When I stepped outside of the study, I sighed as I turned towards the stairs but a hand catching my elbow stopped me. “Oh no, we’re not going that way. That’ll take way too long. I’m sure the Abbess said the central shaft was only for emergencies but that’s just nonsense.”
“Central shaft? I mean, she said there was another stairca… Whoa.” I stopped as Astri opened a door at the end of the hallway. I hadn’t noticed it the first time because it didn’t look like a standard door, more like iron banded stone. I wasn’t sure it would have been possible to open from the other side – although who really knew what was possible with magic. The door opened out into nothing. I stepped up beside Astri and looked out.
Shaft was indeed the better term than staircase. There were no stairs. It looked a bit like an elevator shaft from back home. We were near the top, although it was clear that there was one floor above us. There were two cable coils sitting at the top, but the cables only hung down about a story below us. The size of the coils indicated that they could reach the bottom if they were fully unfurled. As it was, the vast bulk of the shaft was just empty air and then it opened out into the cavernous space at the base of the tower where the library was.
“Wait, but how do we …” I paused. I mean, I knew the answer was going to be magic, but I lacked enough experience to even begin to figure out how.
“Now proper Flight spells are still a bit beyond my skills. So I can’t get up here with them, but controlled falling is a lot easier, and we don’t have to worry about control, so I can cast it on you. But this is how the Masters usually get up and down, rather than using the stairs. Oh, just so you know, when we reach the top of the library proper, an air chute will siphon us over to the walkway on the top floor. We’ll have to go the last few stories on foot, but at least this way we get to skip the long and winding stairway.”
With that as my only explanation, I watched as a spell circle started to form in front of her hands. It glowed with the same glowing clear energy - as if that wasn’t an impossibility but then again, it was magic so I guess I just would have to roll with it – that her efforts that morning at restraining me had used. It was also the same energy that the Abbess had used to float herself around. So it must have been air magic. The Grand Abbot & Abbess had called the rust-colored magic they’d tried to use on me earlier Body Magic. It occurred to me that I’d also seen brown, forest green, a bright eldritch kind of green – both here at Colvale and in the door that had brought me – and maybe other colors. It made me wonder what those magics had been and how many more there would be for me to discover.
It took Astri noticeably longer to form her spell than it had the Abbess or Grand Abbot. I supposed that was the nature of apprentice versus master. It was still looked like it was a fairly complex spell, at least to my eye. The circle was larger than some of the very simple ones I’d seen – I knew the Grand Abbot had said size wasn’t everything when it came to a spell’s power but I didn’t have much else to go on to judge by – with what seemed like a lot of symbols in it. I didn’t speak for the duration, afraid of spooking her and spoiling her endeavor.
After a few minutes of watching her work magic, the circle flashed and then split into two rings, which encircled each of us by the waist. “Okay, now jump!” Astri suited action to words and jumped out into the space. She immediately started to slowly float down and I hurried to join her. Floating in the air was a feeling I had never experienced before. It felt vaguely the same as floating in water did, enough so that I instinctively started to tread the air. I only noticed that I was doing it when Astri laughed and reminded me that it wasn’t necessary. I wasn’t going to push myself through the air like that.
Despite the floating feeling, the descent was actually faster than I had thought had first. After a few seconds’ disorientation, I started to feel the wind rush across my face, although it wasn’t quite strong enough to disturb my hair. It only took us about a minute to fall the twelve stories down to the top of the library. As Astri had predicted, there was a distortion in the air that picked us up and floated us over to the walkway. As soon as our feet touched down, the circles of air magic around us vanished and Astri gestured for me to follow her down.
As we descended, she struck up conversation again, sounding a bit bashful. “Hey, before we get out there and I play guide, I wanted to apologize. I’m sorry for attacking you this morning when I found you in the Abbess’s study.”
“Oh, I will admit to be surprised at being tumbled out of bed. But you didn’t leave any lasting harm.”
