Before I could reply, he continued speaking. “Ahh, right, couple of things to get out of the way first. No matter. Well, we know you’re at least a Two, so I may as well give you a glimpse into what you’re in for.” As he finished speaking, he raised a hand and clicked his fingers. And with that the room changed.

The drab walls and floor faded from reality and were replaced with a beautiful oak floor and walls which constantly shifted from ancient artworks to pictures of magical creatures, and back again.

In place of the dull metal filing cabinets lining the back wall of the office now stood overflowing bookshelves, with some books appearing as though they would turn to dust with a touch. Atop the shelves sat an old fashioned birdcage with a hummingbird sitting in the perch.

As I looked around in wonder, a loud flash brought my attention back to the now writhing table. That’s right. I said writhing.

The wooden table, which had been covered in dozens of carvings of warriors and beasts before, had decided a static fight wasn’t good enough for it, the carvings now moving and fighting in an eternal war, the celtic knotwork simply moving around to accommodate them.

Why wouldn’t it?

Atop the table now sat a large orb, appearing to be made of cloudy azure quartz, akin to one of those fake crystal skulls what were all the rage in the late 19th century.

Eventually, one necromancer, before necromancy was outlawed entirely, of course, found an old Aztec burial ground and raised an Aztec Shaman Priest’s spirit, to finally find out if the damn things were real. When asked, apparently the spirit just shook its head and disappeared.

“First and foremost, I, David Nox, Magus First Class, greet you, Unawakened Initiate as demanded in the Ventraxalian inter-magus relations treaty. Now Charlie, the big question. The classic red pill or blue pill. Earlier, when I said you had to train with us, I lied. There is a choice."

"You can have your magic resealed, before it has been awakened, and you won’t remember any of this. From here, there is no going back. Are you ready? Will you step into this world of chaos and magic?”

I hesitated. I thought of my parents, of what they would think, of how this would complicate my life. I thought of the Johnsons. Of Mina, who was probably either alone and afraid, or worse.

Finally I looked at the decision I was trying to make head on, did I want to be involved with magic? To potentially be a wizard?

Hell yes I did.

I nodded, and the serious look vanished from Nox’s face, replaced by its natural state, a wry smirk. “Okay, then raise your hands to the Orb, and open your magesight.” The orb felt smooth, almost frictionless, and I had a bit of difficulty keeping my hands on it while opening my…

Magesight? Third eye? Manasight? Sure, we’ll go with manasight. “Now, feel the mana around you. Feel it, don’t try to look at it. Try and reach as far as you can for it.

Have you ever tried to grab a large ball with a pair of chopsticks covered in oil? If your answer is yes then, firstly, you’re a damn liar, and secondly, you know how damn near impossible it is. That was what reaching out for mana was like.

With every added inch the density of the accumulating mana increased, and I had to find a ‘crack’ in the ‘wall’ that was building to slip my awareness through and onto the next layer. After about a minute, I was drenched in sweat, panting, and at my limit.

“Push the Mana into the sphere” Nox said, his voice ephemeral through my focus. I pushed. And pushed. And pleaded, and bargained and cajoled. Not a thing worked. Eventually I decided screw this, and told it to move.

“YOU WILL MOVE!” I shouted internally, and with an audible *pop*, all the mana I had awareness of shot into the sphere. My vision wavered, and I felt like I was going to pass. But then a loud *bang* brought me back to lucidity.

The sphere had shattered, into….perfectly… identical pieces. Seven of them. And looking back at the remains of the sphere…. It was still there. As in entirely there.

The debris I was looking at somehow wasn't missing from the sphere. Before I could ask how the hell that had happened, the sphere vanished in another flash, leaving the seven chunks behind.

“Great job Charlie, your power rating put you at a Seven. Congrats, it took me quite a bit of work to up mine to a Seven. And it seems you’re even luckier, the Testing Sphere left behind some Focus Crystal.

It’s not incredibly rare, it happens maybe once in every…. 20 odd tests? Some flaw in the energy matrix, or maybe the Archon just wanted to reward the lucky. Who knows?”

I stopped him right there. I was tired, no scratch that, exhausted, mentally and physically, and I had it up to here with his lack of explanations. “What the fuck is a Ventralaxian, what’s focus crystal, why am I lucky, what do you mean I’m a seven, am I a sorceror or a wizard of some kind, basically, what the hell?”

Nox looked at me like he was five years old and about to giggle his head off. “Sorry, bad habit, have to keep up the idea that wizards know everything.We like our secrecy. Don’t worry, you’ll get into it in no time.

