by Dante King
Enwyn nodded. “A nice analogy. Yes, vectors have residual souls—the incorporeal essence of mages past. I have never heard, until you told me of how your two staffs bonded together at your bidding, of a mage having two vectors in one shell.”
I nodded. If vectors had souls, whose souls resided in my black crystal staff? When the black staff had absorbed my original one, did I actually combine the two, or did one overcome and destroy the other?
Now that the sedation of my morning BJ was wearing off, a few questions regarding the Academy bubbled to the surface of my mind.
“Enwyn, what are we doing all this for?” I asked as I searched the blankets on the bed for any sign of my boxers. “The learning, I mean. What’s the ideal end goal for a mage coming out of the Mazirian Academy?”
Enwyn had managed to locate her boots from where they had been thrown into the bathroom the night before. She came back into the bedroom zipping them up.
“Well, like in any world, there are a host of things that a mage can do once they graduate. There are many callings, vocations, and adventures in which they can channel their magic. However, the vocation at the top of the list is to become a professional War Mage.”
“Right,” I said, coming up empty on the underwear front after looking under all the pillows. “The other frat boys have told me a little about these War Mage Games. They have the three different competitions that you compete in; the rounds where you have to kill as many monsters of one variety as you can, then capture the flag. And, of course, the battle royale one where if you’re killed, you can be reanimated.”
“That’s correct,” Enwyn said. “Well, since the ending of the Void Wars, these games have really taken off. They’re the equivalent of professional sports on Earth—with the same passionate rivalries and the same accompanying hysteria. The competitors are called War Mages as a reminder of what the games have taken the place of. The elite War Mages, the cream that rises to the top of all the aspiring competitors, are worshipped in much the same way as Earth’s professional sports stars are. They’re paid huge sums of gold to represent their respective world, given access to the best inscribers, the most exclusive trainers.”
“Money, fame, and women,” I said. “The holy trinity that transcends languages, races, and worlds.”
Janet snorted. “That sounds spot on.”
“The Mage Wars competition had always been a thing, even during the Void Wars, but after the Void Wars came to a close, they really took off.”
I pulled on a fresh set of my academy uniform: white shirt, black pants, and a coat to match. Then, I slipped my spellbook into one of the jacket pockets and tugged my own leather boots on.
“The Void Wars, huh,” I mused. “I’ve heard so much about them, but I don’t really know anything substantial, except that my parents were heavily involved. What was it like, Enwyn?”
She shrugged. “I was only a young girl at the time. Ten years old or so. I didn’t really understand too much of what was going on. It was a dark time—not really surprising, what with it being a war that pulled in almost everyone in Avalonia.”
“Surely, you know what happened though?” I pressed.
“Your parents lost,” Enwyn said, “and the Arcane Council performed the mass enchantment that almost completely erased them from history. All that matters now is that things are now peaceful.”
I picked up my black crystal staff and studied it thoughtfully. It had belonged to my father. He had wielded black, my mother had wielded white. . . I wondered where that white staff was now.
“What was it about?” I asked quietly. “What the hell drove my parents to be the figureheads for the side they represented?”
“It was, like all many wars, ideological,” Enwyn said. “It was also instigated by the Elite—those at the top of the social pile—while being fought by the common masses.”
“Sounds like every war I ever heard of on Earth,” I said.
Enwyn nodded. “The worlds might be different, but mortals remain the same.”
“What was the ideology being fought over?” I asked.
“There were rumors—the enemies of Zenidor and Istrea said it was because they wanted to overthrow the Council, whereas the enemies of the Arcane Council said that Zenidor and Istrea were trying to stop the Council from doing some unspeakable evil.”
“What evil?” Janet asked, voicing my own question.
“Well, that’s just it,” Enwyn replied, heading for the bedroom door, with myself and Janet following, “no evidence was ever uncovered that the Arcane Council had planned to do anything that anyone might consider morally reprehensible or evil.”
We descended the stairs in a thoughtful trio. When we reached the main hall, we found that an Academy clean-up team was already busy rearranging and patching the atrium, scouring off splashes of manticore blood from the walls with caustic potions, and repairing the scorch marks with some careful vector work.
“Do you girls want some coffee?” I asked.
Janet grinned. “You had your morning cup of coffee alternative, remember?”
I grinned back. “I do recall that the only cup involved this morning was your hand cupping my balls.”
Janet punched me on the arm and grabbed me by the collar. “Come on,” she said, “we’re probably going to be late as it is.”
“Late? We’re going to be riding on the coattails of a member of staff, aren’t we?” I winked at Enwyn. “We’re above the law.”
“You’ll only be able to ride my coattails so far,” Enwyn said. “I’m going to report your break-in to the higher-ups—seeing as our illustrious Headmaster is still absent. I’m going to ask them about this Skeleton Key and the Death Mage. Perhaps I can wrangle some information out of them.”
“Isn’t there some sort of 5-0—some law enforcement agency—that you can go to?” I asked.
Enwyn laughed, her white teeth flashing in her lightly tanned face. She adjusted her glasses and looked at me through the lenses.
