Cherry Vanilla and Red Hot Cinnamon
Title: First Day ( index)
Author: d353r7r47
Rating: G
Word Count: 2,311
Challenges: Cherry Vanilla #5 (The Mysterious Stranger); Red Hot Cinnamon #12 (Blaze/Inferno)
Summary: Jhera has her first day of classes.
A/N: comments are always welcome. For those who have been reading: sorry I haven't added a new part in a while, I had a lot of things to do with going to Costa Rica, my birthday, the end of break, and coming back to school.
The morning found Jhera and Gharak huddled together at a corner table in their building's dining hall. They continued to be ignored by the other students, but were only focused on getting though breakfast so they could get the rest of the day over with.
~~~~~~~~~~
Jhera arrived outside the first floor auditorium in the Fire Building nearly ten minutes before they were supposed to meet. There was a desk outside the doors where they were to receive their room schedules. Once she'd received hers, she went inside and found a seat in a back corner and waited for the rest of the students who would be focusing on fire magic.
She could hear the telltale signs f the other students gathering around the table before entering the room. When everyone was settled, a group of professors walked on the stage and started to talk about what it meant to be a part of the fire section of The University.
"We have already handed out your room assignments and as you will find out as the day progresses, you will stay with the same group of students through all your classes. This will hopefully allow you to create strong bonds with your classmates and make it easier for you to trust each other.
"We'd like to get you to your classes as soon as possible since your professors will be the ones who will describe what you will be learning in more detail. Before we send you off to your first class, we have tablets that we will be handing out to each of you."
He paused in this speech as a few older students started passing the tablets out. When Jhera had hers, she saw that is was a screen and it looked like there was a piece in the back of it that could pop out to prop it up. The device fascinated her since, while they did have some technology in her Tribe, they didn't have anything like this.
As the last student received theirs, the professor stepped up to the stage again to explain how the tablets were used. It turned out that all the information that they would need for their classes could be accessed and they could be used to take notes. The piece in the back was there to prop it up and there was a keyboard that could be projected onto the surface directly in front of the tablet.
Finishing his instructions on the tablet's basic uses, they all left to go to their first class.
~~~~~~~~~~
The class she ended up in consisted of about fifteen people, which unfortunately included the Dean's son, whom she learned was named Darian. They'd be focusing on both history and politics, along with a few other random topics thrown in throughout the course of the year. For the first day, they were given a variety of activities to start to get to know one another.
No one seemed that interested in getting to know Jhera and she certainly didn't care much about getting to know any of them. She did notice that throughout the hour and a half of these activities, people seemed to be whispering to each other and staring at her. She was very different than them and she could tell that they were trying to figure her out.
She actually overheard a small group talking about why they thought she was here, relatively free, when she should be locked up for the rest of her life.
At 10:00, they were released to go to the gymnasium for combat training. They all changed in the locker rooms and met their teacher back in the main gym.
"We won't start learning any actual fighting techniques for the first two or so weeks. I want to make sure you are all in at least semi-decent shape before we start that. That being said, we are going to do a lot of drills and running today to start building up your strength and endurance."
~~~~~~~~~~
After lunch, Jhera returned to the Fire Building with her class for their first language studies lesson.
"As some of you may know, magic is strongly tied to the ancient language and to successfully direct your magic, you must speak your intent in the words of the ancient language. In this class I will be teaching you everything about this language that you will need to preform magic.
"The written form of this language has been lost in time and we are no longer able to translate it. We do have some ancient relics that have the language written on them, but we do not have sufficient materials to learn how to translate it. Therefore, this class will be focused on speaking and listening to the language along with writing it using our modern alphabet." she proceeded to talk about how the language morphed into their modern day language and started teaching them some basic vocabulary.
Jhera had tuned out the lecture when the professor started talking about their people's lack of knowledge about the ancient language's written form. She knew this wasn't true. There were still people in their world who knew its secrets. She laid a hand over the marks below her left elbow, hidden beneath her uniform.
She still remembered everything about the day she had gone through the coming-of-age ritual. With the formation of the markings on her arms came a knowledge of the language, both written and spoken. It was like a gate had opened in her mind and she knew everything there was to know about the language. the knowledge brought a deeper, stronger connection and understanding of the magic that ran so effortlessly through her.
Jhera had been letting the language run through her and before she knew it, they were all being carted off to another part of the building for their first official lesson in using magic.
~~~~~~~~~~
The room they were now standing in was very similar to the gymnasium they were in earlier, but Jhera could feel the magical wards running through the walls, the floor, and the ceiling.
They had three professors for this part of their lessons and they all stood at the front of the room, waiting for the class to get settled.
"We'd like to welcome you all to what for many of you will be your first real lesson in the use of magic. As such, we are going to start with some basic exercises in grounding yourself. This will help you better control your magic."