"As for your questions, the Ventralax are a group of people who made the rules for when two magic using sentients interact. That’s all I can tell you. Literally, I’m under geas. That’s an unbreakable promise, before you ask. "

"You are without doubt a wizard, if you were a sorceror…. Let’s just say you would have known about it a lot sooner."

"Seven… is your power rating. Think of it like a car. Your engine has a certain amount of horsepower. You still have to build the rest of the car, and you’ll need to start off with simpler stuff, before you progress to the bits that can make the most use of your engine."

"To start with, it’ll be very easy to power spells, but as you progress through the ranks, each tier will demand more and more power. That’s right, you still have to go through each tier, starting with Initiate. After all, you can’t expect a toddler to build a car, even if they do have industrial power tools."

"Finally the reason why you’re lucky is because focus stone is fairly valuable, and as an Initiate, you’ll need some cash if you want to get ahead, and because it was your testing, you get to keep it. The reason it’s so valuable is simple. Wizards have to focus on casting spells, like with the Orb. "

"What’s great about the runoff crystal from the Orb, is that it’s one single crystal growth. That means that energy can flow through it perfectly. You’ll want to keep a piece or two for a wand or staff, trust me.”

I just gaped at him. It seemed I really had lucked out. I was pretty powerful by all accounts, I had some rare stuff, and I was gonna be a fuckin’ wizard. Now the only question was, how to go about lying to my parents.

“You have my number, the next training program starts in a few weeks, until then, to keep you occupied, and to make sure you don’t blow up your house”, he winked, and I honestly wasn’t sure if he was joking.

“Here, a book on the basics of mana, you can even have it for free. I’m glad you took this chance kid, I think you’ll go far, and maybe you’ll even be good.” He said with a grin, whatever mysterious message he was trying to give failing to connect.

I rose to leave, packing my new...stones, and the book into my now ex-college school bag. I subconsciously pulled out a cigarette on my way to leave and as I put it into my mouth he said something, and the best way I can describe the sound is the way a CD stutters when scratched, except it was the Universe that was stuttering.

And smoke began to rise from the end of the cigarette. I looked back at him, curiosity dominating my face, the cig nearly falling out. “Goodbye Charlie. Oh, and remember, the veil won’t hide things from you now."

"You’ll still need magesight for glamours and to see mana, but I would recommend a few aspirin when you get home. Things might seem a bit….strange.Don’t worry about your time working with us, it’ll mostly be boring paperwork”

I have never wanted to throttle anyone more than that jinxing bastard in my entire life.

With that final word, I suddenly found myself standing outside the Department.

I walked home, deciding the bus wasn’t for me. It was only about 10 o’clock, but it had felt like years.

I was about halfway home, 20 minutes and several cigarettes deep, when I actually started to notice what was around me. As I walked past the park I saw what looked like young elven kids playing chicken with passing cars.

I was about to shout out, when I saw the girls were…..made of wood. I passed a repairman working on some piping only to realize it was several...gnomes? Piloting some kind of brass automaton.

I looked up to the sky to find some kind of relief, and instead saw a flock of birds which were discharging small bolts of electricity now and again. Nox was wrong. I’m gonna need something a hell of a lot stronger than aspirin.

I walked up to my front door, jittery as hell. I was too enamoured with my new game of ‘Try not to stare at the magic stuff you’ve been around your whole life, but couldn’t see’ to come up with a reason I hadn’t gone to college today. Oh hell, I was still technically under my parents care, so the college would have rang them about me ‘quitting’. Balls.

I opened the door to find the house in disarray, and my sister standing in the middle of the mess. “Well, this is a fine mess” I quipped, channeling my inner wizard. “Shit, Charlie, help me clean this up! I was supposed to clean this up after Mom and Dad left for work… wait, why are you back so soon?”

Let it never be said that my sister is an idiot. By anyone except me, of course. And my personally approved list of individuals to whom I grant sister bullying rights. Don’t laugh, Bullying rights are serious stuff in the big brother business.

Now I don’t know about you, but I consider the ability to quickly lie on the spot the quintessential thing a young man learns in his teenage years. “I was feeling like shit because of the Johnsons, and I decided to come home.”

I said, not untruthfully, which by the way, is the secret to a good lie. “You heard? How? I only just got a text from Mom about it.”

I may have to revoke some people’s rights to call my sister an idiot. “I passed their house when they were…. cleaning up the house this morning.” She brought me in for a hug, before continuing cleaning.

“On to lighter topics, are you gonna help me or what?” Fool that I am, I did. She hugged me for Christ’s sake, it’s a brother’s ultimate weakness. I never asked her what caused the mess. I never said I wasn’t an idiot.

