I found myself simultaneously wanting to protect her and do terrible, terrible things to her body… at least, in a vague and general sort of way. I couldn’t think of anything that extreme to do that wasn’t actually, literally terrible, and I didn’t want to do anything like that.

Really, I didn’t know what I wanted to do with Steff, aside from the fact that it would be with her. I supposed there were some limitations that came with being a passive/receptive partner. I could touch Steff, I could do things to her with my hands and my mouth, but no matter how innocent and vulnerable she looked at a given moment, in general it was for her to do to me, not the other way around.

Anyway, she had more options for doing to than I did. I was aware that there were ways for a woman to penetrate another’s body, but Steff was naturally equipped for it.

So, I didn’t tear her clothes off then and there… I simply stepped up to her and gave her a quick kiss… or at least, I quickly gave her a kiss. The actual kiss itself wasn’t over very quickly. It lingered, it probed, it explored… and so did I, mapping the contours of her body as she had done mine.

Her dick was rock hard beneath the dress, and it jabbed me in the hip as I writhed against her. She started to pull away, but I grabbed her wrists. She looked at me, confused and a little intrigued.

“What exactly do you want here?” she asked.

What did I want? I wasn’t used to being this aggressive… that was the problem. When Amaranth asked me what I wanted, the answer was “to be yours”, but Steff didn’t own me and I didn’t want her to.

I just wanted her to take me anyway… take me and not care about the consequences. Maybe that was a touch hypocritical or ill-advised when I was otherwise rooting for her to think things through and not act on all her impulses… or maybe there was an essential difference I was overlooking here, between her thoughtless and inconsiderate actions and her taking into consideration both of our deeply felt desires and acting on them.

“Whatever you want to do,” I said. The words fell out of my mouth, and I knew them to be true… I hungered for Steff, a deep down gnawing hunger, but this wasn’t like when I’d gone all bloodthirsty. I was myself, and I was submissive. “As long as it’s done to me.”

She groaned quietly and pushed me away.

“Come on,” I said. “We’ll go someplace more private…”

“‘You can go wherever you want as long as it’s to get ready for melee,” Steff said, trying to adjust her skirt in a way that made her massive erection less noticeable. Somehow, this didn’t quite work.

“A half hour or so of cramming isn’t going to make a lot of difference at this point,” I said.

“It’s the difference between some effort and none,” Steff said. “It’s a start, and you’ve got to start sometime.”

“Sometime later,” I said, and I reached for her.

“Oh, hon, if you get us kicked out of the library, I’m never going to forgive myself,” Steff said. “That would be like getting beat up by Honey… embarrassing. Though I could see you getting beat up by her. In fact, I’d pay to see that.”

“Hey, you got beat up by Hazel,” I reminded her.

“She got in a good hit,” Steff said. “That’s not the same thing as beating someone up. In an actual fight, she’d need more than a single lucky shot… and speaking of what you need to get by in a fight, you’ve got to get crackin’.”

“You want to come with me?” I asked, wanting to draw out my time with Steff, find a way to keep her close, keep her in my sight… keep her hands on my body . “Maybe you could help me work on stances or something?”

“Uh, no,” Steff said. “I know where that’s going to lead, and you have got to got to got to take this seriously. That’s an order. I mean, I could hardly blame you for fooling around if I was there, fooling around with you, but this one’s an order for a good reason.”

“So we’re just going to suffer it out, after being apart for…”

“For like a day,” Steff said. She giggled. “Torture, I know… you’re such a horny little devil, Mack, and you don’t even have half an elf cock like I do to blame it on. Anyway, I’ve suffered enough, so I’m going to go off and think about delving in your butt while I masturbate like a motherfucker whose mother has been rendered unavailable for fucking.”

Steff seemed to be as resolute on this point as she was about anything. She wanted to have her way with everything, especially me, and at that moment this was her way. I sighed and resignedly wished her goodbye, which she returned as she left.

