"Fear is the swindler of reason." Ern-Geist glided smoothly from one end of the chalkboard to the other. "It is the one human instinct most prone to error."

With heavy-lidded eyes, Benjamin surveyed the classroom sleepily. His fellow spirits were slumped on their desks in varying postures of boredom, their levels of disengagement indicated by their levels of transparency. In the back corner of the room, Benjamin saw Haley go nearly invisible as she nodded off. She caught herself before she fell of her chair completely, and her peachy skin and pink jacket flashed vibrantly to life before returning to their regular muted translucency.

"Even spirits young as yourselves," continued Ern-Geist, "can easily exploit human fear. Even the Living..." he stopped to chuckle. "Take pleasure in exploiting each others' fears."

Get the point, Benjamin thought impatiently. We're in purgatory here.

Though a real Purgatory did not exist, Benjamin imagined this is is how it would feel. There were no clocks on the walls; wristwatches didn't work; not even sundials existed where he lived. There was no instrument to tell time in Phantomia because there was no need to. Time was at a standstill in their world, so classes like Ern-Geist's could go on quite literally forever. The school bell never rang because they had all the time in the world.

Fortunately, it was only old philosophy professors like Ern-Geist that took advantage of the All The Time In The World rule. Other professors, who taught more practical subjects, were more conscious of the still very-human attention span of their students. Classes like Spectral Stealth Tactics and the Physics of Preternatural Thermodynamics usually lasted for only two hours at most (or what felt like two hours, at least).

Benjamin's intuition told him that Ern-Geist had started the class at least four hours ago, and the old specter didn't seem to be stopping any time soon. Benjamin understood that the old ghost was trying to teach them the significance of fear in what they were being trained to do. But, practically speaking, how much more complicated could it get than "human gets scared—human makes bad decisions—human falls into trap"?