We returned to school under escort. Officer Royce split us into pairs and personally walked alongside, nothing more than worried that we would try to escape. Rightly suffered! If I were alone, this Incubus mug would have lost me in a minute, but now I could not leave Lady Miranda Mirth, shedding tears because of a frustrated wedding.

- We booked the day and time in the main temple of the capital for the year-and-and. The imperial oracle calculated an auspicious date for the ceremony-and-and-and, another such will not be boo-oo-oo-det!

A cloud appeared above the howling Miranda, so far imperceptible and light as a feather, but I knew what it would transform into if the adept did not calm down.

- Nonsense! I'm sure your father will negotiate with the oracle, and a generous donation will help find an equally auspicious date.

- And with the guests, how to-s-yt? Mother sent out invitations six months in advance. - Miranda looked around in a haunted manner and whispered: - I know for sure, now everyone will start whispering that they abandoned me.

- Don't start! Everyone knows that your Roland is crazy about you. Just remember what an amazingly beautiful set he sent you last month,” I said quickly and, seeing that my attempts to calm Miranda were not successful, furtively poked the Army ahead of me in the lower back.

The guy turned around, saw a cloud spreading over the adept, nodded understandingly and created exactly the same over his head. Although no, George's cloud was square and with eyes, and a long tongue protruded from its open mouth. Having created an illusion, Voisky stumbled out of the blue, pretended to fall and literally collapsed on an unsuspecting classmate. Strong male hugs helped create another cloud already above Icarus's head, and then the information began to be transmitted along the chain. A minute later, light snow-white "lambs" hovered over many SHIP graduates. The guards frowned, but did not comment on what was happening. And then George's cloud stuck out his tongue again.

— Aaa! He's mocking me! the suspicious Miranda howled, causing her own cloud to spread and begin to rapidly turn into a menacing cloud.

The trooper turned around, sighed repentantly, and quickly darkened his illusion. None of the guards should have guessed that Lady Miranda Mirth was not in control of her gift. Her illusions often arose suddenly and at the wrong time.

Miranda was sent to our school by her parents so that the girl could learn to control spontaneous releases of power, but she could not achieve the desired result. However, the teachers never found out about this thanks to the timely help of classmates. I myself several times went instead of Miranda to the exam and passed the practicum - the not limited in funds, the daughter of the count was my best client.

“Myra, honey, remember the main thing - the beautiful shiny wand that you will definitely get,” I whispered. You just need to calm down...

Miranda froze in half a step, pressing her hand to her stomach.

“Nine months from now, I could rock a baby in my arms, and because of this ghara incubus…”

Thunder struck, and Miranda's cloud spilled onto the ground in an illusory rain, I was on the alert and deftly opened the same illusory umbrella over us. The guys did not blunder either, and now thunder rumbles were heard over our procession.

“Sun, Officer Royce has nothing to do with it, he's just a messenger. Although ghar, what else should I look for, - I muttered angrily through my teeth.

- No, girls, I'm also responsible for the delivery! And if you don't stop the rainy tantrum, I'll pack it in the portal without personal belongings!

The furious officer Royce studiously ignored something dark as an ink blot, flickering a little further away, but clearly at the level of his physiognomy. Something was spitting tiny balls of lightning that were trying to hit him on the nose. Illusions could not harm, but the eyes blinded qualitatively.

Without personal belongings, he threatens to send me to Karagat. Scared the hedgehog with his bare ass! Yes, I'm not going to this Karagat at all. Nothing to do in an elite military academy for someone whose GPA is way below average!

The preparations were nervous: I rushed from room to room and urged the girls on. If Tiana's personal belongings fit into a small bag, then Aria, Kasmina and Miranda could not choose outfits. And that's just the dresses! There were also jars of cosmetics, jewelry, shoes, hats, school supplies.

Aria flatly refused to part with a collection of pens, gilded bookmarks, chalk holders and multi-colored ink. Here she packed them especially carefully, wrapping each jar in a rag - it will still break during the passage through the portal.

“Ari, you are from the wrong beginning.

“Do you think you should wrap the feathers too?”

I took a deep breath and reached into her closet. Boots! Aria needed warm shoes and clothes. It was here, in the south of the empire, that the climate was mild all year round, winters with little snow, and summers cool, and in Karagat even now there was snow in the mountains.

The boots were found under the wall, there was also a bag with woolen pants and a warm jacket. At the beginning of the year, we were taken on an excursion to the foothills - to admire a real snowstorm, so that later we could create our own, already illusory.

