The heavy, rhythmic clopping of hooves announced the presence of Appythia. The young centaur panted as she galloped down the stone path with her horse-like ears folded back, late for the final lesson of her magic class. She ran as fast as she could, panting heavily, barrelling through and sometimes leaping over anyone in her way, occasionally coughing out “Please move! Sorry, but I need you out of the way!” She ran so fast that her antlers were on the verge of whistling from the air rushing through them. Her lungs and legs burned, but she couldn’t afford to be late, not to the final test of her magic class. The only things keeping her on this side of overheating were the cold, early-morning air and the shade from the thick forest that her village, all of the inhabitants of which were centaurs like her, was housed within. Somehow, she was able to manage to move herself along a little faster as the ancient stone structure that was her destination came into view, which, of course, didn’t mean she was close to it, even if one accounted for the very thick woods; the structure was almost half a kilometer in diameter. She couldn’t afford to be late, not when the Old One, the greatest of the last generation and the tutor of the magic-wielding young ones such as herself, had demonstrated time and again how harshly she dealt with tardiness, like that one time one of her classmates spent a whole week as a tiny fish under the care and monitoring of the Old One herself for being tardy by a mere three minutes. The inverted conical prismic depression in the middle of the structure, about a hundred meters deep and with a staircase going from top to bottom every ten degrees along the inner and outer arcs, came into view, where Appythia saw the Old One and her nine classmates, just as the former began a speech with the latter arranged around her in a semicircle. “My students! You have all done so very well. All of you have impressed me, and, indeed, every one of our kind, in every field of study, even if, of course, some of you did particularly well in particular subjects,” she began, looking around at the students that showed up on time. “You would all go on to become such great mages, I am sure.” Wait, would? Why did she say “would” instead of “will?” “Under normal circumstances, that is, but this is anything but normal.” Appythia’s jaw dropped and she jumped back in alarm as the Old One raised her hand, fingers splayed and palm facing the sky, then threw it down towards the ground, freezing the rest of the class in place just as they, too, realized what was happening. “Sorry about this, but I have some plans that may require your… sacrifice. It’s nothing too sinister, I assure you, but my priorities supersede all of yours.” That in itself wasn’t too unusual for her to say, as the position and title of Old One did somewhat go to her head over the years.
	Appythia could only watch as the Old One stood before the teacher’s pet of the class with a strange smile. “You know I’ve always liked you. Thought you were cute, even,” she told her. “I, however, like no one more than myself, so the following is an obvious course of action.” The student’s eyes went wide with realization as the Old One pointed at her own face, then to the student’s, and then snapped her fingers. At once, the student aged almost thirty years, and then her face, followed by her bodily frame, then her outfit, morphed to match that of the Old One, down to the tiniest wrinkles and scars. “You shall be admired by everyone - including me, of course, once we’re done here.” She clapped her hands together, and the student suddenly had a scepter of conjuring appear in one hand, and then she bucked, holding her forelegs out with one hoof held slightly further out than the other, and she was forced to hold the scepter out before her, tilted slightly forward. With the makeover finished, she turned to marble from the hind legs up to her face which was frozen in a stoic expression, staring off into the distance towards the horizon as if expecting something both great and terrible to occur. “And, no,” she said to the rest of the class, “I can’t be bothered contacting the sculptor to make a statue of myself the proper way, even if all of my predecessors did. But she will go into the Hall of Heroes like a normal statue for all, including me, to admire. As for the rest of you, you’ll stay with me, even after this class has ended by helping me out with my retirement!”
	The next-closest student grunted, unable to speak through a mouth that was forced shut. “I could use a new set of horseshoes. You there, miss best runner in the class, you’ll do!” Before she began, though, she saw this student blush heavily. “Wait, are you - whatever.” She pointed at her with both index fingers, made a pinching motion with each hand, then pointed at the ground. A loud, metallic clang rang out as this centaur turned to stainless steel, then shrank and split away into each individual hoof, each of which compacted and caved into a steel horseshoe, perfectly sized for her hooves.
	“What should I…” Appythia muttered to herself, crouching just behind the edge of the depression, completely unsure of what to do and hoping the Old One didn’t sense her presence. She could hear her metal-on-keratin sounds as the most recently-transformed classmate was being put onto the Old One’s hooves through some attachment spell or another. She leaned forward to look again, seeing another classmate, the cutest one according to their tutor, flatten, shrink, and fold around the Old One’s wrist into a glossy green-and-brown-striped armband. Appythia whimpered as the Old One moved on to another student, allegedly the best swimmer in the group, whose limbs instantly vanished into her torsos as they and her head flattened into a rectangle, followed by all her features being erased and her body fading into a light gray fleece, leaving her as a towel with “Don’t panic” embroidered on it, the letters being roughly where her eyes had just been, and having the same color.
	“And now,” stated the Old One as she went to the sturdiest and strongest of the class. “You don’t look like you’ll have much trouble hauling things around for me, do you’ll make a nice travel bag!” She held her hands out, one over the other with palms facing each other, and then pressed them together. Her latest victim crumpled, human torso folding against horse torso as both flattened out as a half of a zipper on each appeared, its ends where the torsos met. Her legs disappeared followed by any distinguishing features except for her antlers as her body turned to leather, and then the antlers shrank, twisted, and fused together into a simple handle as her body finished shrinking into a large travel bag and forming into a rough rectangular prism. Appythia winced at the sight of the bag that used to be one of her friends being slung over the Old One’s shoulder like it was nothing.
	The next student didn’t fare any better, flattened out into tinted glass and plastic, floating above the ground as she rapidly shrank, hind legs turned into thin, hinged arms to hold the entire object she was becoming up by the Old One’s ears, while her midsection thinned out into a nose bridge. The antlers remained as flat, plastic pieces, part of and the same color as the actual frame. The new pair of sunglasses were caught as they began to fall, and this prompted the Old One to say, “Sorry about the shadiness of your current position, but where I’m going, and you too by extent, we’ll both need it.” She looked around. “Where is Appythia, anyway? She could definitely learn some… objectivity.” The person she mentioned quietly stood up just as she said that, turned around, and ran with all her remaining strength away from the area. The Old One shrugged. “She’ll get here eventually. As for you, miss starry-eyed, miss better-than-the-Old-One-at-astronomy, I’m sure you know what you’ll get!” This student’s eyes went wide as the Old One pointed and snapped at her, and then her face vanished as her entire head turned into a lens. Her entire body compressed and shrank into a cylinder as it hollowed out except for an organ or two that turned into more lenses as everything else save for her legs turned to plastic and metal, with her hind legs fusing together into one limb while that and the front legs moved to what had been where her chest gave way to her abdomen, turning into a tripod. “What a stellar view you will give me!”
	Next, the Old One’s gaze went to the two remaining students at once, for she had decided to tie their fates together. She lazily waved a hand at both of them, and both of their forms turned to wood, and the first flattened, widened, and reshaped into a small square table with legs reminiscent of what it used to be with a wooden horse head protruding from one end and a tail from the other, while the other had her arms forced behind her as they turned into arm rests, tail disappeared, and her torsos flattened with gaps appearing in the upper torso as it became a back rest as the lower torso became the actual seat, leaving her as a very stylized chair.

