The Arena (12 page)

“That concludes our high-level overview of Lycans. I have sent each of you a file you can download onto your Kindle for further reading on the subject. Before we dismiss class, does anyone have any questions?”

I was still thinking about everything we had learned in class. It was a lot to take in about a creature I thought was a myth until right now. I wanted to know more, but I also didn’t want everyone to hate me for making them stay longer.

“Professor, when you say we take direct action, what do you mean?” I just blurted out.

He looked at me as if maybe I was pulling his leg. “I mean we send a member of the Ascendancy to dispatch the rogue Lycan.”

“And a single member of the Ascendancy can kill a rogue or a group of rogue Lycans alone with no backup?”

“Without a doubt. Anything else on your mind?”

“That was it. Thanks, Professor.” It was crazy to think that one day I might be able to fight a Lycan or a group of them alone and come out of it alive. Even Selene didn’t relish the thought of doing that, but hey, all she had was guns. I had something else I could rely on. At least I hoped I did.

“All right, then. Everyone, class is dismissed,” the professor announced before turning his back on the class and wiping down the chalkboard.

A
month
into my stay at the academy, I knew two things for certain: that I had not made any friends yet, and that I also had at least one enemy. I still wasn’t sure why that douchebag Ted had singled me out, but he had, and there was nothing I could do about it now. Most of the students seemed to like to be alone. I wondered if this was a magic-user thing, or if none of us had really had a chance to bond yet. All of us were in direct competition and challenging each other every day. While that served to make all of us better, it might have also put a barrier in place for creating new friendships.

Today was going to be the day we used magic for the first time. After months of talking about it, I was ready to find out if I could actually do it. Most of the students here had grown up using magic, so they had an edge. I grew up thinking magic belonged on the big screen while I was killing a pack of red vines and kicking back on the couch. It really shouldn’t bother me too much that they had a head start, but the more time I spent at this academy, the less I wanted to go back into the real world. This place had started to feel like home. If I couldn’t use magic, my time here would be at an end.

I caught Professor Dreslin sitting alone at lunch. He was reading a paper and drinking a glass mug of hot coffee. I’d have bet it was black; he seemed like the kind of person who liked no frills. “Hey, Professor, can I ask you a quick question?”

He folded the paper over and looked at me. “Sure thing, Jackson.”

“I’m a little nervous about this magic class after lunch. I’ve never really used magic before.”

“Jackson, trust me when I tell you this: you are going to be fine.” He gave me a warm smile, which was out of place for him.

“That is what I keep telling myself, but I’m just not sure,” I said with a shrug of my shoulders.

“Look at it this way: do you want to be able to use magic? Then you will be able to. Relax and have fun with it. This is just the beginning.”

“It’s just with all the talk of fighting and maybe dying, it seems as if having fun isn’t an option.”

“After the first time you tangle with a Lycan, come and find me. If you didn’t have fun, we are going to have to find you a different line of work.”

“Thanks for the quick chat, Professor. I’ll let you get back to your lunch now.”

He watched me for a second and then unfolded his paper and started reading. I headed over to the make-your-own-sandwich bar. For today, the choice seemed simple: pastrami, Swiss cheese, lettuce, tomato, onion, mayo, and mustard. A side of fries or two might have also found their way onto my plate, as well as a giant chocolate chip cookie. It was highly possible that I saved that cookie from possible extinction. Ok, who was I kidding? When it came to cookie extinction, I was a world-ender.

Lunch seemed to end faster than I would have imagined, and it was time to head off to my first class of casting spells. Everyone I passed in the hallways was bouncing around with uncontained excitement. The energy in the air was palpable. All I felt was frightened. I could feel my muscles growing tense with every step I took closer to where I would find out my fate. Being a complete failure was not off the table, no matter how many people told me I’d be fine. Sarge had said the same thing last night, but it didn’t make me feel any better.

I was really getting worked up walking down the hall, almost to the point of feeling like I just needed to turn around and go back home. I felt a hand on my shoulder. If this was Blondie, I was going to get in big trouble for knocking him out. I turned around and was greeted not by Ted but by warm brown skin and the gentle bounce of the beads tied into his dreadlocks.

