The lobby was in an uproar by sheer virtue of occupancy. It smelled like fresh paint and chilled air. A fifth of the space went to covers along the far wall and the two [Painters] on ladders.
Their “group” had claimed three tables in a corner so they sat more or less together, with some people kneeling backward on benches to speak with others. Some squatted in front of tables instead. A small few wandered to and fro, but there were always those walking around.
The three of them had arrived separately so they were scattered. Lisa had been first, tagging along Myra and two friends. She’d claimed a corner seat with a book and her socks up on the bench. Ryan had slipped into the opposite corner and given her a nod across before starting his homework. He was almost finished when Micah arrived with Alex and a workshop friend, so he scooted in to make room.
Monday appointments were over. They had come back from theirs.
He leaned forward to ask, “How’d it go?”
Micah sat on the edge to make room for his leg. Instead of answering, he managed to hook Ryan’s backpack under the table first and pilfered his Proof Of papers. Only when he had them did he look over.
“Pretty great.”
“Find out anything new?”
“Some.” He smiled. “I have a bunch of influence lines like you do, too.”
“Nice.”
And that was that. Alex tried to copy Ryan’s homework. The workshop guy was busy with his own papers. Micah ended up poring over Ryan’s mostly as he had all weekend. He’d probably spent even more time with them than himself and was surprisingly unexcited about his own.
Probably, the wonder had worn off already.
Then Anne and two friends showed up, and Micah looked up like a dog that heard keys in the door. He called out with an arm up and offered a seat where there was none, so Alex and co had to scoot in again.
Then, Ryan was sitting between a workshop guy he didn’t know and one of Myra’s friends in the middle of the back bench. Micah was in the corner where he’d sat earlier. He took up two seats on his own with his cast and immediately tried to introduce himself to Anne’s friends.
Finally, Shala, Navid, and some other guy showed up and unceremoniously scooted in from the opposite end—all the seats were taken already—and Ryan was squeezed up shoulder to shoulder, or shoulder to chest with his neighbors. Lisa was huddled up with her a book in her corner, hugging her knees. It was too loud and the table far too cluttered to finish homework.
“Mason,” the guy next to him said with an awkward smile.
“Ryan.”
“Thea.”
They were too close to shake hands.
Instead of comparing, Micah and Anne were now both poring over Ryan’s papers together. That was just …
Great.
At least, he got Alex to reach over and slip Micah’s notes for himself. He focused on those.
[Essence Path] to [Alchemist]. The first line alone surprised him. Even as speculation, it implied Micah had only gotten the Class because of his Path. On the same morning?
[Essence Path] to [Infusion], [Candle], [Personalized Alchemy], [Lesser Vibrancy], and [Condense Water]. All his spells except [Dissettle] and [Dissolve], even if all but the third were lesser influences. So it had spellcraft influences after all? His [Essence Sight] was the same to varying degrees, exempting the stat.
[Alchemist] had influences on [Winter Cleaning] and [Condense Water]. [Infusion] on the former as well. One page later, it showed an interaction line. It wasn’t even speculation. So it was an enhanced cleaning Skill, then? Ryan leafed through. The in-depth section offered further reading suggestions on cleaning Skills, alchemy, and enchantments but didn’t tell him what it did aside from the Guidance Skill description about its “preparation for a lack of care or use.”
All of his spells influenced [Lesser Vibrancy]. Ryan nodded. Spellcraft led to spell stats.
Of course, [Infusion] was directly connected to [Kinetic Infusion]. No line from the later to Vibrancy? Because it wasn’t independent?
[Warrior Path] to [Lesser Vibrancy] and [Condense Water]? How did that make sense?
[Warrior Path] to—
“Ryan,” Micah called across the table.
“Huh?”
He looked up. He got the feeling that wasn’t the first time he’d called.
Anne was also smiling, but Ryan had a hard time imagining it was genuine. He still remembered how she’d chased him around the hallways like some kind of lunatic the first time they’d met.
He could see the way Micah was trying to sit close to her, despite his leg being in the way.
It was hard, disliking her when Micah so clearly thought otherwise.
“Yeah?”
“We were wondering if we could talk about tactics?”
“Tactics?”
“Yeah. You know, as a team?”
