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Prompt: "You teach at a magic school, but you do not teach any magic. In fact, you’re not even a mage. Yet your classes are among the few that every student has to take, no matter what kind of magic they are studying."

Link: https://inkbunny.net/s/3479942 (InkBunny)", "writing": "Here is the first and only rule of Magic: Power comes with a price. \n\nWe've all heard the saying often enough - had it sung to us in the form of nursery rhymes since before any of us could crawl and then as part of the daily devotions, but does anyone really stop to think about it truly? Has anyone really stopped to think about what it all actually means?\n\nOf course not. Why should they? Silly notion really - much like why the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, it has become an issue only for academics or philosophers to argue and pontificate over. After all, nobody really cares how sausage is made do they; so long as it continues to remain neatly packaged for sale at a reasonable price in the shops. In much the same fashion nobody really cares about why or how magic works. We are born with it, only to have it fade as we grow. In all living memory there has not been a single case of a Mage making it past their first decade with the Spark intact. That is not to say that people don't try, of course - we've all heard our classmates boast about how they will be the First to make it past this arbitrary milestone; to somehow against all the odds emerge triumphant from the Exam with both sanity and magic intact. Heck, we've all even boasted of it ourselves, I'm sure. But for all that posturing, it has never once happened yet. And because of that, there is no real need to provide a comprehensive coverage for the Art; not when its very nature makes it a transitionary phase to begin with. \n\nWhat is my role then, you ask? Why even bother to go to the trouble of creating magical schools and staff them with teachers like me to assign pointless essays on the underlying Theory of Transmutation or what-have-you when Magic itself is temporary and no one will ever go on to wield those primal forces at any point of our adult lives? What point is there in attempting to pass skills to the next generation that they'll never have occasion to use, with nothing more than our own unreliable memories of what it had once felt like to wield those powers ourselves?\n\nNobody who's asked that has ever had the dubious pleasure of cleaning up after a tantrum-powered tempest; of that I'm fairly certain. Nor were they ever graced with the opportunity of de-escalating a superpowered brawl while dodging stray fireballs in the hallways. I am one of the few who can make that assertion however, and still have the burns to prove it. Yes, magic comes with a cost - one that is all too often being bourn by teachers like us in the field. Who else do we look to when the need arises to discipline some bratty ankle-biter who thinks that the innate potential to hurl galaxies about at a whim somehow absolves them from the basic tenets of decency and morality - their parents? Ha, didn't think so. \n\nControl: that alone sets us apart from the fate of Atlantis; entirely erased from the records of Time. Control is important when honing any kind of ability, surely - even more so when said ability has the potential to threaten life or limb. If it requires precise control to be a surgeon with his scalpel, or a mechanic with his tools, or even a chef who has association with both fire and knives; imagine the danger associated with being a Mage - who requires no tool or implement; not when their very body exists as a weapon of mass destruction. \n\nI epitomize that control today; looking out from over my place at the lectern at thirteen solemn earnest faces gazing back. For once there is no murmur of hushed conversation or shuffle of restless feet. They hang onto my every word, perhaps hoping for reassurance. I offer none: empty platitudes would be the height of cruelty; a glimmer of hope that can just as easily be stolen away.\n\n``Today you come of age,'' the words of the rite come easily to me; one that I am thankful I have occasion to recite only once a year. ``Today you will walk the path others have before you, have your worth measured, and return changed from the experience,''\n\nLow muttering follows this proclamation. Most of them know what to expect of course, having had older relatives share their experiences. They know what lies at stake. From somewhere in the back row I hear little Billy Stubbs grumbling something along the lines of how he'll surrender magic over his dead body but choose not to comment. Billy is one of my best and brightest pupils; for all his nine years a peerless savant in the disciplines of Evocation and Flame. I can only hope it does not come to that. \n\n``If you haven't already done so, remove and store any articles of clothing or possessions in the lockers provided - no use giving me that face, Liz. I don't make the rules. You'll have them back after the Exam is over. Yes, Erica-- I'm afraid hairpins do count as clothing so you'll have to be rid of those too,''\n\nLizzie Bowden and Erica Fields: two of the more notorious members in my Rogues Gallery whose very existence makes certain rules a necessity in the first place. Master enchantresses both; Erica leans more towards the methodical practice of Blood ritual while Lizzie favours the subtler arts of Invocation and Imbuing everyday objects into deadly weapons. To this day I still have recurring nightmares about a particular `+1 spork of Apocalyptic Doom' that somehow found its way into the school cafeteria. The less said about that particular incident, the better. \n\n``Form up in single file, and enter the arch behind me when I call your name. Once inside, you may use your abilities in any way you see fit on whatever you encounter - ''\n\n``We can do whatever we want?'' I admit I am expecting that clarification from Gregory Bell; a hulking nine-year-old with a penchant for violence and Thaumaturgy. Less so from Conjuration prodigy Richie Ford, however...at least until my memory supplies me with that infamous incident of something apparently called a `Slender-Man' which took the combined efforts of our entire faculty to banish. Pint-sized or not, Richie would be someone to watch - that much was certain. \n\n ``Anything you kids want,'' I try not to imagine the utter mayhem sure to follow the utterance of this statement.