Something Called Home
(Prologue)

Pulling into the driveway of our family home, I slowly exited the car with my bag slung over my shoulder. My parents were positively furious and they showed it by slamming their car doors closed and turning their backs on me as they proceeded up the walkway to the front door. I knew a bomb was about to explode and I was hesitant to follow behind them, but I had no choice. The entire ride home from Milkweed Academy had been filled with high levels of shouting and then periods of cold, deafening silence. When we had gotten a few miles from home and my father stopped speaking altogether, I knew he had something on his mind planned out for later.

My father actually went out of his way to close the front door on me, just to remind me that I wasn't welcomed inside anymore. He hadn't locked it, but it was the gesture of it that ran the point across. No one spoke to me straight away when I walked inside. It was only when I closed the door behind me and locked it that the outrage started up again from where it had left off back at Milkweed.

"Expelled, huh?" My father, Oliver, started up. His face at this point had gone completely red. If looks could kill, I would've been dead ten times over and I think he would've loved that. "Expelled, Kyle? EXPELLED?!"

My mother sighed deeply and leaned against the console table in the entryway, crossing her arms and pursing her lips. I hadn't even gotten the chance to move away from the front door and now, I was stood stuck on the welcome mat while his rage continued.

"YOU'VE SHAMED OUR FAMILY! WHAT ARE THE PEOPLE OF THE REALM GOING TO SAY ABOUT US WHEN THEY HEAR ABOUT THE FOOLISH STUNT YOU PULLED?!"

"Why do you care so much about what other people think?"

Instead of answering my question, my father turned angrily to my mother and pointed in my direction.

"I'm sorry, Kristen." He breathed out. "He's not staying here."

"Oliver, please—!"

"He is NOT STAYING HERE! HE'S BANISHED! YOU'RE BANISHED!"

My father approached me and wrestled me for the bag that was over my shoulder. I grabbed hold of it, doing my best to try and stop him. I wasn't sure what he was going to do with my bag, but the contents inside were the only items I had left from my time at Milkweed. I didn't want him to destroy anything and with his history, I knew he'd do it if he got the chance.

"Let go!" I shouted, pulling on the strap of the bag. "STOP IT!" My father shoved me harshly, pulling the bag in the opposite direction. Not only did I lose my footing, but I also lost my grip of the bag. He opened the front door and tossed the bag out onto the front lawn, closing it afterwards.

"I want you and all your garbage OUT OF THIS HOUSE before nightfall!" He shouted at me. "And I never want to see you on this side of the realm EVER AGAIN!"

"You can't kick me out!"

"I'm not kicking you out, you're BANISHED from this family! I've HAD IT with you, Kyle! Just the sight of you makes me sick to my stomach!"

I pulled myself up off the floor quickly and rushed out the front door for my bag. When I collected it, I stormed back inside and headed for the stairwell down to the basement. My mother watched the entire fight and did nothing to stop my father from abusing me. Typical of her.

"Banished from the family? What a JOKE!" I shouted from the stairwell. "We were never a family to begin with! I refuse to consider you as a father figure!"

"Oh yeah?!" I heard my father shout from a bit away. His footsteps approached the hallway quickly and I heard my mother doing her best to stop him this time. When his eyes met mine on the staircase, he rushed down after me and again, tried to pull my bag from over my shoulders. I fought him this time, finally fed up with the entire situation playing out. He had nerve to call us a family with the way I was bought up.

I'm an only child of two members of the occult. My mother is a certified witch and my father is a conjurer himself. Both studied and practice black magic for their entire schooling cycle, but neither of them have ever been the best in their fields of study. My mother attended Halfmoon Hallows Academy of Witchcraft, a prestigious all girls school in the realm of the occult for high level witches. My father attended Milkweed Academy, School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Both completed their studies, but neither of them ever came in first for their respective rankings. In fact, year after year, my father ranked second for the title of Wizard of the Year to the father of Sigmund the Sorcerer, Freud Nightbreed. It was the same tune for my mother, never first place.

Being bought up by two academic losers created another academic loser. Me. I had no chance at ever becoming number one with the way I was treated by the two of them. My mother never felt like a mother and my father felt more like a personal, at-home bully than anything else. Before moving to the realm, I was bought up in Surrey, England for my primary years. I feel like those years were the best ones. Living among normal people and going to a normal school, the expectations were low. In fact, there weren't any expectations at all. I'd go to school, get through the day and come back home to a somewhat normal family unit. A father that went to work during the day and came home to a stay-at-home mother who cleaned all day and made sure supper was ready in the evening.

I can recall them using magic in front of me around that time, but I never thought anything of it. It was a normal and reoccurring occurrence in our home. I hadn't started showing signs of magic until Year 3, when I was around seven or eight years old. Pretty late start for most occult kids. They'd been waiting for me to show signs, almost desperately. As soon as I started using a literal ounce of magic, our entire lives were packed up and we moved to the realm.

