Despite being one of the oldest magical groups in the United States, the Jacksonville mages are not, strictly speaking, an enclave. They never had the population or resources to build a proper spatial-logic-defying void domain, so after they moved from St. Augustine, they had to settle for a heavily-warded apartment complex just west of the Intercoastal Waterway, a fair hike from the beaches where the rich people live. Even then, they don't all stay there. The "enclave" includes a loose association of mage families as far spread out as Pensacola and Miami. They trade spells and potions and magic trinkets and kid-watching duties, but otherwise keep to themselves. They're disorganized enough that several other enclaves attempt to muscle in on their turf, but all who actually attempt it mysteriously decide to back off at the last minute. The official reason is that the enclave bands together in dutiful cooperation whenever their sovereignty is threatened. The real reason, the one anyone with any sense knows and doesn't talk about, is Granny Lola. 

---

Alexius gets his magic from his mother, who has close family ties to the Jacksonville crowd. In her youth, she traveled extensively to trade her services for spells that suit her affinity for concealment magic. In Greece, she fell in love with the sea, the mountains, and Alexius' father. They married and moved back to Florida together, because two out of three ain't bad. 

Dad is a mundane, but he's the sort of mundane who trusts what he sees. Where other mundanes would see a bedraggled coyote, Dad sees a six-legged monstrosity with nine rows of dripping teeth. (Fortunately for Dad, a cradlerobber is just as vulnerable as a coyote to repeated blows to the head with a gardening shovel.) Unfortunately, Dad's lack of self-deception is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, Dad carries a loaded shotgun in his own home for two years straight, and a technically-illegal assault rifle for three years after that, and he uses them to kill no fewer than sixteen mals who try for Alexius and little Roberta. On the other hand, when a hungry darkmantle dives for Alexius after his nine-year-old mana spurt, Dad's weapons are worse than useless. It takes Mom and her sister and cousins, fortunately visiting for the holidays, burning a month's supply of mana to put the monster down. They need a better option. 

With her affinity and spells gained from several years of travel and study, Mom has earned a fair bit of respect and pull in the 'clave. It's just barely enough to barter her son's way into their warded complex, and a chance at one of their allocated spots in the Scholomance. 

Even so, young Alexius worries his family. He can get a handful of spells to work, but with no discernible pattern to them. He masters a spell to set broken bones, but can't grasp the 'clave's easiest introductory scrape-mender. He can't artifice for shit. He seems to take to potionmaking at first, mastering the fiddly details of a five-minute lensvision draught on his first try at age nine. But when they try to teach him to brew a float-balm for rescue work (having to explain, repeatedly, that no, Alex darling, you can't drink this one), he can't get it to produce a single bubble after twenty-six consecutive tries, even though it's barely a step up in difficulty from the lensvision. 

Mom and the other 'clave wizards spend the better part of three years fretting over Alexius' seeming lack of an affinity. Then he sneaks into the adults' alchemy storeroom, Roberta throwing one of her patented Distraction Tantrums in the hall, and twelve-year-old Alexius brews a perfect eidetic memory potion in thirty minutes flat. He quaffs it immediately, and spends the next week memorizing enough Latin to speak his mother's hundred-and-thirteen-line stealth charm, which works so fabulously well that no one notices for another three days. 

Alex's affinity is himself. 

In the next two years, he goes into a flurry of research on spells intended to affect the caster, and only the caster. They are easy. 

(Once, in a fit of inspiration, Roberta squeaks, "You're spelfish!" and the pair of them spend five minutes howling with laughter.) 

He discovers that he can get a significant boost to his potionmaking, as long as he fully intends to drink the potion afterwards. He starts making larger batches and sharing. The potions don't work as well for others as they do for him - he seems to be able to tailor the dosage and effect size perfectly to his own needs - but they do work, and he does know how to make them. Soon, he's on track to be the most efficient alchemist in the 'clave. 

(He's a big fish, but it's a small pond. Roberta once calls it a "nonclave", a name which spread like wildfire among the local children until the offended adults managed to stamp it out of circulation. Openly, anyway). 

Still, a tight-knit score of adult mages and fifty-odd in-the-know mundanes, plus dozens of satellite families, is nothing to sneeze at. Alexius considers himself lucky to have any sort of support network at all. And he abuses it to the full extent he can get away with. Eidetic memory potions are expensive and temporary, but popular enough to nearly pay for themselves when brewed in large batches, and they substantially improve retention even after they've worn off. They make him quite popular in the nonclave. He's still not sure he'll get into the Scholomance, but he has to prepare all the same. 

