Magic and Bullets (Academy of Outcasts #2)

Chapter 1

One

The newly formed Academy of Outcasts was the talk of the Under Slump.

Sure, we had no money, barely any magical element to work with, and no clue what we were doing, but we were an officially sanctioned school of wizardry now, and that made us special.

Most of the other magical academies in the Core were located in the prestigious Collegium District.

While it took a great deal of natural aptitude—or a lot of bribe money—to get admitted into one of those fancy schools, we’d accept anybody!

Word had gotten out among the city’s aspiring mages that our academy wasn’t very good, but… we were open for business, and that was something.

Our founder was the legendary wizard, Gaul “the Mutilator” Haddar. Only, he’d left the Core City and returned to the Elemental Plane of Fire to hunt pirates. Leaving me—a lowly rank-one nobody—in charge in his absence, which would take who knew how long.

So, deprived of actual knowledgeable experienced leadership, I’d spent the last few months getting things running and trying to keep our new students from blowing themselves up or unleashing curses which might kill us all.

I’d been successful… Mostly.

“Carnavon! Come quick.”

I looked up from my latest spell-crafting experiment to see what all the commotion was about.

Diverting my attention took a bit of finesse, because I was experimenting with Red, the volatile magical element from my home plane, which got real excitable once you started enchanting it.

Azarin Garzade was standing in the entrance to the fire practice room, gesturing for me to follow her.

“What is it?”

“Trouble in the earth room.”

Though she was a little flustered from running across our tower to get here, I found her pretty as ever.

Tall, graceful, and blonde, she was the opposite of the hardy Fogo girls I’d grown up around.

It turned out I had a thing for air-realm girls.

Though, to be fair, I’d only met one air-realm girl so far, but I’d already fallen for her reckless and impulsive ways.

“I thought you were getting better at earth magic.”

“I am. I’ve been practicing my ass off,” she said with quite a bit of pride. “But this one’s not my fault. Sifuso is being attacked by a dirt slug.”

“Again?” I carefully moved the small pieces of lead away from the activated Red powder so as to not accidentally melt a hole in the metal workbench.

Since this was the room we’d set aside for experimenting with fire magic, the only flammable things allowed in here was us. “That’s the second time this week.”

“He’s really bad at that spell, Oz.”

Sifuso was a nearly seven-foot-tall lizard man, who looked like he’d stepped out of a swampy nightmare, who tested as a natural rank two, one whole rank above me and Azarin, which meant he should have been far more capable at magic than either of us…

Except, running this place had rapidly taught me that natural talent and brains weren’t synonyms.

“Sifuso really should be able to handle one little Elemental spirit without the rest of us holding his claws.”

“You’d think that, but—” Azarin was interrupted by an extremely loud bang from down the hall. “I think this slug might be a bit of a mutant.”

As one of the five founding members of our academy, Azarin and I were part of our Student Council.

Those appointments were based on who I’d trusted to not rob the place or accidentally kill us.

We were supposed to be the responsible ones.

With Azarin being the most reckless and headstrong of us five, if she’d swallowed her pride enough to come ask for my help, the situation was actually bad.

Someone began screaming. That noise was followed by the crashing of furniture and the breaking of glass.

“You’re going to want to bring your gun and fire magic.”

I sighed, fairly certain this was not how the proper magical academies functioned.

I brushed all the Red I’d been working with back into its protective pouch and shoved that in my pocket.

After we left the fire room, I grabbed my gun belt from where I’d left it hanging on a peg in the hall, far enough away that the cartridges in the loops wouldn’t cook off if my spell went wrong.

“I swear, Azarin, if Sifuso keeps screwing up, we might need to kick him out.”

“He’s far from our dumbest student; that’s clearly Rufus! And Sifuso’s one of the few who actually had the coin to pay his tuition. That lacertian is the reason we bought food this month.”

“Good point.” It turned out there was a valid reason all the proper academies turned away so many applicants.

Frankly, it was because most aspiring wizards were trash at magic and not rich enough to make up for the inconvenience they caused by learning.

