Prismatic Education Begins With A Spark 10 (MTG/Multicross)

Foreword: Discussion of Strixhaven's magical studies really does help feed my muse a lot!

Prismatic Education 10

“Third year already… Time has really flown, hasn’t it?” Nivali murmured over her tankard of sweetened water.

“That it has,” Hofri agreed, “Have you picked your courses yet?”

The brunette didn’t reply, but just shook her head.

The school term had yet to start, but already the tavern was packed with third-year students. There was a reason for this gathering, but the event itself had yet to begin. So for the time being, the students were taking the opportunity to reunite and socialize with friends. As always, magic and mascots could be seen no matter where one looked.

“Roy,” Vyse began, “Pardon my curiosity, but what is that book you’re carrying around at your waist? It doesn’t look like any of the usual school texts.”

Dyna nodded, her own expression not hiding her interest.

As I took the grimoire out of its holding case and put it on the table, I wove a magical working as well. Abstraction was a Quandrix specialty that dealt with the adjustment of space, either by simply expanding what was available, or in this case, making it harder for others to overhear by affecting the concept of sound travel.

Hofri raised an eyebrow. “Is it really something that needs such privacy?” He asked me.

“He certainly thinks so.” Vyse snarked.

“Both of you, hush.” Nivali leaned over the table to examine the colorful cover. “Wow, what is this material? It doesn’t look like anything I recognize.”

“As far I can tell, it’s something like physicalized mana.”

“Who could have created something like this?” She wondered, more to herself than actually asking me. “May I?”

With my permission, she opened the grimoire, studying the text within. The others also peered more closely, before giving me odd looks. That was a natural reaction as spellbooks weren’t anything special; wizards recorded their own spells within them, which they would memorize for casting in the near future.

“All this secrecy for a spellbook? Unless…” Vyse narrowed his eyes at me. “What’s so special about this spellbook?”

I just smiled without saying anything, letting them do a more magical examination of the grimoire. It was quickly obvious that the grimoire wasn’t an ordinary physical record of spells, but its secrets were quite elusive. I would know, because I had tried using some of the usual analysis spells on it, only to get inconclusive results.

“Did you discover this when you traveled outside of Strixhaven?” Hofri asked me intently.

I nodded. “That’s right. I happened to be near a snarl, and the mana convergence somehow sent me to some other place underwater, where this grimoire attuned itself to me.” I still don’t feel comfortable letting other people know that I’m a Planeswalker.

“Is it dangerous? Have you gotten any of the school’s specialists to examine it yet?”

“As far as I can tell, no. And I intend to do so.” Eventually…

“Right… as long as you’re aware. Gods knows how many incidents come about from messing with unidentified magical artifacts.”

Hofri shut the grimoire and slid it back over to me. I tucked it back into its case, and dispelled the privacy field over us. 

“Oh yeah! Weren’t you working on that brush before? How’s it going?” Dyna asked me.

“That? Well…” 

My forays into artificing had been moderately successful, and I managed to make the calligraphy brush I envisioned. Practicing with it had resulted in tangible improvements to my penmanship, which in turn raised my grades for Scrivening and Symbology. I had made a few more, to prove that I could reliably repeat my success, and sold them to some other students for extra funds. Some of my customers had mentioned it to their friends, and I was expecting to be commissioned to make more soon.

And it’s only one step among many in replicating the idea I have. 

“By the way,” Dyna held up an item that we all recognized and possessed, “Any of you planning to help with the masquerade?”

The item was a small silver pin in the shape of the Strixhaven star, which had arrived together with the invitation to tonight’s event. It was imbued with magic, which was a casting of the Disguise Self spell.

The reason for that was the Magister’s Masquerade, an elaborate dress ball that was a major campus event for third-years. I was aware of such a thing due to my spontaneous investigation into Strixhaven, though my knowledge was superficial. Fortunately, I had enough time to read up on the event’s history. In order to mitigate the clashes common among students from different colleges, a Lorehold professor had proposed the idea of a masquerade event. Students from all five colleges would prepare every aspect of the event, and attend the ball without any indication of college loyalty, using the pins to disguise themselves and facilitating better unity between the students of each college. Its success had seen the event become an annual tradition, which continued to its present day.