If Steff had meant for me to concentrate on the stick fighting book, she shouldn’t have left me with that image… the one about her pleasuring herself while she imagined taking me in the ass, I mean, not the overly literal expansion of a common idiom.

I did my best to try out some of the basic stances shown in the book and put my hands in the position shown, though the fact that I didn’t actually have a staff with me made me feel extra self-conscious and silly about the whole thing. Even without being able to seek out release, it was still more pleasant to think about Steff than it was trying to act out fighting stuff in the back of the library.

Orders were orders, though, and I did do my best, reading through the introduction chapter and following along with the illustrations and instructions of the basic stance and the simple moves. If I didn’t do them very well, Callahan would probably blame that on me being me instead of me slacking off until the last minute.

It was kind of weird to realize I was basically hoping for a teacher to think I was stupid… or maybe incompetent, since fighting didn’t have much to do with intelligence. That wasn’t at all like me… but then, Coach Callahan wasn’t at all like a regular teacher.

Though it was maybe just possible that Steff had a point about my attitude towards fighting. Even if it was reasonably well-grounded, it wasn’t helpful if I really did need to learn.

My enchantment lab went better than I’d ever have expected, which was extra nice considering it wasn’t a class I ever expected to have problems with.

First of all, we moved on to a new topic: the instructor introduced the concept of “meta-enhancement”… taking the enhancement we placed on an object as an object itself, and then enhancing one of its properties.

“For now, the one we will be most concerned with is its duration,” Rankin said. “General robustness and resistance to dispelling attempts don’t matter much when your enhancement only lasts for a matter of minutes or less. Now, it’s important to note that not only is a duration enhancement more ‘cost effective’ than simply throwing more energy at the whole effect if you just want to make it last longer, but it’s also a useful technique that can be applied to almost any spell or magical effect, not just ones derived from the techniques you learn in this class.”

While it was easier in terms of energy spent, it was a lot more difficult a technique to grasp, and we spent a lot of the class period doing ‘hands-on’ work with the professor’s assistance. I loved it, and my experience detecting magic made it a little easier to see what was going on.

My raw duration was probably higher than most other beginners’, too, as it had more mystic strength behind it, but it could definitely stand some improving. Buffing up the length of my insulation spell before winter truly arrived seemed like a good idea. What I would really want to do was learn how to bind the meta-enhancement in the same spell as the subject enhancement. It would make the spell quite a bit longer, but way more convenient.

At the end of the period, the professor made an announcement.

“A few of you who are enchantment majors have come to me privately to complain about the repeated use of a knife as a focus for enchantment,” he said to us. “Such exercises are useful for armoury majors who will be working mainly with weapons and other items of personal equipment, and they serve the needs of enchantment majors adequately…. but as several of you are not finding this to be particularly stimulating, I’ve decided to offer a choice.

“If you would rather work with something else of your own choosing, you may, so long as you are able to locate a simple, archetypal example of it: a plain t-shirt of the standard design, for instance. If it is a personal item, make cetain it is one you’re prepared to part with… as some of you have learned, it is possible for a poorly directed enchantment attempt to damage or destroy the focus of the spell.”

I boggled… was that really all it took to get away from the stupid knives? Just asking the professor? That seemed way too easy… though if it meant I didn’t have to keep messing around with a sharpened bit of metal, I’d take it.

I felt a tiny twinge of disappointment when I realized that I wouldn’t be able to apply what I learned towards personalizing my knife, but of course the knife was now gone… and it wasn’t like shininess was something I’d want to increase on a quarterstaff or pitchfork. I’d have to pick something that could translate well into tricking out a staff, or something that could be attached. Steff had been dismissive when she talked about putting a glowing ball on top, but you really could pack a lot of useful stuff into a staff.

Almost none of it was simple enhancement, unfortunately. It wouldn’t be until I hit the higher levels that I was able to imbue a staff with new properties or bind spells to it permanently. I could start laying the groundwork as soon as I mastered permanency, though. Improving its balance would help me bring it to bear more quickly as well as fend off attackers who got too close too fast, until I could blast them away with magic. Making it more resilient would help me protect my investment in time and energy.

