"Hurry up!" A frustrated voice grumbled and Dryth felt a hand land on his back and push. He stumbled forward and knocked into the girl standing in front of him even as he tried his best to keep his balance without touching her.
She turned around to glare and saw Dryth keeping himself from tipping over. Her glare shifted over his shoulder to the boy behind him and her nose crinkled up in a sneer. "Don't push people you idiot. And what do you mean, 'hurry up'? We're all in the same line." She turned back around with a huff, completely ignoring Dryth after seeing he hadn't run into her purposefully.
The boy who'd pushed Dryth silently snarled at him, like it was somehow Dryth's fault that he'd been scolded. Dryth kept his face blank as he turned back to face the front and did his best to ignore the angry murmuring from behind him. The guy was an impatient idiot, Dryth had known that for years at this point, and trying to argue with him would be pointless for a number of reasons, but mostly because it would just egg him on to be even more of a bully. Life in general was more pleasant if Dryth just didn't react to the people trying to get a rise out of him and today it was even more important that he not draw attention to himself. Today was the day his entire class became legal adults, the day of their Reveal, and Dryth was not getting in any trouble today.
As if to reinforce Dryth's resolve, one of their teachers walked by right at that moment and stopped next to him, staring behind him with an unhappy expression. Dryth didn't now if the boy behind him was pulling back to give him another shove or the teacher had seen the first one and was coming to dispense punishment, but Dryth wasn't getting involved. The rumors that basically amounted to ghost stories of kids getting dragged off during their Reveal day to be punished and forever losing the chance to become adults, remaining legally children forever and being trapped to always take classes were obviously fake. The much more realistic rumors of kids getting punished and having their Reveal delayed by a day or two sounded much more likely, and Dryth wasn't going to be one of those unfortunates, even if it would only be a day or two delay.
The teacher didn't do anything other than stare disapprovingly, so they must not have seen him get pushed, but they continued to hang out in the area as they walked up and down the line to make sure everyone was behaving. There were only a little less than forty students in Dryth's class from the local school that served the area his home village was part of, but there were five other classes in line and even more scheduled to come throughout the day according to the teachers and the sheer number of impatient students wanting to get past the waiting and the sitting and the listening parts to get to their Reveals meant there was a lot of tension around.
Dryth was clutched by the same tension, and he was too wrapped up in himself to even attempt to make small talk with anyone around him or to gaze out at the beautiful campus they were on like some of his peers. There wasn't really a point in trying to talk to anyone, he wasn't around any of the handful of people he would call friends and he was a social outcast to the rest of the class, so that was out whether or not he was wound up with staring toward the front of the line, mentally begging everyone ahead of him to go faster. Some tiny piece of him was a little sad that he wasn't looking at the gorgeous, and in many cases literally magical sights, but he reassured himself that he could do that later. And he could, honestly. Once he got through his Reveal and became an official mage walking around the Association campus to see all the sights was an easy ask.
Whatever the hold-up at the front was it finally cleared up and people started moving faster. Dryth followed the girl in front of him through the door into the building they'd all been queued up to enter and continued following as they headed up some stairs and then deeper into the building. They filed into a large auditorium filled with seats that all looked down at a wide, semi-circular stage. Following the directions of the multiple teachers around, there both from his class and others from other regions, all of the students took the next seat in line and quietly waited for the event to start, whatever it was. The only thing Dryth knew was that today was the day of everyone's Reveals, and he knew they weren't public spectacles for everyone to watch. Whatever the point of the auditorium was he didn't care at that moment.
Dryth needed to get this over with. He desperately hoped, no he believed that finally being an adult meant he could get out of the shitty situation he was stuck in. It wasn't that bad, he wasn't being tortured or denied his basic rights or anything, but he was fed up with being an outcast and whipping boy for everyones bad feelings, shitty days, and random aggressions. He was the weird kid, he got that even though he didn't remember most of the 'strange events' people told him he went through, although between the ones he did remember and those that were described to him he honestly couldn't understand why people thought he had to be avoided. Who cared if he knew answers to questions before the teacher ever broached a subject? It wasn't that weird, he'd been focused on his studies since the day he'd known he was going to be a mage. And just because people hadn't heard of concepts he'd mentioned or events he knew about didn't mean that he was 'possessed' or anything like some of the people in his home village had tried to accuse. The mage that had ended up being called in to prove that he wasn't had been pretty annoyed.
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He'd thought that joining the boarding school that was required for future mages would give him a break from all of the looks and stilted social interactions he'd gotten back home, but he'd had the bad luck of having another kid from his village having the potential to be a mage too and he'd spared no time spreading around about how terrible Dryth was. Or something like that he'd quickly learned to stop paying attention to exactly what people were saying about him, just to spare his own sanity. He had made some friends though, which was nice. No one that he'd call a best friend or who'd pick him over one of their other friend's if something horrible happened, but having people who were happy to talk to and spend time with him was nice.
This time though, he'd get away from all of it. Away from his 'peers' that mostly ignored or bullied him, away from teachers that didn't like him knowing things they hadn't brought up yet, away from a home that didn't want him around because he made the other villagers uncomfortable. He would become a mage, finish his training, get licensed by the Association, and go live on his own after finding a job to pay his expenses. There wouldn't be thirteen other siblings around to worry about and he could find a place that had never heard of him where he could reinvent himself. Maybe he could even find a girlfriend at some point.
The light that suddenly flashed from behind him, illuminating the stage below, snapped him out of his planning for the future. A tall, portly man with a sharply pointed beard stepped into the light, the gold trim over his robes flashing as he moved to the center of the stage. He held out his hands to either side and the sleeves of his robe drooped down, creating little dark pockets. He stared expectantly up into the crowd of seated students, who stared back at him with confusion.
"Welcome, students, to the first day of your glorious membership in our Association!" He exclaimed in a booming voice. He flicked one hand to the side and a card appeared between tow of his fingers. He brought both hands in front of him, the card held so its edge was facing the crowd. The card began to glow with golden light. The man's sleeves began to billow and shake like there were small animals fighting in them, before golden liquid burst form within. There was more of it that could have physically fit inside the man's body let alone his sleeves as it rushed like a broken fire hydrant toward the students. Several of them screamed or yelped in shock as they tried to scramble out of the way. Right before any of the liquid hit anyone the stream bent on itself and redirected back toward the stage. It continued doing that, twisting and bending, moving in all kinds of directions as it spread over the stage and through the auditorium, until there was a shining golden tree shape hovering behind and above the man.
"My name," He called out, "Is Director Treegold! I have the pleasure of being the Director of Induction for the Association area centered on this lovely city of Stonebreak that we are currently located in, and it is my grand pleasure to welcome you all here!" He held his arms out and above him at an angle and the gold liquid started moving backwards, un-drawing the tree that it had made as it flowed back into his sleeves. When the last bit of the liquid had vanished into his clothing the card he was holding stopped glowing, then vanished.
"That, dear students, is a minor example of what life as a mage and a member of the Association will bring you! Magic in spades, certainly! A bevy of cards of your own, to match your newly Revealed Soul Cards, indeed! A Class, to direct the path of your magical learning, well that comes with your Soul Card as we all know! All of that and more is waiting for you as new members of the Association!" He grinned widely as his gaze panned over the students. "Are you ready, students, for your Reveals!?"
The students burst into cheers, some even jumping to their feet to applaud in the wake of the man's performance. Even Dryth was drawn into his showman ship and clapped and cheered with everyone else.
"Wonderful! Please, all of you, follow the instructions of your teachers and the fantastic mages who have volunteered their time to help with the process today, and we'll make mages and Association members of you in no time!"
