“Eliot.”
Ryan found them in a study corner of the library with old monster encyclopedias strewn out around them. It seemed he had managed to convince Myra after all. He almost would have walked past them if he hadn’t spotted her hair.
Eliot had dark hair today, no freckles, and brown eyes. He seemed to change his look like other people changed clothes. Ryan tried not to let how awesome that was distract him.
“Ryan.” He looked up. “Hey, what brings you here?”
“You said you wanted me to join your team. Is that offer still standing?”
“I thought you already had one?”
“Something came up.” He grabbed one of the chairs to lean against, curling his fists over the wood. “We were one too many, now we’re four too few.”
Myra raised an eyebrow, silent.
Eliot winced and his hopes sank. “Four?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“We’re five.”
“Dammit.” He pushed off and took a step back, thinking.
“Sorry, man—”
“No, it’s alright. I just have to find a team by the end of the week. If we let the school sort leftovers to us, it’ll be horrible on our assessment.” He ran a hand through his hair and looked around, but the library was a ghost town after exams. Who else could he ask?
“This ‘you’ is Micah and you?” Myra asked. She did something with her hands that looked like dexterity exercises.
“Yeah.”
“What about Lisa?”
“Out of her control.”
“My condolences.”
“Thanks. Sorry. I’ve to go. See you two … later?” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder, frowned, and took a step forward instead. “What are you working on?” They were both [Blue Mages]. He should probably be speaking with them more often. The books they had were old. Inaccurate, now.
“Eliot is—” Myra stopped herself, then glanced at him in worry. It didn’t seem very Myra-like.
“It’s alright.”
“Ah.” She immediately became more like herself. “Well, Eliot is showing me his camouflage trick. It’s an ingenious spell.” She ran a hand through her hair. Where her fingers passed, the color turned red. Not natural red, like her hair already was, but a bright deep red like paint. It reminded him of pictures of corals and reef fish from Lighthouse, and faded in ripples of flickering spots.
“Awesome. Do that again.”
She smiled and did it again.
Only then did Ryan realized what he’d asked. It was too late to blush. He just went with it. “That is cool.”
“Thank you.”
“And Myra is going to teach me some of her spells in return,” Eliot said. “She tells me I have to learn how to whittle.”
“You’re teaching each other?” Ryan asked.
“Blue magic is a very niche practice,” Myra explained, “and individual besides. It’s nice to see what others can do.”
“Not that we want to copycat each other,” he said, “we just want to touch base. It’s sort of an agreement?” He checked with her. “Most of the others declined, but I managed to rope one more of us into it. We can learn a little from each other before pursuing our own styles.”
He smiled.
Ryan smiled back.
It was so easy to forget that he wasn’t human.
“Congratulations, then,” he said, “and good luck to the two of you, both with this and on the exam.”
“Likewise,” Myra said.
“Yeah, and good luck with finding members,” Eliot said.
Ryan held his smile and easy pace until he rounded a bookshelf. Then he dropped it and sped up. They’d said they were five. They hadn’t seemed adverse to the idea of him joining. Lisa still had a slot open on her team. Somehow, Ryan couldn’t help but think things would be easier if he could just … split off from the people he knew. But he didn’t want to do that.
He shook his head and focussed. Okay, so Eliot was a bust, even if he wanted to talk to them more often. Next was—
----------------------------------------
“Mason.”
Micah poked him in the side.
“Gimme’ a minute,” he said without looking away from the bubbling fluid in his beaker. Cyan color and somewhat powdery, Micah recognized what he was doing. He adjusted the heat on the burner and stirred it a little. “And you better be wearing safety goggles.”
Micah glanced around and shuffled off. A moment later, he poked him in the side again.
“I am now. Mason.”
“Micah, please. I need to concentrate.”
“Your heat is too high, though.”
“I know. I’m trying to experiment. I want to see what happens.”
“Ah. Okay. I’ll just … wait over there, then.” He looked around and headed for the sideboard next to the door. He had to give a few people he trusted less a wide berth before he got there.
The workshop saw a little more traffic than other places on the weekend. Most workshoppers regularly made any alchemicals they might need here. It was cheaper and few would pass up a good opportunity at gaining experience.
