"In a few moments, you will each take a turn against the test," the man boomed, "Afterwards, you will be assigned housing and an identifier based on your performance. We know you are all young and many of you have yet to learn a sphere. Do not worry, if you don't have a sphere, options will be provided to you." The crowd was restless, and this announcer
could feel the anticipation. He continued, describing the nature of the test and the learning
facilities on campus, but Emory had begun to tune him out. She wanted to go to the library and find something about her book, yet this announcer went on and on. When it sounded like he was winding down his speech, Emory started listening again.
The man finished, "With all that in mind, please line up and head into the holodeck." Tethys, Innes, Gatrie, and Tana joined the line with Sam and Emory falling in a few people back. Surprisingly, the line of ten thousand students moved quickly, yet that had more to do with the capabilities of the holodeck than the pace of the test. Holograms and drones were a cornerstone of testing in the newest era of technology; one could program any situation and evaluate progress without cumbersome machines or dummies. However, the school's holodeck was much larger than even most military applications, easily able to create a thousand separate simulations at a time. The group made it to the front of the line in just under an hour. For Emory, though, time seemed to be ticking away much slower. She just wanted to be done, with the test and with the day. Finally, Sam was called up. Before she left, she turned to Emory and said, "Good luck, new friend! I'll be waiting for you on the other side!" Emory smiled and waved. Moments later she was called forward.
Emory stepped into what could best be described as a glass chamber. Two-way mirrors covered the walls from the floor to the ceiling and gave the participants a little bit of vertigo. When she reached the center of the small room, the lights from above dimmed and a soft glow emanated from the floor. Then a little smiling emoticon appeared on the wall in front of her. "Welcome to the Commencement Day Exam! My name is Jask, and I will be your proctor today. Don't worry; though I am a virtual proctor, I can accurately process your talents," the emoticon chimed.
"How does this work? What do I need to do?" Emory asked hastily.
"This exam can have a maximum of three parts," Jask explained, "There is an assessment done for your general ability as well as each sphere you have. Based on my initial examination, your test will have two parts."
Emory looked back with a confused look, "I don't have a sphere yet, so shouldn't my test only be one part?"
"Manual override engaged. Unknown sphere detected. Please wait," Jask said robotically, "Override approved. Your exam has been reconfigured to have one part: general ability."
"That was odd. I wonder what that was about," Emory commented under her breath. A robot materialized in front of her while Jask was spinning in the background.
Jask defined the test, "In front of you is a drone. First, use your natural strength or general magik to shove this as far as you can. You get two attempts." Emory closed her eyes and focused her magik into her hands for a few moments. When she opened them, they had become a brilliant sparkling blue instead of the emeralds they usually were. She charged forward and released the power from her palms in a wave towards the drone. A normal student would have shoved it backwards a little or maybe even knocked it over, yet Emory had channeled the magik so densely, it sliced right through the drone.
"Error," Jask beeped, "Power level exceeds drone limitations. Please wait." Meanwhile, Emory smirked at the remark. A few moments later, a new drone materialized, one made of a stronger metal. When the AI told Emory to restart the test, she charged and, using only a single palm this time, shoved the drone back quite a distance. Jask rang again, "General exam complete. Do you have additional general skills to attempt to increase your score?"
"Reset the drone please. I want to try physical strength," Emory responded. Soon enough, another drone appeared, but she stood back for a minute. As her eyes glowed blue again, Emory was growing and bulking up. She stopped after a couple of minutes at seven and a half feet tall with the muscles of a professional body builder. Moving like the wind, Emory lunged and threw an enlarged fist at the drone's head. The head caved in slightly as her fist drove the drone into the ground.
As she stepped off the drone, Jask clanged again, "General exam reassessed. Do you have additional general skills to attempt to increase your score?" Emory, changing back into her normal body, walked in front of Jask and shook her head. A thumbs up emoticon appeared on the screen and Jask said, "Commencement Day Exam complete. Do you wish to meet with a counselor to pick a sphere to study?"
"Not right now," Emory replied. Although she was a little puzzled still from the beginning of the test. "Why did it recognize a sphere? Was it an error or is there something about myself I don't know?" she thought. No matter the issue, the door behind her opened to reveal she had moved during the examination. A woman sat on a three-legged metal chair in the opposite room that was otherwise white and empty. She was tapping on a clipboard in her
hands, clearly waiting for Emory to enter. Emory walked slowly into the new room and over to the woman. Looking her over, there was a hint of eloquence and style that stood out from most people. "Excuse me, ma'am," Emory said, her voice slightly cracking from the nerves, "I told the
AI that I didn't want to see a counselor."
"Good thing I am not a counselor then, isn't it?" the woman snapped.
"Oh, I'm sorry. What do I do here then?" Emory asked.