The land of the realm is an entirely different world, almost like an alternate universe where the members of the occult live, work and study. Mortal humans can visit, but aren't allowed to become permanent residents. Everyone knows everyone, mainly because of schooling together in their youths. With me finally being able to use some kind of magic, my parents were eager to go back to the realm, re-enter society and throw me straight into the curriculum at Milkweed Academy.

Through my entire magic puberty, if you wanna call it that, my parents gave me no guidance. I mean NONE. ZERO. Other children at Milkweed seemed to know exactly what was happening with themselves and how to handle it, but my parents shipped me off to the boarding school without even so much of a hint and expected me to come out as some sort of wizard god. As I studied, they reconnected with the company they'd kept in the realm and bragged. Their entire existence, since their years of schooling, consisted of bragging. Bragging about material things, bragging about being in higher levels, bragging about the class of wands they used and now, bragging about the child they'd sent off to Milkweed. Naturally, if you're bragging about your child being "gifted" and "high level", then that's what people are expecting to see. Right? So imagine their shock and surprise to find out said "gifted" child is actually falling behind. Miserably.

Their own expectations of me made them disappointed in me term after term when what they were bragging about wasn't coming into fruition. The more they couldn't brag efficiently, the angrier they became. Always all about appearances before wellbeing and my wellbeing was down the tubes. It was a desolate experience for a young child trying to find their place not only in the realm, but in the fabric of Milkweed's curriculum. Not only was I trying to figure out how to become a wizard on my own, I was also dorming in a boarding school for the first time and mainly living for myself. Students usually received care packages from home every term and at one point, I was one of those students. Care packages usually had student essentials; extra school supplies, hygiene products, funds for new uniforms and elixir ingredients and whatever else popped up. Once my parent's realized I wasn't doing as well as they expected, they started sending less and less to help me. Eventually, I stopped getting care packages altogether. Thankfully, my peers seemed to take notice of my lack of support and donated whatever they didn't want or had excess of from their own packages out of pity. Embarrassing, honestly.

Every wizard ranking at the end of the term was a bad time. It was a time I always dreaded. My father always expected to see me in top three at the very least, though I doubt being third would've pleased him anyways considering he was always second.

"Even top five would be something!" I remember him saying one year when I returned home for holiday. "You can't even make it onto the scoreboard! Not even top twenty!"

And don't even get me started on the ANGER that rose from the depths of his soul when he saw the name "Nightbreed" pop up on the ranking for the first time in actual decades. And not just anywhere on the ranking, number one. Wizard of the Year. In his first semester at Milkweed Academy, Sigmund Nightbreed had managed to shoot straight to the top. He'd been the prodigy my father always wanted me to be. Seeing that surname seemed to trigger something in him worse than anything else. Nightbreed. The name he'd always been second to, back for another generation of humiliation to the Bloodworth-Thomason name, even though I wasn't even at the same caliber. The name just made him snap and when I thought he couldn't get any worse, he did.

I knew who Sigmund was as soon as he entered our classroom as a transfer student. I didn't know him as a person, I knew him as a lineage. I knew more about him than he knew about himself walking into Professor Flan's room with a clueless expression written across his face. Before the academy's annual Family Day at the end of term, Sigmund had sat me down in the dorm we shared and had spoken to me about all he'd recently found out about his family. I remember him showing me an old yearbook and pointing out members of his family that I'd always heard about, but never seen faces to.

"My father actually told me we come from a long line of really powerful sorcerers. We've always been top in our class. That's my great grandfather. He was top of his class the entire time he spent at the academy. Wizard of the Year, every year. I never knew about him till recently. In fact, I never knew about my lineage at all till recently.."

"Then how did you think you came to be of the occult? By chance?"

"Actually...ja."

I knew about the great grandfather, the grandfather, his father and every witch to marry into that family because of my hateful and utterly spiteful family. Because Sigmund's father, Freud Nightbreed, had married a normal woman and not a high ranking witch like the other men in his family, he'd been banished to normality and for the first time, someone else had the chance to take Wizard of the Year. Still, my father failed and he continued to fail every year into his own graduation. Nightbreed was back again, a surname that had haunted and followed him all his life. And the name was more alive than ever with the newly found fame the family had acquired in the normal world in addition to the realm.

With disappointment after disappointment, this was the final straw for my father. And not just for him to be honest, for me too. Now here we were, physically fighting one another on the stairwell leading down to the cold basement were my bedroom resided.

"GET OFF OF ME!"

"Not your father figure, huh?! GET OUT!"

"GET OFF OF ME YOU BLOODY MAD MAN!"

"GET OUT!"

