The Ancients

by Adam-Clay Webb

  But before her thoughts could turn to worry, Hawthorne’s voice stretched from some faraway room to another. “Haiku, darling! Remember to make the place extra sparkly today! I’m hosting that meeting--”

  “Yes, my lady, I know well!” Haiku’s voice returned. Hawthorne sounded like she was in a hurry, and Haiku sounded a little annoyed. Before long, still fastening buttons on her grand dress, Hawthorne brandished herself.

  “No time to eat as usual,” she muttered to herself, then looked at Clover like she had just remembered she was there. “Oh Clover!”

  “Good morning,” Clover greeted.

  “Sorry but I’m off in a hurry today,” she said, trying awkwardly to tie her hair with a purple ribbon. Clover got up and helped her quickly.

  “Thanks dear. Look, you’re a smart girl, so you’ll manage. There are some things you should have known before your first day at school, but you will figure things out. Here.” She grabbed Clover’s right hand and held it tightly. As she released it, a new mark was revealed on the back of her hand. It was a green seal that resembled the marking of her citizenship.

  “Now you’re registered,” she said, then grabbed up a glass of water from the table, gushing it down. “Come.”

  “But I’m not dressed yet!” The girl was in a thin white night dress. She had already dreamed of wearing it for Lex.

  “What were you doing all morning?!”

  “You don’t have a spell for that?”

  “It’s a forbidden technique!”

  “What? You’re joking, right?”

  “You’ll have plenty of time to dress up later. Come!” Hawthorne shifted with the girl. The startled Clover looked around, as if she was new to shifting. Looking almost just as frightened was a middle-aged woman who jumped up from her desk. Clover quickly realized that she must have been in the principal’s office. Books, scrolls and important-looking documents were everywhere. The room wasn’t very large but it seemed sophisticated. Clover could perceive a vibe of business all around. The noise of the school formed into a studious buzz as it passed through the thick brown walls of the office.

  “Elder Hawthorne!” the woman greeted as she stood, bowing a little. She looked younger than Hawthorne. She was a small-bodied woman with firm wrinkles on her face made stiff by creams that tried to make them disappear altogether.

  “This isn’t what I meant by ‘dropping in now and again,’” Hawthorne said apologetically. “Sorry for the sudden shift.”

  “Not at all,” the woman replied, laughing a little, not even noticing Clover.

  “This girl,” Hawthorne said, dragging the woman’s attention to Clover. “She is a special underling of mine who will begin school here.” The principal was obviously perplexed. This was unusual. Hawthorne wasn’t the spontaneous type, or the type to have an understudy of any sort. “Get her enrolled in Kuriu’s class. Give her the best room available. I’ll come back some time tomorrow to check in on her.”

  “I’ll take care of her, Ma’am,” the woman said with an assuring nod.

  “Councillor, how is the search for new Ogal Hands coming along?” the woman asked.

  Hawthorne sighed. “I’ll see today. Take care, Bromwell. Clover, be a good girl.” With that, Hawthorne left them a purple cloud.

  Clover and Principal Bromwell looked at each other for a few awkward seconds.

  “Well, you didn’t have to overdress,” the woman said, and she and Clover laughed. With that, though embarrassed, Clover had a good feeling about this woman.

  After a bit of small talk, interrupted now and again by staff members who needed a word with the principal, Bromwell finally asked Clover who she really was, and why Hawthorne had an interest in her. She didn’t know how to answer. The girl was saved by another knock on the door.

  “Come in!” Bromwell invited. Bromwell was far less intimidating a principal than Hawthorne was. The woman had humbly climbed up the ranks for years, being one of the teachers who had been at the school since its beginning. Though she wasn’t the strongest leader with the loudest voice and most fearsome glare, no one could really complain that Hawthorne chose her.

  “Good morning, Principal--”

  “Oh, just the teacher I needed to see!” Bromwell said, getting up.

  “Am I in trouble?” Kuriu asked jokingly.

  “I hope not,” the principal answered. “Hawthorne came by this morning.”