“Yeah, good thing I defaulted to air magic to restrain you. There were too many things that didn’t make any sense. It’s the Abbess’s study, nobody is usually in that space unless it’s her or one of her apprentices. But now there is a bed in there, and some no-ranked novice sleeping there. I suppose jumping to the conclusion that you were a trespasser was silly, as no trespasser would have a bed and be asleep there. But my brain couldn’t process it and so opted for that as a solution.”
“What else could you have done?”
“I could have attacked with intent to hurt you. If you really don’t know any magical defenses, it might have gone really badly. Fortunately, the Abbess got their quickly enough to deescalate. And then yell at me for reacting like that in the first place. So, like I said, I apologize.”
“Apology accepted. Thank you, I wasn’t really sure what to think of our encounter this morning. It was swallowed up by the day though, I can’t say I was dwelling on it. Everything just seems to be happening so quickly. I showed up here yesterday and got swept up in everything going on.”
“Attacked on your second day here and then bundled about by the Abbess. Although, how did she even find you? It’s not like she watches new arrivals.”
“The Grand Abbot dropped me off with her. He bundled me away as soon as I got here.” I frowned as I thought about Wesley, the Novice he’d apparently mind-wiped – or maybe just hypnotized, I still wasn’t certain what had happened – in order to get me away without any word spreading.
Astri let out a sympathetic whistle. “Wow, that does sound dramatic. And you said you were raised without that much magic around. Seeing this place must be really disorienting for you.”
I laughed. Raised without much magic around sounded like something I could work with. “Better said with no magic around. Dad hated it and wouldn’t allow it in the house. It’s all so new to me I don’t even know what to be confused by. I needed the Abbess to explain to me how the toilet and showers worked.”
Astri laughed. She sounded quite a bit happier now that she’d gotten the apology off her chest. “To be fair, most people who aren’t from the nobility will have seen anything like that before they got here. Anywhere else, enchanted items are expensive and rare. Few places would waste the expense on showers and toilets.”
“Why are there so many here then?”
Astri gave me an incredulous look, like I’d just asked a really stupid question. “How … Wow, you must really have lived under a rock. Colvale’s primary export is enchanted items. This place is lousy with them. The ones in the Abbess’s offices are probably testing pieces from some Apprentice or Journeyman. The school will have a lot of lower quality ones that might occasionally fail spectacularly or just wear out faster that the various students will have made. Although students don’t start making enchanted objects until they’re Initiates, so it isn’t something you’ll have to worry about for a while.”
My brows furrowed as I tried to figure out the colloquialism of a place being ‘lousy’ with something. I figured that there must be some spell doing the translation of words, just as their had been for alphabets, but that one had crept through. Or else it was an English colloquialism I just didn’t know. I managed to figure out that louse was the singular of lice but then the conversation moved on as we reached the bottom of the library.
As we walked out the doors, I remarked. “This is my first time actually walking around the Monastery. The Grand Abbot teleported me about a few times yesterday, but I didn’t get to see anything aside from layers of rock and dirt.”
Astri nodded. “Yes, the Grand Abbot favors moving about by Earth Step. That must have been disorienting.”
I shrugged, trying to act nonchalant to cover the memory of the screaming terror I’d gone through the first time. “Yes, it was certainly an interesting first exposure to magic.”
“Except the Awakening, but I guess that hardly counts. Just putting your hands on a crystal and having it glow is hardly as impactful as being yanked around campus.”
So, that’s how the awakening usually worked. That was good to know. I had figured that having the gods blast you with soul-searching magic probably wasn’t normal, but that hadn’t told me much about what was. It sounded like normal awakenings were much calmer affairs.
“Being yanked around is most of my experience with magic so far. The Grand Abbot’s Earth Steps, then your air magic pulling me out of bed and then floating us down just now.” I considered what else I had seen. “I suppose I’ve also seen magic moving my bed and the food this morning, as well as the toilets. So mostly moving stuff.”
Astri laughed. “I guess I never really thought about that. But you also have had a peculiar first couple of exposures. Magic can do a lot more, depending on your affinities.”
“Is it rude to ask about affinities?” I asked, curious but not wanting to offend her after it looked like I was going to be in her better graces.
