Tercius made a pulse of mana.

Under Mana Sight it was a perfectly spherical shape of red thick swirling gas. The point of this exercise was to shape the mana while avoiding compression of any kind.

During his lessons, Master Lazarus had explained that mana– while inside a body– was in a state called a 'neutral point of compression'. This state was different for all mana using beings, but the difference from human to human was so minor, Master Lazarus told them, that it was essentially negligible in all calculations. Only when it involved other flora, fauna, fungi, or even some metals and such, did it have some impact.

From this 'neutral point of compression' of gas-like mana, mana could be expanded, compressed, or purposefully kept in this exact state.

'Expanded' mana was extremely prone to rapid dissipation into the surroundings. In fact, as soon as mana left the body it slowly went from the neutral point of compression to this expanded state. The larger the expansion the faster the dissipation. ‘compressed’ mana was not immune to dissipation, it was only able to hold its form for longer and dissipate at a slower rate.

Under careful control of a mage, this dissipation could be slowed down, ideally to zero. That was the goal all mages aspired to get to, one day. Few managed to do it. Master Lazarus told them that the skill level of Mana Manipulation needed for something like this to happen was around 80, a level only achievable by those long-lived and persistent mages. To pass the level barrier at level 60, one needed another level 60 skill as a sacrifice, the Master told them that day. Every level after 60 required years of painstaking effort to raise the skill level.

This confirmed a few things Tercius had suspected. The major confirmation here was that even mages used the regular way of going over the barriers. Previously, any time he touched on the topic with anyone; the answer was the same– You will learn in due time. Still, just because the mages used the same way as the rest of the world didn’t mean that he should let his guard down and use Energy.

Tercius did try something, though. He took a risk and tried observing the teachers during lunch using Energy Sight, right after Master Lazarus' lesson. When he tried using Energy Sight it did not work– as if the skill did not exist at all. It was usually so easy to activate it, not even a thought was required.

The only reason he could come up with was that he had little, if any, Energy.

He felt sick afterward, nauseated in a way that never happened before, immediately following that attempt. Every part of him had felt a cold so vast that his whole body had trembled, once he got to his room and allowed himself some freedom. It left him weakened for a while, physically. A good night of sleep carried away most of the side effects, while the breakfast the next morning took away the rest.

Tercius had then waited a few days to pass and tried it once more. The results were the same, to a letter.

Not one to stop at such a low number of tries, even at the expense of his health, he did it one more time– just a few hours earlier, when he went to bed. The results were the same as the two times before it. The first time it happened, six days ago, he was sure that the trembling lasted somewhere north of two hours. This evening it was around the two-hour mark.

Tercius was not sure as to what this meant, or even if he was right about the time-- his way of measuring was extremely imprecise-- but it was fascinating nonetheless. It showed that Energy skills did not use Mana, but rather Energy as fuel. Another thing was that even without an Energy source like he had, a body had ways of either making or collecting Energy on its own.

He always suspected as much, but this was definitive proof.

Another conclusion he arrived at was that Energy Sight needed much more Energy than he had, naturally, at any time to even start working. From this, he was able to deduce that the amount of Energy a body produced or collected was not even a tithe of what he was able to get from a single torn chain from Flu.

This carried another important question: why wasn't the speed of leveling skills even faster?

Tercius' speed of skill leveling could only be described as monstrous. Yet the discrepancy between the Energy a body had, and the amount Tercius was able to have, was so vast that the speed should have been even faster. This implied that the Energy the body had was somehow superior to the one he acquired. Maybe not superior, but certainly different in some way.

It was an interesting topic to think about, in any case.

Tercius yawned as he was finishing the mana pulse. His concentration lapsed for a moment and the whole thing wobbled, the mana around the periphery of the sphere dissipating into thin air.

Other than tired he felt annoyed at himself. He forgot to count the seconds it took him to make the mana pulse.

Somewhere around twenty, I think.

Eunim and J'ro were fast asleep, and the room was plunged in darkness. Tercius thought that the time was around midnight, but he simply had no way to know. Over three weeks had passed since the first-years came into this bunker and that was the last time Tercius saw the light of day.

Twenty four days without sunlight.

While to Tercius this much time meant little, even if he had to spend it alone, but the students were another story entirely. Especially those who originally hailed from these parts and who knew the teachers privately. Every day was a litany of public pleas, and he suspected some private ones, where students tried to convince the teachers to let them out. Earlier this very day, the teachers had finally caved in and made an announcement.

At last, the students would be able to get up to the surface during the weekend.

Students who had family in Chameos or the Pyramid could spend the days with them if a family member came and picked them up.

The rest would be confined to a facility above-ground, Mistress Porfira told them. This facility had a rather large garden and a lot of open space, and a collective cheer had echoed off the walls at that moment.

Tercius stared at the ceiling above him.

