Our Failures

Chapter 1: The Flare

I awoke with a gasp, interrupting the class that I had previously fallen asleep in. I couldn't avoid the stares being sent my way, most pitying and I knew without a doubt I had just interrupted something my teacher saw as important. Dreading what I would find I cast my gaze to Mr. Sanalez, he was a short, stocky man with a receding hairline and narrow brown eyes. He wasn't the greatest teacher but he was slack, however, I had just broken one of his biggest rules: Don't interrupt his lessons.

"Since you seem to be knowledgeable enough to interrupt my lesson I assume you wouldn't mind teaching the class yourself," He said, his narrow eyes narrowing a little more. A quick look at the board showed me that we were learning psychokinetics, a very complicated part but still the basics. I quickly worked out my response before I was interrupted by Mr. Sanalez again: "That is what I thought, so would you like to rejoin your class on this or go back to your fantasy land?"

"I'll stick with the class," I choked out in embarrassment. The man turned away from me, his focusing turning to the next part of the lesson. He explained psychokinetics more in-depth than I had ever heard of before; psychokinetics are the ability to control parts of the universe using your mind, everything from simply moving your arm to causing earthquakes with precise use of magic. It was the broadest subject on magic there was but it built a path for the use of the other aspects such as Illusions which deal with the changing of a person's senses to create a different scenario from the one they are in, the creation and manipulation of nuclear and thermal energies called Atomics, Necromancy is the aspect dealing with dead and is extremely limited in its practical applications and finally Healing which is the one dealing with life and it's replication. There are sub-categories but they are just more specialized versions of each of the others mentioned including psychokinetics.

"Get in teams of three and try to use magic to lift a ball to each other," He instructed as we all found our friends. My group consisted of Natalie, Kasan, and I. Natalie was a petite girl with auburn hair and striking green eyes that glowed lightly from the ambient magic in her. It's widely thought that she'll likely find a living in Atomic's due to how much energy her magic released. She had only kind smiles from what I had seen, after fourteen years in school together I think I had her down pretty good but I had still never seen her without a smile.

The next was a boy named Kasan, he never told me how to pronounce it nor did any seem to actually know so everyone called him Kase. He was lanky, his hair a deep black and light blue eyes that sadly didn't glow. He was a natural in everything it seems, he has the heaviest weight lifted using psychokinesis in the class and his illusion spell was the only one capable of trapping Mr. Sanalez. The only bad thing about him was that other than magic and academics he wasn't very gifted. He was unnaturally skinny, as though he never ate and he couldn't run for more than a few minutes without getting exhausted.

Then there is me, my parents failed magnum opus, their child who could never hope to live up to the expectations they have. They had hoped I was good with magic, I wasn't. They had hoped I would be a star athlete; I couldn't even compete due to my magic limits. Finally, they hoped I would be smart, a child who could think things through and find the answer, yet my score was the second-lowest in my group. I have brown hair that was nearly black and amber eyes that glowed, an early sign of high magical power, that looked cool as hell. I looked strong enough that I wasn't really messed with and it helped that Kase was my best friend. The experts say that my magic should end up showing more at some point but I had never seen it, I couldn't even lift more than thirty pounds with my magic alone. Kasan was able to lift seven hundred pounds when he really tried and a requirement for Archmage is being able to lift over two-thousand pounds with only psychokenetics.

"Hey, so what were you dreaming about? Must've been exciting to wake you up like that," Natalie exclaimed happily as she started lifting the fifteen-pound ball in her magic, before passing it to me. The groups were always the same because of the intimacy of the exercise. If you want to do it correctly then you have to merge magic for a moment to gain control over the ball and it tends to show everything to the person you're doing it with. It was the only reason I knew that her smiles were actually due to happiness and not just her faking it, as well as the only reason I could tell that Kasan was very angry with someone. However, it never really tells you what you're feeling, and it always feels different, even if it's only been a few seconds since the last merge.