Marcus started laughing. I thought he might have found it wrong that I wanted to hurt a fellow student, but that obviously wasn’t the case. He put his hand back on my shoulder and leaned in so he could speak more softly.
“That’s ok, man. Everyone hates Ted, he’s a dick.”
That got me laughing right along with him. “So, what up, Marcus?”
“I just saw you storming down the hall and it seemed so different from your usual walk. I wanted to make sure you were doing ok. You worried about class today?”
“Hell yeah, I’m worried! I’ve never cast a spell in my life. I’m afraid I’m going to screw it up in front of everyone. The last thing I want to do is give Ted anything else to use against me.”
“Take a breath, bro. Half these kids think they are God’s gift to magic but couldn’t light a candle from twenty feet away. Most of them haven’t been allowed to train or practice. For them, this will be just as intimidating as it is for you.”
I wondered if he was just humoring me, but it sure made me feel better. “What about the other half?”
“Well, the other half are really, really good. Some of these kids have parents who have trained them to do nothing else since they were born. A chance to join the Ascendancy was a big deal. That alone could bring some pretty serious advantages to a family. It used to be the best path to a seat on the Council, until they had a major falling out eighteen years ago.”
I was a little confused. We were not covering the Council until next week in class. “Marcus, I know this is going to sound dumb, but what is the Council?”
“The Council is the highest seat in our government; they set the rules and dictate the course for all of the Gifted going forward. In reality, they are a bunch of old-school dicks, but we have not been able to shake them off yet. While America is free, the Gifted are still under the thumb of English rulers.”
“Hey, thanks for taking my mind off of class. Are you ready for this?”
“Yeah, bro, I’m one of the other half. Good luck.” He gave me a huge smile.
He chuckled and walked away. I followed him down the hallway to where we were meeting the teachers. Marcus was a lucky guy, having been trained to use his gift from a young age. He was also the first person to talk to me other than a teacher since I came here. I thought I might have just made my first friend. At least I had done something right today. Time to suck it up and stop dragging my feet. This was my chance to use magic.
I hadn’t ever been to the training room before, but like everything else at the academy, it was easy to find. The room was located eight stories underground, and that would have been impressive in most places; in Arizona, it was unheard of. The clay in the soil normally prevented people from the expense of digging even a simple basement. I had a pretty good feeling they hadn’t used just equipment to get this far underground here. Magic had probably played a strong role in hollowing this space out.
The room was huge; the ceilings were fifty feet above our heads and the cavern extended at least three football fields away from the entrance. The walls and the roof had been painted with some kind of writing. I wondered what it was for—could it be protection in case someone cast a spell that got out of control?
I was surprised by the amount of people waiting for us at the entrance. By my count, there were thirty-five people watching us walk into the room. That was one person for every student, and five extra. All of them were wearing light, white loose-fitting tunics and pants. The exact same kind of clothes my father had left in his chest. For the first time, I wondered what had happened to it. Would I ever see it again? I had my doubts.
One of the instructors stepped forward and addressed the class. “Today will be your first day actively practicing how to use your gift. I know some of you have been waiting for this moment for a long time: the chance to finally let yourself go, to become what you were always meant to be. So today we will be providing individual instruction, but we will also be judging your first task at the end of class today.”
A small groan escaped from the students around me. The teacher seemed not to notice and continued speaking. “For the first hour today, we will be going over techniques on how to access and use the mana inside of you. Then we will work on several basic spells. At the end of class, each student will be asked to showcase a spell they have learned today. I know it feels like a lot of pressure to have a task assigned at the start of your first day, but this is the type of situation you will find yourselves in often. The teachers have already been assigned students for the day. Just stay where you are and they will find you.”
The teacher who had done the introduction walked right up to me. I felt a little elbow in my back and turned to see Marcus laughing. He mouthed, “You’re going down,” and laughed until his own instructor appeared next to him.
Not sure what to expect, I was a little surprised when the instructor stuck out his hand. “Hi, I’m Mike; it’s nice to meet you, Jackson.”
I made sure to give his hand a firm squeeze, but not too firm. “So, what are we going to do today, Mike?”
He smiled at me. I thought he could pick up on the nervous energy flowing through my body. “Well, first I am going to need you to relax. Let’s have some fun. You know how many people would kill to be standing in your shoes right now? How could this not be your favorite class? You are going to get to use magic. Magic! How freaking cool is that?”
He continued to chat with me as we moved away from the other students. I was surprised he was a recent graduate of the academy and was a frontrunner to join the Ascendancy. I was thrilled to be talking with someone who was excited about being here and had dedicated himself to the cause. His endless enthusiasm was contagious. He stopped walking and faced me.
“All right, Jackson, let’s get started, and try not to look so worried. I can feel the power radiating off you. That means you can do this; you just have to focus. The first thing I want you to do is try and find the source of your power. Think of it as something that moves through your body but has a central location in your core. Let me know when you can feel it.”
