Academy

Kyle.

“Welcome to Claire Stantz.” Kuzuyu says to the crowd.
The Academy courtyard is a large space, between the cracked Roman-Era statues and tall oaks I bet
you could fit a whole tennis court here.
It's cool under the shade of the tree, but I take my coat off anyway.
“By now you know you what you are. In case you haven't noticed, magic is real.”
That gets a laugh from the crowd.
And Kuzuyu smiles for a second before resorting back to serious, warrior pixie mode.
She's addressing the newbies.
Every year, The Academy gets a new batch of fresh faced mages, barely over 16.
For 6 years before this they've been in the mage's equivalent of high-school, learning the fundamentals; symbol magic, wards, summoning circles.
Our job is to condition them.
Here, they learn the real shit.
The shit you've got to learn by yourself.
I chip into the tree in front with my pocket knife while Kuzuyu gives the same speech she does every year.
She covers the fundamentals with the 20 recruits; where they'll be sleeping, where they'll be eating, what not to do.
She glances at me, my cue to join her in the annual speechmaking.
I clear my throat and the group of innocents turn to me. They look like I did once upon a time, before I stabbed my frst person with Wolfbane and lost my optimistic glee.
I pass my knife down to Forsee and jump down from the low perch of the tree.
She stabs it into the trunk and folds her arms.
I dust off my hands and crouch down.
“You see. If you're in here; in this fucking place, it's for one reason alone. All the other places wouldn't take you.
You're a troublemaker.” I say, reaching out to Forsee for chalk. She passes a stick to me, and resumes looking bored.
I lecture the group of rebels as I draw on the courtyard cement.
“Nobody else would accept you, you're the kids who set fire to your professor's lab coats and had brawls outside the school yard. The whole system since you were born told you to be good, to follow the rules, be a scientist, be a doctor, be one of those weird plant mages who promote better agriculture and-”
“Ziobotanists” Kuzuyu corrects.
“Yeah, whatever. The point is, you aren't that. You're the fghters, and the rebels of the Community, the rejects. The ones that the grown ups just didn't give quite enough fucks about.”
Our job, the Academy's job, was to fx you. To make you good. It was, until the Fair Maiden herself decided that what we had to do was train you.”
I step away from my beautiful drawing, and Forsee steps forward, her eyes white, bleeding silver tears.
The group looks at me and the pentagram half terrifed, half in awe.
Like what, they've never seen a demon summoning before?
“There's a war going on, that nobody's told you about. And while all the other Academies teach you how to be a part of it. We, well, we teach you how to survive it.”
Kuzuyu walks up to stand beside me, and gestures to Forsee who's whispering in an arcane language that would take me my whole life to learn.
As she speaks each word ripples, like it's being run under water.
Forsee looks down, silver tears falling to the ground, preparing to say the final word, a binding spell of tremendous power.
Kuzuyu crouches down beside me and raises the earth as a shield.
“Ya'll are gonna want to get to cover.”She advises.
The newbies look confused for a second till one smart one, a blond with short hair, a large denim jacket and nerdy glasses (doubt those will last here) breaks formation and darts to a tree.
The rest follow suit, as the pentagrams lines shine a smouldering silver, I duck my head down.
Then, Forsee smiles and for a second I don't recognise her, masked behind all that terrifying power. And she says the word.
And, boom.
The explosion of white is so dazzling I can only look at it for a second, the whole thing only takes two.
Kuzuyu stands up before I do, as I try to wipe the searing image of Claire Stantz's summoning from my retinas.
The nerdy blonde chick from earlier is the first of the newbies to break from cover and the first to stand in awe of the Fair Maiden; the angel, demon, ghost.
The principal of the Academy.
Headmistress, Claire Stantz.