The shadow of the northern university towered over Sorkovo like a massive hungry Gargoyle. Brightfire—or Blightfire, as most members of the guild called it, disparaging the school for its ostentatious, showiness that bordered on the obscene, spoiling the city’s already grim skyline.

Where the University of Generasi was built on the edge of a beautiful city that it had been named for, allowing it to spread over a vast area, Brightfire loomed in the centre of Sorkovo in a claustrophobic cluster of dark towers and squat, barracks-like lecture halls.

Stone walls, thick and high, surrounded the school—capped with spear-tipped, iron spikes—with a gateway barred by tall steel gates of black, glyph-inscribed wood. The symbols burned with a vicious magic promising a host of deadly consequences to all trespassers.

As he studied it from the sky—from invisible eyes—Alexander Roth counted no less than three magical glyphs set to deter the uninvited with searing waves of lightning bolts.

He examined the glyphs, noting how one was crafted to send lightning raining down from above, while another was fashioned to shoot lightning horizontally between evenly spaced sections of the gates, and the third would send flaring streams of electricity boiling from the earth.

‘Isolde would be proud,’ Alex thought of his lightning-wielding cabal-mate. ‘Actually, she probably wouldn’t, considering the other glyphs in that gate.’

His eyes scanned the other symbols: there was magic to wrap intruders in spiked chains, magic to summon lesser earth elementals that enjoyed pounding things to paste, magic that sucked the breath from someone’s lungs, magic to harvest skeletons from anyone caught in the trap, and other gruesome wizard workings…

‘No wonder the thieves couldn’t break into this place,’ Alex thought, recalling Warder’s words as they talked in the small, stone hut.

“Brightfire is protected by many deadly magical traps, and all are set up in such a way that if you destroy or remove one, the others are tripped,” the masked bandit had explained, pointing to a detailed map of the campus he’d pinned to the wall. “Those magics are meant to go off if anyone tries to get through the gates, dig under, or climb over the walls. You need a student card to get in. Otherwise, an alarm goes off, creating quite the ruckus, and meaning you have five seconds to be good and gone.”

“What happens after five seconds?” Alex had asked.

“You’re dead. Several times over. In lots of disagreeable ways.”

‘He wasn’t exaggerating,’ the young wizard thought, writing the deadly symbols in his notebook. Some of them he wouldn’t mind stealing to protect his own wizard’s tower, if he ever built one; the triple lightning trick was one.

Though, for the moment, those lightning symbols were an obstacle; the walls around this school contained more deadly magics than all of Generasi’s campus.

The outer walls weren’t Brightfire’s only defence either.

‘There is a ward around the university meant to stop anyone who tries to cast a teleportation spell to get in,’ Warder had traced his finger along the walls on the map. ‘If you attempt to breach the perimeter and fail, which you would, the alarms sound loud and clear. That ward tells every iron-watcher there’s an intruder about.’

‘What’s an iron-watcher?’ Alex had asked.

‘Go scout out the campus, you’ll soon understand what I mean.’

Now that he was here, the young wizard could see exactly what Warder had meant.

Patrolling the skies around the university were massive, chimeric, monstrosities that appeared to be forged from solid iron. Enormous things with batlike bodies and membranous wings covered in layers of gleaming, dagger-like scales. Both their top and lower bodies were armed; serpentine tails, tipped with bone-clubs, trailed behind them as they soared through the skies, mouths crowded with sword-like fangs, gaped open, seeming like their faces were frozen in permanent snarls.

Iron-draks, they were called, bred from wild monsters for generations to serve as the mounts of the university’s private enforcement force.

Atop the iron-draks’ backs sat fur-cloaked men and women with long spear-staffs clipped to leather saddles. Uniforms were visible beneath billowing cloaks, similar to those worn by the Watchers of Roal, but they rode iron-draks instead of flying disks that were favoured by the guardians of the southern university.

