From the journal of Madeline Le Torneau: “Lesson after lesson revealed my ignorance, especially in those early days.”

  It did not take a scholar to understand how the post office worked. The sides of the containers glittered with big bold words, one large container read ‘incoming’, the other ‘outgoing’. Nothing more complex than that. At the top of the container sat a space large enough for either a scepter or a talisman to enter. She didn’t understand the machinations of how her talisman bonded to her or how the administrators linked her body to her talisman but when she put the talisman into the space at the top of the container, a letter popped out the front.

  She picked it up, a letter carefully marked with her name as the recipient and the sender equally as carefully marked from Aunt Leticia. Madeline had taken great care to ensure the legibility of her writing when crafting and filling the letter’s contents.

  Now came the risky part.

  Holding her breath, she tore the sides of the cheap parchment open, fingering aside the single page of folded nothings. She felt for the smooth metal piece inside. After a panicked second where she only felt paper, her fingers closed around her prize. With a quick look to Talia to ensure the shorter girl only had eyes for her letter, Madeline slipped the small piece of metal inside her sweatpants pocket. Then she made her way over to Talia.

  “Almost done?”

  Talia’s pen scratched against parchment, finishing the last paragraph with a flourish and then she signed her name. “Yeah, can you hand me an envelope?”

  Madeline grabbed an envelope from the stack nearest to her and handed it to Talia, careful not to make more noise than strictly necessary. Talia carefully folded then placed her letter into the envelope and made her way to the outgoing container. In a similar manner, Talia put her talisman into the box at the top and the mail slot opened. Talia deposited the letter.

  They turned around to leave and saw a shadow in the doorway.

  “Fuck,” Madeline swore. They followed the shadow’s cast upward to its owner, Professor Kenneth Hutton.

  “Fuck indeed, Miss Le Torneau, Miss Vansaghe. Is your business at the post office concluded? Anything more you came here to do? You’re about to get detention, might as well make it worth your while,” Professor Hutton smiled broadly, his eyes twinkling and his handsome face completely unperturbed by the rule breakers.

  “Yes, sir,” the girls answered.

  “No protests? No declarations of ignorance? Tsk, tsk, I expected better. From my own affinity no less. I didn’t take either of you for milquetoast personalities. Well, Ruthann will arrange your detentions. At this rate she may have to split the groups into two, there are so many of you.”

  His words blazed a fire in Talia’s eyes. She looked like she had a retort loaded up, opening her mouth ready to snap back, but Madeline hooked her arm in hers and pulled her close, disrupting her rhythm. They could manage one detention. An outburst from either one of them might flip Professor Hutton’s mood and have him act punitively. Madeline’s touch worked and Talia snapped her mouth shut.

  “Alright, well. Come with me, I’ll escort you back to the Warrior Wing, it wouldn’t do for another Professor - or worse, Ruthann, - to catch you out after curfew. I must say, this is a first. Usually when we catch students out of bed it’s to visit a different student's bed. Never to compose a letter,” Professor Hutton said. His conversational tone made it seem like he hadn’t just given them detention.

  Madeline held tightly to Talia, more to keep her raven-haired friend from making things worse than for any sort of comfort. Talia’s emotions always seemed to be on the very edge of control, from her nervous energy in line for the entrance exam to her lust for dangerous situations to now, her undeniable anger at being called milquetoast.

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  “You all have a big day tomorrow, it wouldn’t do well to let down our affinity. Term starts properly in the morning. Great things are expected from both of you, especially now with a Rotden in the City. You both heard the Prime speak this evening. I understand this is a school and the lot of you are full of testosterone and estrogen and bad intentions, but please keep your eyes on the big picture. The rot infects more of the Empire than we know.”

  Once they arrived at the statue of the lazy Warrior, Professor Hutton stopped them, gently placing a hand on each of their outside shoulders, looking unblinking into their eyes.

  “It’s my job to bring the best out in you, understand?”

  Madeline returned the Professor’s stare in kind, as did Talia.

  “Yes sir,” the girls responded in a terse tone.

  “With any luck, we’ll make you strong enough that you’ll have your own statues next to his. You both could do it, you have the strength in you, but you need to focus. Yes? Everything matters.”

  “Yes, sir,” they repeated, tone softening ever so slightly. Madeline didn’t care for statues, only one goal dominated her thoughts. With the metal piece still safe in her pocket, she had taken one step toward accomplishing that which she came to do.

  Professor Hutton bid them a goodnight then returned to his patrol.

  “Weird guy,” Talia said as they walked to an empty couch by the roaring fire and sat down. “He caught us out in the middle of the night and didn’t even seem to care. Yet he still gave us detention.”

  “Ah, he’s not so bad,” Madeline huffed. “We did break a rule.”

  Talia tilted her head to the left and adjusted her bun, pushing some stray hairs back in place. “Yeah, he’s not that bad,” she agreed. “Hey Maddy?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I think we need to do something to get our street cred up,” Talia said, laughing. “We can’t let word get around that we got caught writing a letter after hours. It has to be something cooler. Maybe we went streaking?” Talia grabbed the hem of her sweater and began pulling it over her head before Madeline shrieked and tackled the other woman on the couch. They fell over, laughing. “Okay, not streaking then.”

  “Not streaking,” Madeline agreed. “You want another coffee?”

  “Please. It’s too late to go back to bed but not late enough to get ready for class yet. You couldn’t have waited an hour before getting up?” Talia teased.

  “Shut up,” Madeline shot back, rising to make her way to the coffee corner of the common area. The other student from earlier had gone to bed, no evidence of his late night reading session remaining anywhere Madeline could see. A few more students clearly had first day jitters though, two girls - one ebony skinned with auburn hair a shade deeper than Willow’s, the other fair skinned with rich brown hair - huddled together in the corner, poring over a thick textbook. A hazel eyed boy yawned by the fire, slapping himself in the cheeks to wake up when his eyes closed for a moment too long. A mousy girl with the oddest haircut - long in the back but short in the front and sides - looked like she’d just left the shower room, cheeks flush with heat.

  Madeline returned to the couch and handed Talia her cup. Assuring her friend that yes, she’d made hers a double, they hung out and watched the groggy students come down the stairs from the dorms. Before long, they’d showered, did their makeup, chose clothing, - Talia went through three outfits before settling on the one that showed the “exact right amount of cleavage” - met up with Willow and Hayden and made their way down to breakfast in the mess hall.

  They ate a breakfast designed more for utility than taste, simple eggs, bacon, toast, orange juice and another coffee fueled her morning.

  She really liked the coffee in this place.

  Once they’d finished, it was off to her very lesson. The first year Energy Warriors moved as one, the four women and six men making their way to the classroom that would become their homeroom.

  Professor Celeste Herbert sat behind a desk on the left side of the room, smiling warmly at the students filing into her classroom. Madeline and Talia chose seats next to one another, Willow and Hayden sat at the desk next to theirs.

  The decor of Professor Herbert’s class felt homey of all things. It was probably the overwhelming amount of plants, large and small, almost everywhere Madeline could see.

  Besides the greenery, a large hearth that Herbert stoked periodically with a wave of her scepter was the focal point of the room, built into an indent by the back wall. The student desks were pointed at the hearth, a small space cleared for Professor Herbert to walk and talk in front of them. Once the students settled in, Herbert stood up from behind her desk and pushed the chalkboard into the center of the teaching area.

  “Welcome, initiates. Let’s begin the first lesson.”