Releasing this part because the total ended up at 2k words and I realised no sane person would read this. I recommend reading the rest here: Prologue - Arcane Academy - Introductions
Anyways I’ll edit out the cringy dialogue later, but thanks for reading this mess
Later that day at lunchtime
Henry entered the warm-looking dinner hall, the room was made out of wood and had lanterns across the walls. There were sets of large wooden tables filling the room with sixteenish people filling each one. A warm-looking campfire was in one corner, glowing spirits appeared to ferrying over plates and cups of various different foods and drinks that floated around them. The spirits looked somewhat like a floating ghostly flame flying around with items orbiting around them. The hall was full of students conversing with old and new friends while testing out any magic tricks they learned throughout the day. Suddenly one of the glowing spirits ran in front of him with a menu, startling him. He stopped for a moment before asking “I’m supposed to take one right?”, the spirit continued to hold out the menu, Henry hesitated a moment before grabbing a menu, it has a list of foods and drinks available, it appeared today they were serving bread and “Red Bean Soup.”
Henry scanned through the tables before sitting down by a boy around his age with somewhat messy-looking black hair who was sitting by himself. He appeared to have a staff by him and occasionally some students shot some spiteful looks his way. The staff had a twisted wooden handle and a blue crystal at the end. He was eating a loaf of bread and drinking what appeared to be water. He sat down next to him and tried to start a conversation. “So, uh… what’s your name? I’m Henry” “I’m Isacc” “Any idea how to order stuff here? ” “You just should it out. Although some of the seniors apparently made their own food with magic or something” “Lemee try, Red Bean Soup please.” After a couple of seconds passed, a glowing spirit flew and put down a bowl of red slush with red beans inside. Henry took a spoonful and whole he didn’t like it as he was used to a lot fancier food, he tried to hide it in front of his new friend. Keyra sat down by them with a bowl of soup.
Henry responded “Oh hey! Your back after the, uh incident”, Keyra ignored that comment instead talking to Issac “I didn’t know we got arcane focuses yet.”, “Well, uh, It’s hard to explain, so-”, suddenly Varion grabbed the staff from Issac, “Hey, give that back!”, “Where’s your excelling magic now? I bet you can’t even make a tiny flame without this stupid stick” Issac appeared at a loss for words for a couple of seconds, before responding “I’m j-just as g-good without the staff, Your the idiot who had to get tutoring to show off making a tiny fire” “Well… Keyra got tutoring too! I bet the high wizard didn’t need tutoring when he killed that stupid demon” people were beginning to turn their heads towards all the commotion, Henry quickly got in between the two groups and tried to break it up. “Guys, let’s not make a big deal of this, Varion stop being a hot-headed brat and give Issac back his staff and let’s just stop arguing about tutors.”, Varion, then decided to attempt to escalate this further yelling “I bet you got tutored too”, “Ok at this point your just yelling random stuff and might as well shut up”, Henry said shortly before snatching the staff out of Varion’s hands and passing it to Issac. “You didn’t even learn all that much from your stupid tutoring anyways. Anyone idiot can cast a flame spell” snorted Issac. Varion’s face started turning red, as he responded “Well, can a random idiot do this!”, lightning began to sparkle around his fingers as he pointed it at the ceiling, most of the kids began to back from him. Several students began to run out of the cafeteria as the lightning bolt kept getting bigger. One of the seniors began casting a shielding spell around him.
Suddenly, as the cafeteria grew silent, the bolt exploded, arcs of lighting spreading in every direction and burning through wood and stone alike. Shards of wood flew everywhere as the lighting engulfed the room. Everyone in the blast range was flung backward as the lightening shattered the tables. The lightning eventually settled down, Henry got up and began to dust himself off, “Nice move big sho-” suddenly the second wave of lightning swept through the room larger than the first. As the second wave hit, it felt as if time slowed down for Issac and he heard a scratchy voice in his head, “Unfortunate, I didn’t think the vessel would die this early”, as the wave hit Issac, a bubble appeared, incidentally shielding Keyra and Henry too. The wave of lightning engulfed the roof and incinerated the remains of the wrecked tables and turning the room into a mess of lightning and rubble. Students frantically tried to protect themselves, with any seniors activating any shielding spell they knew as the lightning engulfed them. When the lightning settled, Issac’s small bubble dissolved, several of the people close to Varion were severely burned, barely alive. Varion himself received extreme burns as he collapsed to the ground.