Ironically, it seemed like a lot of what I could think of doing to improve it would fall under the same general heading as “weapon enchantment”. Weird, but not that important. I knew now I’d have to get my own staff before next Tuesday, though, if I was going to start working on this and get credit for it.

Except the power circles we were working with weren’t nearly large enough for a staff… damn it, I thought. I’d have to come up with something else.

The end of my enchantment lab meant that it was time for mixed melee, unfortunately, which meant it was time to impress Callahan with how little I’d learned in the two days since we’d spoken. Since it had only been two days, though, it was hard to see how she could reasonably have been expecting anything else from me.

Discuss this story.

He did take some time to question the possible applications of my mirror finish enhancement. I’d just wanted to make my knife look cool, since I had to lug it around anyway… but since I’d lost both the knife and that requirement, I wasn’t sure what to tell him.

“I just wanted to see if I could do it,” I said.

“That is an admirable sentiment, and you are a remarkably apt young woman,” he said. “If this interruption had come any later in the quarter, it might have set you back, but I think you’ll be fine with simply moving forward.”

He left me to finish up the spell on my practice knife. I was glad I’d sketched out an initial version of the enhancement the last time I’d been in class, a week before. That made it easier to pick back up where I’d left off. I was more careful this time not to just pour my energy into it like I had before. Though I no longer had to worry about “overdrawing”, I did have to watch that I didn’t exhaust my ordinary stores.

I didn’t spend much of the work period actually working magic. Instead, I’d spend a few seconds concentrating on the knife, then a few minutes adjusting the formulae I’d laid down and then trying out the new variation. It was pretty tedious going.

I couldn’t help but think how close this approach was to the old “scientific” method of formalizing spells that had been left behind in the dark ages, the way that resulted in spells that only worked at all under highly select circumstances and could rarely be duplicated by more than a handful of people. It was basically a lot of guesswork and predictions about the behavior of forces that could only truly be experienced directly… but the property I was working with was nebulous and could only be “held” so tightly or so long before the strain got to me.

The “basic principle of magic” was sometimes jokingly defined as “It behaves in unexpected ways except when you expect it to, when it either will or won’t.” Sitting around bullshitting about what might or might not work, or how something might react, could ultimately be no substitute for actually doing it. Several times during the course of the period, I found I had to change my tactics around completely as what I’d worked out no longer worked… but I was able to keep a flexible enough approach that it was a matter of ten steps forward, nine steps back.

Even with the variables shifting around on me, by the end of the class period I had outlined a technique that I could repeat with reasonable consistency. It wasn’t a formal spell, but I could refine it before Thursday and come in ready to do some proper work, and then have a spell ready to turn in by the end of the period.

After that it was back to Harlowe. I decided to change into some of my older surviving clothes while I was grabbing my pitchfork. There was no sense getting my nicer things messed up. Steff certainly wouldn’t be wearing her gorgeous elven style dress to a fighting class, after all.

My anger of a couple hours ago had long since faded, but I was feeling plenty frustrated from my attempts to grapple with a specific enchantment on the theoretical rather than the practical level. I wasn’t exactly looking forward to the next hour and a half, but it would be nice if I had a chance to work through some of my stress.

Also, there would be Gloria.

“Oh, there you are!” I heard one of the Leightons say from their doorway as I headed out through mine. I turned to see them looking at me, with big fake looks of concern and sad puppy dog eyes. “We just wanted to let you know that we are so sorry about that article,” Tara said. “We feel terrible.”

“I just bet you do,” I said, turning away. The anger was returning, but it would be more productive to use it out on the field than to blow my top in the hallway, especially holding such a stereotypical weapon as the pitchfork. Who knew when Mr. Angstrom would come back for a follow-up piece?

“No, really!” Sara said. “We were misquoted!”

I found that hard to believe, but it piqued my curiosity.

