“Mother’s maw! Who the-” Mazorah’s head was submerged in water as he fell over, startled awake by the sudden screaming. He gasped in surprise, which was a terrible idea considering, well, the water thing. Immediately his body rebelled and he flailed around, confused about where he was and what was happening. He soon found the surface of the water and pushed himself up to it. He stood up and coughed like he’d never coughed before (in recent memory at least) for a few moments, memory finally coming back to him. He must have fallen asleep in his bath! Then someone screamed in his dream… No, wait, that was real. Mazorah wiped water and tears out of his eyes and looked around, finally seeing a naked young woman in the doorway. Her expression seemed torn between rage and concern. She was standing intentionally, as if in a stance where she could move any direction she needed to at any moment.
Mazorah coughed a few more times, “who are you,” he asked through a couple less powerful coughs. The woman raised her brow, “who am I? What is a naked man doing in my bath,” she demanded. “You’re naked too!” It was the first thing to come to his mind, but Mazorah regretted saying so even as the words left his mouth. The woman seemed to tense slightly as she gestured to her body, “I generally get naked when I’m about to get into my bath.” She’d emphasized the ‘my’ part of her sentence this time, which gave Mazorah’s slow mind a clue about what was happening. Had Eadit tricked him and just left him in front of someone else’s room? Did she just plan on having someone else kill him? No, wait, the door had opened for him.
“I’m pretty sure this is my bath. At least, it’s my room. The door opened for me. I can’t imagine they’d all do that,” Mazorah said, the words spilling out. He felt like he’d been accused of a crime he hadn’t committed. The woman seemed skeptical, but left the doorway and came closer, holding out her hand. A small white text floated out of her hand, which read ‘704’. “Prove it,” she said sweetly. Mazorah felt sweat starting to build on his forehead as he considered his options, “I’m not sure how to do that,” he said desperately. He knew there was something in his palm that gave him access to the room but he didn’t know how to make it work, let alone glow with numbers in the air. The woman’s expression seemed to harden a bit, “which hand is it in?” Mazorah held out his right hand and the woman grabbed it. Mazorah felt a tiny tingle on his palm and the number ‘704’ popped into the air.
“I guess we’re roommates,” Mazorah said, relieved but still not sure about the situation. The woman let go of his hand and rubbed her head. “I guess so,” she said after a few moments. She stopped rubbing her head and looked at him with her jaw set, “well, move over then. I still need to bathe.” She pushed him aside gently and brushed past Mazorah as she dropped into the bath. The bath was large enough for both of them to sit shoulder-to-shoulder with a third person, if the need arose. At the moment, however, it felt barely big enough for one person.
“I’ll leave you to it then,” Mazorah said as he started moving to get out of the bath. The woman held her hand up, “sit,” she said. Her eyes were closed and she looked completely relaxed in the bath. Mazorah grimaced and looked at his wrinkly fingers. “Another few minutes won’t kill you,” the woman said as though reading his thoughts. Wait, could she read his thoughts? Mazorah gulped and sat back down in the bath, carefully staring forward. Eventually he closed his eyes, since that made it easier. “What’s your story,” the woman asked lightly, “and why did I get a surprise roommate in the middle of the year?” Mazorah shook his head, “I’m Mazorah. I woke up this morning-” “you might mean yesterday morning,” the woman cut in. Mazorah considered, “I woke up yesterday morning without any memories, met some templars, and got recruited to come to this school.”
There was an uncomfortable silence, and Mazorah opened an eye. The woman was looking at him with extreme interest. “Really, you don’t remember anything,” she asked, “what about your name?” Mazorah shrugged, “I guess I remembered that,” he said lamely. “What about Ether? They couldn’t have enrolled a random person with a dubious background and no special talent with Ether.” Mazorah felt a little defensive being described so accurately, “the Lord Templar said my Ether was extra potent, or something,” he tried to explain. The woman giggled, “that’s not a word I’ve heard used to describe Ether,” she said, looking at him as if he’d made a good joke. Mazorah splashed some water on his face, “really, though. It was something about potency and density,” he said.
