Siphon (A Touch of Power Book 1)

by Jay Boyce

  Jade and Tisha stared in awe as they entered the giant building, though Jade quickly neutralized her expression. There were a few people coming and going who all gave the princesses little bows of respect as they passed, gawking curiously at the girl walking with them. As the subject of their curiosity, Jade just smiled enigmatically and tried not to show how much she was in awe of this place.

  It was a huge square building with two stairwells that impressively went all the way to the fifth floor from what she could see from the bottom. In the center of the building was what she assumed would be a courtyard, but it only went up two stories. Thankfully, Camille interjected. “There are three practice courtyards, one on floors 1-2, one on 3-4, and one that’s open air on the fifth. There are twenty classrooms per floor on floors 2-5. Floor one is mainly offices and personal workshops of the professors. There’s also a few shopfronts where you can buy the things other students have made in their classes.”

  She led them up the stairwell, pausing on floor two. “This is where all the Magic Classrooms are. It’s actually quite strange that your room is…” She paused in front of the first door, which distinctly read ‘2A.’ With a look of understanding, she smiled. “Nevermind, it makes sense now. They gave you the blood magic classroom. We haven’t had a teacher for that in ages, so it hasn’t been used.”

  Jade winced inwardly. Did they know? This felt like bad karma. Still, she took the key and inserted it into the lock, drawing the curious scrutiny of a few people who were lounging in the hall nearby. They were taking a rest, and she figured they might have been the ones moving the furniture because there was a stack of desks still sitting next to them as if waiting to find a new home.

  Upon walking into the classroom, she forgot all about her supposed bad karma. Huge windows let in copious amounts of the light emitted by the setting sun. She realized she was on the west side, so she’d always be able to see the sunset. Happy with that realization, she took inventory of the rest of the room.

  The desks she’d seen earlier had left their marks on the stone floor, the places where they’d been appearing lighter, protected from the wear of time or the collection of dust. Speaking of, she could tell they’d done a light cleaning, but the layer of dust wasn’t something a light brush off was going to fix.

  She was happy to find that she had almost an entire wall of shelves and several large tables new to the room were spread about evenly. There was also a small section of the room that was a little different, given that there was a small couch, chair, and table, creating a cozy little sitting area in one corner near the window. The room was big and perfect!

  “This is amazing!” She couldn’t help but gasp out her admiration. Camille and Tisha had been walking around inspecting everything too. They grinned and nodded.

  “They did a good job at getting you the right room. This way, you’ll be close enough that you can come over between classes if you need to without having to run all over campus!”

  Jade grinned, “I know, it’s great! Let’s get everything out! I can’t wait to start playing with it! I mean...practicing. I want to practice.” She grinned ruefully as Camille just stuck out her tongue.

  Camille walked over to the little sitting area, trying to pull out the coolbox when she frowned and hesitated, “Uhm… We may have a little problem? I don’t quite think I’m strong enough to get all this out without breaking it…”

  Jade frowned. This was a problem. Strength wasn’t the forte of any of the girls, though she knew Camille and Tisha were still stronger than her… Thinking of something, she grinned. “No worries, I got this!” Walking to the door, she opened it to find the group of men still sitting there, occasionally glancing at her door. It appeared they were waiting on word of where to take the desks. She smiled innocently at them and called out, “Excuse me, but we could use some help unpacking a few things that are too heavy for us, and we don’t want to accidentally break them. Can someone come help us?”

  She wasn’t usually a fan of acting like the damsel in distress, but she really didn’t want her stuff to get ruined before she even got to use it! She was gratified to see that her little ploy had worked though. They had all been watching the room far too curiously, especially once they saw her enter with the princesses. It looked like they were having a staring match before a few of them won out. Four of them started walking over smugly, having stared down the others with their intimidation.

  “We’d be happy to help you, miss…?” The guy who exhibited the most authority had both offered their unpaid labor and asked for her name without blinking. She nicknamed him Tarzan in her head because his dark brown dreads were tied back in a ponytail and he more or less had the same muscled physique, as far as she could tell.

