I scrambled to my knees as I rested my hands on either side of the front seats to look ahead, the road we had just been on which was muddy, claggy and rocky was now even, smooth pavement, surrounded by thick expansive forestry that seemed to go on for miles in all directions based on how we were on a hill of some kind, but far…far ahead was this massive square clearing where you could see the colorful dome roofs of buildings that I recognized the coloration of from the map as this…metropolis spread out immediately to the right of the school’s grounds. No skyscrapers per say, but from the distance we were at and the angle, I have no idea.

The road we were on soon merged into a very wide stately road, black streetlamps in mirrored pairs along the sides with three white globe lights along the tops, endless shopfronts, townhouses and other buildings covering the sides, immaculately kept sidewalks with firework like bursts of color from flowers everywhere. The streetlights were weirdly ornate in an almost theme-park degree with their ornateness and the complexity of them and were a weird turquoise tone, the streetlights themselves were softly scintillating glowing orbs of red, yellow and green in glass and bronze casing, everything was just…wrong looking and strange. I was able to see a crosswalk sign where the figure had wings off their back on it. Everywhere you looked were gardens, parks, statues, fountains and everything was…pristinely clean. As I looked around, matching cars to this one just seemed to materialize off side-streets with little flags flying off small posts on their hoods and trunks of all sorts of other countries that I’m guessing was where they were coming from. The roads all seemed to be angled towards the east based by the car’s compass on the rearview mirror. Soon a drove of matching black cars were going down the road.

“So, the magic of the school will hold your bags in a bit of stasis while you and all the other first years are being put in all of your houses.” She explained, still yet to introduce herself, but there was a sticker above the hazard light button that said Lucinda (Luci) V., so I’m guessing that this car was assigned to her so I can only assume that that is her name, but…you know the saying with assuming.

“How…how many students are in the school?”

“Maybe about…a few thousand or so per year and there’s five years.”

“But the houses are so small.”

“The houses are also pocket dimensions, Kain….they’re massive on the inside.” She said with a soft laugh before ahead of us…right ahead of us loomed…massive gates.