Chp.41: First lesson

The next day, Maldor walked to the class she was supposed to teach, followed by Kotaru. "How do you think I should behave to make a good impression?"

Kotaru sighed. She knew Maldor would have no problem teaching: during the last nine months, she had prepared hard by studying magic, first with the help of the adventurers, and then with the use of several books their siblings had bought for her. Since dragons had photographic memories, it had been easy for Maldor to study them. She didn't possess an enormous knowledge, of course, but she had clear all the concepts to teach basic magic and also a good part of the more advanced one. Her problem, sadly, was her shyness, even though Kotaru had tried to help her with that flaw. The day before had gone well, and Maldor had managed to behave almost flawlessly with the vice principal with whom she had interviewed, but now it seemed that her confidence had been undermined again. "Just be natural. Yes, I mean, be yourself. You can do it"

"I'm not sure. What if I screw up?" Maldor exclaimed starting to sweat (or rather she would have sweated if she had had a body that still had functioning sweat glands). "What if I fall silent with tension? What if..."

"With 'what if' we can't get anything done. Just believe in yourself. If it helps, close your avatar's eyes and imagine you're talking to yourself. Anyway, no one will notice thanks to the illusion" Kotaru said. "And if you need some encouragement, I'll be sitting next to the desk"

Maldor nodded and kept walking, this time with a slightly more determined step. That was exactly why she had brought Kotaru with her: besides the fact that it would be easier to maintain a connection with others, she would offer moral support to her.

When they reached the classroom door, they found a guy waiting for them. He was a man of about forty and wore a teacher's robe. By human standards he would have been considered average: not too tall, not too short, not too muscular, and not too puny. He was just a normal person, with nice brown hair and not even a hint of a beard. "Hello, Miss Hakister" he greeted her. "My name is Isaac Hugoson. I have been instructed by the vice principal to observe your class"

Maldor nodded. She knew someone would come and evaluate her, since she was still in probation. "It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mr. Hugoson. Please call me Maldor" she said, as she was really beginning to tire of being called 'Miss Hakister'. She was beginning to regret having chosen that surname; since she didn't have much imagination with names, she had created it by putting the words 'Haku' and 'sister' together; just like her father's name that, since she didn't know the real one, it was just a mispronunciation of the word 'nameless'.

"In that case, you can call me Isaac" the man said with a smile. "Anyway, please don't feel pressured by my presence. Act as if I'm not there. I assure you that I will never disturb you"

"You're too kind" Maldor replied, even though Isaac's words were for some reason putting even more pressure on her. "Well, then let's go in. I want to see the classroom before the students arrive"

"Of course, I understand. Please come in" Isaac said, opening the door for her like a true gentleman.

Maldor entered the classroom, followed by Kotaru and Isaac. The room turned out to be very large: he hadn't imagined it so spacious. It was about ten meters wide and at least twenty long, and one of the walls was covered with large windows that allowed sunlight to illuminate the entire classroom. The interesting thing, however, was that the floor of the room was not horizontal: it was in the corner of the teacher's desk, but as soon as one reached the desks and chairs where the students would sit, it inclined slightly. This meant that each row of desks was slightly raised above the previous one, thus allowing everyone to see the teacher. There were seven rows of benches and each of them had a total of at least twenty chairs, consequently in total the hall could have seated about one hundred and forty people; the desks were arranged in aligned rows, but were cut in the middle by a ladder that students could use to reach their seats. Each desk was spacious enough, so students could move freely enough and not bump into each other while taking notes. As already mentioned, all the desks and chairs faced the teacher's desk; it was located near the entrance door of the courtroom and appeared to be extremely valuable, since it was made of a meticulously carved dark wood. The teacher's chair was a blue armchair with the academy emblem embroidered on it. In addition to the desk, in the teacher's corner there was also a cauldron, various magical items and, of course, a large blackboard.

"Wow... that's really not bad" Kotaru murmured as she looked at it. "What do you say, sis-Maldor?" she asked, correcting herself at the last moment.

Maldor was silent for a moment, then she said: "Well... it looks very welcoming indeed"

"I'm glad you like it" Isaac said as he sat down at one of the desks. "I don't want to disturb your work further, so I'm already taking my seat. If you need me, feel free to ask when you want"

Maldor nodded. "Thank you. I hope there will be no need" she said, then she started confabulating with Kotaru about how to settle down properly in the classroom.

