Olly Briggs
The rest of the first week was uneventful, as was the second week. He trudged through the volume of homework as best he could but the assignments and quizzes kept piling up. And regrettably, so did the lackluster grades. He wasn’t failing yet per se but he was off to a bad start. It was the last day of his third week. He had gotten up early to try and find some extra time to study before Sarah and Bowen joined him. They had been extraordinarily helpful and patient with him but he didn’t want to come into every session feeling behind so he at least attempted to solve the problems on his own before he brought anything to them.
Olly ate his breakfast slowly, rubbing his tired eyes. Between staying up late doing homework and persistent recurring nightmares, the bags under his eyes seemed to have found a permanent home. He had little downtime. Outside of classes his spare time was absorbed by studying or attending Brandon’s lab.
The lab sessions had been fruitless since the first one. Brandon’s cheeriness and optimism never wavered but Olly was growing increasingly despondent over it. Not to mention, his non-performance in the practicums was becoming increasingly obvious to those in his cohort. Sarah never failed to stick up for him if she overheard anything untoward said about him but that meant people just got better at hiding their ridicule. He still heard them tittering just within earshot; Odette had gone back to ignoring him despite her earlier interest in his powers. He knew he should stand up for himself but he decided to instead try and focus on his studies as best he could.
He ran a nervous hand through his hair as he reviewed his notes for today’s quiz on Tunnel Construction. The content was currently focusing on the excitement state of electrons; something he had never been taught in school. In fact, he had never been taught about chemistry at all so it meant that he had to catch up on the basics before he could even attempt the material in the course. Sarah helped him select some beginner-friendly materials from the library so that he could learn about the periodic table of elements and how to read it, as well as the composition of the atom and how atoms formed elements. It helped him to understand astraium and chrononium, both categorized as rare magical elements within the table, but by the time he felt comfortable in that, the course had already moved on to chemical bonds, and from there it went quickly into wave functions.
He was about to turn the page when he noticed that someone had stopped in front of his table.
“Olly Briggs?”
Olly looked up to see a primly dressed man looking down at him.
“Yes?” Olly asked.
“I’m the Headmaster’s assistant. He has requested to see you ahead of your first class. Please follow me.” It wasn’t a request.
Olly felt his heart plummet. As soon as his belongings were packed up the assistant wordlessly began to walk out of the common hall. Olly trudged down the winding corridors as he followed him toward the headmaster's office, the weight of his impending meeting pressing down on his shoulders. The assistant led him to an ornately decorated room. He took a seat behind a very polished wooden desk that sat just outside an imposing oak door marked ‘Headmaster’s Office - Franklin Byrne.’
“He’s waiting for you,” the assistant said in a clipped voice and immediately busied himself with his work, his unconcerned demeanor greatly contrasted Olly’s feelings of being a nervous wreck.
Still, he pressed onwards and tried to look unruffled as he gently knocked before pushing the door open and entering the spacious office. The headmaster sat behind an expansive mahogany desk, peering over spectacles with an air of disapproval. The room felt suffocating, the heavy red velvet curtains were drawn tight, which cast a somber shadow over the already tense atmosphere.
"Mr. Briggs, do have a seat," the headmaster said in a stern voice, gesturing toward the chair opposite his desk. Olly lowered himself into it, feeling very small under the weight of the headmaster's disapproving gaze.
"I'm deeply concerned about your academic performance," the headmaster began, though his voice projected more displeasure than it did concern, "It’s only the beginning of the term and your first reported grades have been exceedingly lackluster. Your teachers have expressed their worries about your lack of effort and focus."
Olly felt his mouth drop open. He had been trying. He had been trying so hard. He shifted uncomfortably and broke away from the headmaster’s gaze before tears began to prickle at the corners of his eyes.
"I understand that the content is challenging but this level of performance is unacceptable at any stage of your time at the Academy," the headmaster continued, his tone unwavering. "Your future is at stake here. We expect better from our students, especially from someone who caught the eyes of the other Grandmasters so dramatically during the aptitude test."
