Magic Academy (A Fantasy New Adult Romance) (16 page)

She didn’t know what was
happening to him, or why he couldn’t connect with her, but
still. She pulled her sac close to her and carefully wrapped up her
leftovers, placing them inside.

Mae’lin noticed the maneuver and
looked to her. “That’s a good idea,” he said.
“Pocket some for later.” He stood up. “I’ll
be right back. Gonna get more.” Despite his own lankiness, he
seemed to have no shortage of an appetite.

As Firia watched the elf leave she
spotted, off in the distance, the sight of Bran watching her from
across the hall. Though shortly after their gazes met he lowered his
eyes and focussed on his own food.

“I think I might have offended
him last night,” Firia murmured to Ala’nase. “Bran,
I mean. Not Mae’lin.”

Ala’nase looked around with some
confusion before following Firia’s gaze to the young man.
“Really?” she questioned. “What makes you think
that?” she asked in a bit of a conspiratorial tone.

Firia shrugged, a bit bashful. “I
don’t know. Maybe it’s nothing.” Just that she
thought that, being two of the few humans around, they might stick
together a bit. Until she had to open her big mouth and embarrass
him.

Ala’nase, however, didn’t
let it go so easily. She squinted her ovaline eyes at the man,
studying him intently, as if the mystery would be solved through deep
staring. “He probably just has a crush on you,” she
conjectured after long hard “research”, followed by a
return to her meal.

“You’re just saying that
because we’re both humans,” Firia scoffed, but her face
turned bright red and she tried to hide it from her new friend. “And
why did you have to stare? Now he knows we were talking about him.”

It was hard to refute that, for Bran
had lifted his head and noted at least one of them staring at him.
Ala’nase averted her eyes, but was far too late for cover-up.

“It’s not just because
you’re both humans,” she whispered to her with some
urgency, just before Mae’lin returned. “Mae’lin’s
probably no different either,” she said without the slightest
hint of hiding it.

Firia’s brows furrowed and
suddenly she felt like the same shy girl she was all through school.
She’d been doing so good to suppress that side of herself! But
her throat was dry and she just wanted to run away once more. “I
don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Mae’lin looked between the two
women. “What’s going on? Did I miss something?” His
eyes were wide with curiosity. Or was it confusion?

Ala’nase opened her mouth about
to talk, but then glanced aside and saw Firia’s embarrassment.
“Oh nothing,” she said in a very blasé manner. “I
was just saying I bet you’re hot for me, like all the rest.”
She gave a dramatic sigh and brushed her hair back over her shoulder.
“It’s a burden I carry,” she said like a hammy
actress.

To which Mae’lin stared between
the two of them a while. “Uh, okay,” he remarked,
returning to his own thoughtfully disinterested pose.

The playful elf giving Firia a smirk
and a “told you so” look, as if the young man’s
disinterest in her was somehow proof that he must be into Firia.

Firia rolled her eyes and grabbed her
knapsack. “Well, I’ll leave you two to that, then. Did…
you two want to meet up later, maybe? Check out the library?

“Sure,” replied the two of
them almost in unison, though before another word could be said the
tolling of that great bell happened again.

“Oh crap,” muttered
Ala’nase, while Mae’lin made a point of grabbing his own
satchel up and shoving the food in quickly.

It was time.

She was almost knocked off her feet by
the excitement, the need to go experience everything. The schedule
felt so stifling but at the same time, she couldn’t help but
crave it.

Her next destination surprised her,
however, and not all in a good way. For she appeared next before some
of the powerful sorcerers that held her fate so callously in their
hands naught but days ago, while standing in the middle of a great
chapel-like auditorium, full of fellow students.

The raised platform, surrounded by
great coloured crystal statues that towered high, were many
senior-looking wizards and professors. She even noticed the aging
human who had netted her a right to compete, and then her second
chance.

“I can’t wait for that to
end,” came a voice beside her, and Firia turned to see it was
Ala’nase, with Mae’lin not far off. The three had been
transported near one another, it seemed.

