"This exam consists of one stage," Professor Idlewild said.

Jacob nodded. That was odd. Both the Consumption and Production practical exams had three stages. In Production he'd had to create a light strong enough to illuminate the pitch black examination room, then change the light's colour, and finally create a ward to stop a forceward from Prof Michaelson.

The Decomposition practical examination room was a white cube, like a padded cell in an insane asylum. Ambient light emitted from somewhere, maybe the walls themselves, filling the room with bright, shadowless light. A sphere of orange clay the size of an inflated beach ball rested on the floor in the centre of the room. There was nothing else.

Prof Idlewild stood to the left of the ball, her hands clasped in front of her, her grey hair in crazy corkscrews framing her face.

"You will reshape the sphere of clay into a cube, and then back into a sphere. The more precise the shaping, the higher your mark. You have five minutes. You may only cast transformation."

Five minutes, just to do that? Jacob rolled his shoulder. Shouldn't be too bad.

"Have any questions?" Prof Idlewild prodded, rocking back and forth on her heels.

Jacob shook his head.

"Begin."

Big red digits appeared on the back wall: 5:00.

Jacob took a deep breath and narrowed his focus down to the orb. He could do this. He'd practiced with Archie and Camilla and Tanaka a bunch. It didn't matter that he wasn't doing that well in this class, and that even Blake seemed to be a better Decomposer than him. He couldn't feel the pressure.

He engaged his magic and pictured the light teal associated with transformation. He used the trick Tanaka had shown him in the morgue all those months ago. He believed the sphere was a cube.

The clay shifted, becoming a fraction more pointed.

Damn it.

Jacob breathed out. Sweat had broken out on his brow and upper lip. He wiped it away with one hand. He just needed to calm down and focus.

He took a moment to compose himself, taking several deep, meditative breaths as Camilla had shown him. His mind cleared, but his heart still pounded a machine gun beat. Why was this making him nervous? He'd fought Ishaan, and the rogue mage. This was nothing.

Focus!

He reached out with his hand instinctively. His magic slid out of him and into the sphere. He changed the sphere's shape.

It shifted slightly.

They all said it was about belief. Believing you could change the world around you. Being completely certain that the world would respond to your will. He latched onto this and repeated it in his head over and over and strained his magic against the sphere. What they didn't say was that you had to imagine the cube as well. People said Production was about imagination, but Jacob found Decomp was too, at least for transformation.

The sphere gradually became more cuboid. Some curves hardened into edges, others flattened to form faces.

Jacob's magic slipped from his grasp. Three minutes had passed. He blew out a shuddering sigh. Jesus Christ. He could cast strength and perception forever and not break a sweat, and even the divination spell didn't tax him as much as it had, but three minutes of low level transformation floored him.

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The cube looked like a child had moulded it with their bare hands and not much instruction, the edges still soft, the shape uneven. Jacob strained at it for another half-minute and was rewarded with a slight improvement.

He gasped for breath and grimaced. That was as close as he could get. He should have practiced this more! Points would be deducted if he left it as a cube, so he began working his way back to a sphere.

He pictured the sphere in his head and willed the cube to change back. Nothing happened.

Jacob blew out a breath. He couldn't will it or force it, that wasn't how it worked. He had to believe it would change. No, believe he could change it.

Once again, he kept that in mind as he poured the slippery teal magic into the cube. It softened, then softened some more.

When the time ran out, it looked more like a lump of sludge than a sphere. Jacob dropped his arms to his sides and stared at it in disbelief.

All those tournament fights where Archie and Tanaka had made walls and pillars and had freaking surfed waves of clay rushed through his mind. Tanaka was an outlier, and Archie was as well, for all intents and purposes, but even other students with not much talent or strength like Laszlo Trier or a dozen others Jacob had seen had been able to do it automatically. It shouldn't have been like that.

He'd trained hard, probably harder than any of them. He knew he had, but it just wasn't fucking working for him and he had no clue why.

"Well done," Prof Idlewild smiled. Magic whickered out of her and the lumpy sludge snapped back to a perfect sphere. "You may exit out the back."

A doorway slid open beneath the giant digital timer.

Jacob thanked her and strolled out, wiping the sweat from his brow on his shirt.

Ugh...

He entered the post-examination room. It was a large area filled with randomly assorted couches and sofas. The sound of a waterfall echoed from unseen speakers. The memograph on the walls showed a close up view of damp, tropical undergrowth.

Jacob scanned the room, hoping Camilla had waited around for him. He hadn't talked to her directly before the Decomp exam, but he'd seen her place in the queue online ten ahead of him.

Camilla sat in a chair in the corner, reading something. Jacob went over but hesitated just out of sight behind her. He wasn't really sure what the deal between them was anymore. She'd been pretty cool and distant since they'd talked after the tournament final—which he understood—but then it felt like things had been back to normal surrounding the incident with Ishaan. They'd fought so well together. Everything had been snappy, automatic.

"Yo," Jacob said before he could chicken out. He plopped himself down in the chair across from her. She was reading a thick tome titled: Telepathy: From Root to Stem.

"Hi. How was it?" She asked.

Jacob sighed and shook his head.

"That bad?"

"I couldn't get it to a good cube, or back into anything resembling a sphere."

"But you did move it both ways?"

"I guess."

"That'll count for something," Camilla grimaced and looked around the post-examination room. "You'd be surprised at how poor the overall Decomp skills are in the class."

"I guess."

"You shouldn't compare-"

"I know. I shouldn't compare to you or Tanaka," Jacob said, rubbing a hand across his face. He realized he'd snapped at her. "Sorry. I'm just bummed out. I thought I'd been doing pretty well on exams."

"So you can afford to drop one."

That was not really how he looked at things. Classes were individual skills and thus individual entities. A term average was, if you thought about it logically, kinda stupid.

The good news was, he felt good about Intro and Magical Basics, and the written component of the type exams had been fairly easy. He'd done fairly well on both the Prod and Cons practical component. He'd asked around after Cons and apparently only Camilla and Victor had managed to break the sixth plank. Tanaka, Diego, Sophia, and Xavier Hudson had broken the fifth, but that was it.

"I guess," he said. "It's over now. Can hardly believe it."

"Me too," Camilla said. "Still hasn't really hit me yet."

"Is there anything planned this evening?"

"No idea."

"You gonna just keep studying?" Jacob grinned, indicating the book.

Camilla quirked an eyebrow. "Learning shouldn't be confined to the term. I'd have thought you would know that, with all your biology knowledge."

Jacob grunted. He hadn't thought about magic that way. It was a good point, but after that gruelling exam, the last thing he wanted to do was learn more. He didn't know how Camilla did it.

Camilla had gone back to her book. Jacob sighed inwardly. He wished he knew how to fix this, if it even could be fixed. Was he imagining things? He decided he wasn't.

He settled in to wait for Blake to finish, drumming his fingers nervously on the armrest. He'd tried not to think about it too much—hadn't really been able to, given exams—but it was pretty clear that Blake was not doing that well. Since the incident with Ishaan he'd been rattled. There was no other word for it. His eyes had a haunted look, and more than once Jacob had been woken by him tossing and turning in his sleep.

He'd asked around it a couple times, but Blake didn't seem to want to talk about it, and Jacob wasn't really sure what else he could do.