White walls, what was probably a two-way mirror, a stainless steel table with a pair of uncomfortable chairs. That and my imagination was all that I had to entertain myself for the past hour. It didn’t help that I was still sore all over from my little tussle that morning. My lower back twinged every time I moved and I was still sniffling past the pain in my nose.

I tilted back on my chair and placed my legs across the other seat which I’d dragged to my end of the table to act as a footstool. Twisting around to face to window I squinted at it. “Hey, I could use some water in here,” I shouted. “Assholes.”

One of the few things I could have done, I supposed, was play with my new powers. Unfortunately I was about a hundred percent sure that I was being filmed, so I opted to stick a pinkie finger in my nose while staring back at my own reflection.

That didn’t mean that I wasn’t doing something constructive. Classes came with stats, and while I wasn’t sure exactly how stats affected me, I didn’t think that looking at them would do much.

Just as soon as I figured out how.

Turning to stare at the tiled ceiling I tried to recall what I knew about stats and being able to see them. As far as I knew no one could see someone else’s level or stats, only their Class. But you heard people talking about Awakened and their stats, so there had to be some way to tell what your stats were.

“Stats,” I whispered without moving my lips.

Nothing.

I frowned. Okay, so there went that particular hypothesis. I tried to think of the concept of statistics, of the idea that I now had some arbitrary numbers tied to my very soul.

Nada.

Huffing, I crossed my arms and chewed on my lip. Well, that was another bust. “For fuck’s sake, I just want to know my goddam level,” I muttered.

Information, raw and yet simple, trickled into my mind. I had expected a transparent Star Trek rip-off screen, or something to appear before me, but there was nothing visual about it. I just knew my stats the same way I knew that a dog has four legs and a chicken has two.

The stats that I’d so often seen as something on a sheet didn’t quite translate that way. I knew that my Charisma was nil (and isn’t that just great news) and that my Dexterity was at one, but I also knew, a little bit, of what that actually meant.

Sitting a little straighter, I started to run through the list one stat at a time.

Charisma - None

Dexterity - Uno

Endurance - Two

Intelligence - One, fuck I’m clever

Luck - Shit outta luck

Sanity - One

Strength - Two

Wisdom - Zilch

I stared at the ceiling for a bit. That was all well and good, but it didn’t mean much. What was a Strength two, exactly? Could I bench press a car yet? Discreetly I ran a hand over a bicep and felt at the muscle there. Not exactly impressive.

“Good afternoon.”

I jumped, almost tumbling out of my seat as a voice spoke from just inside the room. Twisting around to glare at the interloper, I found myself facing a pretty 30-something woman in what was obviously a tailored suit.

She was on the short side, though you could hardly tell from the way she stood, as though she should have towered above me even if she was only five foot and change tall. She was slim, too, the suit hugging slight curves without accentuating them. Reaching up, she adjusted a pair of wireframe glasses then pushed an unruly lock of dark hair out of her way.

“You are Richard Reid,” she stated.

“That’s what that says,” I snarked back, pointing to the words floating above me.

“Indeed. Let me begin by telling you, Mr Reid, that we are not being recorded. Our privacy in this room is assured. Though whether or not that is a good thing will be for you to decide.”

A strange statement to make, and not exactly one I’d believe, but I nodded in acceptance. “Oh, please, take a seat.” I said while gesturing magnanimously across the table. I shifted my feet on my purloined footstool, making myself comfortable.

The woman look at the spot where her chair should have been and I noticed the barest quirk of her lips. “I’m a representative of the North Eastern Academy of Awakened Studies, Mr Reid.”

“Christ, that’s an ugly name,” I muttered loud enough that she could hear. One of her eyebrows rose at that. “It’s not exactly Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry, is it?”

“I’ve been trying to get the name changed for years,” she said. Then, much to my surprise, she waved her hand in an arcane gesture towards the ground. The room suddenly felt smaller, tighter before the air across from me began to shiver and distort. A wave of distortions washed out of the ground and when I blinked there was now a tall, straight-backed chair next to the woman.

She pulled the seat back and sat down, dropping a file-folder I would have sworn she wasn’t carrying on the table between us. “I’d usually avoid the theatrics, but I wouldn’t want to deprive a... potential student of his comforts,” she said, as if magicking a chair from nothing were nothing special.

Swallowing past a dry throat I gave her my best cocksure grin. “No problem. I told you to make yourself comfortable. Though I was going to offer my lap, if you really needed somewhere to sit.”

Looking less than impressed, the woman placed her elbows on the table, then fiddled with a ring over her left hand’s middle finger. She dislodged the rather gaudy jewelry and placed it in one of her jacket’s pockets. Shimmering out of nothingness, three words appeared over her head.

