“I can’t wait until graduation! We’ll both finally be out from under the thumb of the headmistress. We’ll start planning our future together.”

Young Morgana Benevolent stared dreamingly at her one and only, Jayce Corgimiester. Together they lounged in the grassy courtyard of the Boston College of Magic in the province of Classics. Their magic robes were covered in leaves, but they did not care. They were carefree.

Jayce listened intently. “Yes. We’ll have much to arrange after we pass our qualifying exams.”

Morgana dreamed of her life with Jayce in the big city. “We’ll move to Rockopolis and start our own magic therapy practice.”

Jayce laughed. “You really think you can start treating people just like that? I thought we agreed on both going to magical medical school first.”

“Well, yes…” Morgana shifted uncomfortably in the grass. “I've actually been meaning to bring that up again. I just keep thinking we don’t need to waste our time with more schooling. We’re already top of our class, are we not?”

Jayce sighed at the thought. He leaned in closer and whispered, “Based on pure magical potency, certainly you are unrivaled among our peers. But your scores only reflect your prowess of your destruction magic and not the sorry state of your healing magic. Morgana. We agreed to master our light magic first, not to engage in a trial-by-fire in the real world.” He reached out and placed his hand on her cheek. “Your father was an educated healer. You told me he valued education more than anything.”

“That’s not what he meant.” Morgana scowled and rolled away. “Light magic isn’t bound only inside books and hallways of education. Learning to be kind, to channel the light within can happen anywhere. You have to grasp what you want, know where to get it, and never look back. I’m done studying. I want to act and to grow stronger for it!”

He was becoming frustrated. “You are placing the cart before the horse! I’m sorry, but it’s ridiculous to believe you can turn your destruction into light just by winging it!”

Morgana's face turned red. Jayce was talking about a very private and embarrassing issue in front of all the students in the courtyard. How could he?

“Say it. I know you want to just tell everybody about it. Go ahead and yell it!”

“Morgana, no! It’s not something to be ashamed of. Plenty of wizards and witches learn to redirect their natural powers into their preference through tutoring.”

“You don’t think that a senior at the top of her class can do anything she puts her mind to?” How insulting. If anyone in this world should have believed in her, she thought it would be him.

She was always suspicious about this more schooling racket that he and her professors tried to sell her. What was after magical medical school, advanced magical medical school? And then what after that, super advanced medical school? Years of her adult life had been wasted standing still and listening to the insistent jabbering of these old fogies. When would it end? Morgana had had a very hard childhood and she was about to fulfill her promise to her mother by graduating magic college. It was finally time to live her life!

“You’re talented and wonderful!” Jayce said. “But no amount of raw talent can control the power you were born with. We need masterful training from the best sources. We need more discipline.” He glanced around the courtyard and saw that their raised voices were beginning to attract unwanted attention. “Maybe we should take our conversation inside…”

Morgana rose from the grass. She noticed Jayce’s wandering eyes. He was looking at other women. Of course he was. He could never be happy with her. How could he when all they did was argue? Despite that reality, she would not give him up without a fight.

“Hey, eyes on me! Am I not good enough for you?”

“How could you say that? I care about you so much. That’s why I’m so worried about your future.” He paused. “Our future! The one we build together!” He leapt up and opened his arms toward her.

She cast him aside and twisted away. “I don’t believe you! You just want an excuse to leave me!” Her face, arms, and legs began to glow red. “Oh, I see it now. It's all clear." She wagged her finger at him. "You knew I wouldn’t follow you to med school. That’s why you’re so intent on going! You’ll never think I’m trained enough, no matter what!”

Jayce jumped to his feet and looked around frantically. Other students were noticing steam radiating from her skin. The grass around them began to wilt.

“Morgana, you need to calm down. You’re losing control again.” He tried patting her head. “Honey…”

“Don’t touch me!” Her heart was filled with fear and rage. She hovered off the ground without even trying. She was losing awareness of her surroundings and of her actions.

Students began to flee the courtyard. They remembered what happened last time Morgana lost control. The entire science wing went up in flames.

“No, Morgana! Not again!” Jayce channeled his magic and cast a binding spell on her. “Please, someone get the professors! I need help!”

Morgana struggled and loosened his grip with her own overwhelming power. Jayce tried his best to summon a calming agent but was unable to complete his incantation when Morgana exploded and blew the courtyard sky high.

Morgana slowly opened her eyes. Bright lights bathed her vision. She recoiled and blocked the shine with her hand. "Ugh. Where am I"?

A blurry figure loomed over her. "She's awake. Take her vitals."

Double vision merged into one and her surroundings became clear. A thin sheet covered her body. She was lying on a cot in the school infirmary. Murmurs and cries of pain echoed off the arched rafters she stared at above.

“Get me more aloe fast!”

“I need an ice spell level three on bed thirteen!”

