The chimera let out another sinister hiss from both its mouths as it stalked forward. Mirian backpedaled as quickly as she dared. She looked one more time at the map. Then the snake’s head lunged forward, fangs bared. Mirian didn’t have time to think, only to react. She hurled the cartography device at the head.

There was a thunk as it clobbered the snake head, which retracted, looking annoyed, then a crack! as the frame of the device hit the stone floor and shattered—and with it, all the light in the tunnel.

Mirian felt her way back, hands moving along the nooks, and prayed that none of the natural spells the chimera possessed included darkvision or divination. Carefully, she reached into her bag and pulled out the wands. There were four. By feel, she could tell which one was the fire bolt wand because it had a crack running down the center. She set it back. The second wand had a smooth obsidian handle, which wasn’t her work. Definitely not the time to experiment with strange wands. She stuffed them back in the satchel.

She heard another echoing hiss and the steps of the chimera coming closer. Shit, shit shit! Mirian had come to terms with dying, but she did not want to be eaten alive. She continued backing up as quietly and as quickly as was possible, then heard something crunch underfoot. Shit!

She held the two remaining wands in her hands and kept the satchel on her shoulder. There was no telling which wand was which because she’d made the casings identical. The force drill wand would be near useless; it could deal with practice dummies just fine, but any contact with a creature’s aura and the spell quickly withered. The minor lightning wand might do better. Either one would reveal her position, as the myrvite could sense magic just as well as she could. The myrvite was right in front of her; she could hear its breath. She raised the left wand, praying, and channeled.

A flash of lightning illuminated the tunnel for a second. In that instant, Mirian could see the chimera was right in front of her, but there was a small gap in a tunnel to her left. She ducked and rolled, but her satchel snagged on the corner of a protruding corner and she went sprawling. As she did, she heard the snap! of the turtle’s jaws just above her. Mirian scrambled forward, leaving her satchel and its contents spilled across the ground. She rolled onto her back, kicking up dust, then shot another bolt at the myrvite. As the bolt connected, she could see the snake head was poised to strike this time. Her duelist reflexes kicked in and she rolled to the side, and without a moment to spare. The head whooshed through the air by her, close enough the scales of the viper’s hood brushed her cheek. Mirian stood, taking a dueling pose, then retreated backwards. The lightning seemed to be annoying the chimera, but it sure as hell wasn’t doing damage.

Once again, she could hear the beast approaching. It moved slow in the dark, but steadily. If it was down here, it probably knew the catacombs better than she ever would. There was also the thick carapace on its back. This thing was tough, and she needed to find some way to either get by or kill it. The problem was, it took up the whole corridor, and its belly was too close to the ground for her to scramble under it.

Mirian’s back foot thudded into a wall. She needed to see where to go next. She channeled another lightning bolt, and again, a flash of light briefly illuminated them. The corridor split, but there wasn’t time to think about left or right, just to move. She dove left, rolling again, then rose and used the wand in her right hand this time. She didn’t point at the chimera though—she pointed above it.

There was a roar, followed by cracking as some of the stone in the ceiling shattered. The force drill spell was designed to deal with barriers, not animals. It was perfect for breaking apart rock. She heard thuds and cracks as piece of the ceiling rained down on the beast, hitting its head and shell. Her next lighting spell revealed that the viper head was wounded; the chimera was now dragging it in the dirt as it moved forward, but the snapping turtle head with its terrifying, bone-breaking beak, seemed unfazed. Mirian dodged to the side as it lunged at her and heard the snap! where her head had just been. She couldn’t keep retreating. Soon enough, her luck would run out and she’d end up in a chamber with no way out. Without the agile snake head threatening her, she had a new option. Mirian shot another bolt, then darted forward, fists outstretched. She used the shell of the beast to vault herself up while still clinging to the wands, then slid across the shell. Small spikes on it cut into her.

For a moment, she thought she’d done it. The corridor was too narrow for the beast to turn around easily. But as her feet hit the ground, she felt the tail of the beast wrap around her left leg. Instead of gracefully running past the myrvite, she ended up getting slammed to the ground, the tail constricting around her leg until she screamed.

