Finally, we arrived at this school-soon-to-be-called home. The buses' passengers have started to flow and gather outside, looking for the greeters that supposed to greet our arrival today. Amidst the crowd, I scan for my friends, childhood friends to be precise. Pairing up with Roland, I separate myself from Celine, since we have different peers, although we are on the same age, everyone here does. I think that around this age, finding and establishing social group of peers is a common thing.
"Do you find the others?" I asked Roland. Being slightly taller than me, he might get a better view amidst this crowd.
"Hmmm, not yet. Let's just make our way to the school gate, perhaps we will find them on the way."
Agreeing with his idea, I tag along. Ugh, people carrying bags make walking through the crowd difficult, as we will almost hit the other bags and suitcases along the way. But it is worthy enough, as we find another one of of our peers.
"Hey, that's Castille. C'mon, let's approach him, wonder if he have met with the others." Roland said, almost yelling since it is noisy here. Looks like everyone has finally woke up from their morning drowsiness.
Castille, one of our childhood friends. He's a son of a nobleman in Ashenville. Although with his noble background, he is completely fine with us, the commoners. He is practically humble though, sometimes he might get too ambitious, must be caused by his background. Can't say I blame him. What matters, he is a good and reliable friend, who honors trust and loyalty more than anything else.
"Master Castille!" There Roland goes again, calling 'Master' to anyone appropriate for the title. I never directly ask him what 'Master' means though, somehow I understand what it meant: he refers that to people who are good at arcane arts, or other useful skills. Simply speaking, he respects those people called 'Master' for their skills. Unusual, but we come to accept his habit. It is a good compliment by the way.
"Oh, hey there Roland... ehm, Master Roland! Long time no see! You too Jason. How're both of you doing?" said Castille. Refined as always in both appearance and way of speaking, he hasn't changed much by these three months, so are we.
"We're good, right Jason?"
"Yup, these three months were good. Have you seen the others?"
"Not yet, but I was on the same bus with Richmond and Connor. We were separated by the time we got off from the bus. Shall we look for them together?"
"Sure, we should also make our way through the crowd."
I decided to tag along, don't want to get lost in this crowd. Better just to stick with them. Some new faces are also found in the crowd. Looks like there are people from different town who enrolled here too. Ashenville's School of Arcane and Chivalry has recently established a good reputation as one of the best schools in this province, managed to be in the serious competition with other arcane schools from different areas which is indicated by some great knights, mages, sorcerers, and spell-swords have been graduated from this school by these decades. Most of Ashenville youths went to this school,due to still in the region of the town.
While sufing in the crowds, I find Connor who is my childhood best friend. He's good with guns, or magick guns since he's the son of the town's gunslinger, part of a division in Ashenville's enforcers. His older brothers are also with the enforcers, which explain his knack of using guns. He also used to teach me how to use magick guns, and we used to practice in shooting targets out in the woods, shooting birds and squirrels. Don't worry, the magick guns we used aren't lethal, so no victims involved.
"Connor!" I yelled from the crowds, no need to mistake his medium-length spiky black hair and physically fit figure. Wow, we haven't changed much despite having less frequent outings during the holiday. I approach him, after letting Roland and Castille know to follow me through the crowds.
"Oh, it's you Jason! Long time no shooting, eh?" he said jokingly. He always like that, throwing mild jokes around.
"Been good I suppose?"
"Better than you." joking again. We had always caught in a friendly rivalry since childhood. To be honest, I enjoy this rivalry thing due to shared interests between us keep us close as ever.
Roland and Castille managed to keep up with me. They also shared a nice and friendly greeting with Connor. We're almost reaching the school gates, with Connor decided to follow us. Hard to have another talk between this crowd, so we choose to proceed to the school.
As we get closer to the school gates, we finally get the look of Richmond. He is the tallest and the most enthusiastic with magecraft in our group, more than Roland. I think he must be looking forward to enter the school area firstly, which explain why he is already standing near the gates waiting for them to be opened. Having a closer look at the gates, they have some unique carvings of shapes, alphabets, numbers, which form an abstract drawing.
"Hey, there's Richmond. Let's check him out." said Castille. He has been some sort of leader between us, leading us through the crowd. Well, it looks like the others are also moving towards the gates after having their short but nice friendly reunions.
As soon as we approach Richmond, the greeters appear inside the gates and all the eyes of the students are focused on those greeters. There are two of them, man and woman, both are wearing well-tailored noble clothes. I was expecting the greeters are wearing robes or a suit of armor, perhaps using formal wear is more appropriate for this occasion.
The gates are opening by themselves. We think that the greeters use some sort of mechanisms to open the gates not in the convenient way. Either way, it successfully serves the purpose of a normal gate; opening and closing.
Yeah, magic practices in this country is not common. After the Great War in this country twelve years ago, only the noblemen, security officers, and those people with strong magic lineage who practice magic in ordinary life, commoners are very rare. Some people say that commoners' magick are inadequate to practice magick, this theory is proved to be not wholly true. Everyone has their own magick pool, but only some of the people have the ability to use and display their magick at work, while the amount of magick doesn't affect the ability.
But fearing the worst of chaos and terrorism, this country's government choose to limit the usage and practice of magic in the country. Only some people, chosen from their elementary years who are able to display their potential in early years are needed by law to be enrolled in magic schools and to be groomed as well as controlled not to wreck havoc in the future.
In the elementary school, we learn the basic maths, social studies, alchemy, trades, and very basic elemental spells. Students who are able to cast even the most basic of the spells, are categorized to have the potential and have to be enrolled in the magic school as part of the law. Luckily. the students are given the freedom to choose their magic school to study and further expand their abilities within, which further explains why we are able choose this school.
"Welcome freshmen of Ashenville School of Arcane and Chivalry! We are your greeters, and we are very proud of you and thank you for choosing ASAC as your place to study the art of arcane and knight's codes." the man says politely and elegantly, almost refined in every words. Lately, competition between magic schools in Brighthollow is getting more tense. Every school wanting to generate a strong and skilled mages and warriors where possible so their fame goes to their respective school where they were trained and studied. Perhaps, this explains why he thanks us for enrolling there.
"Now, we would like to begin our orientation today, please follow us into the main hall of this school to hear the first and foremost, welcoming speech from the principal of ASAC. Now, shall we get going?" says the woman, also politely and convincing enough that we all will follow them wherever they take us without questioning.
All of freshmen begin to bring their bags. Along with their peers, they start to follow those two greeters, while still chatting along the way. In fact, no freshmen here are actually aware of what we will be studying or what will happened next, only filled with youth enthusiasms, based on the previous alumnus who claims that their experience there were enjoyable and fun. Wonder if they are really telling the truth, or hiding the hardships they endured and let us, the freshmen to experience the hardships? No one knows for sure, but we are going to experience it by ourselves.