She shrugged. “In the outside world, sort of. Your affinities determine what type of magic you can use, so it would be like advertising the tools you would be using in the event of a confrontation. Of course, everybody knows the importance of affinity, and so the topic comes up quite often. If I seek employment out there, I’d need people to know that I was an Air mage, as that would tell them what things they could hire me for. But I wouldn’t share all my affinities, in case I needed a card up my sleeve.
“But in here, at the Monastery, it’s unavoidable. Once you become proficient at magic in general, it will determine which classes you take. If you have questions about it, you’ll seek instructors and elder students who share the affinity you have a question about. It would be fairly useless to ask me a question about water magic, for example. But one of my friends who we’ll meet for lunch, Lyle, would be great to talk to for it. So, here, we announce our major affinities.” She gestured at her uniform robe. “These stripes indicate those. Technically, they’re for our proficient affinities, but it is damn near impossible to pass the proficiency exam in anything other than your major affinities. They retest you every level too. I could probably pass the Novice-level proficiency exam in a minor affinity now, but can’t manage the Apprentice one.
“You’ll be able to tell what level someone is by the general design. Novices like you wear blank robes, although you’ll add your proficiency stripes as you earn them. Apprentices like me have the open book here, and here.” She pointed to a pair of small metal collar pins as well as a stitched pattern across her chest.
“Those stitches are the same color as your robe, and those pins small. It seems like it’d be hard to tell the different ranks apart.” I pointed out.
“True, so just be respectful in general. There is neither cause nor use in being rude because of rank. And learn to be observant. Anyway, between our ranks there are the Initiates. Their symbol is a staff, although it just looks like a bar to me. Beyond my rank are the Journeyman, who use the tower, and then the Magus and Master ranks. They use blank robes again for when they go out into the real world. But they all have sashes with their various proficiencies that they wear over their robes when they’re open to being approached by students.” She laughed, startled like a thought had stolen across her. “With your age, you could be a young Magus. I wonder if people will ever make that mistake.” She lapsed into chuckles as she contemplated the idea. I didn’t find it quite so funny so returned my attention to my surroundings.
While we’d been talking, we’d walked down a path through an open field. Looking around, this space separated the Library from the two other clusters of buildings I had seen from the Grand Abbot’s office. We were also headed distinctly downhill. I looked down at the pavement and was astonished to see it as smooth and graded as any concrete or asphalt path I’d have seen back on Earth. I guess that’s another use for magic. Astri’s words had me thinking about what my various affinities could mean. At least the ones I could receive training for here, as they had clearly told me that wouldn’t be all of them. I’d seen mind magic be used to manipulate someone’s mind, but that couldn’t be its only use. The Grand Abbot had used earth magic to teleport around, but it was probably also earth magic that had made these paving stones. Not that I had a meaningful affinity for earth magic, but I took it as a reminder of the versatility of magic.
I looked around at the field. It appeared to be a popular destination for lots of different students. There appeared to be a division, centered around the path. To our left were a bunch of students lounging around, chatting with people or playing casual games that looked a lot like frisbee and soccer. A few were just sitting still, their eyes closed and their attention on something other than the people around them. I assumed they were meditating.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
The right side of the path was far more interesting though. The students on that side were practicing magic. Most of them were either paired off or working by themselves. I still didn’t really understand enough about magic to tell what they were doing, but it was producing a wide variety of effects. I saw a golden circle produce rays of light, what appeared to be energy shields and what seemed to be some kind of heating effect in a concentrated area. There was an abundance of students using the brown I had come to associate with earth magic and the clear of air magic, pulling at the field and air around them. Clods of dirt and stone went flying, reshaped even as they flew through the air. I also noticed a few people in black robes with large brown tabards over them wandering the field. Where they passed, the fields were restored, the large divots left by earth magic filled in and smoothed over. I had never considered that side of a magical society but it made sense that there would have to be people to clean up after the mages were done throwing things around.
Astri noticed where I was looking. “Yeah, it can be pretty fascinating out here. Especially in the week before exams. Everybody is trying to get in practice so they don’t freeze up when the gong rings.”