The way he was pulling at my arm was hurting me. Out of anger, I heated my hands up with a flame trick Sigmund had taught me during our time as roommates and grabbed my father's arm where he'd been holding me. I heard my mother gasp at the top of the flight when she'd spotted the fire. He jerked back immediately, which gave me time to get away and jump down the rest of the stairs.

"THE BLOODY BASTARD JUST BURNED ME!"

I closed and locked the door to the bottom of the basement before he could make it down after me, but I knew that wouldn't hold him off for long. I grabbed whatever I could, including a second bag, and hastily shoved everything in. A couple extra items of clothing, my crystal ball, my piggy bank, random magic books and a parka jacket, which I pulled onto my body to save space in the bag. Before I could zip the jacket close, my father broke through the door of the room, sending splinters of wood across the span of the area. Immediately, I rushed to the back door, but he'd taken hold of one of my bags again and tugged me back. I grabbed the handle of the door as tight as I could.

"YOU WANT ME TO LEAVE AND I'M LEAVING!" I screamed, my voice quickly going horse. "WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?!"

"NONE OF THIS BELONGS TO YOU ANYMORE!" He shouted back at me, referring to the scraps of belongings I'd managed to collect. If my piggy bank hadn't been in the bag he was tugging, I would've just let it go, but I needed it. Every cent. Now I had to fight again.

I blasted him with fire, a move he quickly avoided. In return, he actually shocked me. It wasn't a baby shock either. In that moment, I felt like I could feel every nerve in my body from root to tip, heat up. The bones in my body practically went to jelly. And just pain. A shooting, burning hot pain straight up my spine. An unthinkable action from father to son. Considering all relations were officially dead between us, I did my best and managed to grab him through the shockwaves. If you know anything about science, you know electricity travels. That middle aged man couldn't take much of his own medicine and he actually seemed to lose grip of himself before finally stopping the current altogether.

We both fell back in opposite directions, our hair practically standing on end and the nauseating smell of burnt skin filling the room. While the man I'd called "father" struggled to collect himself, I picked myself up slowly, pulled my bags over my drooping shoulders and staggered to the back door again. Everything was numb, I was exceptionally light-headed and my vision was an absolute blur, but I refused to stay here any longer.

"T-that's the last time..." I muttered, gripping the handle of the door for support. "That's it..."

I don't even know where I found it in me to climb those steps, or speak words, but I managed. My mother watched me stagger and eventually fall over into the garden. Surprisingly, she rushed over to help me stand, grabbing my hands to pull me up. I felt her slip a piece of paper into my hand, but before I could question her, she'd already turned back into the house and promptly shut the door. More than likely, she didn't want my father to catch her assisting me. I decided to just get away from the home and as far as I could before even opening my palm to inspect anything, so I pushed the paper into the pocket of my parka. I didn't want my father to reach me again. I didn't have it in me anymore to fight again. I knew I wouldn't win that fight. He'd kill me.

Though I fell a couple times, I walked and I walked for a long time. I didn't care about the looks and glances I'd received from neighbors as I passed. I was sure they could hear the commotion coming from my parent's home. I just kept walking. I wasn't even sure where I was going, I just knew I needed to keep going and I needed to breathe. Nightfall was quickly approaching by the time I finally stopped and collapsed. I had made it to the town square and looking down at my watch under the sleeve of my pullover, I'd been walking for about forty-five minutes. I couldn't stay on the ground and I'd noticed a bench a few feet away. So close, yet so far away. Again, I dragged myself onto my feet and finally settled on the bench with the heaviest groan I had ever allowed to escape from my body. I let the bags I was holding drop to the ground as I laid back on the bench.

"Ahhh..."

Remembering the paper in my pocket, I reached into it and unraveled the small piece of paper. There was a name and a phone number written in blue ink.

"Uncle Arthur?"

The name was familiar and my brain recognized it in a negative connotation, but I couldn't put my finger on why. One thing I could recall was that I hadn't seen him since I was very young in our normal world home, which would explain the telephone number rather than the crystal code you'd typically use for crystal ball communication. I looked around the square for a pay phone, but I didn't spot one. I knew for a fact that the train station had telephones, but that was at least another half hour walk from the town square. I didn't exactly want to fly, still being light headed and all, but at this point, what choice did I have? Night was fast approaching.

After a few deep breaths, I stood up and conjured my broom. Conjuring the broom, alone, took a lot out of me, so I sat back down again. After some more time, I collected my bags, hopped on and took off into the sky, careful not to crash into anyone around. By the graces of the universe, I made it to the platform at the train station without crashing into anyone or landing horridly. There was change in the pocket of my parka and I used it to quickly make the call at the first payphone I came in contact with. I didn't have much energy anymore and I had to lean against the door of the booth for support.

The phone rang...

...and rang...

...and for the first time in my life, I actually prayed for someone to answer because I wasn't sure if I had anymore loose change anywhere to try a second time.