Lixarts Academy: First Year

3 weeks passed by rapidly. The weather forecast had called for some rain today; maybe that explains the depressing sky outside today. The ashen gray clouds rolled over as they obscured the sun; leaving no light to shine through. The sky told promises of storms today.

Today started off normally. I did my usual routine and sat down at the table with my parents to eat breakfast.

“Hey, Dom,” my dad said. His newspaper crumbled as he folded it in half to look at me.

“I thought we said no magic,” he said to me.

“That was 3 weeks ago, why are you bringing this up now? And what was I supposed to do?” I responded, shoving cereal in my mouth.

“You’re a smart kid. You’d figure something out.”

“I don’t want to hide it anymore,” I grumbled.

“Your abilities would flip our entire world upside-down. And there are people who know of it now. You need to be careful.” Dad got up and walked out of the door.

“Your father means well,” Mom sat down and spoke to me.

“I know but is it so bad if people knew I had this?”

“It is, honey. We’re doing this for your own safety. Now go. The circle should be activating anytime now,” she said, shooing me out of the door.

I walked outside and down the street to where the 4 other students were muttering. They stopped as I walked closer. I shoved my hands in my pockets and let out a heavy breath. In that instance, the usual sapphire blaze engulfed us and sent us to Lixarts Academy.

“Hey, Aura,” I waved at her.

“What do you want?” She looked at me; her bags in her eyes were a dark plum color as she met my stare.

“Nothing, just saying good hey. You look like crap; by the way.”

“I didn’t get any sleep. I was too busy consoling Rose,” she yawned.

“Oh, about what?” I asked, not seeing Rose walk up behind her.

Rose cleared her throat behind Aura.

“Oh, hey, Rose. It’s Dominick,” she pointed at me. Rose crossed her arms and walked away. Aura shrugged at me then waved before walking off with Rose.

I dragged myself to Magic History. I grabbed the door knob; turning it as I walked in. There was no one there just yet.

Not much later, the class waltzed in one by one. After everyone had arrived and settled down into their seats, he began talking.

“Good morning, class!” Mr. Willowsky said in a jittery tone.

He was met with silence.

“Thanks, guys,” he wore an awkward look, “anyways, it’s been 3 weeks since the school has begun and I’ve decided that this seating chart isn’t working so starting today, you may sit wherever you want,” he stated.

Everyone started moving around and sitting next to their friends. Aura remained seated and so did I.

“Aren’t you gonna move?” I looked at her and asked.

“No, aren’t you?” She responded.

“You’re the only person I talk to anyways,” I put my head down and closed my eyes.

Aura wore a small smile on her face.

The bell rang and I headed out to my next class. This was one of the classes I had by myself and honestly I enjoyed it.

The drama is too much and it’s been getting to me.

I haven’t gotten much sleep since the argument the other day went down. Me and Rose argued because supposedly I don’t understand what she’s going through and her father is really tough on her and I get it but it isn’t something that should really affect our friendship. I just wanted someone to hang out with and talk to but she said it’s more complicated than that.

I told her blankly that I didn’t want a complicated friendship with anyone. Her eyes started watering before she walked away; head slumped in dejection.

Nothing happened today in my Magic Rituals class. We learned how to do basic rituals for today’s lesson.

Which I can’t actually do.

Counterspell Casting went by as fast as Magic Rituals did.

The teacher just explained how to find and exploit the weaknesses in a spell based on typing, the caster’s speed, etc. She’s very experienced in this field as she was in the Magic Defense Force before retiring and coming to teach here at Lixarts. She’s a strict teacher but she means well. It’s really too bad I can’t use these techniques since I can’t feel the mana at all; I just see a spell and guess what it is. It’s a real surprise that I’m not dead yet.

Lunch came around.

You know the usual.

I set my tray down and picked up a chicken strip.

Rose walked past my table, eyes glued to my back as she scurried off.

I ate my lunch in silence, basking in the peace and quiet that I’ve been able to enjoy for these past 2 weeks.

Although, I was kind of tired of it.

“Hey, Dominick,” Rose said.

I looked over, probably with a stupid expression as the chicken strip was hanging from my mouth. I put up my index finger, asking her to give me a second because once I’m started I can’t stop.

“You say something?”

“Yeah, I did,” she responded.

“What’s up?” I replied.

“I think I may have overreacted,” she said, looking away, embarrassed.

“You think?” I said, grabbing my apple juice.