The woman tilted her head, “fine, I have heard of Etheric density, but only in theoretical math class. Even if we could figure out how to do it, it’s too impractical. It costs more Ether than it stores, and then you’d have to use Ether to protect the vessel you were trying to condense Ether into.” Mazorah tried keeping eye contact with the woman at first, but after failing a couple of times he gave up and faced forward with his eyes closed. The words she said still didn’t quite make sense to him. He’d been able to use Ether to blow a hole in a rock and fly so far. He imagined there must be a way to store it in objects, which was how his room key and other stuff worked. Etheric density would just be putting in more Ether than something needed? But then the thing would explode. Unless it was reinforced by Ether. It sort of made sense, but Mazorah didn’t really understand how that related to him.
“When you use the Ether in your blood, what can you do with it?” Mazorah figured if he had some kind of benchmark it would help him understand how his Ether was different. “Don’t use the Ether in your blood, Mazorah,” the woman’s voice shook a little, causing Mazorah to want to open his eyes again. He resisted the urge, figuring it would be harder to concentrate on their conversation if he was looking at her. “The Ether in our blood is equally distributed in our bodies. Early on, gathering it in one place in order to use it will cause an overflow to that one area and will make you absorb more Ether to balance you, which can overheat the blood in your body and kill you. And that’s just if you’re absorbing purified Ether, safe from the Chasm’s corruption.” Mazorah was familiar with the corruption concept, so he tried to stay on-topic, “what if you use a few drops of blood from a cut or something,” Mazorah suggested. “There wouldn’t be enough to do anything with, unless you were at least Green 5.” “Green? What is with you people and colors,” Mazorah accidentally wondered aloud.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
The woman snorted, “you really don’t remember anything, if you’re asking that,” she said, laughing a little. “The higher the quality of Ether, the closer to Violet it gets. Numbers from ten to one indicate the ratio of Ether to its binding agent. So the weakest rank would be a Red 10. I’m a Green 7, which is good for someone our age.” The woman sighed and leaned her head back, “actually, it’s really good.” Mazorah waited, thinking she’d say more. She didn’t. After a few minutes of silence he ventured, “what’s your name?” There was a long pause, and just when Mazorah was going to check if she’d fallen asleep he received a reply, “Wyvera,” she said flatly. Mazorah nodded, “Nice name.” Suddenly he couldn’t think of anything else to talk about. Grasping at his fairly limited memory, he settled on imitating Dawl, “mind if I call you Wyv?” “Only if I can call you Maze,” Wyvera countered. Mazorah almost groaned, but he decided to pick his battles. He smiled and held his hand out, “nice to meet you, Wyv,” he said. Wyv shook his hand and smiled back, “nice to meet you, Maze.”
A few awkward moments later Mazorah was dry, clothed in nightwear, and laying in bed. He’d discovered a few massive boxes by the door that Wyvera had simply ignored (apparently she got presents often?), which contained the delivery of Mazorah’s new clothing and accessories. There was a lot in each box, but Wyv had deftly gone through all three boxes in a matter of moments and found clothes to sleep in along with a set of bedsheets. They’d dismantled the bunk bed and placed the top bunk on the floor, which made it function like a normal bed. They’d put the sheets on together, Wyvera had wished him good morning, and she was now snoring in her own bed. Sleep overcame Mazorah before he had much time to complain about the snoring.
Mazorah woke up to someone poking his shoulder and opened one eye. Wyvera was inches away from his face. Mazorah jerked backwards in surprise. “You were drooling,” Wyv said. Mazorah wiped a bit of wetness from the side of his mouth, “you were snoring,” he retorted. Wyvera looked genuinely surprised, “really?” Before Mazorah could answer, the entire room pulsed with a loud thump. It was as if they were inside a massive beating heart. “Better hurry,” Wyv said, “I laid some clothes out for you, we need to go.” She turned around and started gathering some things. Mazorah sat up and looked down at the set of clothes Wyv had picked out for him. He felt genuinely grateful and changed his clothes quickly. Just as he finished buttoning his shirt, Wyvera appeared in front of him. “I really appreciate-” Wyv shoved something that was absolutely delicious into his mouth. He was suddenly one-hundred percent confident he was in love with Wyv. “Maze,” Wyv cooed, “if you make me late to math class I might kill you in your sleep tonight.” She handed him a pair of shoes and socks to put on, which he did with due haste.
