by Alex C Vick
“Yes,” he agreed. “Uniquely awful.”
It was now very late, and the training room was freezing. We had to go home. Me, to my safe, warm house, where I would never take my family for granted again. Nico, to a house where there was no safety at all. He would reassure his mother all was well, and spend the next week pretending to have nightmares.
We were properly partners now. Loyal to each other in a way we had not been before. I agreed to keep his spell combinations secret, and in return, he created a clever little remedy for Evander to take before his Combat assessment.
It was designed to inspire confidence and settle the stomach. Nico hid the confidence-giving part very skillfully in a traditional Sickness Remedy, without any visible change in its colour or pattern.
When the day of the assessments arrived, we congregated in the largest training room. It was time for our class to prove we had learned enough to advance to year two.
Evander was allowed to take the remedy, and he sailed through the Combat assessment. I was delighted. When it came to my turn, I had to close my eyes for a few seconds. There was so much I needed to remember.
Professor Cassius pretended concern.
“Fear not, Galen. The professor does not retaliate in the year one assessment. Next year, however…”
I frowned. I’d have a different professor next year. His expression of anticipation indicated otherwise.
“No doubt you’ll be as delighted as I am at the exception,” he went on. “You have so much potential, you see.” He gave me a broad smile.
OK then. If that’s the way you want it.
All boasting aside, the containment band I created was a masterpiece. Not one, but two extra layers.
Count them, Professor Cassius. Two.
Sleep Remedy, and a Distraction Spell. I tightened the band as much as I dared, not wanting him to realise anything was different.
He allowed me to pass the assessment, grudgingly. Still with that supercilious look on his face as he told me I was capable of better.
“Thank you, Professor,” I said.
Then I waited. He lasted longer than Nico and I had expected. He really fought the spells. He eventually fell asleep half-way through Talia’s assessment.
The best thing was that he couldn’t even remember how he’d got there when he woke up. I’m not quite sure how I kept a straight face.
I took my time leaving the training room once the assessments were all over for the day. I said the same thing to each professor, as if the thought had only just occurred to me. I added just a hint of concern, more for my own amusement than anything else.
“I hope Professor Cassius isn’t taking on too much. He does seem a little tired lately.”
It was nothing compared to what he had put Nico through all these years. But then, we were just getting started.
Chapter 5 - Making New Magic
By the end of the next year, Professor Cassius was a shell of the man he had been before. The hesitation in his eyes, the weakness, where once he had been as immovable as the Seminary walls… It gave me satisfaction at the same time as it made my chest ache.
I had no regrets. But I wasn’t exactly proud of myself either.
The variety of spell combinations Nico and I invented had only kept growing. As research partners, we were better suited than I could ever have imagined.
His father’s anger, at first, had been terrifying. I shrank back with everyone else as he railed against the hidden magic that was attacking him. I was so scared that he would figure out my involvement.
We were risking the Spell of Removal by carrying out such a sustained attack. If we were found out, receiving the ultimate punishment from the Council and losing our force fields was a very real possibility.
Rather unfortunately for the professor, no one else believed there was magic at work. Nico and I were very careful, despite the temptation to invent something weird and wonderful.
Instead, we developed the basic Distraction Spell far beyond its original form. We took the professor’s sharp and cunning mind and punched enormous magical holes through it.
One day we had him swapping words around so he made no sense. The next, he’d forget everyone’s names. The day after, he’d get lost walking around the Seminary.
And, of course, he kept falling asleep. The poor man could hardly stay awake from one lesson to the next. What a shame he’d insisted on being my year two professor as well. Without that, I would not have had half so many opportunities to undermine him.
Eventually, at the end of the summer, he stopped Nico’s programme of self-improvement. Immediately, we stopped as well.
I don’t know if he made the connection. I sort of hoped he did. It might make him less likely to do the same to anyone else. As long as he never knew who had punished him, of course. The main thing was that Nico, my friend, was finally free.
Year two at the Seminary was proving to be the most confusing time of my life so far. There were days when I felt the same as I always had, and others when I hardly recognised myself.
I knew part of it was just growing up. But there was something else as well. Learning about Professor Cassius had changed me. I would never quite trust the natural order of things again. I could not.
I had discovered the world did not necessarily uphold what was right simply because it was right. And I was also a much more powerful magician than anyone, including me, had previously realised.
As the summer drew to its close, Serena finally got her force field. She pretended it wasn’t a big deal, but I knew how relieved she was.
We’d drifted apart a little as the months went by. Perhaps it was inevitable. I was very busy with the Seminary. But I missed her. I just didn’t know how to be with her when there was so much I couldn’t say.
One evening, after dinner, I went looking for her, hoping we could talk for a while. Like we used to.
She’d walked all the way to the edge of the cultivation fields. I found her making the first curl of a letter S. The silver magic glittered in the setting sun.