The woman sighed and looked down at her clipboard before responding, "I am here to finish your registration. Please extend your arm please." Emory did as she was told quickly; clearly this person was not thrilled to be here. The woman placed a watch on Emory's wrist and tapped it a couple times to display three fields. "The three numbers correspond to your magik levels. The first is your general magik or Pull strength; the second two are your spheres. If you tap the screen, it will switch between your detailed level and your total level. This watch always stays with you. Please exit the door you came in," the woman elaborated. Emory looked down at her watch and saw almost what she expected: "4/?/-".
"What's the question mark for?" Emory asked the woman who took a look at the watch and bit her lip.
She answered calmly, "There was an issue when the exam started. It should revert to a blank in 24 hours." Emory noticed the woman's voice wavered when she replied and assumed there was more to the story but didn't want to press the issue. After she walked toward the door and opened it, she saw all the students in an oversized foyer. Sam immediately waved her over, so Emory slouched her shoulders and moseyed over.
~~~
The woman tapped on the clipboard a few times before looking down at her sheet again after the young girl left. Truly, she had seen several things in the last hour that she had never seen before. The sheet was a print-out of the AI's initial scan of Emory. Long past were the days of handheld metal detectors and screening windows to tell if a person was dangerous; today's technology was able to tell a person's genetic and magik make-up with a
quick scan and could make accurate predictions about a person with near perfect certainty. So,
when Jask identified that Emory had a sphere already, it was more than likely telling the truth.
That was the first odd thing.
Then a seventeen-year-old girl let out a Pull wave that cut through the drone. Most adults couldn't cut through the normal drones without sphere magic but somehow, this girl had. That meant she had a Pull level four or five, a fact further proven by the watch.
The watches were special monitors that could read a person's maximal magik level, complete with a Virtual Intelligence that had a full database of known spheres. They doubled as training modules and emergency notifiers when connected to the school's holodeck. However, apart from a few Council families, all the spheres were registered. So, the watch should register her level in the sphere she claimed she didn't have, but this girl's watch had a question mark, proving that not only did she have a sphere, but it was a rare one.
The woman waited in her chair before getting up and going to the door. When she opened it, the room was filled with computers instead of the hall of teens. She quickly sat down at the nearest one and started typing. Most computers had facial recognition in lieu of a password, especially in communal environments such as this, which allowed several individuals access to the network. The woman click clacked away at the keyboard before finally pausing. "A Reiss? No, the Reiss. Well, that explains things a little bit," she huffed.
~~~
Sam immediately grabbed Emory's wrist and pulled her over to her friends. "See?" she exclaimed, "I told you she was a Four."
"I didn't say she wasn't. I was just suggesting that she was picking out a sphere," Tana hissed and smiled quickly at Emory.
Emory shook her head, "No, the test had errors."
"Errors? As in plural?" Innes piped up.
"Yeah, a couple," Emory explained, "It said I had a sphere, but I don't. And look at my watch." She tapped the top to reveal the question mark on her first sphere. "What do you think it means?" she asked the group.
"That's a mystery," Tethys commented, "Naturally they wanted to talk to you about it."
"Except they didn't! The woman who installed my watch said it should fix itself in a day," Emory rolled her eyes.
Most of the class had already been processed when Emory joined them, so it only took about twenty minutes for the rest of the class to get processed. Once everyone was through, the male announcer from before stood before them again and told the group the basic layout of the fortress, including the dormitories, classrooms, library, training rooms, and other facilities. Then he dismissed the group to mingle the rest of the day or make their way to their dorm rooms.
Emory started to take off before Sam caught her, "Where are you off to so quickly? Don't you want to go to the dorms?"
"This is going to sound a bit geeky, but I'd really like to make it to the library," Emory defended herself, "I've heard that the facilities here are better than the ones back home."
"Why didn't you say so earlier? I want to check out our new home for the year," Sam responded. Emory sighed, but she already knew this type of person; it would be easier to let her tag along instead of protesting it. With that Sam bid farewell to her friends for now and left with Emory for the library. Several buildings were laced along the path there, yet Emory didn't care about those yet. It was a fifteen-minute walk through the complex before the girls reached their destination. What a sight it was; from the entrance, Emory could see at least five floors up and the back wall was at least three hundred feet deep. They had a separate area for tables and group projects before the books, even little bubble devices that kept the noise restricted to each individual table. Emory made a straight line for the book catalog, a special computer that gave
the layout of the library.
"So, are you going to tell me what you're looking for or keep me in suspense?" Sam asked jokingly.
Emory continued to focus on the screen and replied, "I'm looking for ancient languages."
"Alright," Sam paused, "What for?"
"I came across some of my parents' old journals and wanted to read them, but they're written in a language that I couldn't find on the internet," Emory half-lied.
"What language are they written in? And why did they write it in a different language?" Sam prodded.
Emory turned and glared at Sam, "If I knew what language they were written in, don't you think I would have said?"
"Woah, that was a lot of sass," Sam laughed, "That's a fair response; it was a silly question. But you still haven't answered why they wrote in a different language."
