The following weekend saw me in a carriage on route to the academy. As we passed through the capital of the grand duchy I looked at the city in all its splendor. Atherora was one of the largest and most advanced cities in the empire. It was a cityscape that had the general colouring or being vaguely whitewashed, mirroring the name of the grand duchy itself, Whitefyre. It had buildings of varying heights and was built with a distinctively fantastic twist to the architecture.

The roads were paved with a white ‘liquid stone’ that fixed itself with the surrounding mana and lined with light poles that magically recharge under the sun with the aid of runes. The sewage system ensured sanitary waste disposal with the aid of magic technology and the city itself was also dotted with areas of pure nature to juxtapose the stone jungle.

‘Truly, a beautiful city.’

Though not the most beautiful, for that pleasure goes to the capital city of the empire. The shining city upon the hill, Eladrium. The empire, Aelius, was named after its founder. Aelius, also known as the living god and one of the known god ranked aura users, is a man of blonde hair and golden eyes. He was described as an unnerving handsome man who shone like the sun and burned your eyes if you look too close to him.

He conceived the empire some two millennia ago along with some followers, one of which was Whitefyre, and has reigned supreme since then. For the longest time, he lacked any children, for his matured divinity of the sun was too powerful to be contained by any womb. So he just took wives who reigned their lives as the empress for as long as they lived.

Something changed 20 years ago though. The emperor, after the fresh loss of his then wife, found another. Mavis, bastard child of the Dragon King Frirvesdoig and one of the many children of Oberon and Titania and high fae royalty, Avna. Mavis had a beauty that was ethereal, too uncomfortable to look at. She had hair of the purest snow and eyes of every shade of every colour, holding within it an intricate geometric pattern that had the ability of vast perception and immense brain processing power, a train inherited from her father. As part dragon, she is a being that generates an ungodly amount of magic with every beat of her heart and as part fae, her very being seems to be drenched in and made out of magic. It is said that she was not satisfied with her natural endowments and looked to the humans to learn how they grew in power. From them she learnt how and proceeded to build magic circles while studying our spell formulae for centuries on end, all in disguise of course.

Only in front of the emperor did her camouflage as an 8th circle grandmaster just researching collapse. He took her as a wife and within the first year, they gave birth to a son, the first child the emperor had ever had and the presumptive heir of the empire.

Arthur, the sun prince, a 6th circle tier 7 genius who is widely regarded as the pride of the empire for achieving those feats while only being 19. But of course, him being a multi talented sorcerer makes it so much easier for him as he has the divinity of his father and eyes of his mother as a sorcery to aid in conceptualizing and the perception to see through all things.

He had sun gold hair and gold eyes that seemed to burn those looking directly into them containing geometric patterns similar to that of his mother’s. It is said that many young girls have thrown themselves at his feet when meeting at the first glance as his looks are a perfect amalgamation of both his parents.

Their second and last child of the emperor is Aurora, 11. She is said to have white hair and eyes identical to her brother’s. She is a 3rd circle wizard and tier 4 aura user, but that’s all that is known about her. All her public appearances were with a veil that hid her appearance from the masses and information about her is purposefully hidden, though it is for her assumed protection.

“We are approaching the arch young lord.” That brought me out of my musing.

I looked out of the window to the large arch that stretched for kilometers and had runes intricately decorating it. The function of the arch was to transport people to one other arch somewhere else in the empire. It was a relatively ‘new’ creation as teleporting organic material had eluded many for countless millennia.

‘I never did make my old research notes public did I?’

I heard my carriage driver talk with the wizard operating the arch for a few minutes, before we were finally let through. As we passed through the arch, I felt a slight thrum of magical energy that surrounded me and passed through all my belongings before we came out on the other side of the arch.

Once again, I looked out as we passed through the arch and what greeted me was the resplendent city that surrounded the royal academy, Eladrium. A few minutes later, we arrived at the academy gates and handed in the letter of acceptance before passing through the gate and entering the academy proper. We came up to the landing area for carriages and I came down to continue on foot. I looked around at the young prospective students and smiled.

‘This is the beginning.’

An individual in a uniform of some kind came to the forefront of the carriage docking area.

“1st year students, follow me.”

We followed the senior and he led us towards the great hall. He directed us to an area to stand and wait to be addressed, so that is what we did. A few minutes later, an older woman with grey hair and dark brown eyes came to stand in front of the podium to address us.

“Hello new students, and welcome to the Royal Academy of magic.”