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Her mother’s voice carried in from the living room, “Are you still here? You‘re going to be late…”

“I’m going, I’m going…“ Alex charged up her runic circle and stepped through. She frowned as she looked around and realized that she wasn’t in the entrance hall of her school like she was supposed to be. After looking around for a couple of seconds she realized that she was in the entrance hall of the auditorium at the school. Several other students she recognized were looking around with various degrees of confusion as they arrived and found that they weren’t where they thought they were supposed to be. She smiled when she noticed the handwritten sign that said the orientation was in the main part of the auditorium. Now that she thought about it, it made perfect sense for them to hold the orientation in the auditorium rather than one of the classrooms as it was the only place with enough room to hold all of the students.

0o0o0

Principal Denis Blackstone smiled as the doors to the auditorium closed after the last student walked in. He took a sip from his water glass then set it back on the podium. He took a few moments to look over the six hundred and some students that had just graduated as he picked up the microphone. “Can I have your attention please?”

Alex stopped whispering to the girl next to her so that she could pay attention to her principal. She sometimes wondered if he used magic to get the near instant silence that asking for it usually gave him or if it was just because most of the students liked him that they tried extra hard to be polite.

He nodded slightly as the crowd of students fell silent. “I assume everyone is here to learn about the next step in your education. If you’re not… well too bad, you’ll just have to listen to me talk anyways because I’ve locked the doors.” He smiled as a number of the students half heartedly laughed hoping that he was joking but realizing that he might not be. “That being said, the first thing I should explain is that the magical college most of you will be attending combines students from Washington, Oregon, California and Hawaii.” He waited a couple of seconds for the noise to die down. He heard a couple people in the front row mutter ‘Why Hawaii?’, “Why include Hawaii you ask? Well, it gives us a reason to have the college in a tropical location.”

Alex frowned as she thought about how easily Abby sunburned.

He took a sip of his water then set it back on the podium as he listened to the cheering for a couple of seconds. He held up his hands for silence. “I’m glad that everyone approves, now onto the less amusing stuff. I want to be very clear about this next part. The island the college is on is considered sovereign territory that is outside of the United States’ control or responsibility. We will be sending you home with a pamphlet on the laws that you will be abiding by. The only reason that I mention this is that the school allows several things that the U.S. doesn’t and disallows several things that the U.S. allows. It’s all in the packets and is rather self explanatory.” He gave the crowd several seconds to consider what he was saying as he picked up his glass of water and took a drink.

Alex suspected that the break in the principal’s speech was designed to be just long enough to get people thinking but not long enough to allow wild speculation to start.

He looked over the crowd of students and tried not to wonder how many of the current year would turn rogue. “That said, I feel I need to mention two of the more important differences and a touch of background. You’re all by this point, trained in basic magic.” He looked over the group of teenagers and stared at a few of the more frequent visitors to his office. “Most of you are even rather responsible in its use. Thus while at college you are considered old enough to understand any contract that you sign. As some of you may know, magical contracts can only last a year and a day at most but that is still plenty of time to ruin your life thus it is critically important that you don’t sign any contracts that you don’t understand. If you are in doubt take the contract to the school’s legal department. You can find the office on the map.”

Alex grinned as she realized that she probably had a lot more experience with contracts than her fellow students because of her mother.

“The other thing I want to mention before I turn you over to your teachers for questions is that for the most part all magical creatures are the property of their creator unless they free their creations. Please don’t start a wizard duel over someone’s pet, it’s a good way to get in trouble or end up dead.” He took another drink as he let that concept settle in. “Another good way to get yourself in trouble is using magic outside of school. While it’s not technically forbidden, I would remind you that certain warlocks would like nothing better than to drain your magic as you lay there dying. So do try not to be noticed by the wrong sort.” He felt a little bad about scaring the students by reminding them that there were some serious dangers running around the world but at the same point it was worth reminding them if it kept them from dying.

