Jace’s eyes cleared and he took in his new temporary home. This location certainly looked idealic. They were standing on a cliff bluff, stretching out into the bay he noticed almost a ring of hills connected to the cliff like a cup. The edge of the cliff was ringed with white stones near the portal to prevent accidents. A vibrant orange type of plant life akin to a miniature tulip covered the ground giving off a nice clean floral scent. After the trauma of the Curran fruit part of him mussed that the flowers must be poisonous in some way, though when he considered they lined a path to the front gate of a huge white fortress, he figured he probably was being too paranoid. Probably.

The fortress looked like something out of a fantasy art book. It was white, with huge hundred-foot-tall walls that stretched for miles, purple stone lined the portcullis and crenellations, in fact all the battlements were purple stone. The lines were simply impossible. He knew a little of architecture. He had toyed a little with the idea of becoming an architect when he was in his junior year of high school. He had seen all the grand buildings in Washington DC, and even been to some civil war era forts. He had some idea of what a stone building should look like. These buildings were organic. The walls had a curve to them that looked impossible. The towers had bowed walls. There wasn’t a straight line in sight. He couldn’t figure out if what he was looking at was an illusion or some sort of magical building technique. Behind the keep maybe 15 or 20 miles from here on the side of a volcanic mountain (the mountain was cone shaped with a caldera looking top high in the clouds), was a huge white palace carved into the side of the black volcanic stone. It had to be huge for him to make it out from this distance. Judging by the smoke from the top of the mountain it was still an active volcano, but he saw no signs of damage from a recent eruption anywhere.

The island itself looked like the creation of two volcanos. Once he had noticed the main one, he realized the teleport portal and this cliff face behind him might just been the edge of the caldera of a second volcano. The beaches were curious, on the right hand side was a long thin black sand beach. On the left hand side of the island appeared to be a white sand beach. The water was a blue that almost stole his breath away. The air felt clean and cool. The volcano with the palace on it was gigantic. It’s top was shrouded in clouds, and clearly had snow on it. There was a river of water that formed from the snow melt and took shape partway down the mountain, which looked like it winded its way in and out of the purple and red forest of these weird fern-trees, before passing through the back side of the fort and existing under the wall and into the sea at the white sand beach.

Plenty of those flying lizards were in the sky, and he thought he saw something long and sinuous move through the shallows on the black sand beach. Some sort of sea serpent maybe? A type of dragon? Definitely larger than any whale he ever heard of on earth. His heart was lifted looking at the water. He knew he would have to learn about the dangers of the sea here. That thought tempered his excitement.

Still his maternal grandfather was a sailor. He actually had some sailing trophies named after him. It was sailing that lead to his parents meeting. Part of his love of swimming was seeded by his parent’s passion for sailing. He never was more than an amateur sailor on Earth, unlike his parents he had never sailed competitively, though he had crewed on his parent’s boats while they sailed competitively. He loved being on a sailboat many time more than being on a motor boat. There was a romance to sailing that was probably planted deep in his heart when he was just a toddler being taken out sailing on his father’s Lightning.

Seeing those beautiful sapphire seas, he hoped not everything about this world was hell. He found he was desperately praying to the many gods of this world who’s names he only half remembered, just thinking about that desire.

There was a group of people dressed in brown and black robes hurrying from the gate of the immense fortress. They were wizards or mages or whatever they called themselves, and it looked like they were all men. Idly he wondered about the lack of female mages. Considering the value these people were putting on magic (understandably), he couldn’t imagine they would treat females with a talent for magic in the same inhuman manner they treated females everywhere. That seemed counterproductive. Though judging by how these humans acted, he also probably wouldn’t be too surprised to find a breeding farm inside those walls with all the magically capable women chained down for breeding purposes to make more wizards. He was surprised at how dark his mind had gotten since coming to this place. Dismissing those dark concerns, he paid attention to the wizards who started talking to the older wizard who survived the journey.

In the group of wizards at the back was a young man with pale grey/blond hair who looked like a student. He only assumed he was a student because of the red hooded cloak he was wearing. He was looking at the portal as if expecting someone else to pop out. From time to time his eyes traveled over the small party lingering longest on Jace. Though what he was expecting to see, Jace probably wasn’t it, because he kept glancing at the portal restlessly.

Suddenly the portal behind them ignited, cutting off the quiet conversation the wizards were having and drawing the eyes of the young man in back. Jace himself looked back at the portal and examined the newcomers. It was an old wise looking wizard with a small pack on his back, with a young man (?), with short grey hair and feminine features. The young man looked far too delicate for masculinity, had you put a wig on him (?) he wouldn’t have doubt it was a pretty girl. The young man was as clean as the wizard he was traveling with, which meant he was cleaner then Jace in his blood stained and dusty clothing. There was almost something regal about how the young man held himself, almost as if he was the son of privilege or something. He was definitely a lady killer. He could imagine that young man (?) would be very popular with a certain subset of the female population which liked delicate looking men.

The wizard quickly hurried forward, and then stopped when he noticed Jace, a look of surprise on his face. He studied Jace closely then, then continued on toward the small group of wizards.

After a few minutes of quiet conversation, the wizards broke up and an emissary stepped forward. “Jace, Kay’rin? Please step forward.” Jace stepped up, followed by the grey haired boy.

“We welcome you to the academy. We will be performing a full elemental affinity assessment test in the main hall. Please follow us.”

Glancing at Kay’rin for a moment, up close he looked even more feminine, Jace spoke up. “I have slaves; they’ll need a place to stay.”

The old man who was speaking for the group smile and said “Of course, well you’ll have your own room. All students here can keep their slaves in the room. How many are there?”

Wincing at the answer he half expected he had a premonition that he might go grey like everyone else before he turned thirty, he said quickly said ambiguously, “My bed plus two more beds. No less.”

The old man looked at the white robed Sam behind him with a look of surprise, then he smiled as if the request made sense. Jace had a bad feeling that something had been misunderstood.