A Bored Lich

Cerlius watched as the other students struggled to record everything but his own quill didn't move. The lecture's every word was on Cerlius's paper before Lance even spoke. The ink was already dry. 'I wonder…' Cerlius thought, his hand moving over the ink well at the top right of his desk. 'Rippling isn't unique to water. It happens with most liquids. Could ink be considered an element?' He raised his hand but Lance reluctantly shook his head.

The designs on the billboard shifted, restoring the magic circle, now with a strange characteristic on the exterior. "For the third spell," Lance spoke a little faster, wanting to reach the end of the lecture. "I added a characteristic along the exterior of the magic circle. This is allows us mages to modify the property and change the output. This is not without cost as, depending on the type of characteristic, more mana is expended and the spell requires more focus."

"Regarding the example shown, the property was Ripple and the characteristic was Energy." The billboard pulsed again. Lance had to hold it steady as it rocked back and forth. "The characteristic, Energy, added force to the Ripple property. You can mix and match Characters but don't do it thoughtlessly. It can be-"

The wave reached the edges of the billboard and sent a deep crack along the middle, making Lance sigh. "Random." He waved his hand and another magic circle formed, one with six characteristics and a design so complex that Cerlius couldn't copy all of it in the few seconds he had before it disappeared. The billboard shifted and in one loud crack, was restored.

"Every magic has some semblance of randomness in it. It's what makes the study of elemental properties so difficult. Fire spreads. That we know, but at what rate? What will the flames look like? You have to picture it and every single possible direction the spell can take or the spell will fail or act out in random ways."

"You can use the same spell twice and it won't be exactly the same." He put his hand to the billboard and used the same spell that had cracked it previously. This time most of the billboard held still. It only twisted and groaned a bit, although that might have been Lance, who awkwardly straightened his crooked back after letting go. "Each characteristic modifies the elemental property, the more characteristics, the more complex the property."

By the end of the hour-long lecture, Cerlius's hands were covered in dried ink. His papers were full of notes on the basics of spellcasting. Lorickan this Lorickan that. He was as sick of hearing that name as he was of the classroom dynamics. Having to ask before using the bathroom. Having to abstain from eating and drinking. At this rate if he breathed wrong the world might implode.

He knew Lance was about to implode as well, as the poor man had to stop the lecture a dozen times over to instruct Cerlius on the accursed dogma that was classroom policy. Complex magic and fundamental concepts Cerlius could understand, policies that went against fundamental human bodily functions on the other hand, he could not.

And then he stopped caring, as if some door had shut. He could still feel the slight annoyance but it was as if the emotion had been eaten as soon as it formed. 'I'm still hungry.'

'Larque, is that you?' Cerlius thought only to get no response. 'Maybe I'm losing it.' He let out a long sigh as he glanced back down at his notes, wondering where he should store them. They had just been on the desk when he arrived. His unasked question was soon answer when Lance walked each row of desks while handing spatial rings to each student.

Cerlius reached out his hand to receive his spatial ring, which Lance gave him before leaning in close and whispering: "I'm sorry about this situation. You're about to go to lunch. Try to make some friends while you eat, before it's too late. It's lonely being an outcast, on this matter you trust me." He walked back to the front of the classroom with not too many students paying his actions any mind. They were all busy looking through their new spatial rings, and Cerlius copied them.

He put the ring on his pointer finger and focused on it. It wasn't as if his mind was disconnected from his body, but he could just feel what was within, a twenty-five foot (or 7.62m) cubic area filled to the brim with paper, ink, quills, notebooks, robes, soap, keys, water sacs, etc. All the supplies he would need as a student. He frowned.

'Clearly I know how to focus on a spatial ring. This means that either using a spatial ring is either a commonly known technique or I was previously in a position where I used them. Maybe I was a wealthy mercenary or a knight. That's doubtful given my age…Oh wait, I'm supposedly fifteen.' He frowned as he pulled his schedule out of his spatial ring. 'Should I ask Lance about the voice? He seemed like the closest thing to an ally, so far at least.'

The next event on his schedule was the mess hall. After an hour of that, meditation, then more class. Eat. Study. Sleep. This piece of paper dictated his life for the duration of his studies. Not if Cerlius had anything to say about it. The soft gong signaled the changing period. Lance grabbed his notes and left through the door he and Cerlius had come through while the rest of the students lined themselves up at a door at the front of the room.

The class emerged into to the biggest room so far, six times the size of the classroom. Although large, the low hanging ceiling made it seem like any other room, tightly pact, as if the walls were keeping a close eye on them. Both the sunlight and a cool breeze drifted through an open wall at the back, where only a sea of clouds and a bright blue sky awaited past it, the one semblance of freedom in this all-encompassing room, a place one could never hope to fly away to in this cage of an academy.