There’s more to being a real mage than being able to cast spells. It was something I’d been slowly beginning to understand for years, and that understanding had progressed by leaps and bounds over the past few weeks. It had something to do with the near-physical presence almost every high-circle mage I’d ever met carried with them, something beyond simple pure mana manipulation. That first encounter with the Myrddin, when he’d simply commanded the world around him to cease and it had obeyed… I hadn’t realized it in the moment, but I was growing more and more certain that what I’d seen had been an expression of pure presence, something distinct from any spell or technique.

Combined with some other things I’d learned, it had really changed the way I looked at so many of my classmates. So many of them were content to wallow in their own mediocrity, never progressing past the path that was set out for them. I was sure it was even worse outside Avalon’s brutal ‘educational system’, but I was finally starting to understand why so many students dropped out after their fourth year. They were good mages, by the standards of just about anywhere outside Avalon they would be considered exceptional even, and many might even go on to eventually achieving the vaunted title of Archmage, but they just didn’t have the drive, the will to tell the world to obey and bend it to their will.

Still, I’d never really understood how it was possible. I’d heard other students throw around terms like ‘nascent divinity’ and seen some of the upperclassmen do things that baffled my understanding of their circles of magic, but the explanations of what I was seeing had escaped me. I’d searched for it in books and asked professors probing questions, but had never been able to find an explanation that satisfied me.

To be perfectly honest, I still didn’t understand how it worked, how any of it worked. My best guess was that it had something to do with the deeper levels of mana manipulation, the same techniques that allowed mages to simulate the higher-dimensional appearance of spell-forms using just mana, but applied internally in some incomprehensible way.

What I had learned however, was that sometimes that sort of presence could arise at the oddest of times. Professor Yana had cheerfully told me an anecdote of the first time she’d ‘broken past the limits of what she thought possible’ and slaughtered a sixth year that had tried to force himself on the fifth year beauty. The way she’d described delicately crushing every bone in his body in agonizing detail had been intensely disturbing from someone I had always considered one of the ‘nicer’ professors, and she’d never ended up answering my questions anyway, so I’d put the story out of my mind.

Now though, I thought I could understand where she was coming from. These… lowlife thugs had dared to touch something that very well might be mine. That was not something I was willing to tolerate. I didn’t care what they did most of the time. I’d certainly done worse, and stood by and watched a thousand greater atrocities over the past few years, but this… If it was her… if she… if they had touched…

I didn’t want to kill them, I told myself. I didn’t. It would be more trouble than it was worth. My eyes fell on the look of terrified hopelessness on the battered girl’s face and my resolve cracked for a moment. I wanted to. I wanted to shatter their bones and grind their flesh into a paste. If that was… if that really was…

No. Not like this. I was not in Avalon, which meant I wasn’t playing by Avalon’s rules. If things really came to it… It was barely the work of a moment to snag a tiny fragment of each of their mana and wrap it in a cocoon of my own power for safe keeping. I wasn’t certain how I did it, their personal mana should have unaspected the moment it got too far from their cores without anything to contain it, but I commanded my soul to hold a memory and it obeyed. If it really came to it, if it was really her, I would hunt them down and make them wish they were dead. For now, a more delicate touch would be necessary.

Still, I wasn’t just going to rush into things. I took a moment to access the situation, my burgeoning mana sense brushing through the air as I quickly cast a personal shield and a spell to hide my face and distort my voice. Caution was a lesson people learned early in Avalon, and just in case this scum was somehow important, I didn’t want to be unprepared.

I didn’t try to talk to them. Maybe once I would have, but I was not that person anymore. I hadn’t been for years, even before I’d come to Avalon. The first warning the group had of my presence was when a battering ram of force slammed into the bulky man, who was still in the process of lifting the girl off the ground, and sent him tumbling across the road and into the wall across the street. At the same time, a tendril of force lashed out and gently caught the girl before she could be pulled after him and carefully lowered her back to the ground.

The remaining attackers spun around, shock and a tinge of fear visible on their faces. “What do you think you are doing, peasant?” one of the girls drawled, her face twisting into an arrogant sneer as she took in my ill-fitting clothing. “When my father hears of this, he’ll have your entire rat–”

I didn’t wait to hear the rest of her presumably insult-riddled declaration. Whatever her backing was, it didn’t particularly matter to me right now. Hundreds of hours of practice made my next spell almost effortless as I launched a volley of force-spikes, one at each of the still-standing mages.

