I stood gawking at the three figures in front of me, wondering why these three weirdly dressed strangers were currently standing in my living room.
"Damn," Zac said, sliding in behind me, "Who invited the cosplayers?" Sometimes I genuinely wished Zac knew when to keep quiet. Surprisingly, none of the figures said anything. In fact, they didn't seem surprised to see him enter the room at all. Glancing around I noticed my parents sitting together on the couch, white faced and clutching each other's hands tightly.
"W-who are you people? Why are you in my house?"
This time the figures did respond. The younger man's bemused smile widened as though he found my what I had said comical. The older woman's frown deepened, and she glared even harder at me, muttering what sounded suspiciously like "Insolence," under her breath. The older man simple continued to stare at me with him unmoving face.
He looked directly into my eyes for another second before he spoke again, "If you and Mr Richards would like to take a seat, I would be more than happy to explain who we are and why we are here."
"How do you know our names?" Zac snapped, taking a step towards the older man. This time, the older man's face creased ever so slightly, forming the smallest of frowns.
"I will not ask again." He spoke in a low voice but there was a sense of tension in his words now, "Sit." He raised his hand towards us, palm pointing directly at our faces. I thought I saw the air in front of his hand shimmer slightly for a second, and then I felt a soft, warm breeze blow past me. Suddenly, he turned his hand around and made a fist, and I felt my legs give way beneath me. I almost yelled when my descent was halted by a solid, wooden chair beneath me. I looked around and saw that the same thing had happened to Zac. I also noticed that these chairs were old and made of what looked like tree branches twisted into the shape of a chair. With a twisting feeling in my gut, I realised that this man had just conjured them out of thin air.
This man also had magic.
We all stared at the trio, too stunned to talk. My parents, I realised, were much more shocked than Zac and I, having never witnessed magic before; they were staring at the chairs, mouths agape, and were even paler than previously. The older man waved his hand again and produced another three chairs for the strange trio to sit on.
"Mr Hill," the older man said as he sat down. "My name is Saul. I am the First Seat of the Council of Sorcerers. This is Madame Thornton and Mr Beck, who are tutors from Merlinian Preparatory School." He gestured at the woman and the younger man in turn. "We were sent here today by the Council because we have detected signs of an Awakening from yourself and have come to investigate.
I didn't say anything; I was too busy trying to decipher what they had just said. I understood very little of what this Saul had just said to me.
"Are aware that you have been developing magical abilities?" Saul asked, sensing my confusion.
"I-I...um....yeah, I-I guess," I stammered.
"We've been monitoring you since you produced a warding spell yesterday," Saul explained, "However, we did not intervene immediately as we normally would have with other newly Awakened sorcerers."
"Wait, there are more people out there like m-I mean, us?"
Saul's mouth actually twitched upwards slightly for a split second before returning to normal, "Yes, Mr Hill, there are many more people in this world blessed with the Gift."
"What do you mean you didn't intervene immediately like you normally do?" Zac interrupted, "Why not?"
"How dare you interrupt, boy." Madame Thornton interjected. Her voice was high pitched and hoarse, as though she spent the majority of her life yelling, which I assumed she probably did. Her distain for all of us, and Zac in particular, was obvious.
"Who are you calling boy?!" Zac yelled, standing up so quickly that his chair was pushed back onto the wall with a bang that made both of my parents jump. Madame Thornton, however, did not react. She simply smiled mockingly and said, "Sit down, boy," spit flew from her mouth when she spoke, "Before I make you sit down."
Zac opened his mouth to snap back a retort, but I grabbed his arm to stop him. He glared at me, but I just shook my head and muttered, "Not now Zac...please.?" He continued to stare down at me at me for a few seconds before throwing himself down onto the chair, arms folded, glaring daggers towards Madame Thornton.
It wasn't that I didn't agree with the way Zac was acting - honestly, I was just as pissed off as he was - but I didn't want him to start anything for two reasons. One reason was that at least one of these people could use magic and that was not someone you wanted to start a fight with. The other, more important reason was that I really wanted to know why these people were here and what they know about my power. So, while I was just as angry as Zac, I held back my emotions.
