Finals week

Waking up in a cold sweat, David was not surprised that once again when trying to sleep he had nightmares. The past several weeks, he had been plagued by them. Looking out his window, he thought he saw one of them still grazing about in the front yard. The pesky horses known to cause bad dreams seemed to have migrated into the general area of his bedroom. Most likely they grazed outside his window at night.

Getting up in an attempt to get ready for his tedious day, David was unsure what he would make of his situation. It was the last day of his wizardry exams. He had studied several of the classes' materials in depth, but on other things he just hadn't had time. Of course, the big problems were the papers. Two of his courses required lengthy papers, which had to be written via spell but contain original content. One of them wasn't so bad, the review on the effects of various arcane forces on several spells designed specifically for the purpose of artistic expression and entertainment. He had, naturally, finished that paper, but the other paper he was only halfway finished writing.

Looking over his parchment, he saw several areas where we was sufficiently devoid of content. He had to teleport to his class right away to turn in the finished essay. In several minutes, his spell was completed, and he found himself being pulled along through non-space by arcane forces at an incredible clip. Only wizards and a few sorcerers could travel by teleportation though, in truth many people had purchased trinkets from a number of high-class wizards that allowed them to teleport at will. Technically speaking, it only seemed like teleportation to the observer, but the actual art of teleportation spells were difficult to manage. They threw the teleporting person out on the other side with terrible accuracy. If the person doing an actual teleportation spell wasn't careful, they could find themselves in some very undesirable places, but that was not important for David to think upon.

The other paper was important, so while he was being rushed onward by the arcane, he brooded upon his other paper. This paper, which accounted for a huge portion of his final grade for that class, was supposed to be a list of somatic components, spell components (with price), verbal components, and description of effect for a new spell. That's right, the final for the class was to essentially design a new spell which could be castable (even if it wasn't possible with the current known elements). He didn't have to prove that it could be cast, and the ingredients could be as exotic or common as he chose. The somatic and verbal components could be as lengthy or as short as necessary too. The point was that there should be a desirable effect, and in magical theory it should work. Undoubtedly this was the most complex assignment he had ever faced, with the exception of the curses class he took the previous semester.

Thinking back on the curses class made him sick. He had passed it, somehow. He wasn't really sure what it was that had led to his passing the class, considering how poorly he performed in class. His curses class had been a headache. It had also been boils, warts, loss of hair, accelerated tooth decay, blindness, and at one point a coma. Seriously, he was almost positive that he was going to fail the class. The teacher had thought that the best way to learn how to cast the curse was to see them while being cast, and to experience the effects firsthand. Every student in the class had been horribly violated by the witch who was teaching. The first week seemed fine, but that was only the intro to the class, where she spoke about the theory behind curses. David supposed that if the entire class had been like that, he would have handled it just fine. Instead, the very next week she cast blindness and deafness on the class, with a verbal component on blindness and a somatic component on deafness that each made them expire by the next class period. The horror of it all was enough to start mumbling amongst the students. Then came the hair loss, then boils, then warts... these led to several students dropping out of the class, in hopes that when they took it the following semester, they could sign up for the class with the other professor (which supposedly was a delightful time). When the class content began to favor tooth decay and coma, one student was so horrified that he left the class immediately, and never returned. Word of the horrors of this class eventually reached the ears of the dean, and he instructed the professor that she needed to avoid casting such serious curses on the students for the sake of their learning. She ended up not teaching the paralysis curse and the torture curse on the students, but she still required that they all knew how to perform them.

Ultimately, the students that survived the course came away scarred, but with good grades. The students supposed that she might have been forced to change her grades, or lose her job. Regardless of why she gave passing grades, the students didn't complain. Better to pass alive, than have to take the class again.