9 Miserable Comedy - 9

[Observer]

Blanche snapped her fingers, and the glass of milk refilled. It was a brief jolt of surprise for Seth, but his reaction was somewhat muted. Noticing this, the headmistress indicated the cup and said, "I assume from that that you've come to a conclusion?"

Seth nodded. "Magic, huh?" he said in a muted voice.

"You don't seem surprised to learn that your world's being turned upside down," she said with a hint of suspicion.

"Well, nah, not really, honestly," he protested weakly. When she raised an incredulous eyeball, he continued with more conviction, "I mean, it's the kind of thing that you always kind of... keep in the back of your mind, y'know, once you've read enough fantasy. Like, maybe there's magic in the real-"

He stopped, cut off by Grant starting to shake with laughter, which he eventually let out in a sound best described as "PUAHAHAHAHAHA". Continuing to laugh, and taking some deep breaths in between fits of mirth, Grant put one arm on the armrest to stabilize himself.

"See, see, this is why I agreed. This guy thinks the world works like Harry Potter! Hey, did you Wingardium Leviosa your brain away?" he gasped out, before going back to laughing.

Ignoring him, the headmistress turned back to Seth. "Well, he is correct that the system through which this works likely does not work in the way you expect. However, you are spot on in that we do call it magic, so as to make the concept of using energy to enact phenomena easy to understand for the layman," she told him.

Standing slowly, she raised her hand and pointed at his cup of milk again, concentrating. A thin white line shot from her outstretched finger, hissing towards his drink. It made a noise that sounded like "tink" as it hit the side of the glass, frost forming where it had touched. "Drink," she commanded, and Seth hastily wrapped his hand around it. Wincing slightly from the cold, he brought it to his lips and drank the now chilled milk appreciatively.

"Guessing that was my demonstration," he ventured, glancing cautiously at her. She shook her head in reply.

"Not quite. From here, I feel like I should give the lecture I had intended to give you if you had arrived on time," she said. She waved her right hand again, and this time a trail of energy formed beyond her index finger, trailing like twine tied around it. Closing her eyes and concentrating for a second, the twine formed a circle with symbols around the border. She opened her eyes again, and Seth jumped backwards.

Headmistress Blanche's eyes were glowing, the pupils sparking and the sclera shining like a lighthouse. The circle began to spin, and the floor began to shake as if there was an earthquake occurring around him. Just as he began to feel sick, the shaking stopped.

"Sorry, force of habit," she said quietly. Clearing her throat, she raised her hand again, and the end of her index glowed once more. Tracing some symbols in the air quickly, she sat back down.

"Instead of imagining just conjuring magic from thin air or using some pool of magic, I want you to see things in terms of energy," she began. As she said this, a glowing circle appeared in midair, with a shining, shaking orb in the center. "Imagine this is an object, any object you want," she went on, tracing the path of the circle in the air, which was now flickering into the outline of a basic chair, bottle, and leaf. "This orb within it is the energy it holds, and it's what keeps this thing together. This might not work very well with your understanding of energy, but our understanding of energy from a magic-based perspective is that it is within everything around us, but very difficult to extract."

A bit of what looked like sparkling dust sprinkled from her finger, as she said, "Essentially, the principle of magic is using what can be extracted, which is a surprisingly large amount. All things around us have varied levels of non-tied energy, colloquially known as mana, which can be extracted relatively easily, and then dedicated to magical channeling."

Concentrating slightly, the headmistress sent a spout of fire out of her hand. "However, extracting mana is only relatively easier because it is improbably difficult, as opposed to the impossibly difficult task of extracting true inherent energy properly," she continued. "Thus, in practical terms, mana is that which flows within us, which is much easier to control." She raised one hand, and another figure, this time of a little human with its outline moving like a conveyor belt along it appeared.

