The pink fire had not melted my face off, in fact it healed the scraped Brax’s push had given me. It didn’t do much for the slight headache I now had, but it was still a wonder to see.

Heidi had gone back to the library, where she had been heading before interfering between myself and Brax and I went back to my room, but even as the sun finished transitioning into its moon phase I was wide awake.

It wasn’t just the two up and close displays of magic that I had seen, it was the bird too. A part of me was annoyed at Brax for killing it. They did not kill it for food or any other reason, perhaps it was to test Brax’s ability to hit things mid air, but he should at least do something with the corpse if he was going to kill it.

I could see the damage’s the impact of the rock caused on the bird, that information could be useful in understanding a birds anatomy, I’ve read that they have hollowed out bones, I could find out for myself.

Before I knew it I was out the door again, I took the path back to the library and went to the last place I remember seeing the dead bird. It was dark now and no students were walking about, most probably getting ready to sleep after being in the city all day. It only took me a moment to find what I was looking for.

A small mound of freshly turned dirt was right next to the small stains of blood.

Someone had buried the bird, most likely Heidi, she had seen the bird as well. I felt my breathing become rough and my vision to darken around the edges.

Burying a dead thing, that was the normal thing to do. Not try and sneak it away to your room so you could take it apart and see how it works. This was why I never had friends, why my parents threw me away. I was a freak.

I rested my hand on the face of my watch and breathed deeply, tapping my finger against the glass.. I let my heart slowly reach equilibrium, beating in sync with my watches ticks.

Breathe in for five ticks, hold for three, release over five ticks. Breathe in for five ticks, hold for three, release over five ticks. Breathe in for five ticks, hold for three, release over five ticks.

I opened eyes I didn’t remember closing and looked back to the pile of dirt. It was true that I was abnormal in some aspects, however I was not broken. I could still feel happiness, sadness, love and hate. My body functioned like any other boy my age, I had goals, I had hobbies, I had things that I didn’t like to do.

So what if I was curious how the bodies of animals worked? I couldn’t be alone in that otherwise biology would not be a field of study. Such information was useful, it could be used to cure diseases, help understand behaviors of animals.

I turned and left, my fingers itched with need. My mind was still full of images of bird bones, organs, their feathers plucked from their bodies. The scales of their legs being peeled away.

I needed to do something with my hands, or I was going to start raking my fingernails across my arms like some junkie.

My door automatically locked so I had to used the card that had been given to me to unlock it. The moment I opened my door I felt something was off. I looked back down the hallway there were sounds from the other boys talked to one another, but none were looking at me in particular.

I entered my room, letting the door shut behind me. The lamp was still off, the mirrored tray by the window that was used to recharge Sun Stones was still in place. My bed was still made perfectly, no, a wrinkle in the bottom was new.

The rooms were small so there were not many places for someone to hide, but how had someone even gotten in here in the first place? The locks were made to only work for a specific card, and while it was possible to make something that would work anyhow, that did not mean it would be easy.

I remembered Brax with his sling, him coming only inches from cracking my jaw. Was it him? No I shouldn’t have an immediate suspect, first I needed to make sure that I was alone. I took off my watch, annoyed that because it would no longer have contact with my skin for more than a minute that I would have to recalibrate its time.

From my laundry hamper I pulled out a dirty sock, I grimaced, but bore with the discomfort of holding something that had been on my foot for a whole day. I put my watch into the sock and held it by the mouth of the clothing.

If I needed to I could swing this and possibly do as much damage as Brax’s sling would have done to me. I pulled back the chair of the desk, making sure to make noise in doing so. Nobody leapt from under the bed or from the small closet.

I bent over, going to one knee and looking under the bed. My suitcase was the only thing there. I stood and turned to the closet, taking out the flashlight from my other pocket as I did so.

Pulling the curtain aside with my foot I flashed the light at eye level to blind anyone that was hiding there. No one, my room was empty.

I froze, remembering that there was one place that people never looked at. I looked up, expecting to see someone holding themselves up between two beams. No one, I had been paranoid.

I looked back to the crinkle in the blanket, no someone had been here. I took out my watch from the dirty sock and placed it on my desk. There was no way I was going to put it on before I cleaned it. After throwing the sock back into the hamper I moved to the window sill.

Unlike the door to the outside the window was locked normally. Not with a key, but with a latch on the inside.

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I knelt close and examined the latch. I saw a slight scratch on the metal that lined up with a small groove in the wood of the frame. I went to my watchmakers supplied to get a magnifying glass so I could see from close up if the wood looked freshly cut.

That was when I noticed my stand of custom made watches.

One of them, the one I had made to run on Sun Stones that was more for display than actual use, was missing.

—

Over the next week and a half my life steadily got worse. Elina informed me that I was not the only student to have something stolen from their rooms. In fact it got so bad that Professor Alyci, she was the pink haired teacher with the guns, had gotten involved.

In the end though whoever had gone on a stealing spree had not been caught. That was a constant source of annoyance for me, but it wasn’t the main reason my life got worse.

As I had expected Brax had started a crusade to annoy the shit out of me. It wasn’t the words that annoyed me, or the kicks to the back of my knees, or the crumpled paper balls thrown at my head that annoyed me. It was the waste of time each little action of his took.

