At the top of the main building at Falden, Mel found her way to a large open room with big stained windows leaking in sunlight from several directions. She stepped into the quiet space and saw Professor Dereey standing a small distance away from her, speaking with an older man.

The room had benches surrounding a middle point. It reminded Mel of the outside theater in Windbrook. She felt like if she would speak in her normal voice in this place, the sound would carry all the way out to the top benches surrounding the stage. Her feet made enough sound to make her self-conscious about her steps and Professor Dereey and the other man noticed her as soon as she stepped inside the circle.

“Melissa Temper,” Professor Dereey said as she approached them. “This is Headmaster Lorken, the head of Falden.”

Mel reached out her hand to Headmaster Lorken and gave him a smile. She had heard about him before. He was the one who had rejected her first application to Falden and the one who had accepted her second one as well. She had thought she would have met him sooner, maybe on her first day here, but he seemed to not be as involved with the students as Mel had first thought.

Headmaster Lorken glanced down at her outreached hand and then turned to Professor Dereey. “Let’s start the examination. I don’t want to be here all day.”

Mel’s hand fell to her side, and she watched him with her jaw gaping open. He was nothing like she had imagined. His fancy clothing and fake hair made him seem ridiculous, like he would belong at some stuffy ball for noble people. Not at a school of magic.

Professor Dereey shrugged and took a seat on the lowest of the benches. Headmaster Lorken sat down next to him and the professor brought up a piece of paper from a black case. Mel kept standing in front of them and clasped her hands behind her back in a murderous grip. This wasn’t going like she had hoped, and Mel didn’t want Austin to be right. That Professor Dereey only meant to treat her unfairly and then kick her out of Falden.

“You're planning on studying mage smithing here at the school, right?” Professor Dereey said.

“Yes.”

“Okay, good. The first questions will be regarding mage smithing then.”

Headmaster Lorken leaned back on the bench and propped up one leg over his knee. He took a relaxed position and Mel understood the test had now begun and he was observing her every move.

“How many of the four smithing songs do you know?” Professor Dereey asked.

“One,” Mel said. “The song of fire. You sang it to us in class.”

“Can you sing it to us now?” he asked.

Mel shifted in her stance and unclasped her hands, feeling her palms sweaty from nerves. She shook her head.

“Can you try?” Professor Dereey asked, looking up from his paper at her.

It felt like an elephant had landed on her chest and she could not understand why he wouldn’t just accept her no. But she knew Professor Dereey to be a cruel man, and she had seen him many times making confident students into wobbling messes. Mel decided she didn’t want to be one of them. She wanted him to respect her, but barring that, she would try her best at anything he threw at her.

Mel swallowed hard and cleared her throat.

“We bend the flames to our will,

“And with it, we can… something…

“Ehm. then it’s…

“We’ll kill them, kill them inside,

“Yes, we’ll kill them, kill them inside.”

Professor Dereey held up his hand to Mel. “That’s enough. Thank you.”

Mel shifted in her stance again and brought her hands behind her back.

“Which metal would you imbue water into?” Professor Dereey asked.

“Silver,” Mel said.

“And what about earth?”

“That’s copper.”

“Yes, correct. Thank you.”

Professor Dereey peered down at his paper again and seemed to be going through it like a list. A list of questions to ask her, perhaps. Mel felt like she was doing okay so far. Not good, but not bad either. She took in a deep breath while she waited for the next question.

“What are the three most important components of making a quality imbue?” Professor Dereey asked.

“The right note, the right tempo, and consistency in the first two.”

Professor Dereey looked up from his sheet of paper, seeming surprised at her quick answer. “Yes, that’s also correct. Good.”

Headmaster Lorken was staring at one of the stained windows to the side of the room and didn’t seem too concerned with how the test was going. Mel kept wondering what he was even doing here. Why was he attending her final test?

Gabs had said her test yesterday had been easy, just with Professor Dereey. He had asked her questions, much like the ones he was asking Mel now. So everything seemed to be like the other students' tests, except they were in a different room and with Headmaster Lorken present.

Professor Dereey reached for his black case and brought it up beside him on the bench. He unlocked the clasps that held the case closed and picked up seven tuning forks and placed them on top of the now closed case. He turned to Mel again and stood up. He walked past her and brought out a table on wheels that he rolled up to where she was standing.

Mel felt her breath getting caught in her lungs and her chest tightening. She wouldn’t have been able to pick out the fire note during the elemental test without her dagger, and feared Professor Dereey would ask her to pick it out once again now. She didn’t have her dagger with her. This test was supposed to be on materials, not the elemental notes.

She had practiced with Austin’s tuning forks since the first test. But thinking she wouldn’t be tested again, she hadn’t been diligent about it. She wasn’t completely sure she could pick out all the four notes.

Professor Dereey placed the seven tuning forks with careful hands in front of her on the table. He stepped back and sat down on the bench.

“Pick out earth,” he said.

Mel felt her breath escaping through her lips in a sigh and her shoulders relaxed down toward the floor. She could do earth. It was the easiest one, after all.