The weight of the headmaster's words hung in the air, punctuated by a heavy silence. Olly felt a lump form in his throat, the weight of his inadequacies pressing down on him. He wanted to explain that he had been trying to just keep his head above water but the words caught in his throat.
Franklin leaned forward, looking down his nose at Olly. “And believe me Mr. Briggs, I am interested in how you performed during the aptitude test. Grandmaster Abigail may believe that you are something special but forgive my skepticism on how someone from your background could have performed as you did. Delilah is a talented Cartographer and researcher but I don’t believe that even she could have molded something from nothing.”
His tone suggested what Olly had always known to be true. He would never be accepted as one of them. He wondered what would have happened if he had pledged for the Cartographers’ Guild and how Franklin would have treated him.
"I’m also interested in your connection to the Mayor. Believe me, if something foul is afoot I will get to the bottom of it. Consider this a warning that you are on academic probation," the headmaster concluded coldly, "If you made it here on your own merit then you have the ability to excel, but it's time to demonstrate that. I would consider you to take this term very seriously because I expect to see a drastic improvement in your grades by the end of this term, or else you can consider this to be your last term."
“I… Yes sir,” Olly managed to choke out.
Franklin nodded. “You may go,” he gestured to the door, dismissing him without another word.
Olly excused himself as quickly as he could and dashed past the assistant. He didn’t even look up from his desk and Olly was almost grateful for it since he couldn’t see the tears that were spilling down his face.
As Olly left the office, the weight of disappointment settled on his shoulders. He didn’t have time to cry so he let himself lean against a wall until his breathing settled. He swiped the tears away from his eyes and made his way to his class. He avoided eye contact with everyone and attempted his quiz the best he could despite the nagging feeling that it was for naught.
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He felt like he was in a fugue state for the remainder of the day. Sarah asked him what was wrong but he feigned feeling unwell. He could tell she didn’t believe him but she didn’t press the matter. He was grateful because he still had to get through a lab session with Brandon and didn’t have time to dwell on what Franklin said that morning.
Somewhat surprisingly Brandon wasn’t in the lab that evening. Olly wondered if he knew about Franklin’s meeting with Olly. Worse yet, Olly wondered if he had informed Franklin of Olly's performance in his practicum or lab ahead of that meeting.
He waited at the usual spot at the bench but no one seemed to be coming. After ten minutes he was about to leave when the door opened. He looked up expecting to see Brandon but found a slightly breathless Steven.
“S-sorry! Brandon wanted me to tell you he got called away urgently on Guild business. He asked that I lead today’s session,” he stammered.
Olly shrugged. Why not. What was there to lose? After the first session where Brandon had elicited an emotional response that triggered his magic, they hadn’t come up with anything further. Brandon hadn’t pushed anything emotionally driven since then and instead focused on standard testing methods.
Steven set up the testing panels between them but removed the shimmering golden sheet from the pane so that Olly could see directly through the panels. He frowned in confusion. Wouldn’t that defeat the purpose of the test?
“I’m going to try something new if you don’t mind,” Steven suggested, his voice seemed a lot more even as he focused on the panels. He offered Olly one of the stones and held up the one in front of him.
“I’ve been doing a little bit of research on loci. Sometimes we focus too much on the tunnel and not enough on the start and end points. Before you can punch you need to be able to see the end point clearly. There’s no guessing during a punch; the Cartographers map out a three-dimensional spot in space and you connect two known points together. The regular test is testing a connection between a known and an unknown point; it’s different,” he explained. He placed his stone in a location at random. Olly could see it floating in space. “Place your stone opposite to mine, but don’t release it.”
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“But doesn’t that defeat the purpose if I can see it?” Olly asked, still not understanding.
“Do you want to be confident in what you know? Or what you don’t know?” Steven responded eyebrows raised expectantly.
Olly sighed at the riddle but obediently placed his stone opposite to Steven’s, letting his fingers rest lightly against it even though he knew it could free-float on its own. He looked back at Steven waiting for his next instructions.
“What do you feel?” Steven asked.
