“Now, the task is simple. Each of your teams gets one femur. Lose it, break it, eat it, and you’ve got no femur. I’m not made of femurs and I can only stretch the allocated budget for class so far. So use yours wisely, and don’t fail out of the class.”

“Someone’s eaten their femur?” I asked Marcus, incredulously.

“Not that I know of, but if he’s mentioning it, it probably happened,” responded Marcus.

“Now that we’ve gotten the disclaimers out of the way, I’ll give you the task. Figure out what sort of properties your femur has. Depending on the life of the human, there will be differences in density, resilience, and mana residue gained from a lifetime of natural exposure. Once you've figured out what properties the bone has, then we can move on to actually forming a basic ritual.”

Alcathorm raised his hand. It was a considerable step in the right direction for his quest to obtain merely passable manners.

Rath stared at the outstretched hand in horrid disgust. There was only one thing he hated more than students, it was students raising their hands to ask unwarranted and pointless questions.

“How do we go about doing that?” asked Alacathorm.

Professor Rath just shrugged.

“Terrible question. How would I know? That’s not my problem. That’s your problem. Figure it out on your own,” said Rath, as he began shoving his papers, pens, and a half eaten pear into his satchel.

The pile of femurs sat on the makeshift table that was set up next to his podium. The class hesitated as if waiting for Rath to pass out their assignment. Rath continued to pack up his belongings.

“Should we go grab a femur?” yelled Frelick, who was ignored for asking another pointless question.

The rest of class hesitated. One wrong move and Rath could tell you to pack your bags and never to return to his class.

“Should we go grab one?” asked Alcathrom to our group.

“Yes, well, maybe we will wait for one of the other groups to make the first step, see how the professor reacts.” said Marcus.

“I agree.” Helfen agreed.

By now, Rath had finished packing his satchel and slung it around his waist. He had things to do and places to be. Teaching class was not one of those things. He made his way to the door, opened it, and slammed it shut behind him.

“Let’s not all rush to those femurs. We can discuss this like wizards,” spoke the preppy girl, but her body told a different story. It was the way her heels turned; she was getting ready to sprint.

“Yes. Yes. We’re all students of this fine academy. There is no need to act like savages, and fight each other for the bones.” said Frelick, as he slowly reached for something in his pocket.

Our group huddled, while Helfen kept an eye on the other teams. The other teams were looking for weaknesses to exploit, for an opportunity to seize.

“Look, we’ve got to make the first move and we’ve got to do it right. That thing in Frelick’s pocket is likely an artifact, something he’s been saving for the right opportunity. He’s going to zap the first team that tries to make a move. Look to your left.”

I looked to my left.

Another team stood, with one of the members holding a shovel. They were eyeing us with a type of hostility that made me uncomfortable, a kind of hostility that led to hitting heads with shovels. They were likely close enough to throw it, if one of us scrambled for the prize.

“Also look to your right.”

I looked to my right.

It wasn’t just one team, but somehow, in the few minutes since the professor had left the classroom, a coalition of three teams had formed. Somehow they even had time to make a sign that read: if you’re reading this, you already lost.

“The way I see it, is that three of us take the beatings and let a runner snatch the first femur. Between the group with the shovel, Frelick’s artifact, and the coalition that’s formed, we’ll have to divide and conquer.”

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

“I’ve got the coalition. The leader hates my guts. If I run at them, they’ll have nothing better to do then to pin me to the ground. I’ll make some noise and keep them occupied," said Alcathorm.

“I’ll do the running. Also, I've got a good intuition to pick out a good femur.” I said, knowing that my mana sight was an unfair advantage.

If I knew the type of mana lingering in the femur, then I’d already have some semblance of understanding our femur’s characteristics. From a distance, it was hard to tell what type of mana were in those femurs. Only the generic death mana emanating from the bones could be seen.

“That leaves you with the shovel, Helfen.”

“I’ll make a herioc leap and time it just right, for the shovel to hit me instead of Calvin.”

“Great. And I’ll stop Frelick with this.”

Marcus reached into his pocket and pulled out an artifact of his own. Or was it loaned to him by Helfen?

The artifact looked like a little bird with a switch, its beak was wide open.

“This, here, is a screamer. It’ll create a piercing shriek that incapacitates foes for about five seconds. It’ll give you enough to make it to the pile.”