Alex shook his head. ‘Someone’s been cheating off others’ designs,’ he mused, scanning the campus’ grim buildings.

Many were too similar in design to Generasi’s architecture to be a simple coincidence, though they were larger, blockier and conveyed an ominous strength and an exacting brutality.

There was no truer example of the vicious design than Brightfire’s main castle.

It dwarfed Generasi’s—by perhaps three times—and was crafted of dark stone that seemed to suck in any hint of colour around it. Its towers looked ancient, spiralling into the air, covered in glyphs of protection, while its windows appeared new in contrast.

To Alex, it resembled a fortress constructed with one goal in mind, repelling an apocalypse. He shuddered, imagining what learning might be like within those walls.

The main castle wasn’t what interested him, though; he was there for another building, Brightfire’s library, by far the school’s tallest building.

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Generasi’s library was relatively squat, and built into the earth—its many lower floors reaching deep into the ground—Brightfire’s library, on the other hand, was monumental, oppressive and black, a tower that rose hundreds of feet in the air.

From what Warder had said, the only building taller in all of Sorkovo was the imperial palace; Alex could see it looming in the distance.

Glyphs of protection encrusted the stones of the library’s facade, blazing with deadlier magics than those on the walls. It was windowless, and its top was carved, taking the shape of an open, clawing hand.

Alex wouldn’t have been surprised to see a blazing eye there—ringed in flame—hovering above, casting its gaze over Sorkovo and the countryside beyond.

He remembered what Warder had said about the guild trying to breach the tower.

“Getting into that tower is its own nightmare. It has protections against teleportation spells worse than the ones protecting the outer walls,” he’d explained. “And they’ve put wards over the whole place that freezes anyone who enters the tower using invisibility magic. Disguises don’t work: anyone stepping into that tower without either a student card, a staff card, or being accompanied by a Brightfire professor, is instantly turned to ice. The same thing happens if you try going from floor to floor.”

“Can you move around inside the library? Without an identification card, I mean?” Alex had asked.

“According to our sources, yes,” Warder had explained. “They allow guests to freely use the floor they’re on without being turned into an ice statue. But freely moving from floor to floor, isn't possible.”

“Did you try forging a card or maybe bribing a staff member?” Alex had asked.

Warder had snorted. “We’re not the Guild of the Incompetents, young wizard. We’ve been in this business for a long while and have tried both ways. People are always caught—Brightfire staff regularly have their minds probed for signs of betrayal.”

Alex had shuddered at that, glad for the City of Wizards’ policies against mind magic.

“And every forgery we’ve tried has been a failure,” Warder had said. “We thought we’d cracked it at one point—one of our wizards was a student there and we tried to analyse her old card—but something went wrong. Three of our agents tried to walk in, disguised and were flash-frozen the instant they stepped through the door.”

“Charming,” Alex had said. “I can see why you’d want Kelda’s power on your side.”

“Exactly,” the gem-eyed man had said. “Go ahead and scout out the university. At midnight tomorrow, we’ll assemble a team that will meet here. Together, you’ll go to the third, seventh, and ninth levels of the library for what we’re after.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Alex had said. “In the meantime, we’ll scout the place out.”

He, Theresa and Brutus—invisible to the eye—had come to the university to assess its defences. Theresa and he didn’t trust Warder. They would do what they had to, but didn’t like being forced to work for scum, which the thief clearly was. They desperately needed access to Kelda’s sanctum, but didn’t have time to think of another solution; Warder claimed to know its location, and they needed him to guide them to it. There was no way around it, so the ruby-eyed thief would get his way, for now. At least, Alex could get spells for battle and to potentially help him change the Mark. Besides, the Irtyshenan wizards of Brightfire seemed as scummy as Warder, so he wouldn't lose sleep over it.

He'd picked a vantage point in the sky, just outside the campus walls, and had remained there while Theresa and Brutus circled Brightfire. When they were through, they would return and—

A finger tapped him on the shoulder.

Nearly sending him leaping out of his skin.