"Jayce!” Morgana shot up in her bed. “Where is he? Oh my goodness, what is happening?" Her mind was aflutter and her gut was in knots. Her confused emotional state was on the brink of chaos and she could not make heads or tails of the situation.

She kicked her sheets off and started to glow a brilliant red. Nurses from all over the room dropped their instruments, medicines, and abandoned their patients to descend on her and keep her down. Some grabbed her arms and legs while others chanted incantations to cool her body and muddle her mind.

“He’s here! He’s right over there,” the head nurse said while pointing across the room.

Morgana spotted Jayce breathing, lying unconscious on a stone slab. His body was encapsulated in a shroud of crystalline blue magic.

She thrust the staff away from her with a reverberating wave of chaotic, crackling electric magic and stumbled toward Jayce. She fell on her knees at his side and reached out to take his hand, but her fingers bumped against the blue barrier.

The hair from his head was gone. His skin smoldered a bright blood orange red. “What’s wrong with him?” she cried as she threw herself over his crystal prison. Tears flooded down her cheeks. The nurses picked themselves off the floor and pointed their magic defensively toward her. Other than her sobs, the room had gone silent.

The thunderous clack of the tall, double infirmary doors blasting open whipped Morgana’s head up. Her tears sizzled and evaporated as they flicked from her face and sprayed across the room. The headmistress’ magical heels clacked against the white tile floor. One after another, this sound of power assured the nurses enough to lower their magic hands.

The headmistress approached Morgana. “He’s in an alchemistic magically-induced coma concealed in an arcane aura of freezing stabilization.” She came to a stop at their side and scanned Jayce’s body with regret written on her face. “He’ll probably never wake up.”

“You’re lying,” Morgana whispered, burying her head in her hands.

“What I say is true.” She shot daggers at Morgana wit her eyes. “You did this to him. Your outburst almost cooked him to alive, but I and the faculty managed to pause his decline. He’ll remain in this frozen state until we can find a way to stop your flames from burning his body from the inside-out the moment we release the spell.”

“Do it now! I know you have the power! Don’t patronize me and claim that you don’t, that every moment further he suffers is because of me and not your inability to act!”

The headmistress scowled. “You think Jayce would still be like this if I could? No magic like that exists! I’ve spent the last few hours contacting wizards and witches all over the continent and none of them can fathom a strategy that can reverse the unbridled rage you directed into his body.”

“Then…then I’ll do it.” Morgana rolled up the sleeves of her robe and placed her hands hastily upon the crystal.

The headmistresses slapped Morgana’s hands away. “You child! You’re like a volcano of undisciplined emotions! You could no more heal a person than you could cast any light magic out of a single finger. You are nothing but an unrefined failure!”

Morgana stumbled back. She was too startled to act as the headmistress took her place in front of the slab.

The headmistresses gazed at Jayce, blue and cold, and shook her head. “He was my top student.” She placed her hand on the crystal and then curled it into a fist. “I told him to dump you like a bad habit. He refused, and now look at what happened!” She turned to Morgana and, in a moment of weakness, let slip out the first few words of a revenge incantation upon her student.

Morgana’s arms began to tingle and she recognized what was happening. She leapt back putting several paces between her and the powerful headmistresses. “You’ve always wanted me gone! You’re afraid of my power, jealous of it! I could save him. I could save anyone I wanted!” She threw up her arms and dispelled the headmistress’ spell. Her fingers twitched wildly as she muttered an angelic enchantment. Her eyes scanned the glowing white ball forming in her hands as it flashed between light and darkness. Spurts of fiery embers sprung from the ball and set cots in the room ablaze. She twisted her wrists and contorted her neck in an attempt to redirect her magical intention, but her heart was filled more with fear and anger than the healing spirit that she needed to help.

Seeing the disarray and growing desperation in Morgana’s eyes, the headmistress ordered the nurses to secure Morgana in a detention hex. They formed a circle around Morgana and scraped their skin with their nails to offer up sacrifices for such a powerful bewitchment.

Chanting and swaying went totally unnoticed by Morgana with her entire attention on her spell that was quickly turning black and spiraling out of control. “Oh heavens! What am I doing?” she cried.

Chains of spectral steel erupted from the floor and wrapped Morgana and her ball of energy into a cocoon. Her spell exploded under the pressure and small streaks of power shot out and hit the chandelier, windows, and students lying on their cots. The chandelier twirled casting candle flames across the room, windows blew out, and two students jumped out of their beds feeling cured beyond perfection. Two others though did not get out of bed ever again.

Morgana howled.

If not for the quick actions of the nurse’s, the school would have surely been reduced to rubble. In the Room of Detention, an impenetrable box sealed by the strongest magic, Morgana’s body involuntarily expelled devastatingly emotional magic in fits of rage and grief during the following days the headmistresses consulted with the leaders of the continent to determine what to do with her.

