Ashwood University Chapter One - The University
Disclaimer
This story is a work of fiction, any resemblance with real life is just coincidence. It is a work meant to be funny, romantic and thrilling. If it offends your belief or religion I ask for forgiveness.
This story contains graphic descriptions of gay male sex. If that may offend you, or is illegal for your country I suggest leaving now. Sorry about my English. English is not my native language and I do not live nor the US or the UK. I would like to thank Kev for helping with the editing of the story for me.
This work is copyrighted and I ask that you do not copy, post or electronically download without my express permission. Here is Chapter One - Come on people let me know what you think by emailing your thoughts to mohamed180996@gmail.com.
I plan on updating Ashwood University every week, maybe more. It totally depends on how the story is received.
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Chapter One-The University
My story really begins on the fateful day that I arrived at Ashwood University. Any time before is of no interest and therefore is not recorded in this my story.
"I don't go further" The taxi driver said, as he stopped the car just before the bridge. He got out and took my bags out of the trunk.
"Why? Stopping here means I've got a five mile walk."
"Sorry lad, I don't go any further." He looked across the bridge, "If I were you, I would turn around and never look back. Come on let's go back; I'll even take you back for free!"
"No, I have to go. My new school is over there." I picked up of my bags ready to set off.
"Bye then and good luck. I meant the offer, the return trip would be free." The taxi driver saw my determination, climbed into his car and drove off as I started walking to the other side of the old bridge.
As the taxi drove away the driver said to himself, "Oh hell that is one dead boy." I never heard it, if I had I would have run for my life.
I must have been walking for an hour and the woods were getting darker and creepier by the minute. Worst of all my prosthetic leg was killing me. I'd lost my right leg in a car accident when I was ten years old. It was the same accident that my parents had been killed in.
Why a university is in the middle of these woods, right by Mount Baker and Mount Shuksan in Washington I will never know. It was almost on the brink of the North Cascades Park in the middle of nowhere. I lived in San Francisco, so I had to catch a plane to Seattle and then a bus, but the journey had been hell.
You see the bus to Billingham broke down near a town called Everett, where we had to stay the night. Finally, the next day I arrived and then there was a taxi drive to a place called Glacier. The taxi journey was almost an hour and a half long. Glacier is the nearest place to the University, but oddly the road crossed a river that wasn't on the map.
I knew of the university because my sisters went there. They don't know I'll be going to it as I kept it as a surprise. Suddenly my mobile phone rang. It was one of my sisters, Amelie or Ame as I call her.
NICK: Hey Ame. AME: Hey brother. How are you? NICK: Bad. The fucking taxi driver left me five miles away from my new school. AME: Why? NICK: I honestly don't know. How are you in your university? AME: Great NICK: Ok Ame I am going to hang up. I'll call you later AME: Ok
"Oh god!" I said.
"He wouldn't hear you here." A voice said.
"Who said that?" I asked, looking for the owner of the voice.
"I said that..." said an old man on a cart pulled by two horses. One horse was as white as snow, the other as black as the darkest night "...Where are you heading?" He asked.
"I'm going to Ashwood University." I said, thinking `Great, simply great, you are a genius Nick. You told a complete stranger where you're going.'
"Great, I work there. Want a ride?" He asked looking at my two suitcases and my backpack. "I think you need it."
"Thanks, that would be awesome!" I said, putting my bags on the back of the cart and climbing into the seat next to the driver. When I climbed the leg of my jeans rose so for a few seconds my prosthetic showed. I cover it as fast as I could. "My name is Nikolas, Nikolas Nikolayevich Afanasiev." I said, offering to shake his hand.
"You're the family of Nikolas Ilich Afanasiev?" As he spoke I wondered how he knew my father? I'm of Russian descendent and the second name is a modification of your father's name, it is called patronymic, Nikolayevich for Nikolas and Ilich for Ilya.
"Yes, he was my father. How do you know him?"
"He studied here. I was his teacher." The stranger said.
"Oh. I'm sorry I didn't know that."
"Where is he now?" So he hadn't heard about the accident.
"He's dead. He died with my mother in a car accident when I was ten."
"Was that where you lost your right leg?" he asked "Sorry, but it is hard to miss."
"No problem. I prefer that to pity. Yes, that was the accident that took my leg."
"I assume that your mother was Viviane De Lumiere?"
"Yes, how did you know?"
"She also studied here. They were deeply in love, but he graduated two years before she did. Circumstances made her have to get engaged to another man. They married and she took pregnant, but the man died soon after the wedding. The last I heard was that Viviane and Nikolas were together again."
