As Jeb continued to admire the fabric, he felt a growing reminder that rewriting reality did not come freely. Grimacing slightly, he braced for the pain in his temples to come back with a renewed vigor. When it didn’t he let out a sigh of relief. It seemed like this time, at least, the only price the world wanted was his rest. Jeb walked over to the sleeping area and fell asleep, hand still clutching the woven fire.
Waking up, Jeb had a moment of panic. The gentle glow of the woven fire along the walls was gone. Shivering slightly, he realized that he was not lying between woven mats. For all that he was somewhere unexpected, the new location did not feel dangerous. Blinking more rapidly, he understood why.
Jeb was once more in his room in the dormitory, sheet of woven fire still in hand. How, exactly, he had been moved he was not sure. Listening to the faint sound of ringing, he heard that it was only now fourth bell. Rolling over, he resolved to deal with the issue only after he woke up again.
Waking at sixth bell, Jeb stretched. His bed was more comfortable than a pile of mats, and he felt almost completely replenished. The Weaver’s ability to simply grasp a flame and weave it with no aids started playing through Jeb’s mind, and he felt the sudden urge to start a fire. The jolt of pain in his soul stopped him, and he took a moment to look inside himself again.
His Magic Skill looked much better than it had before. It was still far from the perfectly consistent spheres of the rest of his Skills, but the center at least had some substance now. Looking, he saw that there was a connection forming between the Skill and Weaving. Following the other connections, he saw that Brewing and Distilling were still in rough shape.
Jeb pulled back out of his thoughts, mind racing. He had refused to let the System claim the Skills when he had advanced Classes. Why, though?
Jeb thought on the question as he walked to the cafeteria. Inside, he headed directly for the pots of hot water and mixed some of the herbs available nearby. As he watched the mixture steep, he tested the idea that it was because he enjoyed his morning tea so much.
Fishing out the leaves, he tossed that thought aside. As nice as it was to have a perfect cup in the morning, he rarely bothered to steep it himself, usually relying on the already brewed tea and coffee. He walked around the cafeteria, filling his plate and thinking of other reasons.
Biting into a cinnamon roll, Jeb remembered breakfasts with his own family. Unlike the cold and quiet room he was in now, the kitchen was always lively. Frowning, he took a sip of the tea, washing down the pastry. Was he keeping the Skills because he missed home?
That idea resonated with him a little more. It wasn’t the whole truth, he knew even without probing any deeper. After all, he had given up Running and Lifting without any argument.
As he looked down at his empty plate, Jeb realized that he had eaten his entire breakfast while lost in thought. Looking up, he saw Dean Aquam looking at him intently.
“Good morning,” Jeb said hesitantly.
“Is everything alright?” the Dean asked in reply, tone full of concern.
“I think so!” Jeb replied, holding aloft his piece of woven fire. “Look what I made,” he said, not caring at all about how childish that sounded.
The Dean took the piece of fabric and worked it between his fingers. “I suppose that this explains where you have been over the past few days.”
“Were you worried about me because I haven’t been in the cafeteria recently?” Jeb asked, nodding to his own question. It made a fair amount of sense that the Dean would be worried if Jeb suddenly disappeared after receiving his new Class.
“No,” Dean Aquam replied, brows creasing together. “There are any number of reasons that our dining schedules have misaligned over your time in the Academy. I ask because I tried to speak with you half a dozen times before you finally responded to me. You were staring off into space as though you were only half present.”
Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.
“Oh,” Jeb replied. “I was just thinking about what happened when I Upgraded my Class.”
The Dean stared at Jeb, and he took a moment to consider how to frame the question. As much as Jeb tried, he could not remember anyone discussing how optional it was to lose Skills when Upgrading a Class. The fact that nobody had commented on it made Jeb assume that it was rare to keep Skills, but there was a part of him that hoped it was something so common that no one had felt the need to tell him about it. After all, nobody had told him that gaining new Classes would feel like constructing a solar system.
Shrugging, he decided to tell the Dean. “When I gained my new Class, Magic absorbed Alchemy,” he began, voice somewhat halting as he tried to figure out how best to explain what he had been thinking about.