"Extracting mana from things around you can be tricky business, which is why the mana that you don't need to extract is the easiest to use, a concept known as the mana pool," she remarked. "However, it's more accurate to call it the mana lazy river, a constant flow throughout your body that is replicated amongst all other things, which is part of what makes it so difficult. Mana is shifting within you in ways that are difficult for anything but you to grasp, and it's what keeps you alive, but also very, very dangerous. In that way, it's more like a lazy river whose path is shifting within a set area constantly, and blasting at speeds of thousands of miles per hour."

The little outline of a person began to move faster and faster, until it had become a blurring circle that vanished. Ignoring this, she said, "Using magic is dangerous. It's like trying to drink from that river, like a dog, putting your mouth to the stream to get a bit of water from the torrent. It's why you need to be trained for it, because trying to use more magic than you can handle is suicide."

Here, various other, similar gingerbread man shaped figures were traced into the air only to be erased from it, and the headmistress went on, "Some people of course can contain more mana than usual, while some have more ability to control and shape it than usual. However, it takes an overlap of both to make a genius magician. For the rest of us, there's sponsors."

"Sponsors?" Seth asked, images of adverts he'd seen over the years flashing through his head.

"Yes, sponsors," she replied. "Magically powerful beings that lend you their mana and control, so that you don't break. Almost mandatory for the standard magician."

Standing once more, she walked over to the wall opposite the door, behind Seth. "Learning magic and getting a hand for control through self-study and using your own mana flow exclusively is possible. But it can take decades, even centuries, and you'd have to keep yourself alive by using extremely fragile and dangerous life-lengthening means, reversing aging with the chance of combusting spontaneously. That's why it's easier to rely on the angels or demons that present themselves, to make yourself stronger using their power. It helps that they're in a bit of a cold war, and there's a hell of a lot of them."

Scanning her face for the hint of a smile, which would indicate that the pun had been intentional, Seth peered intently into her eyes. He found nothing.

"We can discuss the details on sponsors later. For now, all you need to know is how magic works, and why that makes it incredibly dangerous. Understood?" she said snappily.

"Yes, ma'am," he responded.

"Oh, and try not to get too sunburned outside. Aloe Vera is your best bet if you do, but suntan lotion is easier to apply. Stings less," she added.

"Sunburned? I can just stay in the shade, right?" he said, gesturing towards the window blinds.

She started. "Ah, my bad. Where are my manners?"

She clapped her hands, and the windows flew open, revealing the trees outside. But immediately after glancing down towards them, Seth's eyes flew to what was behind them.

A vast beach stretched out next to them, idyllic, blue waves lapping against glowing white sand. There were sparse blankets there as well, parasols, typical beach fare. Hastily working the window latch open, he stuck his head out of the fifth floor with reckless abandon, looking at something that was definitely not next to Hawrtfull, Colorado.

The tall brown dorms, tree-lined road, and glass school building were all the same. But now, the sky was a blue he had never seen before, the sea stretched out to his left endlessly as if this was the only land amongst a field of water, and a sprawling, shining, silver city that looked as though it had been plucked out of a utopia centuries more advanced than anything he'd ever seen was on his right.

His mouth agape, Seth processed the isle of paradise he was now on carefully, stunned. Vaguely, he heard the Headmistress talking behind him, and tuned back into reality slowly.

"...ale teleportation spell, but in order to account for your arrival, we brought you here early in the morning. We did worry that there may have been some issues with the teleportation, but it appears not," she was saying.

She drained the rest of a steaming, half-empty cup of coffee that had appeared in her hand some time during Seth's gawking, straightened her gray hair, and composed herself. Framed by the light of the door through which the other three had unobtrusively left, she was a striking figure.

"Now then, any questions?" she asked.

He shook his head, silent.

"Good! Now then, off to lunch hour," she told him. As he slowly plodded out the door, still trying to understand what he'd seen, she called his name in a commanding voice.

"Welcome to Ilus," she said, smiling slightly.

The door slammed closed, and Seth realized that he was still wearing his backpack, which now seemed fatter than before, and that he had no idea where to go from here.

Sighing quietly, he unzipped his bag, glanced at a new laptop and folder of papers inside, and began searching for a map.