Truthfully, Emory couldn't reveal that it was probably a spellbook, but even that didn't answer why it was in a different language. "Shouldn't it have been updated at some point?" she thought, "Unless it's an original. But that's crazy talk." After a long pause, Emory postulated, "Maybe they wrote it in a different language to hide something from the average reader. The real question is not why did they write in a different language but what secret is it hiding."
"That's a good question. Did you find the language section?" Sam questioned. Emory nodded and got up from the desk. Sam followed Emory back to the far corner of the library to an elevator. They rode up to the top floor and made their way to a section labeled "Historical Reference". Emory moved her finger across every book as she crept down the aisle. It was a slow process, one that Sam stood at the end of the aisle for. However, twenty minutes later she made her way down to Emory who had stopped midway through the aisle.
"Did you find something? You stopped and picked up a book finally," Sam commented.
"Maybe," Emory whispered, "This book is written in the same language as the journal I have, but there's still no English translation. But maybe. Let's go to a kiosk." The two walked to a librarian kiosk and tapped on the screen. An emoticon popped up and waved.
"Jask, I'd like to find a translation for this book please," Emory said to the kiosk as she inserted the book she had found. A laser scanned the library tag, and the emoticon started spinning.
After a minute, Jask chimed, "This book is part of our legacy collection and as such does not have a translation. I could pull up a list of instructors at the school that are fluent in this language."
"No translation," Emory sighed, "Fine. Jask, give me a list of instructors at the school that can speak this language."
The emoticon spun a few times before replying to the directive, "I apologize. No registered speakers of this language are in the database."
Emory stomped her foot and hissed, "Then can you please tell me what language this book is?"
Again, the emoticon spun for a moment before
responding again, "I apologize. This does not match any known or past languages." Emory dropped her head and shook it.
"Why were your parents using this language," Sam pondered out loud, "How did they even know this language?"
"Jask, I'd like to check out this book," Emory said, ignoring Sam's side questions. She had already wondered about this after she had no luck on the internet. The kiosk beeped and showed a green checkmark.
Sam had a confused look on her face, "Why did you check out this book if you can't read it either?"
"My gut tells me both of these books are related," Emory elaborated, "Even if they aren't, if no one can read these books, then I'm not going to cause any disruptions by keeping this one for a while." Sam thought about it for a couple moments and largely agreed with Emory's logic, even though it seemed silly to take a book from the library that couldn't be read.
She shrugged her shoulders and said, "Well now that you have two books you can't read, do you want to head to the dorms?" Emory nodded and the two left the library. In checking their watches, they learned they shared a dorm room, so the pair leisurely strolled back to their room. Along the way they passed a recreation room filled with games and lounge chairs, a science laboratory with distillation equipment, a cafeteria that smelled like food being cooked, and a second holodeck though much smaller than the exam one. Clearly the school had all the amenities they would need; although, they had yet to find the classrooms.
Once back at the dorms, the girls found that Tana and Tethys were already in the dorm room waiting for them. Sam smiled, "Did you already unpack your bags in your room?"
"Actually," Tethys answered, "The four of us are all in the same room, so we waited until you two came back. Did you find any good books at the library?"
"Just one, and I'd hardly call it a good book yet," Emory commented as she held up the new book.
Tana patted Emory on the back and said, "It's okay. Now you have two more people to help you."
"That's right," Sam continued, "But I'm starving. Especially after we walked by the caf. Can we pick this up after dinner?" The other girls laughed and nodded.
"I'll be right behind you all. I just want to check my bags really quick," Emory told the group. After they left, she quickly opened her bags to find the suspected spellbook and compared the writing. "Just as I thought, they are the same language. But what language is it!" Emory screamed and smacked the open books with her fists. It had been a long and tiring day and Emory had much more natural magik than most people her age; it was to be expected that some of her magik would leak out with her heightened emotions. Yet, since the book cover had resisted all damage, Emory had never tried to use magik on the inside. The magik flowed off her hands and onto the pages, but then it seemed like the book slurped up the excess power. Emory's eyes were initially closed, a precautionary measure against her crying, though she quickly opened them when the pages started lighting up. "What is this?" Emory thought. Even stranger still were the printed words on the page reforming. She could even feel her eyes readjusting to the text, as if they were just tired before.
The title page had extravagantly printed text reading, "Arcane Sphere. Welcome Hexblood Aurelias." As the glow from the pages dimmed, Emory thought about the words it said. She knew almost all the spheres of Magik and had never heard of Arcane before. Furthermore, she didn't know what a Hexblood was or who it was since it had a last name there as well. No part made sense until she had an idea; she set aside her parents' book and opened the book she had found at the library. Except when she looked at it, it appeared to be in English now. The cover showed "Hexbloods" as the title and she was just about to open the cover when the door opened abruptly.
"Stop looking at those books. They'll still be here after we eat," Sam yelled as she walked through the door and caused Emory to jump and look around, "Wait. Were your eyes always brilliant blue?"