“I’d like a burger and fries, please, and a coffee,” I said, before I could get accused of wasting any more of the aforementioned important time.
There was a small green square crystal set into the countertop, and I held my hand over it, palm down. I felt a warm pulse as the sensor recognised me, and billed my food directly to my account. A moment later, I pulled my hand away, and the kitchen mage had already assembled my food, freshly prepared, onto a tray with my coffee.
“Thank you, that looks amazing.”
I picked up my tray and waited while Zara placed her order for a tomato pasta bake. While she paid, the kitchen mage pulled a bowl from under the counter and set it on the tray, then held her hand above it. The bowl filled itself, seemingly from thin air – though I knew in reality the food all came from a storeroom. Kitchen mages could cook anything instantly, depending on their skill level, but they had to have all the raw ingredients available. If there was no beef, they couldn’t make stroganoff. Not the good kind, anyway.
The good thing about arriving late, and keeping everyone waiting, was that there were plenty of seats by the time we’d collected our food. We started towards a table at the back of the hall, but then I spotted a trainee sitting alone, with a green cloak folded over the chair next to him. I nudged Zara and we changed our course.
“Hi, Kyle. Mind if we sit here?” I hooked out a chair before he could answer and set my tray on the table. He looked faintly surprised, and glanced around, no doubt noting all the other empty tables in the room.
“Uh, sure,” he said. “But, I mean, you might not want to be seen around me too much.”
I shrugged as I unclasped my red cloak and dumped it next to his.
“I don’t know if you noticed, but half the academy has already taken a disliking to me. You can’t get any more outcast than that.”
He smiled, probably relieved to have found someone who was even less likely to fit in around here than he was.
“I mean, I don’t want to brag or anything,” I continued, sliding into my seat while Zara settled into the one opposite it, “but I’ve already been personally snubbed by the son of the High Enforcer.”
“It’s true,” he sighed with mock dejection. “I’ve only been snubbed by Killian. My outcast skills are poor.”
Zara looked from me to Kyle and back again.
“You two are such weirdos.” She scowled long enough that I thought she was going to leave our table, then her lip twitched and she lost her control, breaking into a wide grin. She glanced down at her combat boots. “How the hell am I not the oddest one here?”
“Welcome to your tribe. Humour necessary, straightjackets optional.”
Chapter Seven
Although attendance at lectures was technically not compulsory at Krakenvale, I didn’t intend on missing any if I could help it. I was far enough behind as it was, and I had a feeling catching up was going to take a whole lot of my time. Time that was already going to be tight with Stormclaw here.
That, and that alone, stopped me running straight to the barn to see the big surly hippogryff. When I’d said my goodbyes to him back at Dragondale, I thought that was exactly what it had been – goodbye. Dragondale was his home, and I’d graduated. Fully qualified druids didn’t go to Dragondale, not unless they were dragon riders or professors. And gryffs didn’t leave. Not unless there was a problem, and he’d had his share of those already.
So it went against every instinct I had to fall in with Zara and Kyle and make my way to our next lecture, which, Zara confidently assured me, couldn’t possibly be any worse than the last. I said nothing, because I’d learned the hard way that when you said things couldn’t get any worse, the universe seemed to take it as a challenge.
Still, when we claimed some seats at the back of the smallish, crowded room, no-one told us to get up again and start running laps, so I was calling that a win. I tentatively hooked my notepad from my bag and set it on the table in front of me, while at the front of the room, the instructor was organising some notes on his desk. I glanced at the clock on the wall behind him – we were a little early. Of course, it wasn’t an actual clock, since pretty much nothing electrical could work around this much magic, but I’d seen Professor Talendale create an enchanted clock once – a comment on my time keeping skills, I was sure – so I figured this must be some variant of that. Either way, it was probably better at keeping time that I was. If it said we had five minutes until we started, I wasn’t about to argue. For one thing, talking to inanimate objects got you weird looks, even in the druid world.
