“You were out late,” Bianca said.
Syl shut the door to their shared house behind him. “I was. I don’t suppose you have a cleaning spell on you?”
“Don’t you know one?” Bianca asked.
“I do. It’s meant to clean an entire scene of every last trace of evidence that might link a disturbance to me or my allies.”
“You have the flux to burn.”
“It’s a matter of principle.”
Bianca sighed. “True enough. Hold still.”
Syl did as she asked, waiting as an arcane circle formed under his feet. Flux washed over him, cleansing the blood and viscera from his uniform.
Though the practice was unnecessary, he read the activation process anyway. Though Cleanse was a C-class spell and a fairly common one to learn, Bianca’s activation of it was a more focused, precise version that ensured a significantly deeper and more effective operation than even Syl’s spells could offer. It was a level of complexity that few would appreciate other than him, which made him suspect her usage of this particular spell was for that specific purpose.
“Eloquent as always,” he said.
“Thank you,” Bianca said. Her FCD, a more traditionally-shaped wrist bracer, pulsed with flux as the process finished. “The calibration is perfect.”
“I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t,” Syl said.
For all official intents and purposes, he was attending First as Bianca’s FCD engineer. It was a reasonable enough explanation, especially given his scores on the theory part of the entrance exams.
“Who were you following?” Bianca asked. “You left so suddenly.”
“There were drones watching us during the ceremony.”
“I know. My—the prismatic families, I should say—all have intelligence on these kinds of events.”
“One wasn’t from a prismatic. If it was, they were hiding it. Whoever it was, they were sloppy with the signature. I traced it back to its operator. He was not receptive to questioning.”
“I take it that explains the blood.”
Syl shook his head. “Self-destructs in his FCDs. I thought I got all of them, but there was one in his brain that detonated before I could get anything out of him.”
“Worrying,” Bianca said, studying his expression carefully. “Is there anything we should be concerned about?”
“With your magic? Absolutely not,” Syl said. “I’ll look into them, but there are any number of groups that this methodology matches, so it’s unlikely I’ll turn up results quickly. Did you put on any coffee?”
“I did. Are you hungry? I made dinner.”
“Not very royal of you to make food for others, is it?”
Bianca snorted. “You and I both know better than that. Cooks aren’t going to survive for very long in the field.”
“True. Thank you for the meal. I’ll try to be quiet tonight.”
#
Classes began a week after the entrance ceremony. Syl had largely skipped out on extracurricular recruitment, which had taken up the majority of that time. He’d only come when Bianca had, and that had been more than a little annoying.
At First, extracurriculars could be sorted into military-oriented magic clubs, which Syl had no interest in joining, and ones meant primarily for entertainment and offered no progression in magic or social status, which he cared even less towards.
There was apparently some ongoing issue with the disproportionate amount of class 1 students invited to the first category, but that was to be expected. Class 1s were the cream of the crop. Most, like Bianca, had been trained for magic since they’d been in diapers. They would be following a faster curriculum than the rest of the students at First, and they often ended up in leadership positions in corporate or military groups. It only made sense that the magic clubs would want people like them, and if the clubs were primarily made of class 1s, then it stood to reason that they would largely be looking for people of their own kind.
Class 2s were the “regular” students, which was still saying a lot given that they were at a numbered academy. First through Fifth were all extremely prestigious academies, and being a class 2 at one of them put a student above the majority of high-tier aspiring magicians elsewhere.
Class 3s, on the other hand, were the rest. They were still high scorers, but compared to the others, they were just ordinary, and that meant the fewest resources allocated to them.
Syl couldn’t deny that it was annoying to receive the least support at the academy, but that was how things were. There was a lot of undeniable talent amongst every class, and it was simply a fact that there were many who would be overlooked because of poor entrance scores, but the system would not change for a few exceptions.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
He had been given access to class selection late, which also didn’t help with getting good ones. Syl was in three theory classes that he only half paid attention to, focusing instead on adjusting his FCDs to work best with the range extenders he’d brought. They let him cast high-cost surveillance spells through the school. Though it took a while to get complex multi-process spells up, it was well worth the cost.
At the same time, he kept in touch with Bianca as discreetly as possible, ensuring that nothing was going wrong on a level his spells couldn’t test.
“Sylvester Auria,” this class’ professor said sharply. “Do you want to be stuck at the bottom forever?”
Not discreetly enough, evidently.
His professor for Introduction to Spell Theory was a seventh-year graduate student who clearly didn’t want to be here. She wore glasses, which was interesting—it indicated severe flux sensitivity, which was typically valued in artillery positions in the field.
“I think I’ll be fine,” he said genially, hoping she would leave it at that.
She didn’t, which confirmed his irritated suspicion that she was the type of student—professor now—who desperately clung to any scraps of power they could get.
“Don’t waste your time and my own if you’re not going to put in the work,” she said haughtily. “You might as well not be in this class anyway. Class 3 and not putting in the work? You might as well drop out now. Save yourself the embarrassment.”
