Chapter 49 - Mind Magic with Professor Myra Mistvale

Edit: Sorry, content warning on the Bjorn Saga verse

Beneath black silk banners and a sky that did not dare storm,
Bjorn wed Maeve.
The ceremony was small - whispers only, no bells, no blessings.
Witnesses, few and hand-picked, spoke in hushed awe of how she gazed at him -
Eyes soft, voice sweet, as if all her world was narrowed to one man.
They did not see the potions.
They did not hear the chains.

The Saga of Bjorn, Verse 27

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Felix wasn’t too upset that mind magic was next and the group - the possible coven he was going to join - was broken up. Only Odric and Sora had the class with him, while everyone else was heading off to divination. In exchange, a large number of the other students were piling into the classroom with him. 

Felix wasn’t quite sure how he felt about it all… but he knew he liked the smaller classrooms. 

“Oi, scoot over.” Sora said as Felix set himself up at the front of the class.

“I thought being a swot was contagious?” Felix joked as he made room for the girl.

“Yeah, well, this is one of the classes where I need to actually pay attention and do well in.” Sora grumbled. “Maybe some of your swotiness will rub off.”

She rubbed his head with a grin. Felix tilted his head.

“For good luck!” She said. Felix scoffed and rolled his eyes.

“Yeah, yeah.” He said with a smile.

“I’ll help you, with, er, flying lessons? That’s how you get bribed right?”

“Oh my god, you’re a bigger nerd than I am.” Felix teased. Sora gasped in horror.

“No! You take that back! YOU TAKE THAT BACK!”

Sora was still throttling a laughing Felix when Professor Mistvale walked into the room. She was tall and willowy, yet held herself ramrod straight. Her greying hair was tied up in a severe bun.

“Park, lose 10 points. Class, settle down, and listen.” The professor said. Sora pulled a face but settled down, and Felix had his pen poised over his notebook. The professor took roll call briskly.

“You are here to learn the mind arts, easily the most important branch of magic.” She said without missing a beat. “It is also called Light magic, by those trying to divide and classify magic. Stories and imagination are ignited by tales of Magus Roko, and the most vile and cruel acts that can be done by misusing the mental arts. Significant focus is then given to defenses and protections, but mind magic is so much more than that. Mind magic will help you organize your thoughts. It will improve your memory, making it eidetic at the highest levels. It will improve your emotional control and regulation, something teenagers sorely lack. It will let you recognize patterns more easily. As you begin to master mind magic, you will be able to glance at a runic array or a ritual, and immediately tell if it’s correct or not, and what impact it will have.”

Felix was rapidly taking notes, and he wasn’t terribly surprised to see Sora writing furiously next to him.

“Mind magic is subtle, but it is the strong foundation that the rest of your education will be built upon. If you neglect this class, the rest of your education will be built on sand, and you will find yourself working ten times as hard to achieve the same result. Or you could simply pay attention in the class, do well, and be as proficient in the rest of your education with a fraction of the effort. No matter how you analyze it, it is worth prioritizing this class. Speaking of paying attention, Sutter, lose five points.”

Felix opened his mouth in wordless protest, gesturing to his notes as the other students tittered. How much more attention could he possibly be paying!? Especially compared to the other students in the class!? Why was he being singled out!?

However, straight out arguing with the teacher first thing in the first class was a dumbass idea, and Felix kept his outrage to himself.

“Motivation and incentives.” Professor Mistvale continued on, like she hadn’t docked Felix almost all the points he’d already earned today. “I have the talent to read minds, and yes, all the offensive mental abilities that implies. Rest assured, I am a professor here, and I have strong ethical guidelines in place that mean I will not be abusing the ability. One aspect of the ethics is informing all of you that I have the ability, and I will use it. I lightly skim everyone’s thoughts, not enough to tell what you’re thinking, just the general idea. I know if you’re paying attention or not. I know if you’re cheating. All of this should provide a strong incentive for you to learn how to construct your own personal defenses. Once those defenses are in place, you will be able to daydream in the class to your heart’s content.”

Felix was finding the outrage over the lost points to be quite distracting, and could easily imagine it turning into a spiral of lost points. Not paying attention to start with had him lose points, which got him annoyed at the lecture, making him think of that instead of what the teacher was saying, making him lose more points… damnit!

Well, he wasn’t getting docked points every three seconds, so maybe there was a grace period or something.

“Along with mind magic directly, we will learn how to perform ego checks in this class, a non-magical way of determining if a person has been mentally compromised or replaced. We will also be establishing baselines for everyone here.”

There were some groans from the class, and Mistvale’s eyes sharpened.

“Make no mistake!” She half-shouted. “There is nothing so deadly and insidious as a mind mage lacking in ethics! There are creatures out there that will kill you, eat you, and wear your skin, hoping to get close to your friends and family to repeat the process with them! How would you like to sit down, only to see your friend looking at you with sharp teeth? There’s the Stranger Solution, which lets anyone assume your form. An ego check is one of the easiest ways of telling if an imposter is pumping you for information, or if your friend is curious about your day.”