I was so caught up in my optimism – both about the lack of running laps, and my time keeping – that it wasn’t until the blond in front of me elbowed the guy next to him that I paid them any attention. Then they twisted round. My heart sank. Xavier. Of course. But it wasn’t me he was looking at.
“Hey, Earth,” he said. “Maybe you should just stop wasting everyone’s time and go home.”
Kyle jerked his eyes up, then down to his desk again. I glanced between the two of them, but it was clear Kyle wasn’t going to stand up for himself.
“Hey, Scarecrow, maybe you should stop following us around like a puppy dog before I have to give you a new nickname.”
“Oh, sorry Zeke, didn’t mean to upset your boyfriend.”
“Right.” I rolled my eyes. “Because a guy and a girl can’t just be friends, right?”
“You said it, Zeke.”
I ignored him and turned to his dark-haired buddy.
“Hey, have a word with your friend, yeah? He’s embarrassing himself.”
The guy sniggered, though whether at me or with me, I couldn’t really tell. Xavier seemed to think it was the latter though, because he scowled at him and got to his feet.
“I’m going to look for some more seats. I wouldn’t want to be seen with a bunch of future MLOs, it would damage my status. And yours, Tyler.”
He grabbed his bag and stalked away.
“MLO?” I tried – and failed – to keep the confusion from my voice.
“Mundane Liaison Officer,” Kyle said.
“What’s one of those?”
“Who do you think cleans up the mess when there’s an exposure risk?” Tyler said, halfway to his feet with his bag hooked over one arm, and the way he said it made it clear he thought it was a lesser career path than hunting down criminals like Raphael. And it was hard to disagree, but honestly, I hadn’t given much thought to how they dealt with that sort of problem.
“Uh…”
“Look, this isn’t Harry Potter. We can’t just go around obliterating people.”
“Actually, it’s obliv–”
“The point is,” he cut me off, “when someone risks exposing magic, an MLO’s job is to cover it up by convincing the mundane they imagined it, or discrediting them. Hardly cutting-edge excitement, is it?”
His words put an uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach.
“Convince them how?”
“As a therapist, blogger, uni professor… that sort of thing.”
“That’s…” I shuddered, and Tyler’s eyes hardened, like he’d suddenly remembered who he was talking to.
“What’s the matter, Princess? The real world isn’t the fluffy place you thought it was?”
“I grew up in the real world, jackass. I just… didn’t think any of you did.”
He cocked his head, then swung his bag onto his shoulder.
“Later, Zeke.”
I stared after him, shaking my head. Well, that had to be about the creepiest thing I’d heard since discovering I was a druid. Why the hell would anyone want to be involved in that? No wonder Xavier was slinging it around as an insult.
“Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for coming,” the instructor started from the other side of the room. I pushed the thought from my mind and picked up my pen. There would be plenty of time to be creeped out later.
“My name is Iain, and I will be your instructor for Familiamancy.”
I straightened in my seat a little. I had no idea what that even was, but it sounded cool.
“Some of you, I have no doubt, are wondering why the first-year travel restriction exists. None of you are kids anymore, right?”
Well, now that he mentioned it, it did seem kinda ridiculous. I had my own flat with Kelsey out in the real world, and not long ago I’d been standing face to face with the most dangerous druid in the modern world… but for some reason I wasn’t allowed to leave Krakenvale on my own.
“Well, this is the reason.”
His lips moved quickly, but I couldn’t hear anything – whatever spell he was saying was too quiet to carry. And then it was the last thing on my mind.
At his feet was what looked like a fox… only not quite. This was more like the ghost of a fox – I could see right through it. I leaned forward in my seat.
“What is that?” I breathed. The orange and white incorporeal creature greeted Iain by winding itself round his legs like casper-the-friendly-cat, then sat beside him, its bushy tail wrapped around itself.
