He took the bowl of soup Kai offered him. “I tell them every year I just want to visit and relax.”
Sin and I stared at him, and I figured she was stuck on the same idea as I was: that of rambunctious, troublemaking Aaron as a teacher. I tried to imagine him wearing glasses, which seemed like a prerequisite for anyone giving a lecture with “advanced” in the title.
“What’s cognitive visualization?” I asked.
“It’s an important part of switch training,” he answered, referring to the tools mages used to refine their magic. He blew on a spoonful of soup. “You visualize what you want to do with your magic while making a specific gesture with your switch. It’s about training your brain to associate the simple motion with a complex actualization of your magic.”
My jaw hung open. Maybe it was unfair of me to be so surprised, but “complex actualization” wasn’t part of his everyday vocabulary.
“It’s like muscle memory, but trickier.” He gulped down his soup. “We’ll go to the arenas first so you can see for yourself. At least one class will be working with switches, guaranteed.”
Oozing impatience, he set his bowl on the sideboard and waved at us to follow him. As he vanished through the door, Kai snorted wordlessly and continued eating.
Noticing my worried look, he added, “He’ll wait for us. Come eat.”
I handed the itinerary to Sin and selected a mini sandwich. The white bread was so fluffy it might’ve been a bread-shaped cloud.
“Jeez,” Sin muttered, reading the schedule more carefully. “Olympus, Ursa Major, Tales of Aether, Azalea Inc., MerlinQuest … these are all really famous guilds. Is Aaron interviewing with all of them?”
“Most of them,” Kai said with a shrug. “They’ll make an offer, he’ll politely turn it down, and he’ll disappear into obscurity for another year.”
“Look.” She pointed at the page. “On Boxing Day, he’s supposed to fly to Los Angeles to meet with Maximus Productions about a—”
“I’m not going.” Aaron stuck his head back into the room. “I told Mom I wasn’t leaving the grounds this time. The whole point is to visit with my family, not fly all over the damn planet. Are you slowpokes ready?”
We each stuffed our faces with one more sandwich triangle, then filed after him. As he led the way through the grand castle, I had to admit his childhood home didn’t intimidate me as much as the realization he was being headhunted by famous guilds from across the worldwide mythic community. With so many one-in-a-million opportunities, why had he chosen a small, unknown band of misfits to call his guild?
Chapter Five
The Sinclair Academy split its students’ time across three areas of study—training their magic, training their bodies, and training their minds. The first one was obvious—of course they learned how to wield their elemental powers—but they spent an equal amount of time learning how to weaponize their bodies.
Magery was the most physically demanding class of magic. Intense magic use rapidly exhausted mages, and the only counter was boosting their physical endurance. That’s why Aaron, Kai, and Ezra trained so hard and were so ridiculously fit. And had insane stamina. And were all deliciously hard muscle literally everywhere.
From daily workouts to classes dedicated to fitness and proper diet, the school hammered the lessons in. Other classroom time was devoted to Elementaria theory, technique, and history, as well as a basic but thorough understanding of the other magical classes.
And last but not least: practicing their magic.
I sat against a hard concrete wall, my butt planted on an equally hard concrete floor. Sin and Ezra sat on either side of me. Across the barren arena, ten fifteen-year-old mages waited in a quiet line, watching the small group of adults in the center.
Aaron and Kai stood with a tall older man, his copper hair streaked with silver and his eyes electric blue behind stately wire-rimmed glasses. Tobias Sinclair. Aaron’s father, the headmaster of the academy, and instructor of this class.
As Tobias described something to his students, an assistant passed two simple steel swords to Aaron and Kai. Looked like they’d be giving another demonstration.
“I don’t get it,” I whispered to Ezra. “Why does every class want Aaron and Kai to help with the lesson?”
I could get why Tobias would invite his son to participate, but this was the third time since we’d begun our tour of the academy. At least it would be the last of the day—the small windows, set high up on the walls, glowed orange as the sun sank below the tree line.
“They’re academy legends,” Ezra murmured. “Best of their year, and among the most talented alumni to ever graduate.”
I scrunched my nose. “Are they really that good?”
“They were the first mages you saw in combat, so your perspective is skewed. Yes, they’re that good. Watch this.”
Tobias finished his explanation and gestured to his assistant, a middle-aged woman with her brown hair pulled into a sleek ponytail. She gathered five plain ceramic discs from a bin beside her. As Aaron and Kai moved to opposite ends of the room, the assistant tossed the first disc into the open space between them. As it fell, she flicked the narrow silver stick she held in her other hand.
