The wordchain Lute had bestowed on Alden was fun, mind-blowing, and a total menace.

He had learned to cascade juggle five balls from Gustavo during a couple of sleepless nights in intake. Under the effects of the wordchain, he discovered he could easily do it with pieces of crumpled notebook paper while he was walking up a flight of stairs.

But sitting still in his Intro to Other Worlds class was proving difficult. People were so damn noisy. His stomach was so damn busy. Friction was so damn everywhere.

He kept making micro-level adjustments to himself in an attempt to get away from his own clothes. He was wriggling like an eel at his desk, trying and failing to escape from the itchy tag Satan had stitched into the neck of his shirt. It hadn’t bothered him at all earlier. Now it did very much. And the waistband of his jeans was rough in one spot. And that girl making little noises with her straw while she slurped on a milkshake that was apparently bottomless…

Giving up, he texted the expert. [Lute, what the hell? How do you use this regularly and not murder everyone around you?]

His reply was a couple of torturous minutes coming. [It’s not hard if something interesting is going on. It’s only terrible when you’re bored.]

The Intro to Other Worlds instructor was teaching them about sacred dirt mounds today. Nothing like a good alien dirt mound to distract you from the eight different ways your pants fit imperfectly—not.

[Find something to concentrate on that doesn’t make you crazy. Physical sensations are better than thoughts.]

He ended up practicing some of the gestures for the wordchain under his desk, as discretely as he could, and when class was finally over he raced to the nearest bathroom and used his promise stick lighting spell to burn the itchy tag out of his t-shirt. With a little too much enthusiasm. Now there was a scorched hole where the tag had been.

It was a vast improvement.

He had nearly two hours worth of study hall next. He’d been skipping it all last week, and he planned to do the same for the rest of the quarter. It was only required if your grades dropped, and he didn’t see that becoming a problem with this roster of classes.

Two hours to kill. I’m suddenly extra graceful, and I need to use it. Or else I’m going to burn up all of my own clothes. But I shouldn’t wear myself out before gym time, so…

He’d wanted to buy a few things to have on hand for skill practice. Instead of ordering them like a Rabbit of leisure, he could go get them himself and play with his new adroitness on the way.

Sounds like a plan.

He headed downstairs, got a small cup of ice water from the coffee shop, and shoved it in his hoodie pocket. That way failing to keep his skill active would result in some cold wet punishment.

Then he headed off at ground-eating speed thanks to his trait. The wordchain was definitely made for motion. The more Alden challenged himself, the more it showed off. He could hop up onto the back of park benches and walk across railings just fine without it, but with it, it was like his feet were always glued exactly where he wanted them to be.

He was so alert to minor balance issues, and making rapid adjustments felt second nature.

Aww…I really want to meet up with Bobby or the parkour club and show off.

He had to content himself with dashing along every narrow edge he could find as he left campus behind and headed for an area that the internet said was one of Apex’s best shopping spots. It was in a neighborhood with a large Chinese-speaking population, so Alden let his interface do a lot of sign translating for him. A busy boulevard lined with glossy, commercial shops gradually turned into a narrower street with more eccentric local businesses that catered to specific Avowed needs.

Alden was fascinated by some of the local stores, and he wished he actually needed a bunch of cool magic toys instead of the mundane stuff that was on his list. He consoled himself by promising to come back when he knew which of the mundane items he wanted particularly magnificent versions of.

An hour later, he was the proud owner of one clear plastic shower curtain, a cheap bedsheet, a four-pack of clear plastic ponchos, a roll of wrapping paper, a giant bottle of glue, a bunch of duct tape, two hundred feet of orange paracord, carabiners, a bubble umbrella, and a very large lightweight nylon duffel bag with backpack carry straps.

There were more items on his I-should-experiment-with-these-things list, but he was running out of time, and one of the things he’d definitely wanted to acquire didn’t seem to exist.

“I’m sure I am not the only guy on the island who wants a pair of thin, elbow-length gloves,” he said, stepping out of a costume and party supply store.

“It’s probably not the most common request,” Jeremy told him. He had a date with his girlfriend, and he was trying to put on a tie. He had even bought one that wasn’t patterned with chocolate chip cookies. Kimberly Martinez must’ve been special.

Behind him, Victor was lounging on top of a new cat tower that Alden was sure he was going to have to find room for in his dorm sooner or later. Jeremy turned around to look at the cat every three seconds.

“None of the work gloves I tried were quite right.” They made his fingers stupid. Not having stupid fingers was a big deal for spells and wordchains. “And surgical gloves are too short and sweaty. Plus they’re going to make me look like, ‘Hi! Here I am to give you a medical exam!’”

He’d bought some disposables anyway to have in his future Rabbit go-bag for backups. But for regular use, he thought he wanted something fabric, very thin, and perfectly fitted. And long would be a bonus, since it would protect his arm when it was preserved. A pair of opera gloves rolled down just a little so that they didn’t cover his elbows and impede motion had sounded like a decent start.