He nodded ahead. Ryan followed the gesture. Lisa was in the corner, though she didn’t seem as engrossed in her book anymore. Either she was staring at the painting or lost in thought.
When he glanced back, Micah nudged his chin again. He needed a moment to catch on that Shala and Navid were just one seat off from her, talking with that third guy.
Anne, Micah, and him. Six.
Oh.
“Sure?”
Was this really their team? A [Paladin], [Alchemist], [Fighter], [Summoner] and … He didn’t even know what their callings were, let alone who they were. It almost felt like a meet and greet at the Guild.
“Great.” Micah smiled and moved on. “Lisa! Hey, Lisa! Lisa!”
She didn’t react until “Thea” nudged her lightly, then Myra shook her shoulder roughly.
She blinked, noticed her, and snapped, “What?”
Myra pointed.
“Oh. Were you, uhm—” Micah started.
“Meditating.”
“Right. Sorry! I was just—”
“Nevermind,” she said, and mumbled, “Wasn’t making any progress anyway.”
Micah didn’t catch it. “What?”
“Was there something you wanted?” she asked back, sounding much friendlier already.
She noticed the pages in front of Ryan and gave him a questioning glance.
“We wanted to talk? Compare notes and ideas? Do you, uhm— You didn’t sign up for the deep appraisals, did you?”
“Nope. Why? Oh, is this about the exam? I can tell you which Skills I have and some of the boxes I can check?”
“Right. Do you have that list with the team requirements Mr. Sundberg gave us with you?”
“Uhh … let me see?” She pulled her backpack up and ruffled through. All Ryan could see were a trove of paperbacks being abused as she searched through them. Were those her textbooks? Not likely.
Ryan looked down.
[Warrior Path] to [Knife Proficiency: I]. Sure? And as a greater influence, [Warrior Path] to [Lesser Resilience].
Unceremoniously, Lisa dropped her bag. “Nope.”
Micah turned. “Ryan? Anyone?”
He shook his head as well. He had it in a folder somewhere in his room, but not with him.
“The list?” Shala asked.
“Yes! Do you have it?”
“No—”
“Drat. It would have been pretty nice if we could check things off,” Micah mumbled to Anne.
Shala was talking to the table in general, “—but I was wondering about one of the requirements. The healing one. Does anyone know if we also have to have redundancies for it?”
“Probably. Why?” Myra said.
“Hey, Ryan,” Lisa hissed.
“It wasn’t that long,” Anne said, “I bet we could get all the requirements together if we made a list. What was it? Ranged fighters, front line fighters, magic, communication, healing, scouting … uhm …”
“Hm?”
“Because there aren’t nearly enough healers to go around,” Shala said. “I believe one in ten students here attends healing courses? How are we supposed to fulfill the requirement with redundancies, then?”
Mason shook his head. “No, it’s more than that. One in eight, maybe—”
“I think there was also knowing the [Light] spell,” Micah said, “and uhm— But I just thought it would be nice talk about our Skills, you know?” He turned to Lisa. “Couldn’t you write them down or something?”
“Huh? Oh, no,” she said and ignored him, pointing in front of Ryan instead, “Will you be done with those soon?”
He imagined handing the copy-less deep appraisal documents over to her after just seeing that display with her books and shook his head. “No.”
“What? Why?”
“Why not, Lisa?” Micah asked.
“That’s just how many people are attending the courses,” Mason explained. “Micah and I take Dangers of Healing, but we don’t have any healing Skills. Most of us are [Alchemists]—”
“As I said—” Lisa started.
“Oh, what?” Micah perked up when he heard his name.
“—probably one in twenty students at the school actually have healing Skills,” he finished. Micah nudged his arm with a question on his face. “I was just telling them how we're in the same course.”
“Right.” He turned to the others. “We are.”
“As I said, you can just ask and I can tell you what Skills I have,” Lisa called over and turned on Ryan. “Now, why not?”
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
“Because it’s Micah’s.”
“So how are we supposed to check the healing box?” Anne asked.
“Yeah, but it would be a lot easier if you had something like a Proof Of paper," Micah kept on trying. "So we could compare?”
“Maybe it’s a trap?” Thea suggested. “Handicap the teams so they can’t climb to higher floors?”
“Why would they do that to nineteen out of twenty students?”
