An immense black and gold tile floor spread out before me as far as I could see. Exquisite and intricate patterned tile. Squares inside of circles inside of triangles inside of hexagons, all in spirals that made my head spin.

Lining either side of this massive hallway were archways with columns holding them up, relief sculptures adorning it all. Faces, shapes, patterns, and symbols the likes of which I'd never seen in my life. People moved within this hallway and between the archways. They wore cloaks, leather jumpsuits, flowing dresses.

It was like being thrust into a costume ball put on by a host who hadn't determined the theme.

Hanging from the ceiling were chandeliers. Each one held what looked like silver candlesticks, but no flame burned. Above the silver tubes glowed lights of all colors. Blues and yellows, reds and greens.

It was like looking into a colorful kaleidoscope, but the light that these chandeliers cast was a warm yellow like late summer dusk.

Dotting the hallway were several… stations?

The stations were golden boxes that stood hip high. The walls of the boxes were made up ornate golden filigree that glowed with multiple colors inside. The glow faded in and out over the entire spectrum of color.

Each station had a slate black tabletop surface that was covered in deep channels of multi-colored crystals.

Floating above each of these surfaces was a projection of light. Some of the projections were circular in nature, others oval, some were rectangular. They looked like floating computer screens.

I frowned. That can't be the case.

The hallway reminded me of something. Back when I’d still been in middle school, our class had taken a trip to the Basilica in Beaumont. I remembered walking into that place, seeing the massive towering ceilings and the intricate woodwork on the columns. That's close to what this place reminded me of.

A basilica.

A cathedral.

Something that had been built to strike awe in the hearts of all who entered.

As I stared up at the strange chandeliers again, my mouth hanging open. There were lights even farther up. There were strange glowing constellations that were only in five different colors. Red. Green. Grey. White. Purple.

The way the lights were set up, spinning around each other in a strange sort of orbit, reminded me of all the maps of solar systems we'd studied in science class.

Focus, Hexana. You’re getting overwhelmed. Lebec invited you to this place for a very specific reason. Stay focused.

I took a deep breath, brought my eyes away from the hypnotizing ceiling, and focused on the task at hand. I was here to learn a trade. I was here to get the theatre back, to regain a piece of my past. In the distance I saw a cluster of people. Two of them wore cloaks: one green, one yellow, and the third wore some sort of full body leather outfit. This person was the same height as Lebec.

Lebec!

I breathed a sigh of relief. He was here. Of course, he was here. He'd been the one to invite me, so of course he was waiting to escort me to… wherever.

I made my way across the hallway, surprised that my footsteps didn't make a single sound against the tile.

You made it. You figured out the shed and the doorway and now you’re here.

I tapped Lebec’s shoulder and smiled.

The dwarf who turned around was a woman, not Lebec, not even close to Lebec. She fixed me with a harrowing gaze and raised an eyebrow.

“Can I help you?” She asked this with a sneer and the two others who stood with her turned their heads to look at each other. I say they turned their heads to look at each other because I couldn't really see anything inside the hoods of their cloaks. It was like they might not even have heads: they might be ghosts for all I knew.

Are there ghosts here? Are there ghosts who walk among humans as though it's completely normal?

The woman snapped me out of it. “Stick. Why have you interrupted my conversation?”

My mind went blank. I was in a strange new place surrounded by strange people who I didn't know. I wasn't sure what to do next, what to ask. I sputtered out the first thing that came to my mind.

“Lebec,” I said, far louder than I meant to. I regulated my volume and continued. “I was invited here by Lebec. He's a dwarf. Do you know him?”

The woman raised a single eyebrow and took a step towards me. I stepped back. There was something menacing in the way she approached.

“Right…” the woman snarled. “Because we all know each other. Us dwarves. We all look the same.”

My mouth fell open, this time not with awe, not with joy, but with horror. I'd been in the magick world for less than five minutes and already I'd managed to come across as a bigot.

“No!” I shook my head. “No, that's not what I meant. I'm sorry. I'm new here, I only saw—”

“You only saw someone the same height as this Lebec you speak of. Then you assumed that I was he.”

I opened my mouth to explain more, but the woman turned away from me and stalked across the hallway. Her two companions did not follow. One of them turned away and walked in the opposite direction while the final one turned to face me.

I still couldn't see what was hidden inside the hood of their cloak, couldn't see their face.

Maybe you’re looking at a skeleton. At a skull…

The voice that floated out of the hood was childish. Far younger and innocent than anything I would've expected. “I know this is your first day, stick, but read the room.”

And with that, the cloaked figure turned and glided away across the floor. I couldn't make out any legs moving beneath the cloak and because of the weird acoustics in the hallway, I couldn't hear them walking.

I looked up and down the hallway, trying to figure out what I was supposed to do, trying to figure out where I was supposed to go. I was in a different world, a completely new world, and I was lost.

I decided to do the opposite of what anyone who is lost is instructed to do.

I started walking. Just frantically walking.

I made my way along the hallway, pausing here and there to look at the golden computer things and the rectangles that floated above them.

Each of these was solid in color and didn't have any words.

Of course.

I’m not sure how long I'd been walking in that hallway, panicked and a little scared, wondering if there was an actual exit to the place or if it was like a never-ending hallway in which I would perish, when I came across a mirror.

I glanced into it, seeing myself reflected in that strange place and almost kept walking, but something made me pause. Something different about myself.

I walked over to the mirror and stood in front of it, staring above my head. Surrounding the top of my head was an actual crown of light.

It wasn't an intricate crown, just multiple straight lines sticking up from my head at random heights. The light wasn’t any particular color and every time I moved or twisted my head the colors shifted.

I reached my hand up to touch the crown of light when a voice made me jump.

“There you are,” a man's voice said. I ignored it at first, assuming it was for someone else, but when the voice said my name, I breathed a sigh of relief. Finally, someone who could tell me what I was supposed to do, where I was supposed to go. “Hexana Covington. I'm your interfacer.”

The man was so tall I had to put my head all the way back in order to see to where his cloak ended. Thankfully he didn't have one of those empty hoods you couldn't see inside of. He was easily visible. He was an older man, wrinkly, and his eyes were grey. He fixed me with a look that said I was wasting his time and that I'd better figure out how I was going to make that up to him.

“Can you show me where to go?” I asked. The question was so pathetic that I almost felt bad. This was an entire new world to me.

“Follow me,” the man said. “I'll take you to the office of Enrollment and Student Finances.”