I turned to face Mr Beck when he coughed slightly, "Perhaps we should just all take a deep breath and count to ten, hm?" He had a soft, relaxing voice, and his words seemed to be laced with a hint of humour that matched his ever-present grin. Madame Thornton's glanced towards him briefly before facing forward again and glared at the wall between Zac and I.
"To answer your question, Mr Richards," Saul said tersely, "We normally intervene within minutes of an Awakening to mitigate any potential damage caused by unregulated magic and to explain the Gift to the young sorcerer who has developed it."
"Then why didn't you intervene yesterday when I stopped that bullet?"
"Bullet?!" my mom shrieked, sitting forward suddenly. Her horror was quickly mitigated when all three set of eyes from the strangers turned on her. Her eyes widened and she sat back quickly, lowering her head and gripping my dad's hand once again.
"I'll explain later mom, I'm fine," I said impatiently. I looked pleadingly towards Saul.
"We intervened by wiping your presence at the scene from the memory of everyone who was there, as there was always a chance that they saw you conjure the ward." Saul explained, "But we did not contact you immediately due to the...unusual nature of your Awakening."
"Unusual? What the hell does that mean?" I exclaimed, becoming increasingly exasperated and worried.
Saul sighed and looked towards Mr Beck, "You are much more adept at dealing with young sorcerers, would you please explain the nature of the Awakening and the Gift to our young ward please, Mr Beck?"
Mr Beck's grin broadened, "Gladly." He shuffled his chair closer towards me and stretched out his open hand, "Christopher Beck, Master of Evocation. You can call me Chris, if you'd like." I took a second to process his words - Master of Evo-what now? - before I cautiously reached out to shake his hand. I only just noticed that there was some kind of strange tattoo on the back of Mr Beck's right hand when I gripped it in a handshake: it was a circle with three lines inside of it, sort of in the shape of a V with another line coming out of the middle of the letter.
"Okay, so magic." he said after dropping his hand before I could get a good look at the marking, "It's a fairly complicated subject but I'll just run through the basics with you for now, okay?" I nodded my consent.
"In general, magic, or the Gift, starts to appear around the time of puberty; I won't go the biology of how that works, just know that the hormones released by the body during puberty triggers the generation of magic within your body. We call this The Awakening."
"But...I'm sixteen," I blushed, feeling slightly awkward discussing this in front of three strangers and my parents, "I hit puberty a while ago."
Mr Beck coughed, "Ah, well...yes, that was one of the reasons we held back from contacting you immediately. We've had cases where people hit puberty late and don't develop their full abilities as quickly as they should, but everyone with the Gift tends to Awaken and display some level of magical ability by the time they're fourteen."
"Then why am I only just starting to get these abilities now?"
"We're not sure, in all honesty." Mr Beck said, "That's why we didn't intervene straight away. We wanted to observe you for a while to try and figure out what's going on with you, and see if you posed a threat."
"W-Well...what did you find out?" I stammered.
"Nothing too concerning." Mr Beck replied casually, "Your Gift appears to be developing in much the same way as in those who Awaken at the normal age. However, your Gift seems to be more powerful than is typical for someone of your age."
"What do you mean more powerful?" Zac interjected, leaning forward in his seat.
Instead of the anger shown by Madame Thornton when Zac had spoken, Mr Beck smiled mischievously at Zac, "We'll go into more detail about this later as I said, but basically those with the Gift have a 'well' of magical energy inside of them which we call the Vessel. The Vessel is an organ in the body of sorcerers which generates and stores magic. Sorcerers drawn magic from inside their Vessel and use it to cast spells. The size and strength of your Vessel directly correlates to the amount of magic you can produce, store and subsequently extract for use in spellcasting. Still with me?"
"Um yeah I think so. It's kinda like a mana pool in video games, right?" I asked.
"Yes, exactly like that. Except slightly different. Actually, a lot different, but the basic principle is the same." I glanced at Zac and found his look of confusion matched my own.