“Anne doesn’t have a Proof Of paper, either?” Lisa said. “And I let you borrow my meditation books for months.”
“And it’s still in perfect condition,” Ryan countered.
“Yeah, but— Oh, wait you don’t?”
Lisa coughed. “Favoritism.”
He didn’t know if she meant Anne or him.
Anne looked over and shook her head. “There were only so many appointments available, we didn’t want to steal any.”
“We?”
“Navid, Sion, and I.”
“Oh. Right.”
The rich kids.
“That’s stupid. It would totally ruin their sample size. They would want as many of us to succeed as they can.”
“Yeah, but not die.”
Mason shifted and leaned a little across Ryan so he had an easier time speaking with the others. Micah’s hand slipped off his arm. “They’ll probably ease up on that requirement, won’t they?”
“Depends on how high we get to climb. They probably won’t let us above the second floor.”
“We still have nine weeks to level up and get new Skills. That’s like two new spells, right Myra?”
“Simple ones, maybe,” she answered.
“For you, maybe,” Lisa added.
She got an elbow to her side, pushing Thea further into him. She and Mason bumped heads and apologized.
Ryan was leaning so far back his neck tensed.
Navid saw Lisa and Myra shoving each other and complained with a smile, “Hey, hey, now. Settle that in a sparring match, ladies. Please.”
“Shut up, Navid,” Lisa scoffed.
“We already have, far too often. I doubt there’s anything new Lisa could have to offer.”
“Offer?”
“So what Skills do you have?” Micah asked. He sounded like he wasn’t sure if he was allowed to ask.
“Not as many as you do,” Anne told him straight-out, almost laughing. “We can’t all be level freaks.”
“I’m not …”
Ryan tried to lean forward to catch more of that conversation, but he could barely move at all. It didn’t help that Mason and Thea were talking over him.
“You know, nothing to offer for me to learn … or to challenge,” Myra said.
Lisa stared at her for a moment before leaning forward. “Hey, Micah! Add front-line combat to the list.” With a side-eye, she added, “Some of us can actually do that on their own!”
“Huh?” Micah asked. He looked thankful for the interruption. “List? Wait, lemme get some paper—”
He bent down and grimaced trying to reach his backpack. He really shouldn’t be so cramped in the corner like this.
“Didn’t Mr. Bates fail you for a simple hand-to-hand combat drill?”
“Mr. Bates is a massive—”
“Wait, Mrs. Chandler here actually failed something for once in her life?” Navid asked.
“He might be, but I don’t see how that’s relevant.”
“I could still beat you two.”
“She is ridiculously strong,” Micah threw in as he pulled up his notepad. “What did you want me to add?”
“Strong?” Navid said, “For a [Mage], maybe.”
“Don’t you have a strength Skill?” He scribbled something down without looking at them.
Ryan leaned over to peer at the page. Lisa, underlined. He added the rest of their names.
“Come again?” Myra asked.
Lisa grinned. “Maybe I do. Maybe I don’t.”
Anne opened her mouth and Lisa threw her book at her.
“Yeah, right,” Navid said, “you have a strength stat.”
“She always won against us in arm-wrestling?” Micah tried, speaking during a brief pause in the chaos.
Two-thirds the table looked at him. Their looks wandered down to his arms and slowly, descended into pity.
“HEY!”
Micah blushed as much as he could, which was basically nothing if you didn’t know what to look for.
Ryan would have said something if only he knew what. The conversation was already moving on when he blurted out, with no regard to self-preservation, “She also won against me.”
In his lighter clothing, his arms were a little more visible. He felt the irrational urge to slide under the table and squared his shoulders instead. After a second, they took the statement a bit more seriously.
Somebody poked his arm. Thea. Ryan glared at her in indignation and she backed off.
“Alright, that’s it.”
Navid got up, walked across the table, and lept into a crouch on the floor. Pens rolled across the wood and books almost slipped off their stacks near the edge. He rolled the sleeve of his uniform back—
Oh. No, Ryan thought. Those were just his regular clothes.
He pushed his arm out and set his elbow down, hand out toward Lisa.
“Arm wrestle me, Chandler.”
Lisa pushed herself off the wall and sat down properly, saying, “Oh, your poor family name.”