After about half an hour, the students started arriving. Since the class Maldor was to manage was first year, all of them were just twelve years old. There were a few who were a little older, who were probably repeating past years or enrolled late, but most were that age anyway. Slowly, the classroom desks filled up with young boys and girls who looked very inquisitively at their new teacher, wondering what kind of teacher she would be. Maldor felt a little uneasy with all those eyes on her. "Kotaru, I feel under pressure. There are too many people!" she whispered into her sister's ears.

"Be calm. Take a deep breath, and relax" Kotaru replied. "You have prepared yourself to teach in this place. You can do it"

Maldor followed her sister's advice and inspired thoroughly. She almost envied Kotaru: she wished she was the one who dressed up as a maid, and her sister the teacher. But unfortunately Maldor had turned out to be the best at understanding certain magical phenomena, as she had already demonstrated by being able to figure out how to make the avatars work. Consequently, the burden of that task had fallen to her. She knew it was necessary, so she couldn't back down: the stakes, their beloved brother, were too high.

When it was time to start class, Maldor closed the classroom door and struck a pose in front of the teacher's desk. Kotaru was looking at her with a smile and an encouraging look. She took a deep breath and then spoke, and her voice was heard down to the back row of pews thanks to the perfect acoustics of the room. "Hello, my dear students. I am Maldor Hakister, and from today I will be your new teacher. My assistant will now give you the lesson timetables". As soon as she said that, Kotaru took a stack of papers and started distributing them among the desks. "Over the next days, I will expect absolute punctuality from all of you, both in showing you to the lessons and in completing the assignments that I will give you. You must know that I won't tolerate delays or cheating on your part. I expect you to be disciplined and honest, and that you are committed. Since you have come to this academy, you all surely want to learn magic, but you must know immediately that magic is first and foremost perseverance, diligence, and a lot, a lot of effort. If you aren't willing to work hard, then it is better for you that you give up now. But if instead you are willing to put all of yourselves into the study of magic, then I can promise you that I will do my best to help you understand how it works and all its secrets"

Maldor was taut as a violin string, and she watched the students trying to understand their reactions. Luckily, they sounded pretty good for now: the teens were listening to her and seemed quite interested judging by their expressions. Kotaru was also signaling that she was doing well, and Isaac too not only looked satisfied, but he seemed to want to encourage her with a smile. This gave her a little more confidence. "Good, now let's start with the basics. The first question we have to ask ourselves is: what is magic?" she continued. "Well, if we look at magic from a superficial point of view, based only on its effects, we might think that magic isn't really a unified science, but several very different sciences under the same name. We have for example the making of potions, the enchant items, necromancy, conjuration... there are so many it would take too long to list them all, and all of them seem to have no connection to each other. But if instead we go to research the cause of all these magics, we realize that they are actually very tightly connected to each other. This is because, if we research their main source, we can find that it is the same for all: mana. All magic in the world comes from mana, no matter how you use it. And the mana is the same for all: there aren't different types of mana, but only one, which, depending on how it is manipulated, produces different types of magic. Consequently, the effects of magic are very different from each other, but their cause is always the same, and therefore it is appropriate to consider magic a unified science"

The students began taking notes, and judging from what they wrote, they didn't seem to want to forget a single syllable. Maldor was a little surprised: was she really doing such a good job? "In the next few lessons I'll teach you how to manipulate mana, but for today we'll focus on defining the theoretical part. As I just said, there is only one mana, and its effects depend on the user. There are multiple categories in which we could divide magic, but in general all of them can be grouped into two macro-categories: the elemental magic and the divine magic. This classification was invented by Tharos Contine, a scholar elf of the now vanished Guthram Empire, in the year 3670 of the Fourth Age. According to this classification, all magic that isn't bestowed by the gods is based on the manipulation of mana to create spells (which can be spells, potions, sorceries, curses, etc.) based on the four elements, namely air, water, earth and fire. Consequently, all non-divine magic can be traced back to the use of these four elements or to the union of them. To give a more precise explanation, Contine devised the 'flower of the elements', also known to posterity as the 'rose of Contine' or the 'bud of magic'. Pay attention..."