"Yes, she had triplets. They study at the school, but they don't know I am Going to be attending."
"Amelie, Marguerite and Claire Andrei are your sisters?" I nodded, my sisters told me once that the school was small so I assumed that there aren't many triplets attending the school. "Nikolas, I have to ask a serious question. Do you believe in magic?"
What the fuck? Is this some kind of joke? "No! Magic does not exist." I replied.
He looked at me and stopped the cart, "You're lying."
"Maybe. I don't know. Why are you asking me this?" I was getting nervous. Of course I believe magic exists, but my psychiatrist said otherwise.
"I asked, because magic does exist. Nikolas your parents knew, they were wizards. This school is a mystical one..." I looked at him, "...all the things from fairy tales exist. I know is too hard to believe, but you should because if you received an invitation to study here it means you have magic.
"YOU are a wizard as well. Every year I take students that don't know about magic and show them the truth before they start school. You have suffered all of your life from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder – ADHD. You are clinically depressed. You suffer from hallucinations. They, I am afraid to say are not hallucinations. They are real. All that is happening is your body is telling you something is wrong. You have to believe me."
"You must be joking, right? All my life people have been saying that magic doesn't exist. Now you tell me it does, and that my parents and sisters are wizards. If this school is for magical beings as you say...OK so magic exists ... Where is it, show me!" I yelled at him.
"We're already here." As he spoke I looked forward and there it was, the most magnificent castle that I have ever seen. It was gorgeous. It had a lot of towers and hanging corridors. A whole side of the castle was full of ivy and creeper flowers. The other side had parts hanging from a cliff. The castle was at the top of the mountain and the cart just kept moving when we found a fork in the road.
The horses took the right path automatically and as they did we started to gain speed. Suddenly they took a curve and the road ended in front of us at a mountain wall ... but the horses didn't stop. They just kept going. I thought they were going to crash and I would surely die, but oddly we went through the wall. Literally it was like it was jelly. It felt weird. Seconds later we were on an open road again.
This was a brick road and there were street lanterns along the side. The woods here were not as thick, in fact it looked more like a fairy tale's forest. The forest was also full of animals; rabbits, deer, birds of so many colours, and glowing things that moved through the air, things that I later learnt were pixies.
Minutes later we crossed another bridge, but this one was beautiful and the river was clear. I saw the castle again. It was surrounded by a stone wall. A big silver gate opened to allow us entry and the second we passed through it, it closed again. Then a big hedge surrounded the whole castle, big enough to cover the lower parts, but there was another gate. This time it wasn't silver, it was gold.
When we entered the hedge wall, the castle was at full display. It had gardens, ponds, fountains and statues. This place was amazing. I saw a mermaid in one of the ponds, and I saw several animals that looked at me. One was a Grey Wolf, as big as a saint Bernard that transformed into a man. He was gorgeous.
I'll be honest with you, I am gay and this guy was gorgeous. He was shirtless, but he had pants on bummer! He was blonde and his muscular build made him well defined. Hey he didn't have a six pack...he had a fucking eight pack.
"He's a werewolf!" I pointed to no one in particular.
"No, a shape shifter. A wolf shifter being more accurate. Werewolves and other Were-kin are soulless beasts." Rectified the old man as I realized I didn't know his name.
"What is your name?" I asked.
"Elion, my name is Elion Aremi Ashwood. I am the headmaster of this university. Now I'm sorry, but I have to run. Dinner will be served in an hour at the banqueting hall. There you will meet with the rest of the freshmen year. Your bags will be waiting for you in your room." He then pointed to a Magnolia tree on a little hill.
"Your sisters group meets over there. Maybe you want to go over and talk to them before dinner." He waved his hand and my bags disappeared, followed by the cart. The horses were taken away by a pair of weird people, they looked exactly like the horses. One as white as snow and the other as black as the darkest night.
I started walking to the Magnolia tree. Suddenly I heard my sister laugh, it was Marguerite. I then I saw her blonde hair and the multicolored hair of Amelie. Last, but not least I smelled Claire's perfume. I give it to her, it smelt like oranges.
"Who are you?" Asked a girl as I got close to the tree. She had grey hair and yellow eyes. "This is a place for second year wizards." I assumed she was second year as well.
"My name is Nikolas; Amelie, Marguerite and Claire are my sisters."
"I do not believe you."
"You don't have too because he is my brother." Amelie said as she pulled me into a hug. "What are you doing here?" Claire and Marguerite had now joined us and hugged me.
"I will tell you, but we need to talk in private." I said.