They had to stretch to reach each other across the distance. It almost looked stupid.
“Those two,” Anne mumbled.
“So Skills?” Micah asked, half an eye on them.
“Oh. Uhm, my main ‘Skill’ would be my [Truth Sight] from my [Heswaren Path], but I guess that isn’t as useful in the Tower aside from reconnaissance. My main other Skill would be [Bless].”
“[Bless]?” He was scribbling under her name. “What does that do?”
“Anything …? It gives people simple short-term buffs.”
“Oh, like an enchantment spell?”
“Yeah.”
“Define anything,” Ryan demanded.
“I can make people stronger, faster, have more endurance, feel warm if it’s cold, cold if it’s warm, see or hear better, resist diseases and poisons … All sorts of things. It depends on the person and situation, and a few other factors. As long as its simple, I can probably make it happen.”
Ryan tried not to let the astonishment show.
“Sounds awesome,” Micah said.
“Sounds [Priest]-y,” he mumbled.
Navid’s knuckled tapped the wood.
He didn’t know how, as half the table was acting like apes cheering Lisa and him on, but Anne shot him a look. She’d heard. He just didn’t know what that expression was. Not a stink-eye, but … curiosity?
He shrugged in what hopefully conveyed an apology and glanced away. It wasn’t like he wanted to not like her.
“Oh, that reminds me,” Micah said and shifted in his seat. He stretched to get a look at the far wall. Shala perked up opposite him. “Cold and hot, we have to figure out which floor we want to go to, right?”
“I kind of would like to go into the Salamander’s Den,” Anne said, “or its equivalent, to get the loot I missed during the entrance exam.”
So she was still hung up on that?
“Oh, that’s a great idea,” Micah said with a smile. That had to be a lie, but Anne didn’t react and he went on, “Ryan needs it, too, for his Path.”
Oh.
“Right. His … Path.”
“You want to go look at the map?” Sion called. His tone suggested he hadn’t heard the conversation.
Micah nodded profusely.
It wasn’t nearly finished, Ryan saw, but there was a lot of red on the wall already. He could see the lizards from there.
Anne was shooing her friends out of the booth and he perked up. They were letting Micah out. He got one leg up to climb over the table and help, but Shala stopped him with a hand as he walked past.
“I got it.”
Micah limped out and they headed for the invisible barrier where the covers ended to get a closer look. Micah lifted one crutch to point with along the way. Anne stayed. She slid back into the booth.
Alex lay down on the empty bench.
“So—” she started.
For the third time, Navid’s arm crashed into the wood.
“HOW?! You have got to be cheating.”
Lisa laughed in triumph, but he and all the others kept on pestering her about Skills, magic, alchemicals, and finally, if she was secretly an underground ring fighter or what her training plan had to be like.
Ryan would have liked to know that, too.
“Didn’t you know?” she finally gave in and gave him a weird look.
He frowned, then caught on a second later. Oh, no.
“I’m friends with Ryan.”
Ryan tried to turn back to the other side of the table, but Anne looked like she wanted to talk to him so that wasn’t much better.
“And?” Navid asked.
“He has an aura Skill that makes his friends stronger.”
“What?”
“Seriously?” Mason asked next to him.
Shifting blame. Or credit. Whatever. He would have expected nothing less from her.
They turned on him.
Navid threw his arms up. “Ryan, my friend!” He climbed back over the table. This time, the book did slip off the edge. Its fall was barely heard over the ruckus in the lobby, but his exclamation might have been.
He squeezed himself between Thea and him—Mason slid into Alex—and wrapped an arm around his shoulders. He smelled like actual cologne. It wasn’t even that bad. He hadn’t put on too much of it like others tended to do, or Micah had when he’d first started making his.
He was all smiles. “So, tell me about yourself, man.”
Ryan regretted ever sitting down at this table. As the others started talking to him, stilted at first, then more casually when they gave up the charade, and pestered each other about all sorts of nonsense, he hated that it was Monday. He would love to have hung out with Lang and Finn right about now, and maybe some of the others from back home. Stretch his legs. A few games of alleyball sounded perfect. Even just walking around would have been fine. But he was stuck in the worst place of the booth and would only get to hang out on the weekend.
He sighed with a small smile and stretched despite the squeeze, reclaiming some lost space before Micah got back.
