Today, at long last, we learn magic.

          It was all Elijah could hold in his bushy head, and the excitement knocked his pointy elbows and knobby knees all over.  Norhill Academia, home since his earliest memories.  He slaved from the time he could walk until fourteen years old.  Then his sharp eyes got him into the scriptorium for four years.  A graduate of honors from the Inscription Guild, but now...now he was eighteen, and the power of the cosmos could become his!

          Tallest in his class, Elijah crammed into the four-hundred seat auditorium stuffed with supplicants, scruffy and rich alike.  Chairs tiny and room rank with nervous sweat, the students craned necks to breaking to see their mentor.  Cloaked and wrapped head to foot, not an inch showing under the magenta cloth, the Wizard brooded alone on a stage raised ten foot above the chairs.  No steps up to him; they were not invited.

          “Mana is a river you swim every day of your life,” rumbled the form without preamble.  As far as he cared, all should know who Master Iyan was through osmosis.  “Like the ignorant fish, you know nothing more of it than the next bend, and it slips from your fingers without notice.  To be Wizard is to step from that river, to engineer its flow as you will.”

          The noble boys, silver spoon-fed morons, bumped and chafed in their tiny seats.  Elijah and his fellow former slaves remained perfectly still, not so much as a knuckle touching.  If there was one crime in the Academy, it was touching.

          A single innocent brush could create the outlet that mana needed to escape a Wizard's body in a storm of hellfire.

          “This is not without dangers.  We tread the lands where the Shaitan prowls, and every movement, every rote must be armored in utter perfection and faith.  Any aspect that you do not control, the Shaitan does.  Failure to control your magic will result in your expulsion.  Unauthorized spells of any level will result in criminal punishment by the Sage Guard.”

          Or worse...Havoc.  The Shaitan's Calling.  Word of power, word of disaster.  Anyone, even the lowliest servant, could call that blasphemous title, opening their souls in hopes the dread forces would roar out through them.  It struck as it would, leaving some supplicants empty and powerless before the Sage Guard's immediate ministrations, and rose others to a flash of godhood before they expired.

          Then, once the Havoc finished and their corpses slumped to the ground, the Shaitan would tie their minds into the infernal dreadnoughts of the Pits, where they would scream for eternity...

          "Possession, examination, or discussion of heretical material is a criminal act, grounds for expulsion and trial by the Sage Guard.”

          Elijah glanced amongst the assembly, a little smug at the blank looks of the noble boys.  They hadn't lived in the Academy; they hadn't seen what the Sage Guard could do.  The police of mana, mind, and souls – masked soldiers of Athos' creed.  The Sage answered only to God, and they policed everyone from the highest Wizard to the lowest healer witch. 

          “Do not question the ways of your superiors.  Obey.  Learn.  Then, one day, you too will become a god.”

          The scribe fidgeted.  Enough with the lecture.  Soon they would get to the good stuff!  What would be first?  Flying?  Fireballs?

          "Collect your textbooks!" barked Master Iyan.  "Dismissed!"

          Shuffles of confusion.  Frowning, jilted, Elijah located the brick of a tome under his chair and tugged it into his lap.  A hundred years ago, that book would be worth four of him, but the Print Guild changed all that.

          "What do we do with this?" asked a youth to Elijah's right.

          "We read it," answered his left.

          "All of it?!"

          Two knuckles thick and pages wide as his head.  Two days until next lecture.  Better buckle down.

**********

          Students performed no chores.  Only a few days before, Elijah would have spent ten hours a day penning bank notes and business ledgers for the business arms of the Academy, but now he had the entire day to attend to his studies.  He still barely finished the tome before class.  To his disappointment, it was a history, tracing the advancement of mana science from the early days of hedge witches, rampant devil worship, and ever-present Havoc.  Six hundred forty six years ago, the first Wizards broke through the fog of sin, committing magic to serve Athos and mankind.  Much of the tome waxed praise for the four Headmasters, first apprentices to the original Grandmaster, Kenja, who divined the secrets of mana and its practice from meditation to the sun, Athos, who.....and then....so next....  Names and dates swam through Elijah's dreams, jumbling together.

          Master Iyan sprang a quiz on the assembly at next lecture.  "Compose a history of mana, starting with Headmaster Tedras' formula of conduction."

