“Alright, so Mystic Raven” Mom said as she sat on the couch beside me, she flicked her hands in a strange motion as magenta flames swirled before they floated out in this large ovate ring shape, the center of the ring seemed to ripple as the colors of everything through it paled out before it was a large disk of quicksilver before flashes of pictures went by: I saw lecture halls filled with all sorts of colorful lights and different patterns, flashes of groups of people of all sorts of magical races and species that I had only ever thought of as fictional before the pictures slowed and expanded showing this…massive city, it was as much San Francisco as it wasn’t, it was like a hybrid of the city and Venice, the bay seemed darker and smoother as this labyrinth of canals sprawled out and the city was a sea in itself, but of colorful lights. The Golden Gate bridge was in Pearlbay, but instead of being that iconic rusty red color or made of hefty metal girders and cables it looked…different; it was solid glass almost, glowing white showing the frosted white tint of it as instead of cables, chains of glowing stars of various colors sprawled out between the geometric patterned structures, they were narrower and taller, almost triangular in shape that were tipped in large glowing spheres of light. It was as if some futuristic style artist was asked to redesign the bridge.

              “Harmony Gate Bridge” Mom said with a wistful smile, “the campus has the most beautiful view of the bridge.”

              “Harmony Gate?”

              “It was built a little after the Golden Gate, not long after, maybe a decade or two, but Harmony is larger by a bit; it’s a little bit longer and at its highest is upwards of three hundred feet tall” she laughed with a soft nudge to my side. “Whereas Golden Gate was built to shorten the distance between the city and Marin County, Harmony was not built for a transportation purpose, while that was wanted, and it was a very smart idea to build it. It was instead built for the formation of the G.A.M.C.”

              “G.A.M.C?”

              “Global Alliance of Magical Cities” she explained, “kind of the magic U.N if that makes sense.”

              “But because there’s only the hidden magical cities…they function as city-states?”

              “In a way, yes. Kálmán Varga was one of the more famous people associated with it.”

              “…but isn’t he in his 30s?”

              “If I remember correctly, he was born somewhere in the 1600s” she said as she brushed some hair off her face, “He’s got a statue in Pearlbay too, obviously sense we’re so coastal and associated with the ocean and that is his domain, people wanted to show appreciation for the person who allowed us to thrive and expand as much as we have.” She said before flicking a finger as the image swirled and moved through the city like someone flying a drone between endless colorful neighborhoods, it was like a futuristic and fantastical version of the Painted Ladies had exploded with every other type of architecture known to man, it was…a ride to see on the pictures, but it was beautiful. The image moved before settling on a large quay projection, an ovate space that jutted out into the water to give an better view and central in the projection was a statute, but the statue did not depict a man, instead it was a tectonic sea serpent, masses of horns in glowing pearly crystal, a large pearly stone set in the forehead, glowing yellow eyes and blue spheres held in the endless coils of the serpent’s body poured water out into the basin, the statue if stretched out…the serpent had to be at least a hundred or so feet long, but was curled up into this extremely organic mix of twists, coils and raised areas making it as beautiful as it was scary looking.

              “But…that’s a sea serpent.”

              “This is how he looks without any glamours” she explained, “None of the warlords are humanoid in their actual forms”

              “Is it…life-size?”

              “Probably far from, from what I’ve heard a sea serpent is born around 50 or so feet long and never stop growing, this was probably what he looked like as an infant or something” she laughed

              “…and the school?”

              “Ah, here” she said flicking her fingers again as the ring of flames expanded further before the picture shot upwards and as it did so, faded from night to day. What showed was…awe-inspiring, it just didn’t seem real.

              “It’s…flying?”

              “Hovering more likely” she laughed, “Like the city, ground space is limited, even in endlessly expanding pocket dimensions, the problem is everything becomes so spread out that it takes forever to get anywhere, so…when the school was built, it was built above the then midway point of the city. The five towers are named after the five founders: they were a group known as the Circle of the Mystic Raven, they were magical people a long, long time ago, who banded together to ensure that the youth of magic were able to have a proper education and this was before the magical cities were really things, so they did it all under the nose of nonmagical people. When the city formed and they were able to do this, they wanted a way to ensure that no child was out of the zoning area of the city.”

              “So, they built it above”

              “Exactly” she said softly tapping her horn against mine, “There’s Urek Tower, also called Gold Tower, named after the manticore member of the group of the same name…then there’s Silklily Tower after the fairy member, also called Green Tower…then is Vyls Tower, Blue Tower, named after the goblin member of the group…then is Elemence Tower, Red Tower, named after the phoenix member and lastly, the central tower is Onnezohr Tower, or Central Tower or Tower Center, named after the human wizard of the group and the group’s founder. He was the one who put the school in the air.” She explained, “All of the towers do have a ground foundation, but the underside of the ground are these large growths of crystal that are solidified raw magic, as volatile as is it powerful, the raw magic of it is how the school floats” she explained, “He did some sort of ritual that allowed him to cause the giant growths of the crystal and willed them into the air and from there…the towers were built.”

              “It’s…beautiful”

              “It is an incredible campus” she smiled, “Amazing cafeteria too”

              “Really?”

              “I know the both of us, your father won me over by his cooking, that’s probably how whomever you’ll spend the rest of your life with will win you over.”

              “Mom!” I snapped at that, she laughed

              “What?” she toyed as she nudged me with her elbow again, “And, you will have a lot of time for that anyways, we are immortal.”

              “…immortal?”

              “To an extent, not too crazy, we live a few centuries or so”

              “What about…” I said before glancing towards Dad who was milling about the kitchen.

              “There’s ways for people like me to avoid that” Dad said having heard a bit of the conversation, “The magical cities are very understanding of people who are in relationships where someone is far more mortal than the other; some magical races are infectious like vampires or lycans or some forms of undeath, I have an insurance policy where if I were to be injured to a fatal degree or when the time comes, the magical hospital will take over and I get to be a vamp.”