But more than that, they all wanted to experiment with all the new ingredients coming out of the Tower. Even if things got expensive, pooling their knowledge and sharing notes helped make sure none of them went insane.
It had helped him when he’d been unable to do anything, learning vicariously from the others.
He pressed his hands against the edge of the counter and hopped up, smiling. For almost three months, he hadn’t been able to do something as simple as that. He was getting back there.
And maybe even getting better? Hopefully, putting on some muscles would make him look older. And hopefully, growing older would let him put on some more muscles. The age difference between him and most of the other students was becoming more and more apparent.
He leaned over to snatch up some of the study cards from the tray next to him to distract himself and leafed through them.
Green-spotted mushrooms. 4th Floor Forest. Medicine?
Known to cause heavy digestive issues. Do NOT use w/o recipe.
I still think there have to be trace values, ppl. Some molds and mushrooms are used to make medicins —K
I still think one of you idiots is going to give himself food poisoning one of these days, —Dll
Any updates from Guild publications? Mon. Wed. Thu.
Micah flipped to the backside. The older cards were still written in larger handwriting, before they had caught on to how long these would go. His own note was second in line on the back.
How about you check the Registry yourself? And sign your messages, you lazy ass —K
Has anyone looked into cause of color? Maybe chlorophyll or dye? —Myc
Might as well use grass?
No more notes after that. These particular mushrooms were a headache so it wasn’t much of a surprise. The last message wasn’t signed. Micah frowned and hopped down. He walked over to one of the desks and fished around in a drawer until he found a pen.
Grass-mushroom hybrid > Grass —Myc
He put the card back and leafed through a few more, reading through the thoughts people had and checking the second, larger tray for recipes, notes, and discoveries when they mentioned them.
This had started after they’d pooled their funds once. Pooling funds led to pooling knowledge, which was much easier to organize and a good way to share recipes people weren’t too invested in, so they could receive feedback. A challenge you could pick up or drop on a whim.
One note in particular caught his attention and he fished around in the larger tray, worried it might have been taken already, until he found the recipe, then brought it to its creator.
“Mason!”
The guy turned his burner off with a sigh. The fluid of his was a mess, the glass burnt near the bottom, but Micah could have told him that. “Yeah?”
“You managed to work the dark slimes into healing salves?”
He immediately perked up. “Oh. Yeah, I did.”
“How?
“I found a book from Lighthouse in the Registry,” he said. “Look to the citations for the location? Anyway, they have a bunch more experience working with slimes than we, so it seemed like a good place to start. I just adjusted from there. It was mostly trial and error, really.”
“Awesome,” he said. “Congrats, anyway. And any news on the Guild’s way of doing things?”
He deflated a little. “Oh, yeah. They have a few in their newest publication. I don’t know … I like my way of doing it more.”
Micah looked around until he spotted the magazine on a counter and made a mental marker of its location. Slimes were a common monster on some floors now, still not as varied and plentiful as Lighthouse, but it was a good thing if they could figure out how to make use of them.
He would have to check with the Guild recipes first to compare, but as far as he could see—
“This is great.” He squinted at the recipe and added, “I want to make it even better.”
Mason sighed. “Of course, you do.”
“Huh? Oh, no. I mean, with my Skills.” He didn’t want to adjust the base recipe … too much.
“Yeah, no, I get that,” he said. “It’s just kind of annoying that you’re already at the stage where you have to adjust recipes to personal Skills when I’m still trying to figure out how to adjust half the recipes to my allergies.”
Micah had known about those, but with the exam in sight, it was the first time he put the thought in context. “Oh, right. You can’t even use standard healing recipes, can you?”
“Nope. And I’m really hoping they won’t be standard for much longer. It’s stupid that it’s more common for people to get themselves checked before buying potions than that they just find an alternative ingredient for an outdated recipe. Way too many people die from what was supposed to save lives.”
Micah didn’t know the numbers, but even once seemed like too much. It sounded horrible. He still remembered how betrayed he had felt when there’d been no portal at the top of those stairs—both times. “Here’s hoping the new ingredients will knock some sense into people?” he asked.
“Yeah.” Mason frowned and glanced at his recipe. “You didn’t come here just for that, though, right?”