- Put it on! “I threw things to Aria.

— Is it cold in Karagat? Everything came to Aria with a huge delay.

I suspected that part of the problem lay in the soothing drops she took at night to keep her from having prophetic dreams.

- Coldly! Whatever you put on is yours,” I grumbled and hurried to Miranda's room.

Eh! Hint to the girls that they are unlikely to have separate chambers in Karagat.

Miranda hadn't even started getting ready yet, she was making a list. It was a long instruction for a visiting maid. Three times a week, girls from the city dropped in at the academy to help our clumsy with everyday little things like a torn off button or a hole in a stocking. Household magic was not taught at school, there were no attendants, so I had to get out.

- What are you upset about? They gave you half an hour to get ready!

“I left two dresses for the laundry last week, and I still have to remember to pick up a pair of shoes from the shoemaker from Flower Street and give the amber earrings for repair. One of the clasps broke. Miranda rearranged the box of earrings in a prominent place.

- What shoes? What earrings?! Are you thinking about collecting things?

- So I already. Look at the door,” she languidly waved towards a fashionable bag, more reminiscent of a lady's handbag.

You can’t put anything more substantial into this than a change of underwear and a modest set of cosmetics.

- If you plan to buy everything on the spot, then do not count on the usual assortment in the shops of Karagat.

"I won't stay in this hole for long," Miranda retorted with a smile, without interrupting the list.

"Have you spoken to your dad yet?"

- Yes. He's sure it's a mistake. Everyone knows that no one more serious than court illusionists and capital decorators has been let out of our school for a long time. Dinara, be realistic: where are we, and where are the fighting magicians of Karagat. This is the future military elite. What kind of joint development of skills can we talk about?

About none. The militants will smear the illusionists on the wall in the very first second of the training battle, solely so that they do not get under their feet. No matter how you look at it, the order for joint exercises looked very strange.

“Your father is sure that our commander-in-chief is a bit confused like that?” The age is not the same. Sclerosis is getting stronger, insanity is somewhere nearby.

Miranda looked at me in surprise, and then laughed out loud.

“What a nice characteristic for a First Gloom Paladin.

“The First Paladin is also for me, sand has been pouring out of him for a long time,” I snorted.

"Lord Adamant Varian Lien was our emperor's tutor," Miranda said with obvious admiration.

- I'm saying it's been a long time.

I heard a lot about Lord Lien from my father, and these statements were not the most flattering. Dad called Adamant Lien a stubborn, vindictive son of a bitch, incapable of making the slightest concessions. The army adored him, but ministers and diplomats wanted to hang themselves when the lanky figure of a black paladin appeared on the threshold of the meeting room. He always appeared suddenly and was able to destroy in a matter of minutes what had been created for more than one month. The worst thing is that the emperor listened to his former mentor and allowed him to poke his thoroughbred nose into foreign policy.

It got from our commander in chief and neighbors. The ice ifrits, who dared to send assassins to the young future emperor, were still paying, the light elves, who swung at a piece of the territory of the allied kingdom of Azroth in the midst of the black pestilence, trembled with horror at the mere mention of the name of Lord Adamant Lien. But his most irreconcilable position remained with regard to the dark ones. It was because of Lord Lien that I was forced to hide my dark gift behind harmless illusions.

So far, I have been able to mask uncontrolled surges of power, but I understood that this could not continue indefinitely. To learn how to manage the gift, I needed my father's notes and books from his library. Every week this year, I went to the local portal and was transported to the capital. I infiltrated the ancestral mansion, cracked the security on the laboratory doors, and almost managed to open the cache. Actually, I was going to devote my summer holidays to opening the cache. In the capital, I already had a rented room, and some savings should have helped to hold out until the start of the school year. Here I am escorting the girls and I myself will go through the portal.

“Veria-a-an,” Miranda’s languid sigh sounded so quiet that I didn’t pay attention to it at first until they shoved a number of the capital’s newspaper under my nose.

What a nightmare! The sight of the armored man waltzing through the hall made me shudder. Interestingly, no one told him that poking into the ballroom in pieces of iron, completely studded with spikes, is at least impolite? His partner, a frail lady in a light green dress, did her best to keep her distance.

She's lucky. It says here that the First Paladin was only one dance late.

- Lucky. What remained intact. How did the security service let him through? One careless movement, and - alas, your son slipped himself, ran into my glove and cut his throat.