“Where’s Aura?” I asked.

“She’s gotta make up some missing assignments during lunch today so she’s eating in Ms. Portword’s room right now while doing that.”

Rose sat down next to me as she did before. She smiled at me before we started the first conversation we’ve had in weeks.

The day carried on at a quicker pace without all of the drama with Rose on my mind. I was relieved she didn’t hate me. She was basically the only friend I had.

It had begun to storm outside. The rain poured onto the roof, clunking against the metal as it slid down the side of the building. A bright jagged bolt of lightning sliced through the air; illuminating the gloomy sky for a single moment before returning back to the murky gray that it was before. The thunder came a heartbeat later; the sound reverberated throughout the entire gym, causing some students to shriek in the halls and the classrooms.

The rain and thunder brought upon a sense of foreboding.

Alchemy had passed by pretty quickly, meaning this time of the day was Training. Me, Rose, and Aura all shared this training class together. Today, Mr. Lainhart had separated us all into groups of 2 to spar with training swords. It’s as he says, “If you run out of mana, all you have is your weapon and your fists,” and I couldn’t agree with him more.

It was evident that Aura and Rose needed practical training at least in the hand to hand fighting department but Everett showed true potential that day.

I also need to work to improve my hand to hand combat.

“Hey, Dom,” Aura said, facing me.

“Huh?” I said, turning around.

“You look lost in thought,” Rose said, coming up from behind Aura.

“Oh yeah, I was,” I responded.

“Well, get your head out of your ass,” Aura exclaimed.

“NOW, TODAY CLASS, YOU WILL PARTNER UP WITH A RANDOM STUDENT TODAY FOR THE REMAINDER OF THIS CLASS! IF YOU WOULD ALL LINE UP AND TAKE A SLIP OF PAPER FROM THIS HAT! THANK YOU!” Mr. Lainhart spoke over Aura, his voice echoing throughout the training facility.

A few minutes passed by, and students chose partners at random by drawing the lots from the hat Mr. Lainhart was holding. I approached Mr. Lainhart.

“Oho, hello there. You’ve got a weird energy!” He said, getting in my face, inspecting me as if I were some sort of lab experiment.

“Oh yeah?” I chuckled, nervously. Aura snickered from the side.

“Where are my manners? Don’t mind me. Just the ramblings of an old man.” He pushed the hat out for me to choose a slip of paper. I walked out of the line and looked at the paper.

It read, “Emelia”.

I scanned the area for Emelia, shouting her name, until I found her. She was already standing with two other people. She gave me a confused expression as each of them showed me their papers with each other’s names on it. We all had different people on our paper. Rose had Josh, Josh had me, Emelia had Rose, and I had Emelia.

“What’s going on?” Josh asked us.

“I’m not too sure,” Rose answered.

I looked around and every other group had the same thing happening. Everyone shared confused glances.

“MR. LAINHART!” Someone had raised their hand up from the far side of the area.

“YES?!” He shouted back.

“I THOUGHT YOU SAID GROUPS OF 2!” The student answered.

“YEAH BUT THEN I DECIDED TO SURPRISE YOU GUYS WITH GROUPS OF 4!” He retorted, laughing heartily.

“OH YEAH!” he said, as if he had forgotten something.

“It’s a battle royale. THE WINNING TEAM GETS EXTRA CREDIT AND 50 OMERAS!”

All hell broke loose.

I don’t know what I expected from Mr. Lainhart but it wasn’t this. In the past two weeks, we figured out what kind of teacher he was.

He was extremely unorthodox with his teaching methods.. He’d pull stunts like this but usually not to this scale or he would just act as a normal teacher with normal lesson plans.

But 50 omeras?

I’m like 90% sure this is illegal but I’m a broke highschooler.

I jumped into the fray, my team staring at me dumbfounded as I grabbed a student and suplexed them into the ground.

“HELL YEAH!” I screamed at the top of my lungs, running after more people.

The competition was a cake walk as everyone dropped out in a matter of minutes when they saw a student running around; beating any student that crossed his path. It was underwhelming to say the least.

I lose all sense of reason whenever money is involved.

Everyone laid on the floor, huffing and puffing or holding their injuries as the nurse was healing them. I walked over to Mr. Lainhart.

“I knew there was something different about you.” He said, dropping the coins in my hand.

“I learned how to fight when I was little,” I replied.

