Rosaldo didn’t know what to expect with his first class. Having opened his tome on his table, the leatherbound journal where the text changed each time he opened it, his first class was Liturgy at building C, room 201. But that wasn’t what he focused on. The night before he’d talked to the ghost of Chris, a former student who had been living in his dorm, murdered and covered up as a suicide. Chris had said he would meet him again in his room.

That was his truest welcome into the Academy. His living roommate was Stephen, a braggart and a bully. Rosaldo had known enough people like him growing up. He remembered one day when one such bully was beating him in the schoolyard, after he’d let in a goal for soccer. Then Rosariel had come running in, tackled the boy and then had started to kick and slap him with the wrath and rage of all a ten year old girl could produce in defense for her twin brother.

Rosaldo smiled at the thought, and wondered how Rosariel would handle Stephen. Thankfully, he was already gone when Rosaldo had woken up. So much for a tour of the campus, and a friend for a roommate. It was alright, though. Rosaldo had learned to be content and sufficient by himself.

Despite the Victorian styled interior, there were modern-day amenities in the washroom such as toothpaste, a tooth brush, and god forbid if it was missing, toilet paper. There was even a showerhead over a cloudy copper bathtub. He wondered where Chris, his predecessor, had hung himself. There were no marks to show, no signs or a visibly high enough place for a hanging. He undressed and with great hesitation, stepped into the bathtub.

After washing, Rosaldo covered himself with a towel and stepped out to open his wardrobe. Inside was the same gray uniform that his roommate Stephen wore, trousers, white shirt and dark blazer. It looked like it fit him perfectly, which it did. Over the breast pocket was a stitched logo of the Order, a downward pointed triangle with a cross. There was even a leather messenger bag he took to place his ‘tome’ inside.

He didn’t know what to expect when he left the room. Busy chatter drew him in from beyond the staircase. Rosaldo reasoned that was where he should go, stepping down towards the noise. The great hall was lined with long, uninterrupted wood tables where students sat and helped themselves to a buffet of English looking foods arrayed over the long tables. Silver plates and cutlery had been placed with neat and perfect spacing between each student.

Rosaldo sat down in a corner where no one sat nearby. He recognized a small pie of some sort prepared with a stack of other pies, took one and cut out a slice. Savory beef, reduced ale and carrots with caramelized onions. Rosaldo had learned to appreciate cooking from living alone, and he recognized great cooking when he ate such food.

His quiet contentment was shattered by a hand that slapped his back, hard. Rosaldo nearly choked on his food, spluttering. He turned to face Stephen, a wide and obnoxious grin on his face.

“I see the dove found himself a place to nest,” Stephen said. “Come on, sit with us.” He waved to a group of young men who were sniggering and barking out laughter. One of them flicked some food at another among them, who stood up with indignation alongside even louder guffawing.

Rosaldo offered an apologetic smile. “It’s alright, I’m good here. I’d just like to eat alone for a bit, get my bearings.”

“Okay. Suit yourself.” Stephen walked back to his table.

A young man sat beside Rosaldo. He looked Southeast-Asian, spiky black hair jutting out from his thin, tan face. He whispered with a friendly smirk, “You missed a nuclear warhead not joining Stephen and his group. Fuckers are a fraternity in the making. I’m Thao, by the way.”

“I’m Rosaldo. Nice to meet you.”

“It’s your first day, no? You look like it. Got yourself all bug eyed and wondering what the hell you’re going to do, yeah?”

Rosaldo nodded, wincing with embarrassment. “Pretty much. My first class is Liturgy. Not even sure how I’m going to get there.”

“Ah! Well, you’re in luck, that’s my class today too! You should eat fast, the second bell is bound to go up soon. Place is like a church run by demons.” Thao caught Rosaldo’s grimace. “I’m kidding. Obviously. I think. Did you meet the Keeper yet?”

“Sure did,” Rosaldo mumbled between gobbling up the crumbs of his pie. “Are the other teachers like…?”

“Like a dryad, or some other mythical creature? No, the rest of the faculty are all Mancers like us. Keeper Annie is kind of the caretaker here. She makes sure we don’t make too much trouble, and that the boys and girls stay in their dorms.”

“Oh,” Rosaldo said, looking around. There were, in fact, no girls in the hall. “How’s that going for them?”

“That’s why there’s parties in the other planes, where we go on ‘field trips’. The faculty generally allow it. You’ve got a lot to learn, and thankfully I’m not so far in my term that I think we’ll have the same classes for the most part.”

Rosaldo asked, “Do you get to leave after one year?”

Thao laughed. “Time is basically stopped in the Academy. You might be here for way more than a year, depending on whether or not they say you’re ready for your Trial.”

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“That sounds ominous.”

“It isn’t! It’s just no one who’s taken the Trial has ever returned. That doesn’t sound right… yeah, they could be either dead or a fully fledged member of the Order. Who knows? But they’re definitely preparing us for something. I’ve learned quite a bit since I arrived.”

“How long have you been here?”

Thao shrugged. “To be honest, you can’t really tell. I tried to record the number of days in my tome, but it just disappears unless they’re study notes. Time stops here, right?”

