Behind her, the class watched with various levels of confusion. Lira was scribbling excitedly. Callum was trying to balance a pencil on his nose. Darek was polishing a rock. Tamsin looked deeply concerned, like she was watching a swan attempt algebra.
“So,” Mina said, turning back to face them, “chaos magic is not just a mess of feelings and raw magical energy—though yeah, it kinda is. But I think it’s more like… like a system that looks random but isn’t. It’s mathematically chaotic. Like, bounded but unpredictable.”
Blank stares.
“You’re… gonna have to break that down a bit,” said Tamsin cautiously.
Mina tapped the chalk on the board, thinking out loud. “Okay. Okay. Imagine you’re tracking a leaf floating down a stream. The water’s moving, there’s wind, maybe a frog splashes somewhere. It looks totally random, right? But if you knew all the variables—wind speed, water current, frog mood—you could predict the leaf’s path.”
Fennik Delore, who had reappeared quietly and was now slouched near the back, muttered, “Frog mood is a variable now?”
She ignored him. “But here’s the kicker: even tiny changes in those variables—like a single drop of water—can cause totally different outcomes. That’s chaos theory. Sensitive dependence on initial conditions. It’s not random. It’s just really, really complex.”
Callum raised a finger. “But… what does that have to do with magic?”
Mina’s eyes lit up. She grabbed the chalk again. “That’s the thing! I was reading the beginner’s spell primer before class—you know, the one with the cute floating rat on the cover—and I noticed that the diagrams weren’t random. They’re fractal curves. Like—like the Mandelbrot set!”
“Mandl-what set?” Lira asked, tilting her head like a curious kitten.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
“It’s a shape from Earth—I mean, my world—that’s made by plotting complex numbers in a specific equation. It makes this infinite, swirling pattern that repeats itself. And it shows up in nature: in clouds, lightning, coastlines. It’s beautiful. And it behaves like chaos magic.”
Still no recognition. A beat of silence passed.
“…So chaos magic is leaf math?” Delore asked flatly.
“YES!” Mina said, triumphant. “Sort of!”
She turned to the board and quickly scribbled an equation:
x??? = r * x? * (1 - x?)
“See this? This is the logistic map. In chaos theory, this shows how populations grow—at first, predictably, and then with increasing chaos. I swear I saw something just like this in the amplification rune diagrams on page twenty of that book.”
Darek squinted. “You’re sayin’ spell energy grows like population?”
“No, I’m saying spell resonance—how energy repeats and reacts—spirals in a similar pattern. Which is why chaos spells are hard to reproduce. They’re not broken. They’re sensitive. Like, one wrong twitch of a finger and boom—you’ve got a singing goat.”
“…That happened to me once,” whispered Callum.
Mina grinned. “Exactly. Chaos magic isn’t about abandoning structure—it’s about understanding emergent structure. Patterns that don’t look like patterns. Like jazz. Or the weather. Or my dating life.”
More blank stares.
“Okay, okay, bad analogy.”
Tamsin was frowning in thought. “So if we tracked the magical vectors over time using non-linear equations, we could technically map chaos spells?”
“Yes!” Mina pointed at her like she’d just won a game show. “You get it!”
“No,” Tamsin admitted. “But I’m willing to pretend I do.”
“Same,” Lira chimed in cheerfully.
Mina sighed, then gave them a reassuring smile. “Alright. Let’s slow down. Today, let’s feel the flow of a chaos spell. Tomorrow, we’ll map it. We’ll start with a basic emotional focus. Everyone pick one strong feeling—joy, anger, regret, hunger, whatever—and we’ll try to channel it through a simple manifestation spell.”
Delore muttered, “This oughta end with at least one explosion.”
Mina smirked. “That’s the spirit.”
As the students spread out, trying to summon small magical effects based on their emotions, Mina took a moment to sit at the edge of the desk, watching them.
She had no idea what she was doing.
And yet…
There was something exhilarating about the way the spellwork danced around them, unruly and brilliant. Tamsin’s hands sparked with swirling light. Lira conjured a puff of glitter that meowed. Callum’s shadow tried to high-five him. Darek accidentally ignited his own sleeve (again). And Delore—though he didn’t admit it—was actually trying this time.
And beneath it all, Mina could see it: the curve, the pattern, the rhythm of math disguised as magic.
She smiled to herself.
Maybe I don’t need to fake it. Maybe I’m actually good at this.