In a city, there was a college town. In that town, there was a bar. In that bar, there was a particular man, a teacher, drowning his fears and sorrows in enough alcohol to fill a hot tub.
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“Another.” The man pushed his glass forward, despite having consumed what could easily be more than five times the lethal amount.
The creature behind the counter said nothing, for it did not have a mouth because it was made of flames, and hesitantly poured out another for the man who taught at the university. It was already known that the staff there were particularly resilient, but it hadn’t become this clear until everyone saw the scrawny, disheveled, 5’ 9” man down shots of what was essentially concentrated acid like it was water.
The creature expelled mana from its body, forming a question mark in the air, and the man chugged the glass before answering.
“The first semester is starting, Ignis. New year, new students.” He pushed his glass forward and sighed before pulling out a pen, gesturing for the check.
The elemental grabbed the glass, evaporating the contents before setting it to the side and burning text into a piece of wood, the edges charring. As it did this, it recreated the question mark.
“We’ve been over this. I teach one of the few specialty magic courses, and the ones that take the class are always the spoiled rich kids.”
Ignis stared.
“Okay fine, they’re all rich kids, but at least some of them are only out of touch and not some pretentious little brat! And you don’t even have to deal with them!”
The elemental put the slab of wood down as it gestured to the rules, posted just above the bar. Right at the very top, haphazardly attached to the rest of the board, was a wooden plank that read, “No artifacts or combat magic. Must be vetted by a junior to enter.”
The man chuckled to himself. “Yeah, that was a bad day. Alright then, I suppose you have to manage with them as well, but you aren’t stuck with three hour long lectures to kids that genuinely want to make you miserable.”
“Plus,” he added while digging in his pocket for coins, “you have a stupidly high proficiency for fire magic and could probably burn down the block if you wanted. You are related to one of the old gods, but still, really thought your powers would be watered down by now.”
Ignis created a line in the air with two points at the end before spreading it out, as if to say distant, but the teacher had already left, two silver pieces sitting where he had been.
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“Johnson!”
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The man, who’d just recently left the bar, turned around and saw one of the few people who stayed on campus year round. The combat teacher.
“Hello, Delilah. Why are you here?”
The woman frowned slightly. “I can’t come see a friend before the year starts?”
“Not normally, no.”
…
“Wow. I need to come by more.”
“Yeah.”
“…Well, uh, I came to see if you needed anything for your class, like paper or spell books, anything like that.”
“No, I’m good but thanks anyway. You ready for the students? We don’t want anything like last year happening, with those two flying through two floors because you taught them a high level spell.”
“Ugh, please. They were juniors, how was I supposed to know they’d fight each other?”
“Their records, perhaps?”
“Shut up.”
The man laughed to himself, noting the reaction he’d gotten out of her. “I’ll see you when the year starts. Don’t die before class.”
“Alright. Good luck man.”
He nodded at her and walked off, going to prepare the class for next week. Hopefully, the students would be a bit better this year. Probably not, but a man can dream.
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“Tom! Get down here!”
Oh…gods. She never yells that loudly unless I did something stupid. And…it’s six in the morning. Rushing to get my clothes on, I run downstairs in a baggy pair of jeans and an inside out shirt, seeing my mom at the table holding an envelope.
She smiled. “Why can’t you be that fast when we go see family?”
I let out a heavy breath, chuckling a bit. “I thought I was in trouble for a bit. What’d you need?”
She shook the envelope at me. “You applied to the Academy, and this is a letter from the Academy and it’s addressed to you.”
…
I take a few moments to fully process that because, well, we live in a border town, next to the dwarven city. Mail takes a few weeks to get from the capital to here since the post office has awful funding, so the fact that the letter arrived at all is a miracle.
“Hurry up and open it, your dad will be home soon.”
Right, Dad works overnight. “He’ll be a bit upset that we opened it without him.”
Mom sighed. “It doesn’t matter if it says you got in, and he’ll be too focused on cooking no matter what it says.”
“He does like making food when he’s upset.” I ripped open the envelope and pulled out a sheet of paper, which I skimmed through until I found what I was looking for. “I got in. ‘We look forward to seeing you at the start of the school year, as of August 26th, and wish you well in your future here. Sincerely, The Admissions Department of the Academy of Combat and Magic.’”
Mom was on the verge of tears and I was in about the same state. I got up and walked around the table to hug her when I heard the door open.
“I’m back! What’d I miss?”, my dad said as he stuck his head into the kitchen. This would be a wonderful day.