  Kuriu’s face tightened.

  “She dropped off this girl. Says she will be in your class from now on.” Clover looked at Kuriu a bit nervously.

  What’s going on? Kuriu wondered. Who is this girl, and why my class specifically? These were indeed valid questions.

  Kuriu spoke to Bromwell for a few minutes about some parts of the curriculum that she would like to see adjusted. With this new principal who loved to nod and smile, Kuriu could now certainly see some changes made that she was afraid to talk to Hawthorne about.

  “Come, Clover. We have a long history session ahead of us. The class is waiting already.” Clover went over to her teacher anxiously. “The seventeenth rule of the thirty-seventh section of the school rulebook says that students are not allowed to shift any at all during school hours except they are final years, when they would have been taught the art of shifting. But don’t worry, teachers can shift to their convenience!” Kuriu said, and grabbed on to Clover. Clover felt pretty pleased with herself, seeing she had already mastered what these people considered a high-level technique.

  Kuriu and Clover appeared in one of the hundreds of classrooms on the compound. Students were just bustling in, grabbing the seats they had deemed theirs. Clover was suddenly nervous. The class of students who looked like about Clover’s age quickly quieted to whispers here and there as students wondered who this new girl standing with the teacher was.

  “Good day class,” Kuriu greeted.

  “Good day, Ms. Sadasaki!” the class chorused, standing.

  “Be seated,” the teacher instructed, motioning with her hands. “Even though the year is almost over, we have a new student with us.” Of course, chattering resumed, annoying Clover. She wanted the awkward introduction to end so she could find a seat and start her journey as a student instead of being a spectacle. “Her name is…” She looked at Clover.

  “Clover Bengushi,” Clover said as boldly as she could manage to. There were whispers about what a strange name that was.

  “And where are you from, Clover?” Kuriu asked.

  “Libson. Magma Town,” Clover answered. Kuriu’s face brightened. She had never imagined having a student from so far away.

  “What’s it like there?” a girl asked excitedly. “Are there many sorcerers there?”

  “Not too many,” Clover answered.

  “She’s not from our country – maybe that’s why she dresses like that,” one girl whispered to another. Clover gasped in embarrassment, hearing. Her face reddened, and she had to restrain herself from shifting. She had forgotten that she was still wearing her night dress. She hung her head.

  “Alright, questions after class,” Kuriu said. “Grab a seat, Clover.” Clover scurried down to one of the empty seats at the back, pulling her desk right up to her, trying to hide her clothes. The room held about sixty students. Where the teacher stood at the front, was a massive whiteboard. Kuriu turned to the board and wrote with her finger; History. Many of the students sighed with agony. History was one of the most difficult, most boring subjects to most students.

  “Now, your exams will begin in a couple of days. I hope we’ve stopped wasting time,” Kuriu began.

  “Miss, can’t we revise some battle spells instead?” one boy asked in a groan.

  “Look, this is the final topic I will be teaching for the school year, and it is sure to come on your history exam, so pay attention!” Kuriu started. Kuriu wrote under the topic, The Elders. “Now which brilliant students remember which famous mage led the attack on the Ionide race?”

  “Sage Lukia!” a boy in the
front answered quickly.

  “Good, now Lukia’s story does not end there. It gets much darker. Nine years after leading the attack on the Iondies, Lukia was forced to step down as leader of the Oga Council.” Clover was already very interested in this piece of history, although she had learnt well that much of history had been contorted and tampered with so much that in many cases, lies completely replaced truth.

  The teacher went on to explain that Lukia was discovered practicing forbidden magic, which was a high crime. “Because Lukia was such a great leader of the council, he was not imprisoned for his actions. Instead, he was given a chance to retire and live out the rest of his life as a wealthy man, but was banned from using magic any at all. Of course, Lukia did not sit well with this.

  “Just three years after leaving the council, it came out that Lukia was the head of a new organization, a clandestine group of powerful arcanines who called themselves The Elders. Still, he never once attacked the council. It came to light that this organization was dabbling in highly illegal sorcery. This group was the most wanted, most criminal, most dangerous organization in its time – of all time, many scholars say!”