“That makes sense,” Dean Aquam replied. “I cannot imagine that you were thinking about that so intently, however, given that the same happened to you when you reached Second Tier.”
“It isn’t,” Jeb agreed. “Before Alchemy was consumed, it tried to consume my Brewing and Distilling Skills.”
Dean Aquam nodded, as though he had expected nothing else. Taking a deep breath, Jeb leapt off the conversational cliff.
“I didn’t let the Skills get absorbed, and I was trying to figure out why.” The words came out in a torrent, and Jeb tried to smile when they came out.
Dean Aquam took a deep breath, as though he too was working up the courage to say something. Preempting him, Jeb continued in a rapid clip, “I can’t think of anything in particular that made me want to keep the Skills, but now that I have them it kind of feels like a waste to just have the Skills and not use them.”
To Jeb’s surprise, Dean Aquam’s face lightened at that. “That seems like an easy enough problem to fix,” he said, tone comforting. “What is stopping you from Brewing or Distilling something?”
Jeb thought about the question. “I mean, the first problem is that I don’t have anything that I can Brew or Distill,” Jeb said. Amending himself, he continued, “that isn’t closer to doing Alchemy, at least.”
Dean Aquam nodded. “Is that the only barrier to you utilizing your Skill?”
“I don’t know if there’s any way for me to make what I do academically useful,” Jeb admitted. “Before I knew I could weave fire, I was beginning to feel the same way about Weaving, but at least that allowed me to make Manaweave. Alchemy can do everything that I would need Brewing or Distilling for in a Magical context.”
Dean Aquam waved a hand, as though encouraging Jeb to explain where the barrier was. Jeb looked at him, unsure how to rephrase the issue.
After a long moment, Dean Aquam hesitantly nodded. “Is your concern that you should not be working on anything which does not benefit you academically while enrolled at the Academy?”
Jeb nodded vigorously.
Dean Aquam let out a laugh, before quickly growing serious. “I am sorry for failing you as an advisor,” he said firmly. “There is more to life than academics, maybe especially while you are enrolled at the Academy. Are you familiar with the Tier Wall?”
“I don’t think so,” Jeb replied.
“I will admit a small measure of surprise that Professor Fredrick did not cover it with you. In short, the qualifications for most Classes is well known at lower Tiers, and there tends to be nothing which limits how many new people can receive the Class. By Tier Nine, however, it is not enough to follow a prescribed path. Instead, each person must find a way to channel who they are as a whole and entire person into their Class. No two people are identical, and so there is no way to guarantee a path to a given Class.”
“Is that the Tier Wall?” Jeb asked, hoping for confirmation.
Dean Aquam nodded. “It is a problem which affects noble children mostly. There are debates about whether that is due to the way they are trained, or whether it is simply a consequence of far more nobles reaching the peak of their eighth Tier. Regardless, the Academy has started encouraging advisors to tell their students to be more than their studies. I had assumed that you were treating at least one of your interests as something outside of your academics here.”
“So you think that I should start making brewed and distilled drinks?” Jeb asked, looking for confirmation.
Dean Aquam clearly played through a number of potential outcomes to their conversation, if the rippling in his bowl of broth was any indication. In the end, he nodded hesitantly. “Yes,” he said, tone measured, “I think that it could be beneficial to your long term growth to explore a hobby such as Brewing or Distilling.”
As their conversation wrapped up, Jeb stood to leave and start preparing to Brew. Even if the Dean had told him that he should work on the Skills, Jeb knew that it would be best to get the majority of the work out of the way during the term break. He rushed to his desk in the Stacks and began to make a list of everything that he would need to start working on both Skills. While making the list, Jeb realized how nice it was to have so many different Magics at his disposal.
He did not worry about finding pure water, since he had a Glyph which could create it. The same was true for cooking the malt, and he had learned Enchantments which would maintain the temperature of the liquid as it fermented. Alchemy was bound to be helpful, if only because it gave him another lens with which to see how the different ingredients were interacting. Taking his list in hand, Jeb moved to start gathering.