Varion, Keyra, Issac, and Henry found themselves in an office with a professor pacing around the room. The room had a simple desk with a silver label reading “Professor Baron”, several different trinkets were on a shelf including what appeared to be a claw of the demon. The professor himself had an eyepatch across one of his eyes and was wearing a leather tunic with a vest. “You four are lucky the high wizard let me deal with you instead of him or else you would be ejected out into the void.” Varion still had bandages across one of his eyes as well as all over his body. “They started i-” Varion began to object, “It does not matter it they started it! You shouldn’t be casting an advanced COMBAT spell in a cafeteria!” Varion reeled back slightly. “Sir, if I may ask, why are we here? We didn’t do anything.” Issac said, “You made a shielding spell correct? A potent one that could defend you from the reckless idiot next to you. What I have to ask, is how you cast a high-level shielding spell that even some of our professors here don’t know, in the span of three seconds at most?” “I don’t know! Some senior probably cast it on me or something” Baron’s eyes then drifted to his staff. “Huh, I’m going to need that staff after your next class. Meet me in my office then.” “Sir do you really need to-” Issac began “You’re lucky you still get to keep at all” Everyone began to get out of the room slowly and began to go to the next class.
They arrived at a relatively open classroom with nothing other than a couple of scattered benches around the room. The teacher appeared to be looking through a couple of notes spread across her desk. She wore a simple black robe with a witch’s hat. The bell began to ring for the next class as people arrived in the classroom. It seemed the class were all talking about the incident during lunch, and many of the students began to avoid Varion. Only one student didn’t really avoid him, a girl with ginger hair that seemed to be good friends with Varion, even after the incident. The teacher clapped her hands after the bell finished ringing, “Alright class, today we’re going to be learning about warding and shields. This will be extremely important if anything like the er… lunch incident happens again. Everyone please stand up and hold your arm out. Close your eyes and try to imagine a bubble on your hand.” Henry began to focus and a small blue circle began to form around his hand. “Hey, I think I’m starting to get it!” The teacher suddenly blasted him with a small bolt of blue light instably broke through his miniature shield and hit him in the nose. Varion snickered from in front of him. Henry grumbled and tried again once again forming the blue circle, although this time the circle had a small pattern around the edges. However, it vanished as quickly as it appeared, disintegrating into small blue sparks. Henry looked around the classroom and noticed that most of the class were having just as much trouble as he was, although Issac seemed to be having a much easier time. Henry took a deep breath and began the shielding process again, when he was startled by the teacher, “Having trouble?” “Trouble would be a bit of an understatement” “Try drawing a circle in the air and imaging filling it in with air.” Slowly Henry managed to create a small shield, as he held out the spell, patterns began to fill in the circle.
As the bell rang, students began to head to their dorms in the housing complex. As Henry, Issac, and Keyra got out, a student with blonde hair caught up with them. “Hey, Henry, could you teach me how to do the spell later? I had a bit of trouble with it.” “If I’m going to be honest, I’m not really completely sure how I did it, but I’ll try anyway. When should we do it?” “Let’s do it in about an hour from now, you guys can come too.” He motioned to Issac and Keyra. They both accepted the invitation. “Meet me in my dorm room which is…” He took out his scroll and read through it, “E107?”
Henry arrived in his room later, finding a barren stone room with a desk, bed, and bookshelf as well as a clock. Several boxes of baggage apparently were delivered earlier including some of Henry’s old book and some clothes. He began to sort out the room as he waited for the clock to tick down. The bookshelf had a couple of books about trading and stories out on it, and he had hung up a painting of him and his family above his desk. When the clock hit four-fifty, he began to head down the seemingly endless wooden halls, when he ran into Keyra and Issac at room E107. “So we just wait until five?” “Guess so” shrugged Keyra. Issac seemed a bit nervous without his staff as they waited for the bell to chime. Henry began to knock on the wooden door when they heard frantic footsteps. “Could we maybe do it tomorrow?” shouted the student they had met earlier. “Uh, sure… What’s going on in there?” They heard some sort of mechanism clicking in the background, however other than that they received no reply. “Should we go check on him?” Issac said timidly. “I think that might be a good idea…” They tried the door to find it unlocked. The room appeared to be largely unorganized, with several boxes still unopened. A large hole was in the ground with ominous red light coming out of it. They heard voices from within, apparently arguing about something. Issac began to head down the hole, motioning for the others to follow.