The inside of the laboratory stank, to the point I felt like I was in danger. The air was sticky with toxic, alchemical fumes. Complex, confusing, sharp, and clinging.

The smell reminded me of the village tannery back in Kirkswill. And the apothecary that Jeddia Rolan ran in the village square. And the dyers. And the charcoal smoker’s hut. And the butcher’s yard.

The source of the foul air was an enormous glass jar at the center of the room, belching out smoke with what appeared to be the tacit approval of the students tending it.

The liquid inside was multi-colored, with red, blue, and white components that swirled around each other, mixing without blending. There were hints of different textures within the jar, thicker fluids that congealed around the base, and even fragments of solid material that appeared briefly against the glass before being sucked away into the swirling chaos.

The whole thing was resting on an iron stand held over a bed of glowing coals. A dozen different tingling maja smells billowed off the embers, and the iron shelf resting above them was lacerated with dozens of cantograms.

I impressed myself by recognizing one of them, the canto for Bottled Heat, which I’d seen listed in a book called The Toolmaker’s Index. It could contain heat in the space above the cantogram like the sides of a clay-lined pot, with side effects I hadn’t spent the time to memorize.

The boiling liquid was only one process happening in the academy’s laboratory. There were three or four installations on the same scale, like the giant tank made of crystal and brass where the corpse of a wolf bathed in rainbow-hued fluid, or the black iron helmet sized to fit a giant that was being painted in shining lacquer.

The laboratory building was sized for its projects, with a roof was forty feet up, and vented in a way that maintained a constant downdraft. The main room was about three hundred feet across, with stone arches on each wall that led to smaller rooms populated with benches and free-standing appliances.

It was one of the widest buildings in the academy complex, and I had the feeling that the projects inside it were of more than just academic interest.

Outside, it was already hours past sunset, but despite the late hour there were still about thirty other students busy in the room, wearing robes of varying shades of gray.

I couldn’t see anyone in the black robe of a master.

I’d come straight from my expedition to the swamp, making it back just as the last dying rays of light had been visible over the horizon. I had my bag of leaves, and I wanted to deliver it to Master Korphus and complete my assignment as soon as possible.

Which only worked if I could find them.

Everyone seemed to be absorbed by their own tasks. Unless I wanted to wander around aimlessly looking for the master, I’d need to ask someone. I approached a student who was working by the giant jar. He was standing on a stepladder, holding a flask by a long steel handle. Every few seconds he tipped the flask to pour a small amount of foaming orange liquid into the glass container.

I waited until the flask was almost empty, then said, “Excuse me, I’m looking for Master Korphus.”

The answer came quickly. “In his office. Black door off the alembic hall.”

I only vaguely knew what an alembic was, but I could see one of the adjoining chambers was full of copper distillation apparatus.

“Thanks,” I said.

I hesitated to leave.

The man had spoken with an East Edge accent. He was Losirisian like me, from one of the cities on Losiris’ eastern border with Antorx. He must have been kidnapped the same as I was, maybe a year or more ago.

“What are you working on?” I asked, trying to strike up a conversation.

“A body reinforcement bath for the Count of Serrato,” he said.

“Body reinforcement?”

“To steel his flesh against physical attack. You know the Counts.”

He finished emptying his flask and turned to glance at me over his shoulder. An aggrieved expression appeared on his face as he saw me, as if I’d tricked him into answering. He climbed off the stepladder and left without another word.

I set off for the chamber filled with alchemical equipment.

The master’s door stood out clearly along one wall, a heavy piece of black iron set in an arched doorway.

I stepped up to it and knocked. The metal seemed to swallow the sound completely, but someone must have heard it. A heartbeat later, a voice called from inside.

“Enter.”

I lifted the latch on the door and pushed it open.

Master Korphus’s office was like a smaller version of the lab outside. There were pieces of copper equipment standing freely around the room, glass beakers and bottles, a cauldron that was currently empty. There were also bookshelves full of books and scrolls, and a desk strewn with messy papers.

At first glancethe room reminded me of Scribe Bevin’s study, but the closer I looked the more I started to notice things that were off. Tucked away on one shelf, half hidden by books and scrolls, was a glass jar filled with mirky fluid. Floating inside it was a peeled human face. It looked young. Its eyes were closed, with only a scrap of hair visible at the top of the forehead. After that, more things started standing out.

A painting on one wall that at first glance had looked like a peaceful forest scene was actually crowded with half-hidden monsters. Grotesque, impossible creatures leered out from behind trees, beckoning the viewer with clawed appendages, giving the moss-covered altar at the center of the forest clearing a sinister importance.

The dagger mounted above the desk was brown with dried blood. The two-tined fork standing in a pen holder on the desk suddenly reminded me of the scar on the woman I’d seen in the library. There was no direction I could look without seeing something that made me uncomfortable. Even the books, when I started to look closer, had titles like Modern Torture Aspects and The Alchemy of Souls.