  She grinned and articulated, “Lady Jade. It’s a pleasure to meet you all, and thank you for the help. If you’ll just follow me, Camille and Tisha are waiting.” Let them think what they would of her leaving off their titles. They nodded and she led them inside. Camille looked a little startled that she had come back so quickly, then quickly smiled and turned princess mode back on.

  “Baronet Tristan, Sir Darian, Sir Dashiel, Sir Prescott. It’s lovely to see you again. Have you come to help us settle Jade in?” Camille had greeted them in turn so Jade could see exactly which one was which on purpose. Jade smiled gratefully, having quickly caught on to what she was doing. She promptly offered each of them her hand as well, intent on collecting her blinking dots.

  Darian had straight sandy blond hair, which was also tied back into a low ponytail. He honestly reminded her of Thor, which was only compounded by the red tunic he wore and the large hammer at his waist. Dashiel seemed to live up to the dash part of his name, having a more wiry build. He honestly reminded her more of the sneaky Stephen given his darker toned clothes, short dark brown hair, and concealed weaponry. Prescott had a bow slung over one shoulder and a dark green tunic, so she automatically dubbed him Hood in her head. It didn’t hurt that he had a roguish grin with a scar at the corner of his mouth and nice dimples. All four of them were in their late twenties if she had to guess.

  “I do believe we have. We simply weren’t aware of who was taking over this room.” Jade admired Tristan’s smooth fishing for information. Camille was gesturing for her to answer though because she wasn’t sure how much Jade wanted to tell people.

  Jade just grinned. People would find out sooner or later, especially when rumors started going around that she was taking every single magic class. “Yes, I’m afraid they went to quite a lot of trouble to give me a space to work in. As a traveler, there are many things I’d like to recreate from my old world, and thankfully I’ve been learning all the necessary magics to help me do so.”

  Tristan caught the pertinent words in her explanation, such as traveler and necessary magics. He observed her in a new light, but it contained even more curiosity, and even a tiny bit of reverence. “What magics have you been learning?”

  Jade smiled and shrugged nonchalantly, “Oh, you know. Just the basics so far. Water, wind, light and dark, metal, and healing. I’m excited to pick up the rest.” They were gaping at her like she was crazy, go figure. She just smiled and redirected their attention. “Well, we’ve got a lot to do and not much time to do it. A great deal of what we got is fairly heavy as well as delicate.”

  She pointed around the room to the unloading spots she wanted as she continued. “I’d like all the glass on this table, metal next to it, the stones and gems next to that, then the wood blocks, and on that last table we’ll put all the fabric. If you’ll put the chests up against the north wall, the weapons can go on the shelves, the coolboxes in the northwest corner by the couch, and the small cabinet can go over there as well with the papers and ink. Oh! Let’s put one of the blankets over there as well.” She paused, trying to think if she’d missed anything.

  “I think that’s it. If you find something you have a question about, feel free to ask me. I’m just going to be doing a little more cleaning.”


  Camille looked startled at that. “Jade, you don’t need to clean, we can get someone to come do that…”

  Jade just grinned. “No no, it’s fine. It’s good practice to raise my magic anyway.” Every single one of them looked confused, so she just waved them off. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll be here if you need me. Let’s get started!”

  Unable to understand what she wanted, but also feeling unable to contest her at this point, they all started to unpack the bag at Camille’s direction as she told them where to put everything, since it was boxed up and only she knew what was in each.

  Meanwhile, Jade stood out of the way, concentrating. There was no conveniently available bucket of water for her to grab, but there was the air, and she’d already noticed there was a bit of humidity. That was going to be miserable in the winter, if there was a winter here. Was winter coming? Shaking her head at her absent-mindedness, she held her hand out, concentrating on pulling the water out of the air. It started to form a little ball floating above her hand, growing larger until she had a ball around the size of a cantaloupe.