“Let’s go slap a bandage on the latest self-inflicted wound. ”

The Academy of Outcasts was situated in one of the unshattered sections of the fallen Tower of Primopolus, which had once been the tallest structure in all the realms. The nice thing about living in the ruins of an ancient mage tower was that we had a large, sturdy structure all to ourselves.

The main downside was that everything was sideways, because that was how this section landed fifty years ago when the spell holding the whole unnatural thing up had failed.

The tower had toppled over and flattened whole neighborhoods beneath.

What had once been The Tower was now known as The Tube.

Many internal walls were shattered, and floors had buckled.

Our stairs and doorways were difficult to navigate, and many of the surfaces we walked around on were concave because they’d been part of the outer walls of the once mile-tall structure.

The worst part, though? The place was also obnoxiously haunted.

A mad wizard’s prideful experiment squishing thousands of innocent bystanders all at once tends to create a lot of restless dead who refuse to move on, but our ghosts had been quiet so far today.

If Sifuso’s latest mistake riled them up and they started moaning and throwing things again, I was going to be extra annoyed.

Due to the sideways architecture, it took Azarin and me a minute to get to the earth room.

Fifty years ago, when this edge of the toppling tower had struck the buildings below, this part of the outer wall had been pulverized and driven deep into the ground.

The result was a dirt floor in this section, which was perfect for practicing earth spells.

As we got closer, I could hear Sifuso calling out, “Can someone help? The ground’s trying to eat me.”

The noise had attracted some curious students, and they were clustered around the entrance, peering through the earth room’s sideways doorway. “Don’t worry. Carnavon is here,” one of them shouted.

They were relieved I’d arrived. If rank ten Gaul Haddar had left me in charge, surely that meant I was somewhat competent.

Boy, I had them fooled!

The other students got out of the way, revealing that, across the room, our lacertian student had climbed up the wall to escape the three-foot-tall, four-foot-wide blob of awakened earth magic that was rolling about beneath him.

The thing appeared to be a pile of dirt and small rocks, but it was moving about like it was disturbingly alive.

Azarin had been so nonchalant when she’d fetched me, I’d been expecting a little creature like last time. Not this massive thing.

“You could have warned me it was nearly the size of a wagon.”

“It’s grown. It was only about as big as a bucket when I left to get you.

” Azarin, who came from a people known for their adventurous storm-chasing, giant eagle-riding ways was by nature an over confident sort, yet she took one look at the menacing thing and grimaced. “Want me to evacuate the place?”

“Maybe? How should I know?” Then I shouted at Sifuso, who was about fifteen yards away, “What the hell did you unleash this time?”

“I don’t know, Carnavon. It was an accident. I was attempting Shape Earth.”

That was a spell I’d had no success with myself. So far, I’d learned some fire, air, and a bit of death, but earth, water, and life eluded me. Shape Earth was supposed to be a simpler spell, directing minor Elemental spirits to move dirt into different useful forms, but this was certainly not that.

I’d not known lacertians could climb so well, and poor Sifuso was doing everything he could to remain stuck to the wall.

In their home kingdoms, lacertians were known as vicious hunters—honestly, I found him a little frightening to look at, not that I would ever admit such a thing—but there wasn’t much his claws or fangs were going to accomplish against this thing.

The blob was currently occupied eating a wooden bench we’d salvaged from the dump.

It had formed a hole for a mouth and was gnawing on the boards with rows of teeth made of gravel.

Another mouth formed on the opposite side, and it began eating a shelf.

I didn’t know much about the beings of the Elemental Plane of Earth, but something about this thing reminded me of the gurglers of my home realm, a dumb—but hungry—bit of the plane come to life.

If this was anything like a gurgler, we were all in terrible danger.

“If you survive, you’re banned from doing that spell in the Tube again. Got it?”

“Never again. I swear!” Sifuso’s yellow eyes were wide with fear as the earth monster effortlessly snapped big planks in half beneath him. “What do we do?”

That was a really good question. Lacertians had thick, scaly skin, that could supposedly even stop a knife thrust, but this thing was contentedly grinding boards into splinters, so I doubted that natural armor would make much difference if it got hold of him.

I looked back toward the students clustered around the door.

“Who’s got some offensive spells handy?”

A couple hands reluctantly went up.