Normally, using flight magic to travel outside the tower would earn Carmine disciplinary action. The laymen knew more superstition than truth about magic, and a student hurling over their rooftops did little to allay those fears. Right now, Carmine did not care. She felt the spell strain burning through her energy as she pushed herself faster over the town.

The tower gate threw itself wide, knowing it could not impede her progress. Uneasy silence prevailed over the tower lobby. Students, most younger than Carmine now, huddled in groups. Their whispers tinged the air with their confusion and concern. From what snippets reached her ears, the exams had been delayed.

“You,” Carmine plucked an underclassman from a clique and turned him to face her. “Explain this.”

“I-I don’t know! T-There was an accident,” he replied, squirming. “They brought up one of the exam-takers from the underground. It…looked serious.”

“They take her to the infirmary?” Carmine asked. The intensity of her question never occurred to her. The other student nodded, pointing to a floor above.

Lifts were slow. Carmine resumed her flight and ascended the tower's core. She landed on the infirmary's floor balcony, and rushed towards the door. She tried contacting her circle, but the brand’s enchantment remained disrupted. A sixth had been carved out of the emblem as one would slice a pie. A whole part of its power hadn't just faded, it had gone away outright. Carmine threw open the infirmary door.

“Where’s Almyra!?” She asked, storming in. The rest of her circle crowded around a bed, and Vale tended to a patient. It took a moment for Carmine to register that it was Almyra who lay in the bed.

The faun lay unconscious, and at a glance Carmine knew that was a blessing. Jagged silver crystals covered- no, emerged from her skin. Blood tarnished each jagged spike in dark specks. They poked out of her clothes in sparse formations all over her body, but the crystals growing from her arms grew the largest. They also sported the densest clusters, rivaled only by the clusters on near her hooves.

Carmine held her breath at the gruesome sight. The wounds hadn't healed but stopped bleeding. She recognized the desperate healing technique Vale had used to put Almyra in an artificial coma. In reality, the state resembled suspended animation, or torpor. The body's functions would be put on hold, and not without risk.

It was the kind of drastic action you took if the alternative was death. The realization hit Carmine like a hammer. Almyra came that close.

“What happened to her?” Carmine asked again. She looked to her whole circle, seeing the same haunted concern etched on their faces. Vale's brow contorted in focus. No one dared disturb her.

‘We don't know,’ Kay signed. She had to repeat a few gestures from her shaking hands. ‘The exam looked easy. Almyra passed every test they threw at her. Near the end, she had to do a test of spirit to measure her energy and stamina remaining after the trials. She stepped into the spell circle and gathered her power. Everything looked fine, but then…’ Kay stopped signing. Her eyes welled with wretched tears.

“She screamed,” Adelaide added. Carmine had never heard her voice shake, not once, until that moment.

Xander relieved Kay, and pulled her to his chest. He took over the rest. “Those crystals started…growing out of her body. There was…so much blood-” Xander cut himself off. He shook his head, his eyes landing on Vale. “If Doctor Valentine wasn't there-”

“I was.” Vale stopped the line of thought. Without taking her eyes off Almyra she beckoned Carmine closer. “Red, Help me with her. The torpor slows down healing, so we'll split the effort.” Carmine wasted no seconds weaving her energy in Vale's spell. The strain felt normal, yet the torpor slowed progress to a crawl, like cutting a wheat field with a pocket knife.

“The rest of you should leave,” Vale continued. “Go…do anything to get your mind off this.”

Emmet stepped forward. “But Almyra-”

“-Will survive. With the two of us here, she's not in danger. There isn’t anything you can do but give us time. Carmine is the only one in your circle with healing experience. Besides, you all still have your own exams to pass.”

Silence met Vale's suggestion. Seconds dragged on, but no one moved.

“She's right.” Carmine added. “Almyra wouldn't want us to fuss and fail. Trust me: I won’t let anything else happen to her.”