Mirian reached for something—anything!—and her hands found a pointed rock. She brought it down again and again onto the snake tail in an adrenaline-fueled panicked fury until at last the tail let go and she scrambled past. In the fight, though, she’d let go of her wands. With a chattering, hissing sound, the myrvite started to turn, shell loudly scraping the adjacent stone walls. The myrvite was now on top of the lightning and force wands. But there were the other two wands she’d dropped, and her spellbook.

She briefly ran forward, then felt for her spellbook. Not with her hands—it would be impossible to find in the dark—but with her aura. If the arcane catalyst was close enough, she could feel the prick of it in her mana flow. She focused, trying to ignore the sound of the chimera’s feet crunching the stone behind her, trying to calm her heavy breathing.

She walked forward, slowly, focusing on her mental picture of her aura. There!

Mirian dove down, hands groping for whatever it was. Her fingers closed around a wand. She stood quickly and moved as quickly as she dared until her fingers touched the far wall of the catacombs. She could hear the myrvite behind her, closing in. Running her fingers down the wand, she could feel the split in it. It was the fire bolt wand that wasn’t fully back together. First, she despaired. Then she got an idea.

The constant spellcasting with the cartography device and the combat spells had exhausted most of Mirian’s mana. Still, she needed to be able to see, just for a moment more. Using the arcane catalyst, she conjured a raw spell—a light.

The chimera jerked back at the sudden brightness, then began to advance more quickly, the turtle’s jaw open, ready to crack her bones. Mirian glanced right and saw the path, as well as the now broken cartography device. She ended the light spell, then ran right. As she did, she channeled into the wand, but dropped it on the ground. Maintaining the connection to it at such a distance was difficult, but she only needed to maintain it for a few seconds. She heard the chimera’s shell crunch into the wall as it turned again toward her. In those seconds as she ran, she put as much mana as she could into the wand, then dove forward into the dirt. Broken as it was, the wand wouldn’t cast the spell.

But it would explode.

The fireball that erupted lit up the catacombs again in a flash of red and orange, and she heard stone crack. The roar of the blast echoed up and down the halls, then faded.

Mirian groped about in the dirt and rock for the cartography device. It was completely busted, but the arcane catalyst was still there. Her mana was nearly gone, but she cast a raw light spell.

The chimera lay slumped over and still. The blast had cracked open the underside of the shell, and Mirian could now smell both the disgorged contents of its guts and the rancid smell of burnt meat. She stepped around it and grabbed her satchel, quickly replacing the journal and tools that had spilled out. She kept the spellbook in hand, and replaced her raw spell with the book’s light spell so her mana didn’t drain so fast. Then she gathered up the minor lightning and force drill spells. There was that third mystery wand too—she saw it had rolled up the hallway northward of the beast. She took a step forward—then froze.

The chimera hadn’t been the only beast down here.

Stepping towards the mysterious wand was another beast that filled the corridor, only beneath its gray-green scales was lean muscle that rippled as it moved. Its mane dripped down like algae. The bog lion, Mirian decided, was well named. It was also a lot larger and scarier than any of the pictures had conveyed, and the black teeth it was baring looked the size of daggers.

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There was no way she could fight it.

She ran.

Mirian ran a lot. She was fast. She was certain a bog lion was faster, and the only thing that might save her was the narrow twisting passages of the catacomb. She heard the scramble of claws on stone and the echoing grumbling roar of the beast. As it echoed through the catacombs, it felt like it was all around her. Mirian scrambled through a narrow passage, trying to remember the map. Right. Left. Left again. Back right. Straight two. Shit, was it left or right here? She heard another echoing roar and sprinted left and prayed. Then she came to a dead end.