Three of them managed to shield themselves, though two of the hastily formed barriers shattered under impact of the translucent projectile. The rest tried, but their casting was sloppy and illformed. The mouthy brunette did manage to get off a shielding spell of some sort, but it proved no match for my spell. The last of the group, a stocky man in a finely embroidered doublet, didn’t even manage that. Both of them went down in an instant, shrieks not unlike their victim’s echoing through the narrow alley as my spells slammed with bone-cracking force against their kneecaps.

The two remaining men tried to counterattack while the other girl seemed paralyzed by fear. My counterspells were formed before they even had a chance to finish casting their spells, fire sputtering out and earthen spikes crumbling to dust. They were slow. Sloppy. Pathetic.

“Stop this insanity,” yelled out one of the men. He gestured to the pair on the ground beside him, “Look what you’ve already done! There will be consequences for such a brazen attack on members of house Shieldlight!”

I tried to call up anything I knew about the supposed powerful house, but my memories came up blank. It hadn’t been mentioned at all during the presentation and I couldn’t recall my family ever mentioning it either. Even if it had been a great house however, I wasn’t really sure if I would have listened.

I took another step forward and this time didn’t even bother with a spell. Mana surged around me, forming invisible tendrils that swept forward like the heads of a hydra. Two rapid blows slammed off a shield, sending spiderweb cracks through the flickering sheet of force, before I simply went around the flat barrier.

A pair of tendrils wrapped around the yelling man’s arms and lifted him off the ground, disrupting whatever spell he was trying to cast and then throwing him after the first man. A third swept the woman’s feet out from under her, then went after the last man who frantically dodged out of the way several times before he too fell to a force spike to the knee.

I looked around, scanning the surroundings for further threats, but found nothing. None of the mages I’d disabled had even tried to get back up, not that I would have let them. Still, it was a rather poor showing, even taking into account the power differential between us. I’d unintentionally used exclusively second circle spells, something they should have been more than capable of dealing with, but they had barely even put up a fight. Hells, there were first years who could have washed the floor with them.

“Please,” I heard the girl who had spoken earlier whisper as she clutched bleeding leg, red slowly staining the fine white sleeves of her blouse, “Mercy!”

I ignored her pleading as I slowly walked towards the group. “The next person that moves loses a hand.” My distorted voice rang strangely through the air and I summoned a glowing blade of force to hover by my side to punctuate the point.

“What are you–” began one of the men.

“Talking counts as moving. This is your only warning.” He wisely shut up.

I walked over to where my telekinetic tendril had deposited the assaulted girl’s body slightly away from the ‘fight’. She was curled into a tiny ball, one arm wrapped around her knees as the other clutched at the torn front of her dress. Looking down at her, there was no mistaking those features for anyone else. They were changed with age, but even then, she looked so much like her mother that it erased any hints of doubt from my mind. If this wasn’t Lea, I didn’t know who was.

Questions rang loudly in my head, but I ignored them as I kneeled down beside her and gently lay a hand on her shoulder. It was pointless to wonder when the person with those answers was lying on the ground beside me.

“Are you strong enough to stand?” I asked quietly, projecting my true voice directly to her ears to ensure none of the whimpering cowards would hear. Their time would come soon enough, but for now this was more important. For now, I directed invisible strands of force to gather bits of hair and blood from each of the six local mages. Mana traces were well and good, but physical rementants were even better. With hair I could find them anywhere in the country without too much issue, and, in theory, the blood would let me curse them directly from anywhere in the world, not that I knew how to do that sort of magic. I would learn if they forced my hand.

She nodded once, a shaky gesture that did little to reassure me of her sincerity, but I decided to trust her for now. From the look of it, she hadn’t exactly recognized me yet, but then again, my face was still covered and the last time she’d seen me I had been a preteen. I gently slid my hand under her armpit and lifted her to her feet, channeling more mana to my physical enhancements to compensate for the awkward angle and poor leverage.

She winced as I maneuvered her legs under her, but managed to stay upright, leaning heavily against my side as I supported her by the shoulder. I shot another dark look at our terrified audience. Yes, I would be coming back for them later. I could recognize a head injury when I saw it, even without using any diagnostic spells. She needed a healer, someone with more experience treating internal injuries than I had, but I was unsure where I could find someone like that here.

