Monday morning came with a bright light in the window. I put on my uniform piece by piece as I kept checking my reflection in the full body mirror. Black slacks. A white undershirt with mid-length sleeves. A black vest. There was a tie, but it was optional for girls and it was the hideous shade of pink so I opted out. There were fingerless gloves, that went up to my elbow and ended, just below my knuckles, black with pink trim. They were optional too but I liked them. And lastly, the thing that starred in my nightmares almost as much as the spiders, a bright pink overcoat that ended above my ankles and had a hood that we were required to have off when indoors. The sleeves of the coat were extra wide at the wrist and flopped about with any movement.

  It didn't suit me.

  I checked my reflection again. But the eye-melting color wasn't changing. I let out a defeated sigh. "First day. Just have to show up."

  I stepped out into the spiral hallway and down the staircase with the rest of the horde of bright pink. Since the rest of the students had arrived the total occupancy of the tower was up to nearly seventy. And they were all enthusiastic and happy and cheery and I was a coward who barely left my room.

  Also, they were all morning people.

  I was not.

  Angelina was at the door, jumping up and waving to get my attention. "Serafina!"

  It was too early. "Good morning Angelina," I greeted flatly.

  She giggled, looped her arm around mine and pulled me into the crowd. "Are you excited for class? Which one do you think will be your favorite? Don't worry, no one's talking about your accident anymore. I hope we get to actually see a creature in Monsters."

  Did she even breathe? "One at a time. Please." Her eyes twinkled with excitement. "I'm excited for Advanced Alchemy."

  "Aww!" She was disappointed. "I got stuck in Basic Brewing. I don't think anyone else has it either. You'll be all by yourself!"

  Thank the gods. "I'll manage," I reassured her while repressing the urge to roll my eyes.

  She was thankfully content to chatter about what she was hoping we were going to cover in Basics on Monsters. I interjected with the occasional affirmation so she would know I was listening.

  The tables from that disaster of a first day were filling up with the students. Banners were placed at the other side of the room, black with the Tower symbols and outlines around them in their colors.

  I let Angelina manhandle me into a seat at the Pixie table. After we sat down a Pegasus I vaguely recognized as another first-year sat down on the table and peered down at me. The sky blue coat blocked most of my vision.

  "Aren't you that girl that nearly died?" he asked.

  I gave Angelina an even, tired, and flat look.

  She giggled. Traitor.

  "That's one way of putting it," I responded. "What's up?"

  He smirked at me in a way that made me want to hit him. "I heard you tripped on spider venom and saw ghosts."

  I sighed and pinched the bridge of my nose. Angelina gave me a worried look. I then looked this person dead in the eye. "And I heard that Pegasusses are airheaded gossips who don't know what they're talking about." It was barely seven in the morning and my well of patience had officially run dry.

  His smirk faltered.

  One of his Towermates, at the table next to ours, laughed loudly.

  Angelina was giving me a scandalized look.

  "If he wants polite he has to be polite first. And I need something to drink if I'm to be patient with people," I told her flatly while not looking at the blue robe next to me.

  One of the older Pegasus students grabbed him by the collar and pulled him back to the table.

  The other Pixies were giving me stares.

  I shrugged at the table.

  (*********)

  "Good morning ladies and gentlemen," the Spellcraft Professor greeted. The classroom was like a curved amphitheater. Professor James Telvis was standing on what could pass for a stage, while me and the other fifty students curved around him in five rows. This class had a mix of Pegasus, Pixie and Slyphid all scattered about. The Pixies were mostly sitting in the front row, the twenty or so Slyphid students took up the middle two rows, and I was in the back with a majority of the Pegasus students. Except one who had a familiar ponytail with a green streak in it.

  "In this class I will be teaching you the simple versions of the most common spells. We'll spend two weeks on a spell and then a test at the end on how to cast it. Due to some regulatory safety rules I cannot require casting of the spells for passing. Pay attention to the lectures, pass the test, you'll do great in this class. Any questions?"

  A girl in Slyphid yellow raised her hand.

  "Yes, miss…"

  "I'm Jackie Heller. You said casting isn't required here, but will we still be able to?"

