Knoll’s Academy is my working book 1 title and/or series title. Surprising no one, it is the name of the boarding school my OCs attend. Also just as surprising, it is a school for magic. Morning classes are the normal subjects (math, geography, language arts, physical education, history, etc) but in the afternoons students have group and private lessons depending on the type of magic they use.

The magic system is element-based, built from earth, wind, fire, and water. It is mostly hereditary. Most commonly, a mage will be a mono-elemental, that is to say they have power over one element. In some cases, there are bi-elementals, where a mage can wield the magic of two elements. Or, there can be hybrid elementals, where the mage’s ability is a fusion of two elements (the hybrid of wind and water, for example, is ice). It is extremely rare, but not unheard of, for a mage to have power over three or four elements. (There is one person whose magic is fusion of all four elements, but no one has ever been able to figure out how he did it, and he’s long since passed away. The school is named after him, though!)

Magic works kind of through a mana-type system, where more difficult magic requires more energy. It is possible to create fire out of thin air, but it would cost more than using a pre-existing flame. If a mage completely depletes their reserves, they will be unable to use magic for an extended period of time while their body recovers. It also functions like physical stamina, so you can build magical endurance.

In terms of the overall setting though, Knoll’s Academy is the only school for magic in existence, and all mages are pretty much obligated to attend. The mages run their own territory; you could almost say they live in isolation from the rest of the world. Obviously this is not a good thing, especially since they have made enemies over the years and so the students at the Academy are growing up overly sheltered and blissfully unaware of the Academy’s true intentions (hint: it’s not just to teach them how to use their powers). And that’s to say nothing of what might happen should the Academy’s defenses one day fall...

My story centers around 6 students living in the same dorm: Ross (fire), Kyle (water and wind), Riha (earth), Lee (earth and wind), Zephyr (ice), and Rochelle (barriers). I’ve finished the preliminary draft of the first novel in the series, which mainly deals with Ross attempting to overcome his PTSD after he’s forced to attend the Academy (while still establishing some of the greater issues that will span the entire series), but it still needs a hell of a lot of work. I’m also leaving out a lot of other things, haha, but that’s the gist of it.