“Would you be out here if the Abbess didn’t have you searching the stacks for books for me?” I wondered if she was bitter that I was keeping her from practicing for whatever she needed to practice for.
“Oh, no. I’m not testing this year.” She thought for a moment. “None of my friends are either. We’ll all still be Apprentices next term.” She seemed happy at the prospect.
We passed a short stone wall that was definitely more ornamental than defensive. It was barely taller than I was. But it demarcated the practice field from a more sedate environment which I took to be the school itself. It was a complex with lots of buildings of varying sizes and heights. Astri pointed out the ones that we passed. In general, student dorms were large buildings whose height was offset by large width as well. They looked low and squat but when I was next to them it was clear that most were at least eight stories tall. There were a handful of towers dotting the campus, each of which had a different name and held some different segment of classes and instructors’ offices. There were far too many for me to remember, so I didn’t try to remember beyond general characteristics. Most wouldn’t be relevant to me anyway. One thin tower, taller than any other on campus, housed air magic instruction while a low, bunker-like building extended several stories underground and dealt with both earth and metal magic.
Only two buildings stood out in the tour, and calling one a building was a misnomer. Taking up the entire western wall of the school was a large open sand pit with only a few rough stone bleachers rising up along one side. “That’s the Practice Arena. The full Arena is further downhill, closer to Colvale City. We hold the exams and festival stuff down there so the townsfolk can come up and watch. But it’d be stupid to go down there all the time for class, so: Practice Arena.”
I was not looking forward to the types of exams that would take place in an Arena. Bloodsport was not something that appealed to me. But I guess I would learn about that shortly.
The other important was the one Astri led me towards now. “This is the main cafeteria. There are a few smaller ones at the Library and further up at the Monastery proper, but students almost always eat here. Three floors. They all serve the same main course, but the middle floor also has a salad bar for those interested. You can eat anywhere. My friends and I like the topmost floor.”
When we entered the cafeteria, the scent of food hit me and reminded me that all I’d had that day was the spicy vergan sandwich. I was worried about making the same mistake but didn’t know how to ask about food without giving away my foreign origin. I hesitated as I followed Astri up to the third floor. A counter ran along one of the walls – buffet style seemed to be the norm here as it had in my college back on Earth – and the rest of the room was taken up by tables with small groups. Large glass windows looked out over the rest of campus. Astri led the way over to the buffet. I tried to play it safe by picking a few roasted root vegetables and what looked like lettuce. Astri didn’t remark on any of my choices, so I hoped that I was being sensible. The trouble came when I got to a set of pots with what looked like a variety of simmering curries.
“What’s wrong? You seem nervous about the food.”
“Ah, my food exposure is a little limited. I didn’t even know what vergan was until this morning…”
Astri chuckled. “Oh, that would be a nasty surprise. How could you possibly have avoided it until now?”
I shrugged. “Poor fishing community growing up. I don’t know. I guess you never realize how limited your worldview is until you step outside it.”
Something about that made Astri grimace. “You don’t have to tell me that twice. That explains why you were so conservative with the potatoes.” The word she said was not actually potato, but whatever translation magic was at work rendered it like that, so I hoped they would just taste like actual potatoes. “Anyway, if you want to avoid that, try the aurox stew there. Aurox is sweet. They’ll have mixed in some sweet carrots and maybe pineapple or coconut fruits, so it’ll be a sweet dish.” It surprised me that fruits and vegetables seemed to be the same as back home. Or at least substantially similar enough to convert using the translation magic. But hey, I wouldn’t look that gift horse in the mouth. Wait … do they have horses here?
I took her advice and then she brought me over to a table where three other people were waiting. A quick collar check showed me that these were the Apprentice friends she had been talking to me about.
As I set my tray down, the other girl at the table spoke up. “Picking up stray Magi now, Astri? Shame he didn’t invite you up to the Monastery proper.” She grinned salaciously enough to make me blush a bit.
