I awoke to the sound of a fist banging against my bedroom door. It was my father ordering me to wake up and come down stairs. I stumbled across the room, and put on the kimono I bought in Mooshu during our last vacation. I struggled to tie it properly in my groggy state, but eventually succeeded and head out my door and down to the lower level of our small home on Cyclops Lane, Wizard City.

"Son, your mother and I have been talking and we don't want you studying death," My father said as I entered the kitchen. My parents leaned against the counter showing obvious signs of adamant composures.

I walked past them to the fridge, and replied as I searched for agreeable sustenance. "Dad the test assigned me to the school of death. I know you guys don't like it, but the test is never wrong."

"Have you heard the news?" My mother asked.

"What news?"

My father sighed and responded for her, "Malistaire went crazy, and stole the school of death."

"What do you mean he stole the school?" I asked no longer interested in food.

"Look here," he said handing me today's newspaper, "Apparently he came with dragons and had them carry away the school last night. He killed seven wizards who tried to stop him, and guess what; None of them were death students."

"Honey we've been telling you this whole time that death students aren't all there. Now do you see what we mean?"

"Quinn, I want you to go back and retake the test. I want you to request the gem question so you can make sure you don't get death again. Remember, death is the onyx. Choose anything but that, and you'll make your mother and I proud."

I nodded in an appalled silence and headed up to my room. I didn't know what I was feeling, but I didn't like it. It was as if confusion, fear, anger, and sorrow all had some sick child and it was living inside me. I locked my bedroom door and pulled a small black book with a badly drawn skull on the cover out of a vent whose screws I replaced with nails. It was a journal of mine which I used to record philosophies and metaphors. It also contained my conversations with my only friend; the personification of death. I don't know why, but when I got to the imaginary friend age, death was there to be mine and I had never left him behind.

I flipped to a random page and felt like weeping as I read one of our past conversations about the value of existence. My lower lip quivered, but no tears came as I recalled how many times these conversations eased the pain of my cognitive loneliness. After a moment of sad nostalgia, I closed the book, and got dressed in my obnoxious yellow and blue robes which distinguished me as a resident of Cyclops.

I snuck downstairs and out the front door for fear that my mother would catch on to my unhappiness. She was a student of Life, possessed an emotional intuition unlike any other, and was a complete pendulum to the stern and gruff stone I called father. From what I could figure out, his demeanor was just a symptom of studying under Professor Cyrus for too long.

I made my way to the courtyard which sat near the entrance of our Lane, and followed one of the streams which flowed through it. At the end of my stream was one of the waterfalls which resided on the edge of the cliff Colossus sits on. I sat down and pulled the book out of my pocket. I looked at its cover and bindings scrupulously before opening it to where I had written the name Quinn Mythblossom and scratched it out writing Quinn Ravenwatcher below. I took a pencil out of my pocket, and scratched out the second name, then I wrote the name Quinn below this last scribble and closed the book. I looked it over one last time before dropping it over the edge and watched its pages flutter open in one last desperate attempt to be seen before they disappeared into the lake below.

Around that lake sat Triton Avenue which I watched for the next hour or so as I mentally prepared for the life I was being forced to choose.