“Well it was fun seeing all of you fighting, enjoy the rest of your day,” he expressed before turning around and walking away.

Aura and Rose walked up to me.

“We had a feeling you would win this,” Rose said, walking up next to me.

“We decided not to participate when I saw my team. I had three other guys in my team but they were scrawny wimps. I could kick their asses. Hell, even ROSE could kick their asses,” Aura said, walking next to Rose.

Rose shook her head and continued talking.

“We still have a while until classes end. Did you guys have any idea what you wanted to do?” She asked, looking around.

“Well, Mr. Lainhart isn’t here. We could just leave,” Aura said.

“No, we can’t. We’ll get in so much trouble if we were caught,” Rose retorted.

“Then let’s not get caught?” Rose retaliated.

“It sounds fun,” I said.

They both turned to the right and Rose gave me a shocked expression. I grabbed my water bottle from the bleachers. I twisted the top off and poured some water into my mouth.

“Wow,” Aura said, “did not take you to have the balls to agree to this,” she nodded with a face of subtle respect. I nodded back with a look of respect as well.

We both squinted our eyes and kept nodding at each other.

“Come on, you two,” Rose said, walking out of the training facility.

I really do wonder where Mr. Lainhart went.

Anyways, the 3 of us walked into the hallway which was filled with silence besides a few stragglers roaming the hallways.

“I never realized how quiet this place is when everyone isn’t pushing me into lockers to get to their classes,” Aura said, looking around at the classroom doors as we walked past them.

“Hey, Aura, we should probably get back soon. Mr. Lainhart should be back by now,” Rose proclaimed, worriedly.

“Stop being a stick in the mud.”

Rose looked down and continued on without saying a word for a while.

She lit up when we passed by the art room where the walls had been painted a vibrant cerulean and a flaxen color.

Rose walked up to the window and stared in to see what they had been doing today.

“You like art, Rose?” I asked her.

“Uh-huh…” she wasn’t paying attention to me at all.

I got next to her to see what they had been doing. There was paint flying around the room and landed on the floor. I looked at the floor when the paint landed and noticed it had been painted white to be a canvas. Beautiful artwork, doodling, everyone had expressed themselves through their immersive art on the canvas. Rose’s eyes were glued to the teacher’s masterpiece. It was a piece of abstract art that, to me, looked like a bunch of random shapes thrown together.

“Hey, Dominick,” she pointed at the teacher’s art.

“What about it?” I asked.

“Isn’t it beautiful? My mother and father used to make art like that when I was younger. I never really understood it but times were easier when I would see that kind of art. I never understood the meaning behind it and I honestly didn’t care. The face my dad would make when he made it was the only understanding I needed…” she expressed, a single tear running down her cheek.

I stood next to her, staring into the classroom where the art began to shape into beautiful masterpieces. Each piece of work begins to form its own story and each one is different from the last.

I’m with Rose on this one.

Even though I never understood art. I probably never will but I feel as if art is beautiful and meaningful when the artist puts everything they have into it.

We stood there for a while, enjoying each other’s companies.

“I’m sorry about Gym. I should probably tell you about why that was so important to me, shouldn’t I?” She said, nervously.

“Obviously, you don’t have to if you don’t want to,” I responded.

“I do. It’s because of-” We were interrupted by a hand that had grabbed our arms,

causing us to jolt.

“Guys, we need to hide now,” Aura whispered, sneaking up behind us.

“Why? What’s going on-”

CRASH

The sound of glass breaking had echoed throughout the hallway.

“What was that?!” Rose said, whispering but raising her voice a little too loud. Me and Aura grabbed Rose and ran to the empty classroom down the hall.

Figures in black robes passed by. One of them had stopped by the classroom we took shelter in and looked in through the window. Rose was shaking while Aura held her. We were standing next to the door. The footsteps had grown close. Rose began crying while Aura continued to hold her. We remained as quiet as we could. The man in the black robe stood there for a while. Every minute felt like hours, the clock ticking echoed inside of my head as the room was quiet. The footprints finally moved away after what felt like an eternity. Rose had finally calmed down.

I turned to face Aura.

“What’s going on?” I said, keeping my voice to a minimum.

“I saw a man and a woman in black robes walking the hallways. As soon as I saw it, I ran over to you guys. This is serious, guys,” she expressed, visibly shaken as well.

We’re so screwed.

A few moments after we were done talking, a blood curdling scream escaped someone’s throat.

The alarm had begun to go off.