I chuckled, along with a few other students. Some stared in awe, others frowned.
This approach was refreshing. Usually when magic was to be used in unstructured ways, boundaries to be pushed, brand-new spells constructed, it brought wariness and restrictionsalong with it, the need to enforce constraints and a very serious outlook.
But in my opinion, that could stifle creativity. And in a world that often required out-of-the-box thinking, that could most definitely be a detriment. I was very fortunate that, growing up, I’d had the perfect balance of those attitudes through being taught by Mom, Dad, and Father.
And, honestly, with my anxiety about undertaking this course now with my power issues on my necromantic side, the way this professor seemed to be approaching things was a weight off.
With a snap of his fingers, he halted the flipping pages of his grimoire at about three-quarters of the way through. “Ah, yes, this was when it started getting good, to the interesting stuff for me. I’m going to show you this spell crafted by yours truly. We’ll analyze the complex spellwork,andthen I will perform it. As a demonstration of what all of this beginning today is leading you toward.Notwhere you’ll begin from by any means. Of course, in demonstrating this, I will also inject errors into the spellwork to show you why you must not skip ahead without a sound knowledge base.”
“What’s the spell?” one of the Kai Hunter fanboys asked.
“Take a guess,” the professor encouraged. “At least determine the facet of spellwork that this encompasses.”
“An alteration to teleportation paths?” the same guy who’d asked the question posited.
“Nope.”
I stared at the symbols and the many lines of incantations scrawled all over the place, much of it crossed out and then written over with lots of annotations—typical for a grimoire.
“Something pertaining to elemental nature,” the Shadowmancer queried.
“Getting closer.”
“Rewriting elemental matrixes?” River suggested.
“Very warm now.”
“Temporarily rewriting the function of magical objects that have roots in elemental aspects,” I called out. I squinted at a particular passage. “One even being the stake that can kill an Ancient… another… iron against Dark Fae?”
Professor Price swung his head toward me, a glint in his eye.
Then he clapped his hands. “Precisely.”
River sat forward a little. “You dated this.”
“All spells recorded inside a grimoire should be dated. It roots them in context as the years—or centuries in my case—go on by.”
River continued, “And the date of this… you developed this spell during the Hybrid Liberation War. You were trying to protect those fighting againstPuritas.”
The professor caught my eye.
Fuck.The iron… he’d been trying to find a way to protect my mom. Given her vital role in what had happened back then. And maybe even Thryne, formerly her resistance organization that had become the Dark Fae contingent eventually fighting against those enemy Dark Fae who’d taken to mind-meddling and aligning withPuritas—and my psychotic grandfather, Morien Morgrave.
And the spell for the stake… perhaps to protect The Shadowed run by my grandpa, Remnant. His real name was Rhodric Vallant, but that was known to very few outside my immediate family. There’d been one stake out there at the time—or so we’d believed. But this spell Price had been developing suggested that hadn’t actually been the case. I mean, in the last twenty years, there had been more of them emerging, reports coming in about it.
“That’s fucking ace,” the other Kai Hunter fanboy exclaimed.
“Eloquently put, Alex,” Professor Price returned, making half of us laugh, because it clearly wasn’t.
He knew the guy’s name. Already.
He was certainly astute—and prepared.
He smiled at me discreetly, obviously recognizing who I was as well and how personal that spell was to me.
Then he moved on and continued with the lesson, easing onto the edge of his desk. “This class consists of magic-wielders inclined toward precision, logic, and ethical experimentation.” He grinned. “That’s the official party line I’m urged to utter. But there’s clearly more. You all possess creative, out-of-the-box thinking and both the need and wherewithal to express that.” He rubbed his hands together. “And that, my talented pupils, is why we are truly here.”
Perfect—as Mom would state elatedly.