  Professor Telvis grinned. "Of course. The hope is that you will be able to cast everything I teach by the end of the unit. Nothing in this class will be dangerous and there are places around campus to practice more complicated spells if you think you need to. I'll also need the occasional hand to demonstrate some of what you will be learning."

  I was relieved. I hadn't managed to cast anything since the accident in Dragon Tower. And I hadn't cast anything before that moment either.

  "Well if there are no questions, I'll introduce you to our first spell. Deflect." He looked around the room and pointed at Ponytail. "Pegasus in the first row, what's your name?"

  "Jarec Quicksilver." He sat up straighter as he answered.

  "I want you to throw that pen in your hand at me. As hard as you can. Whenever you're ready."

  Jarec looked back at the room, our eyes met when he saw me. He smirked, and I grinned back at him. He turned around and chucked his pen. It spun three times in the air.

  Before it hit Professor Telvis held up his left hand. With a delicate batting of his pinky, a thin spherical shield of blue fog appeared for a second. The pen fell to the ground with a clatter.

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  I mimicked the motion with my own hand.

  "Deflect is the basis for all defensive magic. This version is simple and has a low energy cost. It can be cast quickly but the drawback is that it isn't very strong. However learning it and understanding its quirks will help you grasp the foundation of the more complicated spells. This might very well save your life one day."

  He picked up the pen from the floor and tossed it into the air. I watched his hand as he pointed towards Jarec's desk, and it teleported away.

  "Pixie in the back, what's your name?" Professor Telvis focused his eyes on me.

  "Serafina Stewart, sir."

  "I saw you mimic the motion. That's an interesting habit, and very helpful in this class. The rest of you should be doing the same thing when I demonstrate a spell. You don't want to get stuck trying to remember the motions of a spell if you need to get yourself out of trouble."

  I shrunk back a little as a few eyes flashed to me. A few faint whispers echoed in the room.

  "Isn't that…"

  "Ghost girl…"

  "Spider venom…"

  "Dragon Tower…"

  I wanted to crawl under the desk. Why did teachers do this?

  The professor coughed loudly and then clapped three times. "Now on the count of three I want to see all of you try the motion for Deflect. One. Two. Three." He batted his left pinky again holding his hand in front of his face so we could all see it.

  I hid my hands beneath the desk.

  "Well done class." He looked around. "Most of you have good form but I wouldn't say any of you are ready for any kind of stress test. I would say don't practice in the Towers but I've taught enough eager first-years to know that won't discourage you. If you do try, do it with crumbled-up paper. One student nearly took his friend’s eye out with a pen in a practice session gone wrong."

  (*********)

  Class ended and I was one of the last to start heading out of the room.

  Professor Telvis called out to me before I could actually leave though. "Miss Stewart, a moment?"

  I froze for a second and then turned and walked towards where he was standing. "Is something wrong, sir?" I asked cautiously.

  "No. Just an old man's curiosity. You wouldn't happen to be related to a Lucinda Stewart, would you?"

  I nodded. "She's my mother. Is that an issue?" A bolt of nerves ran through my body.

  "No. No. Not at all. She was my Practical Spellcraft teacher when I was your age. I noticed the resemblance."

  This was so awkward. "Yeah…well, I'm not as good at this stuff as she is." I scratched the back of my head. "Was that all you wanted?" Please say yes.

  "Yes. I know you have other classes to get to. I look forward to seeing you get better Miss Stewart."

  I left as quickly as I could without running.

  As soon as I was officially out of the classroom I let out a breath.

  "They put you in Pixie?" a voice asked.

  I nearly jumped out of my skin. Next to the doorway was Jarec, one of the other would-be dragons. He raised an eyebrow at me. The blue Pegasus coat and tie didn't look right on him. It clashed with the green streak in his hair and red of his eyes.

  "They put you in Pegasus?" I responded.

  "Airheaded gossips that do little more than talk badly about everyone else." He rolled his eyes. "I think I get why they let the Towers choose. They suck at it."

  I nodded. "The Pixies are nice, I guess. But everything is so loud." I pulled at the coat. "This is just a taste of what the Tower is like. I have my fingers crossed that they get Dragon Tower sorted out. I'm starting to miss the spiders."

