Scholarly Pursuits

The Choice


 * - By Fiha

Ismena looked up with idle contempt from her notes, a glance at the window told her “only one more hour…just one more”. All about her the other students scratched feverishly at their parchment, quills skittering across pages. The dull lamp over head had attracted its own solar system of very stupid moths.

Listless and bored, Ismena passed the hour flicking lazy bolts of shadow at the hapless creatures causing them to arc gracefully through the thick acrid smoke that billowed through the classroom. She watched them with tepid amusement as they sailed into ink pots, landed in hair and eye. A firm hand on her shoulder set her bones to chill.

“Ismena, there is a time and place for cruelty and it is not my classroom,” Murmured a voice close to her ear, it’s tone bent with smirk “unless of course it is of my own making, you will stay an hour longer today and I shall show you just how cruel the warlock can be.”