I closed my eyes, hoping that would make it easier to follow Mike’s instructions. I reached into my memories, thinking of when I had been so full of endless energy. I felt something, just a trickle at first, and then it was as if a gate opened and I felt my power fill me with energy. The sensation was like nothing I had experienced before. “I can feel it.”
“Ok, perfect. Now, I want you to try and bring that power you feel down to your hands. When you have it in your hands, I want you to think about a bright blue fire.”
I could feel the power moving through me, toward my hands. I started thinking about fire, just like I had seen when the professor held the burning paper in class.
I focused on it until Mike’s voice broke my concentration. “Jackson, open your eyes.”
When I opened my eyes, I was surprised to see that both of my hands were encased in bright blue flames. Mike took a piece of paper from his robe and touched it to the flame. I watched as it quickly burned to ash.
I was doing it. I was using magic.
“Ok, Jackson, you are doing great. Now, I want you to focus on pulling that uncontrolled fire into a small ball in each of your hands. Once you have the ball resting in your palms, command it to fly out to a spot on the wall.”
Focusing on my hands, I thought of something about the size of a baseball. I watched as the flames pulled in on themselves, forming two perfect orbs of burning blue fire. The fire on my hands was now completely extinguished. I picked out the center of one of the symbols on the wall and willed the balls to hit it. I watched, amazed, as they flew across the room and collided with the spot I had been thinking about. Awesome! I’d just thrown my first fireball! Seriously, a real-deal fireball. Who would have ever thought it was possible? It took everything inside of me not to yell out and do a fist pump.
Mike pulled my attention back to him. “Did they hit the spot you were thinking of?”
“Great job, Jackson. Now, I am going to ask you to do that again, but this time to hit spots that I call out, and only one at a time. Got it?”
“I think I can do that.”
For the next forty minutes, Mike drilled me in aiming at multiple targets. By the end, I could track four separate spots on the wall and hit all of them dead on. Then he had me try six spots, and I almost hit another student.
He laughed it off. “Ok, too soon for six. Time to move on to something else. I want you to imagine your power around you like a shield. You can use whatever shape you want, just know that the larger it is, the more mana it costs to cast and maintain. Also, it needs to be able to cover you from all directions. That includes below your feet and above your head. Let me know when you have it.”
I pulled the power around me, thinking of the transporter from Star Trek. I capped off the field around myself just above my head and below my feet. I looked at Mike. “I’m ready.”
He reached inside his robe and pulled out six tennis balls. He started using his magic to hurl the balls at me from all directions, testing my shield. Seemingly satisfied, he turned away and then sprang back, setting all six balls on fire and bringing them down on me from above. My only thought was to reinforce the top of my shield. I was happy to see the balls bounced once and then turned to ash. That had been pretty intense.
“Awesome job again. Way to increase the strength of your shield when you sensed danger coming. Also, super-fast reflexes; we might make something out of you yet. Just for reference: during a longer battle, you may only want to put your personal shield around certain parts of your body, but we are going to work on that later. Right now, I want to show you one handy trick, and then we need to prepare for the contest.”
I had been looking at the runes on the wall while Mike talked, and turned to tell him ok when I noticed he was gone. I took a step forward and smashed my head into something hard.
A laughing Mike appeared in front of me. “Next lesson: basic invisibility.”
“Holy shit, we can turn invisible?”
“Well, not directly, but you can make a shield around you and use your gift to basically take a snapshot of what’s around you and mimic it on your shield. It’s more like instant camouflage. We have other spells that are a little bit harder to master, but let’s stick with the basics for now. So, start by creating your shield around yourself, and then command it almost like taking a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree picture. Then fix the images from your mind into your shield.”
This task took me a lot longer to master. It was about an hour before I could almost disappear. Mike assured me that for my first time, I was doing great. His teaching skill was so laid back and filled with positive reinforcement; it made me want to try harder. It also limited the amount of frustration I felt when I failed. He had hinted there was one more task left, and I wondered when we would get to it.
As if he’d read my mind, Mike called a halt to our invisibility training. Wait, people with magic couldn’t read minds, could they?
He gave no indication that he had heard that thought as he moved on to the next task. “Ok, this one is going to be fun. I’m not sure if anyone else will be teaching this today, but if they are, I have a little extra flair for you to add to it. I want you to create a mini tornado, and then, as it’s moving, fill it with bright orange fire. This spell looks cool and, as you will learn later, can be extremely practical in the field.”
He smiled, but then his face turned more serious. “I am going to need you to make sure that no matter what, you aim this spell at the wall. The runes there are made to dispel any magic that hits them, basically rendering it void. That is why we can practice down here so freely, not really a chance of wild magic running around. Ok, so think twister first and then we will add the fire. The first time you cast the spell, it may help to spin your finger against your palm.”
