Rising Shards

Ms. Corinani laughed nervously as she wandered through the halls of a castle. Jeanette Dusk had summoned her. It hadn’t been easy being this girl’s mentor, especially with all the pressure of the fame Dusk had from a local news tour that had pretty much immediately gone to her head. Corinani wasn’t entirely sure why she’d been assigned Dusk anyways, someone so promising surely wouldn’t get a low level Wildfire Hearts teacher to look over her.

Jeans was immensely talented, sure, but she was also fairly awful, and Corinani found herself humiliated on a daily basis. Jeans sat on a throne, much like the one at her last castle. This girl had incredible prowess for utilizing imagination nodes and creating physical things in the void, and yet all she seemed to use it for was building the same castle over and over as well as retention sprite armies. Ms. Corinani didn’t have to wrangle any of that in at least, but it seemed to be a disappointingly limited use of Dusk’s powers.

“Why aren’t you in your outfit?” Jeans asked as Corinani approached.

“It’s, er, in the wash,” Corinani said.

“Hm.” Jeans said. 

“What did you need me for today?” Corinani said. She could go full jester if Jeans wanted a royal production that day, but she did get an embarrassing rip in her jester costume. Playing pretend was at least kind of a performance even if every time she performed for Jeans, another of Corinani’s remaining shreds of dignity faded away.

“I’m dismissing you,” Jeans said.

“You’re what—huh? Run that by me one more time. I’m pretty sure I heard…promotion?” Corinani asked hopefully.

“No, I’m telling you to go home. You’re annoying.” Jeans said. “I’m requesting another teacher.”

“Alright…” Corinani said.

Jeans looked angrier at the response than anything else. 

“What is it?” Corinani asked.

“That’s it? You’re not even going to grovel?” Jeans asked.

“I…would you like me to grovel? I’m actually a good groveler, you’d love my groveling.” Corinani didn’t even want this gig, but when presented with the choice to humiliate herself or not, she tended to swing one direction.

Jeans smiled wickedly. “I’d like that a lot. It won’t change my mind, but it’d be such a nice sendoff, don’t you think?”

Corinani winced, coming up with some pathetic lines begging for more time as a mentor, deep down relieved she’d be getting to hopefully do some normal work soon.