“What about the opera-going ladies with largish hands and forearms? It’s a terrible injustice for me and for them. Anyway, I’ll find something better when I’ve got more time. Or just modify something. Your tie looks great.”

“You think so?”

Alden nodded. “And thanks for taking care of Victor.”

Jeremy turned around to stare at the cat again. “I thought maybe I should take him to the vet. Because what if he’s sick and he just doesn’t look like it? But then, you know…veterinarians might not understand…”

“Indeed. He’s a complicated cat.”

******

The mood in the men’s locker room was more tense than it had been on combat assessment day. The boys who were joking around were doing it with bravado that came across more as nerves than confidence, and most people were getting dressed quietly.

Odd that it was so much more boisterous when we were all fighting for our places here, Alden thought, running his hand up the front of his gray unitard to seal it around him. And now that we’ve got them, it’s subdued.

Or maybe it stood to reason that the group who’d made it in had taken the trials seriously enough to pass them. Even the guys who had acted like idiots at the party must care a lot about how they performed in the MagiPhys gym.

“Why is it a morgue in here?” someone said suddenly. Alden thought it was the Bow Meister, Reinhard. “It’s just class. They’re not going to kick us out now.”

“They do kick people out for poor performance. My dad said so.”

“For failing courses and failing to level. Not for being terrible on your first day of gym. Somebody talk about something fun. Kon, did someone spell you quiet? Why are some of the globies hiding in the showers to dress? Does your junk look different in other countries?”

In the stall next to Alden, Finlay cleared his throat. “I just don’t want to embarrass you all.”

“He says a few minutes before a class where he’ll absolutely embarrass us!” Reinhard called back.

“I can totally take him,” Kon said. “I can take every last one of you. If you’re asleep.”

“Kon,” someone said, “this class is really going to suck for you, isn’t it?”

“It’s fine. There are other subtypes that aren’t great at combat and rescue, so it’s not like I’m the only one in school. And by third year, I’m sure I’ll be able to destroy you all.”

“He can still beat up the B’s, right?” That sounded like Sanjay.

Thanks so much, thought Alden.

A few people were agreeing, but Kon himself wasn’t among them.

We don’t all know each other’s abilities that well yet, so I guess it’s understandable that some of them would think that surely any S could beat a B.

Kon didn’t have any offensive or defensive abilities beyond a high-rank Adjuster’s physicality. And Adjusters weren’t known for their physicality.

Him winning versus Max or Alden was dependent on circumstance. What would they let Alden use as a shield? Was there ground? How much time and space would Max be given to lay down his zones?

I guess it’s going to be like that no matter who you’re dealing with to some extent.

Years from now, when they all knew what they were doing and they’d refined their power sets, they’d still probably lose to Jeffy if they were fighting in the ocean. There were only a couple of B-rank Brutes at the school, and one of them was Aquatic. She had a special section on The Beat List for “sea days,” when everyone had to practice water battles and she suddenly became a serious problem for all the higher ranks to deal with.

“I don’t think we’re dueling each other anyway,” Kon said. “I asked some older students, and they said they didn’t start fighting classmates until a couple of weeks in.”

That suited Alden just fine.

By some unspoken agreement, almost everyone left the locker room together. The same phenomenon seemed to have affected the girls, because they were in a chattery group outside their own locker room, waiting for stragglers to emerge.

Alden spotted Maricel. She had her back turned to him while she talked with her roommates, but he could tell by her animated hand gestures that she was in her cheerful mode.

I hope she’s actually feeling it. Vandy and Tuyet seem to want to be friends with her, too.

His own roommate chat notification appeared, and he opened it to find Haoyu asking critical questions.

[Haoyu: Astrid looks different.]

Alden glanced at him. They were standing right next to each other, and Haoyu wasn’t obviously observing the target of his inquiry.

[Lexi: Why are you texting us here? Isn’t this for roommate business?]

[Lute: I’m interested in Astrid. Who is she? Is she beating you all up in your Avowed violence class?]

I guess I should answer since I know the answer?

[Alden: She morphs them. She was going minimalist when I met her on assessment day, too. It’s probably better than a sports bra.]

[Lute: Now I’m even more interested in Astrid.]

[Lexi: I’m going to ignore notifications. I need to focus.]

[Haoyu: It would be fun if we could text all class. I’m not good enough at mental, though. I can’t do it and do anything else at the same time.]

They entered the gym in a mass.

Alden’s first thought was, Are they really giving us seven instructors?

The gym was fully set up and prepared for them, and the instructors, wearing their own suits, were having a last-minute discussion together in the corner nearest the locker rooms.

There were forty-one students—twenty-three boys, eighteen girls. Seven instructors still seemed like a lot.

Alden’s second thought was, Torsten Klein is one of them. I hope he’s not an asshole to me.

He also recognized Instructor Marion and Big Snake.

It’s cool that Snake’s here. They said he usually teaches third years. Wait… Instructor Waker. Call him Instructor Waker. He was absolutely going to forget.