Lisa stole his papers. Anne tried to start a conversation. Ryan climbed past Navid and Thea to sit next to Lisa and avoid her. They looked in the papers together. Micah and Navid got distracted looking up reports for more information. Alex handed him the last bit of the homework assignment when he finished it as thanks for the rest. They all squeezed out of the table when it was time for dinner.
He guessed this wasn’t so bad until then.
----------------------------------------
Kelly turned the key in the lock of her dorm room and met resistance. Great. She pulled it back out with a sigh and opened the door. To the right, on her bed, her roommate was back already.
Great.
She wiped her shoes on the cheap mat the dean had offered and stepped inside. The girl ignored her, so she ignored her in turn.
Backpack down. Jacket off and draped over the chair. She wiggled her sports shoes off and slipped into the somehow more comfortable slippers. There had been a time when she’d hated having to wear slippers, and the shoes were designed to be comfortable, but her mind was stubborn.
A different kind of sigh at the comfort, almost an invitation. Still no reaction. Kelly glanced over and stopped herself from scowling. Why did she always end up with the weird ones?
“I’m back,” she tried.
“Mm.”
The girl sat inside a fort of two blankets, one of which had slipped off to bundle around her waist. The other was a stiff quilt held up over her shoulders. She was surrounded by literal piles of books. Not stacks, but scattered piles on her a mattress and a few that had fallen to the floor.
That was all she did in their room anymore, for the last two weeks or so the piles had risen. At least three dozen beginner mage manuals. Wasn’t she supposed to be some hot-shot [Summoner] prodigy?
Kelly had tried to wrap her head around it, imagining she might have faked her abilities somehow with items or tricks, and then given up. It didn’t make sense and it wasn’t like anyone cared, really. If she wanted to waste weeks re-reading the same handful of explanations in three dozen different iterations of word choice by dubious authors, then so be it.
Better than having her experiment with summoning spells, really, or having monsters run around.
She opened the drawer on her desk and ran through the homework in her head, but when she imagined doing it here or hanging out on her bed … It was almost eerie, the way the other girl sat. Was she even breathing?
Kelly couldn’t imagine herself relaxing. Not that she didn’t like bookish people, but she preferred signs of life in the people around her. And besides, the room was so small it always felt cramped.
She closed the drawer, grabbed her backpack, and headed out to do her homework with others in the common room, even if she probably wouldn’t get it done. She only dropped back in when she headed off to shower, then got ready for bed with a last cup of tea.
Her roommate still sat there when she came back, the same as she had before. The only difference was in the shape of the pile and wrinkles on the bed. She must have switched volumes.
A book had fallen between their beds. Kelly picked it up, put it back, and placed her cup on her nightstand. She only drunk half before she headed for the front of the room and held a hand to the wall.
“I’m turning off the lights now.”
“Mm.”
She killed it and went back to her own bed. “Mine, too. Alright?”
“Mm.” A non-commital grunt.
“Alright?”
“Okay.”
Kelly sighed. She switched off her light and slipped under her covers, staring up at the ceiling. The crinkling sound of a page turning a short meter off from her. An almost inaudible breath. Something didn’t feel right. She turned to the wall, pulling her blanket over her shoulder. After a few minutes, she turned again to keep an eye on the stranger she was forced to share a room with instead.
She still hadn’t moved, but she was reading somehow. It was dark. When she turned a page again, Kelly caught a glimpse of light. She wiggled down a bit into her blanket to get a better angle and saw a weak glow illuminating the page, just bright enough to blind her. The moment it did, it shifted to hide behind the book and out of her sight again.
She wiggled back up, spotted it, and it moved back down—her roommate hadn’t reacted, almost as if the spell was doing it on its own. Designed to not be observed or bother her?
Well, if so, it had failed.
She tried to get a glimpse one last time and, even though she knew her roommate was being considerate in her own creepy way, opened her mouth to say something—because she’d really just rather she slept, if she could even do that normally, “Can you turn the light off, please?”
The girl grumbled something in her throat and the light vanished. Kelly’s eyes needed a moment to adjust. The smooth sound of page scratching along page came a second later. She wasn’t surprised. She suspected it would for a few more hours, even with all the lights off.
That was alright. Lisa read in the dark.