Crisis and Opportunity

This story works as a stand-alone piece, but you can check out the earlier Hidden Energies if you'd like to see more of the characters.

***

A copper bowl filled with water was floating through the air. It was doing its very best to stay level, going slowly, often stopping to correct itself, cautious not to lose a single drop. Yet tragically, this very caution would prove to be its undoing. When it was already more than halfway across the room it tilted dangerously to its left - and instead of just accepting a small spill, it tried to save its whole load, overcorrected to its right, lost its balance, and with a splash and clatter fell to the floor, where it joined numerous others of its kind in a great puddle.

Yohan swore under his breath. Around the four tables, the twenty or so other students made sympathetic noises.

"Well now, lad!" Professor Ter Dekke's sonic boom of a voice filled the room. "Tell me what you did wrong!"

Yohan slouched back in his chair. "It was tipping over, and I overreacted trying to steady it, I guess."

"Baah! That wasn't the cause, that was the result! The primary cause was, as is so often the case, a student skimping on the fundamentals!"

"Oh boy, there we go," Yohan whispered. Professor Ter Dekke - who was a square, portly, luxuriantly moustachioed man in a crisp green-trimmed black suit, and at a first glance could be taken for a very fancy walrus - adjusted himself and addressed to the classroom one of his all-time favourite pontifications.

"Lots of you are still using magic naively, like children. Yohan, you held the bowl by its edge, as if your mind were your hand. If you want to get better, you must overcome your instincts, feel the essence of an object, not merely its shape."

Yohan scratched his neck. "I'm at this school because I want to be a geomancer, why the hell do I even have to take telekinesis?" he quietly asked nobody in particular.

Niko, who had all this time been eyeing the longcase clock by the door behind him and tapping on the tabletop, slowly turned to him. "Telekinesis is supposed to be really good training for the brain, you know." He shook his head, flinging his mess of brown hair away from his eyes, and smiled. "Though yeah, in your case it's kind of like training turtles to sprint."

"And you can't effectively manipulate the essence if you don't understand how it moves in space! Baah! Let's quickly review the trigonometry!"

Yohan solemnly placed his hand on Niko's shoulder. "My friend, I sincerely thank you for supplying your worthless fucking opinion," he pronounced. "Say, why are you in such a good mood recently, anyway? Like, this past week or two I've been hearing a lot more of your awful wit."

Niko shrugged. "Dunno. Spring's come?"

Spring, indeed, had come to the Vallnord Academy, and though this particular afternoon was dull and overcast, the overall return of sunshine did a lot of good to everyone's morale. You could especially appreciate it in classrooms such as this one - high up the new wing of the Academy, with large, red-draped windows and a high ceiling, the bookshelves and the tables a reddish mahogany, very unlike the close medieval halls of the old wing. They were also all done with the trimester's exams, and had a week-long spring vacation to look forward too - in short, even perennial worriers like Niko had to admit that things were looking up.

Professor Ter Dekke was now by the blackboard, drawing triangles, writing formulas, sketching diagrams. He was doing all these things at once, with three different pieces of chalk, and with his hands folded idly behind his back.

Yohan had to admit that the man's mental control was absolutely insane. Everyone in the world is able to haphazardly lug a heavy object around (though to an untrained mind it takes more effort than just giving it a physical push), but this sort of fine-tuned manipulation? Now Yohan could telekinetically sign his name with a pen, calligraphy and all, and everyone back at his home town agreed that it was a pretty great trick. Ter Dekke's triangles were ruler-perfect, his writing confident and neat. The way he focused, maintained, and divided his attention, without ever ceasing to lecture, was just something else. No wonder he was one of the nation's most renowned experts in the field. Yohan now started to wonder whether this was something anyone could train themselves to do, or did you have to just be born with an immense, natural talent?

"So, again - you have your vector of gravitational force acting on your object here, and you have your desired direction here. Now, in our standard framework, if we introduce our regular old matrix of spatial influence, three by three, and with a given determinant..."

It took something special, right? Take his classmates, for instance. To end up at Vallnord, they all had to be pretty good - but how many of them could he picture becoming truly high-end, elite tier mages? He looked around. Of all the students, sitting or slouching in their black velvet uniforms and following the lecture with various degrees of understanding, he really could picture nobody. He looked directly across the table from him. Oh, right. Diane. Yep, that he could imagine. She probably had the talent and the drive.