“All right, everyone!” Instructor Klein called, clapping his hands together once for attention. “I’m glad you’re all here for your first day of school. Grab a seat. No talking for the next ten minutes while I explain this course and what we expect from you.”

They hastened to sit down.

Before the last butts had even found their perches, Instructor Klein was standing in front of them, arms clasped behind his back. His eyes were as sharp as Alden remembered from his interview, and his salt and pepper hair looked like it had been commanded by its owner not to fall into disarray.

“We don’t believe in wasting time here at Celena North,” he said, his voice ringing through the gym. “We accept incoming classes as often as we can, so that none of you have to cool your heels for months in a regular high school before applying. We start power training you on the very first day you arrive, even if you’re a mid-quarter group. This is the School for Superhuman Talent Development. And this is the one course all of you have this term where we will be focusing on developing your superhuman talents. We don’t waste your time. You don’t waste ours.”

Alden tensed, expecting the instructor to look over at the Rabbit who he’d literally called a time waster, but he never did.

“Today is the fifth of November. Between now and the day the quarter ends on the twenty-first of December, you’ll be here every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for two hours. Twenty-one classes. Arrive ten minutes early, not ten seconds late. The only excused absences are if you’re on another planet or in the hospital.”

He gestured toward Instructor Marion, who smiled and waved.

“This is Instructor Marion. He’ll be here on Tuesday mornings from six to eight. If you’re struggling with something, send him a message to set up an appointment for that time slot to sort it out. You’ll only have access to a small portion of the gym, and he’ll only be tutoring six people during the Tuesday sessions. It’s first come, first serve until everyone has had their chance.”

He scanned them all.

“This class period is one hundred and twenty minutes long. You will be using your powers and your bodies a lot while you’re here, usually until they are exhausted. If you show up too tired to move, or with your main skills and spells already depleted, we will be extremely disappointed in you.”

Jeffy gasped.

Alden didn’t know what talents the Aqua Brute had other than high strength stats but he wouldn’t be at all surprised to find that he’d been showing off all day without considering what that would mean for class.

“The regular course structure will be four, thirty-minute-long sessions. The idea is to get you all used to the gym and used to thinking about your bodies and your magic in new ways. We will be giving you the opportunity to experiment with your powers. The sessions will loosely mimic different types of hero work. You only became Avowed in the past few months. Most of you are at least seven years away from the start of your careers. At this point in your lives, it’s more important for you to discover what you’re capable of than it is to perform with perfect realism.”

He pointed at himself. “I will be teaching you offense, single-target only for now. Instructor Waker will be running the self-defense session. Instructor Marion will be teaching maneuvering and positioning. Instructor Fragment will be giving you rescue problems to solve.”

Alden examined Instructor Fragment. He hadn’t recognized the stocky woman until her hero name was used. He knew from reading the faculty list on the school website that she was a Ground Shaper who specialized in saving people from building collapses. A rare, emergency-work-only hero.

It’s a totally different lifestyle than most people here seem to want. She lived on Anesidora and got called when she was needed, a bit like Haoyu’s parents but without the collective backing and with zero expectation of showmanship when she arrived. The downside, of course, was no fame, less fortune, and no off-island address.

Alden was inclined to respect her without even having spoken to her.

“You’ll rotate between each of us in small groups. Don’t dawdle when it’s time to move to the next thing. Learn to shift gears quickly. Instructors Wu, Ivanova, and Foxbolt will be our floating faculty. If they pull you out to work with you on something, give them your full attention. Don’t complain if they take up a great deal of your time. They know what they’re doing far better than you do.”

He frowned at them all as if he were already anticipating complaints.

“We have gym etiquette. Your interfaces will always provide you with a floor status notification in this space. Additionally, when you are in here with the floor off and you see a new person enter the room, shout, ‘Floor off!’ It’s a critical piece of information to be aware of at all times, so we like to have the backup call. At the moment, you’re new to this, so you’re naturally checking floor status all the time to make sure you’re doing the right thing. Within a few months, the gym will feel like a second home, and you’ll get laxer.”

He cleared his throat.

“From now on, do not use any powers or any degree of superhuman strength on the gym floor while it’s off. If you want to play with a harmless talent while the floor’s off, do it to the sides or up here on the bleachers. The white floor is where we do things that would be fatal elsewhere. Get it in your head that anyone visibly doing any kind of magic there when it’s not on is making a potentially deadly mistake, and scream ‘Floor off!’ at the top of your lungs the second you notice them. Maybe it’s nothing, or maybe they’re about to accidentally rip off a friend’s limbs. Don’t wait to find out.

“Finally, don’t agonize over leveling. Students inevitably panic as soon as the first of their classmates gains a level. We will tell you when you need to worry, and we won’t even think of telling you to worry for at least six more months. The System’s management of any given Avowed can be somewhat…eccentric. Principal Saleh has been known to pop into classes on occasion and offer her unique perspective as someone who has ranked up. But the general consensus among some of the best levelers on Earth—the ones who’ve seen fit to share insights with the rest of us anyway—is that hard work at the edge of your abilities always pays off. So that’s what we’ll be having you do. We can talk about more creative, personal endeavors to push your limits when that hard work has become a matter of course for you all.

