>>Three Weeks Later

“Kel where the FUCK are we??” Grey screamed with his head against a random tree and despair in his eyes.

“Calm dawn man. This is our fault. We let her keep the map after the fourth day. This is on us bro.” I was already curled in a ball on the ground, a slow puddle of tears forming around me.

“Oh shove it, you two. So I forgot to look at the scale when we started: sue me. Today is the end of the third week so we should get there today. In fact, we should be there in another two hours or so.” Grey and I both shifted just enough to pout at Kel before getting up. Grey looked at me and we both nodded.

“So what you’re telling us, Kel, is that there is real food and baths a two hour WALK from here?” Grey asked gently.

“Yeah it’s right up that hill, why?” Kel had barely gotten the word ‘hill’ out of her mouth before Grey’s godspeed and my newly trained traveler had a rematch. “Fucking little shits.” Kel grumbled before vanishing in pursuit. It turns out we both lost to Kel since her traveler is much higher level than mine, but I came in second and I found it important that Grey be very aware of this. I slung one arm around his neck and blinked my eyes endearingly at him.

“Fuck off, Jin.”

“Nope. Loser buys the winner lunch. We shook on it.”

“We didn’t shake on anything!”

“We did in my head, Grey. And head promises are binding.”

“That doesn’t make any sense! And will you get off me??” Grey roared. Frankly I was surprised he had so much energy since I’d been clinging to his back for the past three hundred feet.

“No.”

“Excuse me sirs, sorry to interrupt but are you here to register for the Academy?” A cute girl with dark, curly hair waved to us from behind a desk next to the entrance to the Academy. I straightened my back a bit to look more presentable.

“Hey, steed, will you walk over there? We should talk to her.” I patted Grey on the face. He threw me on the ground.

“Sorry about him, miss. You asked if we wanted to register?” While poor little me was suffering after another quick introduction to my good friend, the earth, that sword-wielding1 slut made a move on the receptionist! I jumped up, ready to rush over when she responded.

“Yes! Alright. Well then, if you could just go up those stairs over there to the left the registration office is right in that building there.” Shit is she into him? I must stop this.

“Oh, actually we’re already registered.” Grey laughed with an arm behind his head. Heh. Fool. No-one would buy that.

“Oh! In that case you and your friends just need to go over to that building over there to get your house keys.” She responded while pointing to another building. Damn it seems I am the fool.

The registration process was rather quick as everything had already been handled by our respective higher ups. All we had to do was collect a key and be ready to be tested in the next few days for our magic aptitude. We were all put in the same house since we had registered together, but we had different rooms. We also shared the house with two housemates. Or, so I was told as I’d only spotted just the one on her way out to a party. She looked a bit like a classic witch I suppose, with the pointy hat and dark clothes, but she also had everything from high heels and red lipstick to what had to be professionally styled hair. She was what would happen if a model class changed to witch is what I guessed. The other was supposedly an uber-studious sort who didn’t even leave his/her room. So really it was just the three of us. Well, two of us since Kel was dragged along by super model to the party since they were ‘ohmygod HOUSEMATES’. Oh except Grey said he wanted to explore the city so he took off too. Alright so I’m alone in my room.

Fine.

I decided exploring the city was probably a pretty good idea and wandered off into the bowels of the Academy. The Academy was actually the name of the city itself and, I must admit, it was one of the grandest, and most peculiar, cities I’d ever seen. The way that the city was arranged was in a pseudo-circle around a massive castle-like structure that was the Academy proper. There were, however, many bridges that stretched out from various spires of the academy to join with other huge buildings around the city. With so many bridges and pathways intruding into the city, the city seemed to start to meld with them. Basically, while walking around I’d see massive bridges cover an entire section of road with the buildings on both sides becoming more open, making the area of the city look like a massive hallway or some kind of huge, indoor room. The oddities of the city were only compounded by the many technological wonders scattered about and clustered around the few tech shops in the city. It seemed the Academy itself taught many different studies, including both magic and magic technology. It was kinda disorienting to see pseudo-modern tech that was clearly inspired by other foreigners. For instance, a fridge that just used ice magic or a carriage shaped like a car but simply floating and being pulled by horses. Why shape it like a car if it’s going horse speed? Of course I won’t lie to you, I squealed at at least half of the techy things I saw. You ever see a hologram billboard? No? Well I did. Loser.

Before long it was late so I headed back to our house to sleep. And in the morning, we were corralled into the deepest depths of the academy, straight to the THUNDERDOME: a quirky name for the magic academy’s version of the coliseum, a better version, perhaps. The THUNDERDOME’s seats rose nearly all the way to the ceiling with a few holographic projectors relaying events on the dome’s stage to the higher seats. The seats weren’t full, or even attended enough to necessitate turning on the projectors, but there were a few people scattered here and there. Students and family members, I presume. I wasn’t too concerned, what did catch my attention, however, was the massive white orb in the very center of the stage. In front of that orb was a small collection of older individuals and then a crowd of students.

