The air shimmered with millions of sparkling dust motes dancing in random Brownian motion on golden sunbeams that were cascading through the large cobwebbed windows facing the east side of the classroom.
Shadows of the pale alders beyond the window's periphery joined in the elaborate choreography as they swayed to and fro, shifting and coalescing the dappled sunlight throughout the room.
In the undisturbed silence, a momentary violet spark of long-dormant powers flickered around the periphery of the darkened corner where a draped figure stood.
The energy was palpable and distinct. Its algid, electric ozone smell commingled with the warm rich scent of pencil shavings and old cedar desks, causing a discombobulated feeling of futuristic antiquity.
I stood in the middle of the room, mesmerized by the inch-thick layer of dust, intermingled with the cobwebs of a hundred-thousand spiders.
The lacy grey filaments draped with elegant profusion onto the surfaces and sides of the neat rows of carved wooden student desks and on the tops of the stacks of books piled helter-skelter about the room.
It even managed to drape its tender tendrils off the smooth sides of the beach-ball-sized world globe, perched atop its singular, reptilian-clawed bronze stand, which stood next to a bird cage holding some unknown lump completely covered with fuzz dust.
I took another step into the room and eyed the professor's desk with curious misgivings. There were various sized objects placed in an orderly fashion and with great care, but everything was so choked with dust and spider webs that I could not tell what the objects were.
The podium was similarly draped, as was the bulky forms of the motley objects lying pell-mell on the long credenza behind the professor's desk.
Likewise, I could not tell what color the walls had been or what the floor looked like, although if it ran true to form, all the Academy's classrooms were painted a similar shade of greige, with smooth planks of polished hardwood oak that served as a durable all-purpose flooring.
The guys flocked in behind me, looking around with something akin to horrified curiosity. The place looked as if it had not been touched for at least a century. Everything was undisturbed except where we had made tracks as we walked into the classroom.
Without thinking, I uttered the Command of Vorticity, or what I jokingly called the Dustball Command.
"Chinglihuechen!"
My hands began moving in an automatic dusting motion that Mother had drilled into me for dealing with dust and filth.
It was an instinctive, reflexive response, and had I thought about it before I attempted it, I would never have tried it with three strong mages in the room.
Irregardless, it was one of those Commands that, once initiated, cannot be cancelled without serious repercussion.
The dust and cobwebs began to rise up into the air, on my command, and I wiggled my fingers to manipulate the particles, manually sifting through it so the suspended particles would clump up enough to work with.
Then I twirled the dust around so that it would cluster into a ball.
The dust, combined with the grime of long-decayed organic matter, intermingled with thick cobwebs and spiders, both the living and the long-dead, began to gain traction as the dust ball grew larger. It was actually working as it should, and I held my breath in concerted effort, trying to keep it all together.
Mother would be so proud of this dust ball. I had never seen one so big in all my life! The metal waste can was nearby. It would be a slam dunk.
"What in the world are you doing?" I heard Corwin call out.
In panic, I let go of the Vorticity Command.
The moving particles, still twisting and binding, continued in their predestined trajectory even though they had lost their center of vortex.
Guided by their momentum sans the vorticity, the particles broke free from their sphere and dispersed in a soft, muted burst.
POOF!
Dust flew through the air and dispersed throughout the room.
We choked and coughed, waving our hands about and grimacing from the taste and touch of ancient dust and dead bugs.
"Ew! Nana!" I heard Simon yell out. Being the closest to the dust ball when it broke apart, his face and body was covered with the thick, sticky dust particles.
"I'm sorry! I'm so sorry!" I moaned as I tried to brush the dust off his face. He pushed my hands away with a frown.
"Stop it! You're making it worse!"
"Sorry!"
"Agh. You were doing so well." Connor groaned as he wiped the dust from his face and chest. "What happened?"
"Corwin startled me." I said shamefacedly, not sure how I was going to fix this big mess I had just made.
Corwin heaved a big sigh, blowing dust everywhere with his breath. His annoyed, exasperated face was ashen with sticky grey filth.
From the top of his no-longer-red hair to his grayish blackish bodysuit, all the way down to the tips of his combat boots, the dust and sticky strands of web clung to him in wisps and tendrils, giving him the appearance of a very dirty ghost.
My eyes bulged as I bit my lip trying to contain my laughter. Beside me, Connor was starting to chuckle as he too, realized the condition we were in.
Simon joined in, and in a moment, we were all laughing in uncontrolled mirth. The only person who saw no hilarity in the situation was, of course, Corwin.
"Chuhdichingli!"
He commanded with a growl and snapped his fingers. The dust obeyed without hesitation, whirling into the air above our heads.
I was impressed.
This was not the rinky-dink Dustball Command Mother had taught me. It was a serious Sterilization Command normally used to clean and sterilize alchemy glassware, and it was better than taking a bath!
The Sterilization Command was so powerful that I felt all the gunk and dead skin detach from the pores of my skin to join the whirling mass of debris spinning in a tightly controlled sphere at the center of the room.
Corwin hurled another Command.
"Dajiadohlikai!" and pointed to the waste receptacle.
Acting as a single unit, the dust flew towards the can with the speed and strength of an exasperated, infuriated mage. It hit the can with a loud CLANG as the metal side banged against the wall with the force of the incoming debris.