“No, actually. I was kind of wondering if you have a team already? Or if you do, if you have room for two more?”
“I do have a team,” he said. “But we’re five?”
“Drat. We’re two.” He really needed to find a team for both of them or Ryan would be on his own.
“You’re having troubles finding a team, too, huh?”
Micah sighed and was about to explain the whole mess with their one too many members when he caught on something in his tone. “How do you mean? Did you have troubles finding a team?”
“Well, no. Luckily, I could join my friends. But those of us without friends to join up with …?”
He frowned. “Why would they have troubles?”
“Because they’re [Alchemists]?” Mason asked back, as if it were obvious. “It’s not a combat Class, Micah. You know that. And it’s not like we’re going to make much inside of the Tower. We’re more of a utility role. Advisors and such.”
“No, we aren’t.”
“Yeah. We are.”
“Sorry, but that’s stupid,” Micah said. “Didn’t you also come here because you wanted to become a climber?”
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
“Well, yeah,” he said, sounding a little defensive himself, “but to get my things myself with a team. That doesn’t change that [Alchemists] aren’t a combat Class. A lot of the people in the workshop are letting themselves be sorted to teams. A lot of people say [Alchemists] might look bad on team assessments, only useful for saving some costs. I mean, you’re the highest level of us. Have you gotten any combat Skills?”
Micah was having troubles believing that Mason of all people thought so little of his main Class. Or at least, that he accepted that others did.
“Actually, I have,” he said. He remembered melting fish, breaking a golem’s arm off, shoving a mutating boot into Maria’s maw. He could fight. He would use the tools he had been given.
The same tools most [Alchemists] had been given.
“Really?” Mason sounded less surprised and more like he was humoring him. “Which ones?”
“I’m not telling you.” Wasn’t that the whole point of being an [Alchemist]? “I think that’s something you should figure out by yourself—something you should have figured out for yourself by now.”
It was then that Mason caught on to where the conversation was going. He put on an annoyed face and called after him as Micah headed for the door. “Oh, c’mon. You’re the one who’s always going on about sharing information.”
“It’s your Class, too,” Micah called back. “Maybe if you spent less time putting yourself in a box and more time thinking about it, you’d figure it out.” He’d figured out how to use slimes in a healing salve on his own before Micah even had. He could figure this out, too.
Micah stepped out of the workshop … and paused.
Then again, that argument in itself was kind of counter-intuitive, wasn’t it? Micah had figured out how to use his Skills offensively but not figured out how to add the slimes to healing recipes before he had.
Outside, he stood still, awkward, and ducked back in with one hand on the door frame. In a less confrontational voice, he added, “But if you don’t, maybe I will tell you after the exam?”
Mason looked annoyed. “You can be so condescending sometimes, you know that, right?”
He felt his face flush and called, “It’s for your own good!”
He wasn’t just going to sit around and let people think [Alchemists] were worth less on teams.
Halfway down the hall, Micah realized he still had Mason’s recipe, ran back in to put it in the tray, and ran back out.
“Is it [Candle]?” Mason called after him.
“Nope! No cantrips!”
----------------------------------------
“Alex,” Ryan said.
“One moment.” He took a steady breath and sunk an arrow into the first ring of a target twenty-five meters away. It was hard to see on his face, but he didn’t look happy with the result.
Ryan waited a moment, then tried again, “Al—”
He drew another arrow from his quiver.
He sighed and took a step back, looking around. The archery range had two other people in it, spaced far apart. They hit their targets with ease. He got the sense from the others they thought this place was cramped. The club had put in a request to rent the mage gym from time to time to practice over longer distances. They weren’t satisfied with twenty-five meters, even if it was reasonably the farthest they would have to shoot inside the Tower for the next few years.
He could barely even hit that. If he didn’t have a [Scout] Class, Ryan would have quit after the second session. Objectively, he knew this would help him level. Subjectively, he felt cramped himself. For other reasons.
Alex hit a little better this time, but still not perfect. Did something have him off his game? He looked over at him, still with his diligent expression on his face, and relaxed a little.
“What’s up?”
“Micah and I lost our team. We’re looking for new members or a team we could join. Do you have one yet?”
