“I cannot allow you to interfere in this fight.”
“Luckily, it seems like the guardians are unaware of my presence.”
“They are not with you.”
“Now, I will send you into the void between worlds, to never be seen again. I knew you were not dead.”
(CEL)
Waking up suddenly and falling out of my bed was not pleasant per se, but at least it now hurt far less than it would have a year ago.
However, what surprised me was who had thrown me out of my bed. Because on my bed I could spot an unconscious Solar, slowly burning through the bed below her. I quickly scanned her, realizing that some sort of magic was wreaking havoc on her.
Considering that she was an alicorn, I was a bit worried about her.
Then, her eyes opened, dull orange flames emerging from them. What I heard was not her voice, but Nightmare’s voice instead.
“C-Celestia? Our Celestia? Oh, good. Quick, I think we got hit with necrotic energy, and enough of it to nearly kill Flare!”
Realizing what this meant, I summoned up my power, casting cleansing after cleansing spell, using the support of Daybreaker who just woke up, and Nightmare who was doing her best to hold this truly black magic back.
The magic was of incredible strength, but eventually, I managed to flush it out of her body, using up a good chunk of my magic in the process. Satisfied, I fell asleep immediately, incredibly exhausted from what just happened.
Luckily, I woke up before Lina came in to wake me up, which she usually did if I slept in late.
After Daybreaker’s arrival, I made sure to move into a new, big room in the dorm, since I suspected something like this might happen.
However, there were some things we now had to do.
First, I woke up Daybreaker, and she yawned, used two spells to make her decent, then she teleported away. She knew what this meant – we would leave this world after the end of the school year, being reunited.
While we were sleeping, Nightmare took the time to materialize herself. It seemed like the ring was providing her with a physical body. I was curious where or how she might have lost her physical body, but I was not planning to ask. I’d know eventually, anyway.
I woke up Flare and noticed that the ring atop her head was, while still working, only casting an illusion over her. A different rune was lit up with arcane light on it, and I recognized the rune – protection.
Something, probably the havoc the magic had caused made it unsafe to use portals, teleportation, and similar spells on her. I estimated about a week until they would work normally again, but I could be wrong.
After explaining to them my position here on the school, they reacted like Daybreaker, that is with chuckles and the question if I owned the school. The (current) answer still was no.
From there on, I taught them everything I knew in my free time, that was until it was time for me to teach. Since there was only about a month of school left before the summer break, this meant I would only teach this class only four more times, and I gave them just about everything I found out about the spells of this world.
“Listen up, you all!” I exclaimed, walking into the room.
“This is the fourth-last lesson of the year you’ll receive from me this year, and probably the fourth-last lesson at all, ‘cuz I’m leaving. I taught you most if not all the essentials about spells in this world, and I now want you to prove that I haven’t wasted my time.”
“I want you all to construct three spells.”
“However, this time, I’ll give you something special. If you want to test your spell yourself, I will give you temporary material for tier three spells, but if you’d like to do your work theoretical, you can design and hand me up to tier five spells. One spell has to work as an attack spell, one has to work as a defensive spell, and one has to simply be something useful.”
“Excuse me?”
I turned to Leo.
“Yeah?”
“What do you mean with ‘temporary’ material?”
“It’ll vanish if someone else but you touch it or if the spells on it get activated with malicious content. Those materials are manifested life energy. Also, they vanish when they leave academy grounds, or if I leave academy grounds. Therefore, you will be unable to sell them despite being worth incredibly much, nor will you be able to attack anyone with the spells on it.”
“Uh, then how are we supposed to show attack spells?”
“As I said, you cannot use them with the intent to harm. Using them against dummies or my sister is perfectly fine.”
“HEY!”
Some chuckled, and after I got their notice if they wanted to do it theoretical or practical, I handed out material. Over the next one and a half hours, I answered questions, corrected rarely made mistakes because the runes never got used with each other, handed out some new quill-foci because the old got broken, and explained to those interested the quirks of four- and five-tiered spells.
From tier three upwards it becomes complicated quite quickly. They become far more fragile from that point on. For example, tier four spells usually simply use a tier five stabilizer, if simply for the fact that there are three different tier four stabilizers seemingly doing the same thing, but actually disabling your spell completely if used wrongly. It was by no means energy-efficient, but even I haven’t found a better way to decide which stabilizer to use than intuition, so I actually forbade tier four stabilizers.
“Miss Faust?”
“Yeah?”
“Combining Lightning and Fire seems possible,” someone commented, and I walked over, interested.
It was indeed possible, but not that easy. Combining elements usually resulted in volatile spells, controlling them required both knowledge and experience.