A bell gonged, a deep resonant toll that echoed through the building.

The students stood and began to file out of the hallway, donning their messenger bags. Rosaldo followed Thao as they all left the door, out into the garden hedges that grew up to six feet tall in some rows.

“There are three buildings,” Thao explained, pointing to the right of three medieval looking manors in the distance. “A, B and C. That’s C. Easy, right? The dorms are in the middle, the maze is grown in a circle, and the faculty residence is to the other side of the study halls.”

They walked towards the building to the right hand side, winding and turning corners around the hedges.

“Are these hedges necessary?” Rosaldo asked.

“They’re the school’s buffer, in case anything escapes from the other planes into here,” Thao said. “Think of it as security, maintained by Keeper Annie’s literally green thumb. Annoying, yes, but necessary.”

“Anything ever gone into the Academy?”

“Not sure. But that’s the point of the hedges, to keep anything contained long enough for the faculty to deal with it. The maze will let you see just enough to get to where you need to go. Anywhere else, and best of luck. Guys have tried to get to the girl dormitories. They’ve never been able to get close to it. Stephen and his gang tried to burn through the hedges. Ha! Keeper Annie wasn’t too pleased with that, idiots got covered in poison ivy all over. Anyways, we’re here.”

Past the brush of flower bushes and brambles, Rosaldo saw an English manor, topped with parapets and more of the squatting stone gargoyles that looked down at them from their tiled rooftops. A field of grass was scattered with students sitting down and enjoying the sun, or making their way into the school’s doors.

They entered the building, more rugs over the floorboards, tapestries and silvered mirrors covering the walls, scents of pine and herbal incense perfuming the air. Following the knots of students murmuring with excited enthusiasm, they stepped up a wooden staircase to the second floor, where the first door to the right side was stamped with a bronze number: 201.

Rosaldo followed Thao, where a class of fifteen or so students arrayed in three lines sat down in front of their wooden desks.

“Hey!” A girl waved at Rosaldo near the back of the room. He recognized her as Lorne, his classmate, the Scottish girl from the outside world. “It’s your brother!”

Sitting beside her was his twin sister, Rosariel. Rosaldo felt like dominos were circling around him, toppling down with each step he took. For once in his life, he didn’t feel broken; cursed. The curse of a twin sibling who had always gone through life without fault, with effortless whim, reflected back to his life of disappointment and rejection, and if he was honest, rabid envy. All those years of resentment suddenly boiled within Rosaldo as he saw Rosariel. How dare she come here? How dare she take away what was special for once in his life?

She didn’t look happy, either. His sister pointed to the desk beside her.

“Brother?” Thao asked, his mouth wide open. “Don’t often see people who actually know each other in the real world before.”

Rosaldo sat down. Thao sat in front of him, who tried to act like he wasn’t listening to them.

Rosaldo took a long breath, then told his sister, “You look terrible.”

“You would be too,” Rosariel said, and sighed. “Did you know mom and dad knew there was magic all along? They said you were taken by the Order.”

“I wasn’t. I agreed to come here.”

“Okay. You have to come back, though. Mom and dad were attacked by some… Mancers. They attacked our home. They helped me escape to bring you back. So now we have to go.”

Rosaldo shook his head. “I’m not going back.”

“What?” Rosariel said, as if his reply was crazy. “You’re just going to leave our parents alone against who knows what? I don’t know what to even believe anymore, Rosaldo.”

“That’s the point. We don’t know what’s out there, or how to deal with it. The best thing we can do is stay here, and find out. If what you said about mom and dad knowing magic is true, I’m sure they’ll be fine.”

His sister fumed, her eyes squinted and cold when she became frustrated to an unusual extent. “Just because they didn’t tell you magic was real doesn’t mean it’s right to abandon them to whatever is happening right now.”

“You wouldn’t understand,” Rosaldo hissed, lowering his voice as he noticed the other students were glancing back at them. “You were always the gifted one. I was the crazy one who thought everything that was happening to me wasn’t real. Except it actually was.”

A man strode into the room with the authoritative confidence of someone who could have only been their teacher. He wore a tweed suit and a bowler hat, of which he propped over a standing hanger. His dark skin punctuated the whiteness of his eyes, of which he stared at Lorne, Rosariel, and then Rosaldo, a smile twitching his bearded face.

He spoke, his words cool against the warmth of the sun through the windows, “Please welcome our newest students here, Lorne Greyling, Rosariel Ren, and Rosaldo Ren. It’s rare to see siblings together here at the academy, even rarer to see twins. Twins are a powerful omen in Liturgy.”

The man pointed to the black chalkboard behind him, a nub of chalk moving and writing by itself as he talked. “I am Professor Bartholomew, and this is what I teach.” He snapped his fingers and pointed to the board, where the piece of chalk wrote: BELIEF.

“Belief is what drives all magic, and that is through generations of devotion and worship to the pantheons of your different cultures. But here in North America, Christian worship predominates all, and that is why we study Liturgy. You will learn how faith is what powers all magic, and how you can use your existing beliefs to jumpstart cause and effect.”

Bartholomew smiled with shameless relish. “Let’s begin.”