Aya al-Hareem was a woman, thirty of age and dark skinned of Arabic and African descent, though her lineage is that of incredible unimportance. Travelers and traders, all eventually settling into the Americas in its early foundations. At her age, she boasts a matronly jaw and was blessed with youth and beauty, most don’t guess her age above twenty-two or so. She has the body to match, a clean face and a bust that can certainly turn some heads when spotted in a crowd. She often boasts a content smile that she offers freely to any who make eye contact with her, but many in public quickly avert their gaze as to not be rude. For the perceptive, her smile still hides a vague creeping sadness, and is prone to fading into a more neutral expression if she doesn’t catch herself doing so.

Her hair is of a good hue of brown, long and flowing that dip beneath her shoulder blades. She was vision impaired, and was prescribed glasses at a young age that cover gorgeous brown eyes. She worked out in some spare time, and had bold arms that she enjoyed showing off. Her main attire was usually jeans and a tank top, just so that she could show off her arms which certainly fueled further public viewing. Aya was in good health, of body and mind and she knew it.

The life she had led seemed to be of little note, following the footsteps of her ancestors and getting into various retail jobs. From clerking to stocking, and even did a brief stint as a truck driver. The kind of work that, while incredibly useful, can wear a soul down into thinking they are doing nothing with their life by its end. Speaking of ended lives, she had little to no family to speak of. Most died of various accidents and illnesses by the time she was eighteen. While more than a decade had passed and the sting of loss lost its own hold on her, it was still part of her frequent saddened smile. What experiences had she lost, without a family to guide her life? She’s almost more sad for that than the fact she lost them at all. At best, she had a brother that moved out of state to find greener pastures while she remained and languished against the grinding stone of retail.

It is this depressing fact of life that led her to magic. For those uninitiated, the mask the underworld wore to hide themselves shattered. Within a few months, most myths revealed themselves to be true. Well, specifically based around the stories of monsters that lurk in the night. Werewolves, vampires, ghosts. Several aspects of life had been completely overturned. After all, the afterlife itself was revealed but the mechanics thereof still eluded earthly mortals. No actual gods or deities had revealed themselves after this upheaval, and ghosts are not exactly in the position to give accurate details beyond their own narrow experiences.

Most active of all, the Magister Council revealed themselves and spearheaded the campaign to help the world adjust at a faster rate. They established their own headquarters in Virginia, not terribly far from Quantico as to help law enforcement adjust to all of the new information. The magisters had their own set of enforcers to help upkeep the rule of law regarding magic in the realm, but they still cooperated with previously established world nations.

There was a new program introduced to the world to help others learn magic, because despite the sudden surge of extra-natural entities, they were still fairly low in population. The vampires had their own cathedrals that functioned as a similar recruiting tool, but their numbers remained low. Aya actually had considered them as well, and did some cursory research on it. The information was a bit too scattered and unreliable, and while the concept of immortality did not shake her, the side effects seemed too severe to deal with. Far too many bloodlines with too many drawbacks. Some could survive in sunlight, some could not. There was even an implication that she wouldn’t necessarily be able to ‘choose’ which bloodline she could join, as again their numbers were low and the culture had a ‘beggars can’t be choosers’ vibe, which she just couldn’t get behind.

Therefore, it was in one of those magical training centers that Aya found herself in. A program called “aetherial infusion”, the process of tattooing pure magic and energy onto a mortal body to help facilitate the use of magic to a greater degree. It was experimental, which typically means ‘free’ to lower class ears. Aya did not have much to go on, but her way forward was paid as were her lodgings.

It was treated like a surgery, and was a bit taken aback by how little agency she had in the matter. No choice of colors, designs, or anything. She had some vague choice on where they’d be, but she wasn’t terribly picky on that either.

Aya joked to one of the doctors, “As long as it’s pretty!”, offering a wide beam of a smile.

The head doctor and magister gave her a chuckle, showing off the most likely designs. “Most think so, Miss Hareem,” and her smile was infectious as he offered one back nearly as wide.

She was put under anesthetics, as the direct infusion of magic into one’s body could potentially be as painful as one would expect. As magic is an otherworldly concept, it has a tendency to ignore standard medicinal painkillers.

Aya woke up in her room, the aforementioned free lodging. It was a fairly sterile but homey room, with a white and grey color scheme. It had a laptop and WiFi (how generous!) and some general basic reading material including some textbooks regarding magic that had been compiled within the last twenty years. Most important to her however, was the full length mirror. It actually seemed out of place, possibly something shipped straight out of a Wal-Mart. They knew that she would likely want to inspect herself, and they were right.

She performed a brief but moderately thorough search for cameras. She didn’t find any, but there was in fact at least one affixed on the main light fixture but luckily for her, it pointed towards the doorway for security purposes and was not in a position to cause an awkward situation for the screen viewers. She began to strip, already seeing the glowing golden tattoos that took up a much greater part of her body than she at all expected.

They were runic in nature, with flowing cursive curls as accents to tie it all together. They encompassed much of her clavicle area, avoiding her breasts but travelling between them down to her stomach and encompassing the left side of said stomach, and peeling off into her left leg where most of the tattoos seemed to have congregated. From her clavicle, they also went down her right arm, but they were not as elaborate as they were on her stomach or legging. She admired her nude body, having a smile as she posed and focused on the glowing energy that now encompassed her body. She could even feel it to a degree, a slight warm reverberation felt even down to her bones. It was disconcerting but not painful, and within a few minutes she became more accustomed to it.

Aya then had a knock on her door, hearing a “Miss Hareem?”

Her eyes widened and her expression soured, quickly belting out a “Gah, moment! Not decent!” And she rushed to reappropriate herself to an acceptable point. After which, she gave the greeter a nervous, “All good! Come in!”

It was the head doctor that gave her the original set of tests. His smile was genuine and warm, looking over the slightly disheveled room and asking politely, “Been up long?”

“No, just a few minutes or so.”

“Fair enough. I wanted to go over a few things with you that may not have been clear before, when I spoke to some other magisters.”

“Of course, Doctor,” she claimed a seat at the desk with the laptop, while the doctor casually strolled over to the bed to sit.

“Yes, well. This wasn’t in the preliminary waivers and such, an oversight on our part that I’ve been telling my superiors about for months. The main one is that, by undergoing this operation you have forfeit your ability to visit standard doctors.”

She nodded in agreement, “That does make a certain kind of sense.”

“Yes it does, I’m glad you see that. However in some of your letters and essays before undergoing this operation you said you were interested in attending Snowcrag Academy?”

“Yes of course, I didn’t want to do this and then do nothing with it, you know?”

The doctor offered a chuckle, “Heh, that also makes sense. Then there’s good news here, because there is a laboratory outpost near there. As you attend that academy, if you find yourself with any health concerns, you should head there immediately. They should give you directions when you arrive.”

“Good to know!” She smiled at him.

The rest of the encounter was relatively boring. He went over and repeated some of the things she had previously learned. The doctor just wanted to make sure that she no longer had the ability to visit standard doctors, and modern medicine may have little effect on her after this point. If anyone was going to help her now, it had to be an actual mage.

She had almost forgotten about Snowcrag Academy, truth be told. Anesthesia comes with short term memory loss as a side effect once one comes to consciousness. She didn’t forget it entirely of course, though she did lose about an hour of her day after she woke up, at random intervals, which is why she remained in the facility. She couldn’t help but feel excited as a new chapter in her life had opened up, and in a week’s time she would have set her foot within the Academy and begin learning the universe’s secrets.