Kevin Curry
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Chapter 1: Welcome to the Academy
🕑 Added 2022-01-13 02:48:17 +0000 UTC"Welcome, class." Casimir said as he walked into one of the many classrooms of the Academy of High Magic. He felt pretty lucky, getting to use one of the original thousand classrooms for his first solo teaching job. The still-living wood grown into the shape of furniture made him remember the wonder he felt when his Master told the story of the school's founding, and the enchantments allowing natural sun and air inside though the woven branches above while protecting against inclement weather made the place outright luxurious as a teaching environment.
Still, he had a speech to get to: "This is Introductory Curse Magic, the first practical magic course in that subject for aspiring wizards." Casimir scanned his students for those who were panicking at his statement. Twenty-two students, so two too many. Staying neutral in tone, he added as if an afterthought: "If you are an aspiring sorcerer, come back in three hours so I can welcome you again." As an assistant professor for that one, but Obidiah is sleeping off a hangover right now so he'll likely pawn the introduction speech onto Casimir anyway. "If you're only here for an academic credit, you're in the wrong room, and I don't know where Olivia has her class, so I can't help you." Both of the students he had pegged as the extras left, plus one more. Ah crap, that meant he had a lost duckling somewhere.
"Moving on, I am Professor Toomes. I'm not as hung up on formality as some professors here, so simply addressing me as 'Professor', 'Mr. Toomes' or any other vaguely respectful moniker will be fine by me." According to his Master, you can tell a lot about a student by how they address you as their teacher, so this way their options were kept open.
“Now, you may or may not have been told that the professors are looking out to pick up personal students among your yearmates, and that’s… completely correct.” The practice of acquiring personal students is a long and storied tradition in Anima; your Master is like a third parent, and their other personal students are meant to be brothers and sisters, helping each other in all things. “However, I won’t be making any decisions on the matter for my own personal students until at least the end of this course, so don’t bother asking.” Well, adjunct instructors like Casimir were not required to take on such students, but doing so was considered a good step to becoming a full time professor.
Seeing as how Casimir was only doing this as a favor to his Master, and wanted nothing more than to go back to life as an adventurer, it was a tradition he was going to stay well clear of. “Now, we’ll begin by going over expectations.” The class seemed a bit confused, but this was the kind of thing that killed adventuring teams if skipped, so he’ll do it anyway. “First, this may be a basic course on curses, but it is not a basic course on magic.”
Casimir started flexing his own mana in demonstration, with space rippling around his hands as the force-aligned mana formed into a basic mana barrier. “You’re expected to know the Evoker’s Dance mana binding ritual you learned in the basic magic courses, as all conversion lessons will be assuming you start from the force-aligned mana stored by such.” His students did seem rather calm at that part, some lingering nervousness but nothing that indicated they were incapable of that feat. Good. “If this inhibits your prowess, you’ll need to learn how to adjust the lessons you learn to accommodate, either on your own, from a mentor, or from the advanced mana theory course you may or may not be attending alongside this one.”
Suddenly, a disheveled human boy, a little short and scrawny with dirty red hair, stumbled into the classroom, gasping for breath. After a beat, he managed to wheeze out a question: “Is this the curse magic course? With Professor Toomes?” Ah, the lost duckling. Good.
“Sit down.” Casimir ordered. Smiling earnestly despite the rude welcome, the duckling sat down at the closest empty desk, right next to Illivere Oathsworn. Casimir was trying not to think too hard on the fact that he was teaching the Archmagus’s daughter in one of his classes, even if she was his fifth child.
Mentally referencing his checklist, Casimir continued his expectations speech. “You must be able to cast the five basic spells of wizardry from your previous basic magic courses.” He continued. “Detect Magic and Analyze Magic will be extensively used in this course, and Magic Barrier will not be used much at all due to doing nothing to stop curses, but the concepts inherent in all five spells will be used in forming the beginner curses you’ll be learning.” Casting anything with a target is hopeless without having mastered Move Object or a similar spell, and the principles of Flight were essential for the caster using magic to affect themselves, in particular.
Still, he needs to wrap things up. “The first few weeks are going to be all theory, so if you need some time to brush up on those basics, help each other with that.” There. “Any questions? About the class or even curses in general.”
As expected, there were several. Old instincts for flattering clients pulled Casimir’s attention to the richest students, so he picked out one of the Aviost students in his class, the bird man wearing enough necklaces of gold and pearls to imitate a vest, complementing his white feathers with red accents. Aviost loved jewelry, as a rule, so while seeing that much on one wasn’t unusual, gold and pearls were a bit pricier than you usually saw from the ones with ‘a bead for every feather’. “Professor Toomes!” He began as Casimir pointed him out.
