The Hunters of Sian

The Warning

He took a slow steadying breath. He could, no, would pass these exams.

And so would Jeremy.

Cadric sniggered.

'Look at all those fierce expressions. Adorable. Well. Study hard and know that wherever you go, whether it be taking a piss or stuffing your faces, us demons are always watching,' he grunted. He a sharp nod to the demoness instructor, Cadric turned and marched from the room, his heavy boots echoing on the stony steps as he retreated back in the stronghold's depths.

'Right. Now that we have wasted enough time explaining course work, let us begin today's lesson! Blasting sigils,' Arabella barked. The apprentices took out their chalk and dampened their cloths, readying for the lesson. Jeremy only caught Nell's eye once and both boys shared a sharp nod.

They were not going to be left behind.

Blasting sigils were far harder than anything the boys had performing so far. The burning sigil was the base as it was for all fire-based sigils. Six sets of lines were scrawled over the top. Anything short of perfect would cause the sigil to fail. It was the most advanced magic they had performed so far. For the first time since they had become a class, the nobles were not given a different sigil to practice though Nell noticed that neither Florian nor Marshall looked particularly surprised by the sigil. They had probably seen it before.

Jeremy was staring at the sigil like a startled rabbit. He had never been particularly good at fire-based magic. Nell slowly and painstakingly copied each stroke of the chalk. Arabella paced up and down, her hooves clacking behind them.

'Concentrate girl, fix the left curve, do you want to lose an eyebrow?' they heard her say. Nell placed his hand in the centre of his sigil and snapped his fingers. He wasn't overly surprised when nothing happened. He wiped the sigil away and started to sketch again.

There was a 'whomp' of sound across the room. Florian was standing over his sigil. Brilliant white-hot flames were licking up into a tower of heat. Florian's face was scrunched in concentration. In seconds the chalk had been eaten through and the tower or fire disappeared.

'Not bad but you should control how long the sigil remains,' Arabella instructed. Florian nodded, panting a little with exertion. No one else had much luck that lessons. Nell called the fire, felt the heat, smelt the burning smoke but could not get the sigil to burn. He had rubbed it out and redrawn the complicated sigil so many times that his uniform looked grey with chalk dust. Only Denzil got a spark, but his sigil was not good enough and spell fizzled out.

'That's enough. Clean up and move the desks,' Arabella ordered as the last of the sand tipped from the giant hourglass. Groaning, the apprentices got up and began to clean the chalk from their hands and uniforms. Jeremy was brooding. He hadn't even been able to connect with the fire sigil.

'We'll start water magic soon and Florian will be asking you for advice,' Nell promised. Jeremy gave a small snort and splashed him from the stone sink. He did smile a little though.

With Sallos' help, Nell actually got a smile from the demoness as she read over his assignment.

'Well, this is better than the mess you normally hand in, so I suppose I'm impressed,' she said before handing it back with only a few alterations. The errors had mostly been in the parts he had written before Sallos had stepped in. Linguistics was by far Nell's least favourite subject. It wasn't just the boredom of copying lines over and over but also the constant feelings of inadequacy. His reading was so poor that he struggled to keep up and hated having to read outload. Their demon mistress could be cruel and if she chose to, she could openly humiliate him in front of the entire class. This had only happened a few times but even thinking about it made him feel slightly sick.