          Elijah managed twenty-two points on the time line, handed off the paper scrap (yet another thing that would once have been worth more than him), and scarcely caught his head before the Master launched into a detailed review of principles.  An hour later, brain aching, the youth accepted his quiz back.  Many of his classmates got a shock.

          "Everyone with less than twenty correct points is expelled," said Iyan casually.

          Cries of dismay and denial.  Elijah stared aghast at his page.  Twenty-two points, two wrong.

          Some of these boys were noble-born.  No real sympathy for them; they led comfortable lives just for being born right.  But Elijah's friends, his classmates, who paid a dozen years for the tiniest chance to become Wizard...more than half of them departed the auditorium now, tears and anger clouding their eyes.

          "Page seven," commanded the Master, immune to communal hate behind his silks.  Was he smiling, or did lecture duty bore the cloaked demi-god?

          Eons.  Wizards.  The masters of power and discipline who held the wild magics in check to safeguard civilization.  Ripe bastards to the core, every one of them.

          "This isn't education," Elijah muttered to the newly-empty seats around him.  "This is a culling."

**********

          Weeks passed in stutters between lectures, dense and anxious thunderstorms of information, and textbooks smeared by previous generations of Acolytes.  The dorms emptied swiftly.  By the fourth week, only one hundred fifty supplicants remained.  Elijah clung to a silken thread, surviving tests with no room to breath...but he remained.

          By now, he hated and feared Master Iyan more than the devil.  Not that the Wizard budged a whit.  "Today, class, we truly begin...now that we have more manageable numbers.  Fifty of you will become general Acolytes, minor spell-weavers and suitable assistants.  Ten may become Crimson, the right hand to a Wizard.  Either way, you will live well, supported on your master's estate, and die at your appointed time.  Perhaps, at best, a single one of you will ascend to join the Eons.

          Ten Crimsons, their rank declared by the red bandanna across foreheads, emerged from side doors.

          "Split up.  Observe!"  Master Iyan bundled in his magenta cloak paced the stage, swooping like a hawk hungry for mistakes.

          All one hundred fifty Acolyte supplicants spread in orbiting clusters around an assistant.  The outside world may lump all forms of magic makers together, but the Crimsons regarded the students with upturned noses.

          They waited until Elijah and his classmates settled to an obedient hush.

          "Light!" whispered the assistants, and butterflies of shining white bloomed in ten pairs of gloved hands.  Such a tiny, simple spell; an observer could not see the internal war for control against the errant mana.  Falter, and fall onto the devil's path.

          There was no "simple" in magic.

          The Crimson let butterflies putter and dissolve.  Then they repeated the spell, this time vocalizing the rotes of control.  “On this day, second of mid-summer, we stand under the Host of Ariadne.  Leto the Destroyer crosses the Seventh Heaven.  We are Norhill Academia.  Grasp for God, invoked in the shape of Shima, lady of light and butterflies.  We shall not falter to the Shaitan's whisper; we shall not relent to the cursed accord...”

          On and on, rivers in the mind cut by a thousand repetitions until the mana could find no other thoughts to flow behind.  Each phrase linked and led into the next, each combination making possible a new spell.  The cup of their palms, arrangement of their fingers, alignment of the stars - all channels.  They had to force every aspect of the spell into shape.  The effect, its boundaries, its duration, its target, its end...For a second, Elijah considered quitting in the face of all that.  A Norhill scribe was still respected, even with the Printing Guild screwing up the markets.

          No!  How can I throw my life's work away? I will become a Wizard!

          Elijah cleared his head with a shake and leaned closer.  He could afford no lapse.

**********

          They studied the Light spell for nigh a month.  Elijah quavered before a tribune of Sage Guards on the first day of the second week and swore on his eternal soul and pain of death to never reveal the secrets of the Wizards.  Then he received a worn copy of Grandmaster Kenja's Compendium of Rotes, Volume One, from which an Acolyte could draw the entire repertoire of spells they would use throughout their lives.  Crimsons received another volume, and Wizards had access to an entire library of research, enough for infinite workings.

