One
The newly formed Academy of Outcasts was the talk of the Under Slump.
Sure, we had no money, barely any magical element to work with, and no clue what we were doing, but we were an officially sanctioned school of wizardry now, and that made us special. Most of the other magical academies in the Core were located in the prestigious Collegium District. While it took a great deal of natural aptitude—or a lot of bribe money—to get admitted into one of those fancy schools, we’d accept anybody!
Word had gotten out among the city’s aspiring mages that our academy wasn’t very good,but… we were open for business, and that was something.
Our founder was the legendary wizard, Gaul “the Mutilator” Haddar. Only, he’d left the Core City and returned to the Elemental Plane of Fire to hunt pirates. Leaving me—a lowly rank-one nobody—in charge in his absence, which would take who knew how long.
So, deprived of actual knowledgeable experienced leadership, I’d spent the last few months getting things running and trying to keep our new students from blowing themselves up or unleashing curses which might kill us all.
I’d been successful… Mostly.
“Carnavon! Come quick.”
I looked up from my latest spell-crafting experiment to see what all the commotion was about. Diverting my attention took a bit of finesse, because I was experimenting with Red, the volatile magical element from my home plane, which got real excitable once you started enchanting it. Azarin Garzade was standing in the entrance to the fire practice room, gesturing for me to follow her.
“What is it?”
“Trouble in the earth room.”
Though she was a little flustered from running across our tower to get here, I found her pretty as ever. Tall, graceful, and blonde, she was the opposite of the hardy Fogo girls I’d grown up around. It turned out I had a thing for air-realm girls. Though, to be fair, I’d only met one air-realm girl so far, but I’d already fallen for her reckless and impulsive ways.
“I thought you were getting better at earth magic.”
“I am. I’ve been practicing my ass off,” she said with quite a bit of pride. “But this one’s not my fault. Sifuso is being attacked by a dirt slug.”
“Again?” I carefully moved the small pieces of lead away from the activated Red powder so as to not accidentally melt a hole in the metal workbench. Since this was the room we’d set aside for experimenting with fire magic, the only flammable things allowed in here was us. “That’s the second time this week.”
“He’s really bad at that spell, Oz.”
Sifuso was a nearly seven-foot-tall lizard man, who looked like he’d stepped out of a swampy nightmare, who tested as anatural rank two, one whole rank above me and Azarin, which meant he should have been far more capable at magic than either of us… Except, running this place had rapidly taught me that natural talent and brains weren’t synonyms.
“Sifuso really should be able to handle one little Elemental spirit without the rest of us holding his claws.”
“You’d think that, but—” Azarin was interrupted by an extremely loud bang from down the hall. “I think this slug might be a bit of a mutant.”
As one of the five founding members of our academy, Azarin and I were part of ourStudent Council. Those appointments were based on who I’d trusted to not rob the place or accidentally kill us. We were supposed to be the responsible ones. With Azarin being the most reckless and headstrong of us five, if she’d swallowed her pride enough to come ask for my help, the situation was actually bad.
Someone began screaming. That noise was followed by the crashing of furniture and the breaking of glass.
“You’re going to want to bring your gun and fire magic.”
I sighed, fairly certain this wasnothow the proper magical academies functioned. I brushed all the Red I’d been working with back into its protective pouch and shoved that in my pocket. After we left the fire room, I grabbed my gun belt from where I’d left it hanging on a peg in the hall, far enough away that the cartridges in the loops wouldn’t cook off if my spell went wrong.
“I swear, Azarin, if Sifuso keeps screwing up, we might need to kick him out.”
“He’s far from our dumbest student; that’s clearly Rufus! And Sifuso’s one of the few who actually had the coin to pay his tuition. That lacertian is the reason we bought food this month.”
“Good point.” It turned out there was a valid reason all the proper academies turned away so many applicants. Frankly, itwas because most aspiring wizards were trash at magic and not rich enough to make up for the inconvenience they caused by learning. “Let’s go slap a bandage on the latest self-inflicted wound.”
The Academy of Outcasts was situated in one of the unshattered sections of the fallen Tower of Primopolus, which had once been the tallest structure in all the realms. The nice thing about living in the ruins of an ancient mage tower was that we had a large, sturdy structure all to ourselves. The main downside was that everything was sideways, because that was how this section landed fifty years ago when the spell holding the whole unnatural thing up had failed.
The tower had toppled over and flattened whole neighborhoods beneath. What had once been The Tower was now known as The Tube. Many internal walls were shattered, and floors had buckled. Our stairs and doorways were difficult to navigate, and many of the surfaces we walked around on were concave because they’d been part of the outer walls of the once mile-tall structure.
The worst part, though? The place was also obnoxiously haunted. A mad wizard’s prideful experiment squishing thousands of innocent bystanders all at once tends to create a lot of restless dead who refuse to move on, but our ghosts had been quiet so far today. If Sifuso’s latest mistake riled them up and they started moaning and throwing things again, I was going to be extra annoyed.
Due to the sideways architecture, it took Azarin and me a minute to get to the earth room. Fifty years ago, when this edge of the toppling tower had struck the buildings below, this part of the outer wall had been pulverized and driven deep into the ground. The result was a dirt floor in this section, which was perfect for practicing earth spells.