“Now let’s get started.”

******

The instructors didn’t explain how they were breaking people into groups; everyone just got an assignment and went. But there was obviously some thought process to it instead of random selection. One group of ten was entirely Brutes, minus the class’s two speedsters. Haoyu was over there, looking laser focused as Big Snake explained something to them all.

Another group was mostly Shapers and ranged weapon Meisters. Lexi was in that one. More than half of the group was S-rank. It included Maricel, Vandy, Tuyet, and Jupiter.

A third group was more of a mixed bag, but they’d stuck both Finlay and Winston in it together.

Alden was pretty sure the group he’d been put in was the struggles-to-deal-damage group. He, Max, Kon, Everly, and Astrid were in it with five other students he hadn’t properly met. One was actually the Shaper of Light who Alden had seen in the “odd birds” crowd on assessment day.

I didn’t realize he got in. He wasn’t at the party. The Light Shaper hadn’t actually been good at anything, but he’d been on his way to one day being good at multiple impressive things—invisibility, creating high temperature areas. But he’d have to avoid a breakdown first. His forehead was beaded with sweat, and when Alden and Kon both said hi to him, he stared at them like a deer caught in headlights.

If it’s this bad now, what’s it going to be like when we hit the other teachers?

Their group was starting with Instructor Fragment in the rescue work section. In Alden’s opinion, it was the least intimidating.

He tuned out the Light Shaper’s heavy breathing and listened with interest while Fragment talk about how important problem solving and creative skill use was for her job. She explained that they would be exploring ways to use their powers to protect other people from assault and to excavate them from dangerous areas.

“This is really just the most basics of the basics and your first introduction to thinking about possible uses for your magic in these scenarios. You will make mistakes, and those mistakes will teach you even more than your successes.”

They would be climbing a towering jungle gym of a scaffold and bringing down “victims” that were really hundred and twenty kilo sandbags. They were starting to talk about approaches to the problem for everyone, when Instructor Foxbolt tapped Alden on the shoulder.

“Let me steal you for a minute.” She winked at Fragment, revealing that she had a magical effect applied to her winged eyeliner of all things. It flashed from orange to electric blue.

But this was going to be my favorite part of the whole class period, Alden thought as he stared over his shoulder to where Astrid was climbing up the scaffolding.

She was moving easily, and he wanted to watch her attempt the rescue. Naturally, she had more stats than him, but Morph was one of those Brute subclasses that didn’t necessarily come out on top in terms superstrength. They got a lot of choices for how to develop their shapeshifting, which was one of the reasons it was such a desirable subclass. Big’nLittleSnake was one of the most powerful superheroes around, and he showed off Morph combat abilities at the absolute maximum. A lot of morphers were more into impersonation or esoteric body mods that gave them utility in specific situations.

Alden followed the instructor over to the bleachers and sat down when she patted the bench invitingly. “All right!” she said, picking up a tablet. “I’m Foxbolt. Adjuster. Lovely to meet you, Alden. We agreed that I would be the one to talk to you about your equipage for this course. Is there some particular object you’re absolutely dying to use as a main tool?”

He shook his head. Right now, he was preserving a long length of paracord, with carabiners on either end. He’d wrapped it around his left arm and wrist like a homemade bracer. He’d also brought the duffel bag full of supplies he’d just bought, since he didn’t know if the faculty was expecting him to show up with things or not. “I have lots of different ideas I want to try. I don’t have a favorite yet.”

She nodded. “The versatility of items you can use with your skill is one of your strengths, so experimenting with objects is good. But it presents some problems. If you use a different tool each day we meet, you’ll never gain a decent understanding of how to work with any of them. And the instructors’ advice will no longer be as useful from one class to the next because if they give you tips for defending yourself with something like an umbrella today and you show up with a sheet-shaped shield tomorrow—”

Just bought potential sheet shields. And an umbrella.

“—they’ll have different opinions on how it should be used,” she continued. “So let me tell you what we suggest.”

She read some notes on her tablet and nodded to herself.

“For offense, defense, and maneuvering, we suggest you pick a single tool or a homemade combotool that’s not much more complex than the thing you rigged for combat assessment. Take this week to figure it out if you need to, but we think you should commit to using it for the rest of term by next Monday. Feel free to ask us for advice. Even if you later discover that what you’ve chosen is wildly flawed, learning to work around those flaws has benefits, and it will give you ideas about what you might want to try in future courses.

“As for your rescue sessions, Instructor Fragment actually encourages you to bring anything you like. The more the better. She points out that in a disaster relief effort, the ability to use any everyday object at hand would be invaluable. And in such a situation, you’d likely have many people to entrust you with them.”

“That all sounds good to me,” said Alden. “About offense—”

Foxbolt flashed her eyeliner at him before he could finish the thought.

