Neal Ward was pretty much your average unawakened human teenager trying to be a mage. Emphasis on was.
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Don’t get him wrong, Neal loved learning magic but it was weird and it never failed to surprise him. Although the fact that he was sitting on the plush, carpeted floor after being summoned by one of the most famous living dark mages in the world while his headphones were still playing Icarus by Bastille should have helped that conclusion.
And, for bonus weird points, he was dressed in an old hoodie covered in his school’s logo, he was still holding the mandatory weekly update for unawakened students (so the school had a reliable update on whether or not they needed to be teaching someone as an awakened student or not), and there was a rather stereotypical all black cat (even the whiskers) sniffing his shoes as if they were the most interesting thing in the world, the lack of a certain spark in its golden eyes made him pretty confident that it wasn’t a shifter.
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Perhaps the most concerning thing though, was that The Bedlam of Grayl felt like His, the cat felt like His too, in a different way, like he was certain both he and the cat felt like to the dark mage. Hisdark mage.
Or no, maybe the most concerning thing was that both he and this cat were definitely the dark mage’s newly summoned familiars. That wouldn’t be too unusual, having multiple familiars or witches wasn’t that odd. No it was the fact that Neal was 100% human, and humans had no record of ever awakening as a familiar. As a witch? Certainly! But a familiar? Never.
Maybe Neal should stop studying to be a mage, this probably filled up the maximum amount of weirdness he could handle in a lifetime. Nah, he’d miss the weirdness. Besides, this situation would definitely not be over for a while.
The dark mage’s voice snapped him back to the present, “Are you alright kid? I’ve heard that being summoned the first time is pretty disorienting.” The demon seemed at least slightly concerned, not an expression he expected to see on the dark mage’s face.
“To put it lightly, yeah” Neal responded in a voice more calm than he expected. It was still definitely shakey, but less panicked than he felt.