I wait before my professor’s door, sweat collecting on my brow as I attempt to work up the courage needed to confront him with what would typically be a simple question. I take a deep breath, ball my fist, and tap, tap, tap on the door so lightly any other soul may have mistaken the knock for a pin drop. 

I exhale, the muscles in my neck relaxing while my heart finally slows. “Darn, not here,” I say sarcastically as I whip myself around and start to walk away.

I close my eyes and tense back up immediately when I hear my instructor's rough, scratchy, and annoyed voice announce, “stop dilly-dallying and come in already!” 

I take another deep exhausted breath, just now realizing how much energy it took to make it this far. I turn around and open the door. It makes the slow creak of unoiled and rarely used hinges. 

He sat there, eyes down, looking through half-moon spectacles, writing vigorously in red ink using a humorously massive quill grunting as he continued to mark incorrect responses on our last test. His long white and coarse beard flowed beneath his desk, while his bald head reflected the candlelight in the room. He looked up for the time it takes a bumblebee to fart and then resumed his grading. 

“What do you need Mr. Richardson?” He gruffed out. The smell of fish oil and phoenix ash invaded my nostrils as I entered the dimly lit room. 

“It’s... Mr. Smith,” I correct him. Wincing at my own stupidity for doing so. I felt the temperature of the room drop as he stopped his writing, lowered his pen, and gave me a pertinent look. I begin to whimper out, “I was, uh, here to ask...”

“About your failed exam, yes yes, you impatient fools are never late to embarrass yourselves.” He rolls his eyes and begins to shuffle through a stack of papers that would be easier to mistake for a bleeding animal than graded tests. I, for some ungodly reason, interrupt him again. 

“No professor, I’m not here for my exam.” I rapidly say and then add, “I’m sorry.” 

His face wrinkles with irritation and he glares at me, “Then what in the bloody hell are you doing here? Did Professor Rosite put you up to this? That damnable woman was told no 200 years ago and needs to...” 

“I want to do better!” I blurt out. Interrupting him, again! What am I doing? Interrupting professor Stronz... thrice! If he hasn’t transmuted my blood to jelly yet, it sure felt like it. I cast my eyes to the ground in embarrassment. “Sorry.” I pitifully add again. 

Professor Stronz bored into my soul, his gray eyes like daggers. He rummaged through his desk drawer, and grabbed a stick of chalk. He then proceeded to clear a small space on his desk and drew a circle, a spell circle. He threw a sprinkle of phoenix ash and oil on the circle. I had to swallow a gag from the stench. 

He gently took a candle and placed the flame on the edge of the circle. As he did the spell burst into a radiance of light and color bouncing from red to blue to purple to green. My eyes were still downcast I almost didn't see him beckon me forward toward the rune. Strangely, as I grew closer to it, my skin felt as if I had dipped it in a container of ice water. My hair rose as goosebumps assembled on my arms and legs. 

“Your arm.” He said as he took my arm and pricked my finger with a pin drawing a droplet of blood out of my finger. My arm shot back with the sudden sting of the prick. Why in the world would he need my blood? Wait, jelly blood, please heavens no, I was joking about that. 

Professor Stronz took the drop of blood and dripped it onto the spell circle. Immediately the fire flashed out, and in its wake was a faint, pulsating yellow glow outlining the circle. My heart wanted to punch a hole in my chest in anticipation of the completion of the spell when I began to realize that the pulsating of the spell circle was synchronous with my heartbeat. 

Stronz’s hands then began to levitate the circlet of energy. He rotated his hands and as he did, so did the spell circle. Well, it wasn’t a spell circle any longer, but a small yellow sphere. A pocket-sized sun. He placed the ball of light into his hands, coddling the spell like a child. I would never describe Stronz's personality as filial but at that moment he appeared almost motherly. Then he ate the ball. 

Falling. I was falling through a white mist, the sweat on my skin growing colder as the tears in my eyes turned to crystals of ice. I fell through the mist and saw a blazing sun above and the Earth far far below me. Clouds envelop me as I fall toward the ground. I see a small floating speck rapidly growing in my vision. It is growing so fast; I try to flip out of the way, but my back slams into the room. I hear the bones shattering under my skin and the pain rippling through my mind. I am not, however, dead. In fact, after that split second of pure torture, the pain was entirely gone. Moving my body around a little, I began to notice that nothing seemed to hurt.  Ah! I am dead, I thought. 

“You’re not dead.” A grouchy, scratchy, and annoyed voice says to me. 

I look up and see Professor Stronz standing over me. I don’t believe that I truly stated why every student was intimidated by Professor Stronz. He may have been incredibly old and not very fond of Outlanders, but he was also huge. He towered at over six and a half feet tall, and muscles and a beard that would make the Rock and Dumbledore jealous. That is why people were intimidated by him. That, and because he was a complete asshole when it came to interacting with other staff and his students. 

“I heard that.” He said. His lips a line. “Do you even know where we are?” He asked indignantly. 