“Realistically, if we were sending you out to fight bad guys next week, we’d tell you to cover up as much of yourself with a shield as you can, and we’d hand you a solid Wrightmade gun. However, this is a magic development program, and firearms training would do nothing to develop your magic. We’d rather have you practice with your skill. You’ll also find that you can acquire excellent marksmanship quite easily as an Avowed. Your current vision and stat allocations are fine already. If you don’t gain an offensive skill of some kind over the next few years, someone will shoo you off to the targeting range. It won’t take you long to be more proficient with a gun than any ordinary human.”

Alden blinked. “Okay. Yeah. That makes sense.”

He’d been planning to ask if he could go grab a weight from the storage room so that he could tie his paracord around it and whack people in the offense portion of the class. But finding out he had a future as a sharpshooter was interesting, too.

“Last thing!” she said. “Instructor Klein wanted me to ask if you were wearing any magical equipment today.”

“No? I thought we weren’t supposed to bring things like that.”

He’d left Joe’s ring in his messenger bag with his books in System storage, and the auriad around his neck didn’t count because it was more like a piece of him than a piece of equipment.

She looked over toward Klein with a raised eyebrow. He was beside Jupiter, trying to explain something about ankles if the direction his finger was pointing was any indication. The Life Shaper had draped herself in fresh kudzu vines for class today.

“He says he thought you were moving differently than you were during combat assessment.”

Alden glanced at the instructor. How much is he staring at me? I’ve barely moved at all in front of him yet.

“It’s a wordchain. They’re allowed, right?”

“Yes,” Foxbolt said. “They are. A wordchain you’ve mastered will always be there for you to use as you see fit, so we consider it to be another talent in your repertoire.”

“Well, I haven’t mastered this one myself yet,” Alden admitted. “My roommate’s teaching it to me, so he cast it on me earlier to make sure I wanted to keep studying it. He said he could take it off. I can call him if you want.”

The instructor looked bewildered for several seconds, then she said, “The Velra boy in the arts program!” She laughed. “I was trying my best to figure out how another student had done a wordchain for you. I’d forgotten we had a Chainer on campus!”

She lowered her voice. “I think it’s practical to try it out first. They can be tedious to learn. Just let me know before you get any more free ones from your roommate so that I can pre-approve them and nobody can complain.”

She finally let him go, and after collecting a sandbag for later, he hurried over to take his turn on the scaffolding. In the minutes he’d been away, Astrid had failed her first rescue attempt. She’d tried to climb down with the bag gripped between her thighs.

“I squeezed the victim until his ribs cracked, and then my hand slipped and I dropped him and fell on top of him,” she reported to Alden when he walked up. “I think I’ll try a rope next time.”

She gestured at the pile of supplies Fragment had given them to work with. There were things there that would obviously help. Ropes and straps. A pulley. A sandbag-fitted harness. And they’d been given video links to watch that would show them how to use any of it if they wanted. But they were supposed to be using their powers as much as possible, and they had to change tactics after they rescued the heavy bag once. No repeat rescue methods.

A couple of people had already gone after Astrid. Now the Light Shaper was going up.

“That is a nervous person,” said Astrid, watching him climb. “Is he scared of heights?”

Before Alden could consider the question, the Light Shaper froze. He clung to the scaffold three-quarters of the way up and trembled there.

“Maybe the pressure got to him?” someone whispered.

“That’s sixty seconds!” Instructor Fragment called. “You’ll want to get a move on.”

They weren’t allowed to take more than three minutes, and they were supposed to be trying for faster. A few people started calling out encouragements.

Kon had just come over to stand beside Alden. He shook his head. “He’s not moving.”

At the three minute mark, their teacher sighed. “I guess we’re leaving him up there. Everyone has their troubles with different assignments. Let’s see if he gets a handle on himself when people start climbing up past him.”

She gestured, and another 120 kilo bag that had been waiting off to the side flew up to land on top of the platform.

“Alden, you’re heading up next. If your classmate is standing in your preferred climbing route, then adapt and adjust, all right?”

Alden hurried over to the scaffolding, more eager than nervous for this particular assignment. He wanted to try something new, he had a plan, and he thought it would work.

They hadn’t been given a convenient ladder; the scaffolding was made to be more demanding than that, with certain bars arranged at difficult distances and angles. But it was nothing ridiculous. He would have climbed it easily enough even on a bad day, and with the wordchain making him beautifully sure of his grips and his balance, he almost felt like he was flowing up it.

It definitely made up for the period of suffering the chain had caused him in Intro to Other Worlds. He pulled himself onto the metal grating that formed the platform at the top, unpreserved his paracord bracer, and started unraveling it as he stepped over to his assigned bag. The sausage shape made it harder to rescue, in his opinion, than an actual human would have been.

I need to learn how to tie a good harness, he thought as he hastily wrapped cord around the bag in X shapes that he imagined would be slightly more forgiving than a simple belt if his passenger had actually possessed nerve endings. But this is probably faster.