“Really?” I asked.

“Yes,” Tara said. “He took our words completely out of context. See, we were talking about how bad you smell, and your toilet regime is only part of that. He left out the rest. Would you like to hear it?”

“No,” I said, turning and walking away as fast as I could without whacking my leg into the bottom of the pitchfork pole. I was carrying it upright, of course. The last thing I wanted to do was impale somebody on the way to class.

“I guess you’ll have to read it on the letters page, then!” one of them said, and they both shrieked with laughter.

Fucking hell, they were a couple of annoying cunts. Well, to be accurate, they were one cunt with a couple of annoying heads. Maybe that was their problem… too many girls and not enough holes to go around? I could fix that problem real quick. They’d probably like having separate gashes for a change.

Or maybe I could just separate them completely, right down the middle.

I stopped myself, mid-thought and mid-step, halfway down a flight of stairs. It wasn’t the best place to do so… my foot stopped but my body kept going, and I took another tumble down to the landing. That was enough to jar me completely from the state of mind I’d been in.

Holding the pitchfork and getting angry was apparently not a good thing. I would seriously need to find a different weapon or get myself into some kind of unarmed class… probably the former. I felt I’d made too much progress in my sessions with Gloria to simply throw it away.

Well, the school owed me a magic knife, didn’t they?

I tucked the shaft of the pitchfork under my arm, thinking it might “count less” if it wasn’t actually in my hand, and tried to think positively on the rest of the way to the field.

The fork hadn’t had nearly as noticeable an effect on me when I’d first picked it up, but a lot of curses worked incrementally like that. If you knew something was bad news when you first laid hands on it, you’d never come to depend on it.

Two surprises were waiting for me when I got to class.

One was Steff, looking absolutely stunning and completely out of place in her princess dress.

The other was Gloria, who was nowhere to be seen.

I headed towards Steff, but Callahan had just arrived on the scene and blew her whistle.

“What in the name of the Dark Herald are you wearing, Johnson?” she asked Steff while the class was coming to attention.

“It’s called a ‘dress’, sir,” Steff replied loudly. “If it looks sort of familiar, that’s probably because I took it off of your mother last night.”

“Johnson, come here,” Callahan said, and Steff swaggered over with a shit-eating grin. I could have told her that she was about to be punched in the face… but I would have been wrong. As soon as Steff was within arm’s reach, the instructor reached out and grabbed her by the crotch and squeezed.

“Go change,” she said loudly as Steff’s knees buckled and her eyes bulged “Back in ten minutes or you’re marked absent, and if you ever show up for my class not dressed for combat, I’m keeping these. Understand?”

Steff nodded, gasping and sputtering, and Callahan let her go and turned away dismissively to talk to her teaching assistant. I shifted my pitchfork to my hand as she sank to the ground, and I was by her side in an instant.

“Are you okay?” I asked. As ever, a stupid question to ask. I knew the answer. I’d seen what happened and rushed to her aid, after all.

Steff nodded, though.

“I’m… fine,” she said, breathing hard and ragged. “Oh, sweet fucking hell, I hope she does that again before… before she fucks me.”

“What?” I asked. I knew Steff enjoyed receiving pain as well as giving it, but it didn’t seem possible for somebody with her anatomy to enjoy that.

“Sent her a strap-on through campus mail last week, along with… along with a calendar, with the last day of classes circled,” Steff said, starting to get to her feet. I helped her up. “Black leather. She didn’t say anything, so I think… she must be into it. That… what you just saw… was just foreplay.”

“Or she hates you,” I said.

“Of course she does,” Steff said. “That’s what makes it hot. Anyway, I’ve got to go change.”

“Can you really make it to the dorms and back in under ten minutes, like that?” I asked.

“Doesn’t matter,” Steff said. “According to her, she’s already counted me absent every day so far. It’s just… just flirting, Mack.”

I thought she was kidding herself, but didn’t want to argue. “Do you want some help getting back?” I asked.

She shook her head.