“Huh. Not a bad idea, and you actually one-upped me on that one,” I commented, after explaining how not to use elements in conjunction.
“Really? How? You know almost everything!”
I laughed softly, shaking my head.
“Not exactly. But I can tell how a spell will work, usually with a quite high accuracy. That’s how I can tell how, for example, the runes you got here will interact. And I never thought about using fire and lightning in the same spell, fearing a misfire – but this is exactly what I assigned, is it not?”
“Right! You are more focused on foci than on spells!”
I nodded. I managed to teach a few people how to create weak foci and mana crystals because I could – scratch that, would – not be around forever.
After the lesson was over, I walked over to Daybreaker.
“Were you really planning on letting them use the spells on me?”
“Maybe,” I responded, chuckling.
“But I’d of course cast protection spells before they would use anything truly dangerous.”
“That’s a relief. Sorry for doubting you.”
“Let’s not comment on that. I’ll check up on the other two, ok?”
“Sure,” she responded, and we teleported away, landing in our room.
Time passed, and Nightmare and Flare told her story. I used a divination spell, catching the moment Grogar was banished, and Flare finally agreed to not (immediately) try to return to the world she came from.
After two weeks, the date for the assignment came, and I started collecting plates and papers, all holding new spells in them.
We four were all present.
“Who are you two?”
“Relatives of me and Day,” I responded, placing the scrolls and plates down.
We were outside, to test the spells and grade them. Thanks to the shield spell still straining on my magic, I could lower myself down to the average power level to cast them. Otherwise, everything would flat-out work or explode, with no compromises, or anything inbetween.
Most of the spells were quite normal, like ice spears, but some were quite creative.
For example, a shield spell that could power itself indefinitely through ambient magic. Casting it took quite some time, but if you simply cast it again... and again...
And then there were some theoretical tier-5 spells that showed great promise for the students that created them, and three that took me completely off-guard.
The less ludicrous ones were the attack spell combining fire and lightning, the shield spell from the same person combining ice and wind as well as a spell that would temporarily turn something soft – while temporarily meant in this case ‘until magic ran out’, which is in a world of magic is more or less never.
There was an explosion spell with a 94% efficiency ratio – even I managed only about 85% and took notes – and a utility spell of tier four that was able to determine both if something was sapient and sentient.
Then there were the three spells from Leo. They were shocking.
The first one – a tier five attack spell – used spatial runes which I only demonstrated once! And there was no documentation on them published yet. It worked by turning and twisting space in a weapon and using it for a piercing attack, like a spear.
Then there was a shield spell, tier five as well – designed to defend against his attack spell.
And lastly, a stabilizer spell of tier five. You could cast damn near any ‘normal’ over that thing and needed to concentrate to even mess up a little! Like sparks or more mana use than necessary!
“…full marks,” I commented, my eye twitching.
I then called over the other three, gave each of them one of the spells, handed Day my journal about spell creation and told them to get to work.
I would not need to search for a rip in space. I would just open it myself. Redesigning the attack spell sounded like a plan.
“You’re leaving?” Lisa asked, a good deal of my students and the teachers behind her. Granted, the tier twelve spell I set up was not that hard to overlook.
I smiled.
“I told you all I would have to, but there is one thing you may be surprised about,” I retorted, cracking my fingers. After transferring the load of the shield spell onto in the last year mined crystals instead of monster cores, my hair had returned to its former luster, and the illusion spell on the ring changed, preventing my real hair from showing, but still allowing the vibrant colors to become visible again.
“We learned a lot here, from the wyverns, orcs, and humans. From the monsters, from the students, from the teachers, from all of you.”
“And for that, we are all grateful,” Day added, smiling.
Spending time with me had helped her with her anger issues massively.
Therefore – that smile was genuine.
“Don’t worry, we’ll surely visit again!” I exclaimed, getting a chuckle in response.
“Knowing you, that is a promise you will keep!” Leo shouted at me, causing a low chuckle to run though the other students.
I grinned.
“Yep. See you all!” I exclaimed, activating the shield spell to protect them from possible fallout.
Then, I powered the rest of the array. Thousands of runes lit up, most of them the same. A blast of black-white energy crashed upwards into an invisible barrier, straining it and eventually opening an unreal looking rip. It looked like something that had no business existing in only three dimensions.
Grinning, I powered the protection and stabilization runes again, as well as an anchor rune to find my way back. I would always know where this world is as long as I still had my magic.
Stepping forwards, hands crossed, we once again jumped in the vortex of the multiverse, concentrating on a world of magic – on Equestria.
Of course, it did not work.