\n\n``Even...?''\n\n``Yes, Barry,'' It takes great effort not to rub my temples where a monster of a migraine is slowly building. ``Even Necromancy,''\n\nBarry Corcoran: future dark lord in the making if there ever was one. I pray to whatever deity is listening that we won't have another infestation of zombified rodents roaming our hallways once this utter farce is through. Best to get this over with.\n\n``If there aren't any other questions...let's begin,''\n\n--\n\n``Who do you think it'll be this year?''\n\n``Money's on that Ford kid - remember that beastie he conjured?''\n\n``Nah, too obvious. It'll be a dark horse. Someone we don't expect...Bell maybe; or even - ''\n\nYou wait expectantly, but you don't hear your name. Typical. Not even your homeroom teacher believes in you, apparently. Yet here you are, standing over a mountain of fallen classmates, watching the debate in the staffroom play out over a scrying pool crafted from a puddle of Greg Bell's blood: Naked, bruised, sweating, but very much alive...which is more than can be said for the bodies heaped up below you. \n\nOne of them twitches. You draw the very lifeblood from its pores as an afterthought without ever so much as glancing in its direction. The crimson spatter feels like warm rain against your bare skin. \n\nAnother down...but how many left to go?\n\nHard to tell, really. You make an attempt to tick names off your bloodied fingers. Richie: he's the one that gave you such a runaround...what with those summoned creatures of his. Idiot was a one-trick pony though, completely unprepared when you wrested control away and turned his own monsters against their summoner. Eaten by a balrog...not exactly a peaceful way to go. \n\nGreg: he's the one you had to fight twice - first as an empowered colossus and then once more in the form of an undead abomination reanimated by Barry's magic. Both times you emerged victorious, though not without earning some scrapes of your own. Zombie Greg packed a heck of a wallop.\n\nBilly... Thinking of Billy is enough to make the fresh burns on your limbs and stomach sear with phantom pain. Crafty pillock actually thought to play possum and you're not entirely sure how you managed to make it out on top after he slipped past your guard. Suffice to say that you won't be taking any other motionless body for granted after that experience...well, at least not without stabbing it a few times to make sure. \n\nWhich leaves...how many more, exactly? You're not entirely sure, yet it's the certainty that it has to be a non-zero number that has you whirl around when something calls you by name.\n\n``CHILD,''\n\nThere is no question about it. The mere presence of the Being dwarfs you and the weight of its words has you all but struggling to remain on your feet. The end of the Exam is near. You are in the presence of Magic itself. \n\n``STEP FORTH AND BE JUDGED, CHILD.''\n\nYou take one step and then another, proudly painted in the blood of your classmates. Everybody said it was impossible to retain magic after a person's 10th birthday. Both your parents and your teacher shared this assertion. But surely, they are wrong. Surely nobody in the history of mage-kind has done what you have done - clawed all the way to the top and in so doing proved your worthiness to retain what is clearly your birthright. \n\n``WILL YOU SACRIFICE A PART TO PRESERVE THE WHOLE? WILL YOU RENOUNCE MY GIFT?''\n\nWait...what? Is that a trick question? But - \n\n``Yesss,'' sibilant hisses in the shadows reach your ears, their cadence desperate...urging. ``Say yesss,''\n\nVoice after voice joins the chant. Some belong to classmates you recognize. Is that Richie in that chorus? Liz? Greg?\n\nIt's a trick. It has to be. Barry must still be alive somewhere; this has necromancy written all over it. You ignore the voices building to a crescendo around you, steel yourself and answer:\n\n``No.''\n\nBlessed silence... The voices recede, shrink before the strength of your conviction. The Exam is over, and you\n\n``...have failed,''\n\nI regard the trembling figure of my student, temporarily subdued by the physical manifestation of pure Magic - one that approaches every single individual of our community once and only once over the entire course of our lives under specific circumstances to make its single query...the answer to which me and my fellow educators wait for and watch with bated breath. \n\nI remember my own experience willfully relinquishing my magic. I remember the ache of feeling what was originally a part of me be ripped and torn away. For some, it will be the hardest pain we ever bear. And yet for all that the alternative was so much worse; since the dying screams of my graduating class as they fell to my hand would have haunted my every waking moment otherwise.\n\nIt is not a choice that can be made for them. At the end of the day, every child has the right to Choose. The consequences of that choice, however...\n\n--those are for adults to mitigate, as best we know how. With a heavy heart, I turn on the lights, revealing--\n\n--a good half of my graduating class, shacked in place to the school's ward-stone as living batteries; magic draining from them at a steady rate to repair the damages done to the infrastructure and reverse the injuries dealt to their classmates. I see the realization dawn in my student's eyes as they see the empty place on the ward-stone awaiting them; the understanding that only one of us will be leaving this place alive.\n\nI draw my sword and pull the hood up over my head, thanking its blinding and sound-altering properties. My job is hard enough already without looking at the familiar faces of those I am forced to end, or recognizing their screams. It occurs to me that I am a failure as an educator, if so many of my class have come to the same conclusion. But if there's one thing I've always strived to impart and encourage in my pupils, it is the strength to accept and to correct our own mistakes. \n\nThis is my class. My student. My mistake:\n\nAnd I shall correct it...\n\n--even if it kills me.\n\n", "writing_bbcode_parsed": "Here is the first and only rule of Magic: Power comes with a price.

