I wake up in the middle of a fifteen-passenger van. I keep my eyes closed at first, attempting to assess my situation without giving away that I’m awake. I open my eyes just enough to take stock of what’s beside me and in front of me. I see the guard sitting next to me, and the back of the driver’s seat, with stitching across the back, “Property of the Gifted Republic.” I squeeze my eyes shut again. My hands are restrained in front of me in what I assume are copper hand cuffs to assist in blocking my abilities and my eyes are covered by a heavy-duty set of goggles.
This pretty much settles it. Amon’s training exercises that I fail usually end with me getting cold water spshed on my face and told to run through the whole thing again until I get it right. I’ve never woken up in transit to another location.
It’s got to be The Academy. Amon and I have been preparing for me to go to The Academy for the st few years. I’ll be a little te, but it’s time, I just didn’t realize how serious they were about rounding up unlisted gifteds. The Academy is required for the gifted and mage communities for our safety as well as the safety of humans. I haven’t spent much time with the gifted community since Amon took over my care when I was twelve... after my whole family was killed.
The Academy is one of the best pces to learn your gifts and how to use them safely. It’s been the w to attend since the early 1900s after the mage and gifted wars ended with the Entity Treaty between humans, mages, and the gifted. You usually start at nineteen or twenty and dedicate two to three years depending on your gift. After your years of training if you can’t pay you are bound by the w to dedicate two years to the government for every year of training, and they will have free use of your gift or your magical abilities. If you haven’t harnessed your gift by the time the usual years are up, or if you want to study something specific, you can add up to two years for academics with four more years of service.
There is also the goal of a primary bond finding their essentials. Essentials can be male or female, it’s really more about protection and compatibility if we’re to believe the messages from the goddesses. A grouping doesn’t have to be sexual or romantic, even though that’s the most common. A grouping can be formed just by spending rge amounts of time together, but the way to form the strongest connection is through sex. The primary receiving an orgasm from an essential is consider total capitution by the goddess and the bonding is immediately and irrevocably formed.
Your mating symbol links you to your essentials or your primary, and while there is a network you can post on to find each other, most find their mates at one of the academies. Since The Academy for Gifted and Mages is the rgest school in North or South America it’s extremely common for the gifted to find their mates there.
My biggest problem right now is that my mate symbol will give me away almost immediately if it’s noticed. A primary with an unusually rge number of essentials, something like six essentials is almost unheard of. Mate symbols are a gift from one of the three sisters, the one for the gifted, whose name I never remember. Most consider it a gift if you are privileged enough to enjoy your grouping. I will never have that “gift”. If you don’t end up finding your essentials as a primary you will slowly go insane from your power imbance once you hit twenty-five and your brain is fully formed. What a gift indeed. In contrast, if you form the bond and the primary of the grouping dies, the essentials start to lose their minds from ck of grounding. It honestly seems pretty fucked up to me that we’re all tied together so intrusively.
I’ve done my best to prepare for this. I’m covered in tattoos to camoufge myself; mate symbols are tattooed all over my body, they look exactly like a regur symbol. Mine just happens to have six essentials. I have vine tattoos covering my body as well, also in hopes of distracting others from my symbol so that it all just blends in.
The whole mate system is steeped in the history of the gifted. It was supposed to be a gift to us after the Witch Rebellion against the gods in the 1700s. A gift or a reward, I never can remember. At the temple they call everything the goddesses did gifts. Either way, the primary will have it somewhere on their neck or throat, and the essentials will have their matching mark somewhere else on their body. I have tattooed the primary symbol of my parents, my two brothers, my sister, and my old symbol on my throat, along with my vines, to throw off anyone looking for my new, more noticeable symbol. Thankfully, mine is on the nape of my neck, making it much easier to hide.
My tattoos usually make people…uncomfortable. Amon told me that doing something like this was an afront to the sisters so most people would refuse to talk to me when they saw it. I told him I didn’t care if no one in the community spoke to me. He approved immediately and gave me more ideas for tattoos.
When I blink again I finally notice that my contacts are absent, and I have no sungsses to block my abilities after they take the goggles meant to block neuro abilities away. I don’t need contacts, but I wear colored contacts and it helps harness some of my less helpful powers while giving me an extra yer of disguise. My big blue eyes are famous in a way…well, my twin sister’s big blue eyes were famous. Mine just happen to match.
My sister was blessed and given a prophecy by the priestess of the temple of the three sisters while my mom was still pregnant. We were never given the full story behind the prophecy, all our parents ever told us was that my sister was meant to save the world and bring peace to the three communities of the world, and I was meant to help. That’s all the information they ever gave us before they were killed. Before my whole family was killed because of the prophecy…
I’m pulled from my thoughts when the guard who had been monitoring me from the row of seats behind me opens the van door, steps out, and then pulls me out by my elbow. With the restraints, it’s difficult to stay upright and I fall into the guard. He immediately throws me off him and a guard from behind me rights me before I fall. I look up at the tall building in front of me. ‘The Gifted Republic and Mage Counsel’ is on the gss door in front of us.
I’m escorted into the building, and we’re met by a slight woman holding a clipboard, “Is this the newest recruit? The one that caused all the trouble? Great, Councilwoman Davis has been waiting for this meeting.” We walk to the end of a long hall to an office with a gss wall and door with Councilman Davis in white script on the door. The guard opens the door for me, and the councilwoman smiles at my entrance. She gestures to the chair in front of her desk.
She waves away the guards, they shut the door but wait just outside. The councilwoman is older, with closely cropped coiled gray curls, she has the face of someone who has received a lot of botox, an unnatural shine and tightness to her older skin. Her eyebrow picks up as she assesses me, her hands steepled, after a pause she says, “All those tattoos, isn’t that disrespectful to your community, Miss…..?”
“Darcy. Marie Darcy.” Amon hated the name I had settled on when we chose a fake name for me, but he knew that being as close to the truth as possible was the safest option. Marie is my middle name, and with my actual st name being Bennett, I just couldn’t help myself with this fake name. Whenever I wasn’t training, working, or hanging out with Selly and Trevor, I was reading. I thought the name was funny and I’ve gotten so few joys in this life.
“You can call me Mage Davis,” The elderly woman purses her lips and leans towards me, “Miss Darcy, unless you have been living in complete isotion you know that you are mandated to attend The Academy for Gifted and Mages by the age of twenty. How old are you?” I was expecting them to know how old I was, I guess our information on how good The Academy is at collecting information is a little outdated.
I don’t stop to think for too long, because it would be weird for me to have to consider my age, so I blurt out, “Twenty-one.” Mage Davis smirks at me and sits back in her chair as if she knows I’m lying. She makes a ‘hmmm’ noise at me.
“Well Miss Darcy, using Strength and Suggestion to get out of your restraints was unexpected, especially with the special equipment the guards use to block things like that, (oops, hadn’t considered that) but it did tip us off to your strength you naughty girl. You earned your copper cuffs. A neuro… with an added physical gift. Unusual, but not unheard of, you’ll be an interesting case when you graduate. We’ll make good use of you. I can’t wait to see what great things you’ll accomplish. We’re going to put great emphasis on finding your mate grouping, who knows how strong you’ll all be together.” She stood up so I did as well. She walked over to me and put her arms out, for one arming second I thought she was going to hug me. Instead, she grabbed both of my elbows and squeezed before saying, “You are going to be so useful to the cause, my love.”
I give her a curt nod in an attempt to make whatever she’s doing stop. She drops her arms back to her sides and opens her door so the guards can take me to my next location. No one bothers telling me where that will be.
