NOVEL NEXT Trip's End
Nick watched from the back of the crowd of children as the transport descended from
the sky. He hadn’t been able to hunt for more spells for the day, but he frowned as the
flying carriage appeared on his sphere of influence and approached. He wondered
what else could be marked by his mental mapping.
His village didn’t have anything like the thing from the Academy. The most he had
seen was common work wagons for supplies for the local farmers and ranchers. Very
rarely did they ping on his map.
The descending ship looked like a white bird of some kind. It dropped down on three
legs unfolding from the bottom of its body. The wind that surrounded it died down.
“I never thought they would send something like this,” said Carol. She stood at
Nick’s elbow, a little shorter, darker, and wearing her best clothes for the trip to the
big city. “I thought they would just load us up in wagons and make us take the road.”
“I thought he was going to make us walk,” said Nick. He looked around. The adults
were off to one side. Sister Anne smiled and waved at him. He waved halfheartedly
back.
He looked around, taking in the central square one last time. The orphanage, school,
general store, and town hall stood together on one side. Residential housing took up
the other side, forming a crescent moon inside the wall. He could barely make out one
of the three inns toward the north gate. The other two were in the south, but he
couldn’t see them from where he was.
The back of the bird opened up. Master Avere came down the ramp dropping to the
ground. He paused when he reached the end of the ramp. He had dismissed his finery
for a plain set of tunic and breeches that resembled Nick’s. He had taken the time to
wrap his hands in leather bindings.
“I need you to line up youngest to oldest,” said Avere. “The youngest should board
first and take seats near the front.”
Nick figured that was to keep anyone from opening the ramp while the thing was
flying. He doubted it was really dangerous, but he could see someone falling out after
opening the door by accident.
The older kids would know better than to pull a lever to drop the ramp without
someone telling them what would happen if they did that.
Nick, Carol, Bradley, and a few others were in the middle of their group. They had
to wait for the younger kids to be ushered on the flying carriage before they could
look for their own seats. Bars came down to lock them in their seats when they finally
sat down.
“All right,” said Avere. He closed the ramp and walked to the front of the seating
area. “We will be over Grimhild in a few hours. When we land, we will have the
oldest children disembark first and line up to go inside the main gathering hall of the
Academy. We will join the other new students and start placing you where you need
to go to further your learning.”
“Will we be able to stay together?,” asked one of the older kids at the back.
“A lot will depend on what your affinity is,” said Avere. “Some of you will be in the
same dorms, and have the same classes based on that.”
Nick already knew he would be singled out. His spell maybe mimicked an air spell,
but he doubted that would be enough for him to be an air affiliated magician.
“Some of you will be able to influence more than one element, or have such specific
control over the one element you associate with that you can do things no other
magician can do,” said Avere. “This first day is to get you settled in your dorms and
allow you to learn the Academy before you are assigned classes.”
“Why orphans?,” asked someone closer to Nick. He couldn’t see the speaker, but
thought it was Monty. This was a boy that thought Sister Anne consorted with spirits
from the underworld regularly.
Everything was a conspiracy to him. Everything had a deeper meaning than what was
presented. Most things were lies on top of lies.
Nick had no idea how Monty was going to survive outside the village, much less the
orphanage.
“Why not?,” asked Avere. Maybe he thought he was turning the tables on his
questioner.
“Because some of us are too old to compete with nobility, some of us are only here
because we have to be here and prefer to be at home but were warned we would be
sent away because it was too dangerous, because orphans can be used for fodder,”
said the voice. Nick was convinced the speaker was Monty. “Don’t try government
charity. We know that doesn’t exist.”
“The reason I gathered you is the truth,” said Avere. “We are gathering every gifted
person from the edges of the kingdom. The King has ordered it, and the Academy and
the other schools are doing what they can to follow that order. And Grimhild is the
closest Academy to your village. If you had been a few miles in a few other
directions, you would have been contacted by another school and recruited by them.”
“Master Slown and Sister Anne?,” asked another student. “Why didn’t they come
along?”
“The King is requiring them to stay to keep watch,” said Avere. “They are the only
magicians your village has, and they are there to oppose the Lords of Death if they
attack.”
Nick wondered how that would go, but said nothing. He doubted Master Slown
had thrown a fireball at a person in a long time, much less in anger. He didn’t think
Sister Anne had any magic at all.