“Calm down Ellie. He isn’t a Magus. Let’s get introductions out of the way. Kyle, Ellie decided to introduce herself.” She pointed at a tall thin man with a pinched face. “That’s Lyle, you can see by his bands that he’s water, earth and mind magic.” His bands were the brown and pink I already recognized, along with a blue band I now knew meant water magic. Ellie had the same blue, along with two that were somehow different shades of white. The third man was shorter than the other two and was fidgeting nervously with his fork. “That’s Okyor, nevermind the fidgeting. Every lightning mage I’ve ever known did that.”
Okyor spoke up, his surprisingly deep voice thickened by an accent. “I am more than just lightning.”
“You’re also a mind mage.” I butted into the conversation, a little proud of myself for recognizing the pink stripe on his uniform that shared the space with a bluish-white that apparently represented lightning. “I’m confused though. I thought mind magic was something secret.”
“Who are you, then? A Magus shouldn’t be confused by something like this.” Ellie looked at me with squinted eyes.
Astri sounded a little strained. “I already told you he wasn’t a Magus. This is Kyle, he’s a Novice.”
“Oh, try to close Ellen’s eyes!” Ellie said in what I would have called a snarky tone if I’d understood the actual language. “He’s way too old to be some fresh Novice.”
Okyor looked scandalized by what she’d said. “Eliandra!” He barked in his deep voice. “Be more respectful of our patroness!”
“Wait, Ellen is the Goddess of Knowledge? I thought her name was Elenia?”
Ellie scoffed. “Where did you dig this one up? There are a hundred continents, we don’t all use the same names for things. Ellen is what Okyor’s people call her, and I like it better than Elenia. It rolls of the tongue better when you want to swear.”
Okyor’s dark face darkened further into a scowl. “I did not tell you my people’s customs so that you could use them irreverently.”
Ellie waved a hand casually. “Out of all of us, which one has Holy magic, even if this place won’t train me in it? The gods can let me know if they don’t like my tone. Until then, I’ll be fine.” She noticed Okyor’s eyes narrowing further and backed down, switching to a placating tone. “Alright, alright. Sorry, Okyor. I won’t use that kind of language anymore. But my point still stands, Astri. Something about this doesn’t add up.”
Astri shrugged. “Blame the Abbess. He’s her new pet project. Showed up yesterday to be awakened and picked up a Rare Affinity.”
“Mind too, if he’s already been told to keep it a secret.” Lyle interjected. “Which, by the way, is best done by not talking about it. And, to address your original confusion: the school won’t let us wear the pink stripe until we’re Apprentices. They’re nervous about people giving it away too early and being targeted when they’re too weak to defend themselves.”
Okyor turned away from the argument with Ellie and looked at me. “What’s this about a Rare Affinity? Do you know what it is yet?”
I started to instinctively answer with Storm, but then thought for a second. I only knew that because of the artifact the gods had given me. But if all that happened for normal people was that they saw some glowing lights on a crystal, how would they know? “How do you normally know what your affinities are? The colors, right?” I got a bunch of nods from around the table. “Wouldn’t my rare affinity just be a different color, one nobody had seen before?” This round of nods was a little more hesitant. “I don’t know what the colors represent yet.”
Astri was the one to ask the follow-up question. “What colors did you see?”
I delayed having to figure that out. “I don’t really remember. There were a lot of them, and I don’t know how to interpret which ones are what you call major or minor affinities. I don’t really know the difference yet. I remember the blue you’ve told me is water magic, and yes, the pink of mind magic. But there were a bunch of others, and I don’t know all of them yet to even tell you which one was Rare.” It surprised me how easily that lie rolled off my tongue. The Abbess and Grand Abbot had impressed on me a need for secrecy, but it was coming more easily than I expected.
Ellie, though, wasn’t buying it. “Oh please. First, you expect me to believe that you’re some kind of old novice, now that you have that many affinities that you can’t even remember them all? I won’t repeat the swear, but I stand by the sentiment! You’re obviously lying!”
“Ellie!” Lyle hissed at her. I was surprised to see him springing to my defense. I’d just met him! “You’re being rude. You have no reason to suspect he’s lying.” I decided to take the opportunity to get a few bites of food. I was hungry and if the others were going to speak up on my behalf, they’d spin something more convincing than I would, since they knew the world.
