After about an hour of relaxing in our room, we decided it was enough time to wait, so everyone would assume us as properly integrated.

I felt the tentacles of my soul interact with the wall as I touched it, bringing my wish to leave the building towards the titanic organism.

Pain assaulted my mind, and I quickly drew upon the parasites knowledge on how to deal with that pain, simply returning the corrupted power to the building, so it can ensure that I am the one in its data bank, for a lack of better words.

Slowly, the walls shifted, and I understood how it did so. It ate itself and reproduced, a collection of hundreds of small organisms working together like an algae, and finally, the door opened, which we left.

We were not disturbed by the guards as we left, the plants were no problem as I disinfected us, and even the ebonwood opened to our approach. We strut towards the Academy, trying not to marvel at the castle like buildings all around us, with a single titanic shape looming in the center, the place we were not allowed to go, where one needed a royal decree to even look at properly.

A castle build to be a city in and off itself, independent even from the capitals rings, with silver armors lining the walls, constructs and guards if I had to guess.

As the sun was reflected around us in all manner of colors, and every family made sure to prostrate their wealth before the entire world, Ember and I finally reached the academy, a network of towers and bridges, statues and paintings twisted to tell stories I could not quite understand. Students ran and flew, teleported and catapulted through the building, a few of them fighting, only for their magic to suddenly stop as a professor approached and cast something with null magic, probably the most powerful counter spell I had ever seen.

Through all of this, we entered through the front gate, two dragon statues with their throats entwined standing before a golden path lined with rose bushes and trees that grew to arches above our heads.

To put it simply, the moment we entered that gate, we were between realities, spatium was woven into everything, forcing this horrific amalgamation to hold together, my Arcane gaze burned, my mind put under pressure, while my soul began to connect with every stray growth of power.

I would have frozen in many cases, and I almost did when someone decided to randomly throw a freeze spell at me, which I countered with disassociate and counter spell, before turning towards the attacker.

As I looked, I saw a chubby redhead stand there, with the biggest genuine grin I had seen since I could remember

“Hi there! You look nice, so I thought I might as well walk with you. Hope that isn’t a problem?”

Before I could say anything, he was beside me, and while I first thought to simply disregard him, I knew to take him serious when I noticed both Spatium and Geos in his soul, this man basically being a walking stun gun, and given his general demeanor, he perfectly embraced these ideals.

“Where are you from?” he asked me, and I knew I wouldn’t get rid of him anytime soon.

“I’m from a village that burned down, we were the first to die in the titan attack, and also the ones to defeat it. What about you?” I asked, hoping to shut him up by simply acting like an overbearing asshole.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Really? That must be bad, I’m nobody that important, just a nobles son that’s forced to go here, because I got the arcane gaze and Elemental traits.” He bragged, halting my movement almost immediately.

“You too? If that isn’t a surprise.” I answered, hoping to stay calm. There was no way this wasn’t a setup by some asshole to figure out my powers, and kill me the moment they realized my Illegal combinations.

“Yeah, to be honest, I saw the weird soul you’ve got and decided it would be fun to talk to someone with a similar situation. I bet you don’t have many friends, right? That necros-aqua aura you keep up makes it very uncomfortable to be around you, like a reverse swamp, more like icy rain in the winter, you know? You should probably get rid of that if you want to make connections.”

He said, and I grimaced.

“It's mostly emotion driven on my part, can’t help being a walking disturbance to the natural order, you know? I just like to stay calm and not accidentally start something stupid.” My mask hid the side eye I gave him, and still, it shut him up for a second.

“Right, not everyone's elemental trait works the same. My father always claimed he was happy it wasn’t as emotional as I am, which I don’t understand, but I am here to learn, so I’ll add that to the collection.”

It was hard to hide the slight smile blooming on my face, especially when my friend spoke up.

“I am Ember, this is El, may we have your name? He’s always a bit suspicious of strangers, and friends, and probably everything except himself. Don’t worry, he’ll warm up to you at some point.”

I was silent to that accusation, trying hard not to say that I didn’t trust myself either, especially with the weird kid right next to us.

“Nice to meet you, I can’t give you my name, but you can call me Noel, and I have been told that I’m annoying a few times since I entered, which is probably a record or something, because you are the first people I meet here, and you didn’t tell me that.”

Ember grinned at that, and I suppressed a sigh, the surrounding air turning warmer as my aura receded.

“We have to sign in to the academy now, can’t be seen standing around doing nothing, when the entry applications end in three days.” Slowly, we headed towards the entrance, much more silently from then on, our application in hand as we strode through the gates, walking towards a room with the word ‘secretary’ burned into it, where we threw them in a pipe and left again.

In the split second that Noel was distracted, we made sure to disappear, walking the campus in an attempt to understand the situation a bit better.

“This entire thing is a deathtrap.” Ember announced as we passed by a particularly suspicious set of letters, sygils carved into a tree that would make whoever touched them shit their pants, and multiple phallus's engraved just about everywhere, with the janitor, a semitransparent humanoid ghost, cleaning up everything that touched the ground whenever he passed by, an extremely annoyed look on his face indicating his personal opinion on magical graffiti.

We walked by a few groups of gossiping girl, a large ring of people gathered around two Idiots dueling with wooden swords, and a group of Aquamancers moving a ball between them, which was probably done via the ‘control stream’ spell.

Everyone here was much larger than me, the youngest being twice my size, and the oldest looking like actual mummies, two people I assumed to be in their twenties almost shaved my head off as they played catch in the air, using spatium magic to catapult themselves around.

Finally, we entered a small garden, where a relaxing song calmed us while we proceeded further inside, a beautiful figure with long hair standing there, the plants dancing around them while the silver strands danced in the sunlight, Vitus flowing everywhere and ensuring everything grew perfectly.

We stood there for a solid five minutes before they turned around, a face so symmetrical that it was almost too perfect, a serene smile on their face and emerald like eyes opening as they looked at us.

“I am sorry, I did not notice the two of you.” A voice like silk whispered, and both Ember and I were stunned, before my mouth finally moved.

“That was a beautiful song, can I assume you are of elven descend?” I asked, and they nodded, a sigh escaping their lips.

“I am a halfling, and if you plan on fighting me for it, I’ll have to tell you that this garden is a very bad place to fight a Vita user.” They told me, making me furrow my brows.

“As a necros user, that would be no problem for me. But don’t worry, I don’t care much about other peoples races, aside from the cultural implications and stuff. You see, once I am done here, I will head to the Univercity.” I explained, and they nodded at that.

“It’s nice to have someone ask out of curiosity, and not prejudice for once. You may call me Sine, if you want. How may I call you?”

After we introduced ourselves, we rested for a few hours, before finally heading home again, ready to start school soon, after all, we had made a few friends today, and the path towards immortality was just a bit more open.