Redeemed - Heather Fledderus (accelerated reader books TXT) 📗

are at a school that teaches magic so that wizards are not caught off guard. Wipe that surprised look off your face. There’s a reason for everything, and just because I don’t like it doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t exist. Other studetns in your calss may not have been able to practice magic, the same limitation that you have, but they also have a distinct advantage over you- they all know what their magic is.”

“isn’t there only one? Casting? That’s all that everyone uses.”

Zen sighed. “That’s like saying there’s only one planet in the solar system, because there’s only one that is inhabited by intelligent life. There are other magics, although they are obscure. This school is unique because for the most part, they have the tools you need in order to get to your highest level of achievement. You will only ever be mediocre at Casting, I can tell that much. You’ve got an odd magic. I’m not sure what it is, but it’s probably the reason why that Reaver tried to kill you when you proved to be annoying.”

“I was not annoying it! I was attacking it!”

Zen barked a laugh. “Yeah. The way a mosquito attacks an elephant. Which, by the way, is pointless.”

“Well you cast the stupid spell,” August huffed, shoving the feather away.

“I’ve got even less of a talent for Casting than you do, but I’ll do my best,” Zen said as the feather slowly floated to the ground. She pointed a finger at it. “Los Necht et tabulum.” The feather rose several feet into the air and dropped back to its original position in front of August.

She mimicked Zen’s accent. “Los Necht et tabulum.” The feather remained still.

“Roll your ‘m’ a little bit longer,” Zen suggested.

“Los Necht et tabulummmmm.”

“Hilarious. Mock the suggestions again, and I will never help you with a single one of your classes ever again.”

August’s mouth opened and closed several times like a dying fish. “But you said that you would help me with Battle calss. You promised.”

“I did not promise you a single thing. But if this is how you are going to treat my suggestions, then forget it. I don’t explain things to half-baked students.”

“I’m not half-baked!”

Professor Atworth shot them another glare at the sudden outburst. Several other students were looking at them now. August slumped. “Sorry,” she said sheepishly.

Zen waited until the others had gone back to their own work. “Again.”

“Los Necht et tabulum.” The feather rose an inch off the table before falling again. There had been no breeze. August whooped.

“Miss Julian,” Professor Atwater said, “If I hear another word out of you during this time, another demerit will be tacked on to your already sterling record.”

August pulled a face once his attention was diverted once more. She spotted Zen’s paper and snatched it before Zen could react. Her eyes grew huge as she began to read it. At one point, her head jerked up to stare at Zen, who had slumped in her seat and was reasting her forehead on the table.

“Dude, there is no way that this is history!”

“History is written by those that are left, not the ones that were right,” Zen muttered.

August saw that it was how Zen had finished the essay. “Wow. You are going to get in so much trouble for this. I don’t think that I’ll be able to keep up with you for detention.”

“You never should have tried in the first place,” Zen replied, her voice low. “wasn’t my idea for you to start following me around after hours. You need to start doing some extracuriculars.”

“I wonder if detention would count as one.”

Zen snorted. “Yeah, we could call ourselves the breakfast club, and cause all sorts of ruckus when the teacher leaves. I’m sure one of us in here it crazy.”

“Miss Pakto,” Professor Atwaterr said, enunciating every syllable. “Since you seem to be so chatty, I presume that your essay is done?”

“As a matter of fact, sir, it is,” Zen replied readily. “Does that mean that I get to leave early?”

He smiled. “No, it means that you can now read it to the class.” He waved her up.

“What if I don’t want to?”

“Then you’ll possibly be given more detentions. But since that doesn’t seem to be working, the disciplinary committee may become involved to determine the proper repercussions.”

She sighed loudly and took the sheet from august’s hands and wended her way to the front of the room. She turned to face the rest of the classroom, all five of them. “I was assigned to write about magics before the Guild Wars. So that means I had to write about magics that no one knows about, but pretends that they do. So here it is.”

She looked at her page and began to read.

“Most of what we assume to know about the time before the Guild Wars is flat out false. The truth about past magics has been lost or destroyed, either by accident or design. The fact is, there used to be seven types of magic, as opposed to the so-called three magics of today. News flash: spells, incantations, and jinxes all fall under the same magic, called Casting. You are a Caster. You cannot be anything else if you are a wizard. The other magics do not exist anymore.

“Nothing is really known for certain about these seven magics, other than the fact that Casting was the weakest of them. Some mages did not even consider it to be a type of magic, as it required very little investment on a wizard’s part. That is why those who use casting magic are actually called wizards, whereas users of the other six magics were called mages or sorcerers.