She picked up the tuning forks one after one and sounded out the notes. Mel took her time and felt a calmness in performing this task. She knew what she was looking for. When she played the earth note as the fifth tuning fork she banged against the wooden table, Mel still continued to sound out the rest. Taking her time and making sure she had found the right one.

She went back to the earth note and hit it once again against the table and it sounded just right. Mel felt a smile extending on her lips and she held up the tuning fork toward Professor Dereey and Headmaster Lorken.

“That’s the one,” Lorken said, waving a dismissive hand at Mel. “Let her pick out a more difficult note.”

Professor Dereey cast an annoyed glance at Headmaster Lorken and brought up a small item from his black case. “Play the tuning fork once more.”

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Mel did as he said and hit the earth note against the wooden table and let it ring out through the room. The small object in Professor Dereey’s hands looked like an arrowhead and when the note was struck, the arrowhead glowed brown.

Headmaster Lorken shifted his legs and rolled his eyes at Professor Dereey. Mel thought it was strange that the professor wasn’t following Lorken’s orders to a tee. He was, after all, Professor Dereey’s superior.

“Okay, that’s correct. Can you pick out fire next?”

Mel swallowed hard and tried to focus on the task. She could do this. She had practiced with Austin’s tuning forks and she could probably find the fire note among the remaining six forks. It was possible, definitely possible.

She rang out all the remaining six tuning forks and felt the room vibrate with the pure notes. They felt like they were touching her center, and some of the notes felt like she liked them more than others. Mel had learned from practicing with the tuning forks that the ones she liked, the ones that sounded harmonious to her ears, were the elemental notes. For some reason, these notes were just her favorite ones.

She picked out three of these and placed them to the side of the others. These were definitely the elemental notes, but Mel didn’t know which one was which though and she felt her heart beating faster. Her mind felt like it was falling into a panic and she knew this wasn’t the right place for it if she wanted to ace this test.

Mel stood there a long time, hitting the three tuning forks over and over again against the edge of the table. She just couldn’t be sure. They all sounded equally right to Mel’s ears. It wasn’t like the earth note, which she had worked hard on being able to distinguish from the others.

“Just pick one for the mother’s sake.”

Headmaster Lorken’s voice broke the ringing of pure tones in the room and Mel saw his eyes watching her with a beady feeling to them. Her glance shot away from Lorken to Professor Dereey. He seemed like the lesser of two evils today. Mel hadn't thought she would ever seek comfort in Dereey, but right now she was.

He nodded to her with a solemn expression on his face. She needed to pick one now. Fear gripped her, and she picked up one of the three tuning forks. She sent a silent prayer to whoever may be watching and stretched out her hand to Professor Dereey.

He opened the black case and brought out a tiny dagger with markings along its hilt. Mel hit the tuning fork against the table and watched the dagger. It shined gray in the light streaming in from the windows, but nothing more.

Mel felt her shoulders slump, and she knew she had failed this part of the test at least.

Professor Dereey shook his head. “I’m sorry, it’s the wrong one.”

He turned his gaze down to the paper again and then looked up at Headmaster Lorken, who was smiling faintly at Mel.

“Should we stop here?” he asked. “There doesn't seem to be a reason to continue.”

Mel felt her body growing rigid and her eyes flickered between the two men. Were they just going to fail her now? Not even caring to let her take the full test. Whatever they had planned, Mel felt like she wanted to take the complete test. Maybe she could be scrappy and figure out some of the questions or challenges ahead.

If they didn’t even let her try, she had to admit defeat now.

“Please, let me take the full test,” Mel said.

The silence stretched as they watched her and then Headmaster Lorken turned to Professor Dereey once more. “We need to continue. We need to go through the entire list, just in case.”

Professor Dereey sighed and wet his lips. “Can you tell us what kind of magic is imbued into my ring?”

Mel looked down at his hand on the silvery metal wrapped around his middle finger. She listened and heard the note ringing inside. But unfortunately, Mel couldn’t tell which of the elemental notes it was. She was still terrible at telling them apart by only listening to the pure notes.

Her heart beat fast and she decided the only way she would know was to connect to the magic inside and make his ring glow. Then they would all know by the color of the glow.

Mel took a deep breath and in her mind she played the same note that the ring gave off. She imagined herself projecting the sound out of her, and in a moment of pure desperation to pass this test and to not be kicked out of Falden, she opened her mouth and the sound vibrated out of her.

The ring glowed bright and white light shone from Professor Dereey’s hand. His gaze fell down to the ring and then shot up to Mel, who stood there singing the note of wind. His eyes were wide and his mouth gaped at her.

Mel closed her mouth and stopped singing. She felt heat rise to her cheeks and her gaze flew over to Headmaster Lorken. He had sat up for the first time during the test and was watching her intently.

“Wind,” Mel said. “Your ring is imbued with wind.”

There was a silence following her answer, but Mel knew she was right this time. They had all seen the white glow. He couldn’t refuse her this victory.