“His story makes no sense! How could he have just been awakened yesterday?”
I lost the train of the conversation as I focused on the food. It was astoundingly delicious. Astri had been right that it would be sweeter. Even the Aurox meat itself was sweet, and the sauce tasted like a coconut curry with a blend of sweet and spicy. It was a welcome reprieve from the spicy kick that the vergan meat had given me this morning. The roasted potatoes that I’d picked up before then actually tasted like roasted potatoes back home, with the same salt and pepper flavorings I might expect. There was a hint of some other herb in them, but it wasn’t an offensive one. Overall, it was way more delicious than what I had stumbled into with the Abbess and I was grateful to Astri for her recommendation.
A smack to my shoulder brought me out of the food dream. It was Astri. “Hey, starving man. Care to clear something up for us? How were you awakened only yesterday?”
I looked up to see the three friends looking at me. Eliandra still looked suspicious, but Lyle & Okyor just looked curious. I decided that sticking to the basic lies would be best and started to spin out the story that the Abbess and I had developed. “Dad hated magic. He made sure we were out of town when the Magus came through until everyone just kind of forgot that I wasn’t awakened. When he died, I left home and came here.”
“How could someone hate magic like there? Where are you from?” Lyle looked confused and a little pitying.
Okyor spoke up, his voice lilting like he was thinking out loud. “You said Magus, which means it was likely in Colvale’s territory. Only the monasteries use the older styles of address. Makes sense. If you just wanted to be awakened, you’d have headed to the nearest academy.”
“No way a Colvale Magus would have been that careless with records. They would have found you.” Ellie protested.
“Oh, give it a rest Light mage!” Astri rolled her eyes. “You aren’t going to dig anymore truth out of this.”
“But he’s keeping secrets and lying!”
Lyle cut in this time. “Can you blame him? He’s been here two days and the Grand Abbot and Library Abbess have already swept him up into some kind of protective – or research – custody, told him he had a magic people would kill him for, and Astri first attacked him and is now playing at being his campus guide. Keeping secrets seems a natural response.”
My mind fixed on the idea that people would kill me for the mind magic. That was a little more bluntly than I remembered the Grand Abbot putting it. But I suppose it fit with the idea of keeping things secret. I was just glad that the others were shutting down Ellie’s interrogation, even if she still looked unconvinced. But something they’d said made me curious. It felt dangerous to ask – curiosity killed the cat – but I couldn’t help myself. Besides, it might help me play into the clueless rube and it sounded like something I needed to know. “Why’d you call her a light mage?” I directed the question at Astri, gesturing to Ellie.
Ellie scoffed incredulously and responded for herself. “I’m more than my affinities.”
Lyle took up the explanation. “Light magic is associated with a drive to know the truth. Eliandra has a very strong affinity for it, but she’s normally smoother than this show today.” Ellie just huffed in annoyance. “All the affinities have personality traits tied to them. But I’ll leave most of that conversation for your classes. They’ll be better at explaining it anyway.”
With that final idea, the conversation turned away from me. I was the newest thing to talk about, but these four friends had other topics of conversation on their minds as well. I was just as happy to not be the center of attention. Keeping secrets was easier when the conversation was shorter. There were still a lot of details I didn’t know. Lyle and Astri were apparently both Apprentices of the Abbess and spent some time complaining about the various tasks she set them to. Ellie’s Master apparently had an Apprentice testing at the upcoming festival, so wasn’t really focused on her this week. “It’s nice enough,” she added, “not having extra tasks for him means I can just read up on the magic he can’t help with. There are some interesting books about Life magic in the library. Life Sense is a complicated spell, it looks like it’ll be at least Fourth Circle by the time I include all the variables the chapter is looking at. I’ll just have to make sure not to finish it before the end of the week. I don’t need Master Addler deciding to bump me into this year’s tests after all.”
Okyor frowned. “He wouldn’t do that, would he? It would reflect badly on him to have you enter so unprepared. You would fail almost immediately.”
