The Bane of Light

Stay Away

"I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbearably unhappy" -Franz Kafka

∞

Over the next few days, despite my attempts to forget the disastrous night all-together, I still felt the heated gaze of foreign eyes on me as the days progressed. I sensed them tracking me as I walked down the halls with my friends, studied in the library, or simply attended classes. It was though I was the most fascinating exhibition in a freak museum, and his obsessive behavior was even noted by bystanders. Our Ancient Runes professor had to scold him into paying attention, seeing that he found his eyes wandering yet again.

I was thankful that we only had a few classes together, seeing that his curriculum was completely different then mine. Our schedules at the academy were almost entirely based on the type of mage or witch you were. Upon your second year, you began taking courses that were personally attuned to your magical abilities. It guaranteed that mages stuck to their kin and tracts.

Thankfully, Paris and I were in completely different categories, on complete opposite ends of the scale. We spent our days in classes that were honed to our skills. It would help us work towards a profession, coming out of school advanced in their magical abilities. While he was in Magical Combat, Light Manipulation, and whatever morally radiant, goodness-and-friendship based courses he was taking, I was studying subjects that were...less preppy.

The teachers of these specialized, tract classes were called Beldames.  Each magical subgroup had professors  who were qualified to teach the advanced studies, being that classification of witch themselves. My courses, lucky me, were overseen by our Headmistress Rowena herself. She was one of the only two Dark Practitoning Witches in the academy. The second Dark Witch was Madame Grisbane; a teacher notorious for the black eyeliner that covered the entirety of her eyelid and the silver claw armor adoring her pointer finger. 

She was the Belldame of all the Dark Practitioning students of this academy, and personally reminded me of a hawk. Mother forbid she caught you outside your dorm past hours. She had no moral inhibitions regarding using her metal claws on you.

My tract courses shifted between the two. When I finished my core classes, I would spend my Shadow Ethics, Dark Energy Siphoning, and Shadow Manipulation, with Rowena.  Grisbane handled Demonology and Study of Shadow Beasts, Necromancy and Venom Crafting. Though I enjoyed the latter teacher's classes more, I feared her metal claw more than I feared Rowena's steely, intimidating gaze, so I preferred our Headmistress over my own Belldame. Grisbane had an affinity for the misery of children.

Four days after the Paris incident, Grisbane managed to make my exhausted, crabby state even more miserable. After a particularly contemptible Thursday, where my Toxicology project combusted in front of me and burned all of my notes, Grisbane made me clean her entire laboratory half an hour into dinner. 

She was in a raging fit from my poison malfunctioning, having burned through her cauldron, then straight through the lab table below. True, the poison hadn't turned out how It was intended, but I was sure that if any being drank the pure acid that I had created, they would most certainly drop dead. I failed to understand why she was in such a rage.

Scrubbing her miserable laboratory was absolutely disgusting, and my finger nails had all but chipped off, the skin on my fingertips peeling by the end of it. Throughout the entirety of the process I was cursing her with every hex and curse word In my extensive word bank. Once I was done,  I had to apply ointment to my rubbed-raw hands, the skin having boils from the overexposure to toxic chemicals and poisons. By the time the ointment had repaired the damaged skin, I only had a half an hour left for dinner. My day had gone miserably, and  Paris' violating stare was the bloody cherry on top.