The hustle bustle of students, their laughter and shouting and loud music were the signs of jubilant freshman. They’d yet been given their uniforms, some variation of the same cloak that all students at the university wore. The arching halls were as lively as ever, like the beginning of every new year. Professors stood about in groups of twos and fours chatting about lesson plans or introducing themselves to curious dreamy eyed students who’d be attending for the first time ever. Amongst the cacophony was a silent princess with hair as white as snow and eyes like the edge of a blade. Her gaze remained straight as she headed to her first class, books clutched under one arm against her gray sweater and her free arm swinging lightly by her side. Dozens of eyes watched as she moved through the crowd, splitting people into groups of two along the hall until she arrived at the door, pushing her way inside silently. Her sneakers were silent as she crossed the front of the room, taking an empty seat close to the empty desk of the professor who hadn’t arrived yet.

“Who’s that?” A fluffy haired freshman asked his group of friends. They all eyed the girl silently as she removed her earbuds and began flipping through black pages of a black book.

“Abel, there’s no way you don’t know who that is.” One of his friends said, a sad shake of his head.

Abel Wolfe shifted his gaze back to his friends. “If I did, I wouldn’t have asked.”

“Angelique? Tourneau?”

Abel shook his head, not hiding his obvious staring as he gazed upon this Angelique whom he’d never heard of. 

“How did you even get into this school, bro?”

There was no need to answer that. Abel was average in every other area of magical curriculum except Offensive Magic, where he’d scored second place on the entrance exam—unbeknownst to him since he was only looking at the big red ACCEPTED stamp on his letter from the university—right underneath Angelique Tourneau who’d scored above him by well over a hundred or so points. She was an exceptional student by international standards, leagues above her peers, a true prodigy.

“I guess it’s not a surprise,” Abel’s friend said with a sigh, brushing a few strands of brown from his face, “You are you after all.”

Before Abel could retort, in walked a sloppy woman with a wrinkly burgundy lab coat—a scientist's imitation of the school’s cloaks—glasses with lenses that seemed much too big, and a frame held together in several places by white tape. Her coat, obviously too large for her small frame, dragged lazily behind her, barely hanging on to her bony shoulders as she stepped behind the podium and cleared her throat. THe idle chatter died down after a brief moment, and all attention was on her.

“Good morning, everyone!” She began. Her voice was soft and raspy, but it carried throughout her huge classroom nonetheless, likely due to some kind of vocal enhancing magic. “I hope you all found your way here just fine. I’m Carmella Giovanni, but please call me Ms. Giovanni. I teach offensive and defensive magic, and that’s the four level course that we’ll be taking this year. Before we start, does anyone have any questions for me?”

After not a single hand was raised, the students jumped directly into note-taking on how to manifest defensive magic in the form of a shield, a simple invocation to protect themselves and their peers from entry level offense spells. Abel jotted his notes down idly, casting a few glances over to Angelique, noticing that she wasn’t taking notes—not with her hands, anyway. Her stylus was wiggling itself across the screen of her tablet, writing down notes by itself. Abel wondered what type of spell she’d created to do that. 

Class went on for a few hours before lunch dismissal. Abel quickly followed after Angelique, wondering why the hell it was so cold behind the mysterious girl when someone grabbed his wrist, pulling him away from her.

“You definitely don’t want to stalk the Ice Queen, my friend. You’ll end up like that guy from the entrance ceremony.”

Abel slowed to match the pace of his friends. Solomon Callisto was his friend since middle school. He was a solid wizard, built like a brick wall, preaching “Your body is your temple, so train it” whenever he could. He favored plain healthy meals to extravagant greasy ones, and got no less and eight hours of sleep every. Single. Night.

A set of brown-haired twins walked next to Abel on either side. Damion and Deidre La Croix. They styled themselves exactly the same from head to toe, hair swept to the same side, and occasionally even found themselves dating the same girls at the same time. Very weird and equally handsome.The twins were tall, and always looked dreary despite their upbeat personalities. Their white faces were spotted with freckles, and they even had identical smile lines on their faces.

The sea of students filled the enormous cafeteria quickly, and Abel’s group found one of the last completely empty tables, quickly seating themselves and tucking into the hearty plates, ignoring the three randoms that sat with them. 

“Ugh! I don’t wanna sit with you guys,” Abel whined as he bit into a huge piece of meat that was suspiciously big to be a chicken finger. “I wanna sit with her.” His lovestruck gaze settled on the Ice Queen, Angelique as she ate silently amongst a table of fifteen other girls who were all chatting loudly and joking and showing each other things on their phones. Angelique, a stark contrast to the group around her, was silent, sipping from a carton of juice and reading from the same black book she’d had with her all day. No one around her even attempted to talk to her, maybe she liked it like that, being alone in her own world.

The twins laughed and said in unison, “Give it up, Abe!”

“But—”

“Entrance ceremony, dude!” Damion reminded him. 

Abel thought back to the entrance ceremony that he’d skipped for more important matters, like meeting up with some old friends off campus for a smoke break. He’d heard that a girl had been harassed at the ceremony by a random male student, and that she’d subsequently turned him into a human statue, encasing his body in a magical stone. She’d even refused to undo the spell, and it took several high level professors to undo the intricate magic she’d cast onto the creep. No punishment for her, and two demerits for her harasser, plus a few hours spent frozen in time.

