The two ended up being like me…transfer students to Mystic, the girl with bunny ear’s name was Yating Da and the lion-bird guy was Niclas Zahi, both of them told me just to call them Da and Nic. I told them that I was also on my way to look at the school too, so the three of us walked down the pier as I explained to them that you can always find the school no matter where you are, by following the light pillars. Da had transferred from a smaller magic college in Japan and Nic had transferred from a school in Iran, but both of them were going for more specific and while offered at Paradise Academy, Mystic offered them in a more substantial and detailed manner. They asked if I was transferred from another magical school, while not telling them everything, I told them that I had gone to a nonmagical college and was really only just starting my proper magical college, which they didn’t press further, just curt “cool”, though I did also explain my mother is an Alum of the college too. The two apparently knew each other because the school had a sponsored neighborhood for students; like those apartment buildings that wrap around the block for a huge courtyard, almost a gated community like thing where transfer students stay sense there’s no dorm tower and the two had shown up at the same time, but they were far from the first to arrive already.

              “It’s down in Figurehead Corner, you just need to follow the pier and…ah, there it is” I said as we rounded a large collection of skyscrapers, the pier hooked sharply right before curving left as it merged into the retaining wall of Harmony Gate, this large horseshoe like shape of quay and pier wrapped around this maybe hundred or so foot tall growth of raw crystal, clear, but glowing and veined with softly moving and shifting trails of color and floating directly above its center peak…was the school’s central tower.

              “It’s…gorgeous” Da whispered

              The towers all had these platforms had matching crystal bottoms, thick chains of softly glowing magic connecting the towers to this ground-based crystal, the surf churned around the ground crystal maybe ten or so feet of surf around it. The color of the crystal…the best way to describe it was how an oil sheen looks: they crackled, sparked and flared with pulses and shocks of raw magic that made the air thrum like the moment before a lightning strike. Each of the towers, floating roughly a hundred or so feet above the crystal’s peak, loomed like guardians of the city; wrapped and twisted bases of the crystal adorned with thin gold spikes off their roofs that continued the magic where it discharged out into the air like an inverted tesla coil of some kind, except the central tower which had this constantly shifting and twisting tectonic sized astrolabe or gyroscope like fixture.

              “That one has to be Urek Tower, Gold Tower” Nic said motioning to the one with the gold light, the tower was probably thirty or so stories and for its height, uncomfortably thin looking, made entirely of featureless curtain glass with no possible struts, supports or structure, just a pillar of featureless, seamless glass, however off six points of the tower were these large gold flanges, thinnest at the roof that flared out at least thirty feet off the edge of the tower at its base, the adorned with massive glowing gold arcane runes, the gold also thinned out as it wrapped around the base crystal like a birdcage-like structure to it, midway up the tower however was an entirely open floor, a visible gap in the glass where a wide bridge of matching gold art-deco sprawled out, merging to the styling of the central tower as it linked to the same point.

              “Silklily Tower!” Da said enthusiastically, I’m guessing her classes are going to be there, the Green Tower, same height and same general featureless glass pillar like structure, but where the gold tower had those flanges of gold to it, Silklily instead had these four massive trees growing out of the ground base of the tower, roots wrapping around the crystal base in the same cage like fashion, with their trunks, boughs and roots wrapping, twisting and enrobing sections of the tower, the leaves all softly shimmered as if they were carved shards of emerald as the raw magic of the tower’s base infused into the tree making the trees grow so thickly and so vibrantly as flowering vines made a near network that wrapped around the trees, branches and roots.

              Vyls Tower, or Blue Tower, was the same glass pillar, but no tree or gold adornments, instead off its roof rained waterfalls of clouds, like four massive overworked fog-machines, just curtains of cottony cloud poured down the tower making a double-helix pattern around it, that continued down over the crystal where the thick bands of clouds formed together at its tip, making the entire process of cloud seem both still and constantly moving because you couldn’t tell if it was moving upwards or downwards or if it was moving at all, the breeze didn’t dissipate the clouds as they hung there, almost too pure of white to look real, that had that blueish tint that white can get when it gets so, so pale. It was almost like snow instead of clouds, like you could almost see ice forming in the air around the tower.

              Elemenece Tower, Red Tower, same glass tower, but instead it was adorned with almost the gold flanges, but inverted so they were widest at the apex of the tower and not gold, but bronze and instead of runes, they were entirely made of thick panels of feathers and off those flanges were thick, long roaring wings of flames; bright gold, red and oranges that made the entire tower almost a little difficult to look at because it was so bright, the flames had the same cage-like fashion around the base as they rose upwards towards the roof where they feathered out and dissipated in thin embers around the pillar of light.

              Lastly, Onezohr Tower, the Central Tower, where the others were thirty or so stories tall, this tower was only about fifteen or so, but multiple times wider than others, comparably to the difference between a needle and thimble, but it too was entirely glass with that wide open floor where four massive bridges sprawled off it leading to the surrounding four towers. It had the same raw magic crystal base, but it had a secondary base of stone that sprawled out a handful of yards to serve as a landing platform for people entering the school, I couldn’t tell because of the colorful light, but it appeared to maybe be made of a creamy, almost reddish-brown stone, a high fence looped around the stone platform of twisted cables, vines and crystals, crystal spires were wrapped in the cables to form the railing and tall, thin streetlights grew upwards with softly glowing white orbs at their tips casting a wash of milky toned light that when it hit the light made by the other towers made a seamless miasma of color like the Harmony Gate, but even more extreme in the shades displayed, even more seamless and more homologous in the blurring lines of color as they dissipated off into the ether of the city.

              I hadn’t realized I had stopped breathing at the school’s awe till my lungs started to burn from a lack of air which almost made me cough a little as I rubbed my sternum with my knuckles as I took a few long, slow breaths. There was no other feasible word to describe the school other than: magical…there was just no word that fit the majesty, the impossibility and beauty of it as it floated there, the surf that churned around the ground base of crystal was almost pulled into the stone as it served to fuel the raw magic that fueled the school as it hung there: the four towers slowly orbiting the central one, the bridges all moving with them like the supporting struts of a slowly turning astrolabe or gyroscope, structures that large shouldn’t move regardless of how well built they are, so to see them just smoothly, ceaselessly turning around the central tower made me at first have a momentary panic of thinking about how much destruction would be caused if one of them would suddenly drop, before I was able to get that out and away from my mind as I just let myself be consumed by the…glory that is the school. The slow oscillation of the towers was silent, the flames off Elemence didn’t even make sound nor did the swirling clouds or trees or crackling arcane runes. I could only think that the closest someone could get to the feeling of…majesty I felt seeing the school would be akin to when an astronaut first sees Earth from orbit; how something so massive could move so smoothly, the grandeur and scale of everything now askew as you see how it fits into the grand scheme of everything around it. It was that kind of view that steals one’s breath, words and even parts of one’s rationale as you are helpless to the magic of what one beholds before them.