          Thirty more students departed the course, lips drawn and eyes watering.  Each one walked into a secret room with the Sage Guard; an hour later, they walked out, unwilling to speak of what occurred.  Had they been somehow stripped of the ability to cast magic to prevent them from joining the heretical rogue Wizards in the wilderness?  Or was it more mundane, just the usual threats of death?

          Who knew?

          Those who survived began to assume a familiarity of shared bondage, though Elijah could spare no time for swapping names.  He moved through the slow dance of rotes time and again in the cool, evening dorm, one step short of failure.

          Better soon.  More interesting soon.  Freedom soon.

          Then, after a battery of tests like a bucket of cold water, finally the Master declared time for a practical exam.  Only one-fourth of the original class peppered the auditorium seating.

          Master Iyan surveyed his pupils.  None of them knew so much as the figure's hair color.  For all they knew, Iyan was a shared role for a dozen people.  "You will perform one at a time for the class.  At the slightest sign of trouble, you will abort.  A safe abortion will not be cause for expulsion, but a bumbled one will.  The Shaitan does not show pity, and neither do we."

          Elijah exhaled.  Clenched his fists against the urge to shake like a leaf.

          "First.  Elijah of Norhill." Magenta-wrapped fingers pointed at him and speared the youth's heart with ice.

          He forced his legs to move.  Dammit.  He would not be expelled for keeping the Master waiting!  Descending to the open semi-circle at the base of the stage, he pivoted smart on a heel to face the class, pale and rigid as the dead.

          “Use the Sparrow and the Dead Man's Gallows,” commanded Iyan.

          Elijah set his feet wide and cupped his hands, picturing a bird with all his might.

          "Cast, Acolyte."

          His voice rang out, terse and high-pitched like a girl's from stress.  "Light!"  His mind rushed down the bird.  Sparrow led to feather, feather to air, air to light.  Similarly, the gallows transformed piece by piece into the stable earth, holding him fast.  Something began to run through his blood, an electric tension.  He nudged at it, encouraging the little flame to rise from its sleep.  With a tiny pop – like stretching his spine – it coursed through him and leaped out of his fingertips.  A spherical mote of light emerged between his fingertips.

          Beautiful, thrumming through every bone and pore, a ponderous song.  Up up down strike.  Down down up clash.  He gasped to hear it inside him, a beat simple, powerful, profound that rattled from his fingertips into the glowing apparition.

          Then other notes began to appear, racing along with the undertones of his mind.  The image of Sparrow and Dead Man's Gallows wavered ever so slightly, and Elijah slammed shut his mind.  A pressure under his diaphragm coughed, hitched, and collapsed.  The river in his veins dried instantly, and the mote of light snuffed out.

          "Most satisfactory, Acolyte supplicant Elijah," congratulated Master Iyan - the first praise he had uttered.  "Class, emulate his example.  Notice how he terminated the working so promptly as his novice concentration wavered.”  Backhanded praise, at that.

          Elijah stumbled to his seat, aroused as if to an embarrassing dream and full of a keening desire to feel that pounding, vibrant rhythm again.  Fear, too, at how quickly other things tried to rise up and change the rotes.

          Over the next hours, many students ground out faint glimmers and lingering migraines.  Some could produce no effect at all, and bowed their heads before Iyan's condescension.  A dozen matched Elijah's sphere and basked in the same praise.  Only a few failed to cut off the cast, and their motes of light would begin to waver and twist like demons dancing in the air for a dangerous second.  Then the appointed Crimson would leap up behind to touch skin against skin, fracturing the flow of power.  Such failures departed the Academy in shame.

          The Master closed session with a new lesson: conservation.  “The way of a Wizard is full of solitude.  There can be no physical contact, not with man nor woman.  Do not masturbate, spilling your life energy.  Touch not bare earth, running water, or any form of living plant.  Forswear alcohol.  Guard your presence against the Shaitan – he will eat you.”

          Elijah shuffled back to the cavernous dorm hall, ready for a nap before that night's dreary review.  Next week would be candle fires.  Yet instead of a welcoming bed, he found another young man.  New, noble-born, tall like Elijah, but built of rocks instead of reeds.

          No bow from either.  They were equals here.

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          "Jeremiah," offered the young noble.

          "Elijah."

          "That was amazing."

          "Thanks."

