Madeline walked along the path to her classroom quickly, she found and entered the room right before the bell could ring. The teacher looked over at her, “Are you the new fairy student?” The teacher asked Madeline nodded, and quickly the teacher pointed toward an empty seat Madeline quickly walked over catching some glasses from other fairies before being able to sit in her seat, “Now as I was saying each of you should find a partner and choose an assignment, new student pair up with Nicholas.” Madeline looked around the classroom and saw only one other person who wasn’t in a group, Madeline sighed as she could tell it was the only one to be doing work.

***

Madeline walked down the hall quickly as her teammate stayed a bit behind, she groaned in annoyance, “What’s got you in a fuss?” He said, “You're clearly not taking this assignment seriously, as you’re walking so slow.” The boy chuckled, “Hon, please, I’ve been in this school longer than your knight ass. Long enough to let you know we’ve just passed the basement door.” Madeline stopped and looked at him angrily, she scoffed, “And why didn’t you mention this?” Nicholas smiled, pulling out a piece of magical paper, “During your interview they give you a map of the school, I’d had hoped you’d look over it beforehand.”

Madeline rolled her eyes, “I don’t have a map of the school, I came here last minute!” Madeline sighed opening her palms quickly the paper forcibly flew to her, she quickly opened it and saw nothing “Dummy there’s a charm so that students can’t mess with other students maps, only I can show the map.” The boy snapped his fingers, causing the map to quickly show a diagram of the school, “All students opening thing is different, but it’s attuned to the magic that the user carry.” Madeline looked at the map then at the hallway she borrowed her brow in confusion, “But there was no door there, just a painting…” Nicholas sighed “This is a magic school nothing's obvious, particularly this thing, the first headmaster made the realm the basement resides in.” Madeline looked at Nicholas like he was an idiot, but quickly sighed as she knew Realm creation is theoretically possible.

Madeline walked toward where they came, stopping a few steps before a painting with all the elder gods “Yeah, the first headmaster was an Elder God worshiper, particularly Valser, The Elder god of chaos and destruction.” Madeline sighed as she looked at each of the Elder gods all killed by their respective children and much newer but not new Gods, she saw some of the demon lords as they sided with The Elders but lost and were cast down to make the 9 hells, “I thought Elder God worship was outlawed?” Nicholas nodded walking over reaching into the painting markings quickly appeared running up his hand “It is, but the school thinks it would be difficult to find such a powerful mage to recreate a new basement so they just kept it.” Madeline sighed Nicholas grabbed her hand forcing whatever marks that was growing on him to grow on her, she looked at him shocked, but before she could react everything went blank.

Then went back to normal after a quick few seconds she looked around and saw a jail like hallways, she saw Nicholas and quickly ran up to him about to smack him, but quickly he grabbed her hand “Your new here, so you haven’t been through your registration yet, meaning alone you wouldn’t have been able to come inside.” Madeline sighed and looked at him confused about this registering business, “What’s that mean?” Nicholas looked at Madeline shocked and dumbfounded, “You’ve been alive how long, and you haven’t learned about Mage registration!?” He yelled confused, “I’m 17 turning 18 in a few months, and for 9 years I was in a fairy clan before they got attacked and most of them died.” Nicholas gulped and awkwardly laughed “An unregistered Mage are considered heretics a quote danger to society, while a registered one is a safe one, registering consists of a kind of blood magic to track where you are and what you are doing, certain mages are excluded from this process from being too weak or being allergic to that kind of magic, for those they are injected with a special potion that does essentially the same thing as the blood magic would except it rely heavily on a small magical item that is locked to the mage.” “And let me guess you can only register if you go to this school for whatever amount of years it takes to graduate?” Nicholas nodded, shocked Madeline knew a certain amount of the knowledge, “How do you know that bit?” Madeline sighed “before they died my dad and mom hated that fact, which is the main reason they took what they had and joined with the clan I was born into, I was taught healing magic, so when I grew to adult age I would replace the former Clan healer and cleric.”

