It’s hard for a person to describe the smell of a lecture theatre. Easy enough to describe the look, a majority of them are a semi circle with a small carpeted floor for the speaker to wander around at the front of they get tired of their lectern. What used to be blackboards was now a wall that was either a whiteboard or a roll up screen to project their computer onto. The seating followed the shape of the room and as each row went further from the speaker the seats raised in height proportionally. It was like someone cut an old fashioned theatre in half and retrofitted it for education.

But, of course, the sound was something somewhat unique to the setting too. With only one, maybe two, speakers the sound echoed around the room, especially into the microphone. Any chitchat could be heard by most; though any voices not through a speaker just became that almost incongruent thing that was just noise. Unless of course it was someone nearby and then of course the listeners would have a chuckle about whatever ridiculous thing had been so important to discuss over the lesson, because it was almost always something laughable.

Yet the smell is what stood out to Jude the most as time went by. It’s hard to think of smells; with a scene or a sound you can see a picture or listen to it. Unless someone had a vial of something that smelt a certain a way it’s hard to picture that. However, it smelt like old. In the way that babies and old people have a distinct smell that humans grow out of and then into so do buildings and rooms. They usually smell old. Flaky plaster, settling wood, dust, and the excess air of a vacuum cleaner. Not to mention depending on the day and how long the lectures had been going on that day there could also be the prevailing smell of adults laced in sweat.

Jude was gifted, or at least he was always told so, he was an intelligent kid and that didn’t leave him. He was able to piece things together, strategies, and adapt. Though in terms of academia he was not the best – he was a doer rather than a rememberer. Jude was very good at being told a concept and applying it once he understood it, or even using a lot of practice. Which meant whilst he was weaker on exams, requiring a lot of studying, for in class work or coursework he was notably better. But more immediately it meant that for a record that uses memories it meant that the lectures and lessons he learnt were quite sparse.

Today was different though, today was a fateful encounter.

It was their lecturer that introduced them, Raymond commanded the room. The portly gentleman’s broad statues gave him a lot more power in the room than first thought. “Hello all and welcome back to your second semester at Norfield University, I hope you all had a wonderful time at Christmas. I understand many of you may have some concerns regarding safety but unfortunately that is not my speech to give. Right now I am obliged to introduced our guests – we have two men from the Guild Association to speak to you today. Please come in gentlemen.” Raymond stepped off of his lectern, at which point two men entered the room from a door off the right of the front.

The first was a tall, attractive man. He had the kind of handsomeness that’s hard to argue against, even if you are not attracted to men. A few of the girls, and a couple of the guys, remember their first time seeing him. He wore a loose fitting white shirt, with sleeves rolled up to the elbow, it showed that he had a big build whilst not being a ridiculous action star or body builder. He carried a cream trench coat over his arm, before placing on his seat, clearly his defence against the cold winter air outside. Blonde streaks made their way through his curly hair. Though without facial hair he still had noticeable stubble. Black trousers that were too tight barely hid his skin from any of the outside world.

“Hello everyone, my name is Alfonso and I’m the head of applications at the International Guild Association.” That posh London accent seeped out into the room populated primarily by a hodgepodge of students from the Midlands and the North. “I am hear to speak to you all today for two reasons; the first is to make you all aware of the Guild Association, which I’ll be calling the I.G.A. from now on because although it stutters more it’s our professional name.

The I.G.A. is a place that I hope you all note down, as being on this course implies that you are interested in learning about Alterations and potentially using them. Now many of you may go on to do great things outside of the I.G.A. however, it would be a fantastic experience for you all to consider. We accept anyone currently not in education and as long as you follow our terms and conditions, whilst completing jobs you can stand to earn a decent living.

The way to sign up is to either go to one of our offices in person, your guy’s nearest is probably London which is a little far, or you can complete a form on our website. Once you are registered you can create or join any registered guild. Any new guild starts at D-Rank, once every quarter a guild is reassessed based on their performance and can either raise, lower, or stay the same rank. Currently most guilds sit around C and B-Rank as once you get into there we start providing money to the guild although you do get a commission for completing a job even at D-Rank. It’s also the same case for individuals in terms of ranks but that’s not for now. My colleague here, Flair, is currently an S-Rank.

My second reason for being here is you guys did fantastic in the initial tests for your university league. We were so impressed that we had to come down and visit you guys. We would actually like to be apart of the teaching staff this week and how it’ll happen was decided upon by your lecturers so I’ll hand over to Ray.” With that speech Alfonso walked off to his seat to a rounding applause. It made him smile, he was rarely appreciated outside his own team.

“Thank you Alfonso, we appreciate you being here these next few days. Listen up everyone, as you know this week is your first week back so we want to give you not only some lessons taught by professionals in a field you may go into we are also excited to show you something absolutely astounding. Each and every one of us lecturers will give you a small lesson on something that’s coming up this term. We do need you all to gather yourselves up into groups, six in each should do. Once you have all done that you’ll be put on a rota and you will get to work with one of the eight of us on an hourly basis. So if you could please get yourselves into sixes and spread out in the theatre I’d appreciate it.” Raymond spoke, as always, with his odd inflections. But once he had done his speech everyone set off into their own groups. Most of them were unspoken, like Archie his friend group consisted of six.

Jude, Jack, Rin, and Kuna, all immediately got together. Well, the first three picked up Kuna and took him to an empty space in the lecture theatre to form their group.

AJ, Johnny, and Damian joined a three that they were friends with, so that cut the group’s potential members down. They had two spots left and they watched as their friends got gobbled up group by group. Nerissa, Amelia, and that was about it for their close friends. Then Jack hopped over some chairs and headed into the crowd. “Don’t worry lads I’ve got this.” He disappeared for a few minutes before coming out holding the wrist of a girl the boys had had minimal interaction with and she herself was holding someone else’s wrist. Out of the cloud of people Jack brought forth Alice and Sahar. Then they were six.