I Am The Greatest Femboy Mage

She led him through the arc at an easy pace, weaving between clusters of students without breaking stride, and Elian trailed after her doing his best not to look like someone counting the seconds until he could sit down and stop being looked at.

"You’ve got a name?" he said, when the silence between them started bothering him.

"I do." She didn’t offer it.

"Is that a secret, or are you just enjoying watching me ask twice."

That got him a sideways glance, something almost like approval flickering across her face before it smoothed back into neutral.

"Milena." A beat. "Belyanova."

"Elian-"

"Valcourt. Yes." She cut him off without much apology, already angling toward a row near the front, empty save for a scatter of bags marking claimed seats.

"You said that already, in the doorway. Word travels, remember?"

"Right." He filed that away, quick, unbothered, not particularly interested in easing him into anything. It was different from Rowan Vale’s dryness, different from Old Marren’s flat practicality. The noble in him was already starting to do it’s work, quietly storing away the interpersonal politics he was developing with the people he met.

Milena was the most interesting person he’s met until now, not the usual type of noble he found in his country, she had something sharper underneath it, like she was still deciding whether he was worth the effort of being properly rude to.

She dropped into a seat without ceremony, nodding at the one beside it.

"Sit."

Elian sat, staff across his knees, doing his best to look like a person who belonged in a front row and not like someone who’d spent the last hour following strangers in a strange place where he was trying his best to look like he knew what he was doing.

The hall kept filling in around them, the noise climbing steadily toward something that would probably qualify as a roar once the stage actually had someone standing on it.

He caught fragments of conversation drifting past—names he didn’t recognize yet, someone loudly re-litigating a duel from the previous term—none of it meant for him, which was, after the day he’d had, a small mercy.

"You’re staring," Milena said, without looking at him.

"I’m taking it in."

"You’re still staring." She finally turned, studying him with the same flat assessment she’d given him at the door.

"The staff. Is it always doing that?"

Elian glanced down. The Everbloom sat quiet across his lap, same as always—except the single hairline seam of light along its crystal head had brightened, just slightly, steady and warm against the dim of the hall.

"...No," he admitted. "Not usually."

Milena’s eyes stayed on it a moment longer, something unreadable working behind her expression, before she turned back toward the stage without further comment.

Up front, the noise of the hall began to drop, row by row, as a tall figure in dark formal robes stepped out onto the stage and raised a hand for quiet.

The tall figure at the front let the quiet, apart from a few low hanging conversations, settle fully before speaking, unhurried, the kind of pause that came from decades of not needing to raise his voice to be heard.

"Welcome back," he said, voice carrying easily across the tiered arc without any visible effort. "And to our newest arrivals, welcome, for the first of what I hope will be many years with us."

Polite applause rose, scattered, the kind performed more out of habit than enthusiasm.

Elian clapped along a beat behind everyone else, still cataloguing the man at the podium—silver at the temples, robes plainer than he’d expected for someone clearly important, which was a pattern that he was starting to recognize by now, and a presence that filled the stage without needing theatrics to do it.

"Headmaster Aldric Renaux,"

Milena murmured, apparently reading the question off his face before he’d asked it.

"He doesn’t talk for long. Small mercy."

"You say that like it’s happened before."

"Every year, from what i heard."

Renaux moved through the opening remarks with the ease of someone who’d given this exact speech more times than he could count anymore.

"Lucenhall does not exist to hand you power," he said without hurry.

"It exists to make sure you survive the power you already have. Every year I say this, and every year at least a dozen of you treat it as a suggestion rather than the only rule that’s ever mattered here."

A ripple of laughter, knowing, a few guilty glances traded somewhere near the back.

"Rankings from last term will be posted by evening. Tournament season begins in six weeks; I expect the usual chaos in the sparring yards between now and then, and I expect it to stay in the sparring yards." That got a proper laugh. "To our first-years, you will be exhausted, outmatched, and occasionally humiliated over the coming weeks, often all three in the same afternoon. This is normal. It is, in fact, the entire curriculum."

Elian, despite himself, felt his mouth twitch toward something like a smile.

"What matters is not where you rank today," Renaux went on, tone settling into something steadier, more deliberate.

"It’s whether you’re still standing in this hall a year from now, having actually become someone worth being. That is the only metric this school has ever cared about, and it is the only one that will matter once you leave it."

He let that sit a moment, gaze sweeping the tiered rows once, unhurried.

"That’s all from me. Term begins properly tomorrow, as for today’s classes, they will mostly be reserved for introductions." A faint, dry note crept into his voice, the formality easing.

"Try to enjoy your peace before it starts"

The hall broke into noise almost immediately, conversation rushing back in all at once, excited chatter about what was coming reaching Elian’s ears for the millionth time.