Tonight’s event was more of a reception for the planning of the event. Students interested in helping out could join the committee, dividing responsibilities among themselves. Since the masquerade was meant to be handled entirely by the students, those on the planning committee could periodically assign tasks to other students to help prepare for the event.

“I’m not really one for planning such things. Besides, I’m going to be taking more classes this term,” I told her.

Vyse refused as well, citing a complicated mathematical thesis he was working on. In the end, Dyna managed to coerce Hofri and Nivali into joining the committee alongside her, and dragged them over to the committee organizers’ table.

I exchanged glances with the elf, and raised my drink to him in a toast. He mirrored my gesture.

“To our third year at Strixhaven.”

“To our third year.”

…

Course selection in the third year required a bit more careful thought. 

After all, the next year would be the final year… unless you were one of those who wanted to study even further and stay for a fifth, sixth or who knows how many more years. To be honest, I was a little attracted to that idea, but my scholarship would only cover the initial four years.

My course selection up till now had been rather wide in scope, mainly because I was exploring my own interests. However, in an uncharacteristic show of unity, both of my assigned counselors had recommended that I try narrowing my focus this year, hopefully towards Quandrix-related courses. 

Advanced Arcane History was one of the required courses, and so far, I had no issues with handling five of them each term. So that left another four to select.

With a sigh, I discarded my hopes of signing up for Losheel’s Applied Clockwork Artificing course. Though if I had to be honest, I wasn’t really suited for constructing them. I much preferred to summon them and put them to work, like the one that was currently tidying up my scattered tools.

I’m glad Losheel was willing to let me get a mana copy of it, especially with how cheap its mana summoning cost was. I turned my attention back to my course selection form. I really enjoyed Magical Auras in my first year, and the topic of abstraction really appealed to me from the way Professor Frois described it.

Blasting enemies with magic directly was one thing, but influencing a wide area and things within said area had its own charm. Transformation, alteration of rules, and other effects… certainly that was quite in line with Blue. So Advanced Abstraction ended up becoming one of my picks.

It didn’t feel right to just pick one half of the Quandrix theme, so to balance it out with a Green part, I decided to pick Applied Augmentics as well. My experiments with the Spin had shown that there was potential in using that infinite energy in enhancement spells, and I had hopes that this course would allow me to explore that further. Nivali’s help in testing some of the Spin’s effects on living beings proved that there was a significant difference versus using it on nonliving surfaces. I was kind of curious if that difference also applied to fractals.

That left another two picks. I scanned the list again, this time with the consideration of future benefits.

None of the Prismari courses for this year interest me. As for Lorehold… there are some, but only vague interest-level. My gaze paused at one item. Well, I suppose I could improve on my staff-making skills.

The ones I had crafted so far only granted slight boosts in certain types of magic, and I wanted to see if I could push that even further. Of course, creating magical and enchanted items weren’t restricted to staves alone; I knew there were some students who made use of enchanted footwear to get around campus more quickly, and Prismari jewelrymakers who earned money by making fancy flashy jewelry on commission. 

Oh yeah, there are a bunch of Entrepreneurs members who took this course too. I can ask them for help… if they don’t object because of conflicting business interests. Alright, that decides it.

I marked off Advanced Artificing and Enchanting. That just left one more.

After some consideration, I finally picked Overview of Magical Notation, which built on what was taught in Scrivening and Symbology, and was a prerequisite for Spellwriting and Scriptomancy. Casting magic through writing was quite fascinating, after all.

A knock at my door drew my attention. I sent Lyric to answer it, while tucking the document away to submit to the faculty later. My inkling soon returned with three Strixhaven students. I recognized one of them as the dorm resident assistant, just one year below me. The other two wore the grey uniform of first-years.

“Yes, how may I help you? Um, Lydia, was it?” It took a moment to recall her name.

“Yes.” She nodded. “Senior Staff, sorry to bother you, but these two new students are having trouble picking their courses. Could I ask you to help them?”

A friendly smile spread on my face. “Of course. Have a seat and let’s take a look at your list.”

Lyric helpfully brought over two chairs for the first-years.