“I do.”
Of course, he did.
“Great,” Ryan said and turned to leave. This was a waste of time.
“Alex! Reload?” one of the others called. They wanted to take a break so they could get their arrows.
“One moment!” he called to them, then to his back, “Ryan?”
“Hrn?” He stopped at the edge of the field, halfway toward picking up his shoes.
“Let me think about it, okay? I’ll get back to you. And I’ll ask around?”
Ask around?
He sighed. He supposed that’d be the best he could get this late before the deadline. “Sure. Thank you?”
He gave him a curt nod. The other person told him to hurry up, so he went to collect his arrows.
Ryan picked up his shoes headed for the cafeteria to meet up with Micah, keeping an eye out for Saga. He hadn’t seen her all day. He doubted she was here on the weekends. He doubted she didn’t have a team for that matter. She had been in the Tower, too, back then. Hadn’t Frederick wanted to make a team comprised out of people who had been inside it already? Maybe he could ask them.
He found Micah in the hallway outside the cafeteria, leaning against the wall and glancing at the people walking past as if keeping an eye out for anyone he knew. He didn’t look confident.
“Any luck?” Ryan called.
“Nope.”
“Who did you manage to ask?”
When he walked past, the other guy fell into step beside him and said, “I could only find Stephanie and Lukas—they’re on a team together; figures—and Mason. I already know that my roommates have teams, too.”
Roommates. Alex had been the only one Ryan had asked. He wasn’t too interested in asking the others, if he was being honest. The two of them had only discussed asking Alex anyway.
“You?”
“I found Eliot and Myra—they’re on a team; figures—and Alex. I’ll see if I can ask Saga tomorrow morning. Couldn’t find her today.”
That didn’t leave them many more options. He thought of the people Micah tended to hang out with and asked, “What about that one guy? Dark hair, always looks like he’s about to smile but too lazy to actually go through with it?”
Micah looked at him in confusion.
“Uh, Felix?” Ryan tried.
“Oh, yeah. He was also there with Stephanie and Lukas. He’s on a different team, though.”
“Damn.”
They walked past the first row of tables in the cafeteria to the line when someone pushed off their bench and joined them. His skin was a tone lighter than Micah’s, but he looked surprisingly similar if he were a few years older.
Ryan had no idea who he was, but felt like he should. He had a smile on his face when he said, “I heard you two are looking for a team. Didn’t you say you already had a team? Or did that fall through?” He glanced at them in turn and added, “Oh. Or don’t tell me it’s that kind of team?”
“Screw you, Pavel,” Micah said, surprisingly vicious.
Right, Ryan thought, Pav. He went here, too. Didn’t they even share a course together?
… Couldn’t he have left with all the other students after the Tower changes?
The guy held his hands up in a placating manner, that shit-eating grin still on his face. “I didn’t come here to fight.”
“Wise.”
For a moment, he scowled. “Right. As if you little punk are a threat.”
“Then why are you here?” Ryan interrupted.
Micah looked ready to do something that would get him in trouble. He really didn’t like the guy, it seemed.
Ryan could empathize.
“Yeah. Are you just here to gloat? You clearly don’t like me,” he said, “and you already have your food, so you’re not waiting in line either.” He nudged his head back at his table.
Ryan glanced and noticed an ownerless tray. He frowned. “Yeah, I’d rather like to know, too.”
With two people cutting to the chase, Pav glanced at them in turn before giving in. “I came,” he said, “because I took pity on you. You’re both looking for a team? Well, we’re four and we cover the basics pretty well. No idea which Classes you have, but I hear you’re high-level. You can probably round us out.”
Micah looked at him with an expression that called, Bullshit.
“Not that,” Ryan said. “The other thing.”
“Huh?”
“Why don’t you like Micah?” Ryan asked.
Micah looked momentarily surprised before he joined him in giving the guy an annoyed side-eye.
“Do I need a reason not to like him? I mean, just look at him,” Pav said. He gestured up and down.
“You do if you don’t want me to throw you out of this line.”
He mulled that over for a moment, a hint of a smile in the corner of his lip—he was considering calling his bluff. Ryan was in just bad enough a mood that it didn’t have to be one.
