Arcane Academy

.02

Lane:

Lane stared at the blank screen of his laptop, praying for words to magically come to him. It had been three days since he had last written a single word and his article for the Arcane Chronicles was due that afternoon. The screen seemed to taunt him with its white emptiness. He needed something, some sort of news or scoop, even just some drama to play around with. He hated when writer's block struck, it was like someone had sucked all of the imagination out of him. Out of his frustration, he began to type one small simple sentence:

You suck.

"That's a bit harsh, don't you think?" A voice came from behind him and when he turned his attention to the sound, he saw his good friend Ezekiel placing a tray down on the table beside him. His plate was filled with all sorts of goodies for his meal of breakfast, which included: cereal, a banana, eggs and bacon, and one rather large buttermilk pancake with syrup drizzled over the top and a pad of melting butter for extra flavor. He was surprised his friend could eat so much food.

"You tell him, Zekey." Two more trays followed Zeke's as his friends slowly trickled in. Elio and Aster had far less food than Zeke, though still more than Lane himself who merely grabbed a strawberry flavored granola bar that he found he wasn't very impressed with. Too much strawberry, not enough granola.

"You'll figure it out, Lane, you always do," Aster added in a tone that sounded rather dreamy as if his head was straight up in the fluffy clouds above. The boy's bright red hair was pulled up into pigtails on either side of his head and dark eyeliner decorated his eyes.

"It'll be one kick-ass article, as it always is. Don't worry," Zeke added around a mouthful of banana. Lane made a face as he chomped on the fruit, then quickly swallowed and moved onto sawing his pancake into pieces. No mercy for the poor fluffy breakfast cake.

"The deadline is this afternoon," Lane sighed as he closed the lid of his laptop and pushed it aside, looking around at his small group of friends. He sighed as he looked at them all. "I still don't even have a topic."

"There's your topic now," Elio said, pointing his fork right past Lane's face. The group all followed Elio's forked gesture to find a small group of students gathered just two tables over from them. He recognized one, an Elven girl, from his History of Magic class. The others, two boys and a short chubby girl, pressed closer to the pointy-eared female.

"May I help you?" The girl asked softly, clearly taken aback by nerves at the sudden confrontation of the group.

"You help us? Spirits, no. The only way that you could help us is by leaving our school." The voice that came from the leader of the trio was that of a high pitched British male, and boy did he sound like a prat, Lane thought.

The girl, whos name Lane just couldn't remember for the life of him, looked astonished. She glanced around nervously as if someone could swoop in and save her. Her bright-eyed gaze found the trio again and she looked like a deer in headlights. "I'm sorry?" She asked in confusion, a frown painted across her sharp features. Lane felt for her, she obviously hadn't met any Wizards at the school before, or at least none like these. Not all of the Wizards were against the newcomers. In fact, a majority of the Wizards within the Academy had been welcoming when the others had arrived. Lane had even become acquainted with quite a few of them in his classes.

"I said: the only way you could help us is by leaving school. You don't belong here. None of you belong here!" Suddenly, the leader turned and looked around the Great Hall to where many of the newcomers gathered in order to avoid yahoos like these. "This is our school and we'll take it back."