It was curiously easy to instinctively omit her while thinking about your peers. You could feel she was a little bit apart. It wasn't like she was arrogant or anything - she was quite alright in person. It's just, she always knew exactly what she was doing, and apparently assumed that this was deeply true of everyone else, and thus talking to her for any length of time always ended up making you feel acutely aware of all the shit you did not have together in your life, and then you felt somewhat anxious about that, and, and and - well long story short, the gal was a little unnerving.

"...indeed, there is nothing more to all of this than understanding the change of basis that is taking place here. These are the basics. You may think that this is not instinctive, not intuitive, but in truth all intuition is learned. Intuition is just knowledge that has become so ingrained in your head that you can process it unconsciously. In telekinesis, as in all fields of human activity, if you truly understand the basics, you can do everything." The sticks of chalk landed neatly on their tray, and in turn from Ter Dekke's desk a copper bowl rose up. "You can make things dance." The bowl swirled upwards, and turned over. The water poured out of it very slowly, and collected itself in mid-air in a perfect sphere. "You can make them move in any direction you wish. You can even make them move inwardly, into themselves." He pointed at the bowl, and all of sudden it shivered, and sounded off like a gong.

Yohan's eyes were still on Diane - both because of his previous train of thought, and because she was simply pleasant to look at, very light blond hair contrasting starkly with the dark uniform, framing that pretty head. Presently her eyes moved to the clock by the door.

"Someone's going to have to remind him that the time's up, again," she said quietly.

Niko idly tried to replicate Ter Dekke's last action on his own bowl, and succeeded rather well - it buzzed, and the water's surface was suddenly criss-crossed with tiny, regular wavelets. "Don't worry. He'll get hungry eventually and let us go." Diane smiled.

That was a smile of genuine amusement, rather than the mere kindly acknowledgement that she usually dispensed. Yohan perked up, struck by a sudden thought. Niko and Diane did seem friendlier recently. When one of them addressed a comment to a group on a whole, like just now, it would be the other one that naturally responded. Could they...?

Ter Dekke turned around and saw the clock too. "Well, we're out of time. Draw up the attendance list please. Anyone got questions?"

Yohan stealthily glanced back and forth between the two. Nah. Niko's too withdrawn, Diane's too level-headed. No way.

Vallnord, you see, was an important school, whose graduates were important people, often in prominent government or military positions. Its pristine reputation was basically a matter of national honour. If an unmarried couple of students were to be caught, perish the thought, having some sort of an affair, they would surely be expelled for besmirching the prestige of this noble institution. Many fine, morally oriented officials were already scoffing at this ancient and irresponsible custom of allowing male and female students, most of them in their early twenties, to mingle together in one place. This sort of thing should only be allowed from an age when the folly of youth is resting safely in the past - say, eighty-five. And these students were aspiring mages, too, very capable of protecting themselves against any unwanted consequences of immoral liaisons!

Yohan was nudged by Carl and asked something; he turned around to respond.

The attendance list was making its way through the tables. Diane followed its progress with close attention. She flipped her notebook open on a blank page and drew a horizontal line, then rested her pen some way below. Her eyes sought out Niko's, and then indicated the pen.

It was a nice pen - heavy, of silvery steel, the kind that allowed you to draw ink into its body, so that you didn't have to dabble with an inkwell all the time. He focused on it briefly, felt its weight - and with a flick of his mind, slid its nib right onto the line she had drawn.

Behind a nonplussed expression, she hid her excitement. He really got good at this. Their plan could work, and that means they could win for themselves a rare treat at this school - some privacy.

A meeting at the Ministry a while back concluded that as long as the interactions of students of opposite genders were carefully supervised, and perhaps if a touch of discipline modelled on the military schools was introduced, then possibly the magic schools could avoid being an affront to public decency. Then one junior clerk thoughtlessly brought up the idea that unsupervised same-sex interactions aren't always pure too, and the mere suggestion resulted in: the breaking open of twenty-six ampules of smelling salts, the issuing of three separate duel challenges (two of which were later withdrawn and one of which ended with an undersecretary having his pinky finger blown off), and five different letters of apology being drafted and delivered in thirty copies each. The topic of academic morality was never brought up again. As far as Ministry meetings go, that one was about average in terms of productivity.