Olly stared at the stone in his hand. “It feels slightly cold,” he responded.
“That’s because it’s not active. You need to think about it as an extension of yourself. Once you do you’ll feel the connection that it has to its twin. You’re so focused on the physical stone that you’re losing sight of the bigger picture. One location does not make a tunnel.”
Olly tried to look away from his stone and instead focused on the opposite one. He didn’t feel anything different. He tried looking between them; hoping to see some sort of visual connection but that didn’t produce anything meaningful either.
He was about to let go in frustration when Steven told him to wait.
“Keep your hand where it is and close your eyes,” he instructed.
Olly didn’t understand how this would be better but he obeyed nonetheless.
“The stone in your hand and its twin are intended to become a single closed system. The system can’t be opened or closed without energy and you need to provide that energy. Your hand is the conduit so think about the stone as a part of you.”
His fingertips slightly brushed over the smooth surface of the stone. It was still cold to the touch in fact, it felt like it was drawing heat from his skin. He furrowed his brow. It felt foreign in his hands because no matter how long he held it there was no change in temperature.
“Picture the stone in your hand in your mind’s eye,” Steven said.
He tried to ignore the creeping cooling sensation up his fingertips and thought about how it looked. He pictured his arm floating in space with the stone in his fingers, however, as he did he was shocked to see it glowing gold.
Something changed abruptly. It suddenly felt warm and as he continued to focus on it mentally he could see a golden thread growing from it. It headed towards something through the darkness and all of a sudden he could see another glowing point in the distance. It was the other stone! As the thread extended it eventually touched the other point.
He opened his eyes and looked between the two. In real life, they didn’t look any different but he could feel the warmth spreading back into his fingertips. The stone’s temperature and the temperature of his hand were in equilibrium. He let go cautiously and looked at Steven.
“You felt them connect, yes? What did you picture?” he asked curiously.
“Like there was a thread connecting them. And the stone suddenly gave off heat,” Olly explained.
“Good. So what you did was identify the two points mentally. I’m going to try something else, close your eyes again and lightly hold the stone once more.”
Olly obeyed once more, heart pounding excitedly in his chest. He visualized the two connected stones once more.
“What do you see if I do this?” Steven asked.
Olly was about to ask what ‘this’ meant but all of a sudden the thread curved to the left. He could feel it flicker slightly, weakening.
He instinctively followed it with his hand and the strength of the thread seemed to be restored.
“Open your eyes,” Steven instructed simply and as Olly did he gasped. Steven had moved the stone to another quadrant and Olly had moved his stone to meet it.
“So I can do it? I’m not bad at magic?” he asked hopefully.
Steven shrugged. “No one is good or bad at magic, but yes you were able to activate the connection and sense changes. With practice, you should be able to intrinsically visualize it without closing your eyes.”
Olly was dumbfounded. After his horrible morning, this felt like his first true win at the Academy.
“So does that mean I can do it with the panel? I know you said that method tests the unknown instead of the known so can I just extrapolate?” he asked hopefully.
“Likely with practice. The screen acts like a barrier so it will appear different in your mind. We can try a few and see what happens. Brandon did want to use it today so I don’t want to disappoint him.”
Olly saw a nervous tic form in Steven’s jaw as he said it. He remembered back to the time he overheard Brandon yelling at Steven so he suspected Steven was fearful of going renegade.
Steven set up the panel as normal and picked up the other stone. Olly could not see where he placed it and felt a bit nervous. This was the test he technically failed during the aptitude test and the test he continued to fail since he had joined the Academy. And yet, Steven had gotten him farther in the process than anyone else had. He felt an odd sort of reassurance that maybe it wasn’t outside his realm of possibility.
“Okay. Your stone is still active, yes? Close your eyes and tell me what you feel and see.”
It was chaos. With the last test, there was just one thread. In this version he was suddenly disoriented by countless threads, seemingly refracting in all directions off of an infinitely large barrier that expanded throughout the recess of his mind. He wavered, feeling entirely cut off and unsure where to go.