          "Will you teach me that?  I nearly flunked out."

          Elijah considered.  He recalled that this noble scored perfect on the written exams.  "Will you teach me the books?"

          "Fair trade."

          They could not shake on it.  Instead they nodded.  Just like that, the duo became friends to ward off the dark together.

**********

          Over the next seasons, neither youth failed out as the class bled to fifty.  Elijah acclimated to the hours of heavy reading, the paleness of his skin, and began to wear gloves and wrappings on his arms.  Whole lectures went without an expulsion now.  Master Iyan assigned Crimson supervisors for small group work.

          Jeremiah and he guarded each other's back.  Bound by the kind of camaraderie only wartime trenches or weekly exams could forge, they withstood each benchmark and occasionally came out ahead.  A bright future awaited so close...

          If Jeremiah seemed to show far more interest in him than studies alone would account for, Elijah had no experience with that mystical beast - woman - and less with alternative forms of attraction.  More as the days turned, he dwelled on that pounding, earthen rhythm that resided underneath the careful rotes in each spell.  Where did it come from?  Why did it seem so eager, almost inquisitive, as it wiggled its fingers against the walls of rote?

          Jeremiah just shrugged off such flights of fancy.

          Elijah could no more understand the rhythm than reach the sky, locked behind the Academy walls.  Even as his rotes grew more complex, leaping through the associations on spells that required days of preparation and rehearsal, the young man thirsted for more.

          The students received a week's leave for winter solstice.  Jeremiah complained, but his noble father yanked him home.  Abandoned, Elijah and the other former scribes wandered the cold, austere Academy alone, a place of little amusement.  No greenery, no warmth.  A vague itch, a distant restlessness, began in the boy's blood, and it drove him to explore farther.

          On the fifth day of break, he came upon Master Iyan's tower, and the unlocked servant's door beckoned him.  He knew the key to disable the invisible wards from years of scrubbing; he entered.  Inside the familiar common rooms, nothing had changed.  Some other boy doing his old work, no doubt.  Elijah snuck deeper.  He heard voices from another room – not the cultured lilt of a Wizard, but rough voices full of swearing.

          Past the sign that meant death for a curious slave, up the steep stairs, he poked his brow over the door into a room that swallowed the tower's whole level.  Several Wizards watched from behind a wall of yellowish glass, and on the floor four shackled figures handled bundles of silver wire connected to a point in the floor.  Each held a strand to his bare chest, sharing a grim expression.  Each wore the brand of the criminal on his brow, a half circle with a line through it.

          “Commence,” said a faceless Wizard.

          A bolt of lightning arced through the mass of wire, coming out of the floor, and struck each man full force.  They collapsed, dead, chests seared.

          “Dammit,” murmured the Wizard, voice echoing from the stairs rather than through the glass.  “How was it this time?”

          “Too much is evaporating,” his colleague replied.  “It can't even pay for itself.”

          The first one sighed. “This is a waste of time.  Sebastian is a fool.  Let's go see how the conduits are doing.”

          What kind of conduits? wondered Elijah, but he decided to let his curiosity wait for the time being.  He stole from the tower, the image of four corpses playing in his mind.  What had they done to deserve death?  What had the Wizards killed them to find?

          The youth wandered to the edge of the Academy, staring down the volcanic slope of Norhill towards the sprawl of the city below.  As far as he could see, the cram of lesser people.  They orbited the dead volcano, almost a million strong, come to cluster at the foot of the greatest nation in the world.  Only the nobility and Wizards dwelt on the slopes...the people Elijah always assumed would guide the world in benevolence.

          Some blind faith in magic in his chest contracted and died, and the young man's mind began to walk dangerous paths.

**********

          Class fell into a rhythm of building up longer and longer time periods for stronger spells.  The vague restlessness in Elijah bloomed into a full-blown buzzing, a constant annoyance like insects on his toes.  The mana began to thicken in his blood and pound on his veins, pleading for a human touch, the feel of grass, the pleasure of sex.  It wanted out.

          What if he listened?  Just a tiny pinch let loose to ease the itching?

          He didn't try for a long time, too scared, but the idea persisted.  Eventually, it won.  Sneaking to the farthest reaches of the Academy, Elijah wormed into the abandoned dormitory he had cleaned once a week for no better reason than appearances all those years.  Alone there, he did the unthinkable – he let the rotes stand in his mind and change.

