[PI]When your village had sent you to the imperial magic academy you were worried your abilities were much less impressive then the others. That’s when you arrived you realized the other students only use their magic to show off or grand displays and not the labor you used yours for in the village.

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There were a hundred of us at the start. By the end of my time at the academy, the numbers were less than half of that, but that’s not important now. There were a hundred of us at the start and the examination hall wasn’t that big.

I remember standing there, shoulder to shoulder with the other initiates. I don’t know who was to my left. Twins, from the look of it, probably from the North. I never learned their names. The whole place smelled of nervous sweat and ozone, like lightning before it struck.

Celia was at my right, though I didn’t know her name at the time. She was only the tall girl in silver robes that shimmered like water in the candlelight. At one point, she turned to look at me. Her cool eyes swept me from the top of my frizzy hair to the thinning soles of my boots. She frowned–almost sneered–and muttered to the girls next to her, “I forgot they let just anyone join.”

In theory, it was true they let anyone join. Each village was allowed to send a boy and a girl each year. But in larger towns, where the competition was more fierce and every governor and baron and even professor wanted to give their kid a chance, they would gather up an offering and trade a poor village for a spot.

It wasn’t for nothing that the initiates and graduates from the Imperial Academy had a reputation for being fed with a silver spoon. Most were. The boy who should have been my partner, the second initiate from Redrock, was really the son of a Southern duke. His name was Gabriel. 

But at the academy, we would all be evaluated the same. That was the promise of this place. Even a poor girl from nowhere like me could hone her skills to become the best. 

Madame Beaumont, who stood at the front of the crowd, was the perfect example of it. She was a chambermaid before she came here–now she ran the whole academy and had a favoured place on the King’s council. 

Madame Beaumont cleared her throat. “Initiates,” she called out. Her magically-amplified voice carried through the crowd, and all of our murmuring faded to silence. 

I stood on the tips of my toes to see her better. I am not tall, and neither is Madame Beaumont, and I could only make out the curl of her dark hair and the swish of her dark cape. 

“You will come up one at a time.” Madame Beaumont’s voice echoed off the walls of the hall. “You will show us your best.”

A soft murmur stirred through us. We all knew this, more or less. The entrance exam was no secret. But even still, I had imagined there would be some extra twist to it, some specific task we had to accomplish, or beast we had to slay. To simply show off? It seemed absurd. 

My grandmother taught me everything I knew. She had never shown off her magic a day in her life. She told me time and again that we were not show horses. Our magic, she would say in her low and soft voice, our magic is ancient and powerful. I would nod along. At first, it seemed she was building me up in the general way adults encourage children–optimistic and yet hollow. Yes, you ran so fast. Look at you, you jumped so high. 

Into my teenage years, as my grandmother grew older, I suppose I saw her as out of touch with the world. Of course she valued our magic. She worked with the herbs and roots and potions and so thought those were the best, meanwhile in the cities there were automatons powered by magic and sorcerers who could stop a war with the wave of their hands–the demonstration was powerful enough to make another King think twice.

I had never practiced anything flashy. I couldn’t see the first initiate who came up to stand in front of the whole crowd, but a soft whistle cut through the tense silence. Overhead, next to the top arches of the window, a small spark fluttered around the room. 

When I squinted and looked closer, I realized it was fire shaped like a hummingbird, with beating wings and a curious head that turned as it danced through the air. The little things arced through the air and hovered nearer to my head, and I let out a small gasp at the beauty of the little thing, fluttering with wings that raced as quick as my heart. 

From there, the bird sailed back up high again. With a final flourish, the sparks that had been forming the bird exploded into a brilliant red firework. Soft ashes floated to the ground. 

I clapped my hands together. The rest of the crowd stood in silence. 

“Impressive,” Madame Beaumont said. “Take a seat to the left.”
The next initiate attempted to draw all the water out of the air, but ended up dosing the front row when his hand trembled. Madame Beaumont sent him to the right. 

And on it went that way. Impressive shows, much of it elemental magic. Columns of fire, spiraling water, one boy even drew a storm cloud over our heads. Some opted for more unique demonstrations–one boy crafted an illusion that made the whole examination hall fade away and left us feeling like we were on a mountain top. I could even feel the cold ground leeching through my boots and the snow on my cheeks.

A few managed well enough. Colourful clouds of bubbles, a waterfall of champagne, a girl that made her skin glow like a firefly. Nothing about these might have screamed power, but they were impressive and beautiful all the same.

For every few initiates that succeeded, another faltered. More dropped water, earthquakes no more than a chair dragged over the stone, and one tried to turn herself into a bird and couldn’t get beyond giving herself a beak. 

It became clear, quite quickly, that getting sent to sit on the left was success, right was failure. About a third got sent right. The rest got to stay.

The crowd thinned as we went up one by one. I tried to think of what I could do, but the truth was that I had not done much elemental magic and even less of the parlour tricks. 

Finally, it was time for Celia. After her, I would be next.

She stood tall and smirked as she conjured a knife and dragged it across her palm. Someone in the crowd gasped loudly. Blood dripped onto her silver robes, and a few drops landed on the stones, but without missing a beat she vanished the knife, ran her opposite fingers across the cut, and then turned the unbroken skin back to the crowd. 

It was a good move, I had to admit. Healing magic was no small feat.

Even Madame Beaumont looked impressed. Up close, I could now see her face: her eyes were bright, but her face was hard to read. Light wrinkles traced her skin around her lips and eyes, but paired with her dark hair, it was hard to even get a sense of her age. 

“Left,” she told Celia.