A pink unicorn trotted close, eyeing us for a moment before whinnying at the stallion as he pressed his nose against my neck. The stallion snorted in a way that seemed weirdly dismissive and the pink unicorn stamped her foot before moving into the trees to our left.
“Stop it Tyler!” Sofia’s voice came from the trees the pink unicorn had just entered and I flinched in surprise, wondering where the hell she’d come from.
The silver unicorn pushed his face against my chest again and I ran my hand along his neck in response.
“They don’t know what you are!” Sofia said angrily as she stomped out of the bushes with her skirt on backwards and her shirt only half done up. She continued buttoning it as she stalked towards us barefoot, glaring at the silver unicorn like he’d done something to offend her.
“Be careful you don’t scare him,” I began but the unicorn beside me let out a snort which sounded annoyed before suddenly lurching towards me and turning into a boy with frosted tips in his hair and a huge grin on his face. He also happened to be butt naked which apparently didn’t phase him in the slightest. My hand, which had been pressed to the unicorn’s neck, was now planted on his chest. I snatched it back with a cry of disgust and Darcy let out a scream, jerking backwards and falling on her ass.
“Well now we’ve gotten the foreplay out of the way, are you girls going to be coming back to my room?” Tyler asked me and Darcy with a wink.
“You were a unicorn!” Darcy yelled in confusion as my brain struggled to comprehend what had just happened.
“Pegasus,” Tyler corrected. “And you two were all over me.” His grin was widening if that was even possible and I suddenly caught on to what he was saying. The beautiful creature we’d just been petting had actually been him.
“Did you nuzzle my chest?” I asked in disgust.
“Yeah,” Tyler replied, dropping his gaze to my breasts which were thankfully hidden beneath my shirt.
My fist snapped out on instinct and I caught him unprepared, hitting him in the jaw and sending him stumbling back.
“Shit!” he swore, clutching his face.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Darcy demanded as she regained her feet and moved to stand shoulder to shoulder with me.
“Hey, how was I supposed to know that you didn’t realise what I was?” Tyler asked as he started to back up. “You seemed just as into it as me.”
“That’s because we thought we were stroking a wild animal not getting molested by some horse-faced weirdo,” I snarled.
Sofia snorted in amusement at my dig and Tyler kept backing away as Darcy raised her hands at him threateningly.
“Okay, okay, I’m sorry,” Tyler said placatingly. “I’ll get out of your hair.”
He lurched forward like he was going to fall over but before his hands could hit the floor they turned into hooves and the rest of his body transformed into the beautiful silver Pegasus again.
I couldn’t help but stare as he trotted up the hill towards the rest of the herd and Sofia offered me an apologetic shrug.
“Sorry about him,” she muttered. “Shame you can’t choose who gets to be in your Order.”
“You were the pink Pegasus?” I asked in realisation and she nodded shyly.
“Yeah. We replenish our power by flying through the clouds and I was just charging up before our Fire Elemental Class next,” she explained, like turning into a goddamn flying unicorn was no big deal.
I struggled for something to say about that but I just couldn’t think of a damn thing.
“Actually, I think we’d better get going,” Sofia continued, breezing past our shock like she hadn’t noticed it. “We’ve only got twenty minutes until class begins and the Fire Arena is all the way at the south end of the grounds.
“I don’t have Fire next,” Darcy said as she glanced at her timetable on her Atlas. “I’ve got Air. I think Diego said he’d be there too though.”
“That’s good. At least there are two normal people in this place for us to talk to,” I said, although as Sofia headed off to find her socks, shoes and blazer in the bushes, I had to wonder if normal really applied to someone who spent their spare time with hooves.
Darcy gave me a knowing smile as she pulled up the map to her next class on her Atlas and she said goodbye to Sofia and me as she took a path that led to the east of the grounds. I was a little disappointed to be heading in separate directions for our very first real magic class but it was one of only a few where we would be separated.
Sofia fell into step with me as we headed towards House Ignis and the Arena beyond it where we were about to have our first Elemental lesson.
It took a while to cross out of Earth Territory and into Fire Territory in the south But Sofia kept me amused with facts about her Order as we went and I slowly recovered from my shock.
The midday sun shone down on the home of the fire students as we drew close to it and my lips parted in surprise. Last night it had been so dark that I’d only really seen the entrance to the building with the multiple fires ruining my night vision and blocking my view of the rest. What I hadn’t realised was that from the first floor up, the building was entirely made of glass in varying shades of yellow, orange and red which all blended together to give the impression of a huge, glimmering fire.
“From above it looks like a star,” Sofia commented, noticing my attention on the building.
“How did they create such a thing?” I asked in wonder. No doubt magic was involved but I just couldn’t picture the amount of work that had gone into it. The design alone boggled my mind.
“Fire magic of course, and I think there was probably some dragon fire involved too. We’ll learn more about magical infrastructure in our sophomore year.”
“You mean we’ll learn to make things like that?” I asked eagerly, unable to tear my eyes away from the magical building. As we walked, the sun caught on different pieces of the glass and it almost looked like it was truly burning.
“Well creating that might be a little ambitious,” Sofia laughed. “But we will learn to use our Elemental magic more subtly for creation, yeah.”
I couldn’t help but grin at the idea of that.
We passed Ignis House and followed the path around through the Fire Territory where the landscape was rocky and dry. I hadn’t had time to explore Air or Water Territory yet but I had glimpsed a huge forest to the east and a sweeping lake to the west on my way to Cardinal Magic earlier.
A creeper filled with bright red flowers clung to a wall of black lava rock to my right and I noticed more plants peppered around too. Although the fire landscape seemed barren at first, the harder I looked, the more beautiful it became.
We moved along a crevice cut between two rock faces which glimmered with yellow and gold minerals.
“That’s brimstone,” Sofia said, noticing my interest again.
“You’re a walking talking encyclopaedia, you know that?” I teased, not that I was complaining. I had zero idea what I was dealing with in this place and her knowledge was invaluable to me.
“I like facts. I’m a Sagittarius which helps; we love learning new things and are usually pretty intelligent,” she replied with a smirk.