“You need to stay here and practice,” she said. “And pick somebody else.”

“I guess I might have to,” I said.

She kissed me, leaning on me for support as she did.

“Swap spit on your own time, Johnson! Shift!” Callahan barked.

“Yes, sir, ma’am, sir!” Steff said, saluting, and then she hobbled away.

“Crybaby,” Callahan said. “I wanted to see you next, anyway. Well, not ‘wanted’, exactly. I’ve yet to come up with any scenario in which the sight of you would actually be desirable.”

“What the hell is wrong with you?” I asked, stomping right up to her.

Just let her try to punch me, I thought. I’ll burn her hand off.

“Khee, I don’t know, maybe I’m having a bad period?” she said. “Do you want to see my note?”

“You just assaulted a student,” I said, biting back the urge to call her a crazy bitch… by biting my lip. I tasted a faint trace of blood in my mouth.

“That’s what they pay me the big bucks for.”

“They pay you to teach us to fight!” I yelled right up in her face, my voice rising out of control.

“Riiight,” she said, calmly wiping blood mixed with spittle off her face. “Which brings me to the question of why you’re here. Honestly, Crybaby, I’m having a hard time seeing why I shouldn’t boot your ass out.”

Was she for real? Hadn’t she got the fucking memo?

“I had an excuse for last week!” I said.

“How about the week before?” she asked.

“Um, I was here the week before,” I said.

“Yeah, and so what’s your excuse?” she asked.

“For what?”

“Spending all your time making goo-goo eyes at your island girlfriend instead of sparring,” she said.

“We were sparring,” I said.

“You were dancing,” she said. She turned and looked around the crowd. “Dhambizao!”

A knot of students parted as Gloria, looking very grave, came forward. Any delusions I might have harbored that we’d be able to get past our misunderstanding were shattered with one look at her face.

“Yes, ma’am?” she said, her voice completely neutral. Her eyes were fixed straight on Coach Callahan, not even glancing at me.

“You and Crybaby here are going to fight each other one more time,” Callahan said. “Or should I say, one first time?”

“Respectfully, ma’am, I have no wish to…”

“Do I look like a fucking djinni, Dhambizao?” Callahan said. “Do you see a veil on my head or smoke coming out of my fucking ass?”

Gloria shook her head.

“No, ma’am,” she said.

“Then save your wishes for somebody who cares,” the coach said. “You aren’t going to coddle her. You’re not going to let her dance around and dodge your attacks. You’re going to go for her fucking throat, every time. And you,” she said, turning to me, “are going to do the same. Don’t just bore holes through her tits with your eyes.” I couldn’t miss the sharp intake of air from Gloria at these words. “Take that fork and ram it through them. Now, you two go get your weapons mocked and get to it. Dobbs will watch to make sure you’re really fighting while I drill the rest of the class.”

“How long do we have to fight?” I asked.

“How much time is left in the period?” she answered. “Go get your weapons mocked and get it on, ladies. Everybody else, form a circle. Those of you who have any progress will have it evaluated today.”

Silently, Gloria and I headed over to the tables where the mockboxes were kept. She laid her ornate sword in a long one on the table and closed the lid while I went to the largest one, which actually stood upright like a wardrobe, and placed my pitchfork inside.

“I see you have finally relinquished one charade,” Gloria said as she opened the lid. She was inspecting the spectral duplicate, not looking at me. “Does this mean you are done with the pretense of wounded innocence?”

“What charade?” I asked.

“You have laid aside the puny knife with which you mocked me, and brought forth your own weapon,” she said, holding the sword up to the sunlight.

“The knife was my weapon,” I said. “I lost it. Well, I didn’t lose it, but…”

“I have heard enough lies,” she said, turning to face me for the first time. Her eyes blazed so fiercely, they might have been on fire. “I have been deceived by my charitable nature for the last time. Bring your best violence to bear, Mackenzie Blaise… today, we fight.”

