Orange Arcanaeum was an homage to another world that never existed, seen through the lens of mages from Daihoon who had researched ancient texts that may have been more fiction than reality, and done up using modern-Earth building techniques.
It was all concrete towers the width of coliseums and a little bit taller than that, with major structures made of 10-foot-thick walls of solid stone. There was probably magic inside all of that construction, too, but Mark didn't really know.
Thick barrier walls surrounded the entire place, 100-foot thick at the base and a fraction of that width at the top, with the exterior surface like a cliff and the interior like a steep hill. This was to keep the monsters outside, but to allow people to escape the inside in the case of an emergency.
Here and there around the tops of buildings inside the walls of the arcanaeum, and on some of the coliseums themselves, jutting out from the sides, were twists of stone like mid-air bridges, ending in open spaces. Those were mage platforms.
Mages would gather at the ends of those juts of stone up there, with the open spaces in front of them, all in order to link their powers and cast great swaths of destruction upon whatever might be outside the walls, or attacking from the air. With lines of exploding light, they would cut down monster hordes… though not really. Sure; that worked. This place was built in that sort of style. But kaiju erased all defenses so this kind of architecture wasn’t even the style over on Daihoon. It was ‘end-times castle’ style, and it was mostly mythical, rather than realistic. Actual city walls were still straight up-and-down things, wide as a city block, and twice as tall. More minor mountains than ‘wall’.
The walls of the real city were far away from this place.
If there were places like this that existed for real over on Daihoon, then Mark didn’t know of them. According to what Mark knew, modern day defense on Daihoon (meaning the last 1000 years, of course) was all about roving bands of elites, actively going out and ending threats before they were found. Modern day Daihoon cities —even as ‘modern’ as 100 years ago— were more like New Tokyo or Buenos Piedra; defenses pushed out a hundred kilometers away from the main cities.
When the Veil broke and the worlds of Daihoon and Earth were once again joined 80 years ago, there was an information and assistance exchange. Nuclear bombs went from Earth to Daihoon to help them clear out the big threats of Daihoon, the ones that constantly threatened to ruin their world. Nuclear bombs were widely deployed here on Earth, too. Thanks to the mages, the usual nuclear fallout that would have ruined both worlds was instead cleansed away.
Soon, people were in control once again. There was turmoil, of course. But then the New Gods arose. Those gods and the reestablishing of the System on the moon were what really allowed humanity to retake land, and then keep it.
The archmages and the army generals and especially the superheros of Crystal Tower did a lot of the big work, but every day mages and warriors were the ones who did most of the work to keep the world safe. Most problems were better solved without nuclear weapons.
Mark wanted to be one of those people, on the front lines, making the world safer. He wanted to be one of the powerful, who could go anywhere and never be in danger and help others in his presence.
But for now he was stuck in the waiting area of Orange Arcanaeum, looking out the window at the lands beyond, waiting for their appointment to come due. He stared at the Arcanaeum and looked at all the people to pass the time. Dad passed the time reading a novel on his phone.
Orange Arcanaeum was absolutely filled with students walking between coliseums and chatting with each other. All the students wore little orange shoulder capes over their blue school uniforms. Professors wore grey shoulder capes and ties and tweed, or full grey robes. Mark only saw two professors walking around. No one in black robes at all; no archmages out in the open. Of course there wouldn’t be any archmages here, though. That’d be nuts.
… Still would be nice to see one. It’d be like seeing Red Thunder or Mistress Storm flying in person, but weirder, because archmages were rarer than superheroes. Which archmage could Mark even hope to see?
… He wasn’t quite sure. There were a few, right? Erketu was the most famous one. The ‘technoarchmage’. He worked mostly with City AIs, though. He was a Crystal Tower ‘native’, too, and that was all the way over in Japan, so he probably wouldn’t be here.
Mark sighed and turned back to sit in his chair.
He read the warning sign up ahead for the tenth time.
‘WARNING: For those who have not foregone the Tutorial, Orange Arcanaeum is OUTSIDE OF CURTAIN PROTOCOL. Beware your curious eyes and ears, lest you burn your mana channels and thus be ineligible for the Tutorial. WARNING: Do not study magic if you plan on taking the Tutorial.’
