Night had fallen, and the abandoned school was filled with endless darkness, its corridors and rooms bathed in impenetrable shadow. In one of these, an ancient hall ringed with threadbare tapestries, a human crouched. His eyes were fixed on a group of strange creatures in the distance.

The tiny humanoids, broad and short-limbed, were jabbering at each other in low tones, pointing at a glowing orb that was floating serenely past. In their hands they held crude knives and clubs. The blue light of the orb distorted their features into fierce masks, sending a thrill of fear through their unseen watcher.

Leo wasn't about to run away, though. He had new spells burned into his soul, and he needed to learn to use them properly to survive in this strange place.

He took a deep breath, reviewing his newfound knowledge. Although that was difficult, in a way. Understanding the inner workings of his soul was like understanding how his heart beat, or how his stomach digested food.

That thought reminded him that he hadn't eaten in what felt like a full day. He'd drunk some of the water from the flasks he'd found in the backpack, but hadn't yet gotten up the nerve to try the leaf-wrapped rations, which were made of some thick, utterly dry substance and smelled like wood chips.

Shaking off the intestinal distraction, Leo considered what each class he could have chosen would have allowed him to do.

For a shadowmage, the darkness in the room presented an obvious avenue of attack, allowing him to coalesce a creature of living shadow that would wrap around the short humanoids, binding their limbs and choking them.

Attacking with crystalmancy would be even more straightforward. The creatures -- Leo wasn't sure whether to call them goblins, imps or maybe even dwarves -- had small lights hung around their necks. Even though he couldn't quite make out the form of these lights, he thought crystalmancy could probably cause them to burst into jagged-edged, shredding stars of light.

Either approach had a downside, though: Leo had no desire to kill or seriously injure unknown humanoids, who might or might not be hostile. Certainly, they must be at least somewhat intelligent, since they were using tools and communicating with each other.

Seriously, what were they? Given their general ugliness and small stature, he wanted to call them goblins. But they weren't green, and their bodies were too thick and stocky to fit with his mental image of a goblin. He decided to call them imps.

He took a deep breath, trying to control his racing mind. There was nothing for it but to start with his plan.

"Phantasm," he muttered, his eyes unfocusing as he pushed his palm out toward the group.

Roughly ten feet in front of him, a Labrador-sized creature materialized. It looked like the forbidden love child of a porcupine and a wolf, about half as tall as the imps, covered and spines and with a lolling, dripping maw full of needle-sharp teeth.

The creatures had their backs turned, and didn't notice the low growl that issued from the creature's mouth. With a look of growing strain contorting his face, Leo repeated his spell. "Phantasm." Another creature, identical to the first, shimmered into existence.

He panted out a breath when it was done, sagging to support himself with a hand on his knee. Then he straightened up, waving a hand and whispering. "Ready. Attack!"

The two creatures each let out a warbling, high-pitched howl. The imps jerked around, lifting their weapons and staring wildly into the darkness. A moment later, two bundles of jagged energy bounded into the light, each launching itself at an imp.

The jaws snapped shut, one grabbing onto an imp's raised forearm, the other grabbing a thigh. The caught imps screamed, trying to pull back, but the creatures tenaciously hung on, even as the other imps reacted by bashing and stabbing at them.

Maintaining and directing the illusion required concentration. But even as focused as he was, part of Leo couldn't help but marvel at how complete the conjuration was. Illusion magic was more than just smoke and mirrors. It affected the victim's mind. The caught imps seemed to feel real pain. And while the blows raining down on the illusory creatures weren't making contact, or were even passing through and hitting the imps, they were too panicked to notice.

But the spell had a limited duration. He needed to move on to the next part of his plan: testing another spell. He moved forward, coming into the light. The imps were too distracted to notice as he chanted.

"Dread Aspect."

Then, because the imps were still distracted, he shouted to get their attention. "Hey! Assholes!"

The first imp to see him screamed. It was a shrill sound, even louder than the snarling and yelling of the ongoing fight. The other imps jerked their heads around.

It was chaos. All five imps attempted to run simultaneously in different directions, bumping into each other and staggering about in an effort to get away. One fell to its hands and knees and, rather than getting up, began to crawl and scoot as fast as possible to get away from Leo. After a moment four of the imps managed to coordinate enough to dash toward the nearest hall, which the orb had floated down. The last imp dashed off into the dark, his screams of terror receding down a different hall.

Leo stood staring, slack-jawed. His illusory creations had been forgotten in the mix-up and now stood without moving. By happenstance, one was facing in the direction the imps had run, its slack-jawed look miming Leo's own amazement.

After a long moment, Leo snickered, then began to laugh, sounding slightly unhinged. He shook his head, not noticing as the Phantasm spells ended and the odd porcupine wolves shimmered out of existence.

"Well, that was effective."

He looked around. Several items lay scattered on the ground where the imps had dropped them, but it was dark again, the only illumination coming from an adjoining chamber that had a working light orb in it. He sighed at the thought of having to feel around to identify and collect the objects, or do anything other than lie down. Magic wasn't tiring, exactly, but it left him feeling strangely tired and cold. Maybe he just didn't have enough mana to power more than a few spells.