The headmaster stepped off of the podium, quietly walking back to his seat without looking back.

Once he was sat, another figure stood from their seat, a familiar face this time.

Rowan Vale walked with the practiced ease of someone who had no qualms about being in the public eye, the entire hall quieting down into pin drop silence once she had faced them.

Which was weird, and unnerving, because even the supposed to headmaster didn’t get such a perfect silence.

The silence was almost diabolical, almost like the people populating had suddenly lost all their abilities to produce sound.

Elian hesitated for a moment, then turned to Milena.

"Why is everyone so silent all of a sudden?"

She gave him a sideward glance.

"You don’t know?"

Elian returned her glance.

"There is something i was supposed to know?"

Milena didn’t look at him when she answered, eyes still fixed on the stage.

"That’s the Archmage Rowan Vale."

"I’m aware. I met her this morning."

Milena let out a long breath... for some reason.

"She is the greatest battlemage this country has ever seen in its millennia of recorded history. Most people are ready to give away their entire life savings just to have an audience with her, this kind of silence is only to be expected."

A pause, faint and dry.

"If what you say is true, then you already know more than most people ever get to. She doesn’t teach any lectures apart from special classes. Doesn’t take extra students. Doesn’t do interviews when journalists ask about her war record, which they still do, almost a decade later. If she’s standing up there, it’s because she has something to say worth everyone shutting up for."

Elian blinked, glanced back toward the stage with his heart actively thundering in his mouth, where Vale had come to a stop at the podium, arms loosely crossed, entirely unbothered by the fact that several hundred people had gone dead silent the moment she stood.

"That’s a lot of reputation for someone who spent this morning arguing with a quartermaster about armor sizing." Was all he managed to blurt out in his misery, his voice barely a high croak.

"Doesn’t surprise me."

Milena’s mouth twitched, almost a smile, gone before it fully arrived.

"People who’ve actually done something tend not to need to perform it."

Up front, Vale didn’t bother with a greeting.

"Combat placements start tomorrow, first bell, the practical casting teachers will be overseeing it."

Her voice carried without effort, flat and unhurried, same as it had in the courtyard that morning. But louder, and more clearer than even the headmaster’s had been, in fact Elian could sense a faint trace of mystical element in her voice, most likely amplification he guessed.

"Anyone who thinks they can skip the placement trial because they already know their own skill level—you’re wrong, and I will enjoy proving it. Anyone nursing an injury from summer, report it to the infirmary tonight, not mid-spar tomorrow."

A low ripple of laughter, quickly swallowed.

"Sparring yards open after breakfast. Gear should already be sorted—" her gaze swept the front rows, brief, unreadable, and didn’t linger anywhere near Elian long enough to mean anything "—if it isn’t, that’s on you, not the armory."

She let that sit a beat, unbothered by the silence she’d asked for and gotten without asking twice.

"Oh and before i forget," She summoned a slip of paper into her hand out of thin air, the entire hall holding collectively their breaths as she read aloud the contents of it.

"Oizys Rosemere, Rudra Suryavanshi, Elian Valcourt, Milena Belyanova and Darrow Tanner. Make sure to meet me in the east yard after breakfast. Don’t forget to bring your training gear."

Milena’s brow arched half a fraction—the most reaction Elian had seen out of her all evening—as the five names settled over the hall like a dropped stone.

"That’s..." She glanced sideways at him, unreadable again. "Unusual."

"Is that good... or bad?"

"Don’t know yet."

She was already gathering her things, unbothered on the surface, though he caught the faint line of her jaw tightening.

"She’s never done something like this before, especially on such a public scale."

Around them, the hall had dissolved into a low buzz of speculation. First-years craning to spot who else had been named, a few upperclassmen exchanging looks that suggested even they found this worth gossiping about, even worth being dumbfounded about.

Elian caught a flash of gold hair a few rows back, someone tall and composed already being congratulated by a cluster of people who all looked faintly, competitively pleased for him.

He also managed to hear a ’hey that’s me!’ from somewhere along his left on the first row.

"Guess we’ll find out after breakfast," Elian said.

"We’ll find out." Milena stood, slinging her bag over one shoulder, and for the first time all morning something almost like amusement crossed her face.

"We can go together if you want, no point in splitting up now."

Elian nodded, then fell into step behind her, staff in hand, the crowd thickening around them as it funneled toward the dining hall instead of the exits—the smell of something warm and fresh already drifting down the corridor, competing for his attention against the sheer amount of new information he’d been handed in the last ten minutes.

Whatever the east yard had in store, it could wait until he’d had actual food in him. He’d learned that much about himself today, if nothing else—he made considerably worse decisions on an empty stomach, and something told him he’d need his wits about him for whatever Vale was planning.