          "Light!"

          Sonorous Music blasted through his toes, up through blood and bone, across his fingers and into the air.  Sparrow into air into light...then into rainbow, dancing, whirlwind, storm...He fought to keep the sphere in his palms small, but even a tiny window of the Shaitan's chaos created a gleaming brocade of strands and dancing figures.  It was as though the mana bore up all the beautiful thoughts from his inner mind and let them into the air.

          He tasted something wonderful.  His Light crumbled in seconds, but even its dissolution was beautiful, collapsing chaos.  The sterile feats of Crimsons paled, and Elijah knew he was hooked.

          Over the next months, the youth would return many times.  Each infantile step in class he improved into works of wonder and bizarre imagination.  Figurines of fire, lavish fountains, stoneworks wrought into impossible geometric configurations - the Music birthed them all.  Even the worst ones - the snarling demons, the stomach-churning replicas of flesh and pus, the malevolent, sickly ghosts - only burned the boy in a gauntlet and reforged him stronger in the song.  He labeled the evil things as temptations of the Shaitan and hoarded the beautiful for himself.  Ultimately, he trusted the rush more than the priests.

          If only he could understand the Music's source.  Maybe it would whisper to him all the secrets of the world!  How much more exciting that than to live centuries itching from the mana, holed up in frigid towers to horde scraps.

          Jeremiah could only scowl at the smoldering passion that took Elijah away from him.  Grades slipping, his comrade spent his free time fiddling in the abandoned dorms instead of studying with Jeremiah.  He was not properly conserving mana, and the strain sneaked in as their class began more complex workings.  Elijah should have been head of the class; instead, resources split, he straggled near the back.

          Elijah didn't even toss out a goodbye after class before he skipped tutor's hour to experiment alone.

**********

          At the one year anniversary of the class, Master Iyan announced the term project.  "Absolute mana control until I say otherwise.  Not a drop may be wasted.  Studies will continue over this period, but lectures are suspended."

          That was it?!  All forty-two students congratulated themselves on an easy assessment, pouring into the dorm with every anticipation of relaxation.  Piles of new texts distributed onto their beds extinguished that notion quickly.

          Experiments cut off, Elijah moped around the dorm, but Jeremiah stayed nearby to cheer and chat.  Summer left the room muggy.  When the mana surged around the pupils' innards, books conveniently covered laps and the smell of sweat pervaded.  Mutual embarrassment provoked them all to study harder and speak less.

          The itch intensified into the chills by the end of the month, and a sympathetic cook distributed small chunks of bark that the students could bite down on during the worst of it.  On day thirty five, the chills finally retreated, though Elijah felt something strange in his stomach, worming about.

          Next morning, Jeremiah rolled over after a night's nightmares, groaned, and gripped his pillow.  It shredded in his grasp.  Stunned wide awake, he flexed fingers covered in tawny fur and tapering to sharp points.  He had claws.

          Down the room, one student - Kerril? - screamed shrill and long, cradling his chest in his hands, the flesh there ripe like an adolescent girl.

          Elijah sat up, confused, and his horns snagged on the empty bunk above.  Spiraled like an elk, they punched into the fabric and kept the youth twisting desperately for freedom.  Finally, the mattress ripped and released him.  His blood seemed to pulse in time to the Music, louder than ever before.

          “What the hell is happening to us?!”  Kerril shouted.

          “Its the mana,” said Brute, the only one to have finished the entire set of book studies.  “The very last book talked about.  The mana in our blood...its changing us.  The Shaitan, having failed to take our minds, tries to take our bodies.”

          “How do we stop it?” Elijah asked, more fascinated than horrified as he stroked the horns.

          “We have to control our bodies like we do our minds,” Brute explained.  “We have to force it into a mold.”

          “Correct,” said Master Iyan, that magenta silhouette, from the doorway.  “Commendable, Brute.”

          “Do we use rotes?” Jeremiah asked.

          “You will,” Iyan replied, ”in the future.  For now, no.  You will suffer for seven more days.”

          A chorus of groans.

