The next couple of weeks were a blur; I was to report to The Krymmeno on August 21st. Kaine even stuck around the house to answer my hundreds of questions.

“So, when I get to Hogwarts,” I started.

Kaine gave me a nasty look. “How many times do I have to tell you it’s not Hogwarts? Hogwarts was a school; that was its only function. The Krymmeno is a fortress; it’s where the archmage lives and assigns missions to all of the Gnosilepides. Teaching is more of a secondary function; furthermore, there aren’t full-time teachers there. Each 3 person squad is assigned to a high ranking spellsword who is to guide their training; if the students graduate and become Gnosilepides, that person will be their commander.”

“What do you mean, ‘if they graduate?’” I asked suddenly alarmed.

“It is far from a certainty. 21-30 students used to be admitted every year, but only one or two squads become full-fledged members,” he said nonchalantly.

“Wait, squads pass or fail as unit?? What happens if I fail?” I blurted out all at once. Even I could hear the panic in my voice.

“Yes, squads are assigned missions together. Spellswords never work alone, so it would make no sense to pass a student without a squad. Don’t worry though; if you have a tenth of the talent your mother had, you’ll make it,” he replied warmly. I think he was trying to be supportive, but it made me feel worse. He didn’t even answer the question; what would happen if I failed? Would I have to go back to the real world without even a high school diploma? That thought stuck with me until the day we left.

“So do we hop on a magic train or ride some eagles or something to get there?” I asked Kaine at 5am August 21st.

“No, we will teleport there.” Kaine replied groggily; he was still lying in bed. This was much earlier than either of us typically woke up, but I hadn’t slept at all the night before.

“You can teleport??” This information made me forget my fear all together. I could have definitely gotten used to teleporting around. Walking is for “mortals.” At the time I didn’t realize that practitioners were still mortal even if our lifespans are significantly longer than the rest of you.

“Ugh, can’t this wait until after I’ve had coffee?” If it’s not clear, Kaine is not a morning person.

I sighed, “Ok, I’ll make you coffee if you tell me about teleporting.”

“Belgh, fine. Teleporting takes a great deal of power. With a few exceptions, a spellsword or even a wizard can only teleport if there’s another practitioner at the location to open the other side of the portal. For The Krymmeno it’s even more difficult. The fortress is protected by a variety of enchantments. One cannot teleport there unless accompanied by someone with this tattoo.” Kaine said as he lifted up the sleave on his left arm. I had seen the tattoo before, but I thought it was a more intricate version of a trashy tribal tattoo. There was a circle inscribed concentrically within another as well as various symbols in between.

“What happens if you try to teleport without one?” I was torn as I was pretty sure I didn’t want it to happen to me, but I was curious.

“You’d pop like a balloon.” There wasn’t a single note of humor in his voice. Oof.

We had breakfast, and I tried to pass the time by reading, but I couldn’t concentrate. At noon, it was time to go. Kaine looked at me and smiled, held up his right hand, and a vaguely pink circle appeared 2 or 3 inches in front of his hand, and within the circle were many various symbols that all fit together to make a single asymmetric rune. It was beautiful and alien, unlike anything I had seen before. I was so busy staring at the projection of light I didn’t realize what has happening six feet in front of him. Space itself had parted creating a circular opening whose boundary was radiating colors that were constantly changing. It almost looked like an aurora, but in the middle was a dilapidated mansion surrounded by acres of overgrown weeds. Even though we were still standing in the living room, I could feel a warm breeze on my face and smell the grass. I just stared in astonishment; this was the first time I saw what magic could do. I can’t express what I was feeling in that moment; not only was it all real, and I was a part of it, I was saying goodbye to my life. I was leaving all of the misery behind. Yes, I was being naïve, but whatever, it was a good feeling.

Kaine reached over and grabbed my hand, and we walked through the portal. The other side was exactly as it appeared. I looked back just in time to see the portal which now showed the inside of our house closing; the colorful boundary shrunk maintaining its circular shape until it disappeared into nothing.

