8 Trouble Brewing in Topaz

It was close to two in the afternoon and the Main Office was bustling with people. Professors and assistants mingled with the office staff, going in and out of various doorways, carrying scrolls, and laptops, and stacks of papers.

Here and there, a stray student meandered about, no doubt, running errands for the faculty. It was such a mundane scene that it looked all the more out of place against the setting of the Main Office, a massive white building with huge marble pillars fronting four double-wide black doors.

The Main Office had originally been built as a live theater, showing musicals and plays for the residents of the City of Topaz in the early days.

At that time, the Academy was a tiny entity, occupying a single building in the heart of Topaz. With a growing population of students and lack of adequate facilities, a decision was then made to develop the area abutting against the hills, turning it into a campus to house the students and faculty of the Academy for the Study of Magikal Arts.

The theater had been retained and repurposed for use as the school's Main Office. It had undergone extensive remodeling to make it useful, but enough of the original quaint charm of the theater had remained so that the front lobby area was still recognizable as a theater lobby.

The Academy had wisely chosen to retain the colorful wall-to-wall carpet depicting a multitude of colored Mardi Gras beads scattered at random across a dark purple background. There was still shiny foil wall paper with a harlequin pattern of green, purple, and gold, over which various bejeweled and gilded masquerade masks hung at various junctures.

On the front-facing wall was a huge oval mirror with a sculpted, gilded frame that depicted people in various poses of sexual intercourse.

Since it was located in a school setting, one of the staff members had taken to putting magikal clothing on all the carved people, but it only made the images look bizarre and even more curious-looking.

"Where do you want me to put this?" I asked the front desk clerk, a cute blonde girl around my age, wearing jeans, a tee shirt, and a black beret. She spared me a bored glance, shrugged, and pointed to a spot in between a large semi-nude marble sculpture of Bacchus and a tall art deco fountain splashing pink water down a metal cheese grater, into a concrete base that had been shaped and painted into the likeness of a Spam can.

I glanced at Bacchus' naked butt and then turned to inspect the cheese grater fountain dripping pink water into the meat can.

And then I looked at the cactus.

I shrugged. It wasn't my call. I was not the designer of this funky place.

I pushed the cactus into place between the two dubious art pieces and then I went back to the front desk clerk to get her signature. Once my business was done, I looked around, trying to find the red-haired woman and her malamute to thank them.

"Were you looking for the lady who was here with the dog?" the front desk clerk asked.

"Yes. Did you see where she went?"

The girl nodded. "She told me to tell you that she had some important business to take care of and she left."

Well, that was that. I thanked her and left the Main Office. I needed to hurry. I only had a few hours left to do the last of my assignments before I went looking for the Osiris twins.

Next on the agenda was taking Magus Asada out to the koi pond.

I always enjoyed this assignment, but today, I had the added complication of having to deal with Alan's dolly. Since the koi pond was only two blocks away from the Main Office, I decided to fulfill that assignment first before going all the way back down the hill to the Hydroponics building to return the cart.

I made my way back out of the Main Office with my dolly and paused to get my bearings. To get to the koi pond, I had to cut through The Esplanade, a huge paved walkway that connected most of the centrally-located buildings on the Main Courtyard.

On a normal day, it was an easy walk in the park. Today, however, there was an excited and agitated crowd outside the Amphitheater to the right of the Main Office, and it was neither the student body nor the staff members.

Judging from the number of mages in their bright House and Discipline colors, it looked as if there had been a meeting called for the assemblage of the Council of Mages.

My eyes flickered through the crowd, picking out the various members of the prominent mage families comprising the seven Houses, and six of the seven Heads of Magik Disciplines. They were all commingled about the Esplanade, their faces a mixture of apprehension and perplexity.

It was obvious, even to the casual observer that something was very out of the ordinary.

I scoured the crowd, and with only a couple of notable exceptions, all the familiar faces were present.

There was Professor Quimby Head of the Alchemy Discipline, in his usual white lab coat, with his usual unruly salt-n-pepper hair. He was smoking his pipe and chatting up a storm with Professor Morton, head of Thaumaturgy, whose greasy black hair and dark swarthy face always made him look like a dumpy dark mole on the best of days.

They passed by and I caught a few words about some unfortunate situation regarding the primates misbehaving in front of visiting dignitaries.

I choked back a laugh. So it was back to that prank.

I always thought it was hilarious, the way it affected the adults far more than it did any of the students.

Truth was, if the professors and the Heads of Disciplines had not made such a big brouhaha out of it, the apes would have never even realized it was anything worth fussing over and the situation would have blown over in a matter of days.

Instead, it had dragged on for months and was now completely out of control.

I was still chuckling over this when I heard the high-pitched imperious voice of Professor Pomello passing by me.

"This better be good. Who would call a meeting with only fifteen minutes of lead time? I had to send my students home, ten-minutes into class."

I turned just in time to see her drifting by accompanied by the the tall and muscular Professor Nimitz, a playboy demigod with long brown hair, classic jawline, and elegant noble nose.

