Chapter One

“Byron! Byron wait up,” a girl shouted as she rushed down the steps of the dorms.
“I told you we were leaving,” he called back without looking.
“Yeah, but I couldn’t find my shoes,” she explained as she made a short sprint to catch up to the boy and two girls walking with him.
“The rooms aren’t that big,” he said with a roll of his eyes.
“Yeah, well, I’m hungry and tired,” she said slowing to a walk next to them.
“You’re still having the nightmares?” he asked with concern evident in his voice.
“Yeah, no, worse than normal,” she said as they stopped for a moment.
“Were they memories of Mikill Heimsalfu? Or from the other place?” he asked placing a comforting hand on her shoulder looking her in the eye. The mere mention of the “other” place was enough to raise the anxiety of the whole group and the younger girl moved closer to him and held the tail of his jacket. “I told you both things will be different here. In the past three months things have been better and we are together, and nothing is ever going to split us up. I will never let anything happen to any of you.”
“I know he’s right,” said the third girl as she interlaced her fingers in his.
The confidence and sincerity in his voice had a calming effect on the girls.
“Yeah, Beatrice, you’re right. Isn’t he, Olivia?” Sophie said to the smaller girl, “We survived the other place by sticking together. I’m sure that if we do the same here everything will be fine.”
“Yeah, we’ll graduate and live a life filled with riches considering what a well-trained mage can make,” Beatrice smiled as she closed her eyes imagining an ideal future.
The sound of a distant bell echoed through the air. “We need to get going if we plan on eating before classes,” Byron said with a tug of Beatrice’s hand. He figured he must be quite the sight, holding hands with one girl, walking next to another, with a third trailing right behind them holding his coat tail. He didn’t mind, though. The four of them had a shared bond of facing great trial together and nothing was going to split that up.
The group rejoined the rest of the students dressed in their almost Victorian uniforms on the pathway toward the grand main building of the Odensen Skola de Galdra. The school uniforms would seem out of date with their high collars and lace, having a more of a late 19th century feel, but for most of the Awaken, they felt comfortable in them. It was as if their other selves, the memories of their previous lives, found an outlet in the fashion. Of course there were some concessions made to the mentality of the modern teenager. The hemlines came just above the knees and flared out much like a tea-length cocktail dress. The girls could also wear whatever footwear they wanted, whether it be sneakers, heels, or pumps. The boys on the other hand had fewer options other than the footwear, jackets, ties, and slacks with the option of a vest or not.
The ochre-gabled roofs of the massive timber-built Victorian structure were a stark contrast to the white of the building and blue of the sky. A massive rotunda with a conical peaked roof was the centerpiece of the structure and simply called the main hall by the students. The sprawling structure and grounds were originally a seaside resort catering to the wealthy of the gilded age and opening in 1888 on an island off the Swedish mainland. The main building was built to feel like a garden with scattered sitting areas of plush couches and coffee tables and with dozens of tall windows along the walls with a garden of flowering tropical plants in the center, all designed to make the massive space feel cozy and warm even in the dead of winter. A host of rooms, formerly guest rooms, had been renovated into classrooms and administrative space. The student suites were a series of low rise buildings in a similar color and architectural style 400 yards away across a large pedestrian mall dotted with porch swings, shade trees and a knot garden. A stadium was added to the campus as well as a gymnasium when the building was converted to a school for magical studies after the Awakenings began to happen.