Alexis: Page 3

One month later

"Hey, Lucas?"

"Sup?"

"I was wondering if you wanted to go on a date sometime, just the two of us. After graduation, of course."

"Yeah, I'd love that."

"Great. Now let's finish the assignment."

In the past month, Lexi had come out to everyone, to fairly underwhelming reactions, we had told everyone we were dating, to fairly underwhelming reactions, and we had finished the potions section, moving on to enchantment before finals.

"Easy for you to say, you're good at enchantment. My spells don't seem to stick."

I crumpled my paper, tossing it, like the 7 before it, into the small trash can in my room. It was a week till graduation, and I was getting hung up on the least popular magic.

I gave a sideways glance to the paper under her hands. On it was twelve perfectly drawn symbols, each holding a different spell with perfect stability.

I picked up the pencil, redrawing the shape.

"You're doing good, Lucas, now just put the spell into it."

I thought of one of the few spells Samara had taught me, Arouse.

Arouse

The symbol began to glow pink.

"Yes! I did it!"

But you know what they say, pride cometh before the fall. The symbol's glow brightened, flickered, and finally went out.

"Mother fucker!"

I tossed my book at the wall in frustration.

"Well, that was unfortunate."

"You don't say."

" Sigh Maybe we should use Tormani's book."

"Oh, but using it for potions was cheating?"

"That's different, you were using it to be lazy. But I don't know if you have any other choices here."

I sighed, extending my hand towards my bed. The book flew into my hand opened to the page I needed. Magic is great.

I quickly read the page over, until I found a section relevant to me.

"Lexi, looks, right here. It says that mages struggling with standard enchantments should practice with stabilized enchantment."

"Ok, what's that?"

I drew a square around the symbol, then rotated the page 45 degrees and added another square, creating a sort of star shape around it.

I drew a deep breath and very carefully thought of a spell, Animate.

Animate

A yellow glow illuminated the symbol, but not the squares.

"Activate."

Suddenly, the paper lifted into the air, floating around the room before settling back onto the desk.

"See Lucas, I told you it would work. Now just do that 11 more times."

"Ugh!"