The signs were etched into the stone walls and painted red. They were permanent warnings; not something that could be easily taken down and changed. Mark was pretty sure that some mage could change them. A stone-kinetic, probably. Not most mages.
… Mark was 80% sure of that.
… 25% sure.
Not too sure at all, actually.
He didn’t know how magic worked, and that was by design. There were prohibitions about sharing magical knowledge absolutely everywhere. Curtain Protocol is what it was called. That was one of the reasons that baselines couldn’t go into hero towns, or anywhere on Daihoon. Not without specific clearances from the local governments, anyway.
And then there was Dad. Dad was —and Mark loved him anyway— kinda bad at magic, and he purposefully never talked about it at all aside from saying ‘I have bad habits so don’t watch what I do at all’. Mark always thought he had been bad on purpose, but as he grew up Mark lost that naivety. Dad’s Telekinesis was definitely more of a ‘fish-pull’, while Mom’s Cleanse was a ‘clean this water’ or, when she really pushed herself, a ‘40% dust cleaner’—
“What ya thinking about?” Dad asked, softly smiling as he looked at Mark.
“I’m annoyed at Curtain Protocol.”
Dad nodded. “I was that way, too. Trust me, though; it’s for a good reason. You either want to be a brawny, or an arcanaeum-trained mage. Tiny Knacks are not going to save you from a monster break.”
“Yeah yeah…” Mark admitted, “I wonder sometimes if you’ve been hiding your True Power from me for my entire life.”
Dad laughed. “Nope! Your mother and I never got far with our studies and—”
The door opened to the side of the waiting room and a woman stepped out. She wore a grey half-robe, and she called out, “Mark Careed. Markus Careed.”
Mark was already up and out of his chair, feeling nervous. It was kinda odd that the Full Scan process would want to scan both him and Dad, but Dad had shrugged when that’s how they told him it was going to happen, and Mark just accepted it.
And now Mark was going to get tested.
Hopefully the scan found something good. A scholarship would be just about the only way he could afford this place without taking out some major loans or signing his life away for 5 years, or putting his mage training on hold until he was 30 and had saved up for a decade. He absolutely did not want to do that. Curtain Protocol till he was 30? No thank you!
The teacher of some sort smiled at him, saying, “Right this way, please.”
- - - -
The walk was short and ended in a large chamber that was sort of like an x-ray room, but without the x-ray machine. Instead, there were some metal plates on the ceiling and floor over there, a wall with a window that separated the room in half, and with a bunch of equipment sitting behind the wall.
An archmage stood beside the window.
Mark was too stunned to do much except for look at the guy, because archmages were the literal defenders of the world.
There shouldn’t be one here.
Mark was absolutely sure he knew the guy’s name, but it escaped him at the moment.
The guy was young-old and in a black suit with a black-and-gold-trimed half-cape. He looked almost like a superhero, and Mark didn’t know how else to think of him other than in that way. He had salt-and-pepper short hair and a trimmed beard with no lines on his face, but he wasn’t young at all. Ageless, maybe. Or maybe he was just a well-kept 65 year old guy with a lot of work done. But no. Archmages were beyond age. They were contracted to demons and his demon made him as old as the demon wanted him to be. This guy could have been 50 for the last 500 years.
He might have been there to help drop nukes on the big monsters during the Reveal.
What the FUCK was he doing here?
Mark wasn’t the only one stunned to see the archmage. Dad was kinda stunned, too.
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The woman who led them here smiled and walked toward an archway where a control room sat behind some thick glass. She said nothing.
The archmage spoke, “Hello, Mark Careed, and Markus Careed. We’ll be scanning your father first, Mark, in order to determine if his magic has limited or enhanced you in any way. You can step back. Behind the wall in the control room, if you could. Mister Careed? Please step onto the scanner.”
Dad was stunned for a moment still, but he just nodded and walked over there, touching Mark’s shoulder briefly, saying, “I guess this is how they do it now.”
Mark went behind the wall of the control room.
The archmage said, “Sometimes magics cast around the young have a way of passing onto them in ways that a trip through a normal Awakening would simply obliterate, and which can only be brought forth through actual effort. That is what this big scanner tests for. If Mark had come alone, then we would have had less of a chance to see what miracles he might contain.”
As the archmage spoke, Dad made it to the center of the 10 foot wide silver platform, onto a small circle in the center. Dad stood there. The archmage nodded.