For a moment, she panicked, and thought about all the horrible ways she might be torn apart if the bog lion got her, then remembered: right, it’s a dead end because this is the door. She found the lever and slammed it down, leapt through the opening, then slammed the stone portal shut. And just in time, too. She thought she’d seen the flicker of a shadow moving around the corner. Bog lions could cast natural illusion spells, and often, that meant camouflaging. She was lucky it hadn’t tried to sneak up on her.

Panting hard, Mirian slunk down to catch her breath.

She looked up to see a second year student staring at her, mouth open. “Did you… did you just come out of a wall?” he said.

Mirian stood up and dusted herself off. “No, obviously not. Get more sleep so you don’t hallucinate.” Then she walked away before the conversation could continue.

Well, she’d learned a valuable lesson about the north passages. One, they were creepy. Two, they were full of monsters. And three—dammit, there was something really important there! She’d have to return when she was better prepared.

***

Snow fell again on Torrviol. Mirian had mended her clothes, replaced her flame bolt wand, and gone to the hospital to get the nasty bruise on her head checked out. She’d watched the priest carefully, trying to feel if any magic was taking place like Xipuatl seemed to think, but she couldn’t sense anything. Which didn’t prove anything, she realized. It got her thinking, though. If priests were using magic, even if it was celestial magic, wouldn’t they need an arcane catalyst? Or was prayer sufficient? If it was prayer, how did their prayers differ from the prayers of the common people?

As she walked to class, it was those thoughts that jumbled about in her head, mixing together with arcane theory and another batch of glyphs she was trying to memorize. She talked amicably with Lily, though she tried to steer the conversation where it hadn’t gone before, because talking about classes again was starting to annoy her.

Mirian set up the next study session with Nicolus, then headed for the one class she was actually excited for: Combat Magic 301.

Professor Cassius was one of the few professors who wore a full dress uniform. He stood upright and never smiled. His peppered hair gave him a look of wisdom, and his height and muscle gave him a presence that didn’t countenance nonsense.

They met in one of the halls that was adjacent to the practice range. Like Professor Seneca, Cassius had a pocket watch, and when the belltower chimed, he snapped it shut and began immediately, though he went so far as to use a pull spell on the door to slam it shut.

“We begin. It is my opinion that specialization is superior to generalization in most instances. For war, this is certainly the case. Just as a soldier trains with a rifle, not the entire armory, the effective battlemage will have a focus. The Baracuel Army has found that the most effective squads attack with multiple weapons simultaneously. Should you decide to join, you will need a weapon. This is not to say a battlemage should abandon all versatility—there is a reason magi are valued over common infantry—but that you should become efficient at your role. The same is true for anyone looking to delve about in the Labyrinth. There is one thing myrvites yield to, and that is combat prowess. Therefore, as we practice, I will encourage you to look for the spells you are most effective at casting. Usually, students gravitate towards one energy type. It is only through effective practice you will see improvement. This class is designed for students who seek to have careers in combat disciplines, not for those still casually testing the different domains of magic. Those that have signed up for the class in a fit of delusion, I would encourage to drop.”

Cassius then looked around the room coldly. Briefly his eyes lingered on Mirian, then he continued. “You will be expected to practice on the range for one hour each weekday, in addition to the exercises we do in class. Today, we will discuss theory. Tomorrow, we will implement it.”

True to his word, the next day they were already pairing up to practice. Thankfully, Mirian got paired with Daith, a fifth year. He was a ginger, meaning he was probably from Palendurio or the surround. He had a good eye for mistakes and actually knew how to read the tri-point energy meters they were using. He also had a bad eye—his left eye was cloudy and reflected light the same way a cat’s did in the dark.

Some of the younger students acted like they’d never seen the devices before and were busy prodding at the controls as Mirian and Daith got started. They took turns, with one blasting targets and the other keeping an eye on the device to look at the energy going into the wand, leaving the wand, and hitting the target.

“You seem to be doing best with the lightning spells,” he said near the end of the session.

“Huh. Really? Not the force spells?” Mirian’s mana still hadn’t fully recovered from the incident in the catacombs. She was surprised she’d done as well as she did.

“Definitely not the force spells. Those wands of yours are nice though. Where’d you buy them?”