That cheer echoed in his ears as he, with Visualization, went over the announcement and searched for any clue, anything out of the ordinary. The teachers, the students, the surroundings, nothing.

No other incident had occurred since they came here. Not a peep. It got to the point that Tercius wondered if he had imagined all of it. Maybe all of it was a figment of his overactive imagination. Maybe it was just a few coincidences that just seemed connected, while in fact, they had nothing in common.

Maybe, maybe, maybe…

With doubt clouding his mind, he fell asleep.

***

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"Be quiet!" The voice washed over Tercius and the surrounding kids. Such was the voice’s power that it lifted strands of hair in its passing and hushed all conversation.

Mistress Porfira glared at the assembled youths and said, "As I was saying before your interruption if you leave with your family members that is your own business. Now come along,"

In groups, the students used an elevator to rise upwards.

Tercius honestly expected a lot of things, to greet them. A castle, rows of bungalows, even cabins, but a mansion was not one of them.

The elevator brought them into the main foyer just between the stairs to the second floor and the massive front door. Floors made of polished marble, walls lined with paintings and tapestries, all of it very tastefully decorated. Lacquered wooden railings and rich carpets, everything screamed opulence.

In the middle of all of that was a man.

"Porfira," the man's voice was sweet as honey, a sound that for some reason scraped Tercius's ears, as he dragged out the name of the Mistress in greeting. The man's dark hair and beard were immaculate, his expensive clothes pristine. With quick steps, the portly man approached the small Mistress and hugged her. "Finally, you accepted,"

"Keeper Eiler, it is good to see you," Mistress Porfira said as she put some distance away between them. "I hope our stay here won't inconvenience you too much,"

The man waved away her concerns. "Nonsense, my dear. This is a facility of the Academy and I a mere Keeper, one happy that he is finally of use. The mansion if big enough for us all,"

“So this is how the resources are spent, eh Eiler?” Mistress Helfira fired the accusation.

Mistress Porfira called out the students whose familiar relation arrived, and they were shuffled off outside. Penelope ran to her mother, leaving Tercius and the rest behind.

"Why didn’t we come here in the first place?" asked Eunim as he looked outside and saw the sun for the first time in almost a month.

Why indeed, Tercius thought. He looked at the teachers who were talking to this Keeper Eiler and noted that Mistress Helfira and Master Lazarus kept quiet and observed from the sidelines. Their eyes were going over the windows and doors, all the while Fenia, Kot, and Porfira chatted with Eiler.

As Tercius observed Keeper Eiler he heard a low rumbling growl, right near his ear. Perched on his shoulder, was Amber. Using her small claws she held onto the fabric of Tercius's shirt and kept herself stable.

“What is it?” he whispered. Tercius turned his attention to the person of interest she was observing.

J’ro.

Her eyes were focused on the boy, all the while she gave a rumble straight from her core. Tercius moved away, as he feared what Amber might do. “Bad, Amber. Why are you so keen on him?”

As he took a few steps to the left he glanced at Amber and saw that she still had her guard up. Tercius took to observing J'ro once more. The skinny boy was talking to Lomera, rather he did all the talking and Lomera just nodded in agreement or denial of his statements. J'ro reminded Tercius of Neiran, his brother-in-craft, and non-adopted sibling. Both had the same starting shyness and then once they opened themselves up both could talk his ears off if the right topic came up. The only difference was that Neiran was a bit naive and overly trusting in his talks, while J'ro was careful and Tercius would say suspicious to a point.

This suspicious side was a new trait to J’ro, Tercius guessed, one born of some recent event.

Tercius did have some suspicions that the boy might have tried to hurt Amber, or maybe he tried to take something that belonged to Tercius and Amber saw it and did not like it.

Yet neither fitted into what he knew of the boy and Amber. Amber cared little for guarding his stuff, and J’ro did not seem the type to torture animals.

As Amber growl went up in volume, Tercius scrutinized J’ro with more intensity than ever. The boy was still standing near Lomera, his hands waving about as he explained something.

Something about the boy was off, Tercius saw it. As Amber’s growl rose, this feeling only increased. Something about his legs.

There was a faint shimmer there, one familiar to Tercius.

Mana.

Using Mana Sight, he saw the mana outlines of the students in abundance. The crowd was blinding to his eyes. Yet he focused and tried to look past it, right where J’ro legs were. There he saw it. What this ‘it’ was, Tercius had no idea.

'It' was an expanding growth that came out of the boy's mana outline, near his left leg. An image of a pregnant woman came to mind as if he was looking at the accelerated growth of the stomach in minutes instead of months. Tercius cycled from Mana Sight to his ordinary vision, intent on capturing as many visual memories of both types as he could.

There would be time to examine them with Visualization later.

As if birthing a child, the outline popped and disappeared. A hiss on his shoulder occurred in the same instant. He quickly dropped Mana Sight. In the regular vision, Tercius saw a shadow there. Darker than those shadows around it, it looked more like a stain made by tar than something as simple as an obstacle in the light's way.