Their faces twisted with reluctance, frustration, but eventually acceptance. With solemn nods and bowed heads, Carmine's circle departed.

“If you need anything,” Adelaide said, hovering by the door, “we're here.” Her footsteps trailed into the hall.

Only the light hum of healing sorcery kept absolute silence at bay. The pair of healers focused on staunching any bleeding first. Using her magic, Carmine had a sense for how far the damage extended. As bad as the wounds on Almyra's limbs were, there were worse dangers inside her.

These grim crystals grew from the bone out. The largest may be on her arms, but it was the small pins growing on Almyra's ribs and spine that posed the most danger.

It was right for Vale to send the circle away. Most crystals in the extremities could be displaced, pushed out, by healing the body, but for the ones inside…they’d have to operate. They moved Almyra to a clean room, sterilized through sorcery. Normally a faculty nurse would assist Vale, but given Carmine's experience as Vale's direct apprentice, she participated instead.

“I've never seen anything like this,” Carmine said as Vale plucked a small crystal from Almyra's chest. “Is this an attack? A spell gone wrong?”

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“A disease, actually,” Vale replied. She dropped the shard in a small, water-submerged pile.

“That's-” Carmine would have said impossible, but… “I feel like I would know about a disease that makes crystals grow out of people!”

“It can only manifest in magi, and even then, it's extremely rare.”

“So, being a mage is a cause, or a symptom?”

“Neither, it's the test. You're good at sensing magic. Probe the crystals a little deeper.”

Carmine furrowed her brow, but retained her focus on the task. Carmine monitored Almyra’s vitals and located the crystals, while Vale removed them herself. Once extracted, Carmine healed the surrounding damage to let Vale move on to the next shard. Since Carmine already sensed the crystals, probing deeper was an easy task. As she sensed the stones, a two-fold familiarity dawned on her: The stones carried sorcerous energy, and that energy was Almyra's. The latter fact, she didn't understand, but the former…

“It's arcanite.” Carmine remarked. Vale nodded. Arcanite, the same rare ore found deep in the veins of the world. It could carry and store a mage’s energy. Without it, many enchanted items would be useless lumps of junk without the constant attention of a mage. “Why is ore growing inside Almyra?”

“It's called crysthesis. The cause is unknown but it creates a dangerous complication in the manifestation of magic.” Vale closed the last of her incisions on Almyra's torso. With the greatest danger passed, they moved to extract the crystals from her arms. Carmine took the left while Vale took the right. “Instead of a mage's energy going to the spell, part of it bleeds out and coalesces into Arcanite inside their body. Some mages call it mana rot. The growths emerge from bone, as you saw, and focus on areas where the energy is most concentrated. For most of us, that's the hands.” She lifted Almyra's crystal covered wrist.

“It still feels wrong.” Carmine shook her head. As she healed her friend's wounds, the arcanite crystals fell free from the regenerating flesh. Carmine's stomach turned at the sight. “She's been practicing all week, why now?”

“That is the question I've been thinking about since I put her in torpor.” Vale met Carmine's eye for the first time since they entered the surgical chamber. “Crysthesis is a chronic condition. Progressive too, if the mage keeps using magic. It rarely manifests after birth, but even if it did, a mage would feel aches and persistent pains before any shards would poke through the skin. Even then they’d be small. Eruptions like this,” Vale removed a crystal several inches long from Almyra's forearm, “they don't happen, at least naturally.”

Carmine's eyes sharpened. “Are you saying what I think you're saying?”

“It's either that, or Almyra has been somehow suppressing a very painful and very deadly condition, and it escaped my notice for up to five years.”

“We'd notice.” Carmine stated.

“My thoughts exactly, Red.” The last crystal fell from Almyra's arm. It clattered to the floor, unscathed. Vale let out a long sigh and wiped her drenched brow. “I'll look into it. Quietly.”