“Society has since forgotten about those other, more powerful, six magics. And that’s good. That’s what the victors of the Guild Wars had been after, their ultimate goal.”

“What in the world are you talking about?” Professor Atwater cut in. “Seven magics? Don’t you think that someone, somewhere, would have recorded them if they had actually existed?”

“Yes, well, my essay does go on to explain that, in generalizations of course.”

“Zen, it seems that you want to spend the rest of semester in detention.”

Zen smirked at him, leaning against the board. “Yeah, well, it’s more of a ‘have to’ than a ‘want to’ at this point, if you know what I’m saying.”

August’s head thumped loudly on her desk. Atwater’s face was actually turning red. Good cappilaries, Zen thought to herself. He’d bleed out faster than anyone else in this room if they were suddenly attacked.

“How about expulsion? Hm? I gave you a serious assignment to do and this rubbish is what you come up with? Hand it over now.”

She yanked it away from him. “Nuh-uh. No way. This is mine. You can write your own essays, I’m sure you can make up your own version of what life was like befreo the Guild Wars, when there were actual guilds that carried the seven magics. And did you know that even categorizing them into seven categories is a stretch?” She glaned at the clock. “And now, it is officially five o’clock, which means that we are liberated from your presence so that we may go and sup with the common people who do not have the good fortune of spending two extra hours a day with you.”

She gave him a graceful bow, still keeping the essay out of his reach. The other students quickly stuffed their things into manageable piels and whisked themselves out of the room. August had grabbed Zen’s textbook and bag and dragged them after her. Soon, it was only the three of them in the room.

“Give me the paper, Miss Pakto.”

“This was a bogus assignment and you know it. That textbook is useless for everything but as a paperweight. There is nothing that speaks of the time before the Guild Wars. I bet you that we haven’t even recovered a journal of that stupid Immortal Witch’s that’s pre-Guild War, now have we? The victors of the Guild Wars made sure that there was nothing that spoke of before. No one was there to stop them.”

“There was no victor in the Guild Wars. Both sides fought long and hard before they realized that magic was disappearing. They formed a treaty then, a treaty that holds to this day. Are you contesting the existence of that treaty?”

“Oh, I know that the treaty was signed. Funny how there’s nine names to it, am I right? There were more than nine guilds.”

“Four representatives from each side and a witness.”

She shook her head. “No, see, that’s not true at all. That is what we have assumed, and slowly that assumption has turned itself into fact as the ages get denser and denser. There were more than two sides to that war, and no one was neutral. And there was a victor. A guild that was made up of only nine members. I actually talk about it in my last paragraph, as my conclusion. Would you like to hear it?”

She stared straight at him, her paper clenched in her hand. She didn’t glacne at it once.

“Many things were lost to the Guild War- truth being the most prominent example. While the mage guilds of the world busied themselves with in-fighting, murder guilds against light guilds, a different type of guild emerged. It sonsisted of nine memebers. They called themselves the Seraph’s Hand, a bastardization of a noble idea. They believed that those born with raw magic, the source of the six stonger types of magic, were unfairly advantaged. In the effort to create true equality amongst mankind, they decided that raw magic must be cast out and cut down, to the point where only magic that anyone could learn would exist, the magic that we now have today. The reason why we don’t know anything about raw magic is because, ultimately, the Seraph’s Hand won- the guilds were wiped out, the strongest mages killed by the Hand’s own dark magic. There was no one left to argue with their account of magic.

“After all,” she finished, crumpling the paper in her hand into a ball with one fist, “History is not written by the ones who were right, but by those who were left.”

The paper in her hand ignited into a ball of flame. Zen tossed it into the air, where it burst apart, ashes slowly drifting down to settle on the floor. She curtsied to him. “Thankyou.”

Then she turned and left, August trailing behind her, her eyes wide. She glanced back at the professor, but he wasn;t watching the two of them leave. He was studying the ash on the wooden floor.

Secrets

Clarke placed a tray on the small coffee table in the sitting room attached to his office before taking a seat across from his guest. “You said you wanted to see me?”

Ben Atwater spooned the tinniest amount of sugar into his cup, the spoon doing a single rotation around the edge of the cup. “Of course.” He took a sip. “Ah, it tastes as fine as ever.”

“The sugar spoils the taste,” Clarke replied.

“Bah, as long as it doesn’t spoil the desired effect, I always say.”

“Yes, you always do. What is this about, Ben? I know you didn’t simply come here for a top-up.”

“Why isn’t