I had gone to bed early the night before, so it was still dark when I jogged to school. I was testing out the ‘Accelerate’ spell I had gotten and even my slow jog was a blur. I zoomed through the streets in a pair of my mom’s old shoes. They were tattered and worn out but the enchantment on them was still functional, so my mom hadn't thrown them away. I was using them because at this speed the rubber on my shoes would melt in seconds. And I didn’t need that adding to the fear of what would happen if I tripped going at this speed.  My eyes were darting around, as I concentrated on trying to make sure there weren't any people, or objects, that could get in my way. I estimated that I was going around fifty miles an hour, and my twenty-minute jog took less than five minutes.

Because my mom had this spell, I already knew all the drew backs of it. So, when I got to the school, I took out the extra food I packed inside and ate voraciously, before starting to practice. But that’s not why I hadn’t gotten here so early. No, I wanted to go to the library and practice. All the casters of this world seemed to have a glaring weakness, they had to chant. Having my face blocked, and unable to get away, had made that glaringly clear. Because it was so obvious, I figured somebody must have solved it. And indeed, there were books and classes that taught people how to sub-vocalize a spell’s chant. It was just that the cost of both options was in the thousands. A price I couldn’t afford.

In the early hours, I practiced chanting the new spells. For the next hour and a half, as the sun slowly broke the horizon, I fought against imaginary monsters. I dodged and rolled around while continuously chanting. It was to help me get use to chanting while dodging. Plus, I already knew spells that required targets like ‘Heat’s Comfort’ or ones that needed something specific like Pulled to the Depths, simply failed. But even if they didn’t manifest, I could familiarize myself with their chants. Especially the ones I got from the monsters. The words weren’t in a language I knew and the only reason I could cast them was because the knowledge was forced into my head which included how to say the words.

Once the school opened, I showered and rushed to the library hoping to find a treasure. It was just that I was doomed to fail. The school only had one book on the subject and a very long waiting list of people that wanted to read it. Failing that, I checked out a book called, ‘Mental Fortress: How to protect your mind’, went to homeroom, and became the center of attention. I was quickly surrounded by students that bombarded me with questions. Dozens of students shouted things like, “What happened?”, “Were you attacked?”, “Did you kill anybody?”, …, “Were you taken”, “Was that why you weren’t at school yesterday?” The last two were from girls that were hiding behind some of the taller boys and said in a spiteful tone.

Knowing I would be able to have any peace and quiet, I started telling a story about that night. II say story because it was a variation where I saw everything at a distance. That’s right, I was nowhere near the mutated beasts and just a spectator. It was vague and the only details I used statements like, “I hide by the…”, “I was so far away and there were so many that it looked like an ooze sliding across the ground”, and “I wasn’t the only one to have off, all the students that came back did” were ones I hoped couldn’t be verified. By the time I finished, the substitute had walked in, and I went to sit down.

Because most of the teachers still weren’t in school, the classes were more relaxed and wrote “self-study” on the white-boards or simply read the chapter out loud. Amazingly, it was the gym class substitute that switched things up and had us using magic to play badminton. He fiddled with the protection settings as he told us that we were only allowed to use any non-attack spell to propel the birdie over the net. For most students, that isn’t a problem. I say most because for once I wasn’t the only one that had an issue. The Bio-casters’ spells mainly focus on improving their bodies and none of the beginner spells would work, unlike everybody else. Still, they were mostly Juniors, and they had a variety of spells, so I got to see a couple of girls sprouting wings, a boy that grew a frog’s throat that he used like a bellow, and another whose hair grew a little longer and started moving on its own. Only one student didn’t have anything he could use and sat in the bleachers to watch.

The others could use spells like 'Heat Wave', 'Cooling Breeze', and 'Watery Finch' to bat the plastic birdie around. I had to think and maybe because it was one of my newer spells, but the 'Tentacle' spell was the first one that came to mind. I could just grow an appendage and use it like the hair guy. But the attack was too recent, and with the abductions and what happened to those taken known, I thought people would think too much if I cast it. In the end, I picked ‘Black Chains’. The manacles could be used like paddles and the chain links were like smoke. So as long as I was careful, they could pass through people. It wasn’t as easily as it sounded because I had to manipulate two chains around the crazy battlefield of giggling students. Kids crowded onto the court that normally only held four people and because of that I had to utilizing them more flexibly.

It was one of the few times that I forgot all my troubles and just had fun.