“Everyone! Please line up in single file! After you have taken your aptitude test please move on to the physical portion of the test!” The speaker, an elderly man who was seated in the approximate center of the teachers, gestured to what I can only describe as an oversized punching bag. The physical test, apparently. It looked like we were a bit late to getting the THUNDERDOME as we were close to the back of the procession. Luckily, we had free time so we didn’t need to fight hundreds of other hopefuls just to stand closer to the front. As we waited near the back of the line we got to see what everyone else was made of. Most kids touched the white ball, which was all it took to test I guess, and the ball lit up with a few colors of varying brightness before fading. It looked like the brightness and color determined your aptitude, while how much those colors moved denoted amount of control a magician could exercise over the element. It was actually kinda fun cause you would see some kids go up there and touch the ball and all kinds a crazy shit would happen. This one kid touched it and the whole thing turned red while a black snake slithered around in the thing so fast it blurred. That was fun. Another one touched the ball and only one color came out but it flashed so violently that I thought it had been struck by lightning. Eventually I got a bit bored and my gaze drifted over to the physical test portion. Over there was something I had seen plenty of times in bars: you punch the bag and it gives you a number. The thing is magical though so apparently it measures stat growth potential or something? It’s a bit hard to say. Either way, eventually the first of our group was up to bat, Kel. Kel touched the ball and the biggest horseshit happened. The ball cracked. The damn ball cracked. The teachers quickly magicked it better, but apparently Kel has little control but an overwhelming amount of magic power. Not too surprising I suppose since my finger lighter is her flamethrower. Next up was Grey. I expected literally nothing from his since I’ve never seen him use magic, but again I was disappointed. When Grey touched the ball it started to glow with a white light tinged with yellow. The light only grew in intensity until it filled the entire dome. Craziest thing is, when it hit me, it was warm, like, getting a hug from Mom after not seeing her for ten years warm. Shit, I think every person there but Grey was crying after that shit died down. It’s frickin’ feels magic apparently, what the hell. Anyway the teachers rose a bit of a hubbub after Grey but decided to continue anyway and waved me up to the ball. I poked it. The lights that came from the ball started in the center as a small twinkle. They then spread out to the furthest reaches of the ball in a spinning typhoon of subdued color. The typhoon spun faster and faster until they all blurred into a single hue before fading away.

“Congratulations son.” One of the teachers smiled at me. “Your power is frankly quite dim, (ow my pride) but you have incredible control over every element.” C’mon baby I can still be the protagonist with this. I thought back to my vision of a golden knight on a white horse. I smiled at the teacher before following Grey to the small line by the physical test. Hey wait, why is the knight glowing white and yellow? The vision in my mind turned toward me and lifted a hand to raise his visor. NONONONO

“YO, Grey!” I quickly shouted to quickly banish any bad thoughts from my head. “Any idea why we’re doing a physical test for magic school?” I nudged Grey with my elbow.

“It’s to see how much potential you have for strengthening magic, young man.” The Most Magical Elderly, which was the guy that talked to all of us earlier was standing next to me. It looked like the mage had followed Grey over after his magic test.

“Ah. Got it Sir.” I saluted the man. He smiled and nodded back. This time around our turn came quickly. Most of the other students seemed to be getting numbers somewhere between 300 and 700. Kel went up first and punched the bag. A rather unsurprising number of

415

flashed and Kel was ushered off into some back room. Grey went after. With a light tap the bag beeped loudly and an impossible

999

flashed on its surface. “You’re the demon king aren’t you Grey? You can be honest with me, we’re friends.” My words barely made it to him before the MME rushed him into a back room to talk about his incredibly promising future. “Meh.” I grumbled a bit before throwing my weight into the bag.

000

Alright well that’s just hurtful. I sighed and began to walk towards where I’d seen other normal students file through when I saw one of the teachers waving from a back room. I looked around me, then pointing to myself while looking at him. He nodded emphatically at this so I walked over to him.

“Come in.” He said, holding the door open for me.

“Uh, sure. So hey, what’s up.” I looked around then sank into the chair he offered before sitting in his own on the other side of a somewhat ornate desk.

“I’d like to teach you.” I stared at him blankly. I mean, this is a school so I assumed that would be happening already. “Looking at your expression, you don’t know what that means. Allow me to expand on that. Here, in the Academy, everyone can get basic instruction of a level sufficient to get the Magic Novice skill. Every year, however, every teacher is also allowed to pick a student based on their specialty. Your housemates, as you saw, were chosen as well: the little one by Horsig for her power, and the boy by Dumables, because of his…rather special element.”

“And you chose me for my control.”

“Precisely, if you will have me. My name is Horace Piercil. Welcome to the Academy.”

“Happy to be here.”

1Yes, like that