  She heard Tisha gasp beside her, “Oooh, so pretty! Where did you get that though? It’s like it came out of nowhere!”

  Directing the water to the walls first, she pushed it along the surface, mentally commanding it to dislodge the dirt and pull it free. The water began collecting impurities as it rushed across the stone, leaving the stone several shades brighter in its wake. She explained absentmindedly to Tisha as she did so. “I pulled it from the air. Much of the air around us is saturated with oxygen molecules, which when combined with hydrogen, form water. Since they both occur naturally, the water is there in the air, just invisible. We call it humidity.” Okay, her explanation may not have been perfect, but it was the best that she could remember and she was distracted. The point was that there was water in the air.

  “Humidity…” Tisha murmured, staring at the magic Jade was working. Soon her water was dark with dirt, and she frowned, pulling it away from the wall. She’d only managed to clean around 4 feet from ceiling to floor. She held the dirty water, floating it above her hand as she studied it. “What’s wrong?” Tisha asked innocently as she too stared into the dirty globe of water like it had all the answers.

  “I need to pull the dirt out, but I haven’t learned earth magic yet, and I just realized we don’t have a bucket or something I can put it in.”

  “Oh here, let me!” Tisha reached forward with excitement, a concentrated look on her face as she slowly drew the dirt towards her hand. Jade helped by pulling the water away from the dirt, and then they were left with two balls, one of clean water and a smaller one of gritty dust. Jade immediately sent the water to the wall to scour some more as she glanced around, trying to see if she had somewhere to put the dirt.

  With a shrug, she pointed over to an unused section of the shelves. “Just set it there for now. I’ll probably just use it to begin my practice of earth magic later since it’s not expensive.” Tisha rolled her eyes at Jade’s money-pinching, but obediently took it over to said corner to deposit it. She then followed Jade around, helping her clean the water ball every few feet and depositing the dirtballs. Jade had entirely cleaned one wall when she stopped, walking over to the couch to slump down.

  “Are you okay?” Tisha was hovering over her like a worried mother hen.

  When Camille noticed, she too came over, checking her with quick efficiency as she pronounced, “Magic drain. She’ll be fine after she rests for a bit.” Thinking of what Jade had said earlier, she pulled out some of the food from where they’d stashed it and handed it to Jade, who started to eat gratefully.

  “Thanks. I’m just a little lightheaded. I’ll be fine in about five minutes.”

  “Five minutes? It takes most people about an hour to recover from magic drain.” Tristan had walked over to see what was going on and caught their conversation.

  Camille interjected in explanation to Jade, who was looking quizzical at why Tristan considered himself an expert, “Tristan is the assistant teacher for the classes on fire magic.” Well, that made more sense.

  Jade smiled at Tristan and yawned before replying, “Then I look forward to your class on Monday. And I’m not sure how long it takes for other people to recover, but it only takes me about five minutes as long as I eat something. I think I drained myself over fifty times last night when I was lighting up my reading room.”

  “You did WHAT?” The surprised and slightly angry exclamation came from the door, and when she glanced over, she saw a somewhat peevish Stephen. He was walking over menacingly, and she could almost see little storm clouds circling above his head. Interestingly, she saw Dashiel searching around like he wanted a place to hide from Stephen’s wrath. Perhaps there was more than just a passing similarity there...

  But more importantly… When had he gotten there?

  Still, she knew she was in trouble when he spoke again. “Just to be clear, you’re saying you drained yourself nearly fifty times in a row, while you were alone, when no one was checking up on you, or even knew you were practicing magic?”

  Oops?

  Chapter Twenty-Five – Overload

  Jade didn’t want to deal with the wrath of the ninja spy. She wearily held her hand up and smiled wanly. “I solemnly swear that I was only up to good and didn’t realize it was an issue. If you guys don’t tell me the rules on this crap, how am I supposed to know I’m breaking them?”

