Day 4: The Arrival

The mainland was in sight when I woke up, sore and tired. The wolf pup was asleep in the bed, but he woke up with a growl when I turned the light on. I roughly made up the bed, grabbed my pack, and then took him with me to wait on deck. I got many compliments as the mainland approached, and I didn't have much time to myself, even after we got off the boat. Luckily, the girl who was there with us yesterday sat next to me on the bus. She didn't seem to be too impressed with me, so I was left in peace for the ride to the Academy, except for the occasional fighting between the wolf pup and the girl's panther.

The two hour trip was a normal two hour bus ride with teenagers, periods of loudness followed by periods of deafening silence. As the bus wound its way up the mountains, some students were obviously getting sick, many of them trying to sleep it off. The girl next to me fell asleep almost immediately, but her panther wouldn't sleep with my wolf pup sitting on my lap. I watched the landscape roll by, but nothing of note was there, just lots of snow.

A half-hour before the school came into sight, the driver came on with instructions for us. When we got off the bus, we were to line up and wait for our turn to get enrolled to take the entrance test. The Academy was a school for those who had a certain skill with Aura already, it was more the fine mechanics of control and use of Aura that was the main focus of the Academy. The entrance exam was usually a series of trials that were designed to test the limits of a person or squad, which ever the luck of the draw put an individual in.

The Academy came into view, and I was surprised. I had been expecting an ancient Cathedral style building, but it was a modern architecture building. The steel and glass building was situated on a lake, overlooking the lake and a field, against a backdrop of snow covered craggy mountains. As we pulled up, I saw snow starting to fall, and we were ushered inside. There, we lined up and waited for a proctor to sign us in. They tested each prospective's student's auras and recorded them. The tests were tailored to the auras of the people involved, as well as fighting style and knowledge. I was motioned to, so I went over to the proctor that had beckoned me and did as I was told. She had me stick my hands out over a metal strip, and my right hand glowed with Light, which I knew would happen, but my left hand pulsated with Darkness. I had never been able to call my second aura, one of the reasons I was so good with my Light, and also why I was here. Watching the proctor, she wrote down "Twilighter" under a block labeled Aura. I was asked to register my wolf pup, meaning he had to have a name. I settled on the name Ceorn, which he seemed to respond to anyways. After that, I was told to go next door to a main room and make myself comfortable while the others registered and the tests were designed.