A light flashed.
“That’s that,” the archmage said, “You can step off, Mister Careed.”
Dad looked around for a half moment, then he stepped off of the platform, saying, “That was fast.”
“Quite fast, and painless,” the archmage said, smiling, “We only had to go through a few tens of human trials to stop people from turning inside out. You can get on the platform now, Mark.”
Mark halted, one step toward the machine.
Dad and Mark both stared at the archmage.
The archmage smiled, chuckling, “They still have humor here on Earth, yes?”
Dad chuckled nervously.
Mark… hesitated.
The archmage assured Mark, “It’s perfectly fine, Mark. This sort of magic has been perfected for a thousand years. Updating it to modern tech took some doing, but the tech-version works even better than the old stuff.”
Mark felt his ears burn and his face heat with embarrassment. Had he really thought that the archmage had been talking about human experimentation? Mark rapidly moved onto the platform, saying, “Sorry, sir.”
The archmage smiled softly. “No worries, kid. Good luck on getting something useful.”
Mark steeled himself and stepped onto the center of the platform into the circle engraved on the silver. He looked up. Small variations in the metal looked like symbols made in different grains in the silver, appearing briefly as iridescent sheens. The same sorts of magic runes, or whatever, held on the ground, all around him—
The entire formation lit up above and below—
Mark held in an abyss of white.
—and the light retreated. Mark once again stood in the center of the platform, but the iridescent circles and words and flows all around him were gone. Mark looked for the markings in the silver, trying to move his head a little this way or that, trying to see—
The archmage said, “You can step off, Mark.”
Mark took some steps toward the edge of the platform, looking around all the while, trying to see anything… But there was nothing. What had he seen? Whatever the case, the scan was done. Mark stood a few yards from the archmage—
Oh. Shit.
He was really getting his readout now, wasn’t he?
In the flashing lights of the moment and in the presence of the archmage, Mark had completely forgotten that he was here to get another sort of life-changing declaration. The archmage had a piece of paper in his hands, too. When had he gotten that paper? Mark had no idea. But Mark saw the paper and his gaze locked onto that.
The archmage read the paper, saying, “You have an average readout.”
Mark’s hopes fell.
The archmage continued to stomp on Mark’s soul, “No more than 5% deviance for any particular magic. A standard scholarship demands at least 15%. You can’t really change this with anything short of massive emotional trauma, and we don’t like to do that to anyone anymore. Now that wasn’t a joke. That’s how it used to be done, back before Integration. Give a kid a puppy to raise and then make them love it and then make them kill it in specific ways; a standard method. That’s what I went through. Of course all of that is pretty much overkill. You could achieve the same thing by dropping a kid into the wilderness and letting them try to survive the monsters.” He handed over the report, saying, “Sorry, kid.”
Mark took the paperwork, his voice a fragile thing as he said, “Thanks, mister archmage.”
The archmage never moved from where he stood, he just nodded.
In a daze, Mark followed the woman out of there, out a different door.
Dad touched Mark’s shoulders and hugged him and said some words, and Mark made some sort of response, but he didn’t remember what he said. He didn’t know what his dad had said, either. It wasn’t until he was back on the tram, headed home that Mark regained something of himself.
Mark said, “So that went horribly.”
Dad put an arm around Mark’s shoulders.
Mark sighed, and then he made himself smile, and it actually felt like a real smile for a brief moment. “I guess I’m too well-adjusted. Not enough trauma! It’s all your and Mom’s faults.”
Dad’s worried face broke into a wide smile. He laughed, and then grabbed Mark fully around the shoulders, hugging him, saying, “Archmage-level proof that we raised you right! Your mother ain’t gonna believe it!”
“Not going to believe it?” Mark asked, laughing. “What’s that mean!”
“I’ve seen you on the rugby field, young man,” Dad hugged tighter, saying, “You’re vicious out there.”
Mark smiled at that, and then he let go of his Dad. A moment of calm happened. After that moment, he whispered, “No trauma in this household.”
Dad went silent. Mark looked up at him, and saw him wipe away quick tears. And then Dad hugged him again, holding him tight, saying, “I hope that never changes.”
“Me, too,” Mark said, holding his dad.