  Stephen sighed, his anger deflating as he muttered softly, “You need a keeper.” Looking around and seeing that Camille had stopped pulling anything out and that the guys were just hovering curiously, he smiled menacingly at them and said with complete innocence at the same time, “Thank you for helping out. They’ve decided where to put the desks now, so you may go. I’ll help them with anything further they need.”

  “Of course, Viscount. Good day, Princess Camille, Princess Tisha, Lady Jade.” The four men bowed and then scurried out.

  Jade raised a brow and asked, “Was that really necessary? They were quite helpful.” Also, good to know that Stephen was also a viscount.

  Stephen sighed, tapping her on the forehead. “As a traveler, you can act differently as you wish and people will allow or tolerate it. Encouraging others to do the same is not always a good thing. There’s a hierarchy for a reason.” Jade frowned. She wasn’t fond of the whole hierarchy thing.

  She decided to voice her complaint. “I don’t like it though. In my head, all people are created equal.”

  It was Camille who interjected. “They may be created equal, but they don’t stay that way. People with opportunities will always fly higher. It’s an inevitable chain of events at that point. People who are elevated will help their friends and family, and each group grows stronger. Our positions come with privilege, but also with certain expectations. We protect them from monsters, we maintain order, and we maintain the city. Sure, maybe their lives aren’t perfect, but at least they’re alive to live them.”

  Jade nodded slowly. “I still don’t really like it, but I understand. One thing though, you talk about monsters like they’re normal. I realize magic is probably mostly combat oriented for a lot of people, but it’s unlikely I will follow that path. I don’t want to fight monsters, and I can’t guarantee I wouldn’t freeze up and get people killed if I tried. So just in case people are getting the idea to make me into some superweapon…it’s not going to happen. I’m much happier using my magic to improve the quality of life.”

  Stephen frowned a little, exchanging a glance with Camille. “It’ll be hard to avoid. Hunting parties are part of the requirement of the school.”

  Jade smiled and shrugged. “I guess I’ll cross that bridge when we get there.” Or I’ll leave. As much as you’ve all done for me, if you try to force my hand, I’ll find a different path. She smiled innocently, not letting her true thoughts show through. However, this had planted a seed of doubt in her mind. She silently vowed to become as strong as possible, as qu
ickly as possible. Only when she was strong enough to defend herself would she truly be free to choose her own path.

  Deciding to change the subject, she asked simply, “Anyway, what brings you here, Stephen?”

  He smiled down at her, then nodded at the princesses. “Someone said the princesses had come in with another girl, and the description matched, so I decided to come see.” Jade laughed. Gossip. She almost got into trouble because some ninnies couldn’t keep their mouths shut. He glanced around, examining the room. “So what are you trying to make here, anyway?”

  Jade smiled, shrugging, and got up, walking over to the glass table where ten small metal boxes lay innocently. “All sorts of things, really. Anything and everything I miss from my old world.” She opened the box, gently unwrapping one of the sculptures before she concentrated on lighting it up.

  All three of them had followed to watch her. As soon as she finished lighting it, she handed it to Tisha, who looked like she was dying to get a closer view. “Ooooh, it’s even better than I imagined! I wish I knew light magic!” Tisha cooed over the sculpture as Jade moved on, pulling out the next one. Camille eventually took it from Tisha, packing it back up and setting it in her bag once more. It became a line of Stephen watching curiously, Jade lighting them up and handing them to Tisha, who mooned over them until the next one was ready, at which point Camille took the last one and packed it up.

  On the sixth one, Jade smiled and finished lighting it up, then handed it to Stephen instead. “Eric picked this one out for you.” Eric’s was next, and Camille set it aside instead of wrapping it up. When she was done, she sighed in relief. Her magic had recovered, but she was still in the growing pains stages.

  “They’re just going to love these!” Tisha grinned happily, dancing about.

  Camille nodded. “They really will. Thank you.”

  Jade laughed. “Honestly, it’s nothing compared to all you spent on me today, so I should be the one saying thank you. At least I could do something in return!”