“Sorry. I’m good.”
An awkward silence fell over the classroom. Milo worried he would break out in a cold sweat. He probably would have, except that a loud voice suddenly filled the room, startling the cadets.
“I see I have an artist in my class.”
A large man stood in the doorway. Frowning deeply, he studied the drawing on the whiteboard. It had been accurate after all; the man was a life-sized version of the doodle, except that in real life he looked harder and angrier.
The students were completely silent as the man took slow, measured steps into the classroom. Balding and middle-aged, he wore a white, button-down shirt and brown slacks. Draped across his considerable belly was a beige sash covered in medals and insignia. There was an orange stain on his shirt that looked like dripped mustard.
His voice boomed. “Which of you is man enough to stand up and admit to this ridiculously inaccurate picture of me? Was it you, Quorin?” He pointed at the chubby Asian boy.
Quorin was so alarmed that he banged his hands against the table’s underside as he tried to lift them off his lap. He waved them about in a frantic pleading gesture.
“It wasn’t me. I swear!.”
“Of course it wasn’t. The doodle’s a masterpiece compared to anything you could ever scribble with those clumsy hands of yours. What about you, Synthia?”
He leveled his gaze at a mousy girl with brown skin, straight black hair, and eyes like almonds. A red triangle stood out on her forehead. When it sank in that she was the one being targeted, the girl almost tipped right off her seat in a display of denial.
“Professor D’estracanis, that’s impossible,” she exclaimed in a musical accent. “You know who my father is. I would never dream of—”
“Yes, whatever you say, princess.” He doubled over in a mocking display of worship. “Just don’t let your father behead me, please.”
Synthia wasn’t amused. Milo couldn’t stop staring at her. Was she really a princess? She certainly rolled her eyes like one.
D’estracanis put his hands on his hips and studied the drawing.
“Whoever drew this might as well pack up their belongings and return home. What kind of talentless buffoon could expect to last more than a few more months at a school like this? I’d be doing this person a favor by expelling them.”
The students waited in silence. D’estracanis threw his hands up, a wild look in his eyes.
“And what’s worse, I absolutely hate chicken.”
He flicked his fingers at the drawing. The doodle of the chicken leg rearranged itself into a slice of pepperoni pizza. Milo blinked at it in disbelief.
“That’s better,” D’estracanis said. “Pepperoni. My favorite.”
The students laughed and began to clap. D’estracanis gave a sweeping bow. The applause became cheers when the man, with a single swipe of his hand, erased the drawing completely off the board.
“Too bad,” he announced. “Took me ten whole minutes to draw that stupid doodle.”
THE FIRST THING Professor D’estracanis taught Milo and Lily was the proper way to say his name.
“Call me Professor D. It’s fewer syllables, which means less time I have to spend listening to you. And yes, that will be on your exams. The D part, anyway, most likely written in a single large letter across the top.”
The first half of the class went by quickly. Milo and Lily took turns introducing themselves, claiming, as Emmanuel had instructed them to do, that they had been born and raised on Taradyn originally. It didn’t feel like much of a lie; Ascher’s ranch was still home to them.
Then Professor D ran through a few basics.
“I’ll say this now, and I’ll keep saying it until it sinks into those little brains of yours. Anyone even considering the Battlemage program should be aware that physics, my specialty, is probably the most important set of grades you’ll receive in your first two years. You don’t need to be a math whiz to be a spellcaster. You don’t need to be a historian or a philosopher or a chemist. But you do need a solid understanding of the way luminether particles work, both on the atomic and subatomic levels. That includes the unique and frustrating tendency they have to bend and break the fundamental laws of the known universe—laws that, by the way, you are all expected to memorize.
“Once you get that part of it down, then maybe you’ll have the foundation upon which to build yourself a set of Berserker-bashing, low-mage-thumping, pestilent-grinding, dark-acolyte-smashing, coma-inducing, lady-impressing, world-disrupting powers characteristic of a freshly minted Battlemage created by Yours Truly at the one and only Theus Academy.” He pumped his fist triumphantly through the air. “Can I get a ‘Yes, sir?’”