“The Mazirian Academy is very much removed from anything that you might call law enforcement,” she said. “Chaosbane, what with his eccentricities, has made sure that everyone from Idman Thunderstone to vigilante groups view the Academy with something akin to derision.”
“The Academy handles this sort of shit internally, you mean?” I asked.
“Oh, yes,” Enwyn said, “Chaosbane is an advocate for internal resolution and retribution.”
Just then, my spellbook pulsated warmly in my pocket. I pulled it out, and it automatically opened and flipped quickly to my timetable. A message, with a bossy little arrow, had appeared in the margin of the page.
Introduction to Potions: Attendance Required Immediately at Frosthall.
Even as my eyeballs finished reading the final word, the page turned over. I saw that a handy little map and directions for getting to my first class had been provided.
“All right, all right,” I grumbled at the spell book, “I can take a hint.”
I looked about the atrium.
“What are you doing?” Enwyn asked.
“Waiting for my frat brothers,” I said.
Enwyn took my arm and hustled me out of the door.
“Just because you’re in the same frat, Justin, does not mean you will be attending the same classes. Different types of mages attend different classes.”
That made sense, though it was a bit of a bummer.
I squeezed Enwyn’s ass as the three of us made our way down the garden path.
“Just make sure you get yourself a new spell today, huh?” I said. “It’s always nice to have something to look forward to after a hard day of brain strain.”
Enwyn looked back at me and smiled seductively. “I’ll do my best.”
Chapter Six
The handy-dandy map that my spellbook supplied me—the magical equivalent of Google Maps, I guessed—took me up to the Mazirian Academy, and it was there that I parted ways with Enwyn and Janet.
Enwyn marche
d off to do whatever it was that respectable members of the Academy faculty got up to, her ass swaying until she rounded a corner and disappeared from sight.
“So, no Intro to Potions for you?” I asked.
Janet shook her head. She was looking remarkably good for a woman who had spent the previous evening helping myself and the other frat boys defeat and slay an undead manticore, have a few drinks—which had then turned into a slight rager—at our frat house, then embark on a titillating and wild threesome.
“Nope,” she replied, flicking some stray brown hair out of her face, “I’ve got Summoning first up.”
“Summoning? Like the Lightning Skinks?”
“Yeah.”
“I wonder why I’m not in that class.”
“You might be at some point in the Academic year. The classes tend to shift and change at a whim.”
“Man,” I said, “Summoning sounds a lot better than the Potions 101.” And it did too. The idea of learning how to more effectively summon monsters seemed like it would be much more interesting than a prolonged science lesson.
“What’s the deal with our lessons, anyway?” I asked.
“How do you mean?” Janet said.
“Well, the boys in my frat made it sound like—”
“Let me guess,” Janet cut in, “they made it sound like you’d basically spend most of your time at the Academy wandering about and blasting other students? They made it sound like one continuous magical brawl?”
“Yeah, that’s about it,” I said.
“I’m surprised that those freshers told you that,” Janet said, in a voice that sounded anything but surprised.
“Really?” I asked.
“No,” Janet said. She shook her head. “They were as green as you were, so I’m not surprised they were talking out of their asses. The Academy is still a school, a place of learning. There are bound to be subjects and lessons that you find less appealing than others.”
“I guess that makes more sense than what the lads were trying to sell me back when I first met them.”
Janet snorted and nodded. “Who would have thought you guys had no idea what you were talking about…”
I grinned. “So cynical, Janet.”
“All right,” Janet said, “Now that I’ve shattered your illusions, I better love you and leave you.”
“Maybe I’ll see you later then?”
“Maybe you will.”
So, it was on my lonesome that I ended up wending my way through the marvelous and bizarre institution that was the Mazirian Academy. I had experienced a taster of the Academy on the first day that I had arrived—the day on which I had smoked the pipe at the Choosing Ceremony—but I hadn’t really rolled through the halls as a real student.
The map took me through a plethora of strange passages and past an array of interesting rooms. Compared to everything that I was used to on Earth, most of the things I came across were weird. Ghouls habitually floated through the corridors, making a noise and generally annoying people. They couldn’t touch or really do anything to the students, having no corporeal bodies, but they still managed to be a pain in the ass, what with popping out and yelling and overhearing whispered secrets by hiding in walls and what not.
There was also the occasional occult or supernatural creature outbreak that I had to deal with on my way to Frosthall. I was walking through a particularly deserted and dusty corridor, which my spellbook assured me connected the Elemental Wing to the Apothecary Catacombs, when I felt a rushing around my ankles. I looked down and saw a selection of tiny little people zipping past my boots. They were dressed in just the sort of garb that you’d expect people who were about four inches tall to wear: thimble-sized hats, shoes with curly toes, and brightly-colored waistcoats. I was informed later that these tiny fellas were kobolds, and were typically mischievous little bastards who generally made people’s lives an absolute misery. However, as they streamed around my calves, I distinctly heard a few of the squeaky little voices talking excitedly about how keen they were to get up to the roof to enjoy a ‘rat barbeque and a game of gnome polo’. Before I had the presence of mind to ask one of the little chaps about this, or whether they were actually real and not just the result of some accidental ingestion of a mild psychoactive drug, they had all disappeared through a series of cracks in the skirting boards.