“Me too,” Firia whispered
back. It was kind of rude, and made her feel a little more than
violated. Especially when dragged to a torture chamber.

“I kinda like it,” said
Mae’lin. “It’s like a taste of the power to come!”

Ala’nase gave him a strange look,
but before more could be said the rather severe-looking elf that had
nearly cost her her place in the academy began to speak.

“Welcome students.” His
voice carried out over the room to everyone, as if spoken at a
normal, conversation tone, by aid of magic. “For those of you
joining us for the first time, you are perhaps having a period of
adjustment.”

His hawkish eyes scanned the room
almost predatorily. “Note that Gaul’di-mere is famed
amongst the magical academies, and it is because our students
graduate as the best in their fields. And why are they the best?”
He went on with little preamble, “Because we don’t coddle
them. They have to figure things out for themselves, and those who
don’t make the cut? Who can’t decipher the mysteries of
living at the academy? They eventually go home in failure, leaving
only the best to graduate.”

Firia had already assumed that much,
since she couldn’t even get to the academy without solving a
riddle. Still, his condescending words made the hair on the back of
her neck bristle and more than anything she wanted to show him up. To
make sure he knew how wrong he was to brush her off.

“All of our professors come from
amongst the brightest and most ingenious of sorcerers and sorceresses
in the wide world. Most of them graduated from these very walls, but
all went on to do great things, and now stand ready to pass some of
that on to you.

“I won’t waste a lot of
time on introducing you to them now. As I said, Gaul’di-mere is
an academy in which you sink or swim. And we embrace that,” he
declared with a broad grin. “By the time you leave here, you
shall have your class schedule for the upcoming semester. Do not lose
it. Nobody shall mark your attendance, but the first time you fail an
exam, you shall be removed from the academy.”

He paused for just a moment to look
around at the students with a hard gaze. “Once you are removed
from the academy, we recommend to the state that your magical ability
is untamed, and should be restrained, for the good of all. Make no
mistake, you were all brought here because you have aptitude and
promise. But without proper training, those are two things which are
a disaster for the wider world.”

As he spoke she felt her stomach begin
to knot and twist. The idea of being… restrained. Of having
her power revoked…

Firia started to feel a bit queasy and
regretted bothering with breakfast. She knew it was just a scare
tactic, a way to motivate everyone to do their best, but failing one
exam and that was it?

She’d had more grace on her
entrance competition!

“You’ll notice on your
schedules that you have a great deal of empty time slots. Make use of
it,” and those words sounded almost grim. “Perhaps you
got here because you were tutored in magic by a very regimented
instructor who kept you on task. That is not our role. We are not
your parents, and we don’t need to particularly care if you
succeed or fail. Your first day has been full of regimentation, as
spells have zipped you about. You’ll overcome that in time if
you’re a capable magic user.

“Let that be your first lesson:
magical restrictions like that are for those too uneducated to
overcome them. The only rules that matter are spoken or written down.
Heed my words.

“Use your time wisely, visit the
library, study, learn. Become better mages. Form questions and seek
answers.”

On a somber note he ended, “Now
head out there. We shall give you all the tools one could possibly
need to succeed. Make use of them, for if you fail, you shall have no
one to blame but yourselves.”

The great doors opened behind them and
light flooded on in.

It was gut wrenching and terrifying and
motivating all at once, and Firia’s body felt almost stiff as
she digested it all. She’d been staring so intently at him that
when the doors opened she had to blink away the brightness.

She wasn’t sure entirely how she
felt about the school’s policies.

One thing she was certain of, though,
is that she refused to fail.

Class let out, and Firia couldn’t
help but be annoyed at the chatter between Bran and Ala’nase.
The two never shut up from the moment the aged professors ended the
lessons to the start of the next. Every day the same thing.

It wouldn’t have been so bad,
except she was utterly lost. The first day of classes had been a
complete wash for her, nearly. The professors had mostly made such
sweeping assumptions of the students base knowledge on magic that it
was all two or three steps ahead of where she was.