Not a minute later, Mazorah followed Wyv through a hallway towards the main platform he’d come to this floor on. Bright daylight flooded in through large holes in the walls, which served to remind Mazorah of the strangely organic city he was in. They came up to a strange wall that reminded Mazorah of the entrance to the Imperial Academy. Wyv walked through it as if it weren’t even there, so Mazorah followed. After a short moment of being surrounded by the fleshy wall he stepped onto the platform, which also seemed more flesh-like than it had the day before due to small holes that opened and closed rhythmically along the walls. “This is the main elevator,” Wyv said casually as she stepped onto the platform. Mazorah stepped on quickly beside her, and Wyvera made a show of pointing her left hand towards the ground, turning it clockwise. “If you drill a line of Ether from the room key to the gear in the elevator, you can turn it clockwise or counter-clockwise to go up or down.” The elevator started moving up as she finished speaking. Mazorah noticed that there was a small number 7 on the floor, which moved up to twelve as Wyv turned her hand.
After they’d gone up a few floors, a frazzled man who looked to be around Wyv’s age jumped onto the moving platform. He nodded to Mazorah, “depths, at least I’m not the only one who’s late,” he said. “Don’t think we’ve met. Relar.” Mazorah shook the man’s hand, but before he could give his name in return, Relar spoke to Wyvera, “You left early last night, what’s your excuse for being late?” Wyv rolled her eyes and eventually nodded towards Mazorah, “new roommate,” she said, turning to a fleshy wall. “We’re here,” the elevator stopped moving and she grabbed Mazorah’s hand, stepping into the entrance wall. Door. Whatever you wanted to call it. “Wait, roommate or… ‘roommate’?” Relar’s question caught Mazorah off-guard and he didn’t have time to answer before being surrounded by the door.
What awaited them on the other side was a huge lecture hall. There was a woman in the middle of the room, which seemed at least semi-circular. Hundreds of students sat in flesh-like chairs all around the perimeter of the room. The woman in the middle of the room turned towards them and smiled. Even at his distance from her Mazorah could tell she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. Granted, not a large sample size. But still. “Good morning,” she said. It was a simple phrase, and didn’t seem to have a hint of sarcasm. What caught Mazorah’s attention was that the woman had said the word in a normal tone of voice, and the entire room had vibrated in a ripple at the exact same time, making it seem like she’d spoken directly into his ear. It was unnerving.
“Headmaster,” Wyvera bowed, “I was acquainting my new roommate with the Academy and lost track of time,” she apologized. There was instantly a chorus of whispers from the students around the room, which seemed muted due to the strange vibrations of the room. The Headmaster nodded and Wyvera stepped to the side, sitting down without a chair under her. A large hand grew out of the ground and cupped Wyvera’s butt as if she was a small child. “And what is our new student’s name?” Mazorah realized he had been gaping at the scene of Wyvera’s seat and snapped his mouth closed. He thought for a moment, recalling what he’d been asked and looked the beautiful woman in the eye, “My name is Mazorah,” he said. “I am Headmaster Kistera. Please take a seat.”
Mazorah stepped next to Wyv and started to sit down. A hand grew out of the ground and met his butt. It was actually extremely comfortable and didn’t feel like a hand at all. The seat felt cushioned and even grew a back when he leaned back a bit. “Relar,” the Headmaster’s voice came, “unfortunately you have no such excuse and will be docked five points.” Relar grunted and nodded, sitting next to Mazorah. After he sat down he turned to Mazorah, “I was hoping she’d let us all off with a warning,” he mumbled.