"Okay, everybody," the teacher said. "Look very closely. There are three objects on the table. I want you to tell me, in an essay, about the difference between these objects tomorrow. This will be the only announced test, so don't screw up."

The whole class looked at the objects on the table. There was an apple, a ball, and a large key. Hesitantly, one girl raised her hand. She looked confused, and the teacher groaned in an exasperating manner when he saw her hand in the air.

"What is it, Karli?" he asked. She shrank back at the tone of his voice.

"They're all the same sir," she said meekly. "Shouldn't they be different if you want us to tell you how they're different?"

"They are different Karli," he said, clearly annoyed.

"No, sir," she said, even more meekly, though her voice sounded oddly confident. "They're the same." The rest of the students in the class were talking amongst themselves. Most of them were laughing softly at the shy girl, who was just a first year student and shouldn't have been in the class, which was normally only for the advanced student who had already reached the first level.

"Just study them and be ready for the essay tomorrow," the teacher said, his voice vaguely patronizing. She bowed her head and looked like she was trying to sink into her table. Then, he turned to the class, which quieted down at the first sign on his attention. "I expect full description in the essays. Make sure you know what you're doing before you start writing, because you're not going to have all of class to get this done."

He then continued with class. The older students all threw occasional looks at Karli, who was by far the youngest student in the class, not to mention the youngest in the whole Collegium. She tried to avoid all glances, and then after class was over, she stayed behind to talk to the teacher.

"Now what Karli?" the teacher asked.

"I'm sure those were all the same things," she said plainly. "Why don't you believe me?"

"Just do your best tomorrow," he said. "If you see all the same object, write that. Now, I have other classes to teach, and I'm sure you have somewhere else to be at the moment. Good day, Karli."

As he left the room, Karli stared at his back. She looked sad and dejected. She sighed once, before a boy only a little bit older than her walked by, noticed her, and called to her to get her butt in gear before she was late for basic wind spells.

"That's what I saw," she whispered before hurrying after the boy.

The next day the class wrote their essays. The objects were all up on the table again, and most of the students were glancing between their papers and the table as they wrote. Karli wrote a short paragraph in a childish, but neat, hand, on her papers and then handed it in. She looked nervous as she waited for the rest of the class to get done writing essays that were often close to two or three pages long.

The following day the teacher stood at the front of the room with two piles of paper. One pile was huge and threatened to topple as each student walked by it to his or her seat. The other was one sheet of paper, which went skittering across the room as Karli ran into class right before the bell sounded.

"I'm surprised," the teacher said after she was settled and a student had grabbed the paper before it could fly out the window. "Only one of you managed to pass the test. The following students may come up for their papers."

He picked up part of the huge stack of papers and started reading off the names written at the tops of the essays. One by one, the students stood up and received their essays. All winced at the red marks that slashed through the words on their papers. The only student who didn't look in shock when he got to the bottom of the stack was Karli.

"Good job Karli," he said to her as she came up to the front of the class for her paper. "You managed to see through my illusion." She blushed at the praise, and then hurried back to her seat. The teacher then turned to the rest of the class with an angry glare. "As for the rest of you… You call yourselves first level wizards? Had this been from an enemy, or to protect someone, you'd all be dead, or out of jobs. Now, take out a sheet of paper, today's lecture is on how to see through illusions, something I thought you would have learned by now."