He didn’t know if he saw that, but Pav scowled and nodded. “Fine. You wanna’ know why?” He turned on Micah. “You remind me of my little brother and he’s the most insufferable little shit I know. And just like you, I wouldn’t want him going here.” He leaned a little down to be on his height, his hands in his pockets. As if talking to a toddler. Pure condescension. “There are plenty of other schools with gifted kid programs you could have gone to skip grades. You’re too young to be here. And you’re dragging the rest of us down with you.”
Micah stared at him with a blank face. “Well, there you have your answer.”
Ryan nodded. “Bye.”
He leaned back and made a face. “Oh, c’mon. I’ve seen you guys running around campus all day. You need a team. You barely have a week left.”
“No offense,” Micah said and immediately seemed to reconsider his words, but shook his head. “Yeah, no. No offense, but I would rather be sorted into a random group on my own than have to join yours.”
Pav smirked. “Well, maybe you’ll get sorted into mine. Fuck you, too.” He flipped them off and walked backward a few steps before he turned around and headed back to his table.
“I hate people,” Micah said.
“Don’t say that.”
“Why can’t they just mind their own damn business?”
Ryan had no idea.
The stood in line for a few moments before Micah said, “You know what? I’m not hungry. I’m going to knock on the girl dorms door and ask if Delilah is there. Maybe she will join us.”
Ryan raised his eyebrows, unsure if that was such a good idea, but Micah had already stepped out of line and ran off, calling, “I’ll be right back.” The girl dorms were much closer to the cafeteria than theirs.
He stood around awkwardly on his own then, hungry with no appetite, and wondered who else he could ask.
At the end of the cafeteria, he spotted someone sitting in an uncharacteristic group of three and blinked.
Maybe …?
He hadn’t shown up to any of the study group sessions, though. Not even after Ryan had left. Not that he needed them. He had great grades, Ryan had checked. Maybe he had a few struggle subjects. He’d been thinking about offering to tutor him in them for the next exams …
He had a better idea.
He glanced at the door to make sure Micah was gone, then around to see if there was anyone else he knew. Pav dropped his tray off at the station and headed out with his buddies. The cafeteria wasn’t that full.
Right.
He stepped out of line and headed down the central aisle to the back, slowly at first, then a little more confident. Back straight, shoulders back. A smile. Maybe a little less forced smile.
He breathed in a shaky breath. Lang had always complimented him, not that he believed a word that came out of that guy’s mouth. Even less so than his mom. But Micah had today, too. He could do this.
He snatched up a chair from one of the tables that had them—that had been a mistake last time—and turned it around to sit backward at the head of their table, arms resting over top.
It was just the shorter Lukas, Patrick, and him.
Ryan smiled. “Hey there, [Enchanter].”
“Ryan.” Connor looked surprised. And a little bit panicked. Why? Because he was finding him here with his friends instead of some empty hallway or classroom somewhere?
They had been talking about something, but not so much he was interrupting. Of course, Ryan doubted the other two would see it that way. They were staring daggers.
“What are you doing here?” he asked and before Ryan could say something, added, “Uhm, are you here for the spear I made you? Is something wrong with it? Or did you have a question?”
“Huh? No, the spear is great,” Ryan said. “I’m still practicing, but I’m getting the hang of it, like you said. And I, uh— I actually got [Create Fire] a few days ago, when starting the fireplace. I bet all the training helped, though.”
“Cool story, bro,” Lukas said.
Ryan ignored him. “Thanks for that, again.”
“You’re welcome.” Connor furrowed his eyebrows a little and looked like he wanted to say something else, so Ryan let him. “Are you … here for the mana crystal, then?”
“Uh, no?” He frowned. “Why would I be here for that?” Ryan tried smiling, but couldn’t help but wonder what his obsession with that crystal was. He brought it up half the time they spoke.
“Because they haven’t found any yet,” he said. “At all. Nobody has encountered any Candletails in the new Tower. It’s looking more and more like there won’t be any, too, so their value …”
He trailed off.
The other two raised their eyebrows and looked at him.
“Oh.”
