Kalmia was in a conflicted mood. Going to school was a once in a lifetime chance for her. On the other side she still wanted to find out how to turn back and go back to the village and she didn’t want to leave Dedrik, who has been like a father to her.

The school that Dedrik would send Kalmia to is one, that accepts any race and it isn’t bound by nation. It is far away from this place she calls home, in a territory called Hunaga. The school has declared neutrality between the nations, which, as it has been seen as one of the best schools on the continent, has been largely accepted by this continents powers.

It also is a very strict school, which excells at keeping order in the school. According to the school laws even outside of school territory, students are only allowed to fight if its in a manner that concerns the state. If one breaks the rule one gets one strike. At three strikes you get suspended from the school.

The tuition is also extremely high. though it gets reduced if you show promise of being a strong magician. Not everyone can become a magician and outside of the circles of nobility and their bastards it is extremely rare to get the trait to perform magic feats.

Dragons, as one of the magic creatures of the world, usually excell in magic. It must be said though that even dragons have to undergo the enrollment test to get accepted to the school. That means if Kalmia wouldn’t succeed in that test, which is mainly focused on magic, she wouldn’t be accepted to the school.

The test however is less a test of skill, but one of capacity. They measure your magic capacity and put you in a class of people of similar capacity.

Kalmia was nervous and Dedrik gave her off for two months until the test would begin. In this Period she spent her time mostly deepening the knowledge she already had. One of the things she did was learning the correlation of multiplication/division and add/subtract. After an explenation of Dedrik to the topic it was pretty easy to understand. Multiplication was just adding up the number to itself by x amount.

Right before the time off had ended, the entrance exam had begun. It was a travel there of 2 whole weeks. Dedrik has rented a carriage to Luminor, a border city to the east of Menia. It was also one of the wealthier areas in this country. The ride with the carriage took what felt like an eternity. The roads were mostly uneven and there were even some mountain roads along the path. The nations eastern and western halfes were split apart by a huge mountain chain. Most people call them the Menia Alps. To the west of the Alps there was mostly forests, bad farming grounds and poor villages. Most of the Nations wealth concentrated in the east. The east of Menia had some of the best farming grounds in the continent. After passing the rugged mountainchain, all that Kalmia could see were fields over fields with only a few trees left, seperating the fields along the ditches.

Not just the the terrain was different. The weather too was quite different to what Kalmia was used to. It was instead of a rather cool spring more like a cool summer. The temperatures reached the heights of cool summer nights and it didn’t seem to rain too much. In exchange of that there were massive rivers, that the farmers used to irrigate the fields with ditches. As it was the start of spring many oxes could be seen plowing the fields with farmers behind them, making them move forwards.

The rivers that were wider than Kalmia could throw a stone had elegant bridges out of stone stretching across them. The bridges had large arcs that would allow small ships to pass through underneath them.

It seemed as if it was a different nation alltogether. The people they encountered were even talking funny. Truely it was a place, that Kalmia didn’t expect to encounter on the other side of the mountain chain.

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After a long carriage ride they finally arrived in Luminor. As they passed through a gate in the city walls, Kalmia looked around her with wonderous eyes. It was a city with grand architecture. It was a huge and wealthy port city. The houses were mostly build out of stonebricks and had clay tiles as their roof. They seemed like they could last any weather for an eternity, unlike those wooden and straw houses where Kalmia came from.

Soldiers were stationed along the entire wall from what Kalmia could see. The streets were paved with cobble stone to ensure a smoother ride and on the side of the road there were even lanterns emitting light once it got dark.

All the way from the city walls to the inner city Kalmia could do nothing but be amazed. It was more than she ever expected. For all her live she has only seen the poor areas of western Menia and never expected there to be areas that were this wealthy in this kingdom. She wanted to explore the city and walk through the markets. As the carriage came to a hold in front of a large house with the letters “INN” painted on a shield hanging above the door.

“This is where we sleep for tonight.”

Dedrik got up to leave the carriage.

“Come here. Let’s go in to put our baggage in our rooms.”

Kalmia got up and left the carriage together with Dedrik. Before going in Dedrik gave a silver coloured coin to the Carriage driver, which in return looked very happy.

Both of them carried their baggage into the inn and instantly a stench of alcohol and food blew into their faces. It was not too unusual to have the tables of an inn filled with drunkards but there were also those that just sat down to eat. The smell made Kalmia quite hungry. During the travel to Luminor Kalmia had to go to sleep hungry more than once. Right as they went towards the reception, a woman carrying a few cups filled with a drink with a white foam on top of it walked past.

“Will be right there for you in a minute.”

Patiently, Kalmia and Dedrik waited in front of the reception until that woman came back.

“How can I help you?”

“Hello. We need two rooms for one person each please.”

“Sure we can do. That’s one Mât per day per person.”

Dedrik put 15 silver coins on the reception.

“We will stay here for a week. 15 mât. Keep the change.”

“Thank you sir!”

The woman took out two keys out of a drawer.

“Here you go. The rooms are upstairs. Just look for the rooms with the numbers of the keys.”

The keys had the numbers 13 and 16 written on a wooden shield that is attached to them.

“Thank you.”

“… Thank you…”

both of them gave their thanks and left for their rooms. Kalmia went into room 16 and Dedrik into room 13.

The rooms were decently large and seemed pretty comfortable. Kalmia put her stuff down, left the room and locked the door. Dedrik also just left his room and locked his door.

“Let’s go eat.”

“Yeah, I was just about to ask you whether we could get something to eat.”

Kalmia was very hungry at this point. After that long travel with limited amount of food, that wasn’t unexpected for Dedrik. They went down the stairs and sat down at a table. The woman, that received them at the reception came over.

“What would you like to eat?”

“The meal of the day for me.”

Dedrik looked at Kalmia for a moment and turned to the woman.

“And for her the entire menu once.”

A few minutes later she brought the meal of the day twice.

It was a piece of pork with potatoes and a mushroom sauce. In the time that Dedrik took to eat about half his meal, Kalmia managed to eat her entire portion. A few minutes later the waitress brought her the next dish. It was half a chicken with mashed potatos and some asperagus. When that too was done a plate full of fish, potatos and spinach was put down in front of her. This continued for 3 more meals until the menu was worked through by Kalmia and she was saturated. It was already late and after eating this much she got tired and wanted to sleep.

“I will go sleep now.”

“Sure Kalmia. I will go to bed in a few minutes too.”

Kalmia went up into her room and fell asleep pretty fast.

What she didn’t know was that Dedrik went on to drink for a few hours more. He didn’t just drink a few cups of beer but he drank a lot. So much so, that he had problems walking up to his door.

After a few minutes of trying to get the key into the lock he finally managed that and unlock his room.

After that he closed the door and fell down on his bed and fell asleep pretty fast.

**CHAPTER 6: END***