“Yes, sir,” they all shouted.
“All right, all right, settle down. Now that we got that out of our systems, can we get back to the real reason we’re all here today, and not breaking our backs in a field in some backward village?”
He pulled a sleek remote control from his pocket and swiped his thumb along its length. The overhead lights dimmed and the windows darkened with a bloom like ink spreading from a single point in the center.
Milo almost cried out in alarm at what happened next. His chair, along with the others, lifted off its base and floated backward. Within moments, they all hung suspended in mid-air.
The other cadets sat unfazed, watching the table, which exploded with colorful lights as a hologram bubbled off its glossy surface. They were all hovering above an enormous, three-dimensional object Milo recognized with a gasp.
Blue and red orbs the size of tennis balls swirled around a larger, central globe that resembled a sun. Labels popped up everywhere, identifying the different components. Milo had studied this particle before, back at Ascher’s Ranch. An important object, to be sure—there were trillions of them shivering inside his body at this very moment.
“I think we were meant to come here,” Milo whispered at Lily.
She nodded slowly, mesmerized by the colorful globes. Professor D floated up toward the ceiling with the remote control in one hand. He grinned at Milo and Lily’s reaction.
“Shall we begin?” he said. “Or should I wait for the new kids to pick their jaws up from the floor?”
CHAPTER 25
Emmanuel slowed to a jog and eventually a full stop. He watched helplessly as Oscar disappeared over Kenalight Castle’s front wall. With a defeated sigh, he turned toward the building that housed his office. As he walked, he considered the different things he could say to make Oscar feel better, to convince him not to give up, when a voice stopped him.
“Professor Emmanuel! Professor Emmanuel!”
He turned to see a scrawny boy dressed in a loose-fitting, white-and-blue tunic loping across the courtyard, clutching a metal rod in one hand.
“What now?” Emmanuel said to himself.
The boy was an apprentice from the Kenatosian priesthood. Once upon a time, the Kenites had run the place, but that was before the scientific method became the dominant way to study magic. Now—in this place, anyway—they were but a shadow of their former selves, more concerned with ancient lore and rituals than spellcasting. They were more a historical remnant than a necessary academic component.
The apprentice was out of breath when he arrived. He handed the metal rod to Emmanuel as if desperate to be freed from its weight.
“I was told to deliver this to you immediately.”
Emmanuel pressed a finger against each end. The scroll recognized his fingerprints and unrolled itself into a thin tablet.
“Who gave this to you?” he asked the boy.
“The High Kenessir himself, Father Gorhos. He said it would blow up if I tried to open it. I know that’s not true, though. It uses a quad-core luminether battery. Worst it could do is shock me.”
Even the priesthood was using technology now. The times had truly changed.
“Well, you ran like someone carrying a bomb.”
The boy shrugged. “He said he would tak
e me out back and flog me if I didn’t get it to you within the hour.”
“Did he say why it was so urgent?”
The apprentice shook his head. With an abrupt sigh, Emmanuel glanced at the wall in the distance, but Oscar was long gone by now. The Feral boy’s problems would have to wait a bit longer.
“You can go,” he told the apprentice.
With a nod, the boy started to turn.
“Wait,” Emmanuel said, stopping him. The boy vaguely resembled Milo, possessed that same inquisitive spark in his eyes.
“Yes, Professor?”
“Why did you join the Kenites?”
The boy shrugged. “My mother made me. She said I was too soft to be a farmer, too clumsy to be a baker, and too shy to ever find a wife. I don’t mind it. It’s mostly reading, which is all I ever did back home.”
“What about being a cadet at the academy?”
“It was too expensive.”
“Scholarships?”
The boy cast a sad gaze down at the grass. “My mother threw away the application. I ended up missing the deadline.”
“What’s your name?”