We've all heard the saying often enough - had it sung to us in the form of nursery rhymes since before any of us could crawl and then as part of the daily devotions, but does anyone really stop to think about it truly? Has anyone really stopped to think about what it all actually means?

Of course not. Why should they? Silly notion really - much like why the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, it has become an issue only for academics or philosophers to argue and pontificate over. After all, nobody really cares how sausage is made do they; so long as it continues to remain neatly packaged for sale at a reasonable price in the shops. In much the same fashion nobody really cares about why or how magic works. We are born with it, only to have it fade as we grow. In all living memory there has not been a single case of a Mage making it past their first decade with the Spark intact. That is not to say that people don't try, of course - we've all heard our classmates boast about how they will be the First to make it past this arbitrary milestone; to somehow against all the odds emerge triumphant from the Exam with both sanity and magic intact. Heck, we've all even boasted of it ourselves, I'm sure. But for all that posturing, it has never once happened yet. And because of that, there is no real need to provide a comprehensive coverage for the Art; not when its very nature makes it a transitionary phase to begin with.

What is my role then, you ask? Why even bother to go to the trouble of creating magical schools and staff them with teachers like me to assign pointless essays on the underlying Theory of Transmutation or what-have-you when Magic itself is temporary and no one will ever go on to wield those primal forces at any point of our adult lives? What point is there in attempting to pass skills to the next generation that they'll never have occasion to use, with nothing more than our own unreliable memories of what it had once felt like to wield those powers ourselves?