“This is The Krymmeno? It doesn’t look like Hogwarts at all! It’s falling apart.” I said referencing the mansion. I could see it in more detail now: it looked like an old antebellum home with an enormous crumbling balcony, about 50 pillars half of which had fallen over, and a cupola (I didn’t know what this word meant until later, but it’s like a tower that protrudes from the top level of a building) with a semi-spherical roof that 70% of had caved in. “Where the fuck even are we?”

“We’re in rural Virginia. What you’re seeing right now is an illusion to dissuade any visitors. Come on.” Kaine replied as he started walking toward the structure. I hurried after him. Once we got within 20 feet of the building, it began to flicker, almost like an old tv set from the 90s.

“What is happening?” I asked cautiously.

“You’re beginning to see things for what they really are,” Kaine said cryptically. As we got closer the flickering became more and more frequent until the illusion finally vanished, and as Kaine said, I saw things as they really were: the structure wasn’t falling apart. It looked like it was brand new with a fresh coat of paint. All of the pillars were in place, the roof looked immaculate, and we weren’t alone. There were about 20 people looking down on us from the balcony, presumably spellswords. I was afraid they would be wearing robes or even worse be naked, but they were all dressed normally. In fact everyone I saw was wearing jeans except one person standing on the very edge of the balcony. He looked like Gandalf; I don’t know how else to describe him. He was very tall with a grey beard that went halfway down his torso, grey hair that went halfway down his back, and he was wearing a grey suit minus the tie. I don’t know shit about suits, but it looked sleek and expensive. He turned his blue-grey eyes to me and saw that I was staring at him. He smiled, stepped up onto the railing of the balcony, and jumped. You’re probably thinking the balcony was close to the ground but no. It was at least 30 feet up. I should have known he was doing some kind of magic to impress me, but I freaked out.

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“Aghhh!” was all I got out before a gust of wind swept out in all directions and slowed his fall. He landed without even bending his knees.

“Hello there! You must be Dante,” he said in a gravelly voice. I think he was trying to be friendly, but I was quite intimidated at the time.

“Uhh, yeah hey,” I replied fighting the urge to hide behind Kaine. As I looked to Kaine, he kneeled, like full on, on the ground kneeled before this grey weirdo.

“Archmage,” Kaine said keeping his eyes to the ground.

“There’s no need for that Kaine. Today is a day of celebration!” replied the man in the voice of someone who smoked a billion cigarettes. “My name is Arthur Quinn, and as you may have gathered, I’m the leader or archmage of the North American chapter of the Gnosilepides. You are the first of our new trainees to arrive.”

“Nice to meet you.” I replied as Kaine stood back up. Right at that moment another portal appeared around the same spot ours had been. This one showed the inside of what looked like a very fancy house. I could see a chandelier above two people as they walked through. The larger one was about 6’2’’-6’3’’ and very muscular. He was wearing slacks and a button up with a shaved head and dark skin. The smaller one was my age; he had dreadlocks to his shoulders the same shade of skin as his partner (who I later learned was his father.) Unlike his father though, he had about the same muscle tone as me, in other words, none. He was wearing baggy jeans and a Led Zepplin t-shirt. Seeing him made me feel a bit better because he was looking around nervously the same way I was.

As Quinn looked over at them, the larger man kneeled just as Kaine had.

“Stand up, stand up Cedric; we don’t want to give our students the wrong impression. Hello Neil, we met once before when you were very young. I doubt you remember,” Quinn said amicably. I probably haven’t relayed just how terrible Quinn’s voice sounded. It was like a deeper version of nails on a chalkboard; it sounded like a hang nail feels. To this day I still don’t know if that’s what he was going for or if he was just so old it happened naturally.

“I don’t remember,” Neil responded sheepishly; his voice cracked in the middle of the word ‘remember.’ Somehow, this kid was even more nervous than me.

“I won’t hold it against you, and we’ll get very close over the next few years,” Quinn said ominously.

Before the conversation could continue, the third and presumably the final portal opened, and out of it stepped the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. She had pale skin, green eyes, vibrant red hair, and she was wearing skintight jeans, converses, and a tanktop. Unlike Neil or myself, she seemed very relaxed even calculating as her eyes darted back and forth sizing everyone up. There was a woman accompanying her with jet black hair and olive skin. She was wearing a power-suit with a knee-length skirt. She began to kneel before Quinn as the others has but with a dismissive wave of her hand she stopped.

