Chapter II. Ellery #2
Five years prior, an awkward, unqualified girl had arrived at the academy on a wave of unexpected fame.
She shouldn’t have lasted a month. But she had no home to return to.
No other choice. So instead, she became a diligent student, not just of magic but of Aldrish culture.
She styled her frizzy hair and invested in an eyeliner pencil.
She eradicated all traces of her Northern accent.
She absorbed the media her classmates consumed, the jokes they told, the accolades they bragged about.
Until at last, Ellery was ready to play her part.
She hadn’t known all these years later it would still feel like a performance. Or that the Order would insist she forever play the role that had splashed her name across headlines: a hero.
“What’s going on?” Julian asked gently. “Is this still about Welk—”
“It isn’t,” she said. “I’m fine.”
“In the long and storied history of people who’ve claimed to be fine, not a single one has ever meant it.”
“Well, maybe I’m the first.”
Julian reached across the space between them, those long, elegant fingers a hair’s breadth from hers. He waited for her, a vestigial instinct, a habit Ellery thought they’d broken.
“It doesn’t have to be like this,” he said seriously. “You can still talk to me. I promise.”
Julian was Ellery’s closest friend, but the echoes of their romance still lingered. Despite her ending it months ago, despite her wishing it had never happened at all, she still ached to confide in him.
“I-I…”
She remembered Welk recoiling from her, splitting open her palm. As though the Living Wand wasn’t just wrong for her—it despised her.
She clamped her mouth shut.
Julian tried to hide his hurt, but his gaze dampened, as though something within him had flickered out. Sometimes Ellery forgot that beneath all the bravado and boasting was a boy who just wanted to fix things.
But some things couldn’t be fixed.
“There you are!”
Ellery yanked her hand back, relieved, as Demelza Turner hurried toward them.
“I’ve been looking everywhere for you both.” Demelza rummaged in her designer bag, then brandished a packet of paper triumphantly. “I passed!”
To test for each type of wand, a student had to score highly on a corresponding exam. Ellery had aced all three, not that it was helping much.
“Congratulations,” Ellery told her.
“Which one?” asked Julian, although his focus hadn’t left Ellery.
“Nature magic. I’m throwing a party to celebrate, obviously.
” Demelza beamed, her hazel eyes aglow. Although exams started early in the morning, her pale cheeks were pink with blush, her lips glossed.
Her coiffed curls, dyed a trendy platinum blond even lighter than Ellery’s, tumbled down her shoulders as she leaned to put her exam away.
“I’ve already invited everyone else, but you two must come along. I won’t take no for an answer.”
“Of course I’ll be there,” Ellery said. Like Ellery, Demelza loved the modern trappings of Gallamere life.
But unlike Ellery, she’d been born into it.
Her parents, a movie star and a producer, were behind some of Ellery’s favorite blockbusters.
Once this would’ve left Ellery starstruck, but such prestige was par for the course among the Order’s favorite magicians-in-training.
They impressed in class and dazzled outside it.
They were the children of politicians and celebrities and industry titans.
They dreamed of their names on billboards and screens and headlines, and for many, those dreams became reality.
The academy’s average graduation rate was 40 percent, but for the favorites it was significantly higher.
And Ellery walked among them. For now, anyway.
“Who’s everyone else?” Julian asked.
Demelza gestured around the alcove. “My sixth-year study group, the magical design club, that cute boy in Advanced Enchantment Theory…”
“So, half the academy,” Ellery teased. “Who else passed?”
Before Demelza could answer, the nearest doors slammed open and a group of mostly boys burst in, hollering. They waved their papers in the air, jostling each other hard enough that one slammed into a wall. He bounced off, still grinning.
“Oh, great,” Julian muttered. “The NDC groupies finally have their tickets north.”
Magicians played numerous roles in Aldrish society, each role influenced by which of the three types of wands they wielded. Enchantment wands were the most common and the most varied, their wielders contributing to everything from infrastructure to art to administration.
Corporeal wands were rare, making the discipline the most competitive amidst the academy’s already brutal culture of competition. Those who did bond with a corporeal wand continued on to specialized healing training.