A few people struggled with the idea of grounding, but as a whole, they were able to get through it relatively fast. Since Jhera had started using magic at a very young age, she was the first int he class to achieve what the professors called a sufficient ground.
"Now that you all have the basics of grounding down, we are going to be testing you to see how much raw magical strength you have access to. This will serve two purposes. The first is so that you are aware of your limits and the second is for you to know what it feels like when you are approaching those limits.
"What we'd like you to do is start by grounding yourselves, like you were just doing. When you fell sufficiently grounded, I want you to search deep inside yourself for the source of your magic. There is no way to describe what it will be like, but you can be sure that you will know when you find it. Once having found it, you will become one with it and then you will push it outward, away from your body until there is none left.
"Since the results will be different for everybody and since we do not know what kind of strength any of you have, you will be doing this one at a time, while the rest of you will sit on the floor along that wall. This will allow us to form strong wards around you to keep in the magic you release. We want everyone else to stand back because having a focus in fire means that the result will be something related to fire and in case the wards break, we don't want anyone getting hurt."
They started going through the line of students, testing them one by one and recording the results. When they were done being tested, they were sent back to the wall to sit and watch the rest of the students. The results varied widely, from small balls of flame dancing around the student to a wall of reddish power stretching out to form a dome. The latter was a very impressive display that had been produced by Darian.
Show off. Jhera thought to herself. He's surely done exercises like this before, being the Dean's son.
Jhera was worried what would happen when it was her turn. Ever since the ritual, she had an innate sense of where her limits were, but she had never actually tested them out before, nor had she done any similar kind of magical release. She knew that she was strong, but she just didn't know what would happen.
It was finally her turn and she was still worried. As she walked up to the professors, she could feel all her classmates' eyes on her, curious to see what would happen to her.
With a nod of encouragement from the professors, she sat down on the floor and folded her hands in her lap. This was no the way they'd just been taught to ground themselves, but this was the way that she had always done it. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, waiting for the wards to go up. When they were, she did her grounding.
From there, she was able to find her magical core without a second thought and slowly submerged herself in it, letting herself become one with her magic. When she knew she had it, she took another deep breath and started pushing it out as much as she could. As she did, gasps could be heard from the students behind her and she opened her eyes to find herself in the middle of a raging inferno. There were flames swirling around her at impossible speeds and she could feel the magic pushing at the wards containing it.
She reached out to the flames and felt them lap harmlessly at her skin, but she was not deceived by its feigned harmlessness. She understood that if it was anyone else sticking their arm into the flames, they would be very severely burned.
The screaming that was coming from behind her brought her out of her own thoughts enough for her to register the fact that the wards were cracking. The professors were using the last of their strength to hold the fire in; to protect themselves and their students. Realizing the situation, she pulled the magic back to her. Bringing it back into her body and holding it there as it calmed down.
After a few minutes, the professors had regained some strength and were all looking at her.
"That wasn't all of your magic was it," the female professor stated and Jhera shook her head.
Another one looked at her for a long time before asking, "you could sense that the wards were breaking couldn't you. You were able to let out that much magic, sense that the wards that most people can't sense were falling, pull all the magic back into your body, and neutralize it so it wouldn't harm you?"
"I had to do something." His head snapped back up at the comment and he looked at her with incredulity.
The third professors hadn't said anything and didn't look like he was going to be able to for a while. He was still breathing heavily and sweating from trying to hold the wards. All he did was keep shaking his head without taking his eyes off her.
"That will be all for today," the first male professor said to the students. "We'll have to test the rest of you tomorrow. It is not possible for us to form any wards right now." The students had all started to leave the room when he added, "practice your grounding for tomorrow. We want to make sure that you are all able to do it as quickly and effectively as possible."
Jhera left the room as quickly as possible without noticing that an aisle had opened up through the crowd that the rest of her class had made at the door.
She went directly to the dorm and took a cold shower. There was still some magic running through her that hadn't completely neutralized yet and the cold water seemed to help.
~~~~~~~~~~
As she walked into the dining hall for dinner, everyone stopped talking and stared at her. She was a little late and everyone else was already there and seated. Gharak was sitting by himself at a table by the door and she went to join him.
"Let me guess, everyone has heard about the limit testing today." Her voice had no emotion behind it and Gharak nodded in response.
"They all seem to want to know why you were able to produce enough magic to drain three fully trained professors and still have it not be all of the magic you have inside. They also want to know how you were able to pull it all back into yourself and keep it there."
She closed her eyes and put her head in her hands. "Do you want to talk about it?" He asked.
"Not now. Later though, I promise. We'll go up on the room again. Tell me how your day went."