"Ok." They said in unison. They were triplets, but they couldn't be more different. Physically they maybe the same, but mentally they are at worlds apart.
We walked to a pond, my sister knowing what was coming. Once we were out of earshot, I exploded "When the fuck were you going to tell me about magic?"
Amelie smiled, "Sorry Nick, but we thought that you didn't have magic. You never showed any powers."
I was fuming, "You all let me let me think that I was crazy and seeing things. If what that guy tells me is true, magic is a family thing. So... Grandmother, Aunt Cecilia and Uncle John ...All the fucking family and no one told me!" I was on the brink of tears by this point.
Claire took the lead, "First of all Uncle John is not a wizard. He is a sorcerer, more human than wizard. We didn't tell you because magic is dangerous. Knowledge is dangerous. You are going to turn 18 this year and after that time you will become a hedge wizard. A magicless being. You would be safe. We were going to tell you then. You know how hard it has been to keep this secret from you for 8 years? It was exhausting."
Marge (Marguerite) put her arm around me, "We didn't want to keep it a secret. We were doing it for your own good."
"When that man told me about magic...You know what was my first thought was? I am not a lunatic. You know what the second one was? My sisters lied to me. All my life I knew something was missing. When the invitation came to study here I thought it was a normal university, but no it's a fucking magic one.
"Because of all of the lies I can't do magic. I would know if I could, but I can't. So what is going to happen with me? I had one of the worst journeys of my life to get here. I have been walking for hours. My prosthetic and stump hurts and ... I need a fucking cigarette." Marge gave me a box of strong cigarettes, I took one, lit it and began to smoke, "Thanks." It calmed me.
After that I felt better. My sisters told me about everything in this school, and that I didn't have to be worried about not being able to do magic. If I was here it meant that I had magic one way or another.
Then the clock tower, oh yes I forgot to say there was a clock tower in the square near where we were standing, marked dinner time and the bells started ringing. My sisters and I went to the banqueting hall and they left me with the rest of the first year. There was around 150 boys and girls. If that was first year, the school was small indeed.
The banqueting hall was composed by six long tables, one for each year. Fifth year had only 60 people at it, and fourth had 80. Five tables were parallel with each other, then there was a table that stretched across the top of all five table and this is where the teachers were seated.
Every student was dressed in black except for freshmen, like me. The middle table was ours. Gradually the students took a seat, several sitting together as they seemed to know each other. Then there was a group that seemed lost. I decided to just sit in an empty space, after asking first if it was free.
The food appeared on our plates. It was delicious. I didn't know what everything was, but it all tasted awesome. "If I were you, I wouldn't eat those little black berries." The girl at my side said.
"Why?" I asked, scared that they were poisonous.
"They taste disgusting, but salamanders love them." It was obvious that I didn't know what the fuck a salamander was so she added "Salamanders are Fire Fairies" as she pointed subtly to a group of them. They looked kind of badass. "As I see you are new in this world my name is Syrena, Syrena Zieba." She had beautiful red hair, and a pair of emerald green eyes that glowed."
"Nikolas Nikolayevich Afanasiev. Why do your eyes glow?" I blurted out without t hinking first and she laughed.
"You certainly have a way with you...Many would think before they speak. My eyes glow because I'm a wizard as you are, but your eyes only glow occasionally."
"They do?" I looked at my reflection on my knife and my eyes glowed, just for a second or two. "WOW, but my sisters are wizards and I have never seen their eyes glow."
"It can be controlled, where are you from Nikolas?"
"Please call me Nick. I'm from San Francisco, but my father was Russian and my mother French. Apparently both were wizards, but I found that out only recently. You?"
"My mother was British, she was a mermaid. My father is a wizard. I was born in Poland and lived there for almost my entire life." As we kept talking I told her about my sisters and she told me that I had to go easy on them and she explained that what they did was the best way to treat a non-magic.
Suddenly there was like the ringing of a bell as a spoon was tapped lightly on a glass as the headmaster made his way to a podium at the head of the tables. "Attention... May I have your attention please?" Standing on the podium he could clearly be seen by all in the hall.
Once there was silence he continued, "Today starts a new year here at Ashwood. I am pleased that as I look on the faces of the new students I see not only great expectations, but great potential as well. As is tradition could we all move into the garden of Sairei for the sorting and evaluation ceremony of the new students."
Syrena explained, "Sairei was the goddess of wisdom, knowledge, literature and science. The infinite pantheon, as magic beings called them is formed by ten gods. Each god left us a group of celestial creatures. Creatures that once populated the earth, but now they are almost extinct. Of those mighty celestial beings, we are the descendants. For example, wizards and witches are descendants of genies and angels or genies and demons, fairies are descendants of elves. Wizards mixed with the rest of the races and this caused full on chaos."