Last were the nature wands. Half managed Alderland’s agricultural production, ensuring endless bountiful harvests.
But of all the roles a magician could play, no profession was more heroic than enlisting in the Nature Defense Corps.
Each year, the NDC protected Alderland from winterghasts—mindless, vicious monsters of ice.
They were dangerous enough alone, but when they appeared—randomly, without warning—they summoned terrible storms. If left unchecked, winterscurges could freeze rivers in minutes, could entomb entire towns in snow.
Although ghasts could show up anywhere, they disproportionately terrorized the colder North.
Thankfully, they only spawned during Winter.
But those six weeks often seemed more like six months.
Alderland feared ghasts nearly as much as they loved Living Wands.
Ellery tensed as the students rushed past, whooping and cheering.
“How many of them do you think have actually been up past Undermere?” Julian asked skeptically.
“Probably none,” Ellery muttered.
“Oh, come on now. The NDC’s a noble pursuit,” Demelza said. “They’re so dedicated to keeping us safe.”
Julian frowned. “Yeah, or they’ve got a death wish. There’s a reason so many nature wands are in the Vault.”
“You want to be great, don’t you?” Demelza jabbed at him. “Are you really so different?”
“Oh, I’m different,” Julian said. “If I was called to fight for Alderland, I’d do it right. They don’t take it seriously.”
The NDC attracted a specific type of magician, drawn to glory and adrenaline. Muscles wouldn’t do anything to winterghasts—neither would guns, or bombs, or anything that wasn’t nature magic. Yet an intense dedication to the gym seemed to be a prerequisite for trying to fight them.
Ellery was pretty sure that if any of them saw an actual winterghast in the flesh, they’d piss themselves.
Demelza sighed. “What about you, Ellery? I mean, you’d obviously suit a nature wand. Don’t you ever think about going back up north?”
Julian stiffened. Ellery didn’t. She’d been asked repeatedly why she didn’t want a nature wand; she was used to answering.
“I think I’ve fought enough monsters for a lifetime,” she said.
Demelza gulped. “Of course. I totally understand.”
Ellery didn’t dream of glory. Her ambitions were sensible: a predictable enchantment wand that would let her stay in Gallamere, a safe, steady administrative career.
All she had to do was pass a single wand vigil.
An enchanted loudspeaker crackled to life, and a voice rang out through the student lounge.
“Councilor Glynn’s called for an assembly. We expect every student to gather in the grove, immediately.”
The Citadel was the oldest district in Gallamere, a fortress perched on the city’s mountain like the jewel atop its crown.
The grove hid within its labyrinthine stone walls, a small forest at the edge of the cliffs that overlooked the iconic skyline.
But today there was no time to admire the view.
Ellery hurried to the clearing at the center, already packed with people.
Academy classes averaged fifty students per year, and all of them were here, from the Citadel’s newest recruits, barely twelve, to those like Ellery and Julian, who’d passed their qualification exams and were stuck in continued studies until they found Living Wands.
Most crammed closely beneath the cloudless Summer sky, but the Order’s favorites were a bubble unto themselves.
Ellery, Julian, and Demelza joined the rest of them below a juniper tree, murmuring pleasantries to their classmates.
Standing in the sun, surrounded by lush nature, it seemed impossible Summer could ever fade. Yet when the scythe of Winter fell, it would all wither in an instant, leaves rotten, the earth frozen and dead.
“Did Glynn tell you about this?” Julian asked Ellery, while Demelza slid on a pair of trendy sunglasses.
“No,” Ellery whispered. “I would’ve said.”
“Thank you for arriving on such a short notice.” As though she’d summoned him, Edgar Glynn appeared before the crowd.
He was in his late thirties with prematurely gray hair, fair skin prone to sunburn, and a thinning mustache.
Thick spectacles hid his watery brown eyes.
His wand, Aetherium, was plain, a simple branch of oak perpetually coated in dust.
But despite Glynn’s unassuming demeanor, the respect he carried within the student body silenced everyone immediately. As the Order’s Director of Education and Recruitment, he oversaw admissions for the academy and engineered its curriculum. He held the entire grove’s future in his hands.
