Before Demelza could answer, the nearest doors slammed open and a group of mostly boys burst in, hollering. They waved their papers in the air, jostling each other hard enough that one slammed into a wall. He bounced off, still grinning.
“Oh, great,” Julian muttered. “The NDC groupies finally have their tickets north.”
Magicians played numerous roles in Aldrish society, each role influenced by which of the three types of wands they wielded. Enchantment wands were the most common and the most varied, their wielders contributing to everything from infrastructure to art to administration.
Corporeal wands were rare, making the discipline the mostcompetitive amidst the academy’s already brutal culture of competition. Those who did bond with a corporeal wand continued on to specialized healing training.
Last were the nature wands. Half managed Alderland’s agricultural production, ensuring endless bountiful harvests.
But of all the roles a magician could play, no profession was more heroic than enlisting in the Nature Defense Corps. Each year, the NDC protected Alderland from winterghasts—mindless, vicious monsters of ice. They were dangerous enough alone, but when they appeared—randomly, without warning—they summoned terrible storms. If left unchecked, winterscurges could freeze rivers in minutes, could entomb entire towns in snow. Although ghasts could show up anywhere, they disproportionately terrorized the colder North. Thankfully, they only spawned during Winter. But those six weeks often seemed more like six months. Alderland feared ghasts nearly as much as they loved Living Wands.
Ellery tensed as the students rushed past, whooping and cheering.
“How many of them do you think have actually been up past Undermere?” Julian asked skeptically.
“Probably none,” Ellery muttered.
“Oh, come on now. The NDC’s a noble pursuit,” Demelza said. “They’re so dedicated to keeping us safe.”
Julian frowned. “Yeah, or they’ve got a death wish. There’s a reason so many nature wands are in the Vault.”
“You want to be great, don’t you?” Demelza jabbed at him. “Are you really so different?”
“Oh, I’m different,” Julian said. “If I was called to fight for Alderland, I’d do it right. They don’t take it seriously.”
The NDC attracted a specific type of magician, drawn to glory and adrenaline. Muscles wouldn’t do anything to winterghasts—neither would guns, or bombs, or anything that wasn’t nature magic. Yet an intense dedication to the gym seemed to be a prerequisite for trying to fight them.
Ellery was pretty sure that if any of them saw an actual winterghast in the flesh, they’d piss themselves.
Demelza sighed. “What about you, Ellery? I mean, you’d obviously suit a nature wand. Don’t you ever think about going back up north?”
Julian stiffened. Ellery didn’t. She’d been asked repeatedly why she didn’t want a nature wand; she was used to answering.
“I think I’ve fought enough monsters for a lifetime,” she said.
Demelza gulped. “Of course. I totally understand.”
Ellery didn’t dream of glory. Her ambitions were sensible: a predictable enchantment wand that would let her stay in Gallamere, a safe, steady administrative career.
All she had to do was pass a single wand vigil.
An enchanted loudspeaker crackled to life, and a voice rang out through the student lounge.
“Councilor Glynn’s called for an assembly. We expect every student to gather in the grove, immediately.”
The Citadel was the oldest district in Gallamere, a fortress perched on the city’s mountain like the jewel atop its crown. The grove hid within its labyrinthine stone walls, a small forest at the edge of the cliffs that overlooked the iconic skyline. But today there was no time to admire the view. Ellery hurried to the clearing at the center, already packed with people.
Academy classes averaged fifty students per year, and all of them were here, from the Citadel’s newest recruits, barely twelve, to those like Ellery and Julian, who’d passed their qualification exams and were stuck in continued studies until they found Living Wands. Most crammed closely beneath the cloudless Summer sky, but the Order’s favorites were a bubble unto themselves. Ellery, Julian, and Demelza joined the rest of them below a juniper tree, murmuring pleasantries to their classmates.
Standing in the sun, surrounded by lush nature, it seemedimpossible Summer could ever fade. Yet when the scythe of Winter fell, it would all wither in an instant, leaves rotten, the earth frozen and dead.
“Did Glynn tell you about this?” Julian asked Ellery, while Demelza slid on a pair of trendy sunglasses.
“No,” Ellery whispered. “I would’ve said.”
“Thank you for arriving on such a short notice.” As though she’d summoned him, Edgar Glynn appeared before the crowd. He was in his late thirties with prematurely gray hair, fair skin prone to sunburn, and a thinning mustache. Thick spectacles hid his watery brown eyes. His wand, Aetherium, was plain, a simple branch of oak perpetually coated in dust.
But despite Glynn’s unassuming demeanor, the respect he carried within the student body silenced everyone immediately. As the Order’s Director of Education and Recruitment, he oversaw admissions for the academy and engineered its curriculum. He held the entire grove’s future in his hands.