“Whoa, easy there, Jackson,” Marcus said while slowly removing his hand from my shoulder. “For a second there, I thought you were going to hit me.”

“I was going to for a second.” He gave me a quizzical look. “Well, not you, but I thought it might have been someone else, and I’ve been thinking about hitting him for a while now.”

Marcus started laughing. I thought he might have found it wrong that I wanted to hurt a fellow student, but that obviously wasn’t the case. He put his hand back on my shoulder and leaned in so he could speak more softly.

“That’s ok, man. Everyone hates Ted, he’s a dick.”

That got me laughing right along with him. “So, what up, Marcus?”

“I just saw you storming down the hall and it seemed so different from your usual walk. I wanted to make sure you were doing ok. You worried about class today?”

“Hell yeah, I’m worried! I’ve never cast a spell in my life. I’m afraid I’m going to screw it up in front of everyone. The last thing I want to do is give Ted anything else to use against me.”

“Take a breath, bro. Half these kids think they are God’s gift to magic but couldn’t light a candle from twenty feet away. Most of them haven’t been allowed to train or practice. For them, this will be just as intimidating as it is for you.”

I wondered if he was just humoring me, but it sure made me feel better. “What about the other half?”

“Well, the other half are really, really good. Some of these kids have parents who have trained them to do nothing else since they were born. A chance to join the Ascendancy was a big deal. That alone could bring some pretty serious advantages to a family. It used to be the best path to a seat on the Council, until they had a major falling out eighteen years ago.”

I was a little confused. We were not covering the Council until next week in class. “Marcus, I know this is going to sound dumb, but what is the Council?”

“The Council is the highest seat in our government; they set the rules and dictate the course for all of the Gifted going forward. In reality, they are a bunch of old-school dicks, but we have not been able to shake them off yet. While America is free, the Gifted are still under the thumb of English rulers.”

“Hey, thanks for taking my mind off of class. Are you ready for this?”

“Yeah, bro, I’m one of the other half. Good luck.” He gave me a huge smile.

He chuckled and walked away. I followed him down the hallway to where we were meeting the teachers. Marcus was a lucky guy, having been trained to use his gift from a young age. He was also the first person to talk to me other than a teacher since I came here. I thought I might have just made my first friend. At least I had done something right today. Time to suck it up and stop dragging my feet. This was my chance to use magic.

I hadn’t ever been to the training room before, but like everything else at the academy, it was easy to find. The room was located eight stories underground, and that would have been impressive in most places; in Arizona, it was unheard of. The clay in the soil normally prevented people from the expense of digging even a simple basement. I had a pretty good feeling they hadn’t used just equipment to get this far underground here. Magic had probably played a strong role in hollowing this space out.

The room was huge; the ceilings were fifty feet above our heads and the cavern extended at least three football fields away from the entrance. The walls and the roof had been painted with some kind of writing. I wondered what it was for—could it be protection in case someone cast a spell that got out of control?

I was surprised by the amount of people waiting for us at the entrance. By my count, there were thirty-five people watching us walk into the room. That was one person for every student, and five extra. All of them were wearing light, white loose-fitting tunics and pants. The exact same kind of clothes my father had left in his chest. For the first time, I wondered what had happened to it. Would I ever see it again? I had my doubts.

One of the instructors stepped forward and addressed the class. “Today will be your first day actively practicing how to use your gift. I know some of you have been waiting for this moment for a long time: the chance to finally let yourself go, to become what you were always meant to be. So today we will be providing individual instruction, but we will also be judging your first task at the end of class today.”

A small groan escaped from the students around me. The teacher seemed not to notice and continued speaking. “For the first hour today, we will be going over techniques on how to access and use the mana inside of you. Then we will work on several basic spells. At the end of class, each student will be asked to showcase a spell they have learned today. I know it feels like a lot of pressure to have a task assigned at the start of your first day, but this is the type of situation you will find yourselves in often. The teachers have already been assigned students for the day. Just stay where you are and they will find you.”

The teacher who had done the introduction walked right up to me. I felt a little elbow in my back and turned to see Marcus laughing. He mouthed, “You’re going down,” and laughed until his own instructor appeared next to him.

Not sure what to expect, I was a little surprised when the instructor stuck out his hand. “Hi, I’m Mike; it’s nice to meet you, Jackson.”