Master Korphus himself was a rotund man with a head that was mostly bald, except for streamers of gray hair that hung from his temples down to his shoulders. He wore the same black robe as the other masters, in addition to numerous gemmed rings.

He turned in his chair to look at me as I opened the door.

We stared at each other for a few seconds, before he spoke.

“Well?”

“I’m here to hand in my assignment.”

He waved his hand. “Give me your scroll.”

I’d pulled everything except my scroll and the leaves out of my bag before I’d entered the building, sticking my reeds in my waistband under my robe. Now, I pulled my assignment scroll out and handed it to the him.

He unrolled it and passed his eyes over the text, pausing before pushing it back into my hands.

“Fine. Hand them over.”

I pulled my bag off my shoulder and held it out for him.

He snatched it away and pulled open the top, checking the contents. He looked up slowly. His eyes fell on my throat.

“Your neck is bruised,” he said slyly.

The fact that he’d commented on my throat all but confirmed that he knew about the tree spirit, and how it was likely to treat anyone coming for its leaves. My near-death experience had been, if not deliberately arranged, then carelessly ignored.

“I walked into a branch,” I said.

He nodded benignly. “It’s ironic, how rarely the dreamer thinks to wonder if they’re dreaming.”

Is that supposed to be cryptic wisdom?

“It’s more ironic that the academy didn’t teach me how to deal with evil tree spirits before I left,” I said.

The moment the words left my mouth I felt a flash of danger. I was too used to speaking with Scribe Bevin, and I hadn’t fully processed the risk of speaking back to the academy masters.

In this case, I seemed to get away with it.

He turned and carried the bag to the edge of the room, speaking as he moved.

“You only feel that way because of your ignorance. You were told that this place is a school, and so you expect to be taught. The Antorxian Polity calls this site an academy, but before the advent of the Polity, places like this were called Acorridae.”

“A ‘sharp passageway’?” I asked.

Korphus didn’t even blink at the fact that I could speak Ancient Irisian. Instead, he was quick to correct me.

“A very literal translation. A more accurate name would be ‘Corridor of Trials’; places where a student could simply not proceed before they met a bar of excellence.”

He tossed the sack of leaves into the bowl of a large set of scales. After a second of inspecting the gauge, he turned towards me.

“You failed your assignment,” he said.

I could only stare for a long span of seconds.

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“What?”

“Your task was to bring me a pound of ginsberry tree leaves. Instead, you brought me one and four fifths of a pound. Four fifths more than requested. You ignored your instructions and you fail.”

“What? No!”

I felt like he was trying to hang me on a technicality. The whole thing felt like a cruel joke. Were we being set up to fail?

I thought about complaining — that I didn’t have access to a scale, that the task was impossible — but I felt like that would be playing into the line he was taking. He seemed to want to talk about technicalities.

“I haven’t failed,” I said. Keeping my voice steady was an effort. “I did bring you a pound of leaves. They’re just mixed in with some extra I collected for myself.”

He took a step back, gesturing at the bag. “Then unmix them. And hurry.”

I darted to the scale. I pulled my bag out of the bowl and started tipping leaves back into it. I piled them up until the dial showed one pound, then moved back, hooking my bag back over my shoulder.

“One pound of ginsberry leaves,” I said.

Korphus went over to the scale. He checked the dial and hummed, then returned to his desk.

“Fine. You passed your assignment and are due for a reward.”

I watched his pudgy hands as he opened a desk drawer and reached inside. He pulled something out and offered it to me.

A candle. It was a thin, off-white tallow candle, six inches long.

I reached out my hand and took it. For a minute, all I could do was stare at it. I don’t know what I’d expected the reward for completing an assignment would be. A lesson? A book? A magical tool? Something more useful than this.

Korphus stared at me as I held it.

“Aren’t you going to thank me?” he asked.

I almost thanked him on reflex, but instead I looked up and said, “No.”

Korphus cackled to himself.

He waved a hand and I felt a wave of deep, cold maja wash towards me. It hit me like an avalanche and tossed me into the air.

I flew backwards like leaf in a gale, passing through the open door before tumbling to the ground and skidding for six feet across the laboratory tiles.

When I came to rest my hips were throbbing and there were shooting pains running up and down my back. I felt like I’d fallen off a roof onto hard stone.

I lay there for a minute, my back spasming in pain. Eventually, a face appeared above me, the boy I’d asked for directions.

“That was Force aspect manipulation,” he said.

“Does he do that to everyone who hands in an assignment?” I asked dully.

“Only the ones he likes,” the boy answered. “Exposure to Force aspect is one of the best ways to learn it.”

I considered that in silence while staring at the vaulted ceiling. The book I’d found in the library had told me I needed to be burned by fire to learn the Fire aspect. Now this random countryman was telling me that being tossed around by a teacher was a good thing. It had to be convenient for the staff that they could terrorize students and call it education.