A student passed by, his legs obscuring the view for a moment, and Tercius eyes saw the tar stain no more.

He searched for it about the floor, in all directions, without success.

While he had a problem locating it, Amber did not. The little creature was digging in her claws into his shoulder, and Tercius was sure that she was drawing blood. The pain was a mere afterthought after his experiences, so he barely flinched. It did manage to draw his attention to Amber. Following her eyes, he saw what had managed to capture her attention.

A cat.

A cat was making its way between the legs of the students. Black and smooth, its hairless body was made with strange proportions. The legs seemed overly small for the bulging stomach it carried upon them. The tail was thin and it whipped about like that of an excited dog. The creature was making its way out of the crowd of students where it slipped behind a wall.

Tercius did not move from the spot even when Master Kot said to the remaining students that they were free to go outside, his mind going over the scene with Visualization. He had no intention of following after the strange cat.

Curiosity killed the cat, after all. Why would he let that be amended to: Curiosity killed Tercius?

Maybe he was overreacting and being a bit paranoid, but that was fine in his book.

Tercius thought about the moment when this 'creature' took to… emerge from J'ro. From where the Masters and Mistresses stood, they had no way of seeing into the center of the crowd. The mana of the students would obscure any small shape. Visually, the shape was just a dark shadow-- one that was overlooked in the rowing shadows that were present on the floor.

Tercius himself would have missed it, if not for Amber.

Amber had stopped her bloodletting efforts on his shoulder and seemed content to nap, a fact that brought him some peace of mind. If that creature was near, he suspected that she would not be so relaxed as to rest in such a way.

He finally learned what was raising her ire about J’ro; at least he thought that he did.

What was this creature? Why was it 'attached' to J'ro? How was it attached? Was it involved in the mess at the Academy? If so, why did it leave J'ro now? Is this place somehow significant to it? All of this and more was on his mind as he looked at J'ro.

There was the question of the boy's involvement in this. He was the-- carrier, seemed to be the best word, but what kind of carrier was he? Did he know? Was he willing, if he did?

“Tercius,” Euria called for him and waved to the open door. “Are you coming?”

Most of the snow had melted, both naturally and with the aid of spells-- Master Kot informed them, so a lot of space was cleared for kids to have a space to play. After three weeks of being cooped underground, the students were content to simply run in the fresh air.

As soon as he was able, he slipped away from the crowd and ran to the giant solitary tree that seemed to have a view of the whole estate.

Once there, he climbed up, cleaned a spot, and made himself comfortable.

The city of Chameos was in sight, less than a kilometer south of the estate. Between the city and the mansion was a field of green grass filled with flocks of wooly sheep.

There was a plan to what he saw of the city's layout, Tercius skill Mathematics tingled. It was built in a specific shape, one which was not entirely visible from his position.

There was a chill in the air, but that was to be expected. The Pyramid and the city of Chameos were situated between two large mountain chains, both of which had snow covers. The peaks probably never melted, all year round.

Amber had found the temperature disagreeable and had retreated into his cloak.

While the little creature napped, Tercius slipped into Meditation. The surroundings faded, leaving him alone in the vast black void. Thoughts drifted past his mind, and Tercius took a moment to peer into each one. The scene of how the cat came about repeated in his mind, over and over again. J'ro's mana outline, near his left leg, had ballooned out of proportions and the black smudge emerged. Before this, Tercius did not see anything out of the ordinary.

Yet he was not looking for this specific thing, and that made a great deal of difference once he started looking at his memories of J'ro, those that had the boy's mana outline.

There were a few memories in which Tercius had mana outline of which he was sure that they belonged to J'ro, and he focused on those. In one, he noticed an anomaly. If his memory served him right, the mana outline was taken a few days before Amber had started acting weird to J'ro.

The day the boy went to meet that… whatever of his, Tercius thought. Some kind of kin? Uncle? Aunt? Cousin? Someone else?

Tercius combed his memory of the day, but it was difficult. Over a month had passed, and while he was sure J'ro had mentioned with whom he was meeting, Tercius did not give it much attention at the time. He only knew that it was someone of J'ro's who lived in the city at the Pyramid.

That day in their room, when Mistress Dea had locked down the dorms, the anomaly was not present on J'ro's Mana outline.

J'ro was the one that went and reported Amber to Mistress Dea. Was this intentional? Somehow part of some plan?

What weighed on Tercius was the fact that this seemed to indicate that J'ro was somehow involved. Although it wouldn't be the first time someone used a kid as a scapegoat? Right?

In Meditation he allowed himself to delve into darker thoughts and those brighter ones, as neither left an aftertaste for as long as he was here. He could doubt and trust anyone as much as he wanted for as long as he wanted; with no emotional baggage.

That came after.