"Anyway," Mr Beck continued, "The size and strength of a sorcerers Vessel can be increased by training and by continued use of magic. It's like a muscle; the more you work out the bigger and stronger it gets, and the more effective it becomes. Most Initiates - that is, fourteen year olds admitted to Merlinian Preparatory School - have a fairly small, weak Vessel when they Awaken which means that they cannot produce or store much magic and as such cannot extract enough magic to perform powerful spells."
"Picture it like your Vessel is a cup and magic is water. Now picture someone is pouring that water into that cup. Normally, Initiates cups are smaller, with the rate at which water is being poured into their cup being much slower, and any overflow of water being rare because of this."
"Your cup, however, seems to be much larger and it is being filled much more quickly than is normal for someone your age. So much so that the water in your cup spills over much more easily and in much higher quantities. The large amounts of magic overflowing from your Vessel is why you were able to cast powerful spells within hours of your Awakening. The only downside is that you cannot stop the water or magic from spilling out and the uncontrollable magic does not abate until the cup is emptied of enough water as to not overflow. We've actually never seen anything quite like this before, it's quite remarkable really."
My anxiety was rising again. This was the last thing I wanted to hear. I had just started to feel like I was getting a grip on these powers, like I could manage them, and now this man was telling me that I was some sort of freak, some kind of anomaly, even amongst those who could perform magic. That I had an insanely vast amount of power and had no control over it. Who was I kidding, I hadn't been 'controlling' this magic at all. All I had done was empty my Vessel of enough magic with the shield, the fireball and the roses so that it was no longer overflowing. I wasn't fixing the problem, I was putting a Band-Aid over it.
And I had so many unanswered questions. Like what the hell was the Council? What was Merlinian Preparatory School? How could my magic be so powerful when I felt so powerless? Why had it only Awakened recently? Why were they all acting as though overflowing magic was no big deal? And most of all, what did these people want from me? I lowered my head, pinching the bridge of my nose with a trembling hand. I could feel the beginnings of a migraine, coupled with a panic attack and I was so not in the mood to deal with either of those things.
"There's more but I'll save the rest for our lessons together. You seem a little overwhelmed."
I jerked my head back up, "What lessons?"
"You didn't think we were just going to let you go running off blasting people with magic, did you?" Mr Beck chuckled, "No, we're going to train you, teach you how to use your Gift properly. Of course, you're two years behind everyone else at Merlinian Preparatory School, so I'll be teaching you privately over the summer to get you up to speed with the rest of your classmates before you join them after the summer."
"Whoa, hold on a second!" It was my turn to stand up, "I'm not going to any...'school' with you people! I don't even know you!"
"Look, Charlie, I know this is difficult, b-," Mr Beck began.
"Difficult?!" I yelled, my whole body shaking now, "This whole thing is a freakin' nightmare! I was barely okay with who I was before all of this started! Now you're telling me I'm some kind of weird super powered wizard with huge amount of magic that I have no control over, and that I need to leave my school to go to some nuthouse to learn how to use a 'Gift' I never even wanted?!"
"Charl-," Mr Beck tried to speak again but I interrupted him.
"No! Stop talking. I'm tired of listening to this! I'm tired of feeling like a freak! I'm tired of having my world flipped upside down! I'm sick of it! Why can't I just be normal for once? Why can't you all just go away and let me live my crappy life the best that I can?!"
I was breathing fairly heavily following that rant and I was still trembling. All eyes in the room were on me, and now that my anger was dissipating somewhat after my outburst, I felt horrified by what I had just shouted. Normally I tried to hold back all of the feelings of inadequacy, hide my insecurities, to not let anyone see how scared of my life I was all of the damn time. But now those fears and insecurities were on display for everyone to see, and that terrified me more than I could have imagined.
No one said anything for a few seconds and I just had the sudden urge to get the hell outta there. I had to get away from the looks of pity - or disgust in Madame Thornton's case - and quite frankly I was still equal parts pissed off and scared about this whole situation and I needed to just forget all about it for a while. I needed to be alone, to think. To escape. I chose to use the stunned silence to my advantage. I turned on my heels and stormed out of the room and then out of the house. When I was sure no one could see me from the window, I broke into a run. I could feel tears starting to fall and I didn't want anyone else to see them. I ran without direction and I didn't look back.