“A familiar,” Zara said quietly, and then did a double take – at me, not casper-fox. “Wait, you know about familiars, right?”
I folded my arms across my chest. “Pretend I don’t.”
“You’re kidding!”
I rolled my eyes and fixed her with an unimpressed stare. Kyle coughed, and she composed her expression into something a little less incredulous.
“A familiar is a helpful spirit. Every druid enforcer has one.”
“You’re telling me I have to have someone’s dead kitty following me around?”
Kyle spared Zara answering what was apparently a ridiculous question with a shake of his head.
“Not dead,” he explained, with the patience of a saint – or an earth element. “It’s a spirit, not a ghost. It never had a corporeal form.”
“Oh.”
I frowned, then realised my arms were still folded across my chest. I dropped them, and picked up my notepad, flipping it open, although I probably didn’t need to write that down. I didn’t think I’d be forgetting incorporeal assistance animals any time soon.
The chatter in the room had died down, and Iain swept his gaze round the room before continuing.
“That’s right. In this class, you will be creating a bond with a familiar, and learning how to work together. The bond between druid and familiar is not master and servant, as some more old-fashioned teachings may have you believe. It’s a partnership, one founded on trust and honesty. Treat your familiar with respect, and you will find a loyal partner. Treat them as slaves, and you may just find they abandon you at the moment you need them most.”
He stretched down like he was going to pet the fox, but instead, his palm glowed blue and the familiar stretched itself up, as though leaning into the energy pulse. I watched, rapt, for a moment before his words sank in.
“Wait,” I said to Kyle. “We’re going to be doing that? Here? Today?”
Unfortunately, in my shock, my voice wasn’t as quiet as I’d intended, and since everyone else was watching the display in silence, I may as well have shouted. Iain’s eyes pinpointed me across the room.
“Excellent question, Miss…?”
“Eldridge,” I said, feeling my cheeks flush red as everyone turned to stare at me, some openly sniggering. “Lyssa Eldridge.”
A few of the sniggers died away at that, but the stares only intensified. Iain recovered quickly, but not before I saw the look of surprise flash across his face.
“Lyssa. Yes, you are going to be working with a familiar, and yes, we’ll be starting today. But no, not in here.”
He gestured to what looked like a tall cupboard set into the corner on his right, and as I sharpened my attention on it, I sensed its inherent magic, and realised what I was looking at. A rìoghachd. If I stepped through that door, I wouldn’t be standing in a cupboard. I would be standing in whatever sub-realm it led to.
“Through this door is Tàthadh Forest. The only way a corporeal being can enter is through this door. However, the spirits can come and go from their realm to it as they please, and those seeking a partnership with a druid will gather in the forest.”
He clasped his hands behind his back and paced a few steps. His familiar moved with him, then hopped up onto the desk and curled up, keeping one eye on the instructor.
“Now, bonding with a familiar is an intensely intimate experience, and the sheer number of druids in this room would overwhelm an unbonded spirit. You will enter Tàthadh in small groups of no more than four or five.”
I glanced dubiously around the room. There were a lot of us in here – the whole first year. I didn’t see how we were all going to have time to find a familiar and bond with it if only five of us could go through at once.
Around me, I saw people doing the same calculations and getting the same answer. Seventeen or eighteen groups, two hours… Somehow, I didn’t get the feeling was bonding was something that could be rushed in five minutes.
Iain watched us doing our mental arithmetic, then nodded.
“Some of you may have realised that doesn’t allow a lot of time.” He paused and smiled. “Or wouldn’t, if time in Tàthadh moved at the same rate as time here.”
He gave us a moment for that to sink in. For my part, it was going to take more than a moment. Time distortion? It was already giving me a headache.
“Because of its proximity to the astral plane and the way it interacts with our own, time in the forest moves significantly more slowly than time here. You should each have time to spend an hour or so there, which should be ample to make an initial connection with a familiar, if not to bond with them.”