She took a deep breath, and Felix had stopped taking notes, horrified at what he was hearing. Mistvale’s voice softened, but the words were all the deadlier for it.

“Witches tend to do better at mental magic than wizards. Why? Because they’re more scared of the results. Who wants to wake up in a strange room, sore, sticky, and bruised? If you don’t understand what I’m talking about, stay after class. But wizards, this can apply to you just as strongly. Predators take all shapes and forms. Do you want to snap out of a dream, only to find yourself surrounded by the limbs and heads of your family? Do you want to drift through a dream, only for the Praetorians to be arresting you? Wake up married to a stranger? Find you’ve signed over your life and fortune? Agreed to an impossible contract, committed yourself to being a slave? Do you want to have a deep-rooted compulsion suddenly take over, and you assassinate the prime minister twenty years after it was planted? It can be far more insidious than that. False memories. Altered memories. You might wake up one day and discover your best friend was nothing but a figment of your imagination. You might wake up, and suddenly have a thousand memories of a son or a daughter. A false one, that never existed, but the pain of losing your child will still be just as real, made all the worse by everyone else insisting it was all fake. A mind mage can make you do anything, and it’s generally malicious. Courts do not accept ‘a mind mage made me do it’ as a defense. Lords are far more willing to execute heinous criminals than run the risk. You might distract them for a week if you claim a mind mage made you do something, but you will suffer the consequences.”

Felix was circling the words ‘study mind magic’ obsessively. Sora’s quill looked like it was going to burst into flames, she was writing so fast.

“I do not attempt to scare you with the next words I speak, but I know half of you will be thrown into a tizzy. One of the fifth years managed to develop their abilities over the summer, and has all the abilities implied. We will be personally working with the student to ensure a proper ethical foundation and that they do not abuse their abilities, but there is possibly more incentive than usual to build your defenses and make sure they are up to par. The wards at Camelot protect against physical harm, but not against mental manipulation. Normally, we’d be starting with other mental groundwork, such as faster thinking and better recall, but circumstances dictate otherwise. Yes, Stark?”

A girl with the Kirin colors stood up.

“Professor. With all due respect, why allow a mind mage in Camelot? Is the disruption to the rest of our education worth the cost? And is there a reason we need to be worried about an adept? We don’t interact with each other at all.”

She primly sat back down, and Professor Mistvale looked at her, evaluating.

“Those are… fair questions. The first, all are permitted an education, and it is the magic of Camelot that dictates who may attend. How else are we supposed to train new mages, with all the good they can do? Should we cast them out in the dark, and allow the only path of survival the one Magus Roko took? Should we ignore all the benefits a mind mage can provide? And as for worrying, if the mage were malicious, who better to target than the fresh tadpoles with absolutely no defenses at all? It’d be as easy to control and manipulate you all as a noonie. Blackwood?”

Another student put his hand down and started talking.

“Is there anything good Light magic can do?” He asked with an unusually neutral and flat voice.

“The list of benefits is endless.” Mistvale said. “As students, you’ll probably encounter candies like productive peppermints or concentration candy. Self-applied, in other words. Happiness charms can lift the mood. Praetorians can use it in investigations. Therapists, with consent, can edit memories. Telepathy is popular in covens that manage to master the skill. The Winter family has famously figured out how to transfer knowledge without the associated loss of ego.”

“It sucks!” William Winter shouted out from the back, to scattered laughter. Mistvale pursed her lips, but didn’t take off any points, which Felix thought was monstrously unfair.

“Light magic is a tool, and it is all about the hand that wields it. Hence, my great emphasis on ethics. Like Dark magic, it can get a poor reputation for the absolute worst abuses of it, abuses that this class is designed to protect you against, but fundamentally is not wrong.”

The professor continued to lecture on various aspects of Light magic, and Felix was getting a hair antsy. When would they start learning how to do any of these things?

At the same time, a good overview before diving in was nice.

The class eventually ended with a homework assignment - due the next day, of course - and the class was dismissed.

“Sutter, stay behind please.” Professor Mistvale said.

“Professor?” Felix asked.

“I know this is all new to you, but please, pay attention in class.” She said. “You will not succeed otherwise.”

“I was paying attention!” Felix practically exploded.

“Really?” She asked doubtfully. “Then why, when I looked over, were you just idly circling words in your notebook, instead of writing anything I was saying down? Circling an important concept once, yes. Circling the same thing at least five times? Excessive, and a mark of an idle mind far away from class. I can see the pattern of your thoughts. I don’t read the details, but to use an analogy, when everyone’s thoughts are moving in one direction, and yours are off gazing at the clouds, it’s pure simplicity to interpret.”

“But look at my notes!” Felix started to pull his mind magic notebook out. Professor Mistvale held up a hand.

“I am not interested.” She said. “Pay attention in class and succeed, or ignore me, be docked points, and fail at your education. You have been given a chance, take it. I have another class to get to, excuse me.”

She stiffly walked out, leaving a fuming Felix behind.

This was so unfair! He WAS paying attention!