“I realize this is a bit to take in and most of you would be bored to tears with the very long and very dry speech I wrote…” He glanced down at the empty stack of papers he was using as a prop for his speech then looked back up at the students. “So in the interest of letting you have more time to ask your teachers questions, I’ll just leave you with several words of encouragement and a blessing before I send you on your way. As for the words of encouragement, let your imagination be your guide. If you can dream it, you can probably find a way to make it work in this world or another.” He slowly turned his head as he looked over the students. “It’s traditional to wish you good luck and who am I to ruin a tradition that I started oh so many years ago. Thus good luck and may your magic never fail you, unless you’re cursing me, then it can fail all it wants.” He waited for the laughter to die down a touch then he gestured toward the doors in the back of the room and unlocked and opened them with a dash of magic. “Please collect your pamphlets from your homeroom teachers before you leave.”

While Alex was still a touch creeped out at the idea of magic users running around that would gladly kill her for her magic, it was something they had grown used to over the years. She frowned as she wondered if Miss Ashford’s elf assistant counted as a pet. She headed toward the exit as she made a mental list of the questions she wanted to ask Miss Ashford.

0o0o0

Miss Ashford smiled as she watched the first of her group of students walk into her classroom. “Take a seat. You’ll find your information packets and a quick printout of the differences that Mr. Blackstone mentioned on your desks. Please take a couple minutes to quickly and quietly look over the information while the rest of the students get here then I’ll answer any questions you have that are relevant.”

Alex smiled as she took a seat on one of the desks. She decided that she might as well spend a couple of minutes looking things over so that she didn’t ask a question that was clearly covered in the pamphlets.  

Miss Ashford smiled as her timer rang. She figured that ten minutes was enough time for several of her students to come up with questions. “I guess it’s time for questions.”

Matt blurted out his first question, “Where do monsters come from?”

Miss Ashford smiled slightly at Matt’s enthusiasm. “Good question. As I’m sure you’re aware, various monsters are associated with various cultures and points in history for a reason. Earth doesn’t actually have any native monsters, unless you consider people to be monsters.”

Matt asked, “What about werewolves and vampires?”

“Created by magic users and quote unquote dark magic. Same thing goes for dragons and unicorns.” She smiled as a pouting Sally raised her hand. “Yes Sally?”

Sally asked petulantly, “Unicorns were created by dark magic?”

Miss Ashford shook her head. “No, but they were created by magic.”

Another girl in the class blurted out, “How does that work?”

“There are a couple of basic ways to create monsters. You can either craft an animal or a human’s flesh into a monster, breed new monsters from old ones or you can create them with aether.”

Sally raised her hand again then asked her question after Miss Ashford gestured for her to ask, “That’s where our conjured materials come from, right?”

“That is correct Sally.”

“But wouldn’t that mean they have a shelf life…?”

“Depending on how they are created yes.”

Matt raised his hand and waited until his teacher pointed at him, “How come we had to wait this long to find out about making creatures?”

Miss Ashford said, “Mostly because we’re trying to avoid having a zombie apocalypse or worse.”

“Wait, that’s possible?” Matt asked in disbelief.

“Sure, I know of a couple of ways to pull it off and no I’m not going to give you step by step instructions. There was a case a couple of centuries ago where a young magic user tried to bring her pet back from the dead, it didn’t end well.”

Sally asked, “What happened?”

Miss Ashford sat down on the edge of her desk. “The pet collapsed and ‘died’ then ‘woke’ up at night and went hunting other pets. My grandmother said they had to burn the town to the ground and curse the survivors with tongue twisting spells to keep them from telling tales.”

“Wouldn’t it have been better to wipe their memories?” Matt asked.

“Despite the horrible ethical issues memory spells would cause, I can think of a few times over the years where such a spell would have been nice to have. That said, if anyone has figured out how to erase memories safely, they’re not talking. The best anyone has been able to manage without causing permanent damage is screwing up a mundane’s short term memory.”

One of the other students asked, “If there aren’t memory spells how do we stay hidden?”

Miss Ashford shrugged. “For the most part we rely on people’s willingness to ignore stuff and a magic user’s own sense of self preservation which is why having a bunch of children running around creating monsters wouldn’t be a good thing for our continued quiet existence. That and it‘s not all that easy to create a stable permanent monster.” She smiled as Alex raised her hand, “Alex.”

Alex thought about the elf girl that helped Miss Ashford with various lessons and classroom management. “Would Lily be considered a creature?”