          “You will know temptation, and you had best overcome it,” threatened the Wizard.  He left them without further advice.

          So seven more nightmare days sputtered by.  No one could concentrate on books.  Few spoke.  Jeremiah could not eat, transfixed by the fur dancing up his forearms.  Elijah fled to solitude to secretly record his hair changing to a tawny gold.  The dorms were a thunderstorm of mistrust.

          No one suggested that they find earth or person to touch - to purposefully siphon their mana away.  Who would be the one to admit weakness and failure after all this time?

          "What if this is on purpose?" mumbled Kerril on day forty two, several inches shorter and voice girlish.  He quivered in a perpetual state of terror; a woman could barely hold mana at all.  It  inevitably bled out with her moon time.  Even the greatest female magician would never be more than a minor hedge witch.  If he finished changing, his entire life was in vain.

          None responded.  What irony, wondered Jeremiah, that even Brute turning chunk by fat chunk into marble would shun Kerril, the one emasculated into that least of animals - woman.  Maybe if he changed all the way into a girl, they could be friends.  Girls, at least, couldn't ignore Jeremiah into a broken heart.

          Day fifty three, the freak show lined up under Master Iyan's masked eye and, for the first time since winter, marched out of the Academy.  They followed a broad, paved lane along the eastern face of Norhill to a sculpted pond surrounded by manicured trees, one of the many places forbidden to lesser beings.

          "Living things generate mana every day of their lives," lectured Iyan under the late summer sun.  "It hides too in the sun, moon, stars, and soil."

          Students shuffled, marked by fur, feather, stone, and worse.  A menagerie halfway to losing their humanity.

          "However!  Man is the only creature capable of storing mana.  We are the only ones capable of harnessing it!"  He jabbed gloved fingers at Elijah's horns, Jeremiah's claws, Kerril's breasts.  "You see with your own eyes how the Shaitan twists all in his grasp.  Long ago, the feral beastmen were born by such wild, devilish magic.  Given time, the mana would warp you beyond return."

          Many throats gulped in unison.

          "Lucky, then, that mana bows before the righteous will of Athos' sons.  As long as we abide the rules of contagion, we control its flow and its form.  It obeys natural principles.  Mana is fire, burning wild.  Thus, this pond.  Elemental opposition.  Through processes beyond your need to understand, we may change this into heavy water – a substance that dampens, drains, and retains mana.  Bathe, and it will remove the taint of temptation from you.”

          In single file shuffling eager, the students sloshed into the tepid water.  The heavy water felt no different than a normal pond, but its touch stole away the itch from their bones.  It left less than before.  Orderly, horns and fur dissolved; stone returned to life; womanly figure returned to manhood.  Drained but relieved, the students raised a collective cheer.  Elijah was the last one out, his fingers trailing along the surface.

          "Next week, we will begin rotes that control your body and the mana within.  A Wizard must be able to retain mana for years without pause, and even the lowest Acolyte sometimes goes months.  Mutations are a manifestation of chaos and weakness."

          Four Crimsons approached, the first cradling a plain urn of copper.  They fanned out around the mass of soaked students, arms folded into their sleeves.  The one with his urn dipped it into the pond, collecting water.

          "Now, students," Master Iyan clapped.  "One little detail to cover while you are all drained and exhausted." All goodwill drained from his voice.  "One among you has dabbled in the heresies."

          Elijah felt his world implode, the guilt clear across his cheeks.

          "Unfortunately, your training at Norhill is the best.  We cannot simply expel you to the world, ready to teach Grandmaster Kenja's rotes to rogues and witches.  The only ones you will speak to – or scream at, to be more precise – will be the Sage Guards.”

          He needed to vomit.  Turned over to the Sage dungeons?  Death would be a blissful dream!

          "Sir..." whispered the urn Acolyte.

          "What?" growled Iyan.  "Isn't it all collected yet?"

          No!  Elijah wouldn't let the Academy win!

          "That's just it, sir."

          Lucky for him, the Music had some tricks of its own for those who would listen.

          "There is no mana to collect."

          Song roaring in his head, Elijah began to glow as his blood became the Light.

          Except for Jeremiah, face wrought in horror, all the students fled down the path.  Iyan and his crimson Acolytes snapped hands out and began to chant bindings, voices melded together into a chorus.