The disc stopped mid-fall, hovering three feet above the floor.
Ezra sighed. “I’ve never been able to do that. I can’t make the air dense enough.”
Oh, so the assistant was an aeromage? Interesting. She threw the next four discs and, with the same flick of her wand-like switch, caught each one in the air until all five floated motionlessly above the floor between Aaron and Kai.
“Now,” Tobias said to his students in a clear, deep voice, his laser-like stare all too reminiscent of Aaron’s. “Any of you could destroy those discs, one by one, without a switch, but that’s a first-year skill. This month, we’ve been practicing using a switch to achieve discorporate ignition. Now Aaron and Kai will demonstrate why we’re learning it—and what a mastery of discorporate ignition can accomplish.”
“Discorporate what?” I muttered.
“Ignition,” Ezra whispered. “It means creating magic away from your body instead of starting with your hands or switch.”
“Aaron, Kai,” Tobias called. “Please turn around.”
As Aaron and Kai turned their backs on the floating discs, whispers of disbelief ran through the observing students.
“Aaron and Kai are employing spatial imaging to target the discs, even though they can no longer see them,” Tobias explained, emphasizing what I assumed was a term on the kids’ next exam. “Now they’ll use cognitive visualization as they engage their switches.”
Aaron and Kai lifted the plain swords. Aaron held his sideways, the blade’s edge parallel to the floor and one hand pressed against the flat steel. Kai aimed the point of his sword at the ceiling, the blunt edge aligned with his nose.
“Three,” Tobias called, “two, one, now.”
Aaron swept his hand down his blade. Kai twisted his sword sharply.
Five fireballs burst over the hovering discs. At the exact same moment, electricity erupted over the centermost disc, then bolts speared the remaining four. Broken ceramic rained down on the concrete.
The students whooped and clapped appreciatively.
Ezra nodded at his friends’ display of skill. “Discorporate ignition on five small targets would challenge most mages, let alone doing it blind.”
“Can you do it?” I asked.
He smiled ruefully. “I can only manage discorporate ignition on a single target.”
A vision flashed through my mind: an ice-cold and dark loading bay. As I’d plunged off a steel mezzanine, wind had whooshed beneath me, the dense air cushioning my fall.
Discorporate ignition. Ezra had created a dense pocket of air underneath me a split second before I’d hit the ground, while in the middle of a deadly battle against two demons. I might not be an Elementaria expert, but I suspected Ezra wasn’t giving his skills enough credit.
Sin reached around me to pat his shoulder. “It’s tough being the least talented sibling. Lily is a mage prodigy, obviously, since she won a scholarship here. And Anna is only a year older than me but three years ahead in her alchemy apprenticeship. We just have to soldier on, Ezra.”
Aaron and Kai did several more mind-boggling demonstrations of their switch control before Tobias concluded the lesson. While he dismissed his class, the two super-mages sauntered over to join us plebian spectators. Sin, Ezra, and I got to our feet.
“Nice demo,” I said.
Aaron grinned, oozing satisfaction. “I broke the discs first on the last round.”
Kai’s dark eyes flashed with annoyance. “We broke them at the same time.”
“You wish. I’ve always been faster on the draw with a direct line of sight.”
Ezra rolled his eyes. The two mages continued to bicker as, across the arena, the students filed out.
“Excellent work, Aaron,” the headmaster said, striding over to us. “Impressive as always. The students will be talking about this lesson for weeks.”
Aaron’s proud smile returned. He might complain about having to teach while he was here, but he didn’t mind showing off his skills for his father. What boy, even a grown one, didn’t want to impress his dad?
“And you as well, Kai,” Tobias added. “Thanks for your help.”
As the headmaster’s gaze turned to his son’s other guests, Aaron quickly introduced me and Sin. I shook Tobias’s hand, feeling oddly starstruck. I had no idea how much weight he and his wife pulled in the mythic community, but I was beginning to grasp that the Sinclairs were on a whole different level than I’d seen in my dealings with mythics so far.
Clapping a hand on Aaron’s shoulder, Tobias led him to the door. “Are you looking forward to the end-of-term Christmas party? Shane Davila is attending this year. Rumor has it he’s coming to Vancouver to take a crack at their infamous rogue, the—”