Damien inspected the band. It was covered with miniscule runes. They were so small that he could barely make them out. He recognized a few of them, but it was borderline impossible to tell what they were doing. With a shrug, Damien put it on. The metal was cold against his wrist. Nothing happened. He reached out with a tendril of mental energy.

The moment his mind touched the metal, light flashed across his vision. Numbers and words etched themselves into the air at the bottom left edge of Damien’s vision. He had to keep himself from glancing to check if anyone else could see what was happening.

“It’s all in your mind,” Henry confirmed. “And, for the record, it’s quite invasive. This little thing knows just about everything about you. I’ve kept myself hidden from it, so you can keep up our little lie about me being from the Plane of Darkness.”

Good.

Damien glanced down at the numbers at the corner of his vision. The moment his attention was on them, they rose up in front of him and enlarged until they were the size of a large sheet of paper.

Damien Vale

Blackmist College

Year: One

Major: Undecided

Minor: Undecided

Companion: [Null]

Magical Strength: 3.4

Magical Control: .5

Magical Energy: 8

“How can they just stick a number on my abilities? All they have to go off is what Dross said,” Damien said, forgetting to think silently within his own head.

“They don’t,” Mark said. “It’s more of an estimate, but I’ve heard that the mages administering tests are incredibly accurate.”

“This is just the basic version, if I’m not mistaken,” the nameless girl said. “It won’t update automatically. You need to ask a teacher to examine your abilities to get them changed. You can get better versions that self-update and track more detailed stats.”

Damien blinked furiously, trying to dismiss the floating paper from his vision. It didn’t budge. He frowned and swiped at the air, trying to wave it away. To his surprise, the page vanished, returning to a tiny dot at the corner of his sight.

“That’s some really advanced rune work,” Damien said. “This must be really expensive.”

Nolan scoffed at that, but Damien ignored him. Mark just shrugged in response.

“Probably,” he said. “I don’t really get how money works. I haven’t had much of a chance to use it.”

Before Damien could ask what the boy meant, a powerful gale swept through the square. The courtyard brightened significantly as a woman appeared on a platform above them. She wore a cloak made of a motley mix of purple and black that somehow looked garish and fashionable at the same time.

For some reason, the woman had two large metal gauntlets on her hands. Aside from that, she wore no armor.

“Greetings, new students of Blackmist!” the woman called. Her voice was rich and powerful with an unmistakable edge of authority. “I’m the acting Dean for this year. The previous one is currently off in the Wastes looking for a new weapon after he broke his last one over the head of a Devourer Beast.”

That elicited excited chattering that the woman silenced with a single sharp glance.

“If you don’t know what that is – well, there’s a reason we’ve got a general library. You’ll be spending a lot of time there, so you might as well get started early. Now, you may refer to me as Dean or Dean Whisp. I’ve been informed that I’m to lead a tour of our main facilities, so please brace yourselves.”

Damien didn’t get a chance to wonder what she meant. The world twisted around him and the young man felt himself launch upwards. He flew into the air against his will and his vision seemed to shimmer.

With a start, Damien realized he was looking down on a crowd of students staring blanky into the air.

“For many of you, this is the first taste of real magic,” Dean Whisp said. “I won’t be telling you what my companion is, but it’s from the Plane of Stars and gives me access to Astral Magic. You’re currently experiencing something called induced astral projection. Fear not, your bodies will be perfectly safe. Better yet, you’ll find yourselves all unable to speak, so we can get this over with nice and quickly. Come along.”

Dean Whisp floated into the air, her cloak rippling around her. Damien’s vision went along with her as they left the crowd of bodies in the courtyard.

As the dean flew higher into the air, he was able to see the buildings surrounding the courtyard. They were all of different shapes and sizes, but most of Damien’s attention was on the enormous mountains surrounding them.

They were much bigger than he had originally thought. They dwarfed the school and surrounded it on every side. There seemed to be thousands of small dots carved into the walls, but it was difficult to make out many details.

“We’ll start with the mountains surrounding us,” Dean Whisp said. “These are where the majority of students live. The mountains are rich with Ether, which will increase the speed of your magical growth, or cultivation. I’m sure your teachers will go more into that.”

The dean shot towards the ground. Damien wished he could feel the air rushing past him as they flew, but the only sense that the dean had brought along with her was sight. Even so, the reminder that he was such a small part of the world was a humbling thought.

I couldn’t disagree more with the boy. Looking down upon the world always brought me a sense of immeasurable power, not foolish feelings of insignificance. Fortunately, such shortcomings could be fixed through thorough application of trauma.