I wrote this for a contest on "A Writer's Touch" (a small but fun website of young writers), and it actually won! Yea! Anyhow, that's how I got started on the short story bit, since I don't usually write anything shorter than... oh... thirty or forty chapters! :)

Enjoy! --Ruatha

Young Master Licadrien

Twenty-six year old Licadrien walked nervously around the narrow room. Again. Row upon row of long black tables and neatly tucked-in chairs stared back at him, as uncompromising as his graduate council had been two months earlier, before they had finally bestowed upon him his coveted degree. Their testing had been brutal and terrifying, but just at the moment, Licadrien wished he could be back there and gone from here. To be tested was frightening, but – much to his surprise – he found that being the tester was worse.

“You’re a full Arda’e Master now!” he reminded himself sharply. Then he returned to his nervous pacing. “Oh my God! Who am I kidding? What am I doing here?” He sunk down slowly into the Master’s chair – his chair! – and kneaded his forehead with his hands.

Eight years of primary education; six years at the Akademie; six more years as a Master-pupil, assisting various Masters and giving guest lectures and generally learning how to deal with students. And still he was scared thoughtless at what two hours from now would bring: his first real test as a full Master of the Akademie.

“Ok, Cadri,” he said, talking aloud again in an attempt at calming himself. “You can do this! It’s just a basic logic class for the first years. They’re only kids – thirteen, fourteen, maybe fifteen – more than ten years younger than you. And it’ll be their first class at the Akademie, so they’ll be just as terrified as you are.”

Why? You weren’t!

There were days when Licadrien despised his own discipline. A man’s own logic should not be allowed to suggest things that he found so despicably uncomfortable. And his other discipline, rhetoric, was no help at all – it merely gave him beautiful words with which to torture himself! Because it was true; he had not been afraid his first day at the Akademie. He had been over-excited and proud and tremendously confident. He had believed that just by being there, by having the highest Akademie entrance score in his entire year, he was better than everyone else. There was no need to fear, because with a little work and dedication, he would ace all his classes, just as he always had. There was no need for nervousness either, because one or the other of his buddies would be in each class he had, so he would not be alone.

Unlike now. You’re alone now!

Licadrien swore. “This isn’t helping,” he announced to the empty classroom. “I may as well go take a walk. Grab something to eat. Do something!” So he stood and stretched, watching idly as the metallic surface of his Master’s desk distorted his average-sized form with it’s average-looking features into something truly gruesome-looking. His thin, shoulder-length black hair became the mane on a big-eared demon; his dark eyes shown out from their pale surroundings with the glaring light of a dark-magic fire from a fantasy movie. The crystalline green of his Master’s robe turned putrid when reflected, and the mirrored reversal of the robe changed its familiar, innocent House symbols into what seemed the very blackest writings of Satan.

Monsters in the Master’s desk?

The thought made Licadrien chuckle – a laugh that somehow absorbed the nervousness the rest of his body was experiencing. He felt surreal. “That’s right,” he told his reflection. “There’s a monster in the Master’s desk, and it’s me! Snort! Growl! Roar!” He laughed again and made a face at the warped reflection, chuckling further as the expression played itself upon the dented surface and changed into a pair of mutilated images, split down the middle by the presence of his own stylus on the desk’s surface.

Feeling better now?

“Much better!” Cadri answered aloud. “Thanks for asking, Self!” Talking to himself in public was something he generally tried to avoid, on the theory that people might think he was a little bit crazy. But there was no one around, and wasn’t likely to be for over an hour or more, so he decided it was alright. Besides, it always made him feel better, knowing that even if no one else agreed with him, he at least agreed with himself!

And you’re the logic teacher?

“Damn me,” Licadrien growled, his nervousness returning in full force. The surrealism faded away as the tension returned. He pounded his desk angrily with his fist, just once, before folding himself on top of it with a sigh. The problem with being a logic and rhetoric Master was that you tended to argue both sides of any argument, even with yourself. Licadrien suspected this might be a useful life skill to have at some points, but sitting in your empty classroom two hours before your very first class was anything but the ideal time for it.

He threw off his original idea of going to grab some breakfast – since there was no way he could choke anything down now – and started fingering through the assigned textbook for his first year logic class. There was no point to the gesture: he already knew all the material in it, and even if he hadn’t, it was a bit late for last minute cramming. “You’ll do fine,” he whispered to himself, still flipping pages without really seeing them. “You know you will be. You never had any trouble when you were student teaching.”

Well, except for those twins, M’ravika and M’torika. Those two were trouble!

“Not helpful, Self!” He threw the book back down on the desk, then sighed loudly as it slid across the smooth surface and fell off the far side. “Definitely not helpful.” The twins had certainly been a problem: identical girls with similar names and class interests. And with similar inclinations towards mischief and disinclinations towards actual work. The attitude was common enough among the teens at the Akademie, and Licadrien thought he could have handled that on its own. But the twin factor had thrown him. Which was which? Who was who? Licadrien had no idea, even to this day. Their little game at switching seats and dressing identically hadn’t helped matters. It had finally grown to the point where Master Frenshelian, Licadrien’s mentor and the true Master of the class, had had to step in and sort things out. In six years of student teaching, it was Licadrien’s only truly major mistake; the only one he hadn’t managed to extract himself from on his own.

Well, there aren’t any twins in your classes this trimester, at least.

“True.” Logic wasn’t always against him, Licadrien reminded himself. He took a deep breath, trying to clear away the memory of those twins as well as that of Master Frenshelian’s expression when she had taken her star Master-pupil aside later that day. Frenshelian hadn’t been cruel or angry, or even particularly annoyed, but Licadrien still felt as if he had let the dear old woman down.