After getting back to my room, I collapsed for a few minutes, idle thoughts interrupting my need for some peace. It was one of those days, the ones where the morning feels like a thousand years ago and when you get home you feel tired in your bones. After a few minutes of rest, I sat up and checked the time. 4 hours had passed. Like I said, one of those days.

I’m not going to lie, I’ve always taken a secret interest in magic. I mean come on, who wouldn’t, even with parents as anti-magic as mine. I sat down at my computer desk and put on some podcast or other. It didn’t matter, that’s not what I cared about at the minute.

I opened my bag and took out the book. On the cover was some kind of ancient rune, and when I opened the cover the title read ‘On the Ancient and Most High Arte, Controlling the Ebb and Flow of the Most High and Enlightened Energy.’

I flipped a few pages and all I could see were inane scribbles, meaningless lines, and odd symbols that honestly looked like something from Lovecraft.

Of course, he pranked me.. Can’t say I shouldn’t have seen it coming. Just a bit disappointing I suppose. I threw the book onto my desk and just sat there for awhile. Then, a thought occurred to me.

“We like our secrecy."

That’s what he said. I picked the book up once more, and reread the title. It sounded fake because it was fake. I closed the book and then opened my manasight. Immediately, I saw something of interest.

A tiny point of light, in the ‘ancient rune’ on the cover. Focusing on it, I tried to push some mana towards it. In comparison to earlier, this was as easy as breathing. When a smidge of mana touched the small point of light, the book changed.

It warped and reformed in my hands, a strange sensation playing across my skin, like the feeling of a cat’s tongue. I was now holding the true tome, the thing which would start me on my journey to greatness….. An Idiot’s Guide to Mana. I closed the book, stared at my ceiling for a few seconds and sighed.

After reopening the book, I quickly read the entire thing. It was on the most basic of magics, manipulating an element, like fire, or light and so on. According to the book, there were twelve elements, four primary, four secondary, and the 4 primal.

The four basic elements, I mean come on, they’re obvious. The secondary elements were more nuanced; Ice, Lightning, Wood and Metal. The four primal elements were listed as Light, Life, Dark and Death, but unlike the others, no information was given about their manipulation.

The book advised picking an element to start with and I mean come on, who doesn’t want fire at their fingertips. It showed me the ‘structure’ for lack of a better word, that the mana needed to take, which was somehow spiky and curvy at the same time, for fire at least, as well as listing what else was required.

I needed to give the mana a form for the fire to exist in, a shape, a point, or a direction. It suggested doing this with my hands, as it made it subconsciously easier to shape the mana.

I reached for slightly more mana than before, using what I estimated to be the same amount of mana as what I could see in a lightbulb. Yet try as I might, I simply couldn’t shape it. I must have spent 45 minutes just trying to get the mana into shape, yelling each time I couldn’t do it.

Then I looked back at the book and to my chagrin I noticed what I had failed to before. I had left my mana sight on, and when I saw the page I was on, I say not only the current words and diagrams, but the strange lines and squiggles from before.

As I looked at it, I noticed the way both halves intersected, the strange form they made when combined together, and then I knew. Like that.

My memory of earlier, when the universe stuttered as Nox spoke, was simply replaced with the word fire. I just knew that if I said the word ‘fire’ with just the right inflection, the right tone and cadence, then fire is what I would get.

I spun back around in my chair, resolute. I spoke the word, and in my sight the structure formed, and I willed the mana into it. It was still a struggle, but nothing compared to before. I pointed upwards with my index and middle fingers, and the mana structure changed slightly, but that wasn’t what I was looking at.

I was looking at the candle-sized flame now sitting just above the tips of those fingers. I felt the mana, pour from my surroundings,into a structure I created through pure will. And it felt good.

I started playing with the mana, forming small orbs, cubes, spirals and loops out of fire. I was far too preoccupied with my whooping to note down the various changes in the mana-structures. I was playing with fire, and it was great.

After about five minutes, I sat down, suddenly incredibly tired. It appeared using the power of your will to tell the laws of the universe to fuck off was tiring work. Who knew?

I closed the book, and it returned to its indecipherable state. I smiled, my first real smile in the last week or so, proud at what I had achieved. Me, no one else. I hadn’t begged a god nor made a deal with a devil. I had taken the first step on a path leading beyond the unknown.

As I revelled in my own vainglory, I took out a cigarette, and made a small orb of flame the size of an M&M above my first two fingers. What can I say, if it works, don’t fix it? I was just about to light the cig, when Amy burst into the room.

“Charlie what the hell was all that shouting and whooping earlier, I have to stud…”

Her eyes landed on the small flaming orb, flickering in front of my hand.

“....Charlie….. What the fuck?”