“Name?” Casimir asked. Theoretically, he was supposed to learn all of their names by having them introduce themselves, but Casimir had already decided to discard that instruction. If he was going to be a teacher, he’ll be damned if he remembers the name of a student who does not ask questions.
“I am Ruzum Winddancer.” He said, his beak opening at his words and not flapping like a human’s would. “Why does this class only cover curses? What about blessings?”
Casimir grinned. The perfect question to start things off. “That’s because there’s no difference.” There were some whispers among the class, but Casimir let it settle in before continuing: “Curse magic, fundamentally, is binding a spell to a soul, allowing it to continue on without the active input of the caster. The most basic curses are generally just some Active Magic that you kind of…” Which metaphor would be best, here? Ah. “Tie into a knot. It’ll keep going for a little while, and how well you tie the knot determines how long it lasts until it fades away. The art of curse magic is developing ever more elaborate ways to bind that magic to the target, making it last longer, be more difficult to dispel, and the rest is just expanding your repertoire of curses.” And making your curses more efficient and increasing the speed of application, but that’s outside the scope of the class.
Casimir used the basic image spell to create the symbol of the Celestial Church. “Colloquially, blessings are curses that are meant to help the target rather than hurt, but that’s just propaganda. There’s no inherent need for a curse to be negative, and there’s no difference, magically, from a beneficial and detrimental effect beyond the normal difference there would be between two different detrimental curses.”
“I see.” Ruzum said. “Thank you for your insight, Professor Toomes!” He sat back down, his posture still tense in a way that Casimir belatedly realized he was like for the entire class. Kind of high strung, huh?
Who is next? Let’s go with one of the elves. “You. Name?” Casimir said, pointing to one of the students who still had their hands up.
“I am Faron Wavecleaver, Sir!” He replied crisply. Military brat? “If that’s all curses are, what makes it different from enchantments?” Okay, this one knows just enough to get into trouble. Trying to apply curse principles to an enchantment is usually a recipe for a very expensive explosion spell if you manage to do anything at all.
“From a functional standpoint,” Casimir emphasized. “The only difference between an enchantment and a curse is whether you’re using it on an object or a living thing.” It’s why masters of one could quickly pick up some useful stuff from the other… like enchantments that cast curses on those who open the wrong casket. “However, the actual magical techniques involved are very different. It’s like…” Hm, perhaps a martial metaphor would suit this one: “Using a stiletto versus using a bow.” He slipped his own heavily enchanted stiletto out of his sleeve and formed a force arrow with one of his few mastered Shaping spells for emphasis. “They’re both putting pointy things into the other guy, but the methods you use to accomplish this only have a few… points in common.” A few students groaned from the pun. “I’ll get into more detail in a future class.” He added rather than continuing to elaborate. The divisions between magical techniques were always rather arbitrary, so it was not a short explanation.
“Thank you, Sir!” Faron said forcefully, before sitting down and resuming his impeccable posture. Casimir scanned his students for anyone else of similar bearing, but it looked like it was just the two. Usually you see military types in the Shaping Magic courses so they can join the mage-knights, but every wizard needed at least two off-major introductory courses under their belt, so some of them had to pick things other than the classes that helped with mass spellcasting formations, Casimir supposed.
Still, the duckling had his hand up, so Casimir pointed to him. “Name?”
The boy gave an irreverent grin at being called on. “Peter Wood, Teach!” At Casimir’s nod of acknowledgement, he continued with his question: “Are we going to learn curse breaking?”
“Yes.” Casimir said. “In fact, none of you are going to be casting any curses until I’m satisfied you can break them, first.”
There were many groans at that announcement, but Ruzum stood up and admonished his classmates before Casimir could continue. “Don’t you see Professor Toomes is only looking after our safety? Magic is dangerous, if you’ve forgotten!”
Well, that’s a bit of an exaggeration. Casimir just didn’t want to be the one breaking every single curse they cast while practicing. It was one of the many tips his Master gave Casimir when preparing him for this course. “Yeah, that.” Casimir said. “Thank you, Ruzum.” When the Aviost sat back down, Casimir elaborated. “All but one of the curses you’ll be learning in this class are very basic ones, which are simple to break. A little bit of Negative Magic in the right place and they just unravel.” a small number of his students gasped at the mention of Negative Magic.