Miss Ashford sighed as she got to the one question that always spawned the gasps and glares especially when she didn‘t sugarcoat things. “Yes, technically she started off as my property.” She ignored the gasps as she continued. “I said started off. Once I realized that she was stable and a rather happy go lucky girl, I adopted her which swapped her classification from property to magic using creature which gave her the same rights as any other magical child. Legally, at least as far as the school is concerned, I could have kept her as a slave until she passed a placement test for high school. However, like most mages these days, I don’t feel the need to own a sentient creature.”

A boy in the back row blurted, “That’s…” He trailed off as the teacher turned to look at him and he realized that he hadn’t raised his hand.

“Barbaric? Maybe a little. Illegal? Oh, yes.” Miss Ashford let her gaze sweep the group of students. “Especially in the U.S. You’re going to run into a bit of a cultural divide once you get to college.”

“What do you mean?”

She sighed. “Most of you would be classified as pathless first generation magic users even if some of you probably aren’t.”

Dana frowned as she tried to figure out if she’d ever heard the word before. She raised her hand hesitantly.

Miss Ashford smiled as she looked around her class to see if some of the students that hadn’t been asking questions had any. She noticed that one of her normally hyperactive girls was actually sitting quietly with her hand up, “Yes, Dana?”

“I get that first generations don’t have magic in their family trees but what do you mean by pathless?”

“First, that’s not technically true for most so called first generation magic users.”

“But I’ve checked, I don’t have any magical ancestors.” Dana replied.

“In the old days it wasn’t uncommon for wandering wizards to father children that they didn’t know about or didn’t care about,” Miss Ashford admitted.

“Why wouldn’t they care?”

“As you know, when two magic users have children, the chances of the child not having magic is extremely unlikely though it has been known to happen between certain families. Female magic users often have magical children regardless of the father’s ability though it’s not certain by any means. The flipside is that wizard and mundane pairings don’t usually produce magic users unless the female has traces of magic in her bloodline or at least that’s the current theory.”

“So they don’t care because their children might not have magic?” Dana pouted. “That seems rather unfair.”

Miss Ashford smirked slightly as she looked over the students in her room. “I could give you a lecture about wandering wizards but I won’t. The truth is more complicated, most magic users will live for hundreds of years barring death by misadventure.”

Matt raised his hand then asked, “Isn’t that a good thing?”

Miss Ashford sighed. “Yes and no. I’m sure this isn’t a new concept for some of you but imagine for a moment your favorite pet dying of old age.” She gave the suddenly unhappy students a couple of seconds to process that idea before she continued. “It’s tragic but you can convince yourselves that they had a good life and that it was their time. You’ll cry about it or not depending then you’ll move on. Now imagine that it’s your parents that are dying of old age while you look much the same as you look now, a little older but nothing like you would look if you were mundane. It’s going to hurt but once again you can convince yourself that it’s normal enough, they were after all, older than you. Does anyone see where I’m going with this?”

Alex raised her hand. “A magic user’s non-magical children don’t live much longer than mundanes.”

“Exactly, which brings us back to the wandering wizards and Dana’s question about why they wouldn’t stick around. It’s a lot easier to deal with things at a distance, maybe they leave some money or check in now and then on the child’s family depending on the wizard but eventually most wizards wander off or lose track of their mundane families. That leads to situations where the child’s descendants have children with other magical lines and the magic in their blood reignites and thus you have a magic user that isn’t technically first generation but might as well be.”

Matt muttered, “In other words, it’s hard to tell where a person’s magic came from.”

Miss Ashford gave Matt a smile. “In a lot of cases yes, in some cases no which brings me back to the term pathless. Pathless is a nebulous term, it means that you don’t have any special magical family talents.”

Dana asked, “What about my fire dancing?”

“It might be a path and it might just be one of your natural talents. If your future children inherit it, then it could be considered a magical path. They can range from simple things like an affinity to a certain element to having the ability to fly without having to push a massive amount of magic into your flight spell or even being able to take some shortcuts while enchanting.”

Another boy in the back asked, “Do you have any paths?”

Miss Ashford smirked at Jake and decided to ignore the fact that he blurted the question out, “You just asked a question that is considered rude.”

“Oh, I’m sorry…” he trailed off not sure what to say.

Miss Ashford smiled at Jake. “I set you up for it but most magic users don’t like the question.”

Alex raised her hand and waited for her teacher to point in her direction then asked, “How rude of a question?”

She smiled in delight as Alex asked the right question, “Asking about paths would be about as rude as asking a girl, ‘How far down do those freckles go?’”

