It was around midnight, by my reckoning, when the demons got loose. The valedictorian and salutatorian had finally taken their rivalry to the next level, I guess, and each set a demon upon the other. Their display of unparalleled hubris was going to impede heavily on my Saturday night plans of frivolously using magic to fill my wine cup.

Magic’s supposed to make our lives easier. Why did those overachievers have to make it such a headache, all the time? With the constant jockeying for position, the spectral pranks between dorms, the startling spellstorms under the outhouses. Many times I had wished they’d all just cut it out; I tried not to dwell on whether some irony-minded god had chosen to finally fulfill that.

But, you know — not to rub anything in their dead faces — you’d really think two wizardlings who were so “smart” would have known to phrase their request better. “Make me top of the class,” I heard them both shout to their snarling pets. Really. Even I — who couldn’t be bothered to summon cake much less demons — knew not to ask dark powers for something so vague! Obviously, the easiest and most evil way to fulfill that demand is to simply kill the rest of the school, leaving the survivor as “top of the class.” And as the cautionary pamphlet every freshman receives makes clear, “easy ‘n evil” is every demon’s M.O.

So that’s what those demons did, with plenty of help from the apprentices themselves. Most of my “peers” were all too eager for the chance to vanquish a demon, lusting for bragging rights. They rushed in, screaming their strongest spells & flailing their biggest wands & grinding their finest crystals. None of it mattered. These were proper demons, from proper Hell, and none of these scholastic wunderkinds had even fought in a proper duel. All the “combat practice” we got had intense teacher supervision, because of several lawsuits a few centuries past. Those nerds had power, and they had good grades, but they didn’t have the wisdom of experience. All their magic was for naught.

But I didn’t join them! Oh, no. That night, I played it smart, for once.

Can you guess how?

That’s right! I ran and hid.

Does that make me a coward? Sure! An alive coward. I ran to the building where I often took naps, which happened to be the Chapel of Loghain. They’re a Paladin order, so naturally, all their squires had charged out and gotten themselves slaughtered too— which was dumb, because the chapel was so damned holy there’s no way a demon could set foot inside. So yes, I hid, in the safest place to be, and it turned out I was in good company! For as I stepped inside, a bespectacled face peered out from behind the altar. The only other smart guy that night was the Headmaster himself.

“Cheldag?” he asked, with an offensive amount of surprise in his voice.

“Headmaster,” I replied respectfully, thinking it an inappropriate moment for sass.

“How many others are with you?”

“None, Headmaster. They’ve all died, trying to prove themselves to each other.”

He gulped the gulp of a man with inadequate liability insurance.

“And you, Cheldag?”

I shrugged the shrug of a man with inadequate everything. “Me? I’ve nothing to prove to anyone. I just prefer livin’ to dyin’.”

The Headmaster nodded, taking it all in. Can’t have been his proudest moment; all his students dead except the underachieving hedge-wizard who couldn’t even Turn Air Into Gold.

“What do we do, Cheldag? You’re the second-most powerful mage left in the Spire.”

“Much to our misfortune.”

“We have to do something. We can’t let those fiends roam freely.”

I thought we probably could let them roam freely, if we really tried, but decided not to suggest it.

“Cheldag, what brought them here, do you know?”

“Er, well, I did hear the boys chanting a bit. Sounded like Argive Bottlestop & Theodric the Middler both asked their demons to ‘Make me top of the class,’ if you can believe it.”

That stung the Headmaster, I could tell. His lecture series on demonology had clearly not been as comprehensive as he’d thought.

“You’re the only student left?”

“Seems so. I guess that makes me top of the class!” I joked, as he choked back tears.

SHBWOOFSH!, went something outside.

The terrifying noise was followed by two ghastly shrieks, and I caught a whiff of mushrooms & sulfur. The Headmaster tiptoed over, bravely, and cracked open the door while I cowered in a giant pile of scripture.

“They’re gone! Cheldag, you did it! You fulfilled their contracts, and sent them back to Hell.”

“I did?” It sounded a bit far-fetched, but if either of us would know when demons were gone, it’d be the Headmaster. I waddled over to confirm, laden cautiously with holy symbols.

“I’ll be damned. Or not, today, I guess. I really did it!”

“Yes. You, of all people, did it.” The man’s continued lack of confidence was truly cutting.

“I’ll take that a as a compliment.”

“It’s meant as one. After all, you defeated two demons, who slew dozens of magelings & Paladins-to-be. Which, if you ask me, certainly fulfills the final praxis requirement. Thus, I have nothing left to teach you. Consider yourself a fully-accredited Service Wizard, now licensed for practice in the Ragbo Empire and its dependents.”

“Now that’s definitely a compliment.” And a huge savings, as it meant one less year of student loans. Dragons ran that racket, & refinancing was unpleasant.

“Where will you go? The capital? With the entire class gone, you’ll be in high demand.”

I shook my head. He’d never get me. “No. That’s a good way to wind up dead, and we’ve been over my feelings on that. I’m going home. I’ll be in high demand.”

“Home?,” he puked. “To do what? Tend cows?”

“Sounds good to me.”

And so I left, on foot, as the only graduate of the final class of the Spire of the Elect, and the unlikely recipient of its last lesson.

© Frankie G. 2019