Wearing Power Armor to a Magic School (98/?) WiP 1

Hey everyone! Here is the Work in Progress for Chapter 98 I hope you guys enjoy! :D

The Transgracian Academy for the Magical Arts. Grand Concourse Terminal. Local Time: 0620 Hours.

Emma

Teleportation via convoluted and magical means was not beyond me.

I’d experienced way, way more than my fair share of it in my first week of being here.

But portals, a literal bridge between two points in space? Where all it took was a simple step to bridge the gap between tens of miles, as if it was just separated by a solid foot of stone? 

Now, that was markedly different.

Or at the very least, it felt different.

Whether it was simply because I was now face to face with a portal without the added pressure of a bomb looming overhead, or whether it was because I wasn’t still reeling from the explosive repercussions of said bomb, one fact remained the same — looking through that door was quite literally breaking both my mind and my sense of perspective.

This was amplified even further, the moment Ilunor stepped through that door, and arrived in a space that was effectively an entire cable-car ride away.

He’d just traveled miles… in a single step. 

I could feel the spirits of Professor Doctor Fujikawa, Professor Doctor Khan, and Associate Professor Shaw, bearing down on me with varying levels of satisfaction, frustration, and self-congratulatory ovations in that order. 

Their life’s work, having been relegated to the footnotes of the many, many, failed attempts at getting us out of Sol before the warp drive, was now being proven at least somewhat tenable here in an entirely different reality.  

Whilst not exactly a wormhole… this most certainly felt as mind-breaky as one, that’s for sure.

“Ahem!” A voice from behind me finally snapped me out of my shock and reverie, as I turned around to see the apprentice. “Gawking at the fixed-point portal between the Academy and the town now are ya?!” He cocked his head. “What?! Haven’t you ever seen the groundbreaking, reality-defining, earth-shattering wonder of instantaneous transport between two points in a physically discrete space before?!” The man paused, managing to just about close the distance between us, leaving an uncomfortable two inches of space between our personal spaces. 

“I mean, I have, but, I guess this one’s just… different.” I offered.

To which the man simply let out a loud hmph, before responding. “Very well then!” He shouted, loud enough that I feared for anyone sleeping in a hundred mile radius, before reaching into his coat and producing a letter. “Here, take this.” He pushed the letter right in front of my face, prompting me to grab it, a groan escaping my throat the moment I saw who it was from. 

The Dean.

“Is that all?” I replied with a sigh.

“That is, in fact, all.” The apprentice nodded, before strutting back over to his ticketing booth with a few stompy footfalls.

With another frustrated sigh, I began tearing into the letter, revealing a rather short one this time around, with a particularly curious instruction that felt innocuous as it did… dare I say it — magical. 

In accordance with Academy regulation, given you are classified as an atypical mana-fielder, you are instructed to purchase an Arcane Focus from any of the approved proprietors within the Crown Herald Town of Elaseer. Attached to this letter is a list of approved…

The benign wording, and the lack of any passive aggressive jabs (barring the whole atypical mana-fielder thing), felt like it was setting the tone for the day.

Hopefully, Thalmin’s hopes would come to fruition.

Hopefully… Today would actually be uneventful.

The fact that the dean was being civil and upfront for once, was a good of an indicator as any, right?

In any case, I eventually turned my attention back towards the door, as I resumed my stares of complete and utter disbelief at the magical wonder in front of me; more specifically, at the horizon line that was entirely off from my perspective. 

With the strangely overcast night behind us, we were promptly treated to the sight of a pale blue sky, barely lit up by the sun; giving an almost whimsical feeling to the start of the day. 

It was that same feeling I got when waking up extra early at the start to a long weekend. That feeling of being free to do whatever it was I wanted, and the large and seemingly endless possibilities that awaited me at the dawn of a new day.

But instead of just waiting for another episode of Forgotten Tales to drop, or diving head first (then promptly getting lost) into the seemingly endless physical library in my dad’s study, I was instead faced with the boundless and practically infinite possibilities that awaited me in Elaseer.

This was a magical town.

In a genuinely magical reality. 

And sure, if I were to be cynical about it, I could say it was a college town, and a pretty gentrified one at that. 

But that didn’t mean that that spark of honest to god fantasy wasn’t still there somewhere.

A town was, after all, composed of people.

And if the Academy had taught me anything, it’s that even in a sea of brainwashed subjects, there were always those that didn’t conform.

So if Thacea, Thalmin, Sorecar and Chiska were anything to go by, the town could very well be my closest shot at fulfilling this fantastical world itch.

“EVI.” I began, eliciting an affirmative beep from my virtual partner in crime. “Keep a close eye on telemetry readings, and whatever you do, don’t freak out.” I warned playfully, before going through the motions of what literally any other person would do in my shoes.

I began testing out the portal.

With a tentative, but curious motion, I pushed my ‘hand’ through the threshold.

I expected some sort of resistance, some sort of barrier, some weird surge in energy, some sort of suction pulling me through the threshold.

Instead, I felt nothing.

There was no resistance. 

No barrier.

No weird eruption of energy or anything to indicate anything was amiss.

Not even a weird ‘suction’ to push me through the threshold. 

Nothing, but a heavy dose of mana radiation that increased in intensity at the threshold of the portal, presumably there just there to sustain it.

I stood there, my body firmly stood within the Academy, and my ‘hand’ inches in front of me… miles away in town.

A familiar feeling I thought I’d be experiencing more of on this mission quickly manifested — the feeling of complete and utter befuddlement, disorientation, and outright disbelief. 

I was seeing what was only possible in VR, manifesting in real life.

And it was just so jarring.