“Hello Bethany, and you must be Emma, our final trainee!” he said with as much enthusiasm as his voice could muster. “Good, we can begin then. Please follow me. This is The Krymmeno,” he said gesturing toward the structure. “Get to know it well; it will be your home for the next two years at least. As your charges have no doubt explained to you, you have been selected as the first trainees for the Gnosilepides in 15 years. This is a great honor as we are the last and often times only line of defense against the supernatural.” As he spoke, the lot of us followed him toward the structure. I purposefully lagged behind to get closer to Emma; I could make out her face better, and she had vibrant green eyes and an assortment of freckles on her nose leading to each eye. She was wearing purple eye shadow, and dark eye liner but with no other make up. She also had 5 piercings on her left ear and only one on her right. You might think I was being creepy staring at this girl I didn’t know, and you would be right, but as you can imagine, I didn’t have much luck with the ladies before I learned of magic. I wanted to change that.

She caught me looking at her, and we briefly made eye contact. I thought it was going to be magical, pardon the pun, but she squinted her eyes and sneered at me. Kaine pushed me forward whispering, “Pay attention!” I hadn’t realized it, but I had missed everything Quinn had said in the past 60 seconds. Well, fuck.

“… and I thought a demonstration was necessary for you to see what we do here,” Quinn finished as we stepped through a giant wooden door. The inside of the Krymmeno is probably the only thing that could have pulled my thoughts away from Emma. Immediately beyond the doorway was a short hallway filled with paintings of previous archmages. No, they don’t move, but they were somehow three dimensional. You could look into the paintings and see depth almost as if they were portals themselves, but everything was motionless. Some of the paintings displayed people sitting at desks while others showed them in battle against various entities: dragons, other practitioners, or what I could only describe as monsters at the time. Beyond the hallway was an auditorium that could easily sit 1,000 people. Yep, this place was bigger on the inside than it was on the outside. I looked up, but the ceiling was so high, I couldn’t even see it, and the only light in the room came from the still-open doorway.

“Ah, forgive me,” Quinn said as he lifted his hand up, and I noticed something. He had a pentagram inscribed in a circle tattooed on his hand. Kane had the exact same tattoo on both hands; for the first ten years of my life, Kane had always insisted on wearing gloves, and he wore them all of the time. When we ate, when we went out, even while he mowed the grass, but a few years ago, he cut his hand through the glove while trimming the bushes outside our house. I ran to get a bandage, and I saw his bare hand with the aforementioned tattoo on it. Later I learned he had the same tattoo on his other hand; I didn’t really question it too much as I knew he had the other tattoo on his arm. These tattoos must have something to do with magic I thought to myself. Just like when Kaine summoned the portal, a circle of pink light filled with symbols appeared before Quinn’s hand, and 15 spheres of light came into existence. He closed his fist, and the lights instantly shot to different parts of the room roughly equidistant from each other. The lights were so bright, looking directly at them hurt, but they fulfilled their purpose: the entire room was lit now.

I could make out more details now that the room was lit: the walls and the ceiling which was at least 40 feet high were bare stone despite the fact that’s not what the building was made of. Furthermore, every square inch was covered in the same sort of symbols I had just seen. They looked as if they were carved into the stone itself. At the front of the room was a great wooden stage, currently empty except for a large purple curtain, and right before it was a row of three chairs with additional chairs a few feet behind them. With a gesture of his hand, Quinn indicated those three seats were meant for us, the trainees. I stepped forward as Kaine and the other guardians sat in their seats. I looked back at him, and he gave me a thumbs up, but that didn’t make me feel any better. I sat in the middle chair with Neil to my right and Emma to my left. I was too afraid to look at her again after the face she made at me, but I glanced at Neil, and he gave me an unsteady half smile. Quinn stepped through a door and appeared on the stage. He ripped the curtain back, and behind it was a grotesque horror straight out of a video game.