I made sure to give his hand a firm squeeze, but not too firm. “So, what are we going to do today, Mike?”

He smiled at me. I thought he could pick up on the nervous energy flowing through my body. “Well, first I am going to need you to relax. Let’s have some fun. You know how many people would kill to be standing in your shoes right now? How could this not be your favorite class? You are going to get to use magic. Magic! How freaking cool is that?”

He continued to chat with me as we moved away from the other students. I was surprised he was a recent graduate of the academy and was a frontrunner to join the Ascendancy. I was thrilled to be talking with someone who was excited about being here and had dedicated himself to the cause. His endless enthusiasm was contagious. He stopped walking and faced me.

“All right, Jackson, let’s get started, and try not to look so worried. I can feel the power radiating off you. That means you can do this; you just have to focus. The first thing I want you to do is try and find the source of your power. Think of it as something that moves through your body but has a central location in your core. Let me know when you can feel it.”

I closed my eyes, hoping that would make it easier to follow Mike’s instructions. I reached into my memories, thinking of when I had been so full of endless energy. I felt something, just a trickle at first, and then it was as if a gate opened and I felt my power fill me with energy. The sensation was like nothing I had experienced before. “I can feel it.”

“Ok, perfect. Now, I want you to try and bring that power you feel down to your hands. When you have it in your hands, I want you to think about a bright blue fire.”

I could feel the power moving through me, toward my hands. I started thinking about fire, just like I had seen when the professor held the burning paper in class.

I focused on it until Mike’s voice broke my concentration. “Jackson, open your eyes.”

When I opened my eyes, I was surprised to see that both of my hands were encased in bright blue flames. Mike took a piece of paper from his robe and touched it to the flame. I watched as it quickly burned to ash.

I was doing it. I was using magic.

“Ok, Jackson, you are doing great. Now, I want you to focus on pulling that uncontrolled fire into a small ball in each of your hands. Once you have the ball resting in your palms, command it to fly out to a spot on the wall.”

Focusing on my hands, I thought of something about the size of a baseball. I watched as the flames pulled in on themselves, forming two perfect orbs of burning blue fire. The fire on my hands was now completely extinguished. I picked out the center of one of the symbols on the wall and willed the balls to hit it. I watched, amazed, as they flew across the room and collided with the spot I had been thinking about. Awesome! I’d just thrown my first fireball! Seriously, a real-deal fireball. Who would have ever thought it was possible? It took everything inside of me not to yell out and do a fist pump.

Mike pulled my attention back to him. “Did they hit the spot you were thinking of?”

“They did, and almost at the exact same time.”

“Great job, Jackson. Now, I am going to ask you to do that again, but this time to hit spots that I call out, and only one at a time. Got it?”

“I think I can do that.”

For the next forty minutes, Mike drilled me in aiming at multiple targets. By the end, I could track four separate spots on the wall and hit all of them dead on. Then he had me try six spots, and I almost hit another student.

He laughed it off. “Ok, too soon for six. Time to move on to something else. I want you to imagine your power around you like a shield. You can use whatever shape you want, just know that the larger it is, the more mana it costs to cast and maintain. Also, it needs to be able to cover you from all directions. That includes below your feet and above your head. Let me know when you have it.”

I pulled the power around me, thinking of the transporter from
Star Trek
. I capped off the field around myself just above my head and below my feet. I looked at Mike. “I’m ready.”

He reached inside his robe and pulled out six tennis balls. He started using his magic to hurl the balls at me from all directions, testing my shield. Seemingly satisfied, he turned away and then sprang back, setting all six balls on fire and bringing them down on me from above. My only thought was to reinforce the top of my shield. I was happy to see the balls bounced once and then turned to ash. That had been pretty intense.

“Awesome job again. Way to increase the strength of your shield when you sensed danger coming. Also, super-fast reflexes; we might make something out of you yet. Just for reference: during a longer battle, you may only want to put your personal shield around certain parts of your body, but we are going to work on that later. Right now, I want to show you one handy trick, and then we need to prepare for the contest.”

I had been looking at the runes on the wall while Mike talked, and turned to tell him ok when I noticed he was gone. I took a step forward and smashed my head into something hard.