He didn’t want to think like Monty, but he didn’t think Avere was telling them the
whole truth. He also felt like the odd man out. It didn’t make sense for them to take
him. His one spell punched holes in things. Even enhanced from a dead animal, the
main spell just fired at longer ranges, or faster, depending on what he grabbed.
He hadn’t told anyone about the variants, or he could seize spirit money to buy more
charges for his variants or other things. He had been shooting things for a long time.
He knew everything his type of magic did.
And he was certain that he couldn’t teach it to anyone.
He might be the only magician capable of doing what he did.
He looked at the other orphans around him. A lot of them looked scared about the
future. Carol and Bradley were talking two rows over. Their different expressions
said they were having different reactions to the answers they were being given, and
their potential futures.
Out of all of them, Nick felt Carol had the ability to be the number one mage at the
Academy in the next few years. He would be at the bottom since his magic depended
on one thing. He didn’t like his assessment, but he had no way to counter Carol’s fire
spellwork except for a shot through her body. He wasn’t willing to push that far
against one of his few friends.
Bradley, on the other hand, would be perfect for a target dummy.
“Are we going to have to fight?,” asked one of the younger kids up front.
“It depends on if war breaks out again,” said Avere. “The hope is we can keep the
Lords of Death from crossing our borders and destroying the kingdom. If we can keep
the peace, none of you will have to fight. If we can’t, you will have to fight just to
live.”
The questions veered into how the flying carriage worked. Nick understood the
theory of the thing where a magician with both air and wood, or two magicians
working in tandem, could build a body and lift it off the ground with their magic.
He also knew he would never be able to do anything like that.
He should have stayed at the orphanage despite what the others thought. He could
do more there than being stuck at the center of kingdom, learning about magic he
would never be able to use.
If the village was attacked, he could help defend it with his spell and whatever variant
he could grab from his dead enemies.
What could he do at a school where everyone else would be better than him at
everything?
He would be even more of an outsider than back home.
Nick fell asleep as the wooden bird flew on. He was tired already, and the trip was
boring to him despite being in the air. His sphere of influence marked obstacles for
him automatically but there was nothing he could do if the thing crashed into
something this high in the air.
He woke when the craft changed timbre around him. He checked his sphere and
found a set of buildings resembling a castle below him. He wondered how tall
everything was. His sphere only gave him the shape of the thing in general and not
how tall it was.
He saw two other of the magecrafts in the yard below. They vanished from his
awareness like popping bubbles. He saw flashes of magic everywhere. He thought the
teachers and some of the older students were doing things in different parts of the
buildings.
His friends would be doing the same thing eventually.
Avere came from the front of the wooden flying carriage, passing down the aisles,
to the back. He opened up the ramp to let in the early night glimmer on the yard.
“People in the last row, stand up and come down the ramp,” said Avere. He pointed
to a small cone on the yard. “Form a line at that cone. The last people on the row, let
the row in front of you know they can stand up and follow you.”
Nick wondered why they hadn’t dissolved the ship and just drop them to the ground.
Maybe lining up gave them a chance to show the kids who was in charge. Maybe they
were already separating people out into the classes and dorms they would be stuck
taking.
He wouldn’t be in the same places as his friends.
He waited until it was his turn to move out. He was last in line on his row, and tapped
the first kid in the row ahead of him on the shoulder. He walked to the back of the
craft and down the ramp. He thought that Master Avere should have a couple dozen
holes put in him, but refrained from doing that.
Maybe Monty had been right for the first time.
He watched things as he moved into place in the line. The first chance he got, he
would think about going over the wall. He might have to hurt some of these people,
but that didn’t matter to him since he didn’t know them.
Monty might be the only one who went over the wall with him, but that would be
okay. Better someone you know, than a stranger.
“All right,” said Avere. He looked over the line, counting them. He nodded when he
had the exact number of passengers on the field. The wooden carriage boiled away
and its creator dropped to the ground across the grass. “We’re going to join the line
heading into the feasting hall. You can sit anywhere, but afterwards you will be
assigned rooms and you will be taken over there by the incoming senior class.”
“Then what,” said Monty.
“You will be given directions to your classes, and have three days to memorize routes
back and forth between each one,” said Avere. “If you can pass all the tests on the
spells and theory behind them, you will be asked to think about what kind of future
you want to have as a magician.”
Nick knew he didn’t have a future as a magician. He wondered if they taught practical
skills at all in the place.