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Nicholas nodded and turned around, “We’re looking for the staff of Sybil, it’s of course a staff that can be used to negate the not so healing effects of healing potions.” Nicholas walked through the hallways and looked around quickly, Madeline followed now being the one to slow down the assignment “So is this the Capital storage space for artifacts?” Nicholas nodded he looked into one room but saw nothing that they were looking for, “Yup most schools have something like this, only thing is ours is larger and carry artifacts other schools can’t.”

Nicholas backed away and continued to walk, looking in on a room on his right, “Where did your group reside in?” He said right before entering the room, Madeline followed shocked to see a well protected staff, “The Black Forest in Eldoria.” Nicholas aimed his hand to the staff, the surrounding barrier began to react as magical particles surrounded it, “What are you doing!?” Madeline yelled confused, “The only way to claim the assigned item is through a taking spell, didn’t you read the instructions?” Madeline began to reach toward her side causing a shadow like sword to form Nicholas saw and through the assignment paper to her, quickly she picked it up and read it, slowly she put the sword away and aimed her own arm toward the staff focusing all magic on it causing tattoo like markings to run down her arm, the barrier weakened as another magical anomaly appeared “The assignment is to use external magic not internal.” slowly as she lost some concentration the markings retracted, slowly she regained her focus, but suddenly the room felt oddly colder than it was before, she moved her eyes toward Nicholas. Quickly she was met by a crystal like monster impaling his body as he reached out blood spilled down his chest at the same time, the creature pulled away slowly a long blade came out from the body of Nicholas and the creature smiled “has miss Wayland sent me more mage food?” The creature sprinted toward Madeline it’s blade raised over her head, slowly lowering, she quickly adapted and raised her hand causing a shield to block the swing, but it kept her distracted as another sword like appendage impaled her stomach, her eyes widened and tears fell as the pain overwhelmed her the creature kicked her over to some other relic room she coughed up blood as she tried to get up but eventually failed, she looked over and saw a gem, she reached over, but her arm was quickly impaled, she fluttered her eyes as she soon began to lose Consciousness.

Madeline closed her eyes for a second then opened them going from abasement like dungeon to a forest, quickly she stood up and looked around her head began to aches as she did so for an unknown reason “Wouldn’t continue looking if I were you.” a Voice had said it wasn’t just coming from one place but from every direction “Am I dead?” the voice sighed “Yes...” it said bluntly “But…” suddenly the voice changed locations forming in front of Madeline she slowly looked up and saw a shiny light covering a woman's face “Follow me and I can promise you a safe return to Rynior’s creation, if you can follow my every command in the future.” The women calmly said she raised her hand as for some kind of deal making being forced to Madeline accepted.

She blacked out awakening with a rag on her face, quickly she took it off her face and sat up, she looked next to her and saw another bed with Nicholas laying down barely able to breath, Madeline stood up and walked over quickly the door to the room opened, Markus walked in shocked to see Madeline standing, but he smiled as he loved her and hoped she’d recovered somehow, he walked over shaking from the sight of her and grabbed her shoulder “I’m relieved that you’re alive but, how?” He asked Madeline shrugged, “I-I don’t know exactly, all I remember is trying to defend myself from that creature, anything after is a blur.” Markus sighed, his face blushed as he stared at Madeline’s.

“I’m glad you're well, but what were you two doing in the basement?” Orin asked, Madeline looked at her then sighed, “it was supposed to be an assignment to retrieve the staff of Sybil.” Orin began to frown, “Who is authorizing these assignments!?” Madeline took out the paper and showed the sigil of the house Wynne, “You did.” Orin snatched the paper and looked up and down, “This is a fake.” Orin angrily said she crumpled up the paper and used some kind of weird magic, quickly a mass of some kind formed “Find me this ‘Wayland’ and have the entire school on alert.” the misshapen form seemed to nod and disappeared.

Madeline looked at Orin, her face went a ghostly pale, quickly Orin noticed and smiled “Don’t worry you’re not in trouble. Issues like this have happened before, we could not find the perpetrators, but now with this information in hand we’ve found them.”