"Basic Magic 102" by Joshua Price

The middle-aged woman sat at her desk, waiting for the new students to file in. She would have appeared perfectly normal if it were not for the sheathed sword at her belt; unless you were from a world where sword toting was popular. This wasn't anything unusual. After all, her colleague all had their own swords and so would her students in several years, possibly as few as eight. After all, she had only been seventeen when she got hers, though someone who graduated with her was only fifteen. That, she had to admit, was unusual. The youngest normally was sixteen.

The door opened and the students, almost all of them eight years old, entered the class room quietly. Discipline was one of the first lessons taught here and all the children picked it up quite well. The most chaotic moment was when they searched for a seat, since nobody has assigned a seat. There wasn't a need to. Sure, they would probably sit by their friends, but it was rare to have any problem students. After all, discipline was strong in them, which was totally necessary, because someday this class would join the ranks of the Phoenix Knights and be among the Dominion's finest warriors.

She got up from her desk and moved to the front of the room, checking the demographics of the class as she did. Like always, most of them were either human or tyreki, the latter appearing like hairless blueish-green skinned humans, their control over energy was rather famous. She also spotted a larger kid clad in green skin. Orcs weren't very common in a technologically advanced nation such as they were in now.

"Good morning, class," she said, "I am Mrs. Estella, your basic level magic teacher. This year you're going to be learning the basic of magic and how it works. You'll even learn to cast a few simple spells." With that the child inside each student revealed itself clearly, as it always did when their eyes lit up like that. "What do you think magic is? Anyone?"

"Magic is really powerful!" one child proclaimed.

"It's pretty," a girl said, somewhat dreamily.

"I heard it can blow up farts!" This sent some stifled giggles rippling through the class.

"Yes, all of those are right," Estella replied, "But why do you think we are learning magic?"

"To do really neat things!" was one declaration.

"To blow stuff up!" the same boy who mentioned farting called out.

"To beat up bad guys!" the orc exclaimed eagerly.

Estelle nodded at their responses before replying, "Close. Magic is a tool, which as Phoenix Knights we use to fight our enemies and to do our job. We use it to protect ourselves from enemies and also to beat technology."

A tyrekian boy in the back raised his hand. "Why do we wanna beat tech?"

"Well, most of the enemies you'll face will probably either use only magic or, more likely, technology," the teacher answered, "As Knights, we use both so we can beat both kinds of people."

"How does that work?" the same boy asked.

Mrs. Estella had to think for a moment before answering. "This is something you'll learn in this class later on and it may be hard to understand right now, but I'll try to explain. Magic and technology are two sides. They can work with each other, as we make them do, or against each other. Most people use only one or the other, not learning its opposite. So, when you fight them, using the opposite will often beat them."

"But how does the...um..," a girl started, pausing to remembering how to pronounce the longer word, "opposite always win?"

"Well, it doesn't," the teacher answered simply, "In these cases it does, but not always, especially when your opponent is familiar with both. The two forces are equal in terms of potential power. A magical sword will be able to fight a sword made of energy without damage to either one. A magical barrier and a shield belt made with technology will often block lasers and magic fire the same. But sometimes they won't damage each other as much as itself or the same side won't damage itself as much as the other."

"I don't understand," the orc said, scratching his head.

"Yeah, thats confusing," another student agreed.

"You'll learn a little about how magic works more in detail during this course, it'll make more sense then," Estella paused. "Though its deep inner workings aren't covered until a more advanced class, but it works under the same laws as everything else."

"How do we have magic," one of the tyrekian children asked, "thats not hard is it?"

"Yeah, where does it come from?" a boy asked.

"Yeah!" a third agreed.

She had to pause for a moment to come up with the easiest way to sum it up while keeping it understandable for the children, "Almost everyone is born with magical energy, but usually so little you can't tell they have it and they don't know either, nor do they know how to use it. Just like if you run a lot you can run farther, if you use this energy a lot you can use it more. It'll grow and you can do more things with it. You will be learning how to do this during most of this class, since the hardest part about learning magic is learning how to use it in the first place."

The child in the back raised his hand again. "If it so hard, why don't we just use technology only?"

"While technology is easier to use, each item usually has far more limited potential," the teacher replied without hesitation, ready for the question, "For example, with a gun, you can only shoot things. With a shield belt, you can only protect yourself. With magic, you can do both without a gun or a shield belt. You can also combine them. Most of the time, however, we Knights will be using magic as the gun and technology as the shield belt."

"Is there anything magic can't do?" the same boy asked.

"Yes, and it works both ways too. For example, nobody has figured out how to magically fly through space. On the other hand, nobody has figured out how to use technology to summon animals."

"Will we learn that!?" the girl in the front asked excitedly.

"No, unfortunately. At least, not as part of any class you'll take learning to become a Knight. But you always will have the chance in the future. Now, are you all ready for your first lesson?"

Enthusiastic nods swept the classroom.

"Good. Get out your books and turn to page eleven."