“Incorrect!” the professor yelled. Carving into the desk again, apparently not feeling any of the flames, he traced out yet another rune even faster than the first time. He slapped his hand onto the desk, infusing his mana again almost instantly. The entire desk suddenly turned black, glowing with lines of angry red like a burning piece of charcoal. It started hissing and giving off a dark, acrid smoke as it burned. Codrin caught most of the smoke and fell into a coughing fit.

“Only one for two Caffaret, I’m not impressed. Last question!” Professor Aldric carved yet another rune formation into the ruined wood, this one much more complicated. “What happens when you take an igni rune, surround it with a tera rune to remove impurities, and add a venti wind rune to increase air flow?”

“Aldric, stop!” the woman cried out again, now sounding more frightened than angry. She looked ready to cast a spell, but hesitated as she took in how close the other students were to her.

Codrin just gaped at the professor, unbridled fear plain as day on his face. Everyone else in the class stared in fascination and horror at the spectacle before them. When it was obvious Codrin wouldn’t answer, Professor Aldric gave him a grim smile.

“Incorrect!”

“Aldri—!”

An intense white light dominated Nadrina’s world. It was so bright and overwhelming that it forced her to screw her eyes shut in pain. She could hear yelling from several people, chief among them Codrin. The light show continued for only a few seconds before it suddenly winked out, gone as if never there.

Blinking away stars from her vision, Nadrina slowly refocused on the scene in front of her. She fully expected to find a horror show. Instead, she saw the professor and Codrin standing rather awkwardly next to each other, Codrin’s shirt collar still gripped in the professor’s hands. Codrin had a rather wild-eyed look on his face, but other than that looked completely unharmed.

The desk and chair Codrin had been occupying were gone. Not even just burned to ash, but completely gone. The only evidence that anything had happened was the professor’s talisman still laying on the ground, only now it looked to be white hot and glowing. It sizzled angrily against the cold stone floor, its glow slowly dying out into nothing once more.

The entire classroom was horribly silent. Even the other professor was speechless. Professor Aldric was the one who finally broke it.

“Do you know what the scariest thing in this world is?” he asked Codrin. Contrary to his fiery performance earlier, he was deathly quiet and absent of all emotion. His light grey eyes shone with an intensity that screamed danger, and his voice was all the more intimidating for its lack of volume.