New day!

The morning sunlight shone through the window glass. The alarm clock beside Nessia beeped like a police car siren as Nessia opened her eyes to a bright, sunny morning.

It was the second day of school in Aslena Academy.

''It's kind of crazy that Aslena Baston chose me to be connected to her and I went to an academy that was named after her name,'' Nessia thought while having her morning bath.

She turned off the tap, resting in a bath tub filled with water. She looked at the mirror at the opposite side of the bathroom and noticed there was something she had never seen before on her face.

There were small yellow spots on her right cheek and it looked like freckles. Nessia got out of the bath tub, wrapping her body with a towel, and went to look more closely at the mirror. ''It might just be the light illusion. Don't freak out, Nessia... wash it away and it'll be fine...'' Nessia talked to herself to calm herself down. She tried to wipe it away but it still stayed on her cheek.

She drained the water in the bath tub and changed into the academy uniform that was provided in the closet.

''Oh my... I wasted so much time looking at the mirror and now I don't have time to walk from here all the way to the hall!'' Nessia thought and did her hair as fast as she could.

She quickly opened her dorm's front door, locked it, and ran to the hall.

* * *

''Class, we'll be doing something different today. We will be studying magical creatures,'' Professor Lora spoke.

Some students in the class cheered. ''As you may know, winged creatures are very common. Look, you can see some flying rabbits out of the window. They live in the academy garden,'' the teacher added.

The class stood up to look outside the window. ''Awe, look! They're so cute!'' ''Wow, there's different types of rabbits outside!'' ''I can't see!'' The classroom became an animal zoo in an instant. That would always happen when the class gets too excited.

  There were angry banging on the teacher's desk and everybody went back to their seats. Nessia dreamt about being able to fly with pegasus wings, or even better, angel wings!

  ''For us, having wings or being able to fly would be almost impossible unless you go through hard trainings. If you try to train yourself to fly, you would fall from a great height and injure yourself. So, trying to learn to fly is forbidden for everybody's safety,'' Professor Lora explained.

  The teacher continued to talk about magical animals until noon. It was a long, boring lecture.

  Soon, it was lunch time. ''When we come back to class, we'll be focusing on spell language again, and I'll inform you on what's happening later this semester,'' she spoke as the class tidied their table and went for lunch.

  On the way to the cafeteria, Nessia spotted a girl crying infront of a purple-haired girl that was yelling at her.

  Nessia couldn't stand the sight of such things. She walked towards the girls and interupted, ''What are you doing? You know that's just rude!''

  There was a moment of silence and the mean girl laughed, her crystal emitting a dark and evil aura. Was that a dark crystal?

  Nessia backed up a little. She felt the girl's crystal trying to mind control her, or even corrupt her!

  Suddenly, Nessia's crystal shone brightly like the afternoon sun and fought the dark aura. Nessia and the girl gasped at the same time as the crying girl ran away.

  ''Ugh! You got lucky that girl escaped. I'll get you next time,'' the girl stomped away in anger.

  Nessia was relieved the victim knew what to do when she was distracting the purple-haired girl.

  She went to the cafeteria and sat down. A teacher carried the meal to Nessia and Nessia examined the food.

  The meal had sushi rolls, soy sauce, peach juice and cabbage leaves. ''No mushrooms today,'' Nessia sighed in disappointment.

  She finished her meal and everybody in the cafeteria went back to class.

  ''Here is what will happen during the semester. There will be exams on using the Levitation Spell correctly, and perfectly. So, make sure to practise the spell in your dorm room. In this exam, you will be using the spell on different objects, each object has a different weight. The more weight of an object you can levitate, the more points you'll score. Next, is the accuracy test. You will need to levitate a feather through obstacles that will burn your feather. Overall, there are 2 parts in this exam. It will happen around late April,'' Professor Lora explained.

  Nessia was confident and she told herself that she would practise when she gets back to her dorm room everyday for 1 hour. It meant she needed to sacriface some of her sleep time to practise for the exam.

''Now, we'll focus more on spell language, because there will also be exams on each subject. Tomorrow, we'll start learning on potions,'' Professor Lora continued.

''Today, we'll learn how to chant the Shield Spell,'' the teacher said. ''Spells that create shields will protect you from any attack, depending on your strength. That is why we need to exercise,'' she added.

''Speaking of exercising, Nessia, you forgot to meet me yesterday at the field. I'll forgive you, but we'll be meeting there every day so you can excel your exams,'' Professor Lora sighed. ''Oops,'' Nessia thought. She stood up and apologised. ''It's okay, I've already forgiven you. Sit down, we have to get started now,'' Professor Lora smiled and opened the spell-book.

She showed the page to the class. They needed to chat out 4 symbols to cast the spell.

The first symbol is a gold bar...

The second symbol is a diamond...

The third symbol is a star...

And the last symbol is a spiral, the same symbol needed to cast the Levitation spell.

Overall, the Shield Spell was harder to pronounce than the Levitation Spell.

''Here's how you chant the spell,'' the professor said and chanted it. A blue, translucent shield appeared. ''And there you go! Now you'll try.''