Chapter Ten

Memories of a Phoenix– Part One.

Headmaster Polia was simply going about her day, happily reading through some reports in her office when she came across a peculiar one– one submitted by Instructor Williams, the First Year magus-combat instructor.

Its contents were somewhat surprising– Aelius, the weakest student of the Academy, severed the arm and threatened the life of Dylan Menagerie, the second son of the Noble Menagerie family, in a Magic duel.

But just as she was getting out of her chair to go track down Williams and make more sense of this, she heard a deep rumbling from off in the distance.

Grasping her cane and hurriedly stepping to the window, she got to the glass just in time to see the nearest main school building rumble and quake.

Immediately, she detected Fifth Star Magic and pursed her lips. “Are some teachers fighting or something? I’ll have to reprimand the staff it seems,” she grumbled, tapping her stick twice on the wooden flooring.

Zap. A flash of light engulfed her and her feet touched down on the ground, just in time to see the aftermath of two colliding spells fade out.

“H-Headmaster! Thank goodness,” Williams exclaimed, clinging to a nearby wall-rail, pointing at the ground.

Polia frowned as she looked down, spotting a student keeled over on the ground. With a prod of her stick, she turned the unconscious student onto their back and narrowed her eyes.

From him, she could feel Fifth Star Earth Magic radiating from his Core.

Bzzt, bzzt, a strange static and crackling could be heard from his chest. Suspiciously, Polia reached down with her stick and used it to pull aside the student’s jacket, finding the source of the noise.

It was a necklace attached to the boy’s neck, made of exquisite and recognisable design. Most particular on it was the engraving of a certain household’s sigil. The Menagerie’s.

“So that’s how this first year child was able to cast Five Star Magic,” Polia pursed her lips. The necklace was a well-known artefact with great popularity on the market– an Amplifier.

Dylan’s parents must have given it to him for protection. With a one-time use, Dylan would be able to cast a Spell higher than his Mana Core would allow. With it, he seems to have achieved a Fifth Star spell, though the recoil has knocked him unconscious.

Then the question is, who was the other student who cast the other Fifth Star spell? Because Polia had detected two of them.

She looked down the hallway to see the barely standing remains of a Fifth Star defensive spell– Tortoise Breath. Tortoise Breath is a golden classic of defensive Earth Magic. Whoever cast it must be well versed in Earth Element Combat Techniques. But Polia frowned.

She couldn’t recall any of the staff who could use Earthen Fifth Star Magic. Maybe it was a student? But there were only a handful of senior students at the Fifth Star– Polia knew each of them individually, and none of them were Earth Mages.

She took a step forward and blinked to the end of the hallway with a zap, no need to even chant her small distance teleportation spell.

As soon as she rounded the corner, she gasped in shock.

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A certain familiar student of hers lay behind the defensive spell in a pool of red.

“No, oh dear…” Now Polia knew exactly what happened. She quickly raised her casting staff and whispered a chant. In a flash of light, she and the unconscious, injured Aelius flashed.

When they landed, they had teleported to the nearest building.

“Professor– Professor Garner!” Polia called as her feet hit the marble and sterile ground.

“Headmaster?” the called Professor Garner poked her ginger head around a nearby white-linen curtain.

“We have an emergency– I need you to treat this student or else he may very well die.” Polia stepped aside to reveal Aelius whom she had brought with her.

Professor Garner saw the crimson and immediately her demeanour took a sharp turn. With immediate action, she used Magic to levitate Aelius onto the nearest bed and began inspection.

As she worked, Polia watched in worry. To counter a Fifth Star Earth attack spell, Aelius responded with a Fifth Star Earth spell– Earth defeats Earth, this was basic Magic Elemental theory.

She was not surprised at the fact that he cast a Fifth Star spell. She just knew he wasn’t supposed to. She always knew of the incredible talent for Magic he had, and how it was just overpowered by a life-threatening condition.

But today, with his life under threat, it appears Aelius broke through the chains bounding his body to weakness, and cast a spell that should have been impossible for a mere First Year student to cast.

The price of that recklessness was… this.

“Oh dear, this is looking very bad,” Professor Garner remarked over her shoulder.

“Yes… I expected as much,” Polia sighed. Please overcome this, Aelius. She cast one last glance at the unconscious boy before she turned away and disappeared once again in a flash of light.

What a travesty that a genius of that calibre has to live with such a difficult condition imposed on their power. The son of a Kanarian, is after all, still a Kanarian. A lion’s cub is still a lion.

*

A memory bled into Aelius’ mind– one he has not wished to surface for a dozen years.

A lonesome girl of purple in a tattered dress sat, snow petals dancing around her before laying to rest in her long hair. Her eyes of a passionate fiery orange, but her face of a sad solitude. She sat on a cold rock in bare feet, centred around a garden of snow lasting as far as the horizon itself.

She was waiting for someone to return. It broke Aelius’ heart to think of her sitting there, waiting for him. And if he were to never come, she’ll wait for him for eternity. In the snow. All alone.

There was the sound of fire. A cackling fire. As it grew louder, Aelius also began to feel the heat penetrate his skin.

Then there was the sound of wind. It howled louder than wind he had ever heard, blowing past violently and ravaging.

Aelius stirred, his eyelids being held down by something deeply weighing– the heaviness of fatigue. But as his mind awoke, so did a sense of urgency.

He realised this wasn’t the time to be asleep.

A deep pain faded into existence in his chest– a cold burn spreading throughout his veins. His cells feeling as though they were tearing themselves apart from the inside.

He had never felt this kind of pain before. Then, the memories came gushing back to him.

The fight. The threat to his life. The desperate actions he took. The damage he sustained in the aftermath.

Just how was he alive right now?

Finally, his eyes snapped open and he sprung up into a sitting position, looking out.

Past the warm campfire, he both saw and heard the monstrous snowstorm raging on the outside of the cave.

Held at bay by the warmth of the storm was the purest, and whitest snow ever seen– the snow belonging to the northern tip of the Continent.

That’s right, he recalled. This place was the furthest North you could go– the Northern Ice ranges, where nature had no mercy for man.

Outside, the wind and snow continued to swirl and howl.