168
Knid's spell
🔥

You sit still not wanting to encourage the professor, and none of the other students wants to disagree with him either.

"Good. Good." says Professor Knid. "Now we are all agreed, I can tell you that today we will be studying the marvellous woodlouse. Flies, deliver the woodlice!"

At this command, a hundred or so flies detach themselves from Knid's cape, zoom over to a box on the professor's desk and pick up the woodlice, one between four flies. The flies then carry one woodlice to each student and drop it onto the desk in front of them. The flies buzz back to Professor Knid and reattach themselves to his cloak.

The little woodlouse on your desk appears disturbed at this unexpected flight. It takes one look at you then rolls up into a ball.

"Now can anyone move their woodlouse using a magic spell?" asks Knid. "Try any magic spell that you know."

You raise your wand, point it at the woodlouse and mumble "abracadabra" rather hopefully.

You are delighted to see a little sparkle of gold stars shoot out of the end of your wand. The sparkles hit the woodlouse... and bounce right off! The woodlouse is unmoved.

Looking around the classroom you can see that the other children are having no more success than you did.

Snako singed his own eyebrows when his lightning spell bounced off the woodlouse and hit him in the face. Kensley Potato's ice spell has frozen her desk into a solid block of ice but not touched the woodlouse. Brian Banana (another student from Hedgehog) has tried to make his woodlouse disappear but accidentally lost his wand in the process.

"The woodlouse, children, as you are discovering, is completely impervious to magic. So if you want to move the woodlouse you must first understand the woodlouse. And the one thing that scares the woodlouse more than anything else is drying out. As soon as they lose their moisture they die. Now - look at this."

Professor Knid raises his wand in an impressively expansive gesture and recites: "Fiel fresa fusila fuego!"

A large flame whooshes out of the end of his wand and starts to bake the air around the woodlouse on his desk. Terrified of being dried out, the woodlouse unrolls and scuttles away as fast as he can.

"So we can see that indirect magic can be powerful against even magic resistant creatures. And we didn't have to harm any arthropods in the process. Now children it's your turn. Wands at the ready!"

You look down at your cowering woodlouse and, aiming with your wand, recite the words of the spell:

"Fiel fresa fusila fuego!"

From the tips of your fingers to the ends of your toes you can feel a powerful magic charge building in your body. It concentrates in your chest and then zooms along your arm and out of your wand in a very impressive jet of flame.

You are overjoyed at the result, the first time you have cast such a powerful spell. Just think what you could do with such magic! Just imagine how frightened people will be of your powers!

The woodlouse feels the magical flames heat the air and desk around him, and scarpers.

"I did it!" you cry, and commit the words of the spell to your memory: fiel fresa fusila fuego.