Sarah: “This is a new class right?”

  Xarus: “wha!? H-hello” he jumped, her sudden appearance startling him.

  Sarah: “oho, Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you” she laughed.

  Xarus: “It’s fine, it’s fine, and yea, we haven't had this class yet”

  Sarah: “Yea thought so, which one is it again? Enchanting or something?”

  Xarus: “It’s alchemy”

  Sarah: “Oh! I thought that was tomorrow… Maybe I should check my timetable again?”

  Xarus: “you should”

  The classroom door burst open and a short woman with comically large glasses marched in, she headed straight towards the teachers desk and upon reaching it turned to face the students while loudly slamming her hands down onto the desk.

  “Well! Hello class…” she stopped for a moment to check her hands “owowow, too hard, way too hard” she muttered to herself, then she picked up a sheet of paper before continuing “Class 11C is it? Yes 11C should be right” she nodded her head as she confirmed her class name, apparently Sarah wasn’t the only person who should check their timetable.

  “I’m Ms Orchid and I’m going to be your alchemy teacher for the entire year! And possibly next year and the year after that, or not! It depends on the class registering and what not!” she said with a cheerful smile “oh but if something happens to me, like I die or something else awful like that then you will obviously have a different teacher” despite the morbid words her smile did not fade.

  Ms Orchid: “Oh but something like that probably won’t happen, So don’t worry!” she said, placing her hands on her hips and proudly puffing out her chest.

  There was a long silence as the students blankly stared at the excited teacher.

  Ms Orchid clapped her hands together “... Well, anyway! Alchemy! It’s really cool, we get to do stuff with potions and elixirs, Oh and there's also transmutation and so much more stuff…, but we’ll eventually get into all of that. For this Lesson I’m just going to be explaining everything about alchemy… Well not everything, because there’s a lot, but some general stuff at least!”

  She fidgeted with her fingers as she continued talking, words continued to sprawl out of her mouth and she repeated things she already said.

  Ms Orchid: “Ah! I got carried away again… Well before I move on does anyone have any questions?”

  She waited for a moment but no one raised their hands.

  Ms Orchid: “W-Well then, where should I start? Uhm… do you guys know what Alchemy actually is for starters?”

  Sarah: “um… you already said before? Potion making, right?”

  A surprised expression crossed Ms Orchid's face, she probably wasn’t expecting any one to actually answer.

  Ms Orchid: “Well yes, brewing potions and elixirs is definitely apart of alchemy, a major part at that, but it’s definitely not all there is to alchemy, and that’s more like the products of alchemy, not what alchemy actually is, if that makes sense” she finished, uncertainly tapping her fingers together hoping she didn’t confuse anyone.

  So swept her gaze across the students, some had expressions of interest and others did not, but none of them seemed particularly lost.

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  Seemingly satisfied with what she saw she continued her explanation.

  Ms Orchid: “Alchemy is one of the 6 Primary magics and has many fields associated with it, Potions and elixirs are one such field, Transmutation and transformation is another, and the next major field would be Artimancy, besides those three there are other fields but they aren’t as big or important so we don’t need to bring those up now” she scratched her cheek and put on a coy smile.

  Ms Orchid: “Potions and elixirs are probably the largest field in alchemy, It’s been especially impactful in the medical world”

  Xarus: “Like health potions?” he suddenly spoke up, Ms Orchid looked over at him with a confused expression “H-health potions? N-no, things like that aren’t real, I meant that there are potions and elixirs that can be used to cure diseases and infections”

  Xarus: “Oh”

  His expression darkened, he played a lot of video games, so finding out health potions weren’t real was disappointing to say the least.

  Ms Orchid: “o-oh! But there are potions that alleviate pain, which is kinda similar right? Although they aren't as good or long lasting as their drug counterparts they do work immediately so they're good for…” she mumbled on for a bit before catching herself. “So yea! Various famous alchemists throughout history have discovered cures and treatments for illnesses and diseases where science couldn't, and vice versa of course, but this is alchemy not pharmacology so that’s not something I know a lot about”

  Ms Orchid: “But besides medical related potions there are also substances like beauty elixirs, morphing potions, enhancing potions, emotive potions…”

  “Sounds like there are a lot more potions than there are elixirs” someone joked, causing a few laughs and giggles to spread.

  Ms Orchid chuckled softly “Thats true, theres not actually too much difference between an elixir and a potion, it’s just how we classify certain effects, its like with bugs, there are spiders which we classify as arachnids, and bees or ants which we classify as insects, but they're still bugs in the end”

  Someone raised their hand and asked “what classifies as an elixir and what classifies as a potion?”

  Ms Orchid: “Hm, well elixirs for one are typically more expensive to make as the resources you need to brew them are more rare and powerful, the brewing process is typically different as well… but the main difference between the two is that the effects of elixirs are permanent”

  Sarah raised her hand "wait, elixirs are permanent? So if I drank one that could make me fly, would I always be able to fly from then on?”

  Ms Orchid: “erm, nothing like that exists, so don’t get your hopes up, but yes that would probably be the case”

  Sarah: “That's seriously cool though! What Kinda elixirs are there?”

  Ms Orchid: “W-we can talk about that in another lesson, I want to talk about transmutation for a moment” she said, pushing her glasses up and continuing with her explanation.

  Ms Orchid: “ok so, transmutation is literally changing one material into another material, so for example turning lead into gold… although transmutating gold is illegal so please don’t do that”

  Xarus raised his hand and asked “can one thing be transmuted into anything?” He usually preferred to be quiet but he was curious enough to ask this time.

  Ms Orchid “well it helps if the material your transmuting has similar properties to the material you want to transmute it into… but it’s not strictly necessary, but the less similar the two materials are the harder it will be to transmute and the more mana it requires so it’s not really something you can do easily”

  After confirming that no one else had any questions she continued onto the next topic.

  Ms Orchid: “Now moving onto artimancy, I Imagine most of you have seen artimancy before even if you weren’t aware exactly what it was, but artimancy is the creation of artificial life, so things like golems, woodmen, wisps, and… well there's so many artificial lifeforms it would take me far too long to list them all here, golems are by far the most common as there are so many types of them and their relatively easy to make while being extremely useful, Wisps are also used often but they get destroyed easily… Sorry I’m rambling a bit too much, does anyone have any questions?"

  “So… does that mean we can make robots then?” a student asked eagerly.

  Ms Orchid chuckled nervously and said “well I suppose a robot is technically an artificial lifeform, but even so that would be a job for an engineer not an alchemist…”

  Ms Orchid continued explaining various things about alchemy and its three core topics, answering any questions that were asked, not that there were too many but there also weren’t a small amount.

  Xarus listened eagerly, alchemy wasn’t really new to him as he had witnessed it in practice on numerous occasions, but learning about it was definitely different than just seeing it.

  But with that being said, listening to Ms Orchid passionately talk about alchemy, a lot of the words and phrases she was saying were going right over his head, which made him nervous about his future performance in the subject.

  But glancing over at Sarah and seeing her confused and panicked expressions, along with other students in the class, he felt a guilty sense of relief that at least he wasn't the only person who would have a hard time.