CASS
“Two more attacks. Two more wrongful imprisonments. Towns falling under martial law, military presence on the rise in every major U.S. city and a good deal of Europe as well.” I pace in front of the room, looking at each of my students—my responsibilities—in turn. “The news is becoming more grim by the day. I don’t tell you this to frighten you, but to inspire you.”
Twenty-one faces stare back at me, including my bonded brother and another who’s come to mean more than just a responsibility to me.
Stevie raises her hand, and I fake a cough to hide my smile.
Never a dull moment with this one.
“Yes, Miss Milan?”
“I was just thinking… I mean, you’re the professor. But as far as inspirational pep talks go, maybe we could focus on something a little more… I don’t know. Inspiring?”
“I was getting to that.”
“Oh! Good. Carry on.”
“May I?”
She gives me two thumbs up, flashing her heart-stopping smile.
“Mental shielding magick may seem complicated,” I continue, practicing a bit of my own, lest I be sucked into another one of those visions of her by the lake. “But it’s actually quite simple, and fairly easy to practice. I want each of you to become adept at these techniques, and to feel confident in your abilities. The more confident you are in the face of danger, the less likely you’ll be to suffer an attack of this nature.”
I cross to the other side of the room, deftly avoiding Stevie’s gaze.
“Fear is a powerful weapon. All it takes is a single doubt, a single crack in your armor, and the enemy will find it and exploit it to the fullest extent. But here’s something the enemy doesn’t want you to know—fear itself isn’t real. Danger may be real, but fear is just an emotional response to that perceived danger. First, there’s a stimulus—say, a lion prowling around your cave. Then your brain forms a thought about that stimulus—lion wants to eat me! Danger, Danger!”
Some of the students chuckle.
“From that thought, your emotions respond accordingly—danger! I feel fear!—and then you have another thought about what to do—run? Fight? Then your brain tells whichever parts of your body are involved to get moving—feet, make haste! Or hands, pick up that shotgun! It’s a long chain of events, but the part we want to focus on is that initial thought formation after the stimulus. We’re going to learn how to essentially hack our brains—hijack those thoughts before they have a chance to produce the fear response, or to linger there too long. The key to all this starts with presence and awareness, and that’s what we’re going to practice today.”
I pair them off, giving them a series of exercises to test each other’s awareness. In the face of everything Kirin and Stevie have postulated so far, it feels futile. Though they’ve made progress on her mother’s prophecies, and the Dark Magician legends, we still have no way of knowing who the Magician is, what form his or her rise will take, when it will happen, and what—if anything—we can do to prepare.
I rub my eyes and take a deep breath, trying not to let my own fear consume me.
This is a good start, I tell myself. And start we must.
By the end of the class, I’m fairly confident at least half of them would survive a lion attack, and possibly even a dark mage possession, which at this point is the more pressing danger.
The chime announces the end of class, and I assign them two pieces of homework—one, practice their presence and awareness exercises with their roommates. And two, stay safe and alert, especially at night.
Then I send them on their way.
Not sure I’ll ever get used to that—the emptiness that creeps in next. The fear—one that no amount of presence and awareness has ever allayed.
When they’re here in my classroom, safely ensconced inside these four walls, I can protect them. Even Baz.
Shaking off the old ghosts, I glance down at my desk, trying to get things in order for my next class.
But it seems not all the students have left.
A shadow falls over my desk, and I look up to see her.
“I need to speak with you, Doc,” Stevie says, and my heart melts a little bit.
I love when she calls me that, but still, professional boundaries and all. I turn my attention back to my paperwork, shuffling and reshuffling. “Stevie, you know the rules.”
Ignoring me, she blurts out, “What’s going on with Kirin?”