  He frowned. "Yeah. Sorry about earlier, by the way. That guy was a jerk. Great comeback though. Best laugh I had since coming here."

  I shrugged at him. "I don't do friendly that early. You don't have to apologize, though. Hopefully, everyone will forget about me as soon as romantic drama starts happening." Ugh. Romance. No thanks.

  He smiled, amused. "Good to see you're holding up. A couple days of gossip cycles and this should all go away." He patted me on the side of my arm and started to leave.

  "I hope so," I smiled back at him and waved. "See you around!"

  (*********)

  "Good afternoon everyone." Professor Dellik was standing with a podium next to a massive wall of reflective glass. In a classroom that held thirty desks in six rows of five, there was a mix of Salamanders and Pixies, fairly evenly distributed through the room. In the reflection I saw a familiar face amongst the Salamanders. Good for him, getting the Tower he actually wanted.

  "Nice to see so many young and eager to learn faces this year." Dellik was all smiles, but that seemed to be how he was by default. I thought I understood how he became the Head of Pixie Tower. "Before we get down to business I would like to propose a question to all of you. I don't want you to answer, I want you to simply think about it. How do you believe you will be remembered, and by whom? Most of us will never know but think carefully on that answer, and try to live your life so that if the unthinkable happens tomorrow, you have an answer you can rest peacefully with."

  The room was quiet.

  "This class will be mostly lectures. I will be testing you once every two weeks. Topics will be split into four-week blocks and at the end of those blocks will be a paper due related to the topic of that block. Any questions?"

  No one raised their hands or said anything.

  "All right then. Well, this starting block will be about the history of our Towers. The paper I want you to write should be about a small piece of the history of a certain Tower that I will be assigning you. Most of you won't get the Tower that chose you. Questions?"

  Still nothing.

  "Now to assign all of you Towers." He clapped twice and in a puff of very pale pink smoke a paper appeared on my desk.

  Of course he gave me Dragon Tower. Why wouldn't he? On the paper was an image of the Tower from the outside, simple in the design with a large, pointed roof and a dragon statue that coiled around the whole Tower. Dragon Tower was in big red letters at the bottom.

  I tried to not roll my eyes in case he saw. He was in charge of my Tower after all.

  "But of course, there would be no Towers without the people who built them. We should start this story where all stories should, at the very beginning."

  He tapped the glass behind him three times and the reflection of the room vanished. In the glass five portraits started to appear and lined themselves up neatly next to each other.

  The Founders.

  "From left to right we have, Malcarg, Felorias, Delc, Colferna and Jantres. There is a good chance you've at least heard of them, but who wants to guess how they earned their various monikers?"

  The class was quiet for a few seconds then a few hands shot up, Angelina was the only hand I could put a face to.

  "How about you, Salamander in the second row?"

  "They took the castle by force, didn't they?"

  "The magical world was in the depths of a conflict we haven't seen before or since. Magic was wild then. What we know as Spellcraft today was all but non-existent. It wouldn't be invented and properly implemented for another five hundred years.

  "Malcarg was the leader of the group, born to a long line of wizards and witches capable of taming fire. The only magic he knew was prokinetics. He had heard stories of a village decimated by a child using dark necromancy and thought to recruit him for his king. He and Jantres fought for three days and nights before Jantres relented, and followed him. Then the two became inseparable.

  "They became the king's main tools of war. Jantres took a near lethal blow in the final battle and saved Malcarg's life. Felorias was a healer, of a sort, she got him back on his feet she decided to travel with the pair once the war was officially over. It was on these travels that they met Delc, a forest hermit who never liked company. But he took a liking to the trio and followed them back when they received a summons from the new king.

  "The new king was young and after his father's murder, paranoid. His right hand, Colferna did her best but when torn between her king and the people he was supposed to protect. She made a choice that must have been difficult for her. She abandoned her post and helped a group of lords overthrow the king. The lords chose to not rule in the castle after seeing Jantres' corpses roam the halls. They instead took over what was then a college for magic. The castle, after some severe modifications, was turned into a school.