I started thinking of every tornado I had ever seen on TV. That helped me focus on the image. Remember when chasing tornados seemed really cool? Now it seemed like everyone wanted to swim with great whites. Seriously, what is it with people and their death wishes? You know a twenty-foot great white could literally rip you in half with one bite. Shit, at twenty feet, it might be able to swallow you whole. Sometimes I see those people on twelve-foot skiffs, taking pictures of them, and think one of these days you’re going to die. Hope it was worth it.
I could feel the power growing in my hand as the first little gust of wind started to form. Soon I had a miniature tornado going. I looked over at Mike, and he mouthed the word bigger. All I had to do was imagine the tornado growing large, and it did. I set it down on the ground and continued to let it grow in size. Mike pointed toward the wall. As the tornado ripped its way across the cavern floor, it picked up dust and changed color. When it hit the wall, the wind died instantly and the tornado was gone.
Mike took a look at his watch and then did a double-take. He motioned for me to head back to where we started class, and then walked around letting the instructors know time was up for the day. I looked down at my watch and realized we had actually been down here for four hours already. When you’re learning something new that you are extremely interested in, time had a way of just getting away from you.
Mike had all of the students line up facing the wall. “We are just going to move right down the line. When it is your turn, step forward and cast any spell that comes to your mind. When the spell of the person in front of you hits the wall, the next person can step forward until we are done.”
I was a little worried because we hadn’t worked the fire into the tornado yet, but I was going to try and wing it on the fly. What was the worst that could happen? A spectacular failure was still spectacular. What? Screw that. Damn, Mike’s fountain of optimism must have been contagious. I did not want to screw up, but hey, I was going to give it a try, anyway.
I was about two-thirds down the line, so at least I would get to watch the others first. The first student stepped forward, and the competition was on. There was an interesting mix of talents. Some people launched car-sized fireballs; some of the students could only create a simple shield around themselves. The red-headed girl from the auditorium cast a pink fireball, which seemed to grab everyone’s attention.
When she walked by, someone asked how she did it. She responded, “I like pink.”
It was my turn. Stepping forward, I worked at creating the tornado. I set it on the ground and sent it out toward the wall. When it was halfway there, I thought of a fire burning at the bottom of the tornado. Bright orange flames licked around the tornado, feeding greedily on the oxygen it provided. By the time it hit the wall, it was a raging inferno of fire. Didn’t they say we should burn the Lycans? Now I could see how this could come in handy.
The last person to go was Marcus. I was interested to see what he would do, since he had bragged about being one of the best. I hoped he could put his money where his mouth was. I watched as he created a tidal wave out of nothing and sent it rushing toward the wall. Halfway to the wall, the wave froze, and then exploded outward. All the shards of ice hung in the air for a second before they launched at the wall in rapid succession. Ok, so Marcus had not been lying about how talented he was.
Enthusiastic applause broke out from the students and teachers. It was an impressive display of magic and control. The winners of the tasks were not announced, but I was sure that no one had beaten Marcus. Mike stepped forward and dismissed the class. I slowly walked back to my dorm room. A weight had dropped from my shoulders. I could use magic, and I wouldn’t be heading home so soon after all.
13
Jackson
My initial fears of not being able to use my gift had been crushed. It felt good to know that I actually belonged here. It felt as if using magic was what I was born to do. It came to me so much more easily than the physical combat did. For combat training, I had to work twice as hard as I did at anything
else. By all accounts, the physical fighting skills were just as important as the magical ones.
Class continued five days a week, and now that I wasn’t feeling so stressed out, I started to pay more attention to the people around me. I continued to work with Sarge in the evenings and practice using my gift in the catacombs with Marcus on the weekends. I was finally starting to put it all together. Marcus was an incredible teacher; he showed me how to control my magic in a totally different way than I had experienced with Mike. He let me know control comes with practice, but spells come from your imagination.
It was time for my latest nightly beating with Sarge, so I grabbed my duffel of gear and headed down to the gym. Exiting the stairs, I slammed into a black-haired girl from class, knocking her to the floor.
I helped her up from the ground while saying, “Sorry about that; I wasn’t paying attention to where I was going.” I shrugged. “I don’t normally see anyone down here at night.” I hoped that explained why I had been going so fast.
She gave me a quick little smile. While dusting herself off, she said, “It’s all right, Jackson. If anyone was going to knock me down, I’m glad it was you.”
I beamed with a hundred-watt smile as she finished brushing the rest of the dust off of her shirt. She knew my name! Since coming to the academy, I hadn’t really had too much time to interact with people, especially not those of the female persuasion. But she knew my name! The thought of it filled me with joy. Maybe if I was lucky, I could pluck her name out of my mind and not end up looking like a complete ass. It was an iffy call to try and guess at her name. If I was wrong, I might blow any chance I had at talking to her again. “It’s Britta, right? I was watching you cast the other day. Some pretty impressive stuff.” God, I hoped I didn’t come off as a creeper. I was watching you. My God, what was I even thinking?
The Arena Page 12