Casimir glared at those idiot students. “Some of you have had your families hire cursebreakers before, and they may have told you that they weren’t using Negative Magic. Chances are, that was a polite lie. The discipline has a really bad reputation, but it’s not all soul drinking and death beams.” It was really something they should have learned in a previous class, but prejudice is hard to shake sometimes. “Any kind of direct countermagic and many kinds of mana binding rituals are forms of Negative Magic,” Specifically, the ones that relied on being in high-mana environments. “and curse breaking is no exception. While there are a few theoretical curses which are designed to remove other curses without using Negative Magic techniques, they were created pretty much just for bragging rights and no one actually uses them.” Wizards can get very competitive when it comes to novel uses of magic, and even spells that aren’t really useful at all can still get some prestige if it does something neat.
There was only one person left who appeared to have a question. “Name?” He asked as he pointed to the green-haired human girl.
“Ah, my n-name is Hanna, Professor.” Ah, the orphan. Brought into the school by Professor Giltblade, her sponsor, her file noted her as having a spirit bloodline, life-aspected. Why Litnah bothered without adopting the girl, Casimir didn’t know. Probably some Aviost cultural rule. “I w-was wondering if we’ll all be learning the same curses or if we just needed a certain number.”
An important consideration for a spirit-blooded, if she struggled to convert her mana type. Usually those types just became sorcerers, but perhaps she wanted more from her magical career than just healing and helping with crops and gardens. “There’s a list of twenty useful curses we’ll be learning.” Casimir replied. “By the midterm, any four will do, but you must be able to cast every single one on demand in order to get full marks in this course. However, there will also be a project at the end for a more advanced curse, which has no limitation on what it could be. I have a list of suggestions, but anything that’s a certain level of difficulty will do the job.” You could still pass with only being able to cast fifteen of those curses, but good luck getting a Master with only the bare minimum; only about a third of the students get one from the faculty.
Seeing no other questions, Casimir moved on to the final part of the first class. “Okay, so now that there are no more questions, let’s move on to the final matter of the first day before we can part ways: The textbook.”
Casimir retrieved the stack of hand-sized slim stone slates from his desk, magically moving the ones magically marked with the names he knew to the respective students, while the others floated around the class until each one was taken by the appropriate student. “Take that to the library and they’ll loan you a copy of the textbook for the semester. Read the first twenty three pages and we’ll discuss them in the next class.” The librarians would handle all of the various security measures themselves.
Casimir looked around at his students one more time before leaving the classroom. That went well.
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“So how did the first day go?” said Casimir’s Master as she picked him up into a hug. On average, Elves were only about four inches taller than a human, but Gisra Southwind was prodigiously tall even among her own people. Casimir was always quick to point out that five foot nine was the average height among men in Anima, and Anima was somewhat better off mana-wise than most of the humans on Fundament, so he was [i]not[/i] short. But next to his six foot ten Master, it rang hollow.
But the matronly elf’s affectionate nature blunted any negative feelings on the matter, as Casimir allowed the woman to deposit him on the chair opposite of hers before sitting down, a tea service between them. Her office was also from the original academy structure, the massive tree grown into shape by the founder’s immense magic. Her tea table wasn’t a part of the room, but instead an intricate bronze piece gifted by Obidaiah, one of her students that was more senior than Casimir was. It was topped with a red silk tablecloth, intricately weaved to act as a teaching aid for a particular spell, although his Master preferred to just use it as a tablecloth as she had little use for giant waves of fire and had the spell recorded on paper anyway. “It went according to plan.” Casimir said neutrally. “I’m still not looking for students of my own, by the way.” He took one of the teacups and sipped at it. Minty… must be the tea with the traces of mind-aspected mana, Upsi? Something like that.
“I know,” Master said, disappointed. “But with…” she paused as Casimir scowled, daring her to say it. “-what happened, the joys of teaching should be just the thing you need to get back on your feet.” Casimir drank deeply from the tea, using the mana within to power a minor calming curse on himself. It’ll dissipate in a few minutes, but it’s enough to help him through the conversation. Mind mana was difficult to convert into when your own thoughts were clouded, which made using it difficult if you didn’t have a mind mana binding ritual to keep some handy.
Casimir sighed, allowing the curse to bleed away the dark reminder of why he was here. “I agreed that a year of teaching would be a good way to spend my sabbatical from adventuring, we’ve discussed this.” He was just going a bit stir crazy, spending half of it purely as a lackey to other professors. “Teaching solo certainly seemed better than being an assistant, at least.”
“There you go.” Master replied, sipping her own tea. “I had to pull some serious strings to get you a class to yourself so soon, you know.” Yeah, accepting help from Master Southwind always had some guilt trips attached. “Now, tell me all about your new students.”
Ah, maybe he should have actually done the roll call properly.
