Allister Hale's Story Graveyard.

As if to punctuate Azton’s thought a crack of electricity Ripped through the air leaving a confused silence. Lilly had reached the front and was demonstrating her magical abilities and had fainted. Andony rushed to catch her. This is what caused the Rush of electric power.

An older lady stepped forward from the staff members. “Children there is no need for alarm. What you have just witnessed is nothing more than the discharge of spell static. Andony is it? You pass your certification please carry the Heir Restan to the infirmary. I will send her cousin for you after the ceremony finishes. The infirmary is to your right from the front entrance to the main building.

The Infirmary was a two bed examination room and served the purpose of an office for the school’s Clinic. “Hello? I’m one of the enrolling students. I’m carrying someone who passed out during her examination.”

“Set her on one of the beds. No. Nothing stands out, and we have been traveling together for about a week so it wouldn’t be anything too obvious. Also, as she fell I caught her, there was a flash and a loud noise. The staff member who sent me with her said something about spell static.

A middle age woman stepped into the Infirmary room through the clinic door. “You had better take a seat on the other bed then, just in case. You may call me Madam Amaranth.

Andony sat down on the opposite bed and watched The Nurse tend to Lilly. She pulled a glass plate out of a stand on her desk and looked through it at Lilly. “Her name?”

“Uh.. Lilliana Heir Restan.”

The Nurse began filling out a chart of some description. When she was satisfied with the information she set it aside and then touched Lilly’s wrist. After a moment she touched a silver band on the wall that pointed to the floor. There was a soft spark and then nothing. The nurse then took a hand lens out of her apron and held it close to Lilly. “Looks like she is fine. She should wake up shortly. As for you, am I wrong to assume you have never had anything like this happen before?”

“No mam I’ve never seen magic happen on its own like that.”

The Nurse nodded and walked back to her desk. She picked up the same glass plate and looked at Andony through it. Andony could see a soft blue glow on her skin through the glass. “It should be safe… Touch the silver band on the wall for me.”

As Andony reached out he felt his mana reach for the silver. Curious he let the energy reach out. When it met the silver he felt a drain on his power as an electric spark leapt from his finger. “What is… it?”

“Well, it's basically an accumulation of expended mana. You generally only see discharges like that in young Mages or if an older mage is kept from maintaining his mana pool.”

“Oh, okay. Um…”

While Andony was wondering how to respond Lilly made a sound as she curled on the bed and rolled over. With a groan she sat up and got off of the floor. “What happened?”

The Nurse sat Lilly back on the bed. “You fainted at the enrollment ceremony. It seems to just be travel fatigue.”

“Oh. Why am I on the floor?

“Miss Lilliana,” Andony looked Lilly in the eye, “Your’re on the bed now.”

Lilly looked down. “Oh. Yes.”

The Nurse returned to her work in the other room and left the two students to each others company. They spent the time in Idle chatter as Lilly slowly woke up. By the time Amilly arrived they were silently thinking to themselves.

“Lilly? Are you okay?”

“The Nurse says I am.”

“Oh. Good. In that case we need to go back for the campus orientation.”

Amily grabbed Andony’s wrist and Lilly’s hand and she pulled them through the doors out onto the academy grounds.

The orientation was fairly basic; stopping by the major facilities on the campus; and discussion of how the curriculum worked. Students would be divided into Houses of 8 Students based on grade supervised by a Journeyman student. These houses would live together and do class work together. In that spirit they ate lunch together.

“So, basically the afternoon is about making sure you are ready for Coursework tomorrow. First you will go to a quick instruction course on using magical tools; then you get to select your first set of spells. For the most part we can expect you to be able to anchor two spell Schema to your mana pool. This is normal. The staff will tell you how many Schema you can anchor, this is based on your certification examination. We will be going last. While we are waiting we will be given the first house assignment. You will pick your spells based on this assignment. These will be the only Schema you get until the second Examination. After that we move into our rooms and have dinner. Questions?”This was the Journeyman in charge of Andony’s group. Based on the disinterested look and tone of his voice he didn’t want to be there. Infact he didn't even give his name.

Lilly, Segrick, and Amilly were all part of his group. There was also another two boys and two girls in the group. Sanuel Vedrim and Eiendon Lodlen; as well as Omma, and Narsisca. Sanuel wore a sword on his waist. He didn’t seem like the kind of person to certify as a Proper Mage but Andony had heard of Knights and Soldiers who used physical reinforcement spell Schema. Eiendon had no particular characteristics that stood out to Andony other than the of obvious traits. The boy just seemed boring. Omma and Narsisca were clearly both common born even before noting the lack of a true family name. Narsisca had entered the school in order to enter the Medicus order and hadn’t take a Name as a result while Omma just didn’t take a name.

Following lunch they were brought to a room with four round tables large enough to sit one house each. Other groups had been taken to other rooms. At each seat was a glass plate. After the newly Enrolled students took their seats a staff member stood on a short platform between the four tables. “These are the most important tools you will be using for your first year as a mage. This is engraved with a Schema for a spell from a class of spells referred to as Spyglass. This particular Spell allows you to find a mass of mana and determine its quality. You will use this tool for two purposes. First you will use it to help you purify your mana pool. Second you will use it to help determine if it is safe to touch something. Once I have determined your house is able to consistently activate your Spyglasses you will be dismissed.”

