"It is only natural that you as my student would come here after all." she said with a proud look.
"So how does this work exactly? Do I just go in or something else?" I asked genuinely unsure.
"Normally I'd test you to make sure you weren't wasting the time of everyone here but as my own student I believe this can be skipped. That said I would like to know where you would rate yourself as a mage." she said calmly.
"Adept, in every school of magic." I said without hesitation.
She looked at me oddly "What EXACTLY do you mean by 'every' school?" she asked with a strange tone.
"I mean I made sure to study each school until I reached an adept level in them. Conjuration and mysticism were especially troublesome." I said not noticing her tone.
"Foolish child! You are only supposed to study one or two schools at once, not all of them!" she yelled with a frustrated expression.
"What!?" I exclaimed in shock.
"I expected you to focus on destruction and mysticism at most!" she said angrily.
"You just said 'Study as much as possible'! You didn't specify what to study so I just thought you meant everything!" I said defensively.
"Ugh! The frustrating part isn't that you covered everything but that you somehow managed to reach adept in them all in a span of a few short years. Do you have any idea how long it normally takes someone to go from novice to adept in any single school of magic outside the college?" she asked rubbing her nose bridge.
"A few months?" I offered with a feeling I might be drastically underestimating the difficulty.
"Years! A few years Alexan. And you did the same thing for eight of them in the same period." she said making me wince.
"I'm well balanced?" I said and she deadpanned at me.
"You are a monster." she said with an envious sigh.
"So do I just go up the path or....?" I asked awkwardly.
"Follow me." She said with a sigh as she rubbed her head to try and chase away the headache she had.
I felt a little bad about it but to be fair I was basically pointed in a direction and that was the extent of my self study. She literally told me to study as hard as I could so I wouldn't shame her the next time we met. How was I supposed to know she meant only two schools of magic?-
As it turned out I went VERY overboard, oops? Still I wouldn't change a thing as my well balanced learning actually helped me in my opinion. Thanks to learning every school I saw the connections between them and could make freeform magics that blended them. Quite a few of my self created spells used this sort of principal in fact. My [summon mount] spell for example used parts of my understanding for mysticism despite being a conjuration spell.-
Honestly there was nothing I could do about it since I flat out didn't have the theoretical knowledge needed to target and bind specific daedric creatures as mounts. I could only set the summon to a single creature both large enough to serve as a mount and perfectly attuned to the soul of the mage that summoned them. Similar to the [summon familiar] spell but for a very different purpose. This problem wasn't one you could just solve with money either. It was why I had to come to the college if I wanted to get to master in the magical schools in a reasonable time frame, knowledge.-
Shaking my head of these thoughts I followed Faralda along the bridge path to the college. Much like the game the college stood on a pillar of stone that looked suspiciously like it should collapse but didn't. The gap between this pillar and the main cliff was much wider than in the game however so walking across the bridge that had no grounded support was nerve wracking. Not to the point of fearing for my life since I did know the first word of the [become ethereal] shout Feim or fade but the point stood.-
Unlike in the game where Faralda using a spell on the circular blue sort of fire pit looking things was mostly cosmetic I could tell in reality it wasn't. What it actually did was fortify the magic holding the bridge up. I wasn't able to fully feel out this magic but I could understand that it WASN'T meant to be used for this purpose, it was straining under this new purpose in fact. I added 'fix the bridge' to my mental to do list because I was less than okay leaving my safety to a spell repurposed on the fly haphazardly. -
The college itself was also WAY bigger than in the game. The game version was maybe the size of a football field at MOST. The real one? Big enough that the courtyard alone could hold three of the game version college in it with some room to spare. So big that it was actually bigger than Winterhold 'city' itself!
'No wonder the Natives don't like the mages here very much. This place is bigger than their entire hold capital!' I thought with a bit of awe.
That bland snow covered visage you saw in the game was also not what the real college looked like. Don't get me wrong it IS still a big ring shaped structure with two wide and tall towers at the side and grand building in the center. But the courtyard wasn't just snow and weeds with a single statue in the center. In fact the climate itself shifted drastically the moment you walked through the gate. It went from terrible cold winter to warm pleasant spring in a very disorienting experience if you weren't expecting it. There were vibrant flowers growing on the soil with butterflies floating between them and even a pair of trees on either side of the main path with pink leaves swaying gently in the wind.-
There was still the tall robed statue of Shalidor with his arms outstretched as magicka rose from the blue glowing firepit thing in front of him on the path though. There were a few mages sitting on benches as they read tomes or others that walked the courtyard aimlessly in thought. Many would respectfully greet Faralda as she led me towards the main building while sparing me curious gazes. To my surprise there was no discrimination visible amongst these people despite being from every race I could think of as being active in the world.-
Quite the opposite in fact. I saw Altmer speaking with Nords, Khajiit and Bretons like equals. I saw Dunmer and Argonians laughing and sharing notes. It was like a microcosm of equality that flat out confused me with how I understood the world. -
"It must seem strange to you. Seeing the many races in harmony like this." Faralda said with a small smile.
I nodded "It's almost unreal to me. How does it work?" I asked curiously.
"'Scholarly pursuits should not be restricted by race or bias.' It's a phrase that the college enforces strictly. Troublemakers who don't learn to at least play along are thrown out, the rest are welcome as you can see." she explains and I understood.