Danny breathed in, feeling like the sunlight filtering in through the tiny glass windows above was the air itself, full of warmth and light.
Full of the promise and allure of what the new day...and the future were to bring.
Rising from his seat in front of the small desk and bronze mirror he was allowed, Danny took a look at himself once more, just to be certain.
He half felt like laughing at his own reflection, his form distorted slightly in the polished metal. The other half however caught sight of the ribbons tied to his arms and braided into his long black hair, the patterns of gold paint applied with an expert hand over his brow sloping down to curl around cheek bones in fire-like design, and stood just that much taller, straightened himself more presentably.
It was his last day as student, after all.
The halls of the great building were empty, the sound of his own boots and the soft sigh of his shifting tunic and robe echoing off the arches and stone. It was a bit eery. The Citadel he called home was never usually this silent, this...inactive. There was always something happening in the old building since he came; A public baptizing, some collective Spellwork by the elder Casters for a lord or something. Or, his peers - students living in dormitories below his own tower quarters, learning the secret and elusive ways of magik, just like him.
Well, perhaps not just like him.
It was with this thought Danny came upon the entrance to the Everhall, the great room in the center of the keep of the citadel where the elders and senior ranking Mages held council. Stretching to the ceiling in their frame of elegantly carved stone and masonry, the entrance to the Everhall towered over Danny's small figure, the wood of their make nearly as old as the city itself. They stood proud, offering a silent challenge, a dare to try and breach them, should they decide not to open. Very few times were spellmakers of Danny's low rank of Student allowed past the huge wooden doors to glimpse the circular room beyond, or be privy to the discussions of Court held inside.
Except now...he was. After all, it was The day.
Today was the day Danny was stripped of his role, his tidal, his own name. He wouldn't be needing it anymore. After today, after a mere hour in the Everhall, Danny would be reborn, a new person, with a new purpose. It was a time for saying goodbye to the old, and welcoming the new. A graduation to the beginning of the rest of his life.
On a whim, the black haired boy turned and looked back down the long, sunlit corridor he had just come from, remembering all the times he and his friends had held foot races and tag competitions in the courtyards, playing marbles and hide-and-seek within when the weather grew bitter and the cold winds too unforgiving for children to be out in. Danny felt a sad little smile creep onto his face, remembering the new students he and Sam and Tucker would greet every year, even as they grew older their own responsibilities and studies growing larger, more rigorous in parallel - too much so to include time for childish things like games or toys when there was just so much more to be accomplished in a day then play.
The smile slipped a bit at the thought of his old friends, and the circumstances that had brought them together in the first place...what eventually tore them from each others' sides...
It had been an accident, or so he was told.
A...horrid, terrible accident, where, even though some made it out alive, no one was really spared.
Danny clenched his eyes shut, willing away the pictures of fire lapping at bodies, willing away the feel of snow turning to a red slush, luke-warm and sticky in his tiny hands...shoved the unearthly...ungodly screams of those fallen victim to the...to the accident into the farthest depths of his head, making sure they were firmly locked away before daring to open his eyes and mind again to the world. His teachers said that for someone like Danny, someone who possessed the sheer caliber of power held inside as he, it was not good to repress the energy. It would end up hurting him one day, if he kept suppressing it they warned.
Danny supposed he'd never been a very good student in that regard.
But he'd hoped to change that.
Danny opened his eyes, a glint in them that was more then tears, then the bleak sorrow that so plagued he and his two comrades when they were first found in the razed remains of their snow cloaked village, orphaned and taken in by the mercy and charity of the school of Citadel.
No more. Not now, not ever again.
Today would be the last time The Accident would haunt him so.
Over the years, the trauma of the event faded - he could see so in the eyes of his friends, who'd also been affected, but even then it was under different circumstances. The memory was a bad one for them, brutal, but it had been left to turn into just that. A memory.
Not for Danny though. Every night, for years after, every time he closed his eyes, every time some little thing that reminded him of the home now lost, the Accident would flash in front of him, teleporting him back to that night of pain and death.
Sam and Tucker worked through it, much as he did, so that life could go on. The three learned to busy themselves with the struggles and sucsesses of everyday life to distract from and eventually ease the blackness of their pasts. Tucker spent endless nights tinkering and inventing a fasinating array of machines, using his magik to bring the things to life in ways unseen before. Sam would pour over every book and scroll and manuscript a student could have acsess to ( and even ones students werent allowed to see) delving deeper in chantings and writings. It was amusing to recall that even with her devotion to the great libraries of their home, Danny seemed to remember a girl who spent any moment she could manage between her studies and friends out in the stables and surrounding feilds with the local fauna, familierizing herself with each one untill it appeared the animals themselves were better friends with her then Danny or Tucker could ever hope to be. Ah, to be such an enchantress as his friend SAm would grow to be.
About facing, Danny strode forward, a purpose to his step one would be a fool to cross. He reached forward, and without hesitation, pushed inwards the massive doors, ready to step into his new life.
Twin particles of dust, caught in the blue-green hue from sunlight filtering through the leaves from the trees outside danced about each other, before blinking out of his vision, and another different pair came to occupy him in their place. And again. And...again.
Danny squashed down what by now was the almost unbearable urge to sigh loudly, rudely.
He'd forgotten just how he hated speeches and cerimonies as such.
Danny shifted his weight from one foot to another, slightly, waiting for this part of the cerimony to be done with.