Catherine Clark

Archwizard

“I am, as you may have surmised, Catherine Clark, Headmistress of what I like to call the Awakened Academy.” She game me a sharp, predatory smile. “I figure if enough people call it that, we’ll eventually have the political clout to change the damned name.”

“That, that’s a good trick. Do what you want and ask for forgiveness after, right?”

“Yes, it is a good trick, one I see you’re quite familiar with.” She placed a finger over the closed file on the table. “Your records are quite impressive. Passing grades, good ones even, though nearly every teacher you’ve ever had suggests that you’d be less of a waste of space if you used that sharp wit of yours less to poke at your betters and used it instead to actually do some wor--”

“So,” I said, cutting her off. “Are you more of a Yoda, a Dumbledore, or a Gandalf? You know, with the whole being a teacher and archmage at the same time thing?”

Catherine (though I supposed her official title was Professor Clark) licked her lips and looked up from the files on the table to stare at me dead in the eyes. “Mr Reid, as I said earlier, we are not being recorded. In fact, there is no trace that you are in this building.” Before she spoke her next words I felt a stirring in the air, as if the room had suddenly grown a lot warmer. “I could hurt you, Mr Reid. If you pose a threat to me and mine, or if you annoy me too much, or if I don’t like the look of you, I might just do that. It’s not easy being an Awakened in a position of power. I didn’t get here without breaking a few eggs. I hope you understand what I mean and won’t need a demonstration?”

I’ll be the first to admit that, on occasion, I let my mouth get ahead of me, that I’ll speak out when I should stay quiet and that sometimes I poke people just for the giggles. Still, let it never be said that I don’t have a keen sense of self-preservation. Right at that moment my sense of self-preservation was screaming at me to not fuck with the pretty Archwizard.

I pulled my legs down from my footstool and sat a little straighter.

“Much better, Mr Reid.” She smiled slightly and the room’s temperature returned to something less... threatening. “Now, as I was going to say. There are three paths someone newly Awakened can take. You can renounce your status and try to live normally. You can find employment using your new skills, though that path involves certain governmental controls and restrictions. The second option is still quite viable, and even the... more esoteric Classes can usually make a very decent living.

“And finally there’s the path I’m here to talk to you about. Paladin is a combat Class, Mr Reid, which means you probably have a certain predisposition towards solving problems with... let’s say a certain degree of violence. That is quite useful, as we have something of an Insanity problem right now.”

I nodded along. The encroaching Insanity was a pretty big deal. You didn’t hear too much about it on the news, but everyone kept muttering about how it was a bigger problem than the news made it out to be, even if no one was clear on what, exactly, it was. “And you want me to go to your Academy?”

“No.” Her voice didn’t change from earlier, bit it still stung. “Your attitude and predisposition towards misbehaving would make you a horrible soldier in what is, essentially, a war. In fact, I’d still rather have you out on your ear than in my fine institution. Unfortunately, or fortunately, I have been given the results of certain, shall we call them predictions, that suggest you as a viable tool in the coming conflict.”

“Um, okay?”

The professor sighed and leaned back into her seat. “Every spring we run a training simulation with potential applicants to our Academy. Those that pass are greenlighted to lead or join in excursions against the Insanity. This means three years of study at our institution and includes some other advantages for those that pass and survive.”

Survive? Whoa, whoa, that didn’t sound terribly good.

She continued before I could break into the flow of her conversation. “Most students have spent the winter at the Academy going through preparatory classes. You could, in theory, wait until next year, learn more about your new abilities, and participate in next year’s simulation. But I have an offer to make you, one that I’d rather not make at all. Mr Reid, you are going to participate in this year’s simulation.”

There was a long pause, the professor looking at me patiently while I shifted in my seat under her gaze. “Uh, am I supposed to say something?”

“You are supposed to refuse or accept.”

“Ah, I wasn’t aware I was being given options,” I said honestly.

She shook her head. “Only the illusion of choice, Mr Reid. I’ll take your reluctance to answer as a yes.” She stood up, the chair catching fire and burning unnaturally fast behind her. I was left staring up at the tightly-knit woman, flames climbing up behind her like some sort of vision from hell. “The Academy is situated near Lake Ontario, an hour’s drive from Toronto and six hour’s drive from here. You will be sent home and picked up tomorrow at oh-six hundred hours.”

“Uh.”

“Oh, and if you’re curious, the test begins in...” She reached into a pocket and removed a phone to glance at its screen. “In sixteen hours. I hope that we won’t be seeing each other again until you either pass or fail. Good luck, Mr Reid.”

With almost military precision, she spun on a heel and walked towards the door, only pausing just before reaching it. “To answer your previous question, Mr Reid, about what kind of wizard I am, I’m more of an Odin.”