It was no wonder Two had strained herself making it. It wasn’t just chocolate milk that she’d heated up, either. I could have done that myself, though I might have had a problem getting it just hot enough. It seemed like she’d fundamentally altered the contents of the glass. The milk and the syrup had been base components, reference points: this is chocolate, this is drink, or something similar. The end result of the transformation tasted indistinguishable from anything my mother had made on the stove.

Or maybe I just didn’t have a recent enough basis for comparison. Or maybe I just felt so shitty that anything even a little positive seemed awesome by comparison, but whatever.

It was good.

Of course, once I felt a little bit better, I became acutely aware of how awkward and horrible the last few minutes had been. The rest of lunch wasn’t much different. Amaranth kept trying to engage Steff in conversation, without much success. Celia talked about her illusions. That was about it for talking.

I should have tried to talk to Ian. I knew it, but I couldn’t. He took me aside as we were all leaving. I tried not to wince in anticipation. It was hard to avoid, when I was already wincing from the cramps.

“Look, Mackenzie…”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “That was… it was a stupid idea.”

“It was a good idea on a bad day,” Ian said. “Look, why don’t you go to the healing center? I’m not saying it’s… anything in particular. But if you feel that bad, you should get it checked out.”

“I’ll think about it,” I said, thinking that the answer would be no.

The last time I’d been at the healing center, I’d made an ass of myself due to the limited perspective on non-Khersian religions my grandmother had instilled in me. I wasn’t about to go back there unless I was actually bleeding.

And since it wasn’t time for my period, that wasn’t going to happen.

“Anyway, the thing is,” Ian said, “no matter how much time I spend ‘thinking about it’, the stuff you’ve got in your life is still going to be weird to me. I don’t think that’s going to change.”

I closed my eyes and nodded my understanding.

“I need you to understand that I’m going to be weirded out by some stuff,” he said. “It’s okay for Steff to be… well, I mean, it’s all okay. Whatever you guys do. But when I’m thinking things are one way and I find out… I mean… I’ll try not to let it overwhelm me, but I think it’s okay for me to find it weird.”

It took my mind a moment to catch up with what he was saying.

“Also, let’s just take things a little slower for a while,” he said. “We don’t have to, you know, back up or anything… I don’t know if we could, really… but let’s figure out where we are before we go any farther.”

“So, where are we?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “That’s why we have to figure it out. Are you planning on getting any more lovers?”

“I wasn’t planning on anything,” I said. “Well, I mean, I knew I wanted a boyfriend, but the rest just kind of happened. It was like I fell into it.”

He laughed.

“What?” I asked, giving him a dark look.

“Sorry,” he said. “Just a stupid thought.”

“What was it?”

“Nothing,” he said. “Really.”

“Tell me,” I said.

“I just thought of you going, ‘Oops, I slipped and fell into…’”

“I hate you so much,” I said, cutting him off.

“I have to get ready for my afternoon classes,” he said. “Feel better, okay?”

“No,” I said impishly, folding my arms. “I refuse.”

“I’ll talk to you later, Mackenzie.”

“Bye,” I said.

“Bye.”

“So, I know it’s probably still too soon…” Amaranth said, coming over as Ian left, a look of trepidation on her face.

“We’re okay,” I said. “For now. He wants to go slow.”

“That’s great, honey,” Amaranth said. “Now, of course you want Steff to be the first person in your butt, but after that you’ll want to make sure Ian knows that’s avail…”

“Amaranth,” I said gently, interrupting her. “Please, don’t micromanage my sex life with Ian.”

“Oh,” she said, blushing a little. “Baby, I thought you liked it.”

“I, um, sort of do,” I said. It was awkward and demeaning and horribly embarrassing, so of course in the end it drove me crazy in a good way. “But… not with Ian. I don’t want to mess things up with him.”

“I can’t see how it would,” Amaranth said. “Didn’t you say the first time he hit on you, he asked for anal?”