  “Were The Elders ever caught?” one boy asked.

  “Good question, Twain,” Kuriu continued. “Many operations were carried out to find and disband this group, but all failed. The group never once attacked the council, although with the powerful members they had, they were probably even stronger than the council.”

  “Stronger than the Ogal Council?!” one girl asked in disbelief. “You must be mistaken, Miss.”

  Kuriu laughed. She was happy that they were interested in the lesson. “Yes, so many believe. Remember, all these men were arcanines! So yes, the group always operated in the shadows, and the few times they were found by Ogal Councillors, though never by the entire council at once, some say, the councillors faced crushing defeats. This group was the first and last organization in history that was considered to be above the level of the Ogal Council of their time.”

  “Well, this group was led by Sage Lukia, so it’s no surprise,” one girl said without looking up from her book, scribbling notes quickly.

  “Indeed! Now, this group was made up of five persons; Lukia, Vis, Ohm, Shade and In. These five were each uniquely powerful, and they all had one thing in common – they studied illegal magic. Now, I will tell you a little about each of these persons. When you go home, go to chapter 90 in your history texts and read about them for yourselves.” Most of the students sighed. They already had so much readying and studying to do. And now this. An entire chapter to read.

  “Now we already know a lot about Lukia since we read all of four chapters on him. He was the fifteenth leader of the Ogal Council, and the prodigy who led the attack against the Ionides. The power of his attacks were at the level of second generation sorcerers – Lord Oga’s grandchildren, and his mana was virtually unlimited. To this day, no historian can account for this wizard’s anomalous strength.”

  Clover marvelled at this Lukia, wondering if he could have really been that strong. She wanted to believe that he was. If Lukia could be as strong as sorcerers from long before him, then maybe even she, a witch from thousands of years down the line, could achieve power of the sorcerers of old, and ultimately have a chance against Oga.

  Next, Kuriu looked at the man named Ohm, explaining that he specialized in sealing techniques and high-level summonings. “Ohm never used to kill his enemies,” Kuriu told the class. “He considered killing a waste of power. He would seal them away and then later use them as weapons.”

  Kuriu then discussed the only woman on the team, the one named In. She was also known as the Soul Walker. After Oga and Wizard, she was the first to master the Spirit Shift technique.

  “In wielded the frightening ability to not only challenge a person’s spirit itself, but she could also destroy the very soul, where the spirit is housed,” Kuriu said. Most of the students were sceptical of these powers. Whenever Kuriu started to get into distant history, it always sounded too unreal to be true.

  “Now we move on to a man named Vis, my personal favourite of the bunch,” the teacher continued. Clover found it odd that the teacher had a favourite criminal. Kuriu went on to explain that Vis had a more elevated mind than those around him. “It is unknown whether it is his elevated mind that led to his strange power, or it is the other way around,” Kuriu said. The class was anxious to know what these powers were.

  She went on to tell them that Vis was an illusionist who easily defeated all who faced him in battle. Vis had the ability to trap his opponents in vivid illusions that could be made indistinguishable from reality. He was known to summon his enemy’s own fear to torture them to death. “Vis could also alter people’s memories, removing and adding as he pleased. He could also tell exactly what his enemies were thinking, and knew all there was to know of an enemy’s strengths and weaknesses with just one glace.”

  Some of the students laughed on hearing this madness. Kuriu wrote some crucial notes on the board, something she always did when wrapping up a lesson.

  “Miss, you said there were five of them,” one boy reminded. “What about the fifth? You only discussed four.”

  “I’m glad you noticed,” Kuriu said. “The fifth was a man named Shade. His abilities and interests were so prohibited that even his name has been tabooed. He is only studied at special institutions for graduates.”

  “What?! What’s so special about him?” the same boy asked curiously.