And yet, for some stupid reason, he wished for something exciting. Mark scowled at himself the very second he had that thought, for having such a stupid thought. And yet…
No.
Mark would not try to sneak out of the wall and fight some monsters, for real. That was just asking to die.
Mark pulled away from his dad, changing the subject, “Who was that archmage, anyway?”
Dad sniffled a little, hiding a tear, as he smiled and said, “I got no idea! Check your phone? All the archmages are known.”
Mark pulled out his phone and did exactly that. He found the guy fast enough.
The archmage was ‘Sloane Addashield’, his demon’s name was Kanda, and he was a metal archmage. Specifically, adamantium. Which. Ya know. Impressive. He used giant flying blades of that magical metal to slice apart mountain-sized monsters as he flew around them, dodging attacks. He was a true Hero of Humanity, and he was around 350 years old.
He was also one of the normal archmages to be seen around Orange City, for he was based in Crytalis over on Daihoon, which was about where Mexico was located on Earth.
Mark found himself saying, “I knew I recognized him!”
Dad read over his shoulder. “Oh man. Me too. He is stronger than Red Thunder.”
- - - -
“Archmage Sloane Addashield!” Mark proclaimed at dinner. “He looked like a normal guy!”
Dad said, “He looked ageless, actually.”
“Ageless, yeah,” Mark said. “That’s the demons, right?”
Mom dished out the potato salad, unimpressed by any mention of any archmage, saying, “I’m just glad we managed to raise you happy and healthy.”
Mark rolled his eyes.
And then Mom asked, “Are you going to go for mage training, anyway? Are you going to try for the GED and get a job, or what? What’s happening here, Mark.”
Mark was suddenly lost again. “… I… I don’t know. I...” He didn’t know much right now, but he knew he wanted to keep playing rugby… and going to school, he supposed? Maybe he would do the Tutorial and go for brawny? That was the cheapest option… He said, “I don’t know.”
Mom said, “You got time to think. You have time to make mistakes. Certain paths do diverge, though, like doing the Tutorial or getting mage-based magic. Your father and I are both happy with our magics, Mark. It is not a mistake to forgo the Tutorial. Most people forgo the Tutorial. 95% of people, in fact! I know you could do it, but… It’s still a… A big risk.”
People died all the time in the Tutorial.
Mark had already had this conversation a lot with his parents, though. He had been planning on the Tutorial for a long time, and they hated that, but they couldn’t stop him. Once that prompt came up, if Mark accepted it, then he was whisked away, and there wasn’t a force on Earth or Daihoon that could stop it. Many people had tried over the years, and especially on Daihoon, where the thing-that-came-before-the-Tutorial used to take a person at age 12, and it took everyone, regardless of capability or personal choice. Over there, before the Reveal and the retaking of Arakino and the installation of the System and the ascension of the AI god Malaqua, 60% of people died at age 12, to the previous-Tutorial.
Mom and Dad were terrified of the Tutorial, so they opted out of it, and fast, and they had been against Mark doing it his entire life. But Mark wanted actual power to live in the wider world, and that meant taking the Tutorial.
Mom and Dad had mostly come to terms with that, and besides! Mark had passed the False Tutorial, and that was usually a lot harder than the real thing.
The only thing that would stop Mark from taking the Tutorial was if he chose it for himself, and he kinda was, due to the brawny-thing. If the Full Scan would have worked out at all, maybe Mark would have picked that route if he would have gotten a scholarship, but holy fuck. Debt or years under Curtain Protocol or indentured servitude to a mage to learn real magic?
Fuck no!
And now Mark was back to needing to be convinced to go to arcanaeum.
Mom tried to do that convincing, “You could take a week off from school with your dad at the Fishery to see what it’s like for simple halfers like us? Your father has fish-yank, but Devon and Trace are there as brawnies, too. You can see what life is like for all of them, on the job.”
Mark had done that before with other people, with the guards on the walls and with working mages as a part of the school’s extra credit systems. He already knew what life was like for a brawny, or a mage, or any of the other Awakened or powered people out there, and he even knew what Dad did at the fishery.
But Mom was scared and Mark kinda needed to think for a while, anyway.
“Sure, Mom. I’ll go fishing for a week?” Mark looked to Dad. “Sounds like fun?”
Dad smiled. “I think it sounds great!”