As continuously weird as the Academy’s corridors, rooms, and hallways were, I strangely got used to the fact after a good hour of wandering them while following the map in my spellbook. I opened the door leading from a seemingly innocuous passageway and stepped into a room that was one giant mirror. The door closed behind me, and I spent a good minute blundering around like a fucking drunk octopus—all arms and legs and no sense of direction—before realizing that my trusty spellbook would lead me out of there.
After that little experience—which really brought on my hangover—I emerged out of the mirror room and into a pleasantly warm hallway. However, this was short lived, because the next door that I opened, at the behest of Spellbook Maps, led me into a room that was quite literally the interior of a plant. The door that I had just pushed open was a petal, and I had almost walked smackbang into a stamen. It took me a moment or two to figure out that I was standing inside an enormous flower, but when I did, I shrugged it off, thinking that it was probably nothing more than the Academy’s version of a biology classroom.
Just goes to show, the human brain is willing to accept an awful lot when it is handed that ultimate carte blanche excuse: It’s Magic.
It wasn’t until I was making my way down the next fairly normal corridor that I began to question whether I had been my normal-sized self inside of a giant flower, or perhaps I’d been reduced down to a Honey I Shrunk the Kids size and walked through a regular-sized flower.
And that’s when magic starts fucking with your mind.
On my wanderings to my class at Frosthall, I was once more reminded of what had captivated me about the Academy in the first place—apart from being a place of obvious magical schooling—and that was the sheer amount of gorgeous women strolling about the place. It was ridiculous. It reminded me vividly of those great documentaries, first recorded by the BBC and then stolen by Animal Planet, about the plains of the Serengheti and the herds of wildebeest. There were literally flocks of hot ladies milling about the corridors and lingering in the doorways of classrooms and, as far as I could see, only a handful of lions looking to catch them.
I met some of these lions a couple of left turns away from Frosthall—the classroom that I had been aiming for. I had been following my Spellbook GPS a little too assiduously and actually bumped into another one of the Academy’s outnumbered male students as I rounded a corner.
“My bad,” I said automatically as I tucked my spellbook back into my robes and prepared to continue on my way, now that I was sure of where I was heading.
The guy I had bumped into looked a little disgruntled, but another dude in his group nodded at me and beckoned for me to come over. Now, I normally couldn’t stand being beckoned at. Having a guy crook his finger at you was one of the most condescending and infuriating things that one male can do to another. However, seeing as I was already going to be late for class, I thought there was no harm in trying to ingratiate myself with some of the other guys at the Mazirian Academy.
So, I walked over.
“Hey, guys,” I said, in as amiable a voice as I could manage. It struck me, with each and every step that I took toward the group of lounging young men, that I was about to regret this interaction.
Benefit of the doubt, I reminded myself. You’re new here. Give these dudes the benefit of the doubt.
The guy who had beckoned me over straightened up from where he had been leaning against a wall. He had been a big, well-built motherfucker while he had been leaning. Now that he was standing erect, he was even more imposing. He had the hulking yet trim build of a wrestler, pale sapphire skin, and long white hair that he had twisted up into an admittedly co
ol-looking style on the top of his head. Plates of glittering ice-like armor covered his shoulders, shins, and forearms. The real attention stealer though—at least in my eyes—was the way that he had a luxuriant white moustache that he’d braided into his sideburns. The whole moustache-hair effect was one that made him look like he was wearing a dense, hairy helmet. I was into the look, if not into the cocky way that he was looking at me.
“Who are you? I haven’t seen you around before,” he said, betraying an intelligence that might have been equalled by the less discerning armadillo...or brick.
“I’m new,” I said. I found it always paid to tread carefully in these situations, to ascertain just how fucking dumb the person I was talking to was.
“What’s your name?” the big, frosty bastard asked me.
“Bond. James Bond,” I replied.
“I ain’t never heard o’ no Bonds before,” the blue-skinned jock said to me. He looked at the three young guys who stood behind him. “Have you guys ever heard of the Bonds?” he asked.
I puffed out my cheeks. “It’s an Earth thing. What’s your name, man?”
“Ike Frostfoot,” the big, blue dude said. “I’m a—”
“Frost Elemental?” I hazarded.
And a dude who has had his cerebellum on ice for most of his life, I thought.
“How’d you know that?” Ike asked.
“I was born lucky, Ike,” I said.
At that moment, one of Ike’s more astute, and definitely more dangerous and intelligent-looking friends, stepped forward. He was dressed in sweeping robes of deep emerald green and wore a wide-brimmed hat cocked slightly over one eye.
“That’s enough, Ike,” he said.
The big Frost Elemental closed his mouth and glared at me.
“Let me guess,” I said, folding my arms and giving the dude in green my best do-not-fuck-with-me smile, “you’re about to say something along the lines of, ‘Excuse Ike, he’s one sandwich short of a picnic’ or something like that?”