“So will I,” Carmine retorted, her chronic fatigue forgotten. “If I find the wretch responsible-”

“You'll leave it to me,” Vale finished. She moved to a wash basin. Removing her gloves, Vale threw them aside and started washing up. Steam rose off her clenched fists. “You have other responsibilities right now.”

“Fuck exams, Vale, Almyra nearly died!”

“Exactly.” Vale turned around, her face fell, and she struggled to even look at Almyra. “She survived, but…I ran a test to confirm the disease before you arrived. Whatever happened to her today, she has crysthesis now. Do you understand what that means? She can't practice magic anymore.”

Carmine's heart sank. “Even…even though we got all the crystals-”

“More will grow. If she uses anything but the most basic spells, she could put her life at risk.”

“But- but she…she's a great mage!” Carmine could barely believe what she heard. “She's aiming to be a court sorceress. She worked so hard…”

Vale put a hand on Carmine's shoulder.

“She's going to need you, all of you,” Vale spoke plain. “This is the worst news a mage can get.”

Carmine's arms fell to her side.She stood there, stunned.

Just like that, Almyra may have survived, but her career as a mage was dead just as it began. No mistake, no failing, no reason why, it was just…done. This news…it would kill her.

Carmine left the operating room. Another of Vale's assistants would move Almyra while they cleaned up. She waited until the wash basin was clear before washing her own hands. Carmine still had the necromantic mark to conceal. She quickly pulled her own gloves back on before her hands dried, and rejoined Vale in her office.

“Any idea how we find who’d do this?” Carmine asked. Her own test, even her own forbidden project fell to the back of her mind.

“We don't know for certain it was an attack,” Vale said, raising a finger as she sensed the retort coming. “I suspect it. Until we can figure out how Almyra contracted crysthesis, assigning suspicion at this point is not just foolish, it's dangerous. I'm going to run some tests, and see if there is any trace to find.”

“So I should just sit on my hand?” Carmine crossed her arms.

“No, since I'm going to spend the next few days looking after Almyra, I need you to take my place on the safety panel during the remaining exams.”

“What!? I can't do that. I'm not a certified healer like you.”

“Healing arts were always going to be part of your own exam, and as your mentor, it's up to me whether you pass or fail. Carmine, you and I just completed a high risk, high difficulty operation and saved a life. I think you pass. I'll have the certification for you by tomorrow.”

“Oh…you can…just do that.” Carmine hadn't expected to pass her exam like this. One of them, anyway. “Wait,” Carmine frowned. A thought wormed its way into her head. “The exams are going to proceed?”

“Strange, isn’t it?” Vale confirmed. “Despite this incident, they’ll be back up tomorrow. While you're watching, keep an eye out for anything unusual and note it down. Examine the test area if you can for any spell traces. Your spell detection far exceeds my own.”

“I'll check when I can get away with it.” Carmine nodded. “If there is a culprit, we don't want to let them know we're looking.”

“Good. There is just one more thing.”

“What?” Carmine furrowed her brow. Vale rested her hand on Carmine's shoulder without warning. The sudden contact almost made her flinch.

“Get a full night's rest.” Vale's voice carried a motherly warmth Carmine had not heard in a while. The kind she’d been avoiding. “I see those bags under your eyes. You haven't been sleeping enough.”

“As if I'm going to get any sleep now.” Carmine nodded towards the recovery room.

“I know, but try. You're only hurting yourself with exhaustion. Do it for me?”

The genuine concern humbled Carmine as much as it did invoke shame. She was hardly worth it at this point. Still, Vale was right: exhaustion dampened her capabilities. Catching the fucker that hurt Almyra would take her full attention. “I'll try Vale.” She promised, a smile tugging at her lips unbidden. “Are you…going to see Nico too?”

“I was going to when I have time. Why?”

“I…ran from our meeting when all this happened. When you see him, tell him…tell him,” she fell silent, considering what she even wanted to say. “Tell him…when the exams are done, I want to travel together again.”