“Sounds so easy when he puts it like that,” I muttered, then ducked my head when he looked my way.
Iain beamed out at us.
“Now, who wants to go first?”
Chapter Eight
I didn’t volunteer myself to go first, and I was pleasantly surprised when no-one volunteered me on my behalf – because honestly that was exactly the sort of stitch-up I’d have expected from Xavier. But maybe I was doing him an injustice. When he rose to his feet, it was himself he volunteered, and I could practically smell the enthusiasm rolling off him.
Kyle rolled his eyes. “Of course he’d want to go first.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, isn’t it obvious?”
I stared blankly at him until he realised that no, it wasn’t obvious. At least, not to me. He glanced round quickly and leaned in close, lowering his voice.
“He thinks by going in first, he can get the best familiar – the most powerful.”
“Wait, it doesn’t work like that, does it? I mean, they’re not going to, like… run out?”
Zara snorted with laughter. “It’s not a pet store. The familiar chooses you, not the other way round. If they’re not drawn to you, there’s nothing you can do to force them to bond.”
“Jalen will accompany you in the forest to make sure you don’t run into any trouble. He will also tell you when your time is up for the day. Please be sure to pay attention.”
Xavier and Tyler went through first, along with two more of his cronies – I’d seen them sitting together in the canteen. Not that I’d been watching him, specifically, it was just that he was hard to miss what with the loudmouth and stench of bigotry.
Iain waited until they were through, and shut the door behind them, then turned back to the rest of us.
“Now, don’t worry, I’m not going to leave you all sitting here bored while we wait,” he said, to groans from some of the trainees. They’d probably been hoping they could spend some time staring at the inside of their eyelids after Killian’s gruelling session, if they were feeling anything like me. And I knew I was fitter than a lot of people here, thanks to my Itealta training and taking part in the cup.
“Familiars are attracted to a person’s energy – their intentions, their power, and their character. To giv
e ourselves the best chance of matching with the right familiar, it’s important not to attempt to disguise any of these traits. If anything, we want to amplify them, to help draw the familiar to us.”
I scribbled down intentions, power, character in my notepad, then looked back up at him.
“Does anyone want to hazard a guess how we do that?”
“Trancework,” someone called from the front of the hall – I didn’t see who.
“Yes, good. By going into a trance, we can open ourselves to nearby spirits – and you’d be surprised how much you can learn about yourself in the process, too. We’ll be doing a lot of trancework in this class to help with improve the bond with your familiar. Strictly speaking, your end-of-year practical assessment won’t involve trancework itself, but you will be assessed on the strength of your bond, so I highly recommend participating in these sessions. And practicing on your own time, too.”
Ah, good. My first day, and so far, I had at least three different things I needed to spend my evenings doing. Fun times. Oh well, at least I wouldn’t get bored.
Iain continued to explain bonding techniques, and after a few minutes, the door to the forest swung outwards. I lowered my pen and craned my neck, trying to get a better view of who was coming through.
Xavier was the first to emerge, and walking at his heels on all fours was the incorporeal form of...
“Is that a bloody bear?” I hissed.
“They take their form according to your personality,” Kyle said.
“Yeah, but a bloody bear?”
Zara snorted. “Not very subtle, is it?”
I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised. Xavier was all brawn and aggression. Maybe a bull would have been more fitting. He was, I noticed with no small amount of relief, the only one of the four to return with a familiar. Jalen, the fox, waited by the door, tail swishing lazily, and one black-tipped ear twitching.
“Excellent work, Xavier,” Iain said with a smile. Why was I not surprised he knew his name? Seemed like blood counted for just as much here as it had at Dragondale. Bad news for the daughter of a convicted criminal. To the others, he said, “Don’t worry, it’s perfectly normal to take a few sessions to create a full bond with a familiar. Did each of you make an initial connection?”
Familiar Magic (Druid Enforcer Academy Book 1) Page 5