The can rocked a bit and then settled back in place, leaving all of us momentarily stunned into silence.
"Whew, could you maybe shave my whiskers too while you're at it?" Connor rubbed his clean-shaven jaw as he spoke, his tone thick with sarcasm.
"I was trying to get the dust and grime out of my scalp. She really did a number on us." Corwin grumbled.
Simon intervened on my behalf. "Well, you shouldn't have scared her like that."
Corwin expelled an irritated breath and stared at Simon, his expression a clear statement of disbelief and resignation at my apparent incompetence.
What a boor! I felt the heat of his disapproval and turned my nose up with a sniff, firming my resolve to not let his attitude get under my skin.
"Well, no harm done," Connor smile, trying to lighten the mood. "Everything's clean and fresh and smelling like flowers."
He waved a hand and a delightful smell of orange blossoms filled the air.
My eyes lit up and I smiled, recalling the same joyful scent that Connor had created just for me as I flew with him on his hoverboard.
Now that everything gleamed anew, we could actually see what had been hidden underneath all that dust.
The scary corner where the once-cobweb-draped figure stood turned out to be nothing more spooky than a coat tree with a single white lab coat hanging off one of the hooks.
The strange objects on the professor's desk were simply parchment scrolls and a couple of long-dried inkwells with plumed quills.
The more bizarre items consisted of a round black sphere the size of a billiard ball, composed of some strange material that absorbed all light. It looked to have no purpose other than being a glorified paper weight. But of course, what did I know?
Connor reached out and touched the sphere, infusing his energy into the ball. An arc of power surged from the center, illuminating the ball. It was so bright that it hurt my eyes and I had to avert my face to protect my retina from getting burned.
As soon as he removed his finger, it flickered for a moment and went dark.
"What is it?" I asked.
"It's an old-fashioned magik electrometer. It measures how much magikal charge a mage has left within so a novice mage can determine whether he has enough power to execute an energy-intensive Command."
"Can I try?"
Connor nodded. "Touch a finger to the ball and it will give you a reading."
I reached out and touched the ball. It was smooth and cool to the touch.
Although I willed with everything I had for it to glow, the ball sputtered with weak lambency and then went dark.
"Wow, you're inert!" Simon said, cackling with glee.
I turned away with a crestfallen pout. Confirmation of a known condition was cold comfort at best.
To hide my disappointment, I focused on the next items on the desk.
There was a ceremonial silver knife with a wicked blade and strange etchings of twisted beings on the handle. It was placed next to a flat oval object resembling a serving plate, the dubious purpose of which escaped me.
"Hmm." Corwin grunted behind me. "Disgusting."
"What's disgusting?" I asked.
He pointed to the knife and the tray and told me in a superior, smug tone. "Unenlightened barbarians using primitive methods to extract ceremonial blood."
"Well, how do you it the enlightened way?"
"You don't. There is no call for extraction of ceremonial blood, not in this day and age of enlightenment. Magik can be worked without the need for extraction of bodily fluids."
His derision was obvious. "Only those who do not know how to utilize the energies effectively need to do this sort of inefficient and obsolete method."
I raised my eyebrows in outward accedence of his explanation and then turned my attention to the credenza behind him. It was filled with various flasks and flagons, its contents, no doubt, dried and desiccated from a millennium of disuse.
"Look at that. There's even a jar filled with gold dust." Simon picked up a small glass ginger jar that held something which resembled flakes of sand.
"What do you do with it?" I asked.
Simon shrugged. "I'm assuming it's used to teach alchemy since it's one of the elements of the periodic table. Gold nano particles are quite useful for many things, and its colloidal properties are well-known to effect many cures."
I nodded duly impressed with Simon's wide and varied knowledge on esoteric matters. Meanwhile, Corwin and Connor had moved onto the rest of the room.
There was a large oak framed scrying mirror on one wall hanging next to a huge periodic table that incorporated both the physical as well as alchemical elements, confirming Simon's suggestion that the classroom was once used for alchemy lessons.
Along the entire back wall, built-in bookshelves ran from top to bottom, loaded with ancient scrolls and tomes of aged and obsolete knowledge about science and magik, each having evolved and advanced in its own path.
While the twins inspected random magik books on the shelves, Simon scampered around touching everything else.
There was a plain wooden box with the word Greenstones carved into the lid. Simon opened it and smiled as he emptied the box of the pebble-sized stones and magiked them away.
"What are those?" I could not help asking. He pulled one out of the air and passed it to me.
"Very rare stuff. The erudite elite call it chlorastrolite, but it was known as greenstone back in ancient times. It is only found in a single location in the entire world."
"Does it have any usefulness?"
He nodded. "In ancient times, it was used as a form of currency because it was so rare and difficult to obtain, and also because it always held its value."
"How much is it worth now?" I turned the pebble around in my hand, noting the unique turtle-shell pattern composed of various green colors on its smooth, polished surface. It truly was a unique stone, with a stunning pattern that I had never seen before.
"Not much." Simon responded with a bright cat-ate-the-cream grin.
"Nobody knows how rare and valuable it is so it just sits around collecting dust inside an abandoned classroom. That much greenstone would have equaled to a kingdom's entire fortune about forty-thousand years ago."
I coughed. "Wow. That long ago, huh? Does it have any magikal properties?"
Simon licked his lips and shrugged.
I narrowed my eyes. He was not telling me something.