- You do not understand. It's Lord Lien!

“I took the third module in history from Professor Blacks and I know what the Dark Alliance owes to Lord Lien, but is not obliged to approve of his methods,” I rapped out.

In a newspaper article, Lord Adamant Lien was referred to as the Black Dragon Slayer. So, then, the conflict with the winged lizards was resolved with the participation of the army. And this is when my father put so much effort into preventing a military clash!

— Dinara, what are you doing? Miranda took the newspaper away from me. - This is just a picture, and not the best. There is no need to look as if Lord Lien himself is about to jump out of him and bite your head off.

He won't take a bite, it's in his power to do something worse. Of course, I did not say this out loud, but hurried to check how Kasmina was going.

I was sure that after Aria and Miranda nothing would break me, and yet Kasa managed to surprise me - she wasn’t in the room at all. At the door, a half-empty bag stood forlornly. Cursing, she went in search of a classmate. She couldn't escape, but Kasmina always had a heightened sense of justice, coupled with a desire to get to the bottom of the truth at all costs, so I was not mistaken in deciding to go up to the third floor of the administrative wing. Here was the office of Alsar Riolsky, our rector. The corridor was empty, only old Aglaya was busily poking around with a mop.

I remember how I was surprised in the early days at the absence of magical assistants in the school that make life easier for both students and teachers. There was no trace of everyday magic in the SHIP, bathed in illusions of various directions and durations. Later, I learned that these types of magic conflict and it is easier to protect young talents from everyday life than to deal with the consequences later.

— Aunt Glyanya, have you by any chance seen Kasya?

- I saw it. She is in the office of the authorities. It's just that she's sitting there.

- Why in vain?

- So our rector was immediately called to the capital as soon as your exam was over.

- And he, leaving everything, went to the city portal? I was surprised.

Alsar Riolsky by nature was a leisurely and suspicious person, if he had received an order even from the emperor himself, he would first have tried to find out whether the scroll had really been delivered from the palace office, what the situation was in the capital, and he definitely would not have allowed his students to be pulled out of the tavern with an order to gather in half an hour in some kind of Karagat!

- No, our rector did not go to the portal. Why does he need it, if the emperor sent a regular teleporter. That's right from the yard and went.

Everything inside me broke. So Miranda's father made a mistake, and the girls will indeed be taken to the military academy.

I was about to enter the rector's office when Kasmina and Mrs. Orton came out. More precisely, our professor of everyday illusions was clearly trying to escape from an overly sticky adept, clutching a high pile of folders to her chest.

“No, Mrs. Orton, I still don’t understand why such a hurry ...” Kasia asked monotonously.

"And you won't understand!" I have already explained everything to you five times. And to no avail! Ms. Orton stamped her foot angrily, which caused the stack in her hands to first squint, and then the folders, plucked from the tree, fell on the floor.

Our features! I knew this for sure, because I had already poked my nose into a personal file several times. I had to make sure that Alsar Riolsky did not suspect that an adept with a false guise was studying in his school of illusions.

Kasmina and I bent down to collect the folders, when suddenly Kasia gasped softly:

“Miss Orton, there is some mistake here. You took Dinara's personal file.

- No mistake. Our commander-in-chief ordered all SHIP graduates to appear in Karagat.

- So Dinara did not pass the profile exam!

- There was no order that the adept stays for the third year. Miss Orton smiled triumphantly. "Thought I'd let you taunt me further?" The smile faded from the professor's face, two ugly spots now reddened on his cheeks. “Fifty-six leveled illusions!” Fifty-six times you have made me a laughing stock! Ruined reputation among adherents! Do you think I don't understand what you're aiming for in my place?!

“So it was a business… nothing personal,” I blurted recklessly.

Ms. Orton shook with rage, she snatched my file from Kasmina and hissed in my face:

- I will do everything so that your foot is no longer in the THORN.

The loud chime of the bell, usually announcing the beginning and end of classes, announced that the time allotted for training had come to an end, and a voice amplified by magic reached us from the street:

“For those departing to Karagat, go down to the arch of the portal in a minute, otherwise I will use the aura binding.

Gharov incubus! He marked us like some criminals! Apparently, he really was afraid that we would run away.

— Dinara, things! Kasmina stared at me in horror.

Here's an ambush! I didn't mean to!

I turned to Mrs. Orton, calmly picking up the scattered folders, and in the next moment their number increased five times, and the real ones mixed with the illusory ones.