“Hey,” Theresa whispered.

“Jeez, I think you cut ten years off my life,” he hissed. “By the Traveller.”

“Sorry,” she apologised as one of Brutus’ large, invisible heads nuzzled his side. “So, we found the iron-draks’ stable, more gates leading into the campus, and I believe we also found the iron-watchers’ training area…”

She snorted.

“...can you believe they’re calling themselves iron-watchers?” she whispered, sounding offended. “They’re not even trying.”

“I believe you. It’s like they want to outdo Generasi,” Alex said. “Despite all the nasty rumours about this place, lots of wizards consider Brightfire the second or maybe third best wizard-university in the world. I guess they want to show that they can compete with Generasi.”

“Ugh, well let’s just say I’m glad you didn’t get an acceptance letter to this grim place,” she whispered. “But anyway, the iron-draks’ stable is beside the iron-watchers’ barracks and it looks like they’re about four hundred yards and two cross-streets away from the library.”

Alex nodded. “Right. And how long do you think they’d take to get to the library if an alarm went off?”

“Hmmmm,” Theresa muttered. “I don’t know. I’d say maybe three to four minutes if they have to gear up, and more like ten if they’re scrambling to get out of bed. But, I’m just guessing, to be honest.”

“Hmmmm,” Alex muttered. “Alright, so we’ll need to move fast. Very fast.”

“Are we bringing Claygon?” Theresa asked.

“Oh yeah,” the young wizard said. “I’ve been filling him in on what we’re about to do; if we get discovered, we’ll need him.”

“Yeah, I agree,” she said. “Something’s been bothering me too…what if Brightfire has its own Baelin? If some archwizard shows up, we’ll be wiped out in an instant.”

Alex snorted. “Thankfully, Baelins don’t grow on trees. According to Warder, the Rector of Brightfire is powerful, but from what he described, she’s no Baelin.”

“What tier of spell can she cast?” Theresa asked.

“He didn’t know, but she’s more of an administrator than a battle wizard,” Alex said. “The main person we need to worry about is someone named Ljubica Stormhammer, the leader of the iron-watchers. Apparently, she’s a very experienced battle mage, and she comes from a long line of golem-knights.”

“Great,” the huntress sighed. “Do you think we can fight her?”

“With Claygon, yeah. We faced the First Apostle, and if we could do that? We can face her.”

“Makes sense…alright, so are we ready to go back home?”

“Almost,” Alex said. “There’s one more thing I have to check.”

“What’s that?” she asked.

“Whether or not I can actually teleport on campus or is that going to be an issue.” Alex’s hand balled into a fist. “And frankly? I’d rather find out now rather than later; I know Kelda teleported into Generasi, and I think she teleported into Brightfire—judging by how desperate she was to find anything that could help her get rid of her Mark—but I don’t have any way of knowing if things have changed.”

He took a deep breath. “Maybe they’ve improved their wards so they can detect Hannah’s power now. Maybe they detected Kelda’s activities inside their library and found ways to expand their security. A lot could have happened over the past three hundred years, so I’d rather find out now, rather than tomorrow night.”

“...alright, but be careful.”

“I’ll be as careful as I can when I’m, you know, teleporting behind the walls of a dark, mysterious, deadly wizard school,” Alex said, eyeing the glyphs on the library tower. “By the traveller, this place really would give you a deadly education.”

Closing his eyes, the Fool of Thameland called on the Traveller’s power, focused on a mostly abandoned street on Brightfire’s campus and teleported.

Images sailed past him.

Snippets of a dozen planes and a dozen worlds.

And then he was through.

Alex appeared on Brightfire’s campus, still draped in invisibility magic, and froze.

Tensed and waiting.

No alarm sounded.

No mana gathered to strike him.

He grinned giddily, his heart pounding.

Alex’s grin widened the longer he eyed the library tower. “Soon, your secrets are going to be mine, you unfriendly looking thing, you.”