The Academy was a tower of unparralel architechture with exterior colored midnight black and its height reaching into the sky tall enough to touch the gods. The structure was the most grand in Arquesia, it lay facing towards the furious Ocean of Ishmerio atop a profuse emerald cliff. The waves of the ocean had been savage for as long as anyone could recall or history had dated. Why Ishmerio the god of the ocean had been angered to such a degree as to bear such savage waves that ships were denied access to the western ocean of the north was an explanation none could answer with certainty.

The academy was encircled by a thick wall of towering rock enveloping the overcast light attempting to fully break through clouds of shadowy silver. Students of the academy clad in brown robes undifferentiated from one another formed a ring around a black robed man upon the dewy blades of bejewled grass. Fog rolled across the field like moonlight lit graveyards during the night obscuring farsighted view forcing the robed men to cluster into a condensed circle.

This was no ordinary academy, it was a magicians academy and home to students even after there teachings. As it had now been the residence of Demetri Nabokov the black robed man in the center of the circle for a myriad of years. He scolded a student with a vituperate finger of impatience at the students lack of focus. The student attempted to move a rock difficult enough for a fullgrown man to move physically, but the boy was to move the object with his will alone. "You all think that the only way to perform what you so rightfully name magic, to only be tapped into through incantations but I say this is not so. Yes these incantations may be a way of conforming the mind to the manipulation of what I have named Matter. Oh even at this age your minds are so set in there ways. I say this object may be moved without any incantation, you may make objects out of seemingly nothing, or turn a bright day into a ravaging storm of hale, and all these things the hale or whatever object you may form is made of this matter and this is not something I propose as theory this is what I propose to be fact!" Demetri paused to observe the faces of derision implemented upon his brownrobed students before continuing. "Even after all the wonders I have proven to you, of which we are capable of achieving you still doubt me with your unfathomable skepticism" he gazed as if seeking one who would believe his words. "We have all seen your amazing theories proven sir, and I for one have come to believe nearly any idea you may bring to me with conviction. I must say this theory seems as peculiar as any theory you have proposed. So forgive our lack of comprehension I implore of you, it is merely this outlandish avenue of thinking is still a bit foreign to us." the voice was of Donato Salvatore, rich and smooth rendered from his heritage as the son of a minor noble in Arquesia.

Donato's curly brown hair slickened moist in the morning mist, deep eyes of sea green bordered pupils of coal black, thin lips of pink curled into a smirk, a brown robe rippled in the small gusts of wind concealing a thin muscular frame cut to a sculpted definition, small hands of well trimmed nails scratched a flat chin of light stubble common to a boy of Donato's sixteen years of age. "Young Donato you are quite outspoken my boy, one day I just might discipline that brash tongue" Demitri smiled looking directly towards Donato the way a father may a son, for a moment Donato thought he may have even saw the old buzzard wink. "The point is that nothing should be foreign to a sorceror and no possibilities should be seen as incapable of reach, this is the philosophy I attempt to implement in you adolescents. New concepts must always be explored or the study of magic..." Demitri paused stressing the words magic which he believed to be a misleading term for what he had named the manipulation of matter. He whirled to meet the young faces of interminable doubt, he studied there visage as if memorizing them to recall upon at a later time. " Will then cease to evolve past what we then already know, but it would not be this magic that ceased to evolve it would be we who had discontinued evolving" Demitri spoke sharply.

Demitri cast eyes of lavender upon the rock, he intently stared at it for a moment, as if studying the crevices and worn texture. He folded stout arms across his chest whilst his cloak of black conformed to his thick forearms. He had begun to grow old in years, wrinkles pruned his tan leathery face, his hair had become completely bald on the top of his scalp with only minor traces of a few white as cloud hairs. He was still the large man he had once been as a boy, although much of that size now was retained by a large waste. Hi eyes suddenly shut, the brown robed boys watched the master magicians lips to see if he muttered an incantation, but they heard not a single word. Demirti's face strained in concentration, beads of sweat immediately moistened the wrinkled forehead slowly making its way to to the tip of his acuminated nose. The time stretched and impatience grew like water to a boiling point in the brown robes anxiously awaiting yet doubtful of any result forthcoming. The stone shifted a moment, Donato's thick eyebrows raised sensing what Demetri was about to perform. The stone raised high in the air, concurrent with a broad smile of accomplishment and pride etched in his demeanor. The boys gasped in astonishment, and watched the raised rock like it had been the most important moment of there inconsequential lives. The stone was then hurled across the courtyard, it landed skipping across the grassy fields will a dull thud. " Now perhaps your minds of unalterable ideals will allow the notion that not everything is written in stone, things can be changed boys and when tradition hinders the mind from evolving then it is no longer tradition it is an obstacle we must overcome. I do not see this as a stone, it appears to me as matter, the building block of all life. You see it as inanimate object of stone, unchangable but I say again this is not so. It is only a form of matter appearing as you see it before you in a guise of this composition and yet that is not what it is as I have proven to you today" Demitri reveled in the young faces of astonishment drinking in there admiration greedily. " Today you have witnessed but a step of proggress in the manipulation of matter and if you will but open your minds to the fact that I can help you reach further into the depths of this realm of infinite wonders, well I promise that you will learn much. That is all today, but we will reconvene on the morrow and I expect to see a more receptive audience of pupils before me " jocundity in the admiration he had captivated in his audience was barely held in check.