Free Dimwater's Dragon by Sam Ferguson Page B

distance.
    As the time passed and Feberik continued to call upon Kyra both morning and night, the rumors began to flare up again. Another two weeks and the other apprentices fell right back into their old habits.
    It was a particularly sunny Tuesday when everything came to a head.
    Amelia, a tall blonde apprentice walked by Kyra’s desk and pretended to accidentally knock Kyra’s book to the floor. The skinny blonde put a hand to her mouth and made a gasp of feigned horror.
    “Oh dearest me, I’m so sorry, I didn’t see you there.”
    “Oh I’m sorry, were you talking to me? I can’t hear you with that frog in your throat,” Kyra replied.
    Amelia’s eyes went wide and she dropped her books clutching both hands at a bulge in her throat. She opened her mouth, presumably to scream, but instead a large toad slipped out with trails of opaque slime clinging from it to Amelia’s lips. Amelia turned and fell to her knees dry heaving.
    “Miss Caspen,” Lady Priscilla shouted. “We do not use our magic like that in here. Let me show you why.” Lady Priscilla drew out her wand in a flash and banished the toad that Kyra had summoned. Next she turned to Kyra and glared at her. Kyra knew that it was common for instructors of magic to employ spells on the students as punishment, particularly if the students used magic to agitate each other, but Kyra was not about to back down. “Let us see how you like it.” Lady Priscilla narrowed her eyes on Kyra and it was obvious that Lady Priscilla was not going to chastise Amelia for her rude treatment of Kyra.
    As far as Kyra was concerned, the instructor had thrown her lot in with those who teased her.
    No more. No matter how many demerits it cost, Kyra was done silently bearing everyone else’s rudeness and contempt. Kyra was not going to accept any more harassment. Kyra held up her left hand and cast a ward spell of reflection. No sooner had Lady Priscilla finished her spell than her own neck bulged out in three different places. When the sorceress opened her mouth, not one, not two, but three green frogs leapt out from her mouth to rest upon her desk. Lady Priscilla’s watery eyes flashed red with anger. She glowered at Kyra as she raised her wand high over her head and prepared another spell. This time it was not to be frogs. A ball of sparks and fire gathered around Lady Priscilla’s wand.
    Kyra felt an enormous wave of power rise up within her. It wasn’t just anger, she knew that much, but what it was she didn’t know precisely. She leapt up to her feet and gathered both of her hands in front of her. She sent a harmless, yet extremely powerful gust of air rushing toward Lady Priscilla. The tall woman was blasted into the wall behind her and fell to the floor. Her wand broke and her spell fizzled into smoke.
    Not a single student spoke. Many of them glanced between Lady Priscilla and Kyra, but none of them uttered a single word. As Kyra met their gazes, each student jerked their head downwards to stare at their desk.
    Kyra summoned one more spell. Not one to attack anybody with, but something to cover her escape. The thick fog appeared in the classroom around everyone’s ankles. Several of the young girls, including Amelia, screamed and clambered on top of their desks. A couple of the boys did to. The fog filled the room and then Kyra left. The young sorceress bolted down the hallway turning left at the first intersection and running straight for the southern exit.
    She got outside as a class in procession with twenty-five or so students sat around a pair of male instructors busily jotting notes in their field books about various mushrooms and herbs that were growing on the large stump in their midst.
    One of the students looked up and the instructors rose to stop Kyra, but she was in no mood to slow down. She called the fog to her and disoriented the instructors as she ran by them out to the forest in the south. She must have run for thirty minutes, perhaps longer. She