The sound of water trickling from the fountain was crisp in the quiet garden. Sunlight sparkled off the reflective surface, but I still gazed at the blinding water. Abby was balancing herself at the edge of the pool under the fountain, trying not to fall into the water as she completed her first circle around.

“This is getting kind of boring, don’t you guys think?” She said with a sigh. “Yesterday at the recruitment examinations, we at least had something to watch. What’s the point of a written exam anyways? I never had those things.”

“Just let Em take her exam,” Ari said. “I’m sure she’ll ace it.”

“Yeah, she is trying her best,” I added, thinking back to how focused she was when we were studying at the library yesterday. She got so captivated in reading the textbooks that she didn’t even look up when we offered any help.

“I just don’t really understand,” Abby continued, jumping off the fountain and starting to walk through the flower garden. “Information is really easily accessible. What matters more are practical skills like fighting or actually using magic, not your skills in memorizing stuff.”

“Hey, you’re the only one here with that suit that pretty much tells you everything,” Ari told her. “You can’t always be relying on something else for knowledge. You know that, right?”

“Oh, so you’re saying we should all just rely on our own brains for everything? Now, why don’t you just destroy those weapons and armor of yours see if your body could handle fighting on its own?”

“You—you know that’s not what I’m saying, right!?”

“What do you mean? That’s exactly what you’re saying!”

“No, it is not!”

“Yes it—”

“Sshhhh!” The new voice came from the right, where the garden ended and the marble halls of the school started. A young woman wearing large, round glasses stood there, her index finger raised up at her mouth. “Classes are still in session. Please do not raise your voice,” she half whispered, half yelled.

Abby turned to the woman in embarrassment, then composed herself. “Sorry, ma’am,” she said with a bow. She looked up to Ari, whose steam had yet to cool. “Come on, Ari,” Abby whispered, “at least apologize!”

“Oh, yeah.” He turned to the teacher. “Sorry my friend here was causing such a fuss. She was just complaining about your education system. Nothing too bad.”

Abby straightened up in an inflamed astonishment, but the woman didn’t seem to mind.

“Well, just don’t argue too loudly. A nice debate is fine, but a nonsensical argument is not.” She shifted her glasses and studied us again. “You three are waiting for someone doing the entrance exam, right?”

Abby leaned onto one foot and scrunched her eyebrows with irritation. “Yeah, and we have to wait here for three hours. Seriously, what’s the point in such a long test?” She directed that question more toward Ari than the new woman.

The teacher chuckled. “Why don’t I show you?” She suggested, walking towards us now. “I have a lot of free time right now, so I can give a quick tour around the academy. It may relieve some of your boredom as well. What do you think?”

“Sure,” Abby replied quickly for the rest of us. She focused on Ari’s indifferent face, determined to win the argument.

“That’s great!” The teacher said. She held her books down to the side and suddenly began to talk so quick, I thought someone had temporally bumped me forward.

“I’ve been getting a bit bored myself too. Don’t have much to do today. I was assigned to be a proctor for that exam, right? But then they found another person to replace me. Seriously, they should have told me earlier, right? Now I’m stuck here for the next hour or so. ’Cause there’s that next exam section I gotta go see, right? So I was just thinking of coming to the garden to rest a bit. But it’s nice you kids were here. It was starting to get real quiet, and it’s nice to find someone to talk to. You kids get that too, right?”

The woman paused, not for us to respond, but for herself to catch a quick breath. Before we could even process everything, she continued.

“I’m Grace, by the way,” she introduced herself, shooting out a hand. “It’s such a nice pleasure to meet you.”

“Yeah… Nice to meet you as well,” Abby said with uncertainty as she shook the woman’s hand. “I’m Abby, this is—”

“Oh, very, very nice to meet you, Abby!” Grace shook her hand vigorously. “Say, do you mind if I tell you how beautiful you are? You’re really pretty, Miss Abby! And I love that outfit you got on. Very elegant—” Stopping herself short, the teacher released Abby’s hand. “Oh, shoot. Did I cut you off there? I’m so so sorry. I didn’t mean to. Please.”

I stared at Grace blankly, bouncing between being annoyed and confused. However, Abby seemed to enjoy being complimented. She took back the woman’s hand and entered another furious handshake.

“Yes! This suit is amazing! I got it from my amazing parents, you know? Oh— ahem, sorry, got carried away there too. Anyway, this is Day, and this big lump of rock is—”

“You!” Ari’s enraged roar traveled out through the small court. He was about to send back another insult when Grace held her hand up. Ari opened his mouth and moved his lips, but no sound came out. His face emitted a passionate temper, but all that could be heard was silence. It was as if I were watching a video with the volume turned off.

“Sound magic,” Grace explained. “Pretty useful, isn’t it? Your other friend must be very kind, considering your surprised faces. Next time you get into a quarrel with this man, you should definitely ask the mage of your group to lend you a hand.”

“Oh, of course I know about sound magic! You think I’m stupid?” Abby said, sounding somewhat offended. “If Em doesn’t want to do something, then that’s up to her.”

Grace blinked and shifted her glasses. “You’re a soft one, aren’t you? So, want me to unmute the boy? I’ll leave it up to you.”

We all looked back at Ari, who had calmed down. Still, his arms were crossed and, he wore a frustrated look. When his eyes met Grace’s, he flinched and stood straight, like a soldier to his commanding officer. It became silent, with only the sound of trickling water permeating the space.

After a long moment of tension, Abby replied.

“It’s up to him.”

She flipped around, her braided hair whipping through the air, and began heading out of the garden.