  “We shouldn’t discuss that person. Don’t worry, he will not be coming on the exams, okay? Thank you, class. There is a scheduled meeting in my department today, so you’re dismissed early.” Kuriu seemed a little uneasy.

  There was a sudden happy noise that made most of the students forget about this Shade person.

  “Clover, Emma, see me,” Kuriu said over the noise. Clover and a girl she hadn’t noticed in class went up to the teacher while the rest of the class poured out.

  “It might be temporary, but Clover will be your new roommate. Also, show her around and give her the notes she needs.”

  “That sounds a bit much,” Clover said, already feeling like a burden.

  “No, no, it’s quite fine!” Emma said quickly.

  “Good. I have to run. Take care, you two.” With that, Kuriu shifted, leaving behind a green cloud.

  Clover noticed a boy still sitting at the back of the class, looking at her and Emma.

  “Don’t worry about him,” Emma said, glancing at him briefly as if trying to avoid eye contact. “He’s a real creep.” She didn’t even try to whisper. “Come on, let’s go to your new room!” Clover looked at the siting boy. He was short and wore red glasses, and carried a huge knapsack. There was something curious about him. She watched as he scribbled something in his book and tore the leaf out. He then took out something suspicious-looking from his bag. As he left it on the note, she realized it was probably just acting as a weight. Leaving the page on the desk, fixing his glasses and looking at her, he left.

  ***

  Even through her excitement of finally being at magic school, Clover found her new room pretty small and bare, and was already annoyed of Emma’s constant chattering, though Clover’s new friend did give her some pretty useful information about the school. There was a huge gap between how first through third year students operated and how the more senior ones did. Students, after the final exams of their first year, were streamed and placed in specific classes. Each stream had a number, and with that number came a stigma that defined how a student’s life would progress. There were twenty-one streams. Stream number 21 accommodated the students who got the lowest acceptable grades. Those who failed altogether would have to redo first year.

  Each stream in a year group was a class of about 100 students with a single teacher. That teacher would teach the classes for most of the sessions, while occasionally specialist teachers and guest lecturers would make appearances.

  The only thing that
saved Clover’s walls from complete bareness was a timetable that was painted on. The first through third years studied 5 subjects – History, Spells, Nations, Notherland and Science.

  “When you enter fourth year, you will have to choose one of the subjects to specialize in,” Emma explained. “I’m definitely going for science! I’m not that good at magic, so I won’t follow most of my friends and go into Spells.”

  “What happens after fourth year?” Clover asked. She was curious to know all there was to know about the school even though she was sure she wouldn’t be there much longer.

  “Well, final year is when things get pretty tough. You will have to select a subspecialisation of your area.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well… Under History, for example, there is World History, Notherlandian History, History of the Ogal Council, The Greats, The Life of Lord Oga, and a whole lot more I can’t remember!”

  “I see--”

  “For Spells, there’s Regeneration, Magical Warfare, stuff like that.”

  “Oh, I get--”

  “Under Science--”

  “I get the picture, Emma. Now, the most important thing is for me to learn everything I need to ace these exams.”

  “Which school were you attending before this one?” Emma asked. Clover realized Emma had assumed that she was a transfer student. Then again, it’s not like Emma could have imagined that Clover had never gone to school before.

  “Uh…”

  “Anyway” – it was like Emma just loved the sound of her own voice – “I need a study partner so this will work quite well!”

  “Yes, I’m sure,” Clover answered. Clover was already weary of her new friend.

  Chapter 10: Zakashi’s Master

  The harbour at Kundo was even as busy as the one they left behind in Libson. In the brawling disarray, Mike quickly took notice of a vessel heading to Luthor, the continent where Silver Village was waiting. He grabbed Zen roughly. “Take care!” he shouted to her so she could hear above the noise. The place had the raw scent of chaos. There were fights and shouts over who would get into which ship. There seemed to be no order in the harbour. “Take this!” Mike said, and shoved on Zen his bag of money, leaving for himself only his fare to reach Luthor. “I won’t need so much,” he said, “Now find this Cyrus guy as quick as you can, I’m heading out!”