“That was… different,” I said. “I don’t know if he actually wanted it for himself. He was repeating something he’d heard about Harlowe girls. Anyway… I don’t know when I’ll be ready for that. I want to give myself to Steff, but… I’m not ready to take it off the list.”

It was hard for me to say that, because I was horribly conflicted. I was terrified of anal sex, especially with Steff’s preference for being less-than-gentle. On the other hand, I wanted so much to please her, and my pleasure drive did seem to be rather, um… butt-centric.

“Well, it’s not like you have to make up your mind right away,” Amaranth said, scrunching up her lips. Then, she smiled. “I’m confident you’ll come around, though. Ian did.”

“Probably,” I agreed.

It was horrible to be even a little bit glad for Steff’s problems, but at least they put off this particular decision for a bit. While Steff was being restricted by Viktor–and in no real shape for recreational activities anyway–there wasn’t a lot of pressure.

“Make sure you go to the healing center if you’re not going to go to mixed melee,” Amaranth reminded me. “You’ll need a note so you don’t mess up your grades, and anyway, if you’re feeling poor enough not to fight, you need to talk to a healer.”

“I’m feeling better now,” I said. It wasn’t a lie. I did feel better than I had before, even if I still felt pretty terrible.

“Okay, baby,” she said. She gave me the over-the-glasses look. “I’m serious, though. No skipping without a note.”

I was pretty sure I could afford to miss a few classes and still scrape a passing grade, but I would obey. Anyway, I had some time to make up my mind. Before mixed melee, I had my basic enhancements lab. Even if I had felt bad enough to consider skipping that, we were turning in our knife sharpening spells and getting our next assignments.

I felt a little bit better when I thought about how I’d included another, broader-purpose spell for sharpening both knives and swords tacked onto the end of my paper. I’d originally considered including all the variations on the sharpening spell that I’d come up with, but decided that might look a bit haphazard.

A spell that would work on both knives and swords had greater utility than the knife spell and was closely related to the actual scope of the assignment. It seemed like a safe bet that it would get me a little extra credit, either literally or metaphorically.

“Alright, today we’re going to be moving onto our next project,” Professor Rankin said at the beginning of class. “I’ll remind you that the write-up of your knife sharpening spell needs to be on my desk by the end of the period. Normally, assignments will be collected at the beginning of the class, but as this was the first project of the year I’m making allowance for the fact that some of you are probably about to turn in remarkably similar formulae. Bear in mind that I can call on you to perform the spell you turn in before I assign a grade, and then decide if your paper’s ready to turn in or if you want to take some class time and give it more of an individual touch.”

After that little speech, we got our next assignment. We were sadly not moving on from practicing with the knives. The new project was to choose another property of the knife or its metal and develop an enhancement spell for it, using the same techniques we’d learned for sharpness.

I figured most of the other students would go for something predictable like accuracy–hard because it was so esoteric–or durability. It pissed me off considerably that they didn’t have a specialized class where the armoury majors could go play with their toys and let the enchantment students do something useful and fun, but I supposed it didn’t really matter what we worked with. I’d already managed to take what I’d learned from the knife and applied it recreationally.

So what to do next? I knew I didn’t want to do some lame weapon enhancement, but I didn’t have a clue what to do instead.

I leaned over the practice knife in the power circle and studied it, focusing on it to try to get a sense of its properties and see if anything would occur to me. There were no enchantments on it at the moment, so it wasn’t really a matter of detecting magic in the usual sense… I was more trying to get in tune with the everyday sort of magic that made it up.

This was a lot harder than detecting an ongoing enchantment… it’s the disruption in the normal flow of things that stands out. But, leaning close over the knife, I saw my own face as a sort of dim, wobbly reflection in the surface of the blade.

That gave me an idea.

I would try to increase the reflectiveness of the metal. I was picturing my own fairly ugly knife with a high mirror sheen on the blade, once I eventually mastered permanency.

That could be kind of cool, and not directly related to the fact that the knife was a weapon.

Also, it would kind of mimic the high chrome look that was popular in fantasy shows.