“Well, soldier or not, he doesn’t seem like the type of person to follow orders, anyway,” Grace commented as she casually waved her arm, undoing the spell on Ari.

Our footsteps echoed through the corridors as we explored the school. Abby and Grace continued their chitchat, and they seemed to have become friends after not too much time. Meanwhile, Ari avoided getting between the woman and his so-called “love interest.” Instead, he opted to attempt to have a conversation with me.

Our guide blabbered on and on about how prestigious the school was and how so many students from diverse backgrounds come to this place to study. She talked so much, I wondered how she managed to shush at us when we first met.

“…by the way, why don’t we go to one of our training fields? A lot of the classrooms today are taken up by testing. That’s why we got a bunch of classes training outside for today! I bet you we’ll get to see our students with magic in work. It’s the best way to see just how wonderful our students all are! Oh, and speaking of that, we even have this annual competition against other schools…”

We continued to walk through the empty halls, and on our last turn, we left the stone floor and stepped onto a dirt ground. In front of us, there was a vast grassy area. And in the distance, I saw a class or two of students dueling one another.

"Looks like we got a class of first-years over there. From the looks of it, they’re working on earth magic. And of course, when we’re teaching earth magic, you can take as much as you’d like from the ground! No matter how much you damage our field here, it returns itself to its original state, automatically! That’s another reason why we have the best campus of all magic academies!

“And this is only the training field we use for general purposes! We also have areas built specially for water magic, fire magic, wind magic, and earth magic. They’re all custom built, self-regenerating, and they even automatically replenish mana. You can always go all out with your training here! You’ll never run out of resources to work on!”

“Where’s the water magic training place?” I asked quickly. “Practical exams will be conducted there today, right?” Em would be applying as a water mage, so we knew that the practical exam would have something to do with that. There was still around an hour left of the knowledge exam, but I was curious what the testing facility would look like.

“Our aquatic facility is to the left. Is your friend planning on testing there? We can get going now. Or, of course, we can go to some of the other places! The inferno facility is underground, the ground facility is past this field, farther away from the buildings, and the wind facility is to the right. Should we visit one of those first?”

“Woah! There are that many places?” Abby asked. “Are you sure we have time to get to all of them?”

“Wait, no. I was actually thinking of going straight to the…”

As I trailed back into my usual silence, Ari saved me. “Man, all this walking has made me tired, Abby. I kind of just want to get to this aquatic center so we can rest a bit, right?”

“You know, we’ve been traveling across these lands for the entirety of the past week.”

“Yes, exactly! Let a man have some rest, at least!”

Maybe Abby couldn’t tell, but I could. Both Ari and I were sick of, or at least bored from, Grace’s horrible tour. She really talks way too much for my liking.

Sensing Ari’s plea, though, Abby finally gave in. Grace, looking rejected but still alive with her millions of words, led us to our destination

This new training field was covered in a large dome, blocking the view of the inside. When we entered, the building looked so much larger than it had from outdoors.

As I had expected from an aquatic center, there was a wide pool at one side of the space. A couple of large platforms floated at the surface of the water, where I saw an entire class standing and listening to a lecture. The slight wobble of the platforms and the fact that they weren’t wearing swimming suits made me uncomfortable inside.

I looked down at the pool and gazed past the surface to see the bottom through crystal clear water. I almost jumped back in shock from the view. If it weren’t for the liquid, the drop to the bottom would at least break a few bones, if not entirely kill a person. Just where did they get that much water to fill the entire lake?

Thankfully, though, the pool gradually became shallower as we walked down the deck, until it was shallow enough that one could wade through it without needing to worry about getting their knees wet.

Here, we found a set of stands where an audience could sit. Do they have sports competitions here? Better yet, with magic? Either way, we walked up the stands and took our seats, continuing to listen to Grace talk about the pool.

“Okay, so are we just waiting here now? Why don’t I show you some more of this place?” Grace asked impatiently as we slowed to a stop.

“I think watching the students from here is pretty interesting,” Ari said. The class we had passed by earlier had stood up and started to engage in activities. They began to suck water out of the pool to manipulate it.

“Yeah, you guys talk about your stuff. I’ll pass my time here,” I said. “I’m just gonna increase my temporal speed a bit.”

I hadn’t done this in the past because I always had things to do. However, for the first time, I finally found a use to accelerating my temporal speed instead of decelerating it. I might be able to pass this hour in less than a quarter of the time.

Grace looked at me peculiarly, but she sat back and said nothing. Instead, she gazed out at the students on the pool, ending her long rant. The silence gave me just what I needed to focus on my temporal muscles.

Slowly, the world began to quicken around me. The small ripples in the water shifted quickly, and the students in the distance moved faster. It was a real-life timelapse, right before my eyes.

However, to my surprise, the slightly dim room suddenly became bright. I blinked and opened my eyes to watch everybody blur into ghosts. It was as if the world’s exposure had been turned up. No. In a sense, that was actually the case.

I decided to close my eyes in the brightness. A few minutes passed before I slowed my sprint. I took a few moments to catch my breath, then looked up to see the first test takers enter the dome.

Our guide stood up and looked at me again with interest. “Well, I’ll be going now. I think I will go watch this next test from up close. As the headmaster of this prestigious academy, I wish your friend good luck.”

“Wait, headmaster? Miss Gracelyn Padmore!?” Abby called out as the woman stepped down from the stands. “You look so much younger from what I have in my records…”

However, our attention to the woman turned away as Ari exclaimed. “There she is! Em!!”

In the small crowd, I immediately spotted her waiting nervously as applicants began to be called.