Nobody who's asked that has ever had the dubious pleasure of cleaning up after a tantrum-powered tempest; of that I'm fairly certain. Nor were they ever graced with the opportunity of de-escalating a superpowered brawl while dodging stray fireballs in the hallways. I am one of the few who can make that assertion however, and still have the burns to prove it. Yes, magic comes with a cost - one that is all too often being bourn by teachers like us in the field. Who else do we look to when the need arises to discipline some bratty ankle-biter who thinks that the innate potential to hurl galaxies about at a whim somehow absolves them from the basic tenets of decency and morality - their parents? Ha, didn't think so.

Control: that alone sets us apart from the fate of Atlantis; entirely erased from the records of Time. Control is important when honing any kind of ability, surely - even more so when said ability has the potential to threaten life or limb. If it requires precise control to be a surgeon with his scalpel, or a mechanic with his tools, or even a chef who has association with both fire and knives; imagine the danger associated with being a Mage - who requires no tool or implement; not when their very body exists as a weapon of mass destruction.

I epitomize that control today; looking out from over my place at the lectern at thirteen solemn earnest faces gazing back. For once there is no murmur of hushed conversation or shuffle of restless feet. They hang onto my every word, perhaps hoping for reassurance. I offer none: empty platitudes would be the height of cruelty; a glimmer of hope that can just as easily be stolen away.

``Today you come of age,'' the words of the rite come easily to me; one that I am thankful I have occasion to recite only once a year. ``Today you will walk the path others have before you, have your worth measured, and return changed from the experience,''

Low muttering follows this proclamation. Most of them know what to expect of course, having had older relatives share their experiences. They know what lies at stake. From somewhere in the back row I hear little Billy Stubbs grumbling something along the lines of how he'll surrender magic over his dead body but choose not to comment. Billy is one of my best and brightest pupils; for all his nine years a peerless savant in the disciplines of Evocation and Flame. I can only hope it does not come to that.

``If you haven't already done so, remove and store any articles of clothing or possessions in the lockers provided - no use giving me that face, Liz. I don't make the rules. You'll have them back after the Exam is over. Yes, Erica-- I'm afraid hairpins do count as clothing so you'll have to be rid of those too,''

Lizzie Bowden and Erica Fields: two of the more notorious members in my Rogues Gallery whose very existence makes certain rules a necessity in the first place. Master enchantresses both; Erica leans more towards the methodical practice of Blood ritual while Lizzie favours the subtler arts of Invocation and Imbuing everyday objects into deadly weapons.  To this day I still have recurring nightmares about a particular `+1 spork of Apocalyptic Doom' that somehow found its way into the school cafeteria. The less said about that particular incident, the better.

``Form up in single file, and enter the arch behind me when I call your name. Once inside, you may use your abilities in any way you see fit on whatever you encounter - ''

``We can do whatever we want?'' I admit I am expecting that clarification from Gregory Bell; a hulking nine-year-old with a penchant for violence and Thaumaturgy. Less so from Conjuration prodigy Richie Ford, however...at least until my memory supplies me with that infamous incident of something apparently called a `Slender-Man' which took the combined efforts of our entire faculty to banish. Pint-sized or not, Richie would be someone to watch - that much was certain.

 ``Anything you kids want,'' I try not to imagine the utter mayhem sure to follow the utterance of this statement.

``Even...?''

``Yes, Barry,'' It takes great effort not to rub my temples where a monster of a migraine is slowly building. ``Even Necromancy,''

Barry Corcoran: future dark lord in the making if there ever was one. I pray to whatever deity is listening that we won't have another infestation of zombified rodents roaming our hallways once this utter farce is through. Best to get this over with.

``If there aren't any other questions...let's begin,''

--

``Who do you think it'll be this year?''

``Money's on that Ford kid - remember that beastie he conjured?''

``Nah, too obvious. It'll be a dark horse. Someone we don't expect...Bell maybe; or even - ''

You wait expectantly, but you don't hear your name. Typical. Not even your homeroom teacher believes in you, apparently. Yet here you are, standing over a mountain of fallen classmates, watching the debate in the staffroom play out over a scrying pool crafted from a puddle of Greg Bell's blood: Naked, bruised, sweating, but very much alive...which is more than can be said for the bodies heaped up below you.  