It would be tricky to pull off. The appearance of an object was a separate matter from the object itself, and altering that directly was glamour. I wanted to change the substance of the knife to be more reflective, not alter a property of its appearance so it would look more reflective.

I’d never tried glamour, and didn’t think I’d have much luck with that branch of magic–I just wasn’t that focused on how things looked–but it would be important to check myself and make sure I wasn’t straying into it.

I gave it a try. It was sort of tough going… the knife wasn’t a very good mirror to begin with, and “reflectiveness” was a lot less central to the identity of metal than “sharpness” was to that of a knife. For a while, concentrating on the task let me ignore my physical discomfort, but then it would flare up and distract me. Several times I thought I had a grasp on the reflectiveness and then lost it, and while I could feel my energy pouring at the knife, there wasn’t any visible result that I could be sure wasn’t simply my imagination.

Frustrated, I kept stubbornly pouring more and more of my energy at the knife, metaphorically pushing and kicking until I saw it growing shinier. The strain was too much, though. I couldn’t keep it up, and I’d managed to aggravate the cramping in my lower parts.

While I rested up a bit, I realized that once I’d tweaked the knife even a little bit, it should respond to magical detection and I could then zero in on it.

It was kind of odd trying to focus on detecting magic, finding the reflectiveness within the knife’s metal, and pouring energy into enhancing it… it kind of felt like trying to do three jobs with two hands… but this let me “see” what I was doing in a way I hadn’t been able to before.

Once I had that worked out, I was able to focus my energy much more effectively. Before, it had been like I was sending a broad stream at a very narrow target. I couldn’t send as much energy while I was half-focused on detection, but a lot less of it was going to waste.

Under my efforts, I saw the metal seem to brighten as it reflected more of the overhead lights. Then, I felt like I could give no more and I let go. The effect didn’t begin to fade right away… I leaned over and saw my own face looking back at me, clear as could be.

“Interesting technique,” Professor Rankin said, and I realized he’d been watching me, waiting until he could speak without interrupting my attempt. “Where did you learn to do that?”

“High school,” I said.

“They don’t generally teach things like magical detection in high school,” he said. “Were you in a prep class?”

“They didn’t have any at my school,” I said. “I just watched the teachers a lot.”

“It isn’t the most efficient use of your attention while you’re doing complex work, though,” he said. “The bookstore sells enchanters’ loupes that will let you do the same thing with less effort.”

“I probably couldn’t afford one, sir,” I said.

“If you haven’t got one by the time you hit the next level classes, come and see me,” he said. “I usually have an older model lying around gathering dust.”

“Yes, sir,” I said, trying not to grin like an idiot. The professor hadn’t even asked if I planned on pursuing the more advanced classes. He’d taken it for granted. Had he already looked at my paper, or was that just from observing me at work?

Unfortunately, there was still a good twenty minutes left in class and I felt tapped out. There was no way I could fiddle around pretending to be working when I knew the professor was paying attention to me in particular, so I pulled out my notebook and began sketching out a preliminary idea of what the mirror finish spell would look like. It was probably rubbish… I couldn’t do more than guess for most of it… but at least it would look like I was doing something.

I prayed for the end of class to come quickly, but at the same time I dreaded it. Mixed melee was coming up. It would be the first time I saw Gloria since our little misunderstanding in the spiritual arts building.

If she was still upset, I’d be out a sparring partner. Worse, I’d have to give up the idea that we could be… well, even friends. Steff was probably right in thinking that anything else wasn’t in the cards with her, but I still liked her.

I could always get a note and skip, but that would only be postponing the inevitable. Though… Ian had needed time to come to terms with my relationship with Steff. Maybe Gloria just needed time, too.

I was also feeling even more pain and discomfort, after my mystic exertions. In the end, though, it came down to which I wanted to face the least: the healing center or potential rejection or hostility by Gloria.

It was no contest. There was always the chance that Roger, the healer I’d offended, wouldn’t be on duty, but Gloria would definitely be in class.