The attendance list made it to Diane. She signed her name and passed it on. She looked at the sharply defined curve of Niko's upper lip. He had nice, full lips, she thought. She really liked how they felt on her skin, she thought.

Niko got the list, and immediately looked for Diane's signature. For all the steel pens and stoic poises, she had such a girly hand. I mean, the dot over the "i" was in fact a tiny neat circle. Who the hell does that? He smiled in idiot delight.

There was a thick brown leather gym mattress by the wall in the back of the classroom, over which more advanced students practiced levitation. To suppress his smile, Niko aggressively rubbed his temples. Just five more minutes and, if the plan worked, he and Diane would be throwing themselves on that mattress, and reaping the benefits which they had so recently agreed to add to their friendship.

Yohan signed his name on the list and, being the last person to do so, got up to deliver it to Ter Dekke. He was now fairly convinced that his earlier suspicion was nonsense. Bit of a pity, actually. He liked his classmates well enough, but sometimes he wished that they were a more exciting, adventurous bunch.

Ter Dekke grabbed the list and slammed it on his desk. "Alright, let's find out who today's winners are!"

Telekinesis classes always left a great mess behind. Water bowls being very common and time-hallowed training objects, there always ended up being a small lake at the back of the classroom. The hardwood floor was magically reinforced for this specific reason, but still it required careful draining afterwards. Ter Dekke could probably do this himself in seconds; but why even become an academic if you aren't going to make your students do all the work? And so it was the class's happy tradition that at its conclusion two students would be randomly drawn and given the clean-up duty. The pair would be left behind, instructed to lock the door and return the key after they're done, and would face an awful lot of bollocking if the next class found the room in a smallest degree of disarray.

Now the Proctor Superior's office had reminded the staff numerous times - numerous times! - that it was super against the school's code of conduct to leave male and female students unsupervised together outside of public, open spaces - people would talk. Most of the academic body privately thought that such regulations were useless bullshit, but they adhered nonetheless.

For not many people are gifted with the precious art of just ignoring what they deem to be useless bullshit. These are but the happy few, true favourites of the gods.

But it just happened that even among those few, it would be hard to find one as illustriously proficient at not giving a shit as Georg Ter Dekke.

Most students had already packed their bags and were now loitering around the desk. Niko milled among them, and gravitated close to the professor.

Ter Dekke closed his eyes and his pen hit the list at random. It skid a little bit on paper, and settled by a name.

"And our first winner is... Niko!" The eyes behind the round glasses sought out the boy. "Congratulations! Our second winner is..." the pen went up, and down, and skid again. Some part of the professor's brain noted that this skidding felt a little unusual; but he was tired after a whole day of lecturing, and gave this no further thought. "Diane! Congratulations to you too. All the rest, thank you, see you in two weeks, have a good break!"

Yohan finished packing and bumped past Niko on his way out. "See you in the canteen, right? Have fun with the clean-up."

"Thanks. I will." Niko did not meet his friend's eyes. He knew he couldn't possibly keep a straight face. Every one of his muscles was jittery, his lower back felt wobbly, a heavy glee filled his chest. It worked. He'd just won an empty room, a key to its lock, and a pretext to be in it together with Diane, for a better part of an hour. He carefully glanced at her. She did keep a straight face, obviously. She was casually conversing with Sophie, calm and even. Then, just for a moment, her eyes wandered off and met his - and the mutual understanding between them was enough to even shake her composure a tiny bit. A sharp smile flickered across her face, and she had to tilt her head, adjust her hair, and take a deep breath before she returned to her conversation.

Eleven days. Eleven days ago they first had sex, late at night in a public space that should have been abandoned. and almost got caught. For eleven days they had been conspiring how best to have a go again, under the watchful eyes of various attendants, Academy officials, and that one raven that everyone suspected was selling gossip to the Proctor Superior for pretzels. Niko had never before noticed how hard was it to get some time alone with a girl at this school.

