The First Story of The Wizards' School

 
 








       “Class!  Come to order!”  The head wizard was draped in what seemed to 
be a dead leopard, but he nonetheless commanded great respect and authority 
(from someone, somewhere, or so he thought).  “Now, today is the day you all 
look forward to, that special time of year when the Witches’ First Coven joins 
us in our studies of magic.”

     The room went dead quiet.  Somewhere in the building, somebody set 
themselves on fire, but the silence drowned out his screams.

     One little boy in the back of the room spoke up.  “I heard they do things 
with frogs!”

     “Ewww!” chorused the boys.

     “Oh, shut up children.  I don’t know what they do with anything, but I do 
know that we do things with frogs.  Why can’t they?”

     “Ummm...because they’re girls?”

     One older (by about 80 years) boy mumbled, “Are they?  How come I wasn’t 
told?”

     The wizard looked down at him. “Spreck, have you been talking to the 
Chrono Lords again?  You seem a lot older than when I last saw you.  In fact, 
I’d say you were 87 years old.”

     Spreck looked around.  “What, what?  Mold?  No, I dry my clothes, madam, 
thank you very much.  But I would like another set of legs; these are 
brittle.”

     “Yes, yes.  Whatever.  Anyway, where were we?  Ah, yes.  The Witches will 
be here any moment, so be prepared.”

     “Do they really fly on --broomsticks--?”

     “Do you mess with the fabric of the space-time continuum?”

     “Well, yeah, but...”

     “Of course they don’t ride broomsticks.  They’re too drafty.  They use a 
lesser form of Teleport called Minor Gate.”

     “What do you mean, Minor Gate?”

     “A Minor Gate opens a small hole between two edges of the compressed 
fabric of the Random Infinity.”

     “So what’s a Major Gate, then?”

     “A hole in Infinity.”

     The students stared blankly at him.

     “Okay,” he explained, “imagine having two picture frames with some fabric 
loosely bound into each one.  The frames are then placed about an inch apart.  
Now, a Minor Gate causes the two pieces of fabric to be pushed together, 
meeting in halfway between the two frames.  Where they touch a hole is opened 
and a small group can pass through.”

     He brought out two frames to demonstrate.

     “A Teleportation requires the second fabric to pass through the first, the 
first to become a liquid, and the person to be slingshotted by the force of the 
second fabric snapping back into place as though the first fabric didn’t 
exist.  This requires a good deal of magic, mostly of the Air.  A Major Gate, 
however requires even more magic, and can cause horrible things to happen 
whereever they are made.  To create a Major Gate you would take a sort of 
magical knife and slice through this reality and into the next one, like 
this.”  He took a knife and sliced through the fabric of the first frame and 
then into the second frame.  When he was done, there were two huge holes in the 
fabrics.  “That is what a Major Gate metaphysically looks like.  They create 
unfixable holes in Infinity.  I wouldn’t create one even if I could.”