“Great. Let’s go.”

Marcus flipped the switch on the bird and flung it at Frelick. Frelick tried to pull his artifact out of his pocket, but he was not fast enough. As the tiny bird soared, its wings spread, landing atop Frelick’s head.

I was off, as I sprinted for the steps in the middle of the amphitheater. I pivoted my feet as I raced the preppy girl down the steps. She was fast, but so was I.

A shovel torpedoed towards me like a fireball but faster, Helfen jumped, taking the shovel to the chest. He groaned in pain. I would not let his sacrifice be in vain. I was catching up on the preppy school girl, who I had yet to learn her name. I had yet to learn a lot of names, because people tended to sit away from me. Marcus and Alcathorm were exceptions. Not the rule.

With only a few feet of separation, I reached with my hand and narrowly missed grabbing her hair. Yes, I was trying to trip her. No, I was not above grabbing a girl's hair. I was for equality when it benefitted me; I was an opportunist.

I was not faster than her and I didn’t catch up. She reached the base of the pile of skulls quickly, waved a strange device over the femurs and picked one up. One less potential option, I thought. Although, there were enough femurs in the pile that I wasn’t worried.

The death mana was strong and made it hard to single out the remnant mana that hid inside. Picking up one bone after another, I squinted to determine whether or not that bone was worth taking when compared to the best result I had found. A hint of green glistened out of the bone in my hand.

Life mana lingered in the bone. This was not a good bone, this was a complicated bone. Death and life mana were opposed to each other, so it would be challenging to figure out how that interaction manifested. I threw it in the discard pile I had created.

Another bone had two types of prominent mana that I could glean through some type of earth mana and red fire like mana. Two was a complicated number so discarded that bone as well. The more variables, the more difficult the task would be.

The discarded pile grew and grew. The femur I was currently keeping in my right hand was femur with some sort of ice or water mana, embedded into it. Out of all the other options, it was what I deemed the easiest to predict. Sure, there’d need to be some testing to see what type of mana it actually was, but water or ice mana would create something more predictable because it was similar enough to the death mana.

The final femur was a strange one. It was a type of mana that I had never seen before, the color almost a shiny reddish-bronze. The way it flowed was not rigid like earth mana, so I supposed that it didn’t represent some type of metal if there was such a type of mana.

I stared at it, wondering why it made me feel unreasonably angry. There was nothing to be angry about, I had reached the pile first. I had reached the pile first…

But where were the other students, shouldn’t they have piled in by now. I got so distracted trying to find the perfect femur, that I had neglected to think of the time. I had forgotten to take into account the urgency of my assignment. I turned to look back.

The coalition had expanded. Three teams had conquered five other teams through a means of threats and brutish diplomacy. Alacathorm had been tied to the pole that had previously had a sign tied to it. Frelick poked and prodded at Marcus and Helfen, as they knelt before him.

“Looks like you’ve done an excellent job for us, Calvin, is it? The way you judged and discerned those femurs will be excellent information used and spread righteously among the coalition. ” said the coalition leader.

“Then I’m free to go? You’ll let my teammates go now that I’ve got mine?” I asked.

“There is no yours… Except for the tiny one, you grimaced at. We outnumber you by many, you’ll hand over the femurs, starting with that one in your hand. It must be special if you’re so keen on it. You have some sort of device that gives you insight on the mana. You’re clever. You saw right through Professor Rath’s plan for the day.”

“Yes. Yes, I did.” I lied.

Taking credit for something you didn’t do was never wrong, in my eyes if you weren’t the one to dish out the idea.

“I’ll break them all, if you don’t let me take this one.” I said.

“If you choose to do that, I’ll murder your three team members. Sure. three members of the coalition will be expelled, but the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. If that doesn’t break you, we’ll murder you as well. This is Rath Bloodborne’s class. Only united may we be strong enough to pass this course.”

“You’re all sheep waiting to be flunked.”

“No, we’re the wolves to take what is rightfully ours. Hand over the femurs.”

I was conflicted on one hand, I’d have to give over the femur. On the other hand, I’d likely be dead. It was a hard choice, but I liked living too much to keep the femur. I handed it over. As the coalition picked through the pile of femurs like vultures, I stared at the bone with the strange anger inducing mana. This time the anger I felt didn’t come from the mana locked in the bone.