“True conjuring is very difficult,” Yancy lectured. He’d been lecturing for a while. Isaac had a headache and his skin was crawling all over. He’d woken up like that, annoyed that it had taken him so long to realize he was getting sick.

Yancy continued. “When you see a mage conjuring an item from somewhere, rarely are they crafting an object out of nothing, which requires the use of Shadow—and I’m told by our researchers that Dark helps a great deal as well—and requires a good knowledge of how said object is crafted and from what. What one normally sees with conjuring is actually a very small teleportation spell that can be used to summon an existing object to the mage’s location, like so.” He manipulated Light for them, and his spectacles fell into his hand. “These were in my study on my desk, but because I knew where they were, I was able to teleport them here without too much difficulty. This is a spell you will all find very useful for those days when you arrive at class and realize you’ve forgotten your notebooks. The principle behind it is very simple…”

Yancy droned on about the principle, and Isaac tried very hard to pay attention, he did. He’d read about this a few weeks ago because he did all his reading in advance, and he’d read about it again last night to refresh himself. It didn’t seem that hard, though he hadn’t been able to make it work when he’d tried, the Pillars hurting his fingers when he touched them. Jacob had made him go to bed, and Peter was making him stay behind after his healing class to talk to Twila.

He didn’t understand why he was so tired suddenly. He’d been staying up a bit late to get work done, but not that late. He wasn’t working as much as he’d been during exams and he’d been fine then. But the Pillars were buzzing so much whenever he tried to use them that even being in the room with Yancy using them was putting his teeth on edge. Peter was making him talk to Twila because Isaac himself had been buzzing last night. Even Spencer had been able to feel it. Even Jacob had been able to feel it.