Maldor took one of the chalks and began drawing symbols on the blackboard. Soon a wave, a flame, a rock and a gust of wind appeared and were connected in a perfect circle. "What you are seeing is what Contine calls the 'pistil of elemental magic.' Just as the pistil is the central part of the flower, the one from which the sepals and petals unfurl, these four elements are the central part of elemental magic. Even by manipulating individually these elements we can obtain an infinity of magic. For example, by manipulating the air element we can create strong shock waves, or we can reflect light to increase our vision. The mages that can only manipulate these elements are known as 'low-rank mages'. But then, we can also combine these elements". Maldor began to connect the various elements, until they formed four petal-like structures around the initial circle. "These are what Contine calls the 'sepals of elemental magic'. The sepals, in case you don't know, are tiny petals that sit just outside the pistil of the flower. In this case, the sepals are created by joining two elements, for example, water with fire or fire with air. There are four of them; in fact, each element cannot mix with all the other three, but only with two. This is due to something Contine defines as 'affinity', the ability of an element to mix with the others; not in the sense that fire must mix with water, but that the processes for turning mana into fire magic and water magic are very similar to each other, and therefore it is easy to unify them without spending an excessive amount of mana. For example, fire can be mixed with air and water, but not with earth. For this reason the arrangement of the elements in the central pistil isn't random, but each element is placed next to those with which it can be mixed, so be sure to memorize it. The mages who manage to mix two elements together they are called 'mid-rank mages'. And at this point, we arrive at the petals of the flower". Maldor connected three elements together four times, to form four huge triangular structures. "These are what Contine calls the 'elemental magic petals'. They are the result of the fusion of three elements, for example water, air and fire. The amount of mana used for these spells is so great that it even surpasses the affinity of the various elements for each other. The mages who are able to use these spells are called 'high-rank mages' and they represent the pinnacle of elemental magic. Can we go even further, unifying all four elements? Actually, we have no idea. Logic tells us that it is possible, but no one has ever succeeded so far"

The students were taking notes faster and faster, and some of their eyes were twinkling. It almost seemed as if they were discovering the very meaning of life. Maldor wondered if this was normal. "Now, having defined elemental magic, let's talk about its counterpart, divine magic. It is not an invention of mortals, but a gift given by the gods. Consequently, those who can use it in its entirety are the legendary levels at their service; mere mortals like us can learn to use it thanks to the teachings of these legendary levels, but the magic we can use is only a small sparkle of true divine magic, and moreover most spells are precluded from us since they require divine power. However, we can still use some of it. Just like elemental magic, divine magic also falls into four categories: light magic, dark magic, life magic, and death magic. However, unlike elemental magic, these spells cannot cross each other. Consequently, what they form is not a flower, but a ring, the so-called 'divine ring'. This makes it very difficult to classify mages who use divine magic: some argue that it would be appropriate to include them in the category of low-rank mages, since they still use only one type of magic, but according to others divine magic should be considered differently than elemental magic and therefore should be classified as high-rank mages. Unfortunately, the decision is rather arbitrary. To avoid many problems, in our realm it has been chosen that all mages who graduate from this academy must know at least some elemental magic and are evaluated according to it even if they know divine magic; in the case of mages from other countries who know only divine magic, however, they are classified simply as low-rank mages. Are there any questions?"

Several hands went up in near unison as he asked that question. Maldor patiently answered all of the students' questions for the next twenty minutes, then the class hour ended and he then announced its end. The students looked a little annoyed, but they couldn't really ask her to stop time. Maldor also reminded them that that day had only been a trial lesson, and that in the following days the lessons would last much longer and would be very diversified, as explained in the lesson timetables that Kotaru had distributed to them. This seemed to please the students, who left the classroom very satisfied.

When the classroom finally emptied, Maldor finally breathed a sigh of relief. Kotaru ran up to her and almost hugged her. "Si-Maldor! You were amazing! I knew you'd do a great job!"

"Uh... really? Was it really that good?" Maldor asked blushing.

"Yes" Isaac said as he approached. "I've never seen anyone explain complicated concepts so thoroughly, or hold students' attention so much. You have a talent for teaching"

"Thank you, I don't deserve so many compliments" Maldor said with a chuckle. "I hope I will keep this line in the next lessons..."

"I'm sure of it. With your ability, you have nothing to fear" Isaac said, then he asked: "Do you have any plans for lunch?"

"No, neither of us have them" Maldor answered.

Isaac smiled. "So, would you like to come with me to lunch? I think it is my duty to show the dishes of this academy to a new colleague"

Without being noticed Maldor and Kotaru looked at each other. In both eyes was the same thought: was it a good idea to bond with the human? From their point of view, avoiding contact as much as possible decreased the possibility of being discovered. However, they remembered Lisah and Martha's suggestion. In the end, Maldor nodded vigorously. "Of course. I'd love to"