Ryan leaned back in understanding. If mana crystals really were going extinct, their values would skyrocket. Not for commercial use—he doubted anyone would make anything of them when they would run out soon—but for collectors. They could put them in personal museums and studies have people look at them in a few decades, the last few relics of a bygone era.
What else would no longer exist in ten years? Twenty? What had they lost with the Tower changes and didn’t even know it yet?
“No,” he found himself saying. He rubbed his face even as he did, unsure of his words. His parents had just had a baby, they were moving into a new house soon, and then there was Micah and his tuition—they could really use the money.
Still, Ryan couldn’t bring himself to do it. “It was a gift,” he said. “You keep it. You don’t just take gifts back the moment they’re no longer convenient. Besides, I think I might just prefer that favor.”
He smiled.
Connor was staring at him like he was from another planet. “Why are you here, Ryan?”
“I— I just wanted to say hi?”
“Hi?”
“And, uh, ask if you have a team already?”
Finally, understanding dawned on his face. He didn’t seem to relax, though. Instead, he glanced at his friends who had been mercifully silent up until that point. “I do, actually.”
Lukas threw an arm across and his shoulders and pulled him closer. “He’s on a team with us.”
“Right.” Ryan nodded slowly and remembered something Eliot had asked him when they had first met. “But have you, like, done the paperwork for that yet?”
It took him a moment to register, but then Lukas scowled. “Of course, he has.” His hold tightened.
“And what would it matter if he hadn’t?” Patrick added.
“Then he could join or … I don’t know,” Ryan mumbled and shook his head. Confidence, he reminded himself. He spoke up, “So then do you still have room on your team, maybe?”
The question caught them all by surprise. Ryan had no idea why.
“You,” Patrick said, “want to join our team?”
“Shut the front door.”
Connor untangled himself and asked, “Really?”
“Well, yeah?” Ryan asked. He scratched his arm and tried not to fidget. “Me and Micah, I mean.”
“What about Lisa?”
“Wait, how come you don’t have a team in the first place?” Lukas asked.
“We kind of lost ours? We were six,” Ryan said, “but Navid accidentally invited one of his friends, so we were one too many and rather than one of us leave, we both left? Now we’re looking.”
“Navid Madin?” Connor asked.
“Yeah.”
“So the moment you couldn’t fit in,” Lukas said with a smile, “they tossed you aside.”
Ryan made a face. “What the hell are you on about?”
“Nothing, nothing.” He sounded self-satisfied.
“They didn’t toss us aside,” he said. “We chose to leave. There was a misunderstanding.”
“Sure.” He drew the word out.
Why the hell was Ryan even arguing with him? They didn’t like each other. They both knew that. He turned to Connor. “Look, I just wanted to ask if you wanted to be on the same team as me, Connor.”
“You must be misunderstanding,” Patrick cut in before he could say anything. Why couldn’t they just shut up? “We already are six.”
Ryan glanced at him and back, then scratched the back of his neck awkwardly. “And there’s no wiggle room there or other options?”
“Hell no,” Lukas said. “We’re not kicking two of our own out so you two could join.”
Ryan looked Connor, the only reason he had even come here. Thankfully, the other two shut up.
Slowly, the guy glanced across the table as if to confer with his friend. Ryan had no idea what they said between each other, but he ended up shaking his head. “Sorry, Ryan,” he said. “We’re already six. Maybe—”
He cut himself off.
Not even that.
Ryan needed a moment to come up with a sigh and then slowly got up. “Alright, then. I just … wanted to ask— To offer, I mean. Still, thanks for the spear and stuff. And see you later or something?”
“Yeah?” Connor said, still with a question mark at the end. Always with a question mark at the end.
He left the chair and headed off. Once he was out of earshot, he heard Lukas say, What an asshole. He chuckled a little.
Nobody disagreed.
Told you so, Patrick said, give him the first item you make and wash your hands of them. You only have one favor left?
He walked a little more slowly and listened with his [Enhanced Senses] to hear if Connor said anything back or maybe if he would disagree? Lukas said something and Patrick agreed with him.
He didn’t.
They joked and jostled each other. Yeah, Connor said to something else. The conversation moved on to other things. He wasn’t even a consideration.
Ryan left the cafeteria.