“Boren, son of Brahm.”
“Very good. Do you know, Boren, the equation one can use to predict an instance of radioactive decay in an unstable luminether atom?”
The boy reached up and scratched the top of his head. “No, I don’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because no one does. It’s impossible to predict that.”
“Why?”
The boy gave a correct explanation. Emmanuel nodded proudly. Such a mind should not go to waste in the priesthood. Emmanuel was also proud of himself; he still had that knack when it came to spotting talent.
“Thank you, Boren. Now, go speak with the dean of the Battlemage program. Tell him I sent you, and that I’d like him to enroll you as a first-year student on a full academic scholarship, including all costs of room and board. Oh, and a triple-decker meal plan. He can call me to confirm you’re telling the truth.”
Boren was stunned. Tears welled in his eyes. “I—I don’t know what to say…”
“You don’t have to say anything. You earned it. Now get out of here, and if the Church gives you any trouble, I’ll gladly go down there and straighten things out.”
The boy wiped his eyes with his sleeve. “I’ll do that. Thank you, Professor.”
He broke into a full-on sprint toward the tower that housed the Battlemage Program’s administrative offices.
“You’re welcome, Boren,” Emmanuel said softly, watching him go.
He turned his attention back to the tablet. A single tap called up the face of a bearded soldier in a rugged winter jacket caught in a snowstorm. The image, frozen at a single point in time, was from the perspective of something low to the ground looking up, and the soldier was crouched in front of it. Emmanuel could tell from the slight ripples across the image that the man had used a sightstone to relay the message. This would have been a necessity considering where he was stranded. The storm would have scrambled any other signal. He had sent it to the church because they were the only ones who used that ancient form of communication these days.
Behind the soldier stood a mass of thick, snow-capped trees with bright red bark. Twice as tall as any other species in the realm, they only grew on Ankhar, and no steel except Tiberian could chop them down.
With another tap, the grizzled soldier came to life.
“General Emmanuel, sir, Mountaineer Sergeant Friggnor here, reporting from just outside Ankhar Base Echo Peak in the Northern Frontier. A magical storm has drained our crystals, and we’re down to using sightstones. Things are bad. But the good news is, we’ve gathered intel on the location of former Champion, Pris Walksprite. She was last seen two days ago in a fortified town known as Crystal Bark. The place was under attack by elementals, and she was helping the villagers.”
Emmanuel clenched his teeth. Elementals, also known as wraiths, were monsters out of ancient times, evolved from the bacteria that feasted on Cebron corpses. Infused with dark energy, the organisms learned to incubate in terrible storms, drinking in the substantial amounts of luminether released by the heavens. Their reliance on these storms made the chaotic Northern Frontier of Ankhar a perfect place to lay down roots.
They were vicious, deadly creatures, almost impossible to kill without sorcery.
Friggnor continued, his voice urgent. “It gets worse, General. The wraiths are coordinating their attacks, throwing themselves against our walls with no fear of death…”
“A Heavenswraith,” Emmanuel said.
“…which means they’ve got a Heavenswraith nearby, pulling the strings. Our scouts relayed this video of a recent attack.”
Friggnor’s feed cut off, replaced by a video of such violent imagery that Emmanuel had to close his eyes. When the screams became too loud to bear, he swiped a finger across the tablet to shut it down, then rolled up the viewer and slipped it into a jacket pocket. Emmanuel jogged toward the nearest stable to find a levathon. The images from the massacre flashed with visceral intensity at the front of his mind.
Soldiers being torn in half.
Wraiths guzzling their blood.
Human corpses littering the snow banks.
“Give me a levathon,” he told the first stable attendant to greet him. “I don’t care whose it is, I need one right now—and gods save any man who stands in my way.”
Minutes later, he was flying across campus. It was the fastest service he had ever received at any academy stable.
Maybe not fast enough.
HE LANDED in front of the hotel to find Andres sitting on the front steps. The man rose and jogged over as Emmanuel dismounted.
