Haytham was in a good mood, which meant everyone else was about to have a weird morning.
"So," he said, twirling his staff between two fingers as he paced the front of the classroom, "we've spent the last few sessions talking about mana theory. How it flows, how it pools, how it interacts with organic versus inorganic material. Very dry stuff. Very important. You all looked like you wanted to die."
He got a few laughs from that.
"Today, we're doing something different." He stopped pacing and pointed his staff directly at Ashara. "Valoryn. Come up here."
[Oh no.]
Ashara looked at Mira, who shrugged. She looked at Haytham, who was smiling with the kind of enthusiasm that meant he'd been planning this since breakfast. There was no getting out of it.
She stood up and walked to the front of the room. Thirty-something pairs of eyes followed her, which, yeah, she was used to that part. The rest of this, not so much.