She finished her meal in silence as Gharak explained how his day was.
Author: d353r7r47
Rating: G
Word Count: 2,311
Challenges: Cherry Vanilla #5 (The Mysterious Stranger); Red Hot Cinnamon #12 (Blaze/Inferno)
Summary: Jhera has her first day of classes.
A/N: comments are always welcome. For those who have been reading: sorry I haven't added a new part in a while, I had a lot of things to do with going to Costa Rica, my birthday, the end of break, and coming back to school.
The morning found Jhera and Gharak huddled together at a corner table in their building's dining hall. They continued to be ignored by the other students, but were only focused on getting though breakfast so they could get the rest of the day over with.
~~~~~~~~~~
Jhera arrived outside the first floor auditorium in the Fire Building nearly ten minutes before they were supposed to meet. There was a desk outside the doors where they were to receive their room schedules. Once she'd received hers, she went inside and found a seat in a back corner and waited for the rest of the students who would be focusing on fire magic.
She could hear the telltale signs f the other students gathering around the table before entering the room. When everyone was settled, a group of professors walked on the stage and started to talk about what it meant to be a part of the fire section of The University.
"We have already handed out your room assignments and as you will find out as the day progresses, you will stay with the same group of students through all your classes. This will hopefully allow you to create strong bonds with your classmates and make it easier for you to trust each other.
"We'd like to get you to your classes as soon as possible since your professors will be the ones who will describe what you will be learning in more detail. Before we send you off to your first class, we have tablets that we will be handing out to each of you."
He paused in this speech as a few older students started passing the tablets out. When Jhera had hers, she saw that is was a screen and it looked like there was a piece in the back of it that could pop out to prop it up. The device fascinated her since, while they did have some technology in her Tribe, they didn't have anything like this.
As the last student received theirs, the professor stepped up to the stage again to explain how the tablets were used. It turned out that all the information that they would need for their classes could be accessed and they could be used to take notes. The piece in the back was there to prop it up and there was a keyboard that could be projected onto the surface directly in front of the tablet.
Finishing his instructions on the tablet's basic uses, they all left to go to their first class.
~~~~~~~~~~
The class she ended up in consisted of about fifteen people, which unfortunately included the Dean's son, whom she learned was named Darian. They'd be focusing on both history and politics, along with a few other random topics thrown in throughout the course of the year. For the first day, they were given a variety of activities to start to get to know one another.
No one seemed that interested in getting to know Jhera and she certainly didn't care much about getting to know any of them. She did notice that throughout the hour and a half of these activities, people seemed to be whispering to each other and staring at her. She was very different than them and she could tell that they were trying to figure her out.
She actually overheard a small group talking about why they thought she was here, relatively free, when she should be locked up for the rest of her life.
At 10:00, they were released to go to the gymnasium for combat training. They all changed in the locker rooms and met their teacher back in the main gym.
"We won't start learning any actual fighting techniques for the first two or so weeks. I want to make sure you are all in at least semi-decent shape before we start that. That being said, we are going to do a lot of drills and running today to start building up your strength and endurance."
~~~~~~~~~~
After lunch, Jhera returned to the Fire Building with her class for their first language studies lesson.
"As some of you may know, magic is strongly tied to the ancient language and to successfully direct your magic, you must speak your intent in the words of the ancient language. In this class I will be teaching you everything about this language that you will need to preform magic.
"The written form of this language has been lost in time and we are no longer able to translate it. We do have some ancient relics that have the language written on them, but we do not have sufficient materials to learn how to translate it. Therefore, this class will be focused on speaking and listening to the language along with writing it using our modern alphabet." she proceeded to talk about how the language morphed into their modern day language and started teaching them some basic vocabulary.
Jhera had tuned out the lecture when the professor started talking about their people's lack of knowledge about the ancient language's written form. She knew this wasn't true. There were still people in their world who knew its secrets. She laid a hand over the marks below her left elbow, hidden beneath her uniform.
She still remembered everything about the day she had gone through the coming-of-age ritual. With the formation of the markings on her arms came a knowledge of the language, both written and spoken. It was like a gate had opened in her mind and she knew everything there was to know about the language. the knowledge brought a deeper, stronger connection and understanding of the magic that ran so effortlessly through her.
Jhera had been letting the language run through her and before she knew it, they were all being carted off to another part of the building for their first official lesson in using magic.
~~~~~~~~~~
The room they were now standing in was very similar to the gymnasium they were in earlier, but Jhera could feel the magical wards running through the walls, the floor, and the ceiling.
They had three professors for this part of their lessons and they all stood at the front of the room, waiting for the class to get settled.
"We'd like to welcome you all to what for many of you will be your first real lesson in the use of magic. As such, we are going to start with some basic exercises in grounding yourself. This will help you better control your magic."