“They say no to my son,” Andres said. “I see in your eyes that they say no.”
Emmanuel nodded. “I’m sorry.”
“Where is he? Where is Oscar?”
“I don’t know,” Emmanuel said. “He ran.”
“Where?” The man’s eyes shot all the way open. “Where he go?”
Emmanuel had no idea how else to respond. He shrugged and shook his head. “He didn’t say where he was going. I’m sorry, Andres. I’m sure he’ll be back soon.”
Andres surprised Emmanuel by giving him a hard shove, almost knocking him over.
“Your sorry will not help my son. Is your fault he think this school is his life. He don’t need you or anyone else in this place.”
Nodding his agreement and defeat, Emmanuel grabbed the levathon’s reins to lead it forward. “He’ll be back, Andres. I know he will. He loves you.”
“You look at me!”
Emmanuel locked eyes with the man, expecting a punch or another shove. It wouldn’t have mattered either way. He deserved this.
“Oscar is my problem now,” Andres said. His bearded brown face creased with an angry scowl. “You go away from him.”
“I can’t promise I’ll stay away from him,” he told Andres. “But I will promise you one thing.”
“What thing?” Andres barked at him.
Emmanuel handed him the levathon reigns. “I’ll never stand in your way again. Go find your son and do what’s best.”
Andres was off only moments later. Emmanuel hadn’t known the man could fly, but Andres was like his son—he could adapt, and he was a survivor.
Their cause would need people like that.
CHAPTER 26
M ilo finished his morning classes a half hour before lunchtime.
Lily wasn’t with him for Professor Wynde’s class, “The History of Spellcasting Through the Ages: The Marvinian Renaissance.” Her ten thirty class was “Drawing the Ancients,” a course on the history of summoning elemental beings. Milo had never seen her so excited as when she literally broke into a sprint to get there on time.
He found Sevarin outside, pacing back and forth. There were bits of leaves and twigs stuck to his clothing.
“Did you skip class?” Milo asked. “What’s with all the dirt on you
r clothes?”
“Naw, I attended,” he said with a dismissive wave. “But I had to go to the bathroom halfway through.”
“And you didn’t feel like going back.”
Sevarin shrugged. “I didn’t see the point in sitting through a boring lecture on ancient sculpture.”
“Where did you go?”
Sevarin looked away, shifty eyed. “Joined a few kids for a game of soccer out in one of the fields.”
“Yeah, that would explain the twigs.”
Sevarin brushed one off, and Milo wondered why he would lie about that. Maybe he was embarrassed at having spent the morning alone somewhere quiet?
“Oscar didn’t get in,” Sevarin said in an obvious attempt to change the subject. “He ran off somewhere. I heard a couple of students talking about it while I was waiting for you. One of them works in the admissions office for the Rogue Tail program—said Oscar and Emmanuel made a scene in the dean’s office. I guess word’s getting around about the Feral kid with the weird eyes.”
“Where do you think he went?”
Another shrug from Sevarin. “The dorms, maybe?”
“But we haven’t been assigned to them yet.”
“Are you kidding?” Sevarin’s eyes widened. “Didn’t you see the back of your class schedule? I’ve been waiting all morning to tell you.”
Milo dug out the sheet his uncle had given him. On the back was a set of instructions on where he could locate his dorm. That went to show how preoccupied his uncle had been; he had totally forgotten to mention it.
“Emma said to meet her there before lunch so we could all walk over together,” Sevarin said.
“Sounds good,” Milo said, adjusting his book bag, which weighed a ton from all the books he had shoved into it. “I can leave my bag. This thing’s getting heavy.”
Sevarin laughed at him. “Wuss.”
“Hey, at least my pack’s not empty like yours, you slacker,” he shot back.
They boarded a train at the nearest station that shot them halfway around campus. It took ten minutes to arrive at the first- and second-year dormitories, which were housed in a gray stone building complex that wrapped around a sunny courtyard.
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