Page 10 of Lucent Academy: Trinity Awakens
The ceremony was about to begin.
CHAPTER FIVE: THE FROST PHOENIX
The man who walked onto the stage was not what I had expected. When I thought of the principal of a magical academy, I imagined someone old and wizened, with a long white beard and robes covered in mystical symbols. Lord Principal Lucius the Frostbane was none of those things. He was tall and broad-shouldered, with dark hair streaked with gray at the temples and a face that looked like it had been carved from the same stone as the mountain. He wore a simple black coat over a white shirt, no robes, no symbols, nothing to indicate his rank except for the silver pin on his lapel that marked him as a master of the Academy. He walked with the easy confidence of a man who had seen everything the world had to offer and found most of it wanting, and when he reached the center of the stage and turned to face us, his eyes swept over the assembled students with an expression that was neither welcoming nor hostile, simply assessing.
"Good morning," he said, and his voice carried through the courtyard without any apparent amplification, clear and cold and impossible to ignore. "I am Lord Principal Lucius, and I would like to welcome you to Lucent Academy."
A murmur rippled through the crowd, the nervous energy of a thousand young people faced with the reality of their situation. The principal waited for it to subside, patient as a glacier, before continuing.
"You are here because you are Manaborn," he said. "Because some quirk of fate or fortune has granted you the ability to channel the raw power of creation itself. This makes you valuable. It makes you dangerous. And it makes you, whether you like it or not, essential to the survival of our Empire and our world."
He paused, letting the words sink in. I felt Amber shift beside me, her hand finding mine again, and I held on tight.
"For the next three years, you will learn to control your power. You will learn to fight, to defend, to survive. You will study history and strategy and the nature of the Void. And tomorrow you will enter the Summoning Circle and call forth a mate from the Pacted Realms, a being who will be bound to you for the rest of your life, who will fight beside you and die beside you if necessary." His expression didn't change, but something in his voice softened almost imperceptibly. "This is going to be the most important day of your lives, children."
As he spoke, a shadow passed over the courtyard, blocking out the impossible sunlight for just a moment. I looked up and saw the frost phoenix descending from somewhere above, her wings spread wide and her feathers glittering like diamonds in the suddenly dim light. She was even more beautiful up close, a creature of pure elemental power, and as she flew over the assembled students I felt the temperature drop, felt the cold seeping into my bones despite the warmth of the day. This was what power looked like, I realized. This was what I was supposed to become.
The phoenix circled once, twice, three times, and then landed on the stage beside the principal. For a moment she simply stood there, magnificent and terrible, her icy gaze sweeping over us with the same assessing look her mate had worn. And then, between one heartbeat and the next, she changed.
Where the phoenix had been standing, there was now a woman. She was short, barely reaching the principal's shoulder, with hair the color of a winter sky and eyes that sparkled with mischief. Her figure was generous in a way that made several of the male students straighten in their seats, and her face wore an expression of barely contained excitement that seemed wildly out of place in the solemn ceremony. She bounced on her heels once, twice, and then launched herself at the principal with a squeal of delight.
"Luccy!" she cried, wrapping her arms around him and burying her face in his chest. "That was so boring! You were talking forever! Can we do the fun part now? Can we? Can we?"
The principal's face, which had remained impassive throughout his entire speech, went through a fascinating series of expressions in rapid succession: surprise, embarrassment, resignation, and something that might have been affection, though it was hard to tell beneath the layers of dignity he was clearly trying to maintain. He patted the phoenix on the head with the air of a man who had done this many times before and knew there was no point in resisting.
"Crystalline," he said, his voice strained. "We discussed this."
"You discussed it! I just nodded until you stopped talking." She pulled back and grinned up at him, utterly unrepentant. "Come on, Luccy, look at them! They're all so nervous and scared and serious. Someone needs to lighten the mood!"
The courtyard was absolutely silent. A thousand students sat frozen in their seats, unsure how to react to the sight of one of the most powerful beings in existence acting like an excitable puppy. I could feel the tension in the air, the collective held breath of everyone around me, and something about the absurdity of it all struck me as deeply, fundamentally hilarious.
I laughed.
It wasn't a quiet laugh, or a subtle laugh, or the kind of laugh you can pretend was actually a cough. It was a real laugh, loud and bright and completely uncontrollable, bursting out of me before I could even think to stop it. In the silence of the courtyard it sounded like a thunderclap, and suddenly every eye was on me, a thousand faces turning to stare at the idiot in the back row who had apparently decided to commit social suicide on her first day.
"Oh gods," Amber whispered. "Leah, what are you doing?"
I didn't have an answer for her. The laugh was still bubbling up inside me, mixing with the terror of being the center of attention, and all I could do was press my hand over my mouth and try desperately to get myself under control. On the stage, the principal's expression had gone from embarrassed to thunderous, but the phoenix—Crystalline—was looking at me with sudden interest, her head tilted to one side like a bird examining a particularly intriguing worm.
"Sorry," I managed, my voice coming out strangled. "I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to—it's just—she's so cute!"
The words were out before I could stop them, and I felt the blood drain from my face as I realized what I had just said. I had just called a platinum-rank frost phoenix, a being capable of freezing armies and leveling cities, cute. To her face. In front of a thousand witnesses. This was it, I thought. This was how Idied. Not in the war against the Voidborn, but right here, on my first day, frozen solid by a mythical creature I had accidentally insulted.
Crystalline's expression shifted, the playfulness draining away to reveal something cold and ancient beneath. She stepped away from the principal and walked to the edge of the stage, her bare feet making no sound on the stone, and even though she was short and soft and looked about as threatening as a snowflake, I felt the air around me drop twenty degrees in an instant. Ice crystals began to form on the benches, on the ground, on the eyelashes of the students closest to the stage, and I could see my breath misting in front of my face as I sat paralyzed with fear.
"You think I'm cute?" she asked, and her voice was nothing like it had been a moment ago. It was cold, so cold, the voice of glaciers and frozen wastelands and death by slow, inevitable hypothermia. "You dare to laugh at me? To mock me in front of my mate and these children?"
"I wasn't mocking you!" The words came out in a rush, tumbling over each other in their haste to escape. "I swear, I wasn't, I just—you surprised me, that's all. The way you hugged him, and your face when you did it, you just looked so happy. And yes, cute. I'm sorry if that's offensive, but it's true. You're adorable."
Amber made a sound like a dying animal beside me, and I could hear whispers spreading through the crowd, variations on the same theme: who is this girl, does she want to die, someone should stop her before she gets us all killed. But I couldn't take the words back now, and honestly I wasn't sure I wanted to. It was true, wasn't it? She had been cute. Terrifying and powerful and ancient beyond comprehension, yes, but also cute. Was I supposed to lie about that?
The temperature dropped another ten degrees. I could feel ice forming on my skin now, a thin layer of frost creeping up my arms and across my chest, and I understood with sudden clarity that I had about five seconds before I became a very pretty statue.
Then Crystalline threw her head back and laughed.
It was a sound like bells chiming, like icicles breaking, like everything winter could be if winter decided to be joyful instead of cruel. The frost stopped spreading, the air warmed, and suddenly she was bouncing across the courtyard toward me, leaving a trail of melting ice in her wake. Before I could react she had pulled me to my feet and wrapped me in a hug that was surprisingly warm given her elemental nature, her face pressed against my shoulder and her arms squeezing tight enough to make my ribs creak.
"Oh, I like you!" she declared, pulling back to beam at me. "Did you hear that, Luccy? She thinks I'm cute! No one ever calls me cute anymore, they're all too scared. But this one isn't scared at all, are you?"