Every second I spent thinking about if I was about to be picked on was one more second wasted. This was the most exclusive school in the country and I was having my time wasted by childish antics.

What was worse was that a few students had already opened up their Dreamscape. Not only had they opened it, they had opened it up fully. As in they could not harness Intent whenever they wished.

One of the students had only accessed their Dreamscape for a moment, but that was still more than I had.

Every time Brax wasted my time I thought of the fact that he may have been responsible for me being unable to open up my Dreamscape.

I needed to do something about him. Professor Pure had said that they like to do a hands off approach, and we had yet to get any real rules for the school. So hopefully if I retaliated they wouldn’t interfere, that meant I needed to be firm and unyielding when I struck back.

I had been planning something quite simple. I was going to stab him with a knife, not in the chest, face or inner thigh where the femoral artery was, but maybe the outer thigh, or the foot.

Something else got in the way however. After lunch one day Brax himself grabbed my collar and pulled be away from the other students. A few noticed, but I didn’t know any of them.

Brax pushed me onto the ground, I saw that his posse of self deprecating loners had grown from three to four.

“Heyo Monty! I was a bit bored so I decided you would be good training.”

I said nothing.

“Nonono I don’t want a quiet punching bag so don’t worry about that. Remember what Professor Pure said about fight or flight and opening up the Dreamscape being an extension of that? Well we thought that if we fought someone then we would have a higher chance of opening it up. Can’t let the other classes get ahead right.”

I said nothing.

“Come on, get up and lets throw hands. You’ve got to by dying to hit me at least once right?”

I looked at Brax in the eye, I didn’t have a knife yet. I had been planning on just taking one from the kitchens, students could come and go as they pleased so they wouldn’t say anything.

I did however, have a sharp pen. I placed my book bag on the ground, then took my pen out of my pocket. Brax did nothing, just waited for me to get to my feet.

I stabbed him in the thigh with the pen. Pulling back I felt small droplets of blood fall onto my hand.

Brax shrieked in surprise, but didn’t fall over or begin crying. The pen after all was much too short to cause enough pain and damage.

His fist whipped around and caught me in the side of the head. I hit the ground hard, taking a moment to reorient myself.

Brax was slightly hunched over, a hand over his bleeding thigh. I amended my previous thought, there was a tear running down his face.

“I’m going to break every tooth in your mouth,” he growled, beginning to stand up.

Fear spiked through me, and I berated myself for not waiting until I had a knife. Surely he would have been too scared from being attacked by a real weapon to make threats.

Anger and resentment bubbled up from within me. What was wrong with this kid, couldn’t he just leave me alone? He called me the freak but he was the one acting like a toddler. What was wrong with him. What was wrong with him. What was wrong with him.

His brain was surely the cause, the most complex thing known to man, at some point in his life something must have happened to cause his mind to develop such habits, or maybe the inconsistency had even been their since he was developing in the womb.

Take it apart to figure out how it works. Take it apart to figure out how it works. Take it apart to figure out how it works.

I rested my hand over the face of my watch and tried to breath in and out to steady my thoughts and heart. It wasn’t working my mind was filled with the idea of cracking open Brax’s skull and finding out why he acted like he did. Pulling his brain apart, identifying the different tissues, noting the shape of the folds.

No no no, that wasn’t normal I needed to think about other things. My watch, think of its parts.

Dial, hands, bezel, case, crown, ratchet, click spring, click, spinning barrel, barrel, balance staff, balance spring, pallet, escape wheel.

I looked into Brax’s eyes, filled with darkness and wrath. Why did he look at me like that, how did his eyes convey such emotions? My vision seemed to double for a moment and an expanse of white entered my vision for a flash then disappeared.

Cornea, pupil, iris, lens, sclera, ciliary body, choroid, suspensory ligament of lens, retina, optic nerve, conjuctiva, superior oblique, superior rectus, medial rectus, lateral rectus, inferior oblique, inferior rectus, frontalis muscle, obicularis oculi muscle, procerus muscle.

Whywhywhy.

A hand with an iron grip wrapped around my wrist. Without noticing I had stood up and was reaching for Brax. No, not simply Brax, I had been aiming for his eye. For some reason Brax hadn’t moved in that time, just stood there looking at me with wide eyes.

“Don’t lose focus, keep on going,” Professor Pure said, he was the one holding me in place. “Widen your inner eye. Push forward.”

I understood what was happening then. That white expanse had been my Dreamscape.

I pushed forward, I closed my eyes for a moment, but that only caused the white expanse to slip further away. I looked back to Brax instead, what had initially caused it to open.

I imagined him splayed out like my dog Burst, his skin peeled away so I could examine his insides. So I could understand him. He was a clockwork of flesh and blood. Every organ had its purpose, every beat of his heart kept him going. A single misalignment and it would all spiral out of control until eventually he fell to pieces. Pieces, Brax in pieces, the feeling of me slicing his eyeball in two so I could examine the inside and understand how he could display such emotion by just flexing certain muscles in his face.

A diagram of flesh, a puzzle that I could analyze.

A white room then dominated my vision completely, and my Dreamscape opened.