I wished I could take her into Avalon, the main infirmary maintained an eighth-circle ‘Ring of Recovery’ over the entire area that could heal even near-lethal wounds overnight, but that was not an option. The only outsiders allowed in Avalon, barring a few rare exceptions, were slaves and prospective students. Even then, only actual members were given access to Avalon’s services, so that wouldn’t have helped regardless.

“You need a healer,” I whispered, “fourth circle at a minimum, higher would be better.”

She turned her head to look at me slowly, eyes blinking in confusion. She wasn’t going to be any help here. Well, plan b it was. I looked up towards where I could just barely make out the peaks of white-marble towers. If that was the mage’s academy like I thought it was, that meant they would almost certainly have a robust medical center. It would be a bit of a pain to get them to care for some random girl off the street, but I was sure I could persuade them.

Maybe it wouldn’t even be too bad, I could feel some amount of magic in the girl’s core, though it was muted and rough. She hadn’t properly compressed her core in days, maybe weeks, but I could still feel power near the peak of the second-circle flowing sluggishly through her battered body. I had no idea how that had happened, Lea had never had any talent for magic from what I could remember, but then again, I hadn’t been particularly inclined towards that sort of thing as a child myself. If she was a student here, former or otherwise, that could help explain some things.

I shook my head again and cast a basic first-aid spell that would hopefully ensure I didn’t make anything worse by moving her. Then, I slung an arm under her legs and picked her up. She mumbled something under her breath, her head slumping forward onto her chest, and I once again had to remind myself that getting her healed was more important. My magic twisted around me, shrouding me in a weak illusion that would hopefully stop people from focusing on me, and I began to walk.

Daphne Warbringer shifted uncomfortably in her seat, looking around at the crowded grand hall with annoyance. The massive room was packed, nearly five thousand students crammed into a room meant to fit half that number. She’d thought arriving fifteen minutes early would be plenty, but instead had only barely managed to find an open seat at the back of the room. Still, she was one of the lucky ones. Just about everyone that had arrived after her was forced to stand, crammed like sardines around the edges of the hall and between the rows of seats.

Adjusting the straps on her dress where they clung unpleasantly to her sweat-slicked skin, she did her best to fan her face with her hand. It was horribly hot in the poorly ventilated room, the heat of thousands of bodies rapidly turning even the vast hall into an oven. She threw a jealous look at the student lounging beside her. He was nothing but a jumped-up merchant boy, but as an official apprentice he was allowed to cast spells outside of the careful supervision of their teachers. The aura of cold air that she could feel washing around him was almost enough to make her debase herself by asking for help, but only almost.

She shifted again, adjusting the way her long skirts hung around her legs. The warm dress was usually wonderful for this time of year, both fashionable and able to ward off the icy winds that blew off the nearby ocean, but today it felt stifling. She was only thankful she’d decide to wear a light jacket today instead of one of her long-sleeved camisoles. She’d thrown that off immediately and the occasional breeze across her bare arms and shoulders were a blessed respite from the heat.

Glancing around, she tried to find any familiar faces in the packed crowd. Most of the seats around her were filled by older students and apprentices who had fewer classes and thus had easily made it to the hall ahead of time. She recognized several from the many balls and parties she’d attended with her family over the years, but no one she was particularly close with.

She raised an eyebrow as her eyes passed over the hunched figure of Adonia Earthshadow sitting in the row behind her. The girl, who she shared several classes with, looked terrible. Dark shadows, poorly hidden by makeup, were clearly visible under her eyes and a veritable aura of depression hung over her. It seemed the exuberant girl still hadn’t made up with her blonde ‘partner’, Daphne hadn’t seen the uppity baker-turned-artist in almost two weeks and had heard rumors that she’d been seen rushing out of the Earthshadow estate with her clothing a mess and tears in her eyes.

It didn’t matter much to her. Their families, while not technically enemies, belonged to very different factions within the kingdom. Daphne would not cry if either of the deviant sluts disappeared for good. She’d actually overheard several of her classmates discussing teaching the Sweetglass girl a lesson, now that she was no longer under the aegis of House Earthshadow. For someone like her to dare lay a hand on one of her betters, and another girl at that, was a poor precedent to set. The fact that Lord Earthshadow had tolerated it for as long as he had spoke of the sweet spot he held his daughter in.