“Hey,” I said.
She jumped, and the letter vanished. She reached out to touch the air where it had been and sighed.
“Don’t stress about it,” I said. “You’ve got ages yet. The Seminary won’t take any more admissions this year anyway.”
To prove the strength of her force field, in advance of the Sygnus adoption ceremony, she would have to write her name in magic and hold the letters for at least a minute.
“I’m not stressed,” she said. “I just want to be prepared. For everything.”
I frowned, remembering what Professor Cassius had said. Be prepared to be unprepared.
“Some things you can’t prepare for,” I said abruptly. There was a short silence.
“What is it, Gale?” she asked.
“Just… I don’t want you to be disappointed.”
“About what?”
I shrugged.
“Other people.”
“Do you want to talk about it?” she said softly.
I shook my head. I couldn’t talk about it. Whether I wanted to or not was kind of irrelevant.
She stared at me for a minute. Were those tears glinting in her eyes, or was it just the reflection of her new force field?
She looked down for a few seconds, and when she lifted her head again she was smiling.
“Alright, then,” she said. “Tell me something amazing about magic. What’s the best spell in year two so far?”
“Hard to choose,” I answered. “Although… Manipulation was fun last week,” I added, grinning at the memory.
“Tell me.”
I turned to a small tree next to us, and pulled one of the new season’s apples off its branch. I handed it to Serena.
“We had a competition,” I told her. “About who could change an object the most with only a single spell.”
“What kind of things did you do?” she asked, looking down at the apple on her palm.
/> “Colour,” I said. I turned it all the colours of the rainbow, one at a time, until finally it was a combination of all of them.
“Temperature,” I said, making it glow with warmth and then crackle with a layer of ice.
“Size and shape are probably obvious,” I went on, making the apple into a cube, then a cylinder.
Serena was looking from me to the apple, smiling every time I made it appear different.
“But texture,” I continued, “that was interesting.”
I curled her fingers over the apple and made it soft and fluffy, then dry and wrinkly, and then rough like tree bark. Finally I made it feel like shifting, squishy slime. Her fascinated expression turned to disgust at the last one.
“Galen, it’s repulsive!” she complained, holding the apple away from herself.
I lifted the spell, and the apple returned to normal.
“I think that final spell must have been the winner?” she said enquiringly.
I shook my head.
“What, then?”
“It was this,” I said, projecting something so fast, I knew she wouldn’t be able to see it properly. The apple sat in her hand, appearing completely unchanged.
“It’s rubbish,” she said, “it doesn’t look any… any…”
Her grin had returned. I waited. She started to giggle. Then she burst out laughing. I laughed along with her. Even though I wasn’t being touched by the spell, her happiness was completely infectious. It had been a long time since we’d laughed together like this.
Eventually I removed the spell, and her laughs faded, until she was only grinning. She raised her eyebrows.
“What was that?”
“Turning an object into an emotion,” I said.
“Your idea?” she asked, and I nodded.
“I’m proud of you, big brother,” she said, slightly wistful. “I can’t believe only a year ago I was giving you advice. You certainly don’t need my help now.”
I nudged her with my elbow.
“I’ll always need your advice,” I promised. “I might not take it, but that doesn’t mean I won’t need it…”
She nudged me back.
“Ow!” I complained. “Your elbow is worse than a sharp stick.”
“My advice to you,” she said with a grin, “is don’t give it out if you can’t take it.”
I held a hand up to her face, projecting my force field until the magic was tickling her nose.
“Don’t make me use this,” I said, pretending to threaten her.
Her grin got wider.
“Do your worst, evil magician!” she said, and turned to run for home. By the time I caught up with her, we were both out of breath and laughing again.
I saw my parents exchange a glance as we went back inside the house. They were obviously relieved my sister and I were happy.
Well, I’m relieved too.
I decided to make sure I spent more time with her in the future.
I started officially learning the year three spells. Although I was still weak at Remedies, I was so far ahead on the other five disciplines, it made sense for me to complete year three simultaneously with year two.
Evander teased me about it, saying I’d never get a girlfriend if I spent all my time projecting spells.
“There’s no point in being a great magician if you never have any fun, Galen.”
I rolled my eyes. He’d only been seeing this girl Floria for six weeks. It had taken him three months to get up the courage to speak to her properly. He was talking as if he now had years of dating experience compared to me.
“And professions aren’t awarded based on kissing ability,” I retorted. “Excuse me if my priorities are a bit different to yours.”
Actually, I was a bit jealous. Not of Floria, she wasn’t remotely my type. But I did wonder what it would feel like to kiss a girl. Evander compared it to touching magic for the first time.
Nico had more girlfriends than I could keep track of. Apparently messy blond hair, intense grey eyes, and incessant rule breaking were all very attractive things when put together in one underage magician.
Although, he wasn’t breaking the rules nearly so much since his father eased up on him.
