Chapter 8

“Of course there’re classes,” Bradey groaned, rolling his eyes. I had failed to stop a surprised face when he told me such as we walked out of the cell. “For you especially. Basic education is taught in the training compounds but a plebeian like you doubtless had nothing of a proper upbringing.”

“Hey!” My blood boiled at the insult that wasn’t truly directed at me. “My father—”

The air left my lungs. I gasped, trying to wheeze but a vacuum nearly collapsed my windpipe. I fell to my knees, eyes bulging as I clawed at my empty throat.

“…And that’s another thing,” Bradey continued instructing, stopping his lazy gait. He looked down at me; his eyes which previously drooped half closed were now wide and red where there should have been any other colour. “Speak when permitted.”

He shifted his hand and the air rushed back into me. I panted, halfway to the fetal position as my chest pumped air in and out frantically. “Slow and deep,” he muttered and I took the begrudging advice, my vision soon clearing.

“As I was saying…” he continued while I rose to my feet. He paused, glancing at me, and nodded as I didn’t say anything before looking ahead again. “…basic training in classroom content begins today. Regardless of your meager upbringing, I don’t think you’ve covered such things that you will need to know. Have you learnt basic battle tactics? Fundamental magic theory? The weaknesses of a dragon?” He slowed, holding a hand out and stopping me. “Those weren’t rhetorical questions, Ren,” he grumbled.

I bumped into his arm, quickly inching back. “N-no, sir,” I stuttered, still a touch short of air.

“Thought not…” His arm lowered and his gaze looked forward again. We ascended a flight of stairs, the walls turning from the stonework of what I now realized was a basement into well kept wooden panelling. “Now the timing of everything… is weirdly convenient.” A yawn interspaced his words and he kept talking about nothing. We passed by closed door after closed door through vacant hallways, his musings and comments about the history of the building or the military mages went over my head as I mentally drifted, following in a sort of light daze.

“Forty seven… forty eight… forty nine,” he muttered under his breath, stopping at the final one before opening the door. His hand shoved me in without a chance to stop him. “Hey skull face,” he called with a sing-song tone, “got your last one.” He closed the door behind him as a rickety figure turned to me.

If a more apt nickname ever existed before, I haven’t seen it. Unlike the other military mages I saw or heard about, his cloak matched Bradey’s in everything but colour, boasting a burgundy red with silver lining rather than blue and gold. He looked like an advertisement for moisturizer, sunken skin on a decrepit form. His head was almost completely hairless with sunken eyes and perfectly round on top with a forehead that felt just a bit too short until I realized it was his wiry eyebrows, the only exception to a hairless status, that were too high. He slowly reached up and scratched his chin. Each knuckle on his fingers was like a rounded marble with bone thin rods between them.

“It’s Scolffice,” the man muttered, his voice low and scratchy. I got a look as he opened his mouth; the teeth were far too long, gums receded beyond what looked natural. His tongue, contrarily, was bloated and filled his mouth, garbling his speech somewhat though he seemed adept at talking around it.

I quickly looked down at his feet.

“Ren, I presume?” he asked, and I affirmingly. “One seat left.” He slowly turned his head to the rest of the room and jerked towards a specific direction.

I turned and looked, so focused on not looking at him that I didn’t take in the rest of the room. It hit me like nostalgia. Rows of individual desks and chairs were spaced out to fill the room, four rows of four. Each seat was filled with a student, a boy or girl that appeared to be within a few years of my age, with the exception of one in the third row. I hadn’t seen anything like this in this world, an organized classroom, and to add to it, everyone had the same sky blue coloured shirt. I took his prompting and quickly walked over. It was borderline uncanny the similarity the desk held to the one I sat in during middle school, albeit the chair itself was wooden rather than plastic and metal. Of course, the dimensions were somewhat different, thicker and more squared in this world, and had a metal ring sticking out of each side, but the feeling still hit me and for a moment I was transported back to my first youth.

“Alright, now that we’re all accounted for, I can continue,” Scolffice spoke back up. Each word he spoke first sounded like it had been scratched out of the chalkboard that lined the front wall but it gradually became more tolerable as I listened. “While most of you received a proper training, some of you didn’t.” He seemed to glare at my direction only to be slightly off, and I realized he was focussing on the girl in front of me. He paced back and forth, finally stopping on the other side of her. I had to crane my neck to see around; her unkempt hair easily tripled the size of her head, blocking my view of the instructor as he resumed his pace back and forth. I wiggled in the desk seat, leaning over until I felt it start to tip. I quickly shifted to correct its lean and it clattered as I tried to set it back.

The red robed lecturer stopped pacing, turning to leer at me. His gaunt lips tightened over his skeletal face, only further accenting his cheekbones in an unflattering way. But he didn’t say anything and I relaxed a bit. He turned back to the board and drew a crude outline of what quickly became a person. “Because you come from a mixture of training bases, let me review the basics. Each of you is already capable of using magic and basic mana manipulation, otherwise you would not be eligible to be here in basic training. Now, each person, as well as animals, has mana flowing through them.” He switched from white to blue chalk and drew lines over the figure extending from the chest to the ends of each limb. “One’s mana comes from their soul. While training can allow one to manipulate their own mana, it is insufficient to generate any actual power from it, at least proper magic. Therefore, each of you completed the ritual, what we call separating a soul from the body and forcefully absorbing it into your own mana stream.” He changed colours again, circling inside the chest in red chalk. “And you created a magisoul. Channeling your mana as well as the mana of the soul you took supplies enough power to influence reality. Of course, the factors of relation impact the…”

He continued talking, but I didn’t hear it, unable to focus as for the first time, I realized what magic truly was; murder and enslavement. It clicked finally: what Tobian tricked me into doing, why I wasn’t being tried for murder, and dream. The dream! It wasn’t what I had seen before but her. It was her voice that surrounded me. It was her memory… of her murder.

Rose… can you hear me? I thought in my head as loud as I could.

Silence.

I didn’t know what to expect; the notion that she would have been willingly silent this whole time while I was awake only to speak when questioned did not align with the sister I knew.

Rose, if you can hear me… I’m sorry. I’m so so sorry… I begged her forgiveness in my mind, feeling as if the room was shrinking on me as I kept my eyes down on the desk. I felt my eyes moisten and feel warm, and I caught myself just before I was about to lose it in the classroom. I kept my eyes down, though I probably should have been listening. I was caught up in my thoughts though, cursing myself, the day I was born into this world, my interest in magic, my arrogance, my meeting Tobian. Tobian… if I ever see you again, I’ll kill you, I swore.

“And now that we’re all on the same page about the fundamental principles of magic, it is time for the evaluation.”

Scolffic’s words cut through my internal distraction. An evaluation!? A small part of me worried over the fact that I hadn’t actually tried any magic, not really, not since… I received my power. The thought of it made me sick, of using… I pushed the thought from my mind for just a moment’s peace.

“Mind you, anyone who fails to perform adequately will be removed from recruitment… which as you know means you will likely be tried and convicted of murder.”

Neither option seemed good and I couldn’t tell which I resented more.