“I made them,” she said.

“Oh. So combat’s not your focus. That’s, uh, good.”

Mirian laughed. “No, I just started. My degree will be in artifice. Yours is combat?”

“Yeah. You need it if you’re going to join the Arcane Praetorians. Battlemage focus. The Praetorians don’t want the sorcerer meatheads.”

Mirian nodded. “Your technique is good. I think one of the arcane capacitors in your flame bolt wand has a flaw, though. The outputted energy was dipping below the other two at the exit point. Your mana efficiency seems good, even with that, though.”

“Thanks,” he said. “My older sister’s hand-me-down wands. Surprised they still work.”

“Out of curiosity, what do the 400 level classes look like for the major?” They started disassembling the tri-point energy meter so they could put it in its little cart and wheel it back to the storage closet in the classroom.

“You’re expected to hit certain marks on energy outputs, and higher marks in your chosen specialty spells. I think it’s 50 myr for regular spells, and 60 myr for your specialty. Hence having us start to track our spellpower output now. Most people have an affinity for fire, and since other energy likes turning into heat energy, you can screw up your mana transmutation and still get a hot enough fireball to pass. Most people go with fire because it’s easy.”

“But not a good strategy for getting into the Arcane Praetorians,” Mirian guessed. “They probably get too many applicants in that field. So what’s your specialty?”

Daith smiled. “Magnetism.”

“Useful,” she said, and she meant it. Next cycle she was for sure scribing a strong magnet spell. It could open the switches of hidden doors, for one, and probably screw up the guns of the Akanan soldiers. “Can you stop a bullet?”

He chuckled. “Not yet. You’d need to hit at least 70 myr for the magnetic shield to have enough energy, and in a fairly small area. I know Archmage Luspire and Professor Cassius can do it. I’d bet at least half the professors can’t, though.”

That got her thinking. “What’s the highest myr an aracanist has been recorded hitting?” That would be a good benchmark for her to compare herself too.

“That’s disputed,” Daith said. He started pushing the detector back to class, and they joined the meandering line of students chatting as they returned to the building. Cassius was obviously a hard-ass, but at least he didn’t actually enforce military discipline. “The wizard who made the scale thought he’d found the theoretical maximum a human was capable of, and set that at 100 myr. Then came the Archmage Solvir, who was claimed to have hit 150 myr with a disintegration beam. Of course, the rival academies called it a measurement error, and he died in the Unification Wars before they could resolve the issue. Then there’s all the mythical tales of powerful spellcasters that are said to have done far greater things, which implies an even higher number, but of course, no one ever measured them, and probably, those old tales were exaggerated.”

Mirian nodded. “Probably. So how’d Solvir die if he was so powerful?”

That made Daith grin. “That’s the question, isn’t it? He fought the necromancer Atroxcidi. Had several other arcanists with him, too. And Atroxcidi beat him. That implies spellpower that eclipsed Solvir, doesn’t it? No surviving witnesses, though, except Atroxicidi, of course.”

That gave Mirian a little chill. The myr scale wasn’t linear. The kinds of energy they would have been wielding at 150 myr would have made their spells more powerful than a direct hit by an Akanan artillery. That was magic, though. It took years of training to lift the kind of weight a toddler could carry, but at the high end of the scale, it utterly eclipsed what a human could do without magical training.

There was another thing itching at the back of her brain. The name ‘Atroxcidi’ sounded familiar, but she couldn’t place where she’d heard it. History class, maybe? He seemed like an important fellow.

“You know your history,” she said.

Daith shrugged. “That’s the kind of thing I like to learn about. The boring parts of history, like who signed the treaty of whatever, I never cared for.”

“Yeah, same,” Mirian said, even though she was starting to appreciate that sometimes history could actually be useful.

“Hey, let’s match up as partners again for the next sessions. I don’t really want to, you know.” She jerked her head back towards one of the other groups behind them that they’d seen having trouble even turning on the tri-point detector.

“You don’t have to ask twice,” he said. “See you tomorrow.”