* * * * * *

	“I hope I’m far enough away,” Appythia said, panting heavily. She looked back, over her shoulder. “She shouldn’t be able to sense me, right?” All around her, other centaurs were giving her strange looks, as if questioning why one of their young mages was seen running full tilt towards her place of learning, only to later run away.
	“Appythia,” a voice called in her head, the voice of the Old One. “Where are you? You missed the graduation and retirement party.” Appythia shuddered and then shook her head, trying to block out the Old One’s telepathy. “All your friends are waiting. Surely, you don’t want to keep them like that.” Try as she might, the young centaur could not resist her tutor’s allure, so she slowly turned around and began to tro back towards where class was being held. “There you are! Come on, I’m sure you don’t want to miss out on the party!” Unable to stop herself, Appythia fell into a state of bliss as she trotted back towards the old stone structure, now totally ignoring the “what is going on?” looks she was getting.
	When she arrived, she was greeted by one of her classmates who - wait, wasn’t this person just turned into a table by the Old One? No, surely not, surely she must have been mistaken. It was a bad daydream brought on by bad sleep, nothing more! “Hey, Appythia,” she said, but something was off with her voice. “Sorry you missed the party. However, the Old One still has something for you. Come down, please.” Appythia was led into the depression by the person that was totally her classmate, until they were right in the middle, where the Old One abruptly dropped her disguise and turned around. Appythia yelped and tried to run, but she was instantly frozen in place. “I have finally caught you,” she said. “And I know just the thing to do with you!” Immediately, the young centaur felt as if she was being crushed while also becoming hollow, as both things were indeed happening to her.As her eyes darted about in fear, her form compressed and smoothed out into a hollow, rubber sphere, and any color was quickly replaced by a dull, unassuming medium bluish gray, save for a print of a shocked Appythia’s face on the side, placed opposite from the air nozzle. “That’s better,” the Old One chirped. “You know, Appythia, you’ve always been a bit of an airhead in my presence - so now you are a very literal airhead! But don’t worry, you’re quite well-rounded for your new role.” She would have groaned at the very low-effort pun if she still had a voice. The Old One leapt atop Appythia and began rolling her around, remarking on how comfortable she was. She either didn’t know or didn’t care that Appythia was using all of the magic she still had to keep herself from popping. “Oh, and, did I mention this will become permanent quite soon?” Any one of her students would have screamed if they still had a voice. “Well, class, this is my final lesson for all of you: objectivity. Literally!” She looked around for a moment as if expecting applause before remembering that there was no one around who could provide it.

