Ah, intro incantations. The bread and butter of learning some goddamn spells already that you don't have to hunt for between poems or cross your fingers you'll get good ones from the void. Standard, universal English incantations with a grounding in how they work, why they're better than other versions that used to predominate, how they get embedded into artifice and potions, what the difference is between incanting and telling a spellbook it's very lovely.
Annisa is in a good mood. The English Romantic poets continue to be idiots who are wrong about everything but they can't possibly ruin a delightful morning spent in the shop doing the thing she has been rehearsing relentlessly for the last several years. .... unfortunately between being in a good mood and having tried to escape English romantic poetry as soon as possible, she's the second kid into this classroom, and the other one is bad news. Just very evidently bad news. Annisa's not even sure if it's maleficer vibes or something else about her that just trips all your stay-away radar instantly.
Well.
She'll just turn around and leave the classroom and come back in five minutes.
For some reason, the school put her with the same creepy maleficer girl that was in her History of Maleficing class. Maybe it's trying to tell her to keep an eye on her, or something?
...Still, that doesn't mean sitting next to her is a good idea. She looks around the rest of the room. Creepy maleficer girl, unsuspicious girl who apparently thinks it's a good idea to just sit down right next to a creepy maleficer, assorted unsuspicious-looking people. She checks one of the desks that's not near the maleficer for mals, sits down, and starts reading through the textbook.
Introduction: What is an Incantation?
An incantation refers to the use of specific words, phrases, or other sounds to produce a magical effect. Incantations, along with artifice and alchemy, compose the three primary divisions of magic. However, in most cases, incantations form one element of artifice or alchemical concoctions. Therefore, the study of incantations serves as the foundation for all magical study.
Literally everyone knows this. Why can't the textbook just get to the part where it teaches you spells rather than talking for an entire chapter about obvious things that literally everyone knows?
You know what this class needs? Another creepy maleficer. Good news, it has one. This one is paler and smiles more.
Now, does she want to sit next to Ms. Worse Aura Than Literally Anyone In Pisa, who might be rotten by spring but is an unsolved puzzle, or someone else, or in clear space?
The puzzle is not worth risking her life, so she takes a seat next to... mentally flips a coin... Briar. Who is this girl, is she interesting?
"Hello, I'm Teresa Calloconti. Pisa, languages track."
Lissa smiles at El as she sits down, looking around as everyone else filters in, which does make her textbook appear at some point. She flips it open, nodding a bit at the beginning introduction. Even without any background, it seems to follow pretty logically. Though some of the information about exactly what kinds of words or sounds count seems useful.
Why is everyone in this school a creepy maleficer??
Actually, this girl might not be; she's not nearly as creepy, and she's got a power-sharer, so maybe she's just the ordinary kind of creepy. Still, her aura feels really off.
"Briar. Portland, creative writing." She hesitates for a moment. "Pure mana." Hopefully if this girl isn't a creepy maleficer she won't take offense to that.
Pen sits in the back of the room, because that seems like the least inconvenient place if you're obviously not going to successfully talk to anybody anyway. She opens the textbook and starts reading. Maybe if she learns enough she won't die even though she's apparently totally mute.
"Is that in America? I'm from Üröm, a town near Budapest."
She looks over Briar at Teresa, notices her nails. Teresa is looking at someone on the other side of the room, so Ellen puts the question to Briar:
“Is she a maleficer? I’ve heard they have black nails and a weird aura. I have never seen one, at least that I know of.”
Briar nods. "Yeah, on the West Coast."
She lowers her voice a little, although not nearly enough that it would actually be difficult for Teresa to hear. "And -- I'm not sure. She has the aura, but she also has a power sharer? So maybe she's just creepy? But it's kind of a lot to be a coincidence."
"My friend Mari is in an enclave and I've visited it, but we didn't talk about that sort of thing. If it gives an enclave a big advantage, can't they have malificers and not tell anyone? It's not as if anyone can just walk in and look to see if there are any; they have guards. They only let me in because I was with Mari. It sounds like an unstable equilbrium."
"I think it's mostly a problem if people are doing it in the Scholomance, not outside? A problem for the other enclaves, I mean. Obviously it's still bad if people are maleficing outside."
She follows Ellen's gaze. "Yeah, she's in one of my other classes -- clean fingers, but that's not the only tell, and she's barely even trying to hide it. And I didn't think there were that many, but I ran into another one at orientation, and then Shanghai also adopted one..."
Ellen gives up on getting any information out of El, beyond the fact that she isn't a maleficer — at least says she isn't — goes back to her seat, picks up the textbook. After she has read the first few pages she puts it down again, turns to Blair.
"This book is written to teach incanting to small children who don't know anything. The girl you thought was a malificer says she isn't. How can you tell?"
"I don't really know her, but I think she snaps at a lot of people. My enclave is Pisa, yes, it's an old Italian city. We're the exception to the rule. It's been centuries that we've all been maleficers, and we haven't ever started a war or let anyone go rogue attacking a rival. And in the Scholomance, we haven't been perfect, but we police ourselves. First sign of ripping malia from a human and all the cousins come down on them, lethally. And we're useful trade partners, so Europe has agreed that we're not a problem."
"Thank you. That explains a lot."
"She thought you might be able to tell me how to tell which people with auras were maleficers and which were not. If people who aren't get mad at you when you ask them, it would be very useful. If it's a spell, I have lots of spells, mostly for fire, so I could trade you one."
Apparently there are enclaver maleficers? And the other enclaves just let them? If she were in charge of an enclave, she wouldn't just let people go around being evil just because it was "useful."
Besides, she's not sure why anyone would trust a self-admitted maleficer about whether El was or not. El is obviously a maleficer, so probably Pisa is just lying.
A moment later she realizes that Ellen asked her a question, but now she's talking to the maleficer enclaver. She's going to wait a little and see if there's a gap in the conversation.
Waiting for an answer, Ellen is considering the problem of sources; it was easier at home, because Anya always told her the truth and Apa either told her the truth or didn't answer. Briar has told her one thing that wasn't true and another that probably wasn't, at least two other people said so. And her level of confidence about who was a malificer was backwards, more confident on less evidence. She is probably one of the people Apa had told Ellen about who were not careful about what they believed.
After class she can ask Mari about malificers and enclaves and Pisa and auras, but until then she should discount things Briar tells her.
"It's not for sale, sorry. We have trade secrets that keep us from going hollow and insane like rogues, and it is too likely to help someone else learn them. Bad news for us, obviously, but not just that. If every maleficer could work without restraint, that would be bad for the world, too."
"Thank you. That makes sense. I guess it's black nails or don't know."
Ellen picks up her textbook again, looks through it to see if it says anything she doesn't already know or anything that she knows isn't true. The list of verse forms for spells is missing lots of them but it doesn't actually say it's a complete list, and there probably isn't one. She doesn't think kennings would work for spells in any of her languages, but if she can find a textbook on Old Norse in the library ... or maybe the void would give her one. She already has two Germanic languages, a third shouldn't be that hard. Something something Surt's wound snake ...
She puts down the textbook, starts trying to compose a spell that she is pretty sure won't work in any of the languages she speaks.