A few people struggled with the idea of grounding, but as a whole, they were able to get through it relatively fast. Since Jhera had started using magic at a very young age, she was the first int he class to achieve what the professors called a sufficient ground.
"Now that you all have the basics of grounding down, we are going to be testing you to see how much raw magical strength you have access to. This will serve two purposes. The first is so that you are aware of your limits and the second is for you to know what it feels like when you are approaching those limits.
"What we'd like you to do is start by grounding yourselves, like you were just doing. When you fell sufficiently grounded, I want you to search deep inside yourself for the source of your magic. There is no way to describe what it will be like, but you can be sure that you will know when you find it. Once having found it, you will become one with it and then you will push it outward, away from your body until there is none left.
"Since the results will be different for everybody and since we do not know what kind of strength any of you have, you will be doing this one at a time, while the rest of you will sit on the floor along that wall. This will allow us to form strong wards around you to keep in the magic you release. We want everyone else to stand back because having a focus in fire means that the result will be something related to fire and in case the wards break, we don't want anyone getting hurt."
They started going through the line of students, testing them one by one and recording the results. When they were done being tested, they were sent back to the wall to sit and watch the rest of the students. The results varied widely, from small balls of flame dancing around the student to a wall of reddish power stretching out to form a dome. The latter was a very impressive display that had been produced by Darian.
Show off. Jhera thought to herself. He's surely done exercises like this before, being the Dean's son.
Jhera was worried what would happen when it was her turn. Ever since the ritual, she had an innate sense of where her limits were, but she had never actually tested them out before, nor had she done any similar kind of magical release. She knew that she was strong, but she just didn't know what would happen.
It was finally her turn and she was still worried. As she walked up to the professors, she could feel all her classmates' eyes on her, curious to see what would happen to her.
With a nod of encouragement from the professors, she sat down on the floor and folded her hands in her lap. This was no the way they'd just been taught to ground themselves, but this was the way that she had always done it. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, waiting for the wards to go up. When they were, she did her grounding.
From there, she was able to find her magical core without a second thought and slowly submerged herself in it, letting herself become one with her magic. When she knew she had it, she took another deep breath and started pushing it out as much as she could. As she did, gasps could be heard from the students behind her and she opened her eyes to find herself in the middle of a raging inferno. There were flames swirling around her at impossible speeds and she could feel the magic pushing at the wards containing it.
She reached out to the flames and felt them lap harmlessly at her skin, but she was not deceived by its feigned harmlessness. She understood that if it was anyone else sticking their arm into the flames, they would be very severely burned.
The screaming that was coming from behind her brought her out of her own thoughts enough for her to register the fact that the wards were cracking. The professors were using the last of their strength to hold the fire in; to protect themselves and their students. Realizing the situation, she pulled the magic back to her. Bringing it back into her body and holding it there as it calmed down.
After a few minutes, the professors had regained some strength and were all looking at her.
"That wasn't all of your magic was it," the female professor stated and Jhera shook her head.
Another one looked at her for a long time before asking, "you could sense that the wards were breaking couldn't you. You were able to let out that much magic, sense that the wards that most people can't sense were falling, pull all the magic back into your body, and neutralize it so it wouldn't harm you?"
"I had to do something." His head snapped back up at the comment and he looked at her with incredulity.
The third professors hadn't said anything and didn't look like he was going to be able to for a while. He was still breathing heavily and sweating from trying to hold the wards. All he did was keep shaking his head without taking his eyes off her.
"That will be all for today," the first male professor said to the students. "We'll have to test the rest of you tomorrow. It is not possible for us to form any wards right now." The students had all started to leave the room when he added, "practice your grounding for tomorrow. We want to make sure that you are all able to do it as quickly and effectively as possible."
Jhera left the room as quickly as possible without noticing that an aisle had opened up through the crowd that the rest of her class had made at the door.
She went directly to the dorm and took a cold shower. There was still some magic running through her that hadn't completely neutralized yet and the cold water seemed to help.
~~~~~~~~~~
As she walked into the dining hall for dinner, everyone stopped talking and stared at her. She was a little late and everyone else was already there and seated. Gharak was sitting by himself at a table by the door and she went to join him.
"Let me guess, everyone has heard about the limit testing today." Her voice had no emotion behind it and Gharak nodded in response.
"They all seem to want to know why you were able to produce enough magic to drain three fully trained professors and still have it not be all of the magic you have inside. They also want to know how you were able to pull it all back into yourself and keep it there."
She closed her eyes and put her head in her hands. "Do you want to talk about it?" He asked.
"Not now. Later though, I promise. We'll go up on the room again. Tell me how your day went."
She finished her meal in silence as Gharak explained how his day was.