Symphonic Odyssey
: Vol. Two: Beneath the Hawthorn Tree: Verse Fifty-One

Cypher woke not long after sunrise to the rumbling of his stomach. He was groggy from such heavy and peaceful sleep but found he was well-rested after the feeling began to wear off.

He performed his morning routine, doubling a few aspects of the workout, and then made his way to the kitchen. It seemed to be stocked quite well. One cabinet held a few plates, a couple of mugs, and a few glasses.

Looking further, he found two drawers, one filled with silverware, and the other with cooking utensils. But he was more impressed when he happened to open the cabinet above a small cooktop. He was startled as an unexpected chill from within reached him.

Confused, he looked inside and noticed cheese, eggs, sliced meat, a clear bottle of milk, and two more opaque bottles. One held chilled water, while the other, (after smelling and tasting it,) contained orange juice.

The many innovations of this academy were quite impressive to Cypher. First the lanterns, then the bathroom which he had found earlier that morning, and now this chilled cabinet and stove. After flipping a switch that turned out to heat the cooktop, he made a small meal of eggs and ham and looked through the window and out at the mountains while he ate.

In the distance, he could just barely make out a few buildings. He wondered why they had spread the academy out amongst the mountaintops but quickly discarded the thought.

The world of Conductors was a somewhat secretive one, and many schools like this one dotted the continent. Most but not all were hidden from the general public, and Cypher only knew about two others from the books he had read at the manor. Hiding one on top of a mountain chain wasn’t all that strange when he considered this.

He finished his meal, and then washed the dishes in the sink. He was surprised to replace that a faucet with clean running water was also available for use. The water seemed to come from nowhere which puzzled him at first.

Although, after looking under the cabinets beneath the cooktop and sink, he found a mechanism of several glowing crystals set in brass frames that continued up and into the counter. They obviously powered the magick that ran the appliances above.

He then began running through a few sword drills in the living room after his morning stretches and workout routine. Keeping his body in top form was more important than ever now that he was walking down the path to becoming a Conductor and he wouldn’t allow himself to slack off now.

Afterward, he took a bath to clean away the sweat and got dressed in the outfit he had chosen the night before, opting to leave the robe draped over the arm of the couch. It wasn’t long before a knock at his door disturbed him as he dried his hair, and he quickly moved to open it.

Alvin stood smiling at him, another chest floating behind him. This one, however, was much larger than the last one and Cypher stepped aside to allow him inside. Alvin made his way into the living room, removing his loafers at the landing before stepping up onto the carpet.

“I trust you’re all settled in by now yes? How are the accommodations treating you so far?” Alvin asked as he lowered the chest to the floor. Cypher thought about it for a moment, his gaze locked upon the chest.

“It’s much nicer than I expected it to be. The bed was very soft. That was perhaps the best night of sleep I’ve ever had. Although, I’m not sure what to do with all this extra space. I don’t own very many things so putting away my stuff didn’t take very long. All in all, I’m thankful for your generosity. Would you like something to drink?”

Alvin shook his head and sat down, opening the chest with a spell. He pulled out a binder filled with paperwork and set it on the couch beside him. “So as you know, classes officially start at the end of the weekend. I came today for a couple of reasons,”

“The first is because we need to go over the available courses here at the academy, and you can decide what your schedule will be like. The other students here already have a decent idea about which classes they wish to take. But given what you’ve told me your education is severely lacking.”

“As your sponsor, it falls to me to help bring you up to speed. I can’t expect you to understand what you’d like to learn if you don’t have a decent foundation to build upon. First, I’ll need to know what you managed to learn about magick. You already learned a spell so that is already a good start.”

“Well, if I’m being honest,” began Cypher, “I don’t know much. When I was studying that book of magick back at Galvan manor it was almost impossible for me to grasp the finer details of what it was explaining. A lot of what it talked about was theory and speculation. In fact, the spell I managed to learn was about the only thing I could understand properly and even that was a struggle.”

Cypher scratched the back of his head and continued, “It was a confusing series of lines, symbols, and circles, almost like a diagram or something. As I stared at it I sort of just… knew what I was supposed to do. Now when I close my eyes and focus I can see the diagram burning in my mind,”

Alvin frowned and let out a sigh. “It’s worse than I expected. Given what you’ve told me and from your demonstration yesterday, it seems like you were reading Yordrin’s Scale. It was written about three hundred years ago by a Conductor of the same name and covered a lot of the subtleties of magick as opposed to being a proper instruction on the art. His specialty was delving into the elements and bringing out some of their secondary properties. It was actually one of the more advanced tomes and that you managed to gain anything from it is quite impressive, to say the least.”

Cypher nodded, that was indeed the name of the book he had managed to borrow and Alvin’s explanation made him feel better about not understanding most of it.

“The lightning bolt spell you learned is a result of his tests. As it turns out, lightning magick is a subclass of the fire element. Each of the elements has a subclass just like this, but spells for them are hard to come by, even the academy only has a few on hand. But, never mind that for now, I’m getting ahead of myself. We have a lot to cover so let’s just get down to it shall we?”

Alvin opened the binder and pulled out a few sheets of paper, then he reached into the chest at his feet and handed Cypher his own binder of blank pages as well as a quill and an inkwell.

“This is a list of available classes in your year. All of them are introductory courses so you needn’t worry about feeling left behind by your peers. I’m also going to hold you back for a week while I instruct you a bit, and fluff out your education. I’ve already talked with the other teachers and they are on board with my plan for you. They’ll be expecting you not to show up so don’t worry about absences.”

Cypher didn’t like the idea of waiting for a whole extra week before starting his instruction. He knew that he was behind enough already but decided it would be best if he took the extra time to try and get caught up.

“But before any of that,” Alvin continued, “I’m going to explain the different branches of magick and how Conductors use them. That is my second reason for coming today. Make sure you take notes so you can study them later okay? You uhh… you know how to write yes?”

Cypher nodded and took a seat next to Alvin on the couch and opened the binder in his hands to the first empty page. He wasn’t very good at writing as he hadn’t practiced all that much, but he was sure that he would be able to do well enough.

“I’m not going to go into full details here as we don’t have all the time in the world. That said, a quick summary of things should give you a decent idea of what to expect and what you might be interested in learning about. Before that though, I need to explain the centers of power you will have access to as a Conductor.”

“Centers of power? You mean like my Orrium right?” Cypher asked, a look of confusion spreading across his face.

“Indeed, your Orrium is one of these centers. However, it isn’t the only one even if it’s arguably the most important. In order to be a proper Conductor and advance through the different ranks, you will need to master and train all three of these centers of power.”

Cypher rubbed his Orrium as Alvin continued, “We’ve discussed briefly about the Orrium. To use magick you need to harness and control Zight, your Orrium is the source of this ability and without it, you cannot properly control this power. But there is another question you have to ask yourself. What good will having vast amounts of power do if your body cannot contain or channel it without harm?”

Cypher had no answer, but he waited eagerly for Alvin to continue. In his mind though he sighed, there was so much he didn’t know and he realized how much further he still had to go before he could be called a Conductor.