He packs systematically and meticulously. He studies the weight-saving methods of other students, and soldiers, and backpackers who hike the Appalacian Trail, and drills holes in his toothbrush. His parents outfit him with survival gear and vitamins, even some powdered drugs and nutrients he can coax his digestive system into handling. He stunts his growth with magic to increase his weight allowance, a feat which would normally be hideously dangerous for an adult mage. He plans to return his growth to normal with magic once he enters the school, which is by all accounts just as dangerous - for anyone but him. 

He packs like the Boy Scout he totally would have been if he could have set foot outdoors without a dozen guards. He finds a seemingly-useless spell for growing a second set of teeth, uses it on himself and pulls out the first set and coaxes the enamel into storing mana for him nearly as well as a professional crystal. (He could in theory do this at the Scholomance, but the process is painfully distracting for days). He packs alchemy tools and mana storage and caulk and a couple enchanted sealing tools and a relatively tiny portion of spare clothing and a pack of cards because mana-building has to be hard but that doesn't mean it can't be fun. 

Alex manages to barter, brew, and bestow several more boosts on himself. Thanks to that and his carefully-rationed memory potion, his studying is vastly improved. In addition to his Greek, Spanish, and Latin, Alex manages to pick up Mandarin, Hebrew, Sanskrit, a handful of other languages. 

He's as prepared as he can be. He just has to get into school. 

---

Three months before induction, a maleficer gets Roberta.

Alex doesn't mourn long. He can't afford to. Instead, he finds Granny Lola. 

Granny Lola has a sweet, kind, understanding smile. Granny Lola bakes cookies for the whole 'clave once a week. Granny Lola is thirty-seven years old, and looks ninety. Granny Lola is the reason nobody fucks with Jacksonville. 

"I want you to try to drain me," Alex tells her.

"Oh, sweetheart," smiles Granny Lola. "You must be -"

"You know why I'm here. You know my affinity, and you know why I have to test it. Cut the crap," says Alex. "Just do it." And he opens the taps to his soul. 

Granny Lola, still smiling, obliges. She latches onto the opening he gave her, and yanks. 

And then Granny Lola frowns. 

"Try harder," demands Alex, through gritted teeth. 

Granny Lola does. Her frown deepens. Her grip on her purple cushioned armchair goes white-knuckled. 

Alex pushes through the agony. It's nothing; only pain. It's nothing, compared to losing Roberta. He denies himself permission to tremble. And his life force stays firmly where it belongs, just as he tells it to. It stays there for long minutes, in sweaty silence, until Granny Lola lets out a gasp of exhaustion and the mortal agony subsides. 

Granny Lola raises her head, panting, to look Alex in the eye. She nods, once. 

It's enough; Alex leaves. 

Then he passes out on the floor. 

---

The official story is that Alex's impressive potionmaking skills, and his diligent, determined studying, make him a good candidate for surviving the Scholomance and enriching the 'clave. In point of fact, he's nowhere near that good. The real story is Granny Lola threw her weight around. 

Alex knows what she's thinking. He's thought it himself, plenty of times. He'd make a damn good maleficer, if he chose. He may be absolute shit at affecting other people, for now, but his control over his own body is impeccable. He could stave off the withering far longer than most, if he rationed his use wisely. And he could know exactly how far the damage progressed, exactly how much leeway he had remaining. Maybe even alleviate some of the symptoms with personal cleansing magic. Bring a batch of bugs or mice to school and breed them right, then heal the damage when he got out. It could work. Granny Lola could teach him how - she's still alive, nearly twenty years after her gradutation. Alex could sell his soul for survival, and earn the highest status in his 'clave to boot. 

The thought makes him want to vomit. 

He's tried malia, of course. Just a tiny draw. It's easy enough to practice on insects, here - walk outside at dusk, and thirty mosquitoes dive-bomb your exposed skin, they even deserve to be drained, the fuckers - but at the very first touch of malia, he fell to his knees and threw up on the grass. He could feel it rotting him from the inside out. It felt like drinking raw sewage, but worse, because it infected his soul. And it brought him one step closer to being the thing that killed Roberta. 

He can't use malia; it would destroy him even to try. 

He's probably going to die. One in four odds, and not much reason to think he's exceptional. But if he's going to die, then he's going to die Alexius Marcus, not some shriveled, murderous, deranged husk. 

That's what he's thinking when the magic takes him.