“That guy obviously had zero game, and I bet he didn’t look like me either,” Abel confidently brushed a hand through his twisted hair, showing his best playboy smile to his friends as they burst into laughter.

Deidre elbowed his brother and Solomon. “Bro. Abel. If you can get her to say ONE word to you, or even acknowledge your presence, I’ll do your laundry for a whole month!” Deidre stuck his hand out, and Abel dapped him up firmly before Deidre could take it back since he hated doing his laundry and often reused shirts and pants for multiple days at a time. 

“Watch and learn, buddy.” Abel smirked at the group before heading to Angelique’s table, waiting silently until a seat freed up next to her. He quickly sat, releasing his anxiety under the table by bobbing his knee.

He hadn’t noticed the table had gone quiet. “Um, can we help you?” One of the girls asked. He glanced around quickly, landing on a pair of bright blue eyes and a pale pudgy face hawking him down from further up the table. 

“Um, you can’t,” Abel mocked her bitchy tone, “but she can.”

Angelique had remained reading her nameless book with black pages, paying zero attention to the new person seated beside her. Abel eyed her untouched plate, specifically the cheesy garlic bread. It was a special that day. “Hey, you gonna eat that?” She continued to ignore him and flip through pages as she read, which drew giggles from the girls around them. “Well, don’t mind if I do.”

Abel grabbed the cheesy bread, which was still warm to his surprise, and opened his mouth to take a big bite, not noticing the burst of quiet orange magic. The entire gathering of girls burst into shrill laughter, and the cafeteria quieted to complete silence as Abel jumped up, spitting a furry hamster from where the wonderful bread should have been! The hamster landed on the table, scuttling atop one of the girls' heads. She began to cry laughing, holding the hamster up and petting it lightly. He turned furiously to the group, spitting fur from his mouth and asking which one of them had done that! But to his surprise, all hands pointed to Angelique, the Ice Queen.

“Impossible! I didn’t hear her invoke a spell.”

The Ice Queen stood suddenly, the mystery book tucked against her chest and the cup of juice in her free hand. Not even passing a glance at Abel, she headed away from them in triumphant silence. Abel gritted his teeth, drawing a mahogany wand from his pocket. All twelve inches of the polished wood glistened under the light with sparkling runes etched across its sleek surface, a dragon’s tear seated at the core of it all. 

“Hey, what the hell’s your problem? It was just a joke!” One of the girls called quickly. 

Abel aimed his wand at Angelique’s back, lowering it quickly to the ground and breathing words of power into the air. A spell. “Of waves and rivers, flow with ease.”

The tiled floor beneath her turned to a deep pool of murky water, which would have sunken any unsuspecting civilian—and that was something Angelique Tourneau certainly was not. She rounded silently, her mouth twisting into a mocking smile across her usually blank face. She stood atop the water’s surface, drawing awestruck sounds from the crowd of students. Abel quickly looked to his snickering friends; and he was a very sore loser despite having actually won the challenge between him and Deidre.

Angelique still held her juice carton, and raised it to take a sip. This was Abel’s chance, and he took it without a hint of hesitation. “Like shooting stars, burst forth!” An overly wordy incantation, but effective nonetheless, caused the carton of juice to explode in Angelique’s hand, drenching her hair, clothes, and book in a wet sticky mess. The cafeteria became a throng of audible gasps and words of worry. As silence ensued and professors began to move slowly toward the two of them shaking their heads, Abel eyed his friends with a goofy successful smile, but their faces were full of regret and worry! He turned back to Angelique, feeling a sudden blast of maleficent energy emitting in her blank anger.

When it came to offensive magic, Abel was as clever as a wizard could get, and he wasn’t afraid to fight dirty. INstead of sending spells back and forth in a boring strategic barrage, he’d find ways to outmaneuver his opponents by using anything around him to his advantage. In contrast to his recklessness, Angelique the Ice Queen fought with style and grace, overpowering her opponents every chance she got, forcing them into opeless submission. She was a monster, a witch in its truest form, and her predatory gaze had now marked Abel as prey.

Abel was an idiot, but he was no fool. The calm purple eyes that now gazed at him with silent fury sent shivers down his spine. He immediately went into a defensive stance, invoking an advanced barrier he’d secretly worked on during the intro lessons in his last class. But that barrier was little more than a sheet of paper for the witch in front of him, and he knew it.

Eyes around them grew wide in horror as Angelique raised a thin finger toward Abel. She was miles beyond needing invocation to use magic, so the silent ball of swirling red magic that formed at the tip of her finger caused many students to get the hell away from the two fighting students. She released the magic when it had just the right amount of energy, and it shot forth with so much power that it left a lack streak burned into the tiled floor all the way up to Abel, who’d crossed his arms over his body in helpless defense as the beam of red magic shattered his shield.

But as it was a hair’s width away from his body, the piercing red beam burst into glittery rain, falling around him and dissipating into the air.

“Now, now, Miss Tourneau. You know killing your peers results in immediate expulsion as well as legal action, don’t you?” A haughty voice called from somewhere above the dozens of heads. Abel looked up to see a gorgeous woman emerge from a light in the ceiling. Her fiery hair danced around her body as she descended between Abel and Angelique.

This mysterious beauty was none other than Andromeda Morgenstern; headmaster of Swinescar College of Invocation and Alchemy.