I had a lot of girls making friends with me in the hopes it would get them an introduction to Nico. I got a bit fed up with it. Nico just laughed.
He said if I had any sense, I’d be deciding which one I liked and then convincing them to go out with me instead.
He reminded me that the time between joining the Seminary and being matched went by very fast.
“I’ll be in year five soon,” he complained. “The countdown to my coming of age ceremony has already started. The Council are waiting to assign me a profession. And a wife.”
“She doesn’t get assigned to you, Your Greatness,” I said sarcastically. “You get assigned to each other.”
“Doesn’t matter how you describe it,” he replied. “The point is, if you let the Council do the whole thing, you might end up with someone you hate.”
“I’m not even fifteen yet,” I said, getting annoyed. “Nowhere near mandatory matching age. Why should I try to find someone now?”
He grinned knowingly.
“It’s not like homework, Galen. It’s a lot more fun than that.”
I blushed bright red, and he laughed.
I consoled myself with the fact I had no time right then anyway, what with the extra year three spells and the research Nico and I were working on.
We had to produce a manuscript by the time our partnership ended, and Professor Auden, who was overseeing our research, was getting frustrated at our apparent lack of productivity.
We could hardly explain to him that we’d spent most of the year inventing dangerous spells to discredit another professor.
However, it was proving difficult to find something to work on that we could own up to and do together.
Remedies were out. Nico was brilliant at them, but I was terrible. And if we couldn’t demonstrate our research as a team, we wouldn’t pass.
Other spell combinations were out too. We both agreed the risk of someone putting two and two together was too great. The details of how the great Professor Cassius nearly lost his mind had to remain our secret forever.
But we needed to produce something incredible. We both wanted to work at the Foundation for Research when we came of age. A profession reserved for an elite few.
In the end, it was fitting we came up with the idea together.
“What about portals?” Nico said one evening. We were using Movement Spells to stack and unstack the chairs in the training room. Over and over, up to the ceiling and then down again. It was noisy, but it helped us to think.
“What about them?” I asked.
“Well… Is there a way we could improve them? Simplify the symbols or something? Androva knows they’re still a complete pain to open.”
“Androva knows…” I repeated, thinking. I did like the idea of working with portals.
“What is it?” said Nico. “I know that look. You’re about to say something brilliant or something completely crazy.
“More likely crazy,” he went on, adding the last chair to the pile with such force the whole thing wobbled.
“What about somewhere else? Not Androva. Opening a portal to somewhere that’s not Androva,” I repeated, my voice rising with excitement.
“Do you really think we could?” Nico asked, his face lighting up.
“The portal symbols are just another way to combine magical energy,” I said slowly.
“If we break down the coordinates and rebuild them…”
“Instruct the magic to behave differently…”
“Just like with the Distraction Spells…”
We were staring at each other in amazement.
Then we spoke at the same time.
“Yes!”
Chapter 6 - Changing Perspective
I passed the year three and year two assessments in th
e same week.
I actually did it ! Even Remedies, although I did not complete anything more than the minimum Universal Spells.
Just before Spring Festival I turned fifteen, and Serena joined the Seminary in one of the early year one intakes. She had adopted the same circular Sygnus as our parents, rather than the seven-pointed star that now belonged to me.
Professor Cassius was no longer teaching first years, and I was very relieved my sister would not have to face him. In fact, he had stepped down as senior professor for Combat and taken on more of an advisory role.
I continued to excel at being a magician. I never started learning any new spell with the expectation it would be easy, but my force field just seemed to know what to do.
Oh, and I had a girlfriend. Talia.
It was alright, I suppose. Better than being alone.
She was perfectly nice, and we’d always got on well, back when we used to be in the same classes.
She had asked me out at Spring Festival, telling me later it was the Entertainment Remedy she’d been drinking that had given her the courage.
Underage magicians were only allowed to drink them at the season festivals, though I knew Nico and his friends regularly ignored the rule. So did most Androvans in years four and five.
Entertainment Remedies affected everyone slightly differently, sharpening all of the senses and emotions. They made it easy to have a good time, or, as in Talia’s case, to be brave.
I was shocked at first, but could think of no reason to refuse her. And having my first kiss while the sky lit up with fireworks behind us was no hardship, after all.
I just thought it would be more… well, more magical. Like the buzz of a new spell when it touches the skin.
I’d obviously set my expectations too high. It was probably my own fault for believing Nico’s ridiculous claims about the sensation of two force fields merging.
We were progressing with our portal research, but we still hadn’t made the breakthrough we were hoping for with the coordinates. So far we had only simplified the opening sequence and made the portal a bit more stable.
At least we were walking through portals so often, we didn’t need to take a Portal Remedy every time. Our bodies had adjusted to the exhaustion that portal travel always caused in the beginning. And I had been everywhere worth visiting on Androva.