Nerves fluttered in Ellery’s stomach as a second figure joined him: Alexander Sharpe.
As President of the Magicians Order and the Director of Infrastructure and Administration, he was one of the most influential people in the country.
Despite being twice Glynn’s age, he towered over him, his imposing frame topped with a shock of white hair, his fair skin carved with deep frown lines.
His own wand, Ballathim, was formidable to behold even from a distance, made of gnarled blackthorn and famous for once constructing the Citadel.
“What we’re about to tell you is of the utmost importance.” As Sharpe spoke, Demelza adjusted her sunglasses. Julian straightened his crooked tie, smoothed back an errant brown coil.
The two men had chosen to stand beneath the massive alban tree in the grove’s center, with a trunk so wide Ellery couldn’t have wrapped her arms around it.
Its wood was stark ivory, its branches tall and twisted.
Thin golden leaves spidered between the twigs, so delicate the sun shone through them like windowpanes.
Alban trees only grew in Alderland. They were so rare and revered that most towns and cities had been built around them, keeping them at the heart of Aldrish life.
They were radiant beacons of Summer, the only foliage that stayed in bloom year-round, impervious to the change of seasons.
The mere sight of one left an ache in Ellery’s chest, so she avoided them.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d come to the grove on purpose.
“At the Order, we strive to instill in you an understanding of your magic and your potential,” said Glynn.
“We do our best to prepare you for the responsibilities of a Living Wand and joining in our ancient, proud tradition. You are the next generation of magicians, each with a crucial role to play in service of Alderland.”
Glynn scanned the crowd. Although Ellery knew he couldn’t possibly pick her out from the masses, she felt the force of his gaze anyway. He wanted her to be part of that future almost as much as she did.
“With that in mind, our announcement,” Glynn continued. “Valmordion has awoken once more.”
Valmordion. Valmordion.
The name scorched through Ellery as the crowd broke into gasps and chatter. Julian swore softly, while Demelza let out an awed exhale. Now Ellery understood why they’d made this announcement in the grove. Valmordion was the only wand crafted of alban wood.
In fact, Valmordion had been born from this very alban tree.
“Winter cannot be destroyed, but it can be defeated,” boomed Sharpe. “In a thousand years, time and again, Valmordion has quelled Winter’s storms and annihilated its monsters.”
Sharpe left out the darker footnote: although most of Valmordion’s past wielders had survived their cataclysm, its previous Chosen One had died in the process of saving the country, burned alive by the wand’s own flames.
“Valmordion is the greatest wand of Summer. Thus, its wielder bears a destiny greater than any other,” said Glynn.
“They alone have been foretold from birth to thwart Winter’s cataclysm.
They alone will fulfill the prophecy that will save Alderland.
They are our Chosen One, our nation’s savior.
And they will forever be remembered as a hero. ”
Hero.
The crowd whispered the word, fervent, nearly reverent.
“Under such extraordinary circumstances,” Glynn continued, “we’ve elected to create an application process for the wand’s vigil. Anyone who wishes to submit their candidacy for Valmordion may do so in the next week.”
“And for any of you thinking of signing up as a stunt or out of empty arrogance, consider this,” Sharpe warned.
“While all wand vigils bear a risk of injury, laying a hand on Valmordion poses true danger to those not meant to wield it. Examine your potential, your capabilities, your past. And ask yourself if you truly believe this is the path destiny has designed for you.”
Hunger gleamed in Julian’s eyes, a hunger reflected in Demelza, in every other favorite standing shoulder to shoulder with Ellery.
Yet when Ellery dared peer at the rest of the crowd, their gazes locked on one magician and one magician alone.
Her.
Years of practice kept Ellery’s expression unchanged. But deep within her, a secret unfurled, a long-dormant dread rooted in her rib cage. And although it was still Summer, she could’ve sworn she felt a foreboding chill in her bones.
Alderland needed a hero. But it didn’t matter what the rest of the Order believed.
That hero wouldn’t—couldn’t—be her.