As the two chatterboxes continued on,
she noticed the rather sickly look upon Mae’lin’s face.
For a second she might’ve thought she was looking into an
emotional mirror.

It made sense. She figured he had to
have come from a background more similar to hers than the pampered
upbringing of the other students. He seemed just as lost and confused
as her, and didn’t have the knowledge to read those mystical
words either.

It was the first time she ever had
actual friends, and she didn’t know how to handle it. To try to
tell them to be quiet.

To admit how utterly lost she was.

She shimmied closer to Mae’lin,
leaning up to whisper in his ear. “Want to hit the library with
me?”

The tall, lanky elf looked to her a bit
wide-eyed and lost but nodded all the same. “Yeah, let’s
go.” She knew just how powerful and talented he was; after all
she’d done magical battle with him, of a sort. Together they’d
wowed the academy scouts, so they deserved to be doing better.

Before she could get away though,
Ala’nase caught sight of her leaving. “Where you going?
We’re gonna go practice. Not coming?”

“Ah, no, not tonight.” Why
did she feel so sheepish about her lack of understanding? She was
used to always being bright. Promising.

Exceptional, in her own way.

Now it was sink or swim, and everyone
else already had the lessons.

The library was massive. She could tell
as much upon first sight, but she really had no idea just how
sprawling it truly was. It seemed to dwarf even the towering facade,
as if it defied reality itself to encompass so great a repository of
knowledge.

Such as it was, despite how many
students came to partake of the knowledge there, she never had any
issue finding a quiet corner. There were many private study nooks,
and Mae’lin and she were able to settle in together.

“I had no idea they would expect
us to know so… much,” he said with some disbelief, as if
his life were crumbling before his very eyes upon his palms.

“Me neither,” Firia
lamented. “And it feels like we’re the only ones that
can’t understand every other word we’re being told. How
did they have the time to learn so much growing up?”

Mae’lin ran his hands over his
hair, shaking out the blonde spikes, but only making it a little more
erratic and wild-looking. It looked good on him, truth be told. “I
don’t know. I was always working in the fields, making sure the
harvest was in on time. My mother basically handed it to me
completely until my brothers grew up.” He sighed a little. “Are
we too far behind, Firia?” His emerald eyes looked to her
hopefully.

“I’m not going to give up
magic, are you?” Firia retorted, her voice taking on a hard
edge.

There was a moment’s pause as
what she said sunk in, then he shook his head firmly. “There’s
no giving it up. If I don’t make it here, then I’m…”
he blushed a little, “I’d have to go back home and be a
farmer for the rest of my days. That’d be the best thing I
could hope for…”

“I’d be a groundskeeper, so
we’re both just going to have to suck it up and catch up,
alright? If we didn’t have the skills, we wouldn’t be
here, right? So we’re just going to have to, once more,
struggle to get what the rich kids get for free.”

She was surprised by how determined and
strong she sounded, for she felt defeated. She couldn’t even
contact Varuj with all the latent magic in the air and whatever
spells they’d used to bind them. She was surprised by how
lonely and quiet she felt inside.

Mae’lin went quiet a while, the
two of them nestled in their nook together. “How do we learn
this stuff though? I mean… if it were that easy…”
He furrowed his smooth, fair brow in thought as he stared off. “We
were amazing together,” he abruptly stated, quickly blushing
thereafter as he looked to her then away. “I mean… our
magic was. At the competition.”

Her skin tingled with warmth and her
face began to pinken but she nodded all the same. “It was one
of the best things I’ve ever done. And I don’t want them
to take that away from me. So I don’t know how I’m going
to do it, but we’ll figure it out together, alright? We won’t
sit with them tomorrow.”

Somehow that made the worry drain from
his face before her very eyes. The curiously handsome face took on a
pleasant demeanor as he smiled to her so warm and genuinely. With a
nod he said, “I’m glad we’ve become such good
friends, Firia. This place…” he took a glance aside,
“It’d be too intimidating to go it alone, I think.”