Syl looked at her, dead-eyed. She had been uninteresting and unthreatening enough to not pique much of his attention earlier, but he analyzed her now, processing her style of dress, the class emblem she’d tried so hard to subtly cover, her position in the academy.
“Class 2,” he said, indicating her pin. “Lower end of GR, I would imagine, or you wouldn’t be teaching basic spell theory. Took the teaching position to avoid military duty, take some more high-level classes? You’re not one to speak.”
Most of the other students in this class, all of whom were class 3, either hadn’t learned how to magically attune their senses or didn’t have the flux to do so at all times, but the professor certainly did. Her eyes widened with obvious anger, then narrowed as she got herself under control.
Syl smiled evenly at her, which didn’t seem to help. Just because I don’t care about this class doesn’t mean I’m going to brook disrespect towards me.
“Since you appear to believe that you don’t need this class, why don’t you explain the current topic at hand?” she asked, her voice dripping with sweet poison.
He took a glance at the screen at the front of the class, then nodded, standing up. “Of course.”
Was this supposed to be a gotcha of some kind? The content was simple. Everyone in this class should have been aware about it already.
“Spells are broken up into flux and activation processes. The former is what determines the actual shape of the spell—one flux pattern might create force, while another could be directed towards fire. Activation processes, on the other hand, are what direct that spell. The simplest activation processes are ‘start,’ ‘stop,’ and ‘modulate.’ The textbook doesn’t cover this yet, but ‘modulate’ is the one with the greatest amount of variance in sub-directions. Speed, temperature, light—anything with a vector can be changed by that instruction.
“Flux patterns can be mixed to make more complex spells, but I don’t think we’re talking about that either. What we’re focused on for the time being are multiple activation processes. Even simple spells or unnamed magic manifestations require more than one. Transporting an item a short distance, for example, requires a start, modulate speed up, modulate speed down, and stop process in the same spell. Increasing the number of processes increases the cast time of the spell, but this can be circumvented via vocal commands or pre-programmed spells in certain custom FCDs.
“Also, while those might be the simplest activation processes, they aren’t the only common ones. There are a total of fourteen. Would you like me to list them?”
“No, Sylvester,” the professor said. She crossed her arms, managing to look equal parts disgruntled and impressed. “That will be quite enough.”
“Thank you,” Syl said, sitting back down and returning to his FCD.
#
The first problem came during lunch, which he took with Bianca. Unfortunately, she had decided to take it with the Graduate Reserve leadership. They weren’t all present, but there were enough of them to set Syl on edge.
Drew and Jennifer, the two prismatic family members, were there alongside another three.
Bianca introduced him, which seemed to draw Drew’s ire again. The last three reacted with suppressed disdain, mild excitement, and naked curiosity, respectively. That was about as much as could be expected.
They introduced themselves in turn. Waylan Red, sixth-year, was a Commander, which put him a rank above Drew in terms of the GR hierarchy. Ashley Aurum, also sixth-year, served as military police for the GR and was a discipline officer for the academy as a whole. Uriel Indigo, fifth-year, was already a Major and served as the president for the Reserve as its ranking officer.
“With all due respect,” Drew said in a tone that implied that his following words would be which is very little, “why is there an inept at our table?”
“Drew,” Uriel said warningly. “We’ve spoken about this.”
“Fine,” he said. “Why is a class three first year here? I understand the class 1 representative. She’s on a level that we haven’t seen since the San Francisco Bay incident. Why him?”
“Thank you for the compliment,” Bianca said dutifully. “You’re being rude to my friend. He’s my FCD engineer.”
Drew scoffed at that. Though the others didn’t react as much, Syl could see that both Waylan and Ashley were holding themselves back from commenting.
“I would consider myself competent as an engineer,” Syl said humbly.
“He’d also wipe the floor with you in a fight,” Bianca said to Drew.
The table’s eyes shot to her in an instant.
What the hell? Syl mouthed, using his hands to say the same in Aurian sign language.
Bianca shrugged in response, signing you told me too in reply.
Syl resisted the urge to sigh. He’d told her to loosen up to seem like less of a princess at the entrance ceremony. This was her idea of doing that?
“Is that so,” Drew said, a nasty smile forming on his lips. “Would you like to test that belief?”
“Don’t,” Jennifer interjected. “He’s a first-year engineer. We already know how bad you are at holding back, Drew.”
“Last I checked, academy regulations let me offer an official duel to anyone,” he replied. “It’s up to him if he wants to back out and prove this mouthy bitch wrong.”
Bianca tilted her head quizzically. “Me?”
Syl stood up slowly.
“I wouldn’t have said that if I were you,” he said coldly. “If I remember First code correctly, challengers can agree upon conditions upon victory, yes?”
“That’s right,” Drew said languidly, shit-eating grin plastered on his face. “I don’t need anything out of my end other than you not trying to talk to us again.”
“Then my condition is similar,” Syl said. “When I win, you will address us by our names and titles alone. I’d prefer if you never spoke to us at all, but I recognize that might cause other problems.”
“Sure thing, inept boy,” Drew said. “When do you want your ass beating?”
“I’m not particularly fond of bullies,” Syl replied flatly. “How does right now sound?”