Alden was pretty good with string. And he was wordchain-blessed at the moment. His bag wrapping knowledge might not be up to snuff, but it didn’t actually have to be. He’d soon made a tight, secure-looking net of rope around the bag, and if his knot tying was shoddy, it would be irrelevant as long as he kept his skill active.

He lifted and preserved his cord in the same motion, and the sandbag came with it. It weighed two hundred and sixty pounds. His arm said it weighed almost nothing. Instead, the authority bound within his skill strained under the weight as the bag rested on top of his shielded cord.

He gave himself a few extra seconds to feel it. Acknowledging the weight is important.

While watching the fireworks last night and telling the girls and Lute about his suitcase cannonball, he’d suddenly had the thought that this weight-lifting trick he’d found could be more remarkable than he’d realized. He thought it might be something a normal Avowed with the skill at this level shouldn’t be able to manage as easily as he himself did.

The Bearer of All Burdens was older magic that had “roots in sacrifice and symbolism.” As he understood it, it derived part of its power from the fact that Alden was at least peripherally aware of himself laboring while he used it.

Any Avowed’s authority was laboring while they used their talents, of course. But they couldn’t feel it. Like it or not, Bearer was a little different. Because an Avowed couldn’t detect their own struggle, it made them struggle more than they should’ve had to. So that it could power itself. Or maybe even so that it could truly be itself—a very wizardy sounding idea Alden had come up with, though he wasn’t enough of a wizard to fully understand what he even meant by it.

So…an Avowed who received Bearer got the carriage restriction to start. From an ancient alien perspective, that was a helpful flashing signpost instead of a mysterious inconvenience. Move your feet. For this skill, you need to be burdened. And it wouldn’t let Alden feel like he was floating preserved objects around telekinetically, even though he technically was. You have to hold it. Because you have to be burdened. And even though he had managed to mentally gymnastics his way to hitting people with his preserved items, it was clearly an inferior way to use the skill.

What he was using the skill for mattered. If he preserved an umbrella and swung it at a concrete block with all his might, he’d hurt his arm. If he preserved his umbrella, and Heloísa tried to crush it with a concrete block, his power broke the concrete.

The Bearer of All Burdens protected things, transported them, and bore their weight. He was sure he’d find more.

And he also suspected he’d collect more evidence that although Bearer was vast, complex, and versatile…it wasn’t a skill designed for cheaters.

He stared at the sandbag. It weighed more than he did, and he could hold it here one-handed. He could toss it over his head by flicking his arm.

This would feel like cheating for sure. If I wasn’t aware I was carrying it with my authority, too.

What he was wondering was if a normal Avowed could have used a preserved item as a heavy-stuff carrier without some kind of physical repercussion or weakening of the magic. It was more in line with the skill’s theme than attacking was, for sure. The Let Me Take Your Luggage name the System had given the skill could even be considered a hint about this use. But would it have worked this well?

Alden could now fling two hundred pounds around like it was a basketball. As a B-rank. Would he be able to if he couldn’t feel what it cost?

If I didn’t have my authority sense, would I be consciously sacrificing enough to make the skill strong enough to do what I’m about to?

He tilted the sandbag on the back and forth by moving the rope attached to his wrist, checking that it wasn’t going slide out of its quickly rigged carrier, then he set it back down on the platform near the edge and unpreserved his rope. There were a few different ways to do this rescue, but he was choosing the one that he thought would test his powers the best. He climbed swiftly down the scaffolding. He enjoyed the wordchain just as much on the way down as he had on the way up.

“Hey,” he said encouragingly to the Light Shaper as he sped past. “You’ve got this. The realism setting is ten percent today. I’ve felt it before. Even if you fall, it’s not going to hurt much at all.”

He didn’t have time to see how the words landed, but he hoped they helped the other boy out.

“Alden! You forgot the victim!” Astrid said brightly when he reached the bottom.

She probably thought he’d had trouble and had to bow out. She was trying to lighten the mood. The guy who snickered when she said it was being a dick, though.

“Nah,” said Alden, smiling. “I’m bringing him down right now.”

Their instructor was staring up at the platform intently.

This is totally going to work. There’s no reason it shouldn’t. Alden preserved the paracord, and as soon as it stiffened, he lifted it over his head. The snickerer looked startled. Astrid stared from Alden up the frozen paracord line to the bag held at the top.

“It looks like a giant balloon!” Everly Kim exclaimed, sweeping a strand of silver hair out of her eyes as she looked up. “That’s so neat!”

It’s harder on my skill than I thought it would be now that I’m down here, Alden noted.

He carried his preserved string and its high-altitude burden to the edge of the area that had been set aside for the rescue group’s use. Working with an inflexible straight line of this length did present some problems, and he was sure Instructor Fragment wouldn’t approve of him setting the victim in the middle of another pack of students who were practicing their powers.

The rest of his rescue classmates had jogged after him. He started to lower his arm carefully.