Hell, I think before answeri...

“No, not Hell you fool!” he was shouting. “This is your mind, and clearly this explains your absolute ineptitude for the magical arts. Your head is literally in the clouds!” I look around me and finally, feeling less of a daze from my fall, see that we are in a large white marble-tiled room that has a collapsed roof. When I peer outside of the room I see the day sky completely surrounding us. Clouds flow past and through our building leaving frost on the floor, walls, and my already freezing skin. Also, wait. I didn’t say, hell, out loud. 

“Yes, I can hear your thoughts, took you long enough to figure that out. Since I finally hear what you are thinking I can feel rest assured that you will never amount to much in the magic world. However, since you wasted my oil and ash for this ridiculous place, I may as well teach you something. Here.” 

He flexes his hands and two wooden quarter staffs appear in them. He throws one on the floor next to me. It clangs against the ground nearly whacking me in the face. I languidly grab it and get up. 

“Casting a spell is like being forced to write a fight scene on the spot,” he said as he swung his staff at me. I placed up mine to block. The staffs clashed. “If you describe too little, the fight is confusing and the spell is easy to interpret or change in different ways.” As he said this my staff became a flexible substance like rubber allowing him to bend my staff with his own and wack me in the head. 

He stepped back as I rubbed my head in irritation. Why in the world, can I still feel pain in my own head? I thought as an idea clicked in my head. I thought about my staff becoming rigid again, and in a split second, it was. When Stronz saw this he swung at me again. I placed pressure on my back foot for stability and then raised my staff above my head to block the incoming blow. The staffs made a whack, as they clashed, the wood in my hands vibrating through my arms making my hands swell and my knees bend. 

I was then on the floor. He tripped me! “And if you describe a spell too much, you make the reader exert too much effort for them to remember everything that is happening. A spell is the same. If you build it too much, you cannot act fast to counter what your opponent will do next. Yes, your staff was rigid that time, and I could not control it. However, because you took so long to describe the actions happening, I was able to act too fast for your irritatingly slow mind to keep up. You would know all this if you ever paid any attention during my lectures!” His condescension was palpable. His disdain for having to waste his time on an Outlander like me leaked into my own subconscious. 

He came at me again and swung his staff down. I caught it above me the vibrations of the rigid wood shooting down my body. He quickly swung again, low this time attempting to catch my legs. I brought my staff down and planted it on the floor defending myself against a sweep of my legs. Our staffs clashed again. The force of his blow was too much however breaking through my guard sending my staff and me twirling. I flipped through the air, my face breaking my fall as I slammed into the cold tile floor. How in the world can a human be so strong? 

I have to do something he isn’t expecting, but he can hear my thoughts. It isn’t fair! How am I supposed to plan for the next attack if that tells him what my next attack is? Wait. This is my head. What if? 

“Professor Stronz could no longer hear my thoughts,” I said aloud.

  “Finally,” he said, a wicked grin coming to his face. “Believe it or not, most Outlanders never even figure that part out.” 

“Professor Stronz could no longer move his body,” I said aloud. A grin appeared on my face for about as long as a virgin last and turned into a look of pure disappointment as I saw him continue to twirl his staff. 

He chuckled, his smile growing and eyes twinkling, “Now now Mr. Santiago, do you think I would let you have more than one.” He slammed his staff into the ground shattering it into hundreds of tiny shards. He then drew a rune with his finger in midair and all the shards lifted from the ground, sharp points toward me. With a motion of his hand, they flew at me. 

Crap! I made a circle with my hands and pushed it into the ground. The tiles of the floor came to life ripping from the floor and forming a shield. The shards slammed into my shield, the force punching me back. My shield wasn’t perfect though as a shard got through and jutted into my thigh. The pain was gone in an instant, I thought, attempting to rid myself of it. This time, however, the pain continued to pulse through me. Wonderful. 

I attempted to shoot tiles from my shield back at Stronz, but my shield was also not moving. Forward rune, how in the world could I forget a forward rune, but it was too late. Stronz had a wall of tile up behind me. He sucked it in, crushing me between it and my own shield. My chest screamed as I felt every rib crack, blood pooling out my mouth and eyes as my head popped between the stones. 

I awoke in Professor Stronz's office. Drenched in sweat, my heart beating out of my chest, I saw Professor Stronz towering over me. “You Outlanders always seem to think you can keep up with us.” He said, prejudice seething from his lips. “But, the simple truth and obvious proof is?” He looked at me expectantly. “Hmmm?” his voice rising to an irritating pitch. 

My voice loathing every syllable I say, “Outlanders our inherently spelless, and thus are a leech on Turian society,” verbatim from our history text drilled into us since primary school. 

“Well my my,” he said, “You finally got a question right.” He then ruffled through his blood-red pile of graded tests, put a stupidly huge “+1” on the front, and handed me my failed test. He continued, “and please, Mr. Smith when you go to visit that wretched magicless cesspool you call home. Don’t come back.”