Everybody stood up to leave in their different years, as expected the first year was the last. The garden of Sairei was a circular space surrounded by trees. It was dark outside so the garden was illuminated by lamps. The rest of the school were gathered in their different years in front of a big tree that stood on the middle of the garden. It looked like a great oak.
Beside the tree was a woman. According to Syrena, the woman was an Arboriloquenti, a green talker, tree speaker, and the tree was a talking tree. The celestial beings of Sairei.
The ceremony consisted on everyone of first year touching the tree. When they did the tree communicated with the woman and told her what you were. Most already knew, so it was simply a ceremony as far as they were concerned. The tree didn't really speak, only the Arboriloquenti could hear it, so...
Every time a student got sorted the others of the same species would cheer and celebrate. I watched vampires, fairies (sylphs, salamanders, undines, gnomes, floras, fauns and others), shapeshifters (bears, eagles, owls, cats, sharks, wolfs, yes and others).
Every time you went up to the tree they said your name and then your sort. I saw the wolf shifter from early, "Jonathan Wolfanger..." said the Arboriloquenti "...Shapeshifter, WOLF." All shapeshifters began to grow, howl and make every sound they could, and a group of wolf shifters turned into wolfs and howled at the moon.
"Assholes every last one of them, all shapeshifters. Especially the Wolfanger clan. They are royalty but they're not worth a penny." Syrena said, as her turn was announced.
She walked towards the tree, reached out and touched it, "Syrena Zieba, half celestial, mermaid, half wizard." There was a wave of whispers. "You are sorted as a WIZARD." Yelled the Arboriloquenti.
I was the last one to go forward. As I moved towards the tree I looked at my sisters, they were holding hands and looking at me. I nodded and they nodded back. I put my hand on the tree and I felt a wave of electricity. "Nikolas Nikolayevich Afanasiev..." said the woman and then looked at me, "...What the? ... Wizard." She said, but almost no one heard her. "WIZARD!" She shouted this time.
The ceremony was over. I talked for a while with my sisters, but it had been a long day and the need for sleep soon took over. The sleeping quarters for the first year students were in a tower on the east wing of the castle, it looked out towards the cliff. I found my room fast enough, because I was on the top floor and there were only two or three rooms up there. The sleeping quarters were mixed. So male, female, wizards, shape shifter, witches, sorcerers, vampires, fairies, everything in together.
Syrena was two rooms before mine and when I opened the door I knew my life here was going to be hard as Jonathan Wolfanger was in boxers in the middle of the room. In one of the beds was a guy I remembered being sorted as a witch. A salamander was smoking at the window and a guy was seated on the ceiling, a vampire. So five in each room.
I saw my things on the bottom of one of the beds. As I started towards it the vampire dropped from the ceiling in front of me "Hi, my name is Theo Amadeus." He said giving me a smile and offering his hand for me to shake.
"Nikolas Afanasiev." I said, shaking his hand.
He smiled, "The rest of the mates are Jonathan, Alexander (the witch) and MJ (the salamander)." He explained.
"Hi." Alexander said waving to me. The salamander looked at me and then looked out the window again.
Jonathan, smiled at me and shook my hand "Don't let MJ get under your skin. It is just him trying to look cool." I was in awe as this guy was even better up close.
The male bathroom was at the end of the hall, the door was on the rightside. I went to take a bath when all my roommates were asleep. Having taken of my jeans I then took off my leg. I sighed as it was sore. I started the shower and got in. The hot water felt incredible and worked its magic on my stump. After half an hour I decided to go back to my room.
I was going to sleep with my leg on, but it was super uncomfortable. Not being able to settle and moving around a lot trying I heard, "You know you can take that off?" Jonathan said moving toward me. He was shirtless, I don't think he own any shirts. "A vampire and a shapeshifter; we heard the sound of your leg long before we saw you." He smiled as I took the leg off and sighed.
"Thanks." I said to him
"Thanks you. Maybe now we can all get some sleep." Theo said. How odd, a vampire sleeping at night. I would ask Syrena tomorrow.
I had a dreamless night. Tomorrow will be a new day, a new school, and a new life.
___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ That's all for now folks ... This is Chapter one – Chapter two will follow soon.
Let me know what you think it really helps to inspire ...Write me with your feedback and comments mohamed180996@yahoo.es or mohamed180996@gmail.com ...The story will take a big turn soon I hope. Please let me know if you hate it, like it, love it, IDK.
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