I really wanted to believe that there was a reason I was lying on my back with every bone between my skull and pelvis throbbing. If I could learn to do the same thing, then at least I could pretend I Korphus hadn’t just attacked me on a whim.

“How do I learn it?” I asked.

“If you have a clear memory of what it felt like, then you have it. Make your maja become the memory. Make sure you push the maja out… Internally directed force maja is an advanced skill.”

“You’re being more helpful than I expected,” I said flatly.

The boy didn’t reply straight away. When I angled my head to look at him, he was bending over, looking inside my makeshift bag. After a few seconds he lifted it up, hung the twine strap over his shoulder, and walked away. I watched my bag and my remaining leaves disappear into the main chamber.

I hope you have a use for them. Godspeed.

I let my head roll back onto the tiles.

After another minute I started getting self-conscious and dragged myself to my feet.

~

At the barracks, I was surprised to see the boy whose hand had been blasted off was back, sitting alone at one of the tables in the common room. He was wearing a numb expression on his face, opening and closing the hand he wasn’t meant to have. The new hand was made of the same stone-gray flesh I’d seen on some of the academy masters, but otherwise matched his other hand. He was flexing it, staring at it like it didn’t belong to him.

Was this what the medicine of sorcerers could do?

I started walking towards him. As I got closer, I could hear him talking to himself.

“I can’t feel it. Why can’t I feel it?”

He looked to be a year younger than me at most, but if I hadn’t known better I would have thought it was the voice of a child.

I forced myself to move closer. I sat on the bench across the table from him.

He looked up as I sat down.

“They said they could give it back. But this isn’t mine,” he said, looking at me with wide eyes.

“I’ve seen a lot of the masters here with the same thing,” I said to him. “I think this kind of healing must be normal for them.”

“Who do you think I speak to?” he asked.

“What?”

“To get my real hand back? Who do you think I should speak to?”

At my silent stare, he pulled up his sleeve and started picking at the ridged line where pink skin met gray.

“I don’t think you should do that,” I said.

“It isn’t mine,” the boy insisted.

I reached over and tried to stop him, but he waved the gray hand at me, brushing me away. In the moment we touched, I felt the texture of his new flesh; cold, smooth, and hard, like marble.

I pulled my arm back. I couldn’t think of a way to help him. I slid back off the bench and stood up, watching him as he picked at his forearm. I turned away and left the room quickly.

Back in my room, Adrian was only slightly better off. He was sitting on the cell’s stool, leaning back with his head against the wall, illuminated in shades of gray by moonlight shining through the cell’s high window.

He turned his head to look at me when I entered, giving me a long, flat stare. His eyes followed me as I went to my bed and sat down with my legs crossed.

I held my candle in my lap. I didn’t even have any way to light it.

Bleakness washed over me like an oncoming storm. I’d never been more alone. I’d never felt so lost. My future was closing in front of me like a snare. Magic was my only way through, and if I couldn’t learn that, then I’d be trapped, or dead, or worse.

I tried to center myself and felt for the dark pool of my maja, then began the torture that was trying to cast the Winter Hearth canto.

Adrian watched me silently as I dragged my finger through the air again and again, each attempt no more successful than the last, until my whole arm was fever-hot and my veins were burning like acid.

“You’re trying so hard, and you’re not even any good at it,” Adrian said.

I let my hand drop, turning a hard stare on him. I’d been trying this for hours without making progress. Maybe it was time to try another approach.

I thought back to when Master Korphus had thrown me out of his office. I focused on the feeling; his maja gripping me, the immense weight of it. Flying, briefly.

I felt for thr maja of my core and pushed the feeling into it. The memory passed into the maja without hesitation, rushing through it, converting it, like blood mixing with water.

The maja that the feeling touched was no longer a serene black pool. It was twisting and fire-red — a violent, frothing maelstrom.

The aspect-shifted maja burst free from my core, flooding out through my body like a dam break.

This was powerful. It was dangerous. It would tear me apart if I tried to contain it. I had to get rid of it.

I threw out my hands and pushed the force maja out.

I directed it out and at the floor hoping it would disappear into the ground, but it scattered and reflected off the stone somehow, splashing back up at Adrian.

The spell hit him like a sack of grain. He was thrown violently back against the wall. His head hit the stone with a sound like a cracked egg, and he slumped, falling onto the floor. The stone behind where he’d been was stained red.

I jumped down from the bed and rushed to his side.

“Adrian?”

I put my hand to his mouth to feel for breath. My palm only brushed his lips for a second before he was fending me off.

He pushed me away and staggered to his feet. He seemed dazed. His eyes were roaming the room, one hand held to his head, the other touching the wall. Finally, his eyes fell on me.

“Or maybe you’re already one of them,” he said.

“Adrian, I’m sorry.”

He shook his head and went for the door. I put a hand out to stop him, but stopped short of making contact.

He pulled the door open and walked through, vanishing into the darkness of the corridor.

He didn’t come back that night, or any following night. I’d frightened him away, and I had the room to myself.