"The torch invocation is one of the simplest spells, and one that you should already know by now. It is comparable to the light-emitting shaping exercise that you should also know by now."
Ilsa then launched into an explanation about the relative advantages and disadvantages of the torch spell compared to the shaping exercise, and how it related to structured vs. unstructured magic in general. For the most part, it was nothing that Zorian hadn’t known from books and lectures already, and Zorian amused himself by drawing various magical creatures in the margins of his notebook while she talked. From the corner of his eye he could see Akoja and a number of other people furiously writing everything down, even though this was just a review session and they almost certainly had all of this already written in their last year’s notebooks. He didn’t know whether to be impressed with their dedication or disgusted by their single-mindedness. He did notice, however, that some of the students had animated their pens to copy down the entire lecture while they listened. Zorian personally preferred to write notes himself, but he could see how such a spell would be useful, so he quickly jotted down a reminder to find the spell they used to do that.
Ilsa then began discussing dispelling – another topic they had covered exhaustively during the previous year, and also one of the key areas they had to be proficient in to pass the certification process. To be fair, it was a complex and vital topic. There is no one-size-fits-all solution to effectively dispelling a structured spell, and without knowing how to dispel your own spells, experimenting with structured magic could be disastrous. Still, one would think the academy would assume they knew it by now and move on.
Somewhere along the line Ilsa decided to spice up her explanation with examples and performed some kind of summoning spell that resulted in several stacks of ceramic bowls popping into existence on her table. She told Akoja to distribute the bowls to everyone, and then had them use the levitate object spell to make the bowls hover over their tables. Compared to levitating that little girl’s bicycle out of the river, this was insultingly easy.
"I see you’ve all managed to levitate your bowls," Ilsa said. "Very good. Now I want you to cast the de-illuminator spell on it."
Zorian raised his eyebrows at this. What would that achieve?
"Go on," Ilsa urged. "Don’t tell me you have already forgotten how to cast it?"
Zorian quickly made a couple of gestures and whispered a short chant while concentrating on the bowl. The item in question wobbled for a second before finally dropping out of the air like any normal heavier-than-air item. A plethora of clattering sounds informed him that this wasn’t an isolated occurrence. He glanced towards Ilsa for an explanation.
"As you can see, the levitate object spell can be dispelled by the de-illuminator spell. An interesting development, don’t you agree? What does a spell designed to snuff out sources of magical light have to do with hovering objects? The truth, my young students, is that de-illuminator is simply a specialized form of a general-purpose disruptor spell, which breaks down the structure of a spell in order to make it go away. While not designed with levitate object in mind, it is still capable of affecting it if you supply it with enough power."
"Why didn’t you tell us to just dispel it normally, then?" one of the girls asked.
"A topic for another time," Ilsa said without missing a beat. "For now, I want you to take notice of what happened when you dispelled the spell on the bowl – it dropped like a rock, and if it had not been magically strengthened, it would have probably shattered upon impacting the table. This is the main problem inherent in all disruptor spells. Disruptor spells are the simplest form of dispelling, and virtually every spell can be disrupted if you put enough power into the disruptor, but sometimes disrupting the spell can have worse consequences than letting it run its course. This is especially true for higher-order spells, which almost always react explosively to disruption because of the vast amount of mana that goes into their casting. Not to mention that enough power can be far more than any mage can provide. Place your bowls on the table and put a few torn pages from your notebook into it."
Zorian was somewhat surprised by Ilsa’s sudden request, but did as she said. He always found tearing paper to be somewhat cathartic, so he filled the bowl with a bit more paper than necessary, and then waited for further instructions.
"I want you all to cast the ignite spell on the paper, followed immediately by the de-illuminator on the resulting fire to dispel it," Ilsa said.
Zorian sighed. This time he had caught on to what she was doing, and knew the flames would not be dispelled by the de-illuminator, but he did as she said anyway. The flames didn’t even flicker, and the fire died out on its own when it ran out of fuel.
"I see all of you can cast the ignite spell perfectly," Ilsa said. "I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised – heating things is something that is very easy to do with magic. That and explosions. None of you managed to dispel the flames, though. Why do you suppose that is?"
Zorian snorted, listening to several other students trying to guess the answer. Guess being the operative word, because they seemed to be throwing random answers around in hopes of making something stick. Normally he never volunteered for anything in class – he disliked the attention – but he was getting tired of the guessing game and Ilsa didn’t seem willing to supply the answer herself until someone figured it out.
"Because there’s nothing to dispel," he called out. "It’s just a regular fire, started by magic but not fueled by it."
"Correct," Ilsa said. "This is another weakness of disruptor spells. They break down mana constructs, but any fundamentally non-magical effects caused by the spell are unaffected. With that in mind, let us return to our immediate problem…"
Two hours later, Zorian filed out of the classroom with his fellow classmates, actually a bit disappointed. He learned precious little during the lecture, and Ilsa said she would spend an entire month rounding out their basics before moving on to more advanced stuff. Then she gave them an essay on the topic of dispelling. It was shaping up to be a relatively boring class, since Zorian had a pretty good grasp of the basics, and they had essential invocations five times a week – that is to say, every day. Joy.
The rest of the day was uneventful, since the remaining four classes were purely introductory, outlining what material would be covered for each class and other such details. Essential alchemy and operation of magical items looked promising, but the other two classes were just more of the same thing they’d had for the past two years. Zorian wasn’t sure why the academy felt that they needed to continue learning about the history of magic and magical law into the third year of their education, unless they were deliberately trying to annoy everyone. This was especially true because their history teacher, an old man by the name of Zenomir Olgai, was very enthusiastic about his subject and gave them an assignment to read a 200-page history book by the end of the week.
It was a poor way to start the week in Zorian’s opinion.