— Adept Lasart, what do you allow yourself!

- I'm buying time. Nothing personal either, I sang sweetly.

And she lied. This muck I did with great pleasure.

Officer Nathan Royce turned out to be a ghar, which did not exist in nature! He actually used the attract marks. Yes, I just managed to jump into the room and grab a bag with parting gifts from my classmates from the table, when the window swung open, and I was pulled out. And this is when I didn’t even get to the hiding place.

Throwing my bag over my shoulder, I clung to the countertop with all my strength, and the table in my room was strong, oak. So I soared above him, like a balloon. A sharp jerk of the connecting thread - and I wholeheartedly put my shoulder on the closed window, the sash of which I barely managed to slam shut. The delay was temporary, I managed to win ten or fifteen seconds at most, and they could not be lost! Pushing off the wall, I flew to the closet. At the very top, in the gap between the ceiling and the roof, was hidden a box hidden by magic.

There is! I did it!

I was just stuffing the box into my bag when the window flew open so abruptly that the glass cracked, and I was not just pulled, but pushed out with such speed that I forgot how to breathe!

The earth was approaching quickly and inexorably, I understood that the connecting thread would break as soon as my feet touched the ground, and then by inertia I would be dragged along the paving stones, and it would be good if I got off with my knees torn to blood. I spread my arms and prepared for a hard landing, when suddenly metal spikes sprouted from the ground. Long, sharp, they like to place them in the kill zone between the walls of the castle. Just went through last month. That's what I had to run into when landing!

I yelled loudly, feelingly and on the same note. Grohnu Army, could not conjure something less terrible! However, the illusion worked. My flight slowed sharply, and then I was gently lowered to my feet a little away from the metal pins.

“Thank you, Officer Royce. Am I late? I said with a particularly nasty undertone of politeness.

A visibly gray incubus jumped up to the pins and kicked one of them - of course, his boot went through an immaterial illusion. After spitting savoryly at his feet, Royce glared at me angrily and headed towards the now almost formed arch of the portal.

Ms. Orton was standing near the dimensional passage, clutching folders with the personal files of SHIP graduates to her chest.

“Officer Royce, everything is here as you ordered!” Psychological characteristics, report cards and ...

- Don't care! This is not for me. He took the folders from the professor and handed them to one of the guards. “So, kids, we split up into pairs and take turns stepping into the portal. And if someone dares to create at least one fucking illusion, they will greatly regret it.

The incubus looked pointedly in my direction. And I… I blew a kiss to the Army. Still, he saved me.

The latter approached the transition of the adept of the School of Illusions and Transformation. Miranda was again attacked by jitters, threatening to develop into a full-fledged hysteria. Mrs. Orton smiled so maliciously that I, too, began to perceptibly shake. Because of the petty revenge of the professor of everyday illusions, I was forced to go to a place where I would no longer be covered by the walls of the school shrouded in illusory magic.

I mentally told myself to relax. All problems must be solved as they come, the next surge of the dark gift may not happen soon. The main thing is to be less nervous. I defiantly turned away from Mrs. Orton. It stands here, gloating when we, girls of noble birth, are forced to go to the cold and already disgusted Karagat.

- Wait a minute! Officer Royce! I called out to the incubus. - You can not do it this way!

Officer Royce turned to me with a completely brutal expression on his face.

“Would you like to challenge the order of our commander-in-chief?”

“I want to find out how decorum will be observed in Karagat!” This is an institution for adepts of martial magic, and everyone knows the reputation of these subjects. Yes, they should not be allowed to decent girls! Do you think the head of the clans will be glad that we were transported without proper escort? What will happen to our reputation?

“Adept Lasarte, if you haven’t noticed yet, there are three boys per girl in your group!”

“But these aren’t battle mages!” - I said weightily, and stamped my foot. It was a prearranged signal for the girls.

"Officer Royce, my fiancé will be horrified," Miranda murmured. “He will think me a promiscuous girl.

“My father will protest to the emperor!” Aria picked up. “If they find out in the capital that we lived next to the battle mages, we’ll be finished!”

“And as a decent man, you will be obliged to marry one of us!” - Tiana blurted out a little off topic.

The last argument, however, was the most impressive for officer Nathan Royce. Turning visibly pale, he pointed at Mrs. Orton.

- You're coming with us!

We stepped into the arch of the portal to the screams of the professor of household magic, who, unlike us, did not even have time to collect things.