"It's okay, Annette," Professor Nimitz responded. "We only have to put up with it for a couple of hours and then we get to hear the Koubaesha and Shaibadon concert afterwards. I hear it's highly anticipated."

I smiled at his reply. The cool cat was at his best.

Nimitz was, by far, the best looking professor on campus. He was so far-out and totally cool in his colorful gypsy rag dress and beaded barefoot sandals.

I could not help staring at him in fascination as he walked past, his dress fluttering in the wind and giving off the scent of wild freesias. He was the one reason for the sudden uptick of students, both male and female, who wanted to major in Necromancy, a normally somber and unlikely field of study for the coolest kids in school.

I didn't blame them. He made Necromancy look glamorous.

"Nana! Are you here for the meeting too?" I heard a soft voice calling from behind.

I smiled, recognizing Professor Jonesbarry's voice. He reminded me of a jolly, light-hearted, nimble harlequin, with a jocular, thin, elvish soul, a hook nose, curly brown hair, and bright lavender eyes.

Jonesbarry was my favorite mathematics teacher even though he mostly taught upper level mathematics and astronomy to the seniors.

"Oh no, Professor Jonesbarry. I'm on my way to my weekly session with Magus Asada."

"Ah, the oft absent and enigmatic Lady. Please tell Kim Asada I send my regards. I only ever see her via scri-visuals any more."

"I will."

Professor Jonesbarry pursed his lips. "In this case, though, I wished she were here to do some auguring for us. We are in the thick of seriously sticky things and we have no clear guidance from anyone at the top."

"But Professor Jonesbarry," I scratched my head, "you ARE one of the people at the top."

"Ah!" He waved a dismissive hand. "I'm just a mage who happened to be free of obligations of the familial type, and Blackstone harvests my free time to the limit. I have been doing a great deal of the chores that would usually be his to shoulder, but I have very little power to act on my own."

I nodded, realizing for the first time that Professor Jonesbarry had been substituting for the elusive Dean Blackstone at every function, meeting, and assembly that I had ever been to. He was not the Dean, but he had been doing most of the heavy lifting.

"How do you know we're in a sticky situation?"

"I am still Head of the Astrology Discipline. Although we do not, and cannot, see with clarity, the visions that Augurors are able to, we can still predict general patterns and huge cycles which perpetually repeat, mirroring the movements of the celestial bodies."

He leaned even closer. "Mark my word. Something of great magnitude is about to happen, and it is scheduled to occur at this precise moment in history. This is according to every star chart and star-scry-visuals I have analyzed."

I raised my eyebrow. "Have you told anyone?"

"Do you think anyone listens to someone who portends great upheavals?" He shook his head. "Those who are holding the power reigns do not want anything to change. They are the most conservatives of the conservatives! But I have to tell someone or I will burst at the seams!"

"You can tell me."

Professor Jonesbarry inclined his head and muttered to me in a conspiratorial tone. "Topaz is in for some serious trouble, and one which we are unable to contain. We have only a very short time before something major happens. Something catastrophic. I would tell you to leave this place, but I have no idea where you could go that would be any safer." He heaved a great, troubled sigh. "We are living in extremely chaotic times."

"But Professor, isn't there an ancient mage saying, Heroes arise from chaotic times?"

He snorted. "Those heroes that the ancient mages spoke of went six-feet-under before they were able to earn that posthumous title--little good it did them. Personally, I would leave the hero-ing to others more suited to the job."

I nodded. I was a disabled mage. What sort of hero could I possibly be?

He sniffed. "You and I, we are little cogs in the big wheel of fate. The chance of us doing anything heroic is next to nil. Let others have the glory. We need to stay safe and live to fight another day."

"Is anyone aware that there is trouble in Topaz?"

"Of course. Not everyone is clueless, and there have been measures put in place to alleviate certain situations, but between you and I, this smelly situation where we have to invite outsiders to solve our internal issues is a bad, bad idea. It will come back and bite us." He darted a quick, surreptitious glance at a group of mages at the periphery of the crowd. "You see those black suits over there?"

I was about to look at the direction he indicated but he stopped me with a hurried hush. "No, no, no. Don't look at them. I don't want them to know I'm talking to you about them."

I kept my head still, moving only my eyeballs.

There, in the midst of the colorful array was a group of mages, both male and female, dressed in crisp, tailored, black business suits and dark sunglasses. I knew they were mages because I could see the telltale sign of the faint swirls of the mage energy patterns.

As far as I could tell, however, they did not look as if they were Topazians.

"Who are they and where are they from?" I asked in the same hushed whisper as Professor Jonesbarry.

"They are part of the group of mages who live outside of Topaz. They call themselves Mage Elites. I can't stand the organization because, as you can see," he cocked an eyebrow, "it implies that those who are not part of their Elite group are thereby relegated to lesser status, an inferior social standing, so to speak."

"So...what kind of trouble is Topaz in?"