Conduition - Chapter 1

Sylvia couldn’t disappoint everyone again. Her father would blow a fuse if she was kicked out of the academy. Especially after all of the tuition he’d paid. She would be sent off-planet in an instant.

Headmaster Tole spoke. “Miss Enisa, you’ve failed to graduate three times already.” He was a stern man, face wrinkled with age, particularly around the forehead. His skin was blotchy, too, with a big, pink spot covering the left side of his nose.

“If you don’t pull your act together during the next six weeks, you will be expelled from this academy.” His voice was soft, but it was a knife to her throat.

Sylvia nodded, but couldn’t bring herself to look Headmaster Tole in the eyes. He might see into her soul and realize how scared she was.

It wasn’t that she didn’t want to succeed. She wanted to, more than anything in the world. She wished the conduit in her head would cooperate with her and let her use magic; that was the reason she had begged and pleaded her mother to let her come to the Handmages’ Academy of Aris 3-C. She wanted to be the best handmage the universe had ever seen, aboard the best starship, exploring worlds unknown and saving the galaxy from the Colaurians. 

But the conduit wouldn’t allow it. After all these years in her brain, it refused to even acknowledge her existence, let alone use magic for her.

“Well?” Sylvia snapped to attention. Her eyes had wandered to the cup of styluses on her headmaster’s rich mahogany desk.

“What are you going to do about this, young lady? Do you plan to fix this mess you’ve made for yourself, or do you intend to go back home a failure?”

“I…” Sylvia couldn’t hold her hands still. She was suddenly and viscerally aware of how dry and constricted her throat was.

The headmaster sat for a moment, gaze fixed on her through his glasses. He sighed. “Sylvia, I couldn’t care less whether or not you succeed. But I can’t keep investing school resources into a student who fails year after year to conjure so much as a spark.”

She knew for a fact that her father was paying more for her to be here than the school was. In fact, the school was more than likely making money off of her attendance. She wanted to stand up and shout that in the headmaster’s face. Then maybe she’d shout something about how this school hadn’t once done anything to help her. She wanted to. But her throat was filled with tar, and her arms and legs were gelatin. 

“Step up to your responsibilities, or go home and never come back. Those are your choices. You are dismissed.”

Sylvia was frozen in the seat. Her eyes drifted down to her dark hands. They felt so alien to her, trembling against her will. She balled her right hand into a fist, trying to get it to do… anything. A spark, a droplet of water, a single Newton of force. But it just shook. Her heart sank into her stomach.

“You are dismissed, Miss Enisa. You have a class shortly, do you not?”

Her legs jolted up from the chair. “Right. I’m… sorry.”

She turned and sped out the door, tucking her chin into her uniform in an attempt to hide the blood-red heat of her cheeks and the tears that threatened to burst from her eyes.

The pristine, perfect walls of the hallway seemed to burst from the seams, collapsing in on her. Blue streaks of floor lights blurred through her tears. Students stood in clusters, bearing their uniforms, laughing with their friends. All of them could use their conduits.

The laughter echoed in her head, louder and louder, pounding at her skull. Her tears were flowing, she couldn’t use magic, they all could. They were laughing. Eyes upon eyes filled the hallway, the walls bursting at the seams. The walls had eyes too, all staring at her as she sobbed and ran down the hallway, alone.

She bolted down a turn in the hallway, and there were more students, laughing, eyes. Another turn, more laughing, louder now, another turn, eyes, staring, laughing, turn after turn, students, all better than her, all of them using magic, she couldn’t, eyes stared at her, walls collapsing inward, tears staining her cheeks.

The door of her living quarters slammed behind her. The room was pitch black. She ran across the floor without turning the lights on, falling face first into her bed. She wanted to suffocate herself in her pillow right then and there. No one would care if she did.

She pulled her blankets tightly around her back, first a thick comforter, then a thin, fluffy blanket. She tried to pull the coolness of the comforter into herself. Her tears and snot stuck to the softer blanket. 