He had no intension of doing so again. Although she was no longer formally his mentor, Frenshelian had promised to drop by after Licadrien’s last class today and see how things had gone. “I can’t let her down,” Licadrien murmured. “Not after everything she’s done for me these last few years. It would be... wrong. I’ve got to get it right today and show her I can do it.” The thought of little old Master Frenshelian made him smile. She truly had taught him well, and Licadrien was perfectly aware that of the Master-pupils she’d trained recently, he was her favorite. How much of that high esteem was just a matter of well-matched personalities and how much was in judgment of his actual skill – or potential, perhaps – Licadrien didn’t know, but he did know that she wouldn’t have sent him off alone unless she had really thought him ready. Which meant he was.

His sense of logic had no arguments there, so Licadrien allowed himself a small smile and walked around the desk to pick up the fallen logic textbook. This time as he fingered through its well-read pages, he swore he could feel Frenshelian’s small hands over his. In his mind, he could still see her right hand lifting occasionally to underline a passage or highlight an important concept with a deft tab. Gently he set the book back on the desk, aware that he was not truly alone. All of his teachers were with him now, in a sense.

Just as you’ll be with all of your students, someday, if you can get up the guts to teach them!

“Point freely given, Self,” Licadrien acknowledged in the traditional method of a debater. He patted the ragged little logic book again, then stood up. Maybe he would grab a bite to eat after all. Being hungry throughout class wasn’t going to help him any, after all, and he could just hear Master Frenshelian scolding him for doing so. “Yes, food,” he decided. “The little café by the math department, I think. I could use a fresh bagel.” He left his papers on the desk – not even those horrible twins would have dared steal a Master’s things from his desk – and headed towards the classroom door.

The door creaked open before he made it halfway there, and a blonde little head peaked in. The boy gasped at the sight of Licadrien’s semi-formal robes. “M... Master?” he asked, his dark eyes widening.

Licadrien nodded, then smiled down at child – he was so small, he could hardly be anything but a first-year. “Master Licadrien,” he affirmed. “Are you lost?” He could take pity on that, having gotten confused several times his first trimester at the Akademie. “Where are you trying to get to?”

He took a step into the room. “L...Logic. First-year Logic, sir.”

Licadrien blinked, then swung around to look at the clock above his desk. Seventy-five minutes remained before the class started. “Well, you’re in the right place, but you must have gotten the times confused. We’ve over an hour before class starts.”

“I... I know,” the boy stammered shyly. “I just... I mean, I didn’t want to be late, Master! Or get lost.” Suddenly it was as if a drain had come unclogged, and all his words came tumbling out in a sudden rush. “You see, I only got here yesterday and these fourth-years who are friends of my friend’s brother told me and him – my friend, that is – that we’d better leave our dorm early on the first day, because almost everyone gets lost, and I didn’t want to be the last one here and have everyone make fun of me, because I’m already probably the youngest one here and they’ll probably already tease me! Sir.”

Licadrien managed to avoid grinning madly – barely – though he wondered to himself just how many words a minute the child could get out of his mouth if he was actually in a hurry. Instead, he fixed a friendly, understanding expression on his face, doing his best to mimic Master Frenshelian’s disarming welcome. “Well, there’s certainly no fear about that, lad. You’re here in plenty of time. Go throw your bag down on a seat somewhere – you’ve got the best pick in the house!”

The boy – he couldn’t have been more than thirteen, if he was worried about being the youngest in the class – relaxed and even smiled a little. “Thank you, sir.” He tossed his schoolbag on to the center of the second row table. “It... didn’t really take all that long to get here. I’m pretty good at following maps.”

“A useful skill to have,” Licadrien replied. “I’ve never been particularly gifted in the matter, myself. Unfortunately. I really did get lost on the way to one of my first day classes. And the second day as well, though to a different class.” It felt strange to admit it to a child he hardly knew, considering the amount of time he’d spent denying it to his peers over the past few years, but it also felt... right. Licadrien wondered if that ‘right-ness’ was what Frenshelian had meant when she’d told him that he’d understand what to say to his students when he had to say it. From the child’s answering grin, he suspected that whatever Frenshelian had meant, his answer had been the correct one. “What’s your name?” he asked the boy.

“Dani,” he answered. “R’danilo dasid Kheshalial, from Sudern. I’m in your class,” he added rather unnecessarily.

“Yes,” replied Licadrien, allowing a little of his amusement to show at his redundancy. “So you are. And, since this is your first class, welcome to the Akademie, Dani of Sudern.”

R’danilo had blushed slightly at the start of his comment, but had taken the little tease well. “Thank you, sir.”

Licadrien glanced back at the clock a second time. Seventy minutes left. He looked back at the boy. “Perhaps you’d best pull out that map of yours again. There’s no point in you being this early for every class, and I should be able to help you find anyplace you’re looking for. I’ve lived here for twelve years, after all.”

“Thank you, Master,” answered the young student. “I’d appreciate the help.”

As R’danilo began digging through his backpack for his campus map, Licadrien smiled. This was what being a Master really meant: helping little lost souls find their way, in any matter necessary. Master Frenshelian was right: once he stopped worrying and got into his work, he’d do fine. Being a Master was no different than being a student in that regard: as long as you put forth your best effort, you’d do well. There was nothing to worry about.

Of course not! I told you that!

Licadrien grinned. In the end, logic always proved right.