          Elijah let the Music free in one word without boundary.  A holy word to break hollow chains.  They only called it the Shaitan's word because they could not see how it would build a brilliant new world.

          "Havoc."

          His flesh ignited, consumed itself in fire.  A reborn, fiery angel spread its arms wide.

          Deep in the heart of Norhill, an eye opened.  Angular and sharp, reptilian, it blinked away the sleep and stirred in its bed of fire.  Someone was calling through the ancient songs.  It would honor the call.

          It reached out for the iridescent star of Elijah's Havoc and fed it, pouring its strength into his own.  Let the mountain tremble!

          Magma surged from Norhill's heart and exploded from the pond and a hundred other tiny gaps, melting rock, masonry, and people to slag.  A few Wizards in their towers, marooned by the searing onslaught, sacrificed their pain-staking reserves to wink far away.  More could not spare enough power or time to hold back the tide and met their end same as mortal men.

          Though Iyan crashed bindings around the angel-Elijah's legs, the Music ignored him.  Those killed rose again, bodies remade in heat and stone, minds reveling in a sea of lava.  The first Academy in all the world gave way, foundations melting away.  The entire mountain rattled, spilling an avalanche onto the city of Norhill and the land around.

          Under a hot, reeking wind pushed by the fires, the magenta cloth unraveled from Master Iyan.  Beneath, a man.  Clean-cut, angular, not much past thirty in appearance.  The magic coursing down his veins turned his skin a nauseating purple.  He bared teeth and chanted at a bellow, working the bindings up Elijah's body.

          Too late, Jeremiah knew.  The boy stood transfixed, now trapped on the shrinking island of rock between fires.  Elijah woke something primal that would not be denied.  The volcano would reawaken now.  The Academy was finished.

          Lava, stone, and smoke swirled around the once-peaceful pond.  The Crimsons began to drop to fumes and fire, only to rise again as burning beings.  Mermaids for a world of lava, swimming in it like a sea.

          Elijah floundered, Havoc spent, and the flames of his body sputtered to embers, crumbling away.  Iyan, trembling but victorious, warded against the waves of lava.

          Heat evaporated Jeremiah's tears.  He and Elijah shared one last gaze.

          I'm sorry, mouthed the fading angel.  So sorry.

          Then its core collapsed into soot, and Elijah died.

          "This place is lost," spat Iyan, eyes on his Acolytes now frolicking in lava like blazing dolphins.  "How in the devil did one boy's curse do all this?  Tch!”  He glanced at Jeremiah.  “At least you have the balls to stick around.  I should have enough power left to port us towards Elsia Academy.  Stand very still.”

          Jeremiah obeyed out of pragmatism, though rage settled in his heart.  Iyan could not care less about the dead; the whole Academy destroyed amounted to an annoyance in his personal life!

          So after the world twisted and lurched, sucking them like noodles through a tiny point of darkness and spitting them out on the coast of the Rainbow Sea, Jeremiah reached over and grabbed Iyan's shoulder with a bare hand.

          He felt a shock like touching an open flame, and flickers of purple lightning spurted off them both as Iyan's vestiges of mana flared away. 

          “You traitorous bastard!” hissed Iyan, staggering back.

          “For Elijah,” spat back the youth.  He picked up two rocks and proceeded to beat the Wizard to death, taking grim satisfaction in each wet snap.  Apparently the Eons were too superior to need martial defense lessons.  Oh well.

          Bloodied and heart sore, Jeremiah forced himself up.  Of course, the Sage Guard would hunt for him, but the rogues would welcome him, if only for access to new rotes.  He would gladly join their fight.

          He would beat every Wizard in the world to death if it would prevent another Elijah.

**********

          The next week, when earthquakes and lava ceased, the refugees of devastated Norhill found their proud mountain still smoldering.  It belched waves of ash on the eastern wind, coating the lush plains in soot.  Their land lay charred and broken.  Nothing would grow in these Wastes.  West, the reclusive Dryads of the Forest refused to share their land; already, ambitious families from the provinces declared themselves free nations.

          Oldest kingdom of the human world, Norhill crumbled.

          Underneath its mountain, the sated dragon curled into a ball to sleep once more until the stars called.