A very long minute later Niko, leaning with his back against a table, watched the last students head towards the door (very slowly, he thought - don't those jerks have somewhere to be?!). Soon only two other people were left in the classroom - Professor Ter Dekke, still sorting his papers and chucking them into his bag, and Diane, slowly approaching him from the other side.

The state he was in. He was just... mouth-watering. He was flushed, breathing heavily, leaning forward a little to hide his erection. He was trying so hard to keep it together for just a few more moments. She stopped right by him. Her right arm hung straight along her body, her left was grasping at the strap of her bag with some force. Black velvet jacket, bright white collar, light blond hair, deep-blue eyes looking into his with calculated seriousness. She nodded towards the puddles in the back.

"We've got a lot of work to do," she said. Her face was completely still. "It's really wet down there."

He closed his eyes and arched his head back. She saw the muscles of his neck tense as he swallowed hard. She found that her teeth were sinking into her lip.

"Yeah." He answered. "That hardwood really needs some attention."

"You should be done pretty quickly," Professor Ter Dekke said, and clasped his bag shut with a definite click. He looked to the clock on the wall. "Next class here is in forty-five minutes, just drop the key at the reception desk as usual. Well, the mess isn't too bad today, is it? Your group is making progress. You've done well today, Niko. Been practising?"

Niko had a flashback to all the evenings over the past week, which he had ardently devoted to manipulating pens with utmost precision. "Y... yes, a little."

Ter Dekke emerged from behind his desk, bag in both hands, and made a few steps towards the door. "Good. Practice makes you better, and it also makes you less stressed. If you're stressed, you won't perform."

Niko and Diane dutifully nodded at this piece of wisdom.

"And even if something does go wrong, knowing the basics will help you make the best of a bad situation. It will help you not to panic."

This bit of advice was likely received with appropriate affirmation.

"We're almost done with planar motion, next trimester we're moving onto the good stuff, inner manipulation." Then, to Niko's and Diane's dismay, there was a subtle change in his body language; it was as if his weight shifted away from the door, and settled more firmly inside the classroom. "You are lucky you know, when I was your age all universities devoted four full trimesters to just lugging heavy stuff around. In the age of steam! I guess the old guard just refused to acknowledge that machines are more efficient at this sort of thing, they just held onto this old idea of mages being the physically strongest players in all of nature. It was basically just one guy that finally convinced the Ministry to change their outlook. What was his name? Damn." He ran his fingers through his moustache, looked to the ceiling, and thought hard. Niko squinted. Diane now leaned against the table too, and placed her hand just millimetres from his. His underwear was damp with precum, his cock was aching, imprisoned against the fabric. He wondered if using telekinesis to remove the Telekinesis professor from the Telekinesis classroom was explicitly forbidden anywhere in the school rules.

Suddenly, Professor Ter Dekke snapped back to attention and decisively turned to the door. "Baah, I forgot. Never mind. See you in two weeks!"

A few brisk steps later he was out, and they were alone. The echo of the shutting door still resounded in their heads, and it took them a few moments to move.

Now that only Niko was around, Diane immediately discarded her self-composure. She turned to him and he saw that look of keen hunger on her face, that he'd until recently never imagined he'd see there—

There were footsteps outside and they snapped back to their previous positions just as the door opened and Georg Ter Dekke re-entered jubilantly. "Tevodros! It was Professor Tevodros. He wasn't of Vallnord, he was a saltwater mage." The man plopped himself down on the chair by the door and placed his bag on his wide-spread knees. Niko gripped the edge of the table so hard the bones of his hand stood out sharp under his skin. "Yep, there were serious breakthroughs going on in precise inner manipulation, and Tevodros had enough connections in the Ministry to eventually overcome the geezers and let the schools teach the actually useful things." Leaning a little to obscure the view, Diane lifted her little finger and dragged it, very slowly, across the inside of Niko's wrist. He pretended that he was yawning, and hid his face in his other hand. "I actually met Professor Tevodros once or twice, at some conferences. He was of course by that time a very old man. But you have him to thank that your trimester projects are no longer hauling a half-ton granite block over a bar or all that other nonsense that we had to do. Alright!" he definitively slapped his hands on his bag and got up, "see you!" Then, finally, he left.