Two weeks after the disaster, Morgana Benevolent was banished from Boston College of Magic. She accepted this punishment in exchange for immunity for her crimes. All involved wanted to hide their mistakes, carelessness, and failure to act sooner so the incident was covered up and forgotten.

She packed her bags and drove away deep into the heart of the continent. Her heart was filled with shame, regret, and hopelessness and she wondered what future someone like her could still have. With Jayce, she had a difficult life still ahead of her. But alone?

Exhausted, dirty, and barely caring enough to eat a single bite, she stopped at a diner in the Pop Populous. While awaiting her breakfast, she stared blankly at the children’s place mat on the table before her. A word search caught her eye when she spotted the name Jayce written within it. It was not one of the listed words to find therefore she felt it was serendipity promising a happy ending to her torment. It was a sign that she was to stop sulking and start acting just like she once believed was her correct path forward.

She grabbed a crayon and began listing all of the most powerful healing spells she knew. She racked her brain over what could possibly keep the fire within Jayce at bay when she flipped the placement over for more room. That’s when she saw it: a map of the Continent of the Jam Gods. Her eyes naturally fell upon the blazing Mount Rock in the Land of Rock province. It occurred to her that perhaps she did not need to improve her feeble healing skill, but that she could use her strength to fight the fire back into submission.

She had once read in a forbidden library tome of a place of immense power. This was a place that might still hold hope for Jayce and show all the haters that she was more than talented enough to excel at any form of magic she pleased.

Begin Ocean Avenue by Yellowcard

VERSE 1

There’s … night.

Morgana climbed toward the peak of Mount Rock, the tallest volcano in all the provinces. On her way, she incinerated mountain trolls, dispelled bandits, and cooled herself from the sweltering lava flowing down from the crater.

After clawing herself to the top, she peered down in awe of a molten lake of fire. A legend in the oldest tomes teased that if a magician strong enough to survive the magma dived inside and survived, they would be granted one wish.

With some courage, but mostly sadness and a lack of will to live, Morgana threw herself into the giant maw The seething wind licked her face and hair. Her wizarding robes began to burn away and left a rainbow of colored smoke in her wake. She hastily cast a cooling spell and engulfed her body in crystal of blue ice.

As the lava rose up to take her, her life began flashing before her eyes. She saw the years of abuse, disappointment, and broken promises. But then she saw her years at school and how it was made right by her love for Jayce.

CHORUS

If … yeah!

Their first year, Jayce fought off those bullies who tormented her for not being able to play an instrument. She was forever grateful for Jayce’s kind heart.

Their second year, he handed her the medal that inducted her into the magical society for the gifted. This would start her path toward accessing the best magical opportunities.

Their third year, he helped her learn the xylophone. She finally learned to rock like everyone else.

VERSE 2

There’s … tonight.

Her body splashed down into the searing ocean. She heard the surface of her magical barrier crackling. Realizing her mistake, she twisted herself around to swim back out, but she saw only lava. She had already begun to sink too fast.

Her heart was filling with a kaleidoscope of emotions. How could she risk her future like this? What if Jayce woke up on his own at any moment? She may never be there if he finally did.

CHORUS

If … yeah!

She closed her eyes as she began to feel the overwhelming heat seep into her shell. She made her peace and prepared to greet the afterlife when suddenly her skin detected the curious receding of heat. With this glimmer of hope, all her emotions coalesced into one desire: to live. Her skipping heart pushed ecstatically against her magic shell and burst it apart from the inside. She surrounded herself with a bubble of pure emotion and slowly descended into the heart of the molten underworld.

INSTRUMENTAL

♫♫♫

After some time, the glowing red darkness around her began to break. She noticed a light from below that came closer by the second. Finally, it was as if she broke the surface of a body of water and was ascending into the air, but upside down. She floated through a vast cavern, bright and pleasantly warm.

BRIDGE

I … somehow.

She hovered toward a stony island and landed softly. Taking a risk, she dispelled her bubble. A mild breeze blew through her hair. She noticed an altar at her feet.

She knelt and read the inscription.

Ye who place thine indomitable hands upon this slab shall be granted the true yearning inside thine heart.

She quickly slapped her palms onto the slab and laid bare her wish to keep Jayce safe. In her mind, all she thought about was curing Jayce. But the slab pierced its gaze into her heart and saw only one thing, the root of all her dreams: fear.

CHORUS

If … yeah!

The volcano erupted, spewing molten rocks across the Land of Rock and launching a bright star into the ashen sky. High above the Continent of the Jam Gods, a new goddess was born. Morgana Malevolent received the overwhelming and frightening power to crush all those she feared, the very power she yearned for her whole life. As she surveyed the land, her heart was filled with ambition.

Her mind muddled within a quagmire of opportunity, desire, and revenge it was strange that Jayce did not make an appearance within it. But that would all change in the years to come after she shaped the Land of Rock into her own personal empire. Safe, obedient, and finally afraid of her.

End Ocean Avenue by Yellowcard