“You’ll need to go even slower, Alden,” Instructor Fragment said with a touch of amusement in her voice. “And be careful of how you move your wrists. We want to place the victim gently on the floor, and with this method, it will be quite easy to drop him like the head of a hammer instead.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And you’re rotating him now,” Kon said, shaking his head in mock disappointment. “The poor man’s getting further traumatized.”

“He’s unconscious!” Alden protested. “We already established that.”

“Maybe he woke back up when you turned him into the world’s largest sausage on a stick.”

Instructor Fragment chuckled. She seemed to have a good sense of humor, and it was making most of the group loosen up.

Alden had to admit there was some resemblance to a giant cocktail wiener stuck on the end of an even more giant toothpick. But it was still awesome. He stared at the bag the whole time he lowered it, trying to be considerate about momentum and still meet his three minute deadline.

It touched the floor. Gently-ish.

“I think that counts as a rescue,” Instructor Fragment announced.

Astrid punched Alden in the shoulder. Everly clapped. Max gave him a thoughtful look…because he was Max, and staring thoughtfully at everything was what he did.

The teacher waved another bag up onto the scaffold. “Kon, this one’s for you.”

Alden grinned at Kon, who cracked his knuckles dramatically. “Yup. Here I go. Off to use my awesome Adjuster powers to carry that heavy guy on my back and hope I do not fall.”

**********

The last few minutes of rescue class was a free-for-all. Alden hadn’t been expecting that, but Instructor Fragment said she couldn’t send them off to their next teacher looking like she hadn’t given them a workout. “Many of you were trying to be careful and sensible the first time up,” she called from where she was riding a sandbag up to pry the Light Shaper off the scaffold. “Now it’s time for you to try more ideas out. Speed run through as many as you can in the next…six and a half minutes! Come on, young man. Let go now. We all have bad days.”

As soon as Fragment hit the floor, she lifted her arms, and the bags started soaring up to land on the platform. She draped a couple of them across bars, too.

“Go!” she said. “Find out what you can and can’t do when you’re really rushing!”

They all raced toward the scaffolding.

Alden was right behind Astrid and Kon. Both of them had thrown caution to the winds. They were forcing their way up more than climbing. Astrid was jumping from precarious perch to precarious perch, barely pausing to finish pulling herself up before she flung herself higher.

Damn she’s fast when she wants to be. He felt sure she would die more often than not climbing this way, but it was still something to see. Kon was being more moderate than her, but he was taking a lot of risks, too.

Guess I should push it as well.

Leaping and swinging as fast as he could from one angled metal bar to another instead of choosing his hand and footholds would be stupid under normal circumstances, but Fragment had said to find out what rushing was like.

Alden crouched on a bar that was connected to the corner of their scaffold jungle gym at a forty-five degree angle, holding himself steady by gripping the vertical corner pole. He eyed the route ahead of him. If he jumped there, then there, then swung himself over…

He tried it.

His body flew almost exactly the way he expected it to. His hands landed in almost the perfect spots. He’d worn his parkour shoes today, and he felt light on his kick-offs and glued on his landings.

“Are you part monkey?” Kon called as Alden caught up with him and then passed him.

“Rocking a new wordchain,” Alden said between breaths. “It makes me better at controlling my body.”

“Which one is that?”

“One Lute’s teaching me.”

Kon grunted.

The scaffold shook beneath them. Alden heard someone yell. He didn’t pause to see who it was.

He pulled himself up onto the platform. Kon popped up right behind him. Astrid and a couple of others were already there working on their bags.

“I’m going to rescue you this time, my man!” Astrid told hers cheerfully as she tied a rope around it with strangling force.

Alden was working hastily with his cord again. He was going to strap it to himself and carry it down this time instead of going for the sausage-on-a-stick route.

Everly reached the top of the platform and stared at one of the bags with a resigned look on her face. “You can do it, Ev,” Kon said encouragingly.

She looked like she weighed about a hundred pounds herself—less than half of what the bag she was supposed to rescue did. As an A-rank Adjuster who was just starting out, her stats wouldn’t be high. She could lift the bag, but she couldn’t carry it easily. Much less climb with it. She’d tried with a rope, harness, and pulley the first time, but now what was she going to do?

She’s got ice spells, thought Alden. Adjusters had extensive spell lists, so it wasn’t like he knew everything on them. But he had at least skimmed over all the well-known ones for high ranks, and he couldn’t think of any freezing spells off the top of his head that would help much with this task.

He hoisted his own, physically weightless bag onto his back and started his climb down.

When he’d made it about half way, a length of rope fell down beside him. He looked up to see Everly aiming a spell at the top of it.

So she is freezing it after all?

He didn’t see how that was going to help, but at least she had a plan.

His feet hit the floor.

“That’s a rescue, Alden!” called Instructor Fragment. “Get back up there. Get one more.”

On the opposite side of the scaffolding, he saw someone else’s victim being lowered in a harness. It was a really obvious rescue method that didn’t utilize powers at all. He hated to do the same thing, but it was hard to come up with fresh ideas in a hurry.

He started climbing again.