She didn’t want to move. She wanted to drown in the darkness.

Her breath tightened, and she was forced to roll onto her back, twisting and dragging the blankets around with her. The ceiling was impossible to make out in the darkness.

Thumping in her chest was her only friend -- her heartbeat. It ached.

It all crashed into her, how real this was. She couldn’t fix this mess. Everything she had dreamed of all her life, being a mage, saving the galaxy… All that glory wasn’t waiting for her. She had wasted nearly a decade in this school. Home awaited her, a prison of fate. No doubt that her father would berate her for her failure.

She hugged the comforter in a wad against her chest, trying not to think about the tears on her face or the class she was missing, surely only making the situation worse. 

She tried to take solace in the fact that it was Professor Aydl’s class that she was missing. Of all the professors at the academy, Aydl was easily her favorite. He seemed to understand her in a way none of the other professors did. He tried again and again to help her, not once growing impatient with her. Almost anytime the academy had organized some sort of intervention with her before, Professor Aydl had volunteered to do it.

A few years ago, she had even developed somewhat of a crush on Professor Aydl. Of course, she had gotten over it as she grew to understand that Professor Aydl had no intentions of leaving his wife to date a student of his, but some of those feelings of appreciation still lingered in her heart.

Thinking about Professor Aydl had managed to steady her breath. A wave of cool washed over her, and suddenly she felt profoundly exhausted, like she could sink into her mattress and be perfectly content, her heart beating steadily.

She barely even recognized that she had stopped crying by the time she fell asleep, her comforter still wadded up against her chest.

---

Lydia Plath stood at attention next to her fellow officers, upright with her hands behind her back. Her chin was raised no more than four centimeters above level, legs tightly pressed together, toes pointed directly forward. Her hair was buzzed perfectly short, not a single hair out of place on her skull.

She wore a silver suit, pulled taut against her skin. A large insignia stood proudly across her chest, two crossing blades over a planet, printed in a darker shade than the suit at large. Every other officer wore some variation of this suit, some in different colors. Five or six rows either side of her matched her color.

The floor of the interplanetary base was sterile and cold, a wide expanse of what seemed like miles enclosed by walls and a ceiling that seemed impossible to reach. And yet, it managed to be filled to capacity with rows and rows of people just like Lydia, unfaltering in their attention to the large rectangular platform at the front.

The same insignia stood proudly on a rich blue banner hanging from the wall behind the platform, itself larger than some of the ships flown by the personnel in this room.

A voice boomed from the front of the room. “Attention, military personnel!” 

The room was silent. His command didn’t so much as echo as every officer stood completely still, eyes on him.

“Call!” 

“Good morning, Sir Director Pul!” Lydia called back, melting into the uniform cacophony of everyone else in the ranks.

Director Pul frowned. “I’m afraid I can’t hear you. Let’s try that again. With the full title. Call!”

“Good morning, Sir Director Pul of Military Dealings of the Galactic Coalition of Democratic States!” Every word melted together into blistering vibration.

He laughed. “I understand why you prefer the abbreviated title! Now then, let’s get to business. Today begins the new Border Region Initiative. Increased numbers of refugees are expected to attempt entry through this region for the following months.”

Lydia was ready. Normally, confrontation wasn’t very common in the Border Patrol Section, but she had spent the last several months training for them with her fellow officers. Especially with the Colaurians, she had no doubt that combat would find its way to her soon. 

“I’m sure you all understand why that is, so I won’t bore you with what you already know. Patrol Officers, you are dismissed. Please report to your Sectional Directors for orders.”

Lydia turned on her toes to face the left, in a perfect dance with everyone else in her rank. The line slowly fed out of the large chamber, one after another after another, as Director Pul went on addressing section after section.

“Mechanical Officers, your duties will be largely unchanged, but you will be expected to be ready at a moment’s notice for the foreseeable future…”