“Yes,” Professor Dereey said.

He looked at the list in his hands again, and he swallowed noticeably. He placed the paper on his seat and stood up, walking up to the table in front of Mel where the tuning forks still lay. He wriggled off the ring from his finger and placed it on the table between them.

“Do you know what this ring can do?” he asked.

Mel shook her head, but then she answered anyway, “Shouldn't it be able to do everything the wind can do?”

Professor Dereey gave her a quizzical expression and adjusted his spectacles before he spoke. “The shape of the object the magic is imbued into determines to some parts what it can be used to. I know we haven’t talked about this yet in class, it is actually a more advanced topic than what the basics cover. But let’s just for simplicity’s sake say that this ring can be used to make a small breeze.”

“Okay,” Mel said.

“So what I want you to do is to connect to the magic in the ring again and blow away these small pieces of paper.” Professor Dereey brought up a few ripped pieces of paper and placed them around the ring on the table. “Can you try to do that?”

Mel nodded. “I can try, but I’m not sure I will be able to.”

“That’s okay,” Professor Dereey said. “Like I said, this is pretty advanced magic. Definitely more advanced than the basics.”

Mel watched him back away from the table and wondered when he had ever been nice toward her before. It was like he was hesitant around her now and almost seemed afraid of Mel. Something that struck her as really strange. It was like his personality and mannerism had completely changed the more this test had progressed.

She relaxed her forehead and focused on the ring on the table. She pretended like Headmaster Lorken and Professor Dereey weren’t watching her like hawks at the moment. The sound of the wind inside the metal rang throughout the room and Mel really wondered why people struggled to hear something that sounded so stark to her.

In her mind, Mel matched the tone and harmonized with it. This time, she didn’t try to sing it out loud. She didn’t think that would actually make her use the magic except for making it glow like a tuning fork could. She had used the magic inside her dagger two times by now, and she knew it had more to do with commanding it. Telling the element what to do.

So if Professor Dereey wanted a small breeze to blow away some scraps of paper from his pocket, then she would imagine that. Mel visualized the breeze and the papers blowing away, wisping up into the air and landing on the floor beneath the table.

Nothing happened.

Mel felt herself growing frustrated, but forced herself to calm her emotions. She needed to create wind. That was all she needed to do. If she created the breeze, then this would all be over and she could go home to the safety of her dorm. She would pass the semester and be let into the dragon forge. She just needed to do this one simple task first.

Her eyes fell on the ring, and she felt the wind calling to her. Like it was whispering something undetectable, something that didn’t quite make sense to her ears. She harmonized with it and projected out the command blow. It glowed, but no wind came.

She then instead projected out the feeling of wind from her mind to the ring. Without saying the words in her mind, only thinking about what a small breeze would feel like on her face. The ring glowed brighter this time and then a small breeze wisped up around it and the tiny pieces of paper took flight.

They circled like butterflies around the ring in the air, like the center of the ring was the storm's eye and then they flew out away from the ring. The paper pieces slowly descended to the floor around the table and landed like small flakes of snow dusting the floorboards.

A huge smile spread across Mel’s lips, and she couldn’t contain her happiness. She had made wind. She had created magic. This time, it had been different from the others. She had done it with intent and the magic had done what she had meant for it to do, nothing else.

Professor Dereey stood up from his seat and his boots jabbed into the floor, making an awful sound. Mel’s eyes shot up to meet his. His face was full of horror, not happiness, and Mel’s smile faltered. Had she done something wrong? Wasn’t this what he had asked for?

Her eyes flickered to Headmaster Lorken, who sat up, staring at her with large beady eyes. His expression was full of shock, but not terror, like Professor Dereey. Mel took a step back from the table and her hands flew up to shield her from whatever was coming.

But the lines in Professor Dereey’s face evened out, and he met her gaze. He gave her a forced half-smile.

“Good. You did that excellently. Those were all the questions we had for you today, and we will review the results in the coming days.”

Mel’s hands fell to her sides, and she took another step toward the exit. She forced in a breath, but couldn’t shake the feeling that something was terribly wrong with this interaction.

“When will you let me know if I passed?” Mel asked.

Professor Dereey turned to Headmaster Lorken, who seemed to snap out of his shock. He cleared his throat and stood up from the bench, walking over to the table. His finger brushed the edge of the ring in astonishment, and then his gaze met hers.

“If you haven’t heard back from us in a week, you can assume you’ve passed.”

“What?” Mel asked. “You won’t tell me?”

Headmaster Lorken watched her for a moment and brought down his hand into his pocket. “There’s no need. You have proven your abilities today, and you deserve a place at Falden. We just need to do a formal review, but I expect it to end favorably for you. So you can just assume you’ve passed the test and continue into the next semester if you haven’t heard anything from us in a week.”

“Oh,” Mel said. “Thank you. That’s great.”

A new smile formed on her lips, but this time it was small and hesitant. She caught Professor Dereey’s gaze again and her smile vanished. His expression never seemed to reach his eyes.