* * * * * *

	The Old One remained on the ball that had been Appythia until the sun began to set, when she finally got off to try out her new telescope. “I must thank you all for these wonderful gifts,” she said to the objects that had been her students that morning with a smirk. “As for you,” she said to the student-turned-telescope, “You’re certain to magnify my view of the cosmos!” What the Old One didn’t realize, however, was that Appythia wasn’t nearly as simple-minded or depowered as she thought: almost as soon as the Old One got off of her, the ball that Appythia had been turned into had started to change to chestnut in coloration, and then ever so slowly started to form into a less spherical and more centaur-like shape. Limbs appeared, first horse legs, and then human arms, followed by a tail and two distinct torsos, one horse and one human. Clothing and antlers appeared, followed by human hair and a very angry human face. As soon as she restored her own form, Appythia began to creep towards the Old One, who was so absorbed with the cosmos that she didn’t notice the clopping of her hooves, until she was right behind her.
	“Don’t try anything,” Appythia stated coldly as the Old One turned around. “I’m quite sure it’s safe to say, you deserve what’s coming. First, however,” she extended an arm towards the ground and then waved it over and in front of her own face, then snapped her fingers. As she let her arm fall back to its side, the transformation spells on the rest of the class began to fade away, and all of Appythia’s classmates’ forms started to return, with the ones who had been turned into an armband and horseshoes returning to size so quickly that the One One got thrown onto her side. Wood, plastic, metal and glass was restored to flesh, hair and fur and cloth, and eight sets of antlers and eight angry faces appeared.
	“But I-”
	“But nothing,” Appythia said as she extended a finger towards her, moved it around in a circle, and jabbed it at her. The Old One shuddered, and was forced to buck with her forelegs held out, with one further out than the other, and her student pressing her hands together forced the Old One’s arms to fold over her upper torso just below the ribs, and her face froze into that same stoic expression as what was forced on the first student she transformed that morning. Her tail was forced to sway before being frozen in place, and a scepter that could have been of any element appeared in one hand, with that arm being forced forward and up slightly, and then the material change started. First, the hooves turned to polished marble, and the changes slowly crept up the Old One’s legs, preserving even the tiniest details. Her eyes darted about as the material changes went through her legs and spread into her lower torso, quickly converting that and her tail. That same stoic expression she forced onto the formerly-petrified student was now on her face as her own petrification swept up her upper torso, down her arms, turning the scepter to marble as well, before, finally, her head and antlers turned as well, eyes looking expectantly towards the horizon. “Wow,” remarked Appythia. “It never occurred to me how hard of a head the Old One has.”
	The rest of the class groaned.
	“Hey, Appythia?” one of her classmates spoke up. “Your telekinesis is good enough to carry the Old One out of here, right?”
	“Well, I think it is.”
	“And, you’ll turn her back once a proper statue has been commissioned for the Hall of Heroes, right?”
	“Of course. But for humility’s sake,” Appythia lazily raised one hand to the level of her upper torso’s ribcage, causing the Old One to lift slightly off the ground, “hey, it works! Anyway, for humility’s sake, I think she should be displayed in the Hall of Heroes until then.”
	“Appythia,” the Old One’s voice called in her head. “You realize I can still lay a curse on you due to me being your tutor, right?”
	“Yeah, so what?” she quipped mentally.
	“You shall turn back into a giant rubber ball at random from now on - at the worst opportunity.”
	“That’s a small price to pay for saving my class. Get out of my head now.”
	“Fine.”

* * * * * *

	“So, let me get this straight,” the ruler of the village said. “The Old One declared her retirement, and then turned all of you into objects?”
	One of Appythia’s classmates nodded. “That’s exactly what happened,” another said.
	“And Appythia was somehow able to overpower the Old One’s magic, turn the whole class back, and then turn the Old One into marble, at the cost of a randomly-activating objectification curse?”
	“Yes, exactly that,” another said.
	“The Old One wasn’t transformed permanently, was she?”
	“She was not,” another student said. “Appythia said she’ll turn her back once the sculptor gets contacted to carve a proper statue for the Hall of Heroes. That shouldn’t be more than two or three days, right?”
	“What say we just go there now and turn her back to give her a nice little talking-to about her conduct?”
	“The Old One may need some time to herself,” Appythia said with a sly grin.
	“Appythia, please don’t.”
“Her world got rocked pretty hard today.”