July 15, 2065
Jefferson Memorial Hospital, Soneria
I awoke to the harsh light of a hospital room. I rubbed my head and noticed that my hands were covered in burn marks that traveled up my arms. Shaking my head, I heard a fairly animated argument coming from the hallway just outside my door.
“You’re going to send him to MDC? You know as well as I do that he won't be able to take it. For fuck’s sake, his affinity just awoke Karen. He won’t be able to keep up, hell, he might even die from a backfire.” I hear my father say, in a pleading voice.
“Ganashi, we don’t have much of a choice. The PARAGON system has rejected you, he is the only person with a viable activation factor in his genome right now. Besides, with Meredith lurking about, and both Sol and Nesterssia trying to secede from the Council, we need every Magus we can get out hands on right now. That’s how it is. I’m not eager to send our son off so quickly either but there is no other option right now.” A stern voice replies, 100% my mother. I stagger out of bed, walking to the door.
“Alright, I see what you are saying. I’ll try and catch Patrick up in this month we have until the term starts. Are you going to be posting guards at our house?”
“No. I took a temporary leave of absence to personally make sure nothing happens concerning Meredith.” My mother replies. “Besides, Zigrus was bitching about being bored.” I open the door, and see my father, wearing a uniform I didn’t recognize, and my mother, standing at around six feet tall with red hair and distinctly pointed ears, wearing some kind of combat armor with two large vents on the back. My mother turns to me.
“Good afternoon Patrick. How are you feeling?” She asks, trying her absolute hardest to appear motherly.
“Like somebody sucked the life out of me. What were you guys arguing about?” I reply. Her face turns from a faux-motherly smile to being dead serious.
“Your new school. Here, have a look at this. It’ll outline what your new life is to be.” She said, handing me a folder. I take the folder from her, looking inside it. The folder is filled with pictures of a gorgeous school, likely isolated from civilization, and a program for talented young magi to prepare them for military service.
“You realize that I have no intentions of serving in the military, right?” I say, returning the folder.
“You realize that you don’t have a choice, right? Under Galactic Council ruling #231, all Magi are required to provide a minimum of 35 years of honorable military service. The penalty of disobedience is removal of a magi’s Affinity circuits, a process that few survive and those that do are left crippled for life.” She says, giving me a glare for resisting her wishes to join the military yet again.
“Fine, I’ll do it.” I take the folder. As I do, My father motions back into the room. I return to the room, and my father follows me in, waving off my mother and closes the door.
“Patrick, I’m going to be completely honest with you.” He says, giving me a stern look. “If it were any other time, I’d be completely against this. Unfortunately, we need every magus we can get right now. The school you are being sent to is called the Magus Development Center, or MDC for short. It’s a military compound that helps Magi come into their own. However, it is expected that they have at least some prior knowledge before they enter the school. Unfortunately, we have a month before the term starts and your mother pulled strings to get you in the class of 2068.”
“So what, you are going to dump all of this on me at once?” I reply, groaning.
“A little bit. Once you get out of the hospital, we’ll do the bare necessities like determining your attunement and type of Affinity.”
“Well, let’s get on with it.” I say, bracing myself for the oncoming infodump.
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“So, we actually know next to nothing about Affinity. We have no clue how it works. In fact, we define Affinity as the power to defy the laws of the Universe. What we do know it that there are three different general attunements for Affinity, and four different types of Magi that we know of. The three Attunements are the following: Spark Affinity, which draws power originating from a trans-dimensional artifact known as the Spark. Void Affinity, which draws power from the Spark’s polar opposite, the Dark Diamond, more commonly known as the planet Umbra. The third type of attunement contains everything else, the only one observed so far is Blood Affinity.” I yawn. “Myself and your mother are both attuned to the Spark. Continuing on, There are four known types of Magi: Latents, who have an affinity that either hasn’t awakened yet or is too weak to register. Naturals, who are considered the rough norm for Magi. Overdrives, who are near identical to Naturals on the surface, but can undergo a temporary boost in power under the right conditions. Your Mother and I are both in this class. The last, and certainly NOT least type of Magi is are the Ascendants, who are indescribably stronger than the other classes, at the cost of incredible mental stress, and are always walking the boundaries of madness.” My father takes a deep breath. “You get all of that?”
“More or less. I get the feeling that it will make a bit more sense once I see it for myself. So, considering the pictures of MDC, I guess that it is nowhere near here?” I say, shifting the topic of conversation.
“It’s located near the Military base, but it’s a boarding school, so distance is irrelevant.” My father replies. “Once you go there, your mother is undoubtedly going to make me return to active service.”
“I thought you retired after the end of the Void war, thirty years ago.” I say, confused. My father chuckles.
“Patrick, I’m a Magus, and a rather powerful one at that. While I did earn a medal for my service at that final assault, there is no way in hell I am ever going to be able to retire. Even losing an arm wasn’t enough. I’ve been on reserve service for the past thirty years.” My vision starts to blur and my head starts spinning again.
“Why do I feel so shitty today? Does my Affinity awakening have something to do with it?” I ask, taking a seat on my bed. My father gives me a smile.
“Yeah, you are one tenacious kid. People react differently to their affinities awakening. most of the time, they don't react well. When my Affinity awakened, I was in a coma for two weeks.”
“Two weeks? What, did Mom take care of you or something?” I ask. My father gives me a familiar face, the one he would give me whenever I asked about when he was my age, it looks like a combination of being withdrawn and sad.
“No, but things would have worked out much better if it was her.” he said, quietly.
“What, did your not having met Mom yet get somebody killed or something?” I ask, trying to crack a joke. My father falls silent.
“Yes.” An extremely awkward silence envelops the room. “Well, I better get going. I’ll drop by tomorrow. See ya Patrick.” My father says, putting on a false face.
“Yeah, see ya.
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Hello Friendly readers!
I'm posting this to basically announce that I am going to try and upload somewhere between one and three chapters of this story a week, depending on any number of variables. (Length of chapter, difficulty of college, amount of shit hitting the fan in story, etc.)
This is my first time writing something like this, and this is a story I have been positively itching to write for a while.
Thank you so much for your interest,
REckbold