Still, hopefully the heiress would push out of her funk soon. It was demoralizing to see someone who looked so very miserable every day. How was she supposed to get any work done while she was always sniffling in the corner?

A bright flash of light pulled her eyes to the front of the room and a hush fell over the crowd as the headmaster coalesced out of a pillar of light. He was a bulky man, nearly seven feet tall and with biceps as thick as her thighs. Despite looking more like a dock worker or a bouncer than a mage, his identity was unmistakable. His hair and skin glowed with an inner light and his eyes shone bright enough that it was almost painful to look directly at them. As the light coming off his body washed through the room, Daphne felt invigorated, sitting up straighter in her seat as the fatigue of a long day fell away, along with all the other tiny discomforts she’d been feeling.

Headmaster Lightbarer folded his hands behind his back and floated up several feet into the air until he hung over the stage. He looked almost like an angel, his elegant white robes draping over his shoulders like white-featherd wings. He cleared his throat loudly and the last traces of conversation in the hall vanished.

“Thank you, everyone, for coming to this assembly. I know it was a rather sudden summons, but an important piece of information has recently come to my attention and I believe it crucial for you all to hear it as soon as possible.”

He paused for a moment, his eyes sweeping over the assembled crowd. She self-consciously adjusted the modest neckline of her gown, suddenly painfully aware of how crumpled it had gotten after all her fidgeting, even though she knew the odds of him looking directly at her were slim.

He continued onward, “As you may have heard, a ‘trade portal’, as our king has chosen to describe it, will be appearing in our little town in the coming days. It will be here for several months, disappearing just after the winter solstice. His majesty has chosen to distribute very little information about this portal, only calling it a wonderful opportunity for merchants and nobles alike.

“Well, as some of your parents may have told you, there is much more to the story than that.” He paused again, and the expression on his face became deadly serious. “The ‘trade portal’ is much more than that. It is the interdimensional link to the headquarters of an organization you may have heard of before. Avalon.”

A quiet mumble of whispers spread through the room as Daphne stiffened in her seat. What? That was– why hadn’t her father said anything! They were coming here? After what had happened with Adara? Her hands clenched into firsts, finely manicured nails biting painfully into delicate skin.

“Avalon, and particularly its own academy of magic have something of a reputation among certain circles. It is often considered one of the finest institutes of learning in the world, producing a truly staggering number of archmages over the centuries. In fact, I myself was once a student there, though I completed my education elsewhere.

“What is not often spoken of however, is their brutality. The mages of Avalon are cruel and heartless, one and all. They do not care for others, they do not love or cherish. They will do anything to get ahead, no matter the cost to them or others. As students here, you are loosely protected by ancient treaties and the agreements made between our king and their own leadership, but do not let down your guard. The members of Avalon are vindictive and merciless towards any harm or perceived insult.

“Do not go anywhere alone with members of Avalon. Do not speak to them if it is at all avoidable. Do not antagonize their members, even if they are rude or seem weaker than you. Do not tell them anything about yourselves or your families. If you absolutely must interact with them, do so in a public place surrounded by those you trust. Most of all, never, ever pass through that portal. It does not matter what they offer you or what promises they make. If you pass through that portal, willingly or not, I fear you will never return.”

He let them strew after that declaration for nearly a minute, before brightening slightly. “Still, it is true that this is a wonderful opportunity for our nation. Mages and merchants from far and wide will be streaming into our little town to do business with Avalon. Make connections, purchase rare materials, and, most importantly, enjoy yourselves! Opportunities like these are rare, even when you live for as long as I have!

“Remember. I am here for each and every one of you. If you have concerns or questions, see me or one of my assistants and we will do our best to ensure your safety and wellbeing. Here at Lighcastle, your safety is our very first priority, and I will always strive to provide a safe and secure educational environment for us all. Thank you, that will be all for now.” He nodded his head once and a bright pillar of light lanced down from the ceiling to swallow him whole. When it vanished, the headmaster was gone.

Conversation exploded throughout the room and everyone began to move as people crowded towards the exits. Daphne looked around, and realized that there was no way for her to get to the doors from where she was sitting. She sighed loudly in annoyance. Maybe she should have just stayed standing by the doors after all.