Alex shook her head, while she didn’t have freckles, she doubted most people would appreciate a stranger asking that question. “I see your point, something you could get away with asking a friend but not something you ask a stranger?”

Miss Ashford chuckled. “Exactly. The best rule of thumb I can offer is to keep your heads down and don‘t offend people, unless you have to. Are there any other questions?”

Alex raised her hand again, “The pamphlet mentioned realms carved from the aether, it doesn’t say much about it other than directing us to the class schedule. Can you explain a bit more about that?”

“I’m glad you asked that. It goes right into the next topic I was going to mention. What do you know about aether?”

“It’s where magic comes from.”

“Correct, do you know how that works?”

Alex shook her head. “I just remember the teachers saying that magic bleeds into the universe through magic users and some locations.”

Miss Ashford nodded. “More or less correct. Most of the locations where magic bleeds in are the result of magic users mucking with stuff they shouldn’t. Anyways, to answer your question the aether is another dimension or layer of the universe. Long story short, a magic user or a group of magic users can carve realms out of the aether that you can then travel to.”

Jake muttered, “Pocket worlds, neat.”

Another student muttered, “That could be useful.”

Alex ignored the rest of the class’s murmurings of “That’s so cool and holy cow…” and various other things that blended in the background as her mind went to work with possibilities. “How?”

“Let‘s just go with the how not being important right now. The how is covered in the aether control class. The important thing to remember is that the creator or creators sets the laws of the pocket space that they create, both legal and in some cases metaphysical. I recommend not traveling to anyone’s personal realm unless you’re friends or you have a magical contract filed with the school or an association that guarantees an acceptable level of hospitality. That’s the official stance on the pocket realms…” She took a minute to look each of her students in the eyes for a couple of seconds to make sure they were paying attention to her. “My advice is to have a contract for every world that you enter, friends or not. It might seem rude but considering the risks… I want you all safe.”

Alex frowned. “So what you’re basically saying is that people are evil?”

Miss Ashford asked, “Before today how many of you would have thought I had ever owned Lily?”

Alex gulped as she realized that her teacher had a very good point, just because you thought you knew someone didn’t mean you did.

Matt asked curiously, “Are we going to be able to make people like Lily?”

Miss Ashford rolled her eyes as Matt asked the question that a lot of young men asked her every year. “It might take a few years and a lot of work but if that’s the direction you want to go with your training then I don’t see why not.”

Dana glared at Matt. “You’re such a boy.”

Alex had to admit that creating creatures sounded interesting. “I bet you could use the same skills to create a unicorn if you wanted Dana.”

“Oh… that could be cool,” Dana admitted.

Jake muttered, “Or monsters.”

Miss Ashford glanced at the clock, “Wow, time flies when you’re having fun. Let me just say a couple more things then I’ll let you leave before I get a bunch of angry phone calls. You’ve already been assigned your core classes based on the aptitude shown on your end of the year tests. You’ll need to pick up a science and look at what field of magic you want to study now that you have the basics. I also suggest looking at the audit option for some of the higher level classes that are taught later in the afternoon. Anyways, look over your information packet with your parents and please e-mail your selection after Wednesday and before next Friday. The correct e-mail is on the back of the packet. Any other last minute questions?”

Alex’s mind was spinning with the new information. She glanced at the rest of the students and wondered where everyone would be in a couple of years. She felt sorry for anyone Matt ended up creating. It wasn’t that he was a bad person but he was the type of person that was more worried about how to do something than if he should do something.  

Sally shook her head, “I think we’re good…”

“If any of you need anything feel free to e-mail me until Friday. After that I’m going on vacation and you’re not my problem anymore.” She laughed at the shocked faces of her students, “And by that I mean feel free to drop an e-mail saying hello but don’t expect me to be in teacher mode. Class dismissed for the last time.”

Alex let the rest of the students exit first as she resisted the urge to hug her favorite teacher. “Thanks for being a great magic teacher.”

Miss Ashford winked, “You’re welcome. Just remember that college might sound scary but once you get used to it you’ll do fine.”

“I’ll try.” Alex smiled as she headed out of the classroom. She could tell that most of the other students in the halls were anxious to get home and see what the new classes were about. She ignored the whispered comments and overheard plans of her fellow students as she made her way through the crowd toward the tapestry gate that would take her home.