While I had shied away from helping in the masquerade organization committee, I found teaching rather enjoyable, even if it was a small thing like giving advice based on my own experiences. The students thanked me gratefully, and I offered them an open ear if they needed to come again for any reason.

Being a senior student here really feels much different from how it was in my memories.

In my past life, I think I was quite introverted and barely interacted with the freshmen after me apart from just passing down the notes I had received from my seniors. As for Castle Aldrheim, that couldn’t even be called a typical scholastic setting

Contrary to my expectations, the third year wasn’t as hard as I was expecting. On top of participating in my extracurricular activities, I even had the free time to go searching through the Biblioplex for manuals and guides on dance and vocal training for the two kids I met in the Seabed Temple. Though it probably wasn’t as hard as it sounded as I just had to ask the automatons to locate and retrieve them. After browsing through the contents to ensure that they were useful for beginners, I made copies and returned the original texts. The next time I visited the Seabed Temple, it would be with those copies as a gift.

With two Quandrix courses, I was spending more of my time on the Quandrix campus, and it gave me a lot of time to appreciate the magical beauty of the place. The Blue aspect of the place helped shape water in fantastical ways; cube-shaped fountains, rivers flowing through the air, structures built entirely out of solid-seeming water, and more. The most mysterious and prominent one was the Arithmodrome, which looked like a ten-foot cube of water from the outside. The inside was a seemingly infinite space, separate from the usual laws of reality. Many Theory-focused lab classes, not just my Advanced Abstraction one, took place within there for that reason.

It’s one thing to know you can cut a Mobius strip to make a giant loop, or to cut along its length in thirds to make a long one with a separate loop perpendicular to it, but actually applying that to reality?

Mind-bending. Literally.

Likewise, the Green aspect made for evolving effects that were visually impressive to look at. It’s not an exaggeration to say that a fern can turn into a whole forest within the time span of a single class, and some of the sights made me think back to the Vineglimmer Snarl I was mana-bonded to. And growth was just one of the many possible ways to apply augmenting spells, though the lecturer for Applied Augmentics wanted to ensure that all the students had grounded basics before moving on to more complicated stuff.

I had no objections to that; the Cultivarium, a garden filled with spiraling, cyclical plants and fractalized animals, was an amazing place to be in. Literal centuries of growth spells cast there had soaked into the place, causing a resonance effect that enhanced any growth-related spell cast within. Meditating there helped me gain a better connection to my own Green mana.

The courses themselves were intense, but not overly so. They were also engrossingly interesting, which was a benefit when it came to studying. 

Advanced Arcane History was mainly about the more complicated aspects of magic used in the past. What magical tools or workings were commonly used, the purpose they were used for and so on. Interestingly, the course itself was taught by Dean Augusta Tullus, the Dean of Order for Lorehold. She did an excellent job of explaining how some lessons learned from studying the past could be applied to the use of magic in the present. As much as I had trouble with some of the written homework about listing out historical relics and their use, I couldn’t deny that I was learning a lot of useful stuff.

Magical Notation had some synergy with my Advanced Artificing course, and I was having a great deal of fun making all sorts of magical knickknacks, though I made sure to properly dispose of the failures. Hofri wasn’t exaggerating when he said that many incidents came about from poor handling of magical items. Aside from that, I found that transcribing spells from my grimoire seemed to be extra effective, even if the produced magical scroll was a single-use item.

And throughout it all, my grimoire’s repertoire of spells continued to grow, along with my own magical strength and stamina.

Lyric had taken to inhabiting my grimoire in its free time, and somehow gained the ability to alter its coloration, which was something that I was still carefully investigating the effects of. Marill could similarly alter its elemental configuration on the fly, which was a nice surprise during mage duels against opponents who presumed to use the counteractive element against it.

Despite my trepidation about the looming exam for Advanced Arcane History, I couldn’t help but think to myself about how much I was enjoying my third year at Strixhaven.

Afterword: Another great chapter discussing the new aspects of magical learning! And it’s not just all studying and no play, as you can see from the start. Magister’s Masquerade is a third-year event that comes up in the sourcebook, and events related to it go on the whole year.