Room 802: Introduction to Magic

"Alright, looks like everyone has completed the quiz."

With a wave of his right hand, they all vanished with another (smokeless) pop.

"Now then. We are going to be discussing spells. We've covered the basic parameters of a spell--space, time, effect, and magnitude. I hope you are all incredibly excited about learning these aspects because we are going to be playing with light, today."
He smiled just as some may detect the slightest hint of sarcasm in his voice.

"Our first component, space, is very important. It predicts where your spell will materialize and where it will go, what areas it will affect, what its overall shape is, and if it is supposed to move or change or not. I want you all to imagine a cube, if you will, broken into quadrants in the upper and lower hemispheres, for a total of eight areas."

The chalkboard, which had not been used yet in the class, began to draw its own picture. Several different colors then floated on their own, scribbling together a quick diagram that, once completed, appeared to be a mathematically immaculate cube, complete with perfectly straight lines, a three-dimensional perspective aided by the shading of any one particular color, so that eight color-coded sections numbered I-VIII presented itself impossibly accurately without a ruler. Whatever spell had guided the drawing of this figure devoid of the tiny errors and imperfect lines of any human artist had to have been extensively prepared beforehand.

Garo tries to draw the same thing, but isn't quite so good at it. Still, the concept is easy enough for him to understand. Break the area surrounding yourself into 8 boxes. Got it.

"Now here is where we shall cast our first spell. You may start channeling..."

He lifted both arms slowly, as though maestroing a crescendo.

"Yes... that's it. I can feel your energies... bring them to the level you brought them yesterday and no farther--I'd like you to imagine, now, all of that energy condensed, into a little ball... a little ball of bright, white light. And now tug on those strings from the leyline... your objective is to mentally weave yourself that ball. If you can get light to materialize before outstretched hands, you're headed in the right direction. Remember: bear in mind the space--your hands with the spell in the shape of a ball, the effect--light, and the the magnitude--where we were in yesterday's exercise."

Ashani maintains command of her perfectly glowing ball with relative ease, waiting for their next instruction. She knew the class would take some time to get any light going at all, and so she took this time to hone in her channeling and focus in maintaining the spell.

"Ah... a perfect equiluminance!"

He noted Ashani's good performance.

"Now, focus on moving your spell to the center of your quadrant two... so that it takes approximately one second for it to move from where it's at, to it's new location."

And then the class gave it a try--many did not succeed in moving their spells at all, and others began to lose control of them.

"Watch your space!"

He rose his voice a little over the chaos that would ensue. Spells would go awry, from fizzling out to flying in uncontrolled directions.

"What's your space?! Focus!"

With his complement, she let break a smile, and her spell dimmed for a second before returning to its perfect glow.

The door to Vywricks classroom swings open. Professor Echoes, head of the inter-dimensional, and time magics department walks in. He waves cheerily at Vywrick, before walking up to the chalk board. He reads the list the other professor has made, before picking up a brush and erasing the last two items. He then writes the following.

Delmar Laurent would not be present in the class on that day, or any of the day of class henceforth. He would also not be found at his dorm, or anywhere else on campus for that matter. It was as if he disappeared, fading into non-existence when no one was looking. His little belongings would also be found to be missing, his bed in his dorm made neatly as if no one ever slept on it. The last person to have seen him would be Royal, who was his roommate. 

Roy watches the strange man come in and write on the board, then carefully writes the entire list. Glancing around, he notices that his roommate Delmar is strangely absent. How odd.