Tenthé sat at the edge of the roof outside his sanctuary, legs dangling through the low wrought iron barrier which formed a feeble last ditch effort to stop people from plummeting to their death. It was a nice day and below him, several students were gathered in various groups, simply taking in the weather under the guise of studying.

Although, that’s not what Tenthé would call it. Outside of his time here at the College, studying had been more along of the lines of learn or die. This also included the few times when he had someone who might be called a teacher.

The stories always say the Sages who take on students were all-seeing and all-knowing, tough, but kind. Tenthé's experience was that instead, they were self-centered, overbearing, stupid, and cruel.

Tenthé would learn what he could from them, then move on. Sometimes peacefully, sometimes not. Eventually, when he had amassed so many techniques, he ended up having to teach himself, although Bear helped. After some time, they came up with something that worked reasonably well, with only a few spectacular failures.

Classes at the College were going adequately. He had been here for… he had to think for a moment… two terms. Maybe three, but he was pretty sure it was two. He was so proud that he knew two, now.

He had stuck with History and could recite all the names for all the people in the head families of the City, and how they all worked together. For whatever good that was.

Physics was a bust. It started well, but all they’d learned were extremely rudimentary spells, although it was nice to know what could be counted on to work as expected. The math needed to understand the semi-stable spells was far beyond him, so he put those into the maybe column.

Which meant that they might work, but he’d better have a backup. Most of the spells he knew fell into the unknown, so their reliability was questionable. Tenthé stayed in the class, though, because he liked the Magister. He got so excited when Tenthé showed him something he’d never seen, and one day the Magister had even told him they were co-authors of a new spell book. Bear hadn’t laughed this time, just grumbled about fools and then something else about butts.

Tactics was going okay. It turned out he had a very good grasp of how to command a small group, but not of how to handle a large operation. He was severely hindered by his lack of math skills. And interest. He did, though, now appreciate how much work it was to get campaigns to run smoothly. Tenthé was looking forward to the next part of the course, which was supposed to cover spying and sneaking around, which sounded like fun!

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He was baffled by Mystic Studies. Magister Grenville said he was the best natural she had ever met. Tenthé still didn’t know what she was talking about, she just told him he didn’t understand so much more than all the others.

To round out his schedule, he’d started a new class. Swimming.

Using magic, he could zoom through the water. Without magic, he would sink to the bottom faster than any other student the teacher had ever seen. He was getting better, now he could make it a few strokes before he went under and swallowed half the pool.

And library was going very well too. He’d found a passage to a room of forbidden books where he and Bear had to fight for the privilege of reading. Not with the Magisters, but with the books themselves. They weren’t for everyone and had a high opinion of themselves. But it didn’t really matter. So far, the books had not given him much in the way of new spells, but they’d had some epic battles.

As for the uprising with the Houses and Horde, his involvement remained unsuspected. Or at least, unproven. The College Magisters had taken the warriors’ parole, which meant they could be released into the City, where they were in great demand. Tenthé thought that was dodgy, but supposedly, the warriors could be trusted not to spy or create mayhem. Part of how the Horde worked.

As predicted, the families involved had managed to avoid most of the repercussions. All they’d received were a few slaps on their wrists. This verified the rumors he’d heard when he lived in the Mission District: the rich lived by a different set of standards than the rest of them.

On top of classes, there were a number of other issues on his mind.

He hadn’t forgotten the sample of his blood the College still had, which was a detail he needed to deal with.

Isabell was another. She had gone completely bizarre-o. Whatever she was, she acted like the old her, but somehow, had merged with her magical armor and with something so strange that no-one knew anything about it. She kept saying that she was in control, but then would turn into a pile of bouncing cubes and disappear to some place even he couldn’t see. It was quite neat. She was his best friend.

Next to her, George and Nik hung out with Tenthé. Plus, Dahl and Varsh. And a bunch of others. He had more friends now than he’d ever had. All in all, he figured it was okay. The others, Elishua and the Envoy, weren’t really friends. They were on his case all the time and were getting much better at dogging him. They’d found some of his lesser-known routes and had kept him from ditching too many classes.

Exams at the end of the first term had been okay, not that hard. His prodigious memory made most of them easy, but he had barely passed Tactics because he just couldn’t do the math. Bear had not helped much. He’d said that they weren’t here for him to pass tests.

But aside from all this, he was up here on the roof for a serious reason. He pushed a little closer to the barrier and readied his water balloons.