If I had a long enough tarp I could make a ramp? Like a sliding board. Though the victim might have a rough roll down it, which was less than ideal.

Actually what would a tarp or sheet that big weigh? And could I get it into the right shape without it flying all over the place?

Also it would be humongous. Size did matter with his skill. And now he was thinking that the distance he extended his protective magic from his body did, too. He’d noticed it a couple of times before, and the first sandbag rescue confirmed it in his mind. He was fatiguing himself a lot faster when the paracord was extended a long way than when it was coiled around his arm in a tidy bundle. Even if he could preserve a really massive sheet ramp, he probably couldn’t do it for long.

And massive objects are more likely to take impacts. So much surface area for things to smash into. At some point I’m going to have to start doing math…that sucks.

He was interrupted from his thoughts and his climb by the appearance of Everly.

Even though he knew he was short on time, he couldn’t help but stare. What the hell?

She was a couple of yards above him on his right. Her rope was stiff and completely covered in a thick, glossy sheet of ice. And she was walking down it. Sideways.

Sort of walking anyway. It was more like her feet—completely bare and flashing pale blue toenail polish—were adhered to it and gravity was giving the rest of her a really hard time. She was in a half-squat, and she had the sandbag deathgripped to her side, opposite the floor far below them. It was being held more by her body than her arm.

But her body isn’t being held by anything, is it? Except her feet.

Alden recognized the spell she was using now. Glaze Object. It completely coated objects in a layer of ice, which was why Everly had decided to use a rope rather than the scaffolding itself. The scaffold was probably too large for the spell to encase, and if it couldn’t encase the thing she’d targeted, it wouldn’t work.

Her skill must have been that one that gave you traction control on ice. He couldn’t think of the name right now, and he hadn’t ever imagined it being used this way.

Everly, purple faced and breathing hard, carefully slid one foot down the iced rope, a little closer to the floor. She shifted her weight, bent her knee, and slid the other.

Isn’t that brutal on your ankles and knees? And your abs? And everything?

The gym suits didn’t prevent muscle fatigue or soreness. Alden knew from experience.

“All right, everyone! Stop focusing on your classmate’s magic, and start focusing on your own!”

Fragment’s call made Alden realize he’d forgotten about his rescue mission to stare. At least I’m not the only one, he thought as he hastily resumed his ascent. He spotted at least three other people who had paused to watch the girl’s progress.

Just as his hands grasped the edge of the platform, a pair of sneakers stepped beside them. Max was staring down at the floor below. Alden had noticed him laying rope down in a rectangle beside the scaffolding earlier. He assumed the other boy was outlining a zone.

“What are you going to do?” Alden asked, as he pulled himself up.

Still staring down instead of at him, Max said, “I was going to throw the victim down, but that won’t really tell me anything. I know it will slow the fall, but it might still be lethal.”

Then he wrinkled his nose, sighed, and jumped.

A few people yelled. They had whenever someone had fallen from up high. It was an unnatural thing to see. Alden’s own stomach clenched.

Max slowed before he hit the floor.

The pool zone, Alden thought. Max was using it like a diving tank. It looks like he still hit pretty hard.

“Two minutes left!” shouted Instructor Fragment.

Another sandbag landed beside him.

A new rescue method in two minutes? He was curious about what would happen if he tried to preserve the bag and jump with it, but he felt like if he could get that right, it was going to take more than a single attempt.

I mean I guess I can just try and lower it.

“Oh god,” Kon groaned, flinging himself up onto the platform and then looking down at his girlfriend. “She didn’t have the upper body strength to get the bag down, so she went with magically gluing herself to an ice pole so that she couldn’t fall. My whole body hurts just watching her. Or maybe my whole body really hurts.”

“You saved two bags with zero spells. You can be proud.” Alden started wrapping up victim number three.

“Preserve me and time skip me to the end of class.”

“You’re always asking me to carry you.”

“Instructor Plim made it sound fun. Also, whoa. Your skill is way more useful than you made it look previously.”

“Thanks. It’s only because I figured out the weight thing…oh! I could try something like a zip line? Crap, I should have brought up more supplies.”

“We’re doing this again on Wednesday. I heard her telling our Glow Boy that he’d have a chance to re-try. It seems like heights are his nemesis.” Kon was harnessing another bag. “I’m glad to have another chance, but I don’t know how much more creative I can be. I climbed with it on my back down the bars. I slid with it on my back down a rope, which I don’t recommend; I think I wouldn’t have hands anymore if I really tried that without magical protective gear. Now I’m lowering it on a rope.”

“Rope lowering does seem like the easiest solution.”

“I guess for Wednesday I can learn how to properly abseil?”

“If we’re in the same group again, we can try teamwork.”

“Teamwork?”

“She didn’t say we couldn’t help each other after the first round,” Alden pointed out. “You can ride my zip line holding a victim.”

Kon sighed. “That’s you working and me being at a carnival.”

“You’re assuming I actually know how to make a good zip line. I don’t think I can get the length I’d need to give anyone a gentle landing.”