But there was a chance that the imps had dropped something useful, and another chance that some other monster or creature had heard the noise and would come to investigate. He had to move, so he did.

Groping around, he found a knife by its foot long blade, which didn't cut him because it was quite dull. His other hand snagged against some cloth, which proved to be a bag with some unknown items in it.

He settled for those two things, gripping one in each hand as he rose and looked around. His guide orb had disappeared down the hall the imps had fled down, but he wasn't worried about running into them again. Without any better option, he set off down that hallway, the knife extended in front of him and the hand holding the bag trailing along the wall to keep his balance.

He couldn't see much, so a significant amount of time passed as he slowly made his way along, his fears of what might be lurking in the dark growing with each step. What if one of those worms--

A light grew ahead, and he could suddenly make out his surroundings again. There was a closed door straight ahead, where the hall took a turn to the right. The light coming from around the corner, steadily brightening, was blue. His guide orb. With more confident steps, he made his way toward it.

He turned the corner, locking his eyes on the orb of light twenty feet away and starting toward it.

Which blinded him for a moment to the fact that the orb was not quite his orb of light, and that behind it, there was a group of three people staring at him.

Everyone froze for a long moment. There were two men and a women, all part of the group that had been in Leo's summoning chamber, wearing their heavy robes. One was a young man with blond hair and a scruffy beard. A girl stood beside him, long brown hair tied up in a braid that was draped over her shoulder, with an oval, alert face and a short spear in her hand. Slightly behind the two was a tall, broad-shouldered man with a crew cut and a harshly planed face, also holding a spear. He reminded Leo of a Marine, in part because he was giving a very stern look that might even be called an scowl.

"You!" said the large man, in an angry voice. He reached to brush the younger man aside, starting toward Leo.

Leo stayed still for a moment, his brain kicking into a full fight or flight response as it searched for his to respond. How he arrived at his new spell as the proper permutation of 'fight' was uncertain, but it was likely that some memory of its recent use played into it.

"Dread Aspect!"

The imps had run like hell. That was close to, but not quite, how the humans reacted. The large man uttered an oath, leaping back and reaching for the spear strapped to his back. Beside him, the slimmer, younger man rapidly backed away, half turned as if to run but still staring wide-eyed at Leo.

The girl, on the other hand, stood as if rooted, a look of utter terror seizing her features. But another part of her had a different response. Her free hand whipped upward, open-palm toward Leo. "Firebolt!"

Leo's own reflexes were pretty good; he managed to half-dodge the shaft of bright flame that materialized in front of he girl's hand and shot toward him. The bolt still skimmed along his chest and shoulder, there and gone in a flash, but seeming to carry the heat of the sun itself with it.

-

Getting a severe burn really hurts. But that's not the only reason to avoid being burned. There are, in fact, other bad things that go along with having part of your skin literally cooked.

Like the fumes. In an instant, Leo's stolen shirt caught fire, and as he breathed in to scream, he sucked in a mouthful of smoke and superheated air from the Firebolt's pasing. That instantly set him to coughing.

He didn't stop, drop and roll. In fact, he probably did more damage to his charred skin by reflexively clawing at his chest, trying to get the burning cloth away as he hacked and wheezed.

There was one positive effect to the very sudden, unfortunate event of being set aflame, though. That was completely losing control of his Dread Aspect spell, which caused him to suddenly reappear to the three other humans as a young man in rather desperate straits.

The large man cast down his spear with a clatter, rushing forward. He grabbed the hem of his robe, jerking the heavy garment up and around his body. With his other hand, he knocked Leo's hands aside, using the robe to smother the flames.

Leo had never experienced much pain. His friend had punched him, once, during a particularly stupid fight. He'd had a mole removed without enough anaesthetic. He'd broken his wrist once, which hadn't hurt as much as he expected. He had, of course, given himself minor burns while cooking, like most people have. Small things.

He still wasn't fully feeling the burn as he looked down at his chest, after the large man stopped patting the flames out with his robe. But from the look of what was there -- charred cloth, blackened flesh around edges, dark red and already weeping fluid in the middle -- he knew this was going to be bad. Really bad. That was just based on looks; the smell was a separate issue, even more upsetting that the appearance of the burn, in its own way.

After a few moments, the screaming of his remaining nerves began to reach his brain. The fact that he was still coughing, making his chest tense up, only made it that much worse.

For some reason, his teeth began chattering. A strange whine issued from his throat. The world swam around him.

The large man managed to get Leo's arm over his own shoulders before Leo fell down. Maybe he was about to pass out, or maybe he just wanted to lie down and writhe around in pain. He wasn't sure, since all capacity for thought was being driven out of his mind by the growing faultline in his chest. He couldn't feel anything at all in the center of the burn, but the edges felt like they were being held over an open fire.

"Janso, get over here and help me," snapped the large man. His younger cohort scurried over, taking Leo's other hand and looping it over his shoulders.

His vision misty with pain, Leo stared straight ahead as they helped him along, fixing his eyes on the mana orb controlled by the large man. Both its shape and color, he realized, were slightly different from the orb he'd been following.

And just once, as they turned a corner, he thought he saw his orb. The blue guiding light that had led him so far. Where else would it have taken him? But now... he'd been captured.