  "The Towers were built to house the students. And as part of the agreement Jantres designed unique and very powerful wards defending the castle and all those within from all manner of attack. Two thousand years and the school has remained unchanged since. What we call them now would come much, much later. For centuries the founders were called simply by their name."

  A Salamander in the first row raised his hand. "I was told it was because of their powers."

  "Ah yes. Malcarg and his fire, Felorias and her duplication, Delc spoke with animals, Colferna's telepathic abilities, and of course Jantres and his infamous necromancy."

  "It couldn't have been that special," a familiar voice mumbled two rows in front of me.

  Dellik laughed. "Perhaps not. The powers themselves were not unique then, nor are they now. I believe somewhere in your Spellcraft syllabus is a fire spell. And reading minds, while difficult, can be done with enough training and practice. But having something unique is not important. It's doing something unique with it. They helped topple a spiraling empire. Which, in my humble opinion, is far more special than any fancy parlor trick."

  (*********)

  I was just outside of the hallway when an orange coat suddenly blocked my path.

  "You're looking better," he grinned. "How's Pixie Tower?"

  I inhaled slowly. There was too much pink within earshot for an honest answer. "The people are nice," I said as evenly as I could. "I see you got Salamander like you wanted. Is it everything you hoped for?"

  He barked a laugh. "Nope. I just like the color. The people suck and the Tower is tacky. I never thought there could be such a thing as too much flame-themed décor, but I do now."

  I laughed.

  "More importantly," he leaned closer to stage whisper, "tell me about the ghost you saw."

  "Only if you promise to not laugh at me."

  He covered his heart and leaned back in a mockery of offence. "Never. I would never make fun of someone who has been through a traumatic experience." How did he sound sincere and sarcastic at the same time?

  "She was a student. Wore a red uniform. I could see through her and she glowed blue."

  He looked at me closely and then hummed. "Interesting. Could she see you?"

  "She was surprised to see me and told me I should start running. And then the spiders attacked. After the spider attack I heard laughter. Not hers-multiple voices."

  "Ooh…" he had a smirk on his face. "Walk with me, I want to show you something."

  I followed next to him, amid a sea of students headed in all directions. I recognized the route when we were halfway there. "We are not going in," I told him firmly. I was not missing Alchemy.

  "Of course not. We have class and it's guarded. There's been at least one person outside and at least three on the inside doing the clean-up."

  I let out a relieved sigh.

  "And here works.” We slipped from the crowd and stood against the wall. There was a wide circle around the door to Dragon Tower. A professor I didn't recognize ushered students away. The door was being held open by what looked like a web of chains that glowed with a telling grey light.

  "They aren't risking letting it close again," I observed.

  "All the staff are tight-lipped about it but according to a few Pegasusses only a handful can get the password to work. Good job setting the password to 'Open Sesame' by the way. Hilarious."

  "In my defense, I genuinely didn't think it was going to work."

  "The best part? The door opened before with a non-verbal password that was a knock pattern."

  "That's very strange and kind of suspicious."

  "Here's are facts that I could find. Something is definitely in that Tower besides spiders. We all saw something pull you in. You saw something when you were inside."

  "I find it hard to believe there isn't a connection."

  He nodded. "Exactly. And I think I know how to get an answer, but I will need your help."

  "Before you finish that thought, I am not agreeing to anything that could get me expelled and I am not going in there unless I know for sure the spiders are all gone. Understand?"

  He nodded, "That's fair. When they're done I want to hold a séance. I have the stuff but if whatever is in there isn't showing itself to others it might be useless without you around. What do you think?"

  "Okay. But now we have to get to class."

  He nodded and started to wander off.

  "Wait." I pinched the sleeve of his coat. "Before I forget, what's your name? I don't think we ever introduced ourselves."

  He turned his head to me and he thought for a second. "We didn't. How rude of me. My mother would be appalled, I'm Russel. Russel Kingsley," He performed an elaborate formal bow.

  "I'd curtsey, but I'm wearing pants." I smiled at him. "I'm Serafina Stewart."

  "I'll see you around," He waved and left.

  I headed towards Alchemy at a hurried pace.