Andony picked up the Glass plate in front of him. It seemed like nothing more than a sheet of glass about the size of a Catalogue card. He tried moving his mana into the glass only to find it solid. Surrounding it in mana was just as effective. He looked to his Journeyman who was playing with some tool while he waited, presumably, for people to give up. Andony looked down at the table and began tapping his foot. Then Andony noticed a silver inlay on the table and set the plate on that and touched the glass above the inlay. Once again his mana reached for the strip of silver but the time it couldn’t penetrate the glass. Trying to force more energy though the glas had no effect.

Andony looked away from the glass and started thinking again. The pull of the silver felt somewhat ticklish but he ignored it. After a while he became aware of a steady drain. The moment he turned his attention to his mana it went away.

By this point Andony had noted that Lilly and Segrick were both Looking though their plates. Amilly was struggling just to shape her mana but the seemed to have gotten the Plate working. The slight drain on Andony’s mana had returned by this point and he guessed that it was his own activation of the plate. Around this time Omma, and Narsisca had given up. Eiendon was imitating Andony, for whatever good it did him. Sanuel hadn’t even picked up his plate and was instead levitating a dagger in orbits around his head whilst spinning it. The journey man was watching Silently waiting for Andony to give up.

Andony decided to try one last thing before giving up. Closing his eyes he began meditating, letting his mana float uncontrolled. The pull on his mana increased as more and more of it slipped into the silver inlay on the table. After a moment of this he noticed that some of the mana was collecting around the gap between the silver and his finger. After contemplating the mana he realised it was in the form of a spell. What interested him was that he had never managed to shape such a complex spell pattern. The only function he could figure out was that it could give off light.

Reigning his mana in he looked at the Journeyman and shrugged in defeat.

“Amilly, you need more practice so keep at it. Segrick and Lilliana you both pass, Help out with the other girls. Sanuel, just demonstrate that you can do it. Andony, you’re on the right track. Eiendon, Do some basic shaping practices, Andony’s method won't work for you on its own. Omma, Narsisca; Try and copy Eiendon.”

It took Andony about half an hour to realize he had been imposing a limit on his shaping skills. He had never thought to think of objects as not being solid things. He had only ever tried to move his mana though open air and the ground had always repelled his mana when he meditated. Once he realized what he was doing wrong it took him 15 minutes to retune his shaping skills to only react to his thoughts and other mana. Strangely enough as soon as he had done this his mana began to react to his direction my naturally.

Andony studied the Spell schema engraved in the glass plate while waiting for his group to finish. While he wasn’t able to decipher any more about the spells function he was able to determine that some of it just wasn’t there. After a moment's thought he decided that this made sense, after all the Staff member had said the Spyglass, was a class of spells. If in the full version of the spell there were part the staff wanted the students to have and others they couldn't use or understand or, possibly, couldn’t be trusted with for some reason it made sense to make weaker versions of the spell that fulfilled their needs. While there were some edits made to the structure of the Schema to keep the spell working without the parts that were removed, the edits had a sort of surgical quality to them that reminded Andony of the stitching in his clothes. Something about them just seemed to hold the Schema together and keep it from fraying at the edges of the edits.

Andony would have continued studying the Schema but he was interrupted when Omma finally figured out how to use the Spyglass tool without struggling. With that their entire group was finished. It had taken her a good two hours and Andony thought she wouldn’t remember how to use it for very long judging by the look of confusion on her face.

Amilly proved she had no such concern by pulling Lilly and Andony foreword. Their destination was the Spell Library. Once they had gotten a lead on their group Amilly let go of Lilly’s arm and turned to Andony complaining, “Andony, I can't believe that was so easy for you.”

Andony smiled and shook his head. “I can’t claim it was easy to completely rework the way I do magic, but it was mostly just convincing myself it was possible rather than having the shaping ability to do it.”

Amilly, judging by the fact that she stuck her tongue out, was displeased by this notion. For her own part Lilly looked impressed. They had caught up with Sanuel, who had left before the trio, by this point. “Even if it isn’t impressive in terms of shaping skills,” Sanuel turned to the group and offered his own opinion; “People generally can’t figure out how to overcome a block like that in just a quarter of an hour. My family is big on Qi training and when I first started trying to learn conventional magic it took me a month to figure out.”

Andony gave Sanuel a curious look saying, “Qi, what’s that?”

Sanuel gave Andony a funny look and then began by saying, “Qi training is a maical discipline that uses unshaped mana to improve the user's health, physical strength, and resistances. For these purposes it uses less energy and is more flexible than Schema based spell work.”

“However, it is much easier to detect Qi users than a traditional mage because they essentially let their mana float loosely around them. It is one of the earlier magical disciplines. Most of the physical Spell schema come from Qi cultivation and other similar disciplines.”

The Schema Library was surrounded by a pair fences with a good forty meter of empty space between them. The was an additional forty meter gap beyond the outer fence. Within the inner fence there was a small plaza at the entrance with a fountain and some benches. Amilly selected a bench and pulled Andony onto it.

When the rest of the group arrived the Journeyman in charge of their group informed them that the first assignment would require a balanced team. They would need some group defenses, some utility spells, and some way of attacking. They would be making a dungeon run in a controlled environment.

While they were discussing plans Andony was pulled aside and tested.

“Well, you can handle four Schema at the moment. That places you as a second shell mage. Not very impressive in and of itself but it is a strong start for a new student. Keep in mind that your First Shell Schema will be more reliable and use less mana than those in your Second Shell.