One of them twitches. You draw the very lifeblood from its pores as an afterthought without ever so much as glancing in its direction. The crimson spatter feels like warm rain against your bare skin.

Another down...but how many left to go?

Hard to tell, really. You make an attempt to tick names off your bloodied fingers. Richie: he's the one that gave you such a runaround...what with those summoned creatures of his. Idiot was a one-trick pony though, completely unprepared when you wrested control away and turned his own monsters against their summoner. Eaten by a balrog...not exactly a peaceful way to go.

Greg: he's the one you had to fight twice - first as an empowered colossus and then once more in the form of an undead abomination reanimated by Barry's magic. Both times you emerged victorious, though not without earning some scrapes of your own. Zombie Greg packed a heck of a wallop.

Billy... Thinking of Billy is enough to make the fresh burns on your limbs and stomach sear with phantom pain. Crafty pillock actually thought to play possum and you're not entirely sure how you managed to make it out on top after he slipped past your guard. Suffice to say that you won't be taking any other motionless body for granted after that experience...well, at least not without stabbing it a few times to make sure.

Which leaves...how many more, exactly? You're not entirely sure, yet it's the certainty that it has to be a non-zero number that has you whirl around when something calls you by name.

``CHILD,''

There is no question about it. The mere presence of the Being dwarfs you and the weight of its words has you all but struggling to remain on your feet. The end of the Exam is near. You are in the presence of Magic itself.

``STEP FORTH AND BE JUDGED, CHILD.''

You take one step and then another, proudly painted in the blood of your classmates. Everybody said it was impossible to retain magic after a person's 10th birthday. Both your parents and your teacher shared this assertion. But surely, they are wrong. Surely nobody in the history of mage-kind has done what you have done - clawed all the way to the top and in so doing proved your worthiness to retain what is clearly your birthright.

``WILL YOU SACRIFICE A PART TO PRESERVE THE WHOLE? WILL YOU RENOUNCE MY GIFT?''

Wait...what? Is that a trick question? But -

``Yesss,'' sibilant hisses in the shadows reach your ears, their cadence desperate...urging. ``Say yesss,''

Voice after voice joins the chant. Some belong to classmates you recognize. Is that Richie in that chorus? Liz? Greg?

It's a trick. It has to be. Barry must still be alive somewhere; this has necromancy written all over it. You ignore the voices building to a crescendo around you, steel yourself and answer:

``No.''

Blessed silence... The voices recede, shrink before the strength of your conviction. The Exam is over, and you

``...have failed,''

I regard the trembling figure of my student, temporarily subdued by the physical manifestation of pure Magic - one that approaches every single individual of our community once and only once over the entire course of our lives under specific circumstances to make its single query...the answer to which me and my fellow educators wait for and watch with bated breath.

I remember my own experience willfully relinquishing my magic. I remember the ache of feeling what was originally a part of me be ripped and torn away. For some, it will be the hardest pain we ever bear. And yet for all that the alternative was so much worse; since the dying screams of my graduating class as they fell to my hand would have haunted my every waking moment otherwise.

It is not a choice that can be made for them. At the end of the day, every child has the right to Choose. The consequences of that choice, however...

--those are for adults to mitigate, as best we know how. With a heavy heart, I turn on the lights, revealing--

--a good half of my graduating class, shacked in place to the school's ward-stone as living batteries; magic draining from them at a steady rate to repair the damages done to the infrastructure and reverse the injuries dealt to their classmates. I see the realization dawn in my student's eyes as they see the empty place on the ward-stone awaiting them; the understanding that only one of us will be leaving this place alive.

I draw my sword and pull the hood up over my head, thanking its blinding and sound-altering properties. My job is hard enough already without looking at the familiar faces of those I am forced to end, or recognizing their screams. It occurs to me that I am a failure as an educator, if so many of my class have come to the same conclusion. But if there's one thing I've always strived to impart and encourage in my pupils, it is the strength to accept and to correct our own mistakes.

This is my class. My student. My mistake:

And I shall correct it...

--even if it kills me.

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