Free Intergalactic Wizard Scout Chronicles 1: Wizard Defiant by Rodney Hartman Page B

anyway.
    “Now, cadets,” she said to the two hundred and sixteen students. “After your first week of wizard classes, what are your questions?”
    A cadet a few seats to the left of Richard raised her hand.
    “Yes, cadet 240? What is your question?”
    The cadet, a female from the Kreptilia sector jumped out of her seat to a stiff attention and yelled, “Sir! Cadet 240 does not understand the difference between magic and Power. They both seem the same. Sir!”
    “Ah, yes,” chuckled the chief instructor with a smile, “that’s a common point of confusion. And, you don’t have to say ‘Sir!’ twice when you talk to an Academy instructor, nor do you have to stand at attention and shout. You are here to learn.”
    Chief Instructor Winslow was a nice woman. While Richard figured she thought she was doing the cadets a favor by trying to create a relaxed atmosphere, he thought she was really doing them a disservice. Although they had only started their official Academy classes last week, the two years of pre-Academy training with the 4th Training Brigade had taught him that you had to stay on your toes at all times. They had started with eight hundred and thirty-two cadets. They were now at two hundred and sixteen. The TAC officers were always looking for any little excuse to D.F.R. a cadet. Assuming he graduated in four more years, he would be one of less than a hundred cadets from their original cohort of eight hundred thirty-two who would have the golden-dragon insignia of a wizard scout pinned on their lapel.
    “As you were told during your indoctrinations last week, the entire universe is composed of Power with a capital ‘P’. Everything has it, and when you get to some of your advanced classes in quantum relativity, it will be explained to you in mindboggling detail,” she said with a friendly laugh and smile. “But for now, just know everything radiates at least a small amount of Power. Most of that radiated Power is recycled back into other existing objects, but some of the Power finds its way into pools, or as they are more commonly called, reserves. The process is similar to the way water evaporates and is released back to earth as rain. Most of the rainwater is soaked back into the ground, but some of it winds up in lakes. Think of one of those lakes as your Power reserve. Each of you has access to one of those Power reserves. If you didn’t, you would not be at the Academy. Almost everyone shares a reserve with others. If your access is to one of the larger reserves, you may share it with hundreds of others. A few fortunate wizards have a reserve all to themselves, although that is rare. Once you get to your upper level classes, you will be trained how to use the Power in your reserve to energize your wizard abilities. By the end of your time at the Academy, you will be able to use your Power to perform active and passive scans, create stealth and defensive shields, perform heals and self-heals, tear holes in an opponent’s shields, and even use telekinesis to levitate objects including yourselves. A few of you may even be talented enough to manipulate Power links or do interdimensional shifts. In your final class at the Academy, you will learn how to dump the Power in your reserve as a last-ditch method of attack. But don’t let your egos swell too much,” she laughed. “Your opponents will have learned defenses against your wizard abilities, and hopefully, you will have learned defenses against theirs.”
    She paused a few seconds to let the cadets ponder the information before continuing. “During your first two years as cadets, you were in pre-Academy training designed to weed out those unsuitable to be wizard scouts. As part of that pre-Academy training, your TACs introduced you to a lot of the Empire’s advanced-technology scout equipment. Almost every piece of Empire equipment uses power. That’s power with a lowercase ‘p’. Using nuclear sifters, technicians are able to gather