The trip back to the base of the mountain was faster on the way back. Now that they’d traveled the road once, they managed to shave a few minutes off their time. When they arrived at the base of the mountain, a familiar looking woman was already standing there.

“Hi, Beth,” Damien greeted her. She turned, her eyebrow raising slightly.

“I see you decided to explore,” Beth said. “Was your room not to your liking?”

“Well… it’s got some things I think we can improve,” Damien hedged.

“It’s not good,” Sylph said bluntly. “Where am I supposed to train? In the bathroom?”

“Of course not,” Beth replied. “There are a multitude of different places to train on campus. And, like I said, you’re welcome to make any modifications to your room that you’d like. If you don’t have a place to train, build one. If that’s too hard for you, you don’t belong at a mage college.”

Sylph turned her cold gaze on Beth, but she gave the older student a small nod.

“So, any reason you’re waiting at the base of the mountain?” Damien asked, clearing his throat.

“I’m waiting for your friends,” Beth replied. “I’m checking to see how long it takes you all to get bored and head down the mountain – I just didn’t think you two would leave so quickly. Did you just leave immediately after I did?”

“A few minutes after,” Damien admitted. “We went to the mess hall.”

“I hope you had money,” Beth said, shuddering.

Now Damien was really curious. Could the food really be that bad? It seemed like half the college was more scared of the free mess hall food than they were of the dean.

“Are you just going to wait here for the next hour?” Damien asked.

“No. They’ll be down in a few minutes unless they already left,” Beth said. “There’s only so much you can do in those rooms on the first day.”

Beth turned out to be right. No more than a few minutes later, the other three students sharing the cliff face with them stepped away from the sloping mountain path and headed towards them.

“I see you two didn’t wait around,” Mark observed. “When did you leave?”

“A little over an hour ago,” Damien replied.

Nolan and Reena turned their noses up, pointedly ignoring Damien. Beth rolled her eyes. Her gaze went unfocused for a few moments. Then she swiped the air before her away and gave them a nod.

“Right. We’re a bit early, but there’s no harm in that. Come along.”

Beth set off and they fell in behind her. The older student led them back to the teleportation arch before the mountain and stepped through it without a moment of hesitation.

“Maybe getting food wasn’t the best idea,” he muttered as they stepped through the portal.

His foot landed on the black rock of the obsidian courtyard. Damien braced himself, preemptively putting his hands over his mouth. Predictably, his stomach lurched a few moments later. He managed to keep his lunch down and let out a relieved sigh.

“You’ll get used to it,” Beth said, tapping her foot impatiently as she waited for everyone to recover from the teleportation. “Now, Sylph asked about training locations. We’re actually about to visit one.”

Beth led them down the rows of arches at the edge of the courtyard before arriving at one near the middle of the row. They all stepped through it.

Wind howled past Damien’s face. He blinked, then immidately squeezed his eyes shut and braced himself for the wave of sickness. It was harder to keep a hold of his lunch this time, but Damien managed to avoid redecorating the floor.

He sighed and opened his eyes again. They stood at the top row of the seating section of an enormous colosseum. The seats wrapped around the entire structure and it looked like there was enough space for thousands of people to sit.

After several dozen rows, the seats stopped to make space for the huge arena at the center of the colosseum. They were easily three stories above the ground, which was some sort of light orange sand.

“This is the Colosseum,” Beth said. “I know, it’s not the most creative name. The ground floor has a good amount of training devices and tools that you’re all welcome to use. Just keep in mind that the school uses this arena for any official fighting matches or tournaments, so you can’t use it during one.”

They were so high up that the arena didn’t look particularly large, but Damien got the feeling that a hundred students could have been practicing on the sandy ground without a chance of interfering with eachother.

“Is there a reason you’re showing us this?” Nolan asked.

“Of course there is,” Beth said. “You’re going to be meeting your professor. We’ve assigned everyone to classes. Just wait around for a few minutes, everyone else should start trickling in soon. In fact, let’s head down to the ground floor. Your professor doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”

They followed Beth down through the rows of seats until they reached the railing at the edge of the walls overlooking the arena.

“Just jump. There are runes to slow your fall,” Beth advised them before leaping over the side.

Mark didn’t hesitate for a moment. He leapt over the edge as everyone else rushed to the edge to watch them fall. Instead of plummeting downwards, the two students were slowly floating to the ground.

“I feel like there’s a parable to be made of this,” Damien grumbled as he leapt over the edge to join them.

The air seemed to reach up and cushion him gently the moment he let go of the railing. He descended at a leisurely pace before touching down lightly on the dense sand. It shifted slightly under his feet as Sylph, Nolan, and Reena landed beside him.