Ellie shrugged. “He doesn’t really think like that. He would probably figure it would be a good experience for me and use the fact that I’d successfully completed a Fourth Circle spell as proof that I was ready to start thinking about the tests. For him, the best way to learn is to experience, and failure is a better teacher than success.” Her voice took on the singsong of parroting someone for the last sentence. Probably her hardcase of a teacher.
Lyle shuddered theatrically. He did a lot of things theatrically, gesticulating with his arms expressively whenever he spoke. “I’m glad the Abbess doesn’t see it that way. She doesn’t want Astri or I testing until at least our third year.”
Astri rolled her eyes. “She just doesn’t want to lose the free assistants. There aren’t that many Death magi going around that she can use as an excuse to snag the Apprentices. She had me shaving rituals for two whole hours this morning. She claims it was punishment for how I ‘disturbed Kyle’s rest’ but she probably would have found some other reason.”
Lyle grimaced and reached out and patted Astri’s hand sympathetically. “Poor little Princess, toiling away in the tower. Fair though, ritual shaving is pretty boring. But the Abbess had me working the circulation desk on the second floor. It was absolute torture. Half the floor is off-limits to outsiders, and half the people in the Library today are outsiders, coming in for the festival. If I have to explain to any more puffed up mages from the capital or merchant lords up out of the city that, no, they cannot go look at training manuals or circulation guides but that there is a lovely section on magical theory they are welcome to peruse …” He cut off and sighed. “Makes me wish I was the chosen Apprentice who got to babysit the new kid.”
“I’m not babysitting him!” Astri snapped. “I showed him where to get lunch. I’m going to be dropping him back off at the Third Study after this to keep reading whatever books he wants to. The Abbess had me pull a bunch on the Ice Kings for some reason, and apparently took him around the first floor for some general reading. When I got there, he was reading some basic primer on the gods.”
When the attention turned back to me, I shrugged. “I grew up in a really small village. My education about the gods was lacking. If this Monastery is dedicated to Elenia, it seems prudent to learn a little more about her.”
Okyor nodded. “It is good to respect the gods. Ellen is more detached from her worshippers than most, but she still watches over us. She just shares her vision less often than some of the others.”
The conversation wound down shortly after that as people finished their food. It sounded like they all had to get back to various tasks and projects. But I didn’t hear anything about classes, which struck me as strange for a school. When Astri took me back to the Library, I noticed that both sides of the field were more crowded than they had been on our way down. So I asked, “you and the others didn’t mention anything about classes. And none of these students appear to be in class either. Do they just not happen here?”
“Oh no, they do. After the Festival, we’ll all be locked into a bunch of classes every day. But it’s the week before the exams, so classes are over and people can use this time to prepare.”
“Why aren’t you are the other three testing this year?”
She shrugged nonchalantly. “Our Master decides when we get to test, and none of us are ready yet. The Apprentice Exam involves being able to craft a bunch of Fourth Circle and even a few Fifth Circle spells in a row. It sounds like Ellie is close to making her first Fourth Circle spell that she developed herself. I can only do it if the Abbess or some other Master walks me through it. Lyle’s a bit more secretive about his progress, but I know he’s not ready. And Okyor doesn’t even have an official Master yet. He was hoping that the Grand Abbot will take him, since they’re from the same homeland. But the Grand Abbot told him he won’t take anybody below three major affinities and even here there aren’t that many other mind magic Masters who want to take on Apprentices.”
I was confused at how nonchalant she was about her progress. Wasn’t not being ready to test a bad thing? My confusion must have shown on my face because she patted my shoulder reassuringly. “An Apprentice isn’t really expected to test until their third year. Most of the tests are like that. Not even all the Novices test their first year.”
When we got back the Library, Astri paused at the front doors. “Here’s where I leave you. I’m going to sneak off before the Abbess finds more tasks for me. See you around.”
The trudge back up the Library steps seemed interminable. It was a really long way up and made me long for the day when I would be able to fly up that central shaft. Now that I knew what it was, I could see a few other, more powerful, magi stepping off of the balcony at the top of the fifth floor and drifting at various speeds up to their floors in the tower above. It would be a fun day indeed when that would be me.