Part II: The Parents’ Teacher
At the gates of The Firmament, it is said one will unwillingly ‘spill’ and come to terms with every fault and flaw of their magical bloodline. In many ways, Nero’s entire ancestry presented more challenging obstacles to his route than anything else the cosmos could throw at him.
One learns from books and example only that certain things can be done. Actual learning requires that you do those things.
-“Children of Dune” by Frank Herbert
The summer before Nero began studying at The Mage’s College and almost one year exactly before Nero first-sparked, his family took a trans-cosmic vacation to the planet Ishaan. That summer, his parents’ favorite instructor, Professor Raith Thomasson, had invited them and some of their other college friends to witness a celestial event that was only visible in the mortal realm from Ishaan.
Thomasson, an Ishaani professor of prophecy and visionary magics, taught Nero’s parents and their friends in a spellbinding senior seminar back in the day. All seniors of The Mage’s College on Isla Nortay have to take a seminar, but theirs was special. Each major sek of magic was taught at The M.C., and the top scoring senior from each one joined the other five for a once-in-a-lifetime educational discovery of the cosmos’ many foundations.
Nero’s parents were both first-place sek-skolari: Sharma (née Feste) had mastered chronopathy (time magic), and her doting future husband Gyro excelled in artimancy (objects magic). Their three best friends consisted of a couple of magic-high-school-sweethearts, Daisy and Ariana Millennial, and a Santa Ignacian farmer’s daughter named Aleis Cato (née McIntyre). Daisy reveled in necropathy (death magic), Ariana proved unparalleled in auramancy (prime-elementals magic), and Aleis stunned with her prowess in verdopathy (life magic). The last-but-certainly-not-least member of their smartypants cabal was none other than the heir to the Canderran Empire himself, Crown Prince Armande Tyrus Rodolpho IV, and, unfortunately, it couldn’t be denied the luckiest born boy in the world was also a true savant of mirromancy (illusion magic).
Their beloved Professor Thomasson studied and mastered visionary magics, an interdisciplinary intersection of all six seks that afforded the practitioner a unique understanding of prophecy. Together, the seven probed the cosmic magics and specifically engaged with a briefly written but important visionary tract known as The Dawn of the Heirauphin Prophecy. Many, especially Professor Thomasson, believed that the prophecy contained the identity of a very powerful being who would be attempting The Ancients’ Path in the ongoing Age of Audition.
While the group and their tutor didn’t uncover any secret would-be deities during the nine-month tenure of their seminar, Professor Thomasson et al. forged new and lasting comprehensions of how magic and chaos, the primal origin of all magic, functioned.
“If prophecies are spoken by gods and then transcribed by The Iolanni, what might that mean?” Professor Thomasson asked on the first day.
“They’ve already been diluted by interpretation upon arrival,” Nero’s mother immediately replied. Everyone in the seminar and The Mage’s College as a whole knew Sharma Feste was the most promising sek-skolarus in generations. Her corruption and eventual demise would break an entire planet’s heart.