing heavily in the very back of the compartment, hidden by shadow, there was no way I wanted to go inside and look around.

Taking the silver knife I cut my thumb and put it on the altar. It lit up with a faint pink light. I sighed in disgust at the colour choice.

Looking around I saw that Calci's altar was a bright grey in colour, making it look like granite. Garth's was a nice emerald green that lit up his immediate area. A lot of bright lights came from behind me. Turning around, I was almost blinded by some of the altars that were as bright as the sun. The colours faded to something more bearable, and I saw that the students with the brightest colours were looking very proud of themselves.

Death Wing's altar was a reddish black that somehow overpowered everything around it. I could feel the power coming off of it, and the hair on my arms rose up. An elf boy next to her had a blue alter and it was like looking into the ocean. No one else was close to their level of brightness, but everyone dwarfed my pitiful faint pink.

One altar wasn't lit up. A student was inside the compartment with only their feet sticking out. “Hey come back here! I need that knife!” a girl shouted.

There was the sound of jars falling, glass breaking, and what sounded like a big bell. “Gotcha!” she shouted. Then she screamed, wildly kicked her feet and was dragged into the altar. A moment later a tentacle closed the compartment door.

Mage Malacoda sighed. “They always forget to spray for eldritch entities over the break.”

He walked to the altar, opened it up, stuck his head into the compartment and spoke for a few seconds. Then he stepped back, tapping his foot impatiently.

A large object completely wrapped up in tentacles slowly came out of the cabinet. The tentacles unwrapped themselves, revealing a shaking girl who was covered in slime and deathly pale. A smaller tentacle put a silver knife in her hand, and then patted her on the head. The tentacles went back into the altar, closing the door after itself.

“Now that that's all settled, we can begin,” the teacher said, returning to the front of the class.

“If you look at the altars around you, you'll see they each glow at different strengths. That shows your raw power in magic. Don't let this fool you, raw power means little without training. A talented and intelligent person with little power can defeat a strong person who has less training or isn't careful.”

He looked around to make sure everyone was listening, before continuing. “Now lets see what each of you can do. One at a time I want each of you to cast one spell. If you need a living subject, let me know and I'll provide one. If it will cause damage, especially extensive damage, you'll need to step into the safety circle to avoid damaging school property. Petra you're the weakest, please cast a spell.”

My stomach dropped. This was my worst fear come to life. Well not my worst fear, I'd gained several dozen new fears since coming to Doom Valley, but it was in the top fifty. Sweat beaded up on my forehead. What spell should I try? My protection spells were useless, unless I wanted to turn myself into a human cannonball. I felt all eyes on me, and heard laughing.

Wracking my brain for anything that I could cast without looking hopelessly incompetent, my knees started to shake.

“Any time now, Petra,” the teacher said.

I felt a bit of inspiration, I could cast a simple firelight spell I'd learned in Squire Scout camp. It wasn't much, but it was something. Muttering the words I'd spent hours memorizing two years ago, while waving my hands like I was doing a free style interpretative dance, I cast my spell.

A tiny fireball appeared in front of me, floating in the air, ready to follow me where I went. There were snickers and laughs, I couldn't blame them, it was a pretty pathetic spell, but I'd cast it successfully. Giving Mage Malacoda a small smile, I hoped I'd be allowed to sit down.

He didn't look impressed.

“OK, that's... something. Get rid of it.”

I spoke the words to stop the spell. At least I thought I did.

Suddenly the tiny fireball that would easily fit in my hand, started growing in size. As it grew it threw off more and more heat, until I was afraid my eyebrows were going to catch fire. When it became as big as my head it flew straight at me.

Screaming, I took off running, with the fireball following me. My butt became uncomfortably hot as I raced around the room. Bags, pens, papers and books went flying as students ducked and ran away from me, while the insane fireball tried to turn me into charcoal.

The teacher watched in disgust as chaos enveloped the room. Waving his hand, the fireball vanished. I stopped to catch my breath, my backside was still uncomfortably hot and I smelled something burning.

“PETRA! YOU'RE ON FIRE!” Calci shouted.

Looking behind me, my skirt was burning quite happily.

I dropped and rolled to put it out. Once I was no longer on fire, I gingerly got to my feet and saw that my skirt still covered my butt, barely. I'd definitely need to change it soon but at least I could still wear it for now. Going back to my desk, wincing at the burns on my legs and backside, wanting to cry, I quietly apologized to everyone I passed.

“All right class,” Mage Malacoda said, “this was a little earlier than I'd planned, but you'll notice there are several runes on your altars. The most important one is the health rune. Petra you'll want to put your hand on it and hold it there until the burns heal. I think you're going to be using that a lot in this class.”

Following his instructions I felt instant relief. I still groaned unhappily, death would be better than this embarrassment.