He hesitantly moved his hand and Steven cleared his throat disapprovingly.
“Hesitation leads to mistakes and you can’t afford mistakes,” he said softly.
Olly froze. “So what should I do? I can’t see past this wall and there’s so many threads.” The stone began to feel uncomfortably hot in his hand.
“Focus on your stone. It’s an extension of you, remember? You need to control the energy you're supplying it.”
Olly was on the verge of letting go at the risk of burning himself. He thought back to how cold it had felt before and tried to will that sensation back. It worked… somewhat. He felt the temperature reversing slightly and as he did so some of the threads began to disappear. Suddenly some seemed brighter than others.
“I think I’ve narrowed down some choices…” Olly suggested, still unsure.
“Good, now think about the other stone. You can’t see it when your eyes are open, but think about what’s on the other side of that barrier.”
He scrunched up his eyes but the barrier still took over his mind’s eye.
“Think about it like a window. It’s shut now so you need to open it.”
Olly relaxed his shoulders. Okay, a window. That didn’t mean anything to him right now but another thought occurred to him. He thought about something back from his aptitude test studying days. The logic problems always had him lay out what facts he did know and use those to extrapolate the correct answer. He knew that in real life there was a screen with two twin stones on either side of it. He knew the location of the stone in his hand but not the stone on the other side of the screen. However, the stone in his hand was supposed to help him conduct magic to detect the other one.
In his mind’s eye, there was still a mess of threads, but maybe the threads weren’t important right now. He focused on the stone in his hand and pictured it as nothing more than an extension. The temperature continued to cool until it was in equilibrium once more. As he did so, there were no threads left but he could see a faint glow coming from the other side of the barrier.
Heart pounding, he slowly but deliberately moved his stone to mirror it in depth and location. One single thread grew from his stone once more and connected the two stones.
He opened his eyes. The screen was transparent and the stones were in perfect alignment. Steven, despite his nervous personality, wore the first real smile Olly had seen on him.
“I did it!” Olly exclaimed.
A slow clap came from the doorway. They both jerked their heads to find Brandon smiling widely from the now-open door. Neither had heard him come in.
“Well done mate, I knew you could do it. And Steven, incredible. I was hoping you’d have some unorthodox method you’d use to help him get there.”
Steven seemed to retreat into himself almost immediately and Olly felt immediately bad.
“Good job Olly, see you in class,” he said hurriedly before rushing off.
Olly frowned and turned to face Brandon.
Brandon seemed nonplussed. “He’s smart but a strange fellow. No matter though, I’m sure you’re pleased with yourself!”
“I am, yeah. Will you be telling the Headmaster about this?” Olly asked curiously.
Brandon frowned in confusion. “What do you mean?”
Now it was Olly’s turn to feel confused. “The Headmaster called me into his office today. He said I was on academic probation because of the reports he’d be hearing from my teachers.”
Brandon immediately looked furious. “He did what now?”
Olly shrunk back slightly, having previously seen Brandon’s temper. “You didn’t tell him anything?”
He shook his head. “No, and rest assured I will be telling Grandmaster Abigail immediately about this. This is unacceptable.”
He sank heavily down into a lab stool and deflated slightly. “Okay mate, you did great today. Don’t worry about the Headmaster, leave that with me. Why don’t you run along for the evening? I’ll see how Abigail feels about us reducing some of these sessions so that you can focus on your studies. Sound good?”
Olly couldn’t help but give a small smile. “Sounds great!”
It was the most optimistic he felt all day! Still, he had questions. He didn’t feel like Steven was the monster he was made out to be, so Sarah would probably be blown away that he was the first person who helped him get his magic where it needed to be. He also wondered what the Headmaster intended for him and if it was truly just a social issue.
As he got to his room he decided to put on the television. His mind was spinning too fast to sleep and he felt out of the loop with the rest of the world. He flipped to the Occaigh news and saw it was playing re-runs of the inquest report by the Mayor.
His heart sank as he heard the Mayor’s words. “And if you’ll let me I will not falter in my duty until justice is served.”