Mirian spent four hours of Sixthday, which was supposed to be a day off, harassing the staff at Housing, then another two hours in Maintenance. She could not begin to fathom why it was so hard to get them to send someone to deal with a broken pipe and a flooded room, but at last she got one of the workers to follow her out to the third floor. Immediately upon seeing the severed pipe and the sagging floorboards around the hole, he said, “This is terrible! Why didn’t someone come out sooner?”
She wanted to scream, but instead she just smiled and said, “Well, I did try to get them to.”
The man squinted at the hole, first looking up where it had pierced the roof, then down where it had gone through three floors. “What did this? I’ve never seen a hole so clean. Did you cast a spell or something?”
“I’m flattered you think I have the capability. No, I was asleep when it happened.”
“Did something… hit you?”
“No,” she said.
“Are you sure you didn’t… I mean, I’ve heard of magi who cast a spell in their sleep. Maybe you had a nightmare and did it on accident?”
Pure hogwash. Mirian had learned that was impossible in Arcane Foundations 101, and she told him as much. The man finally left to go organize a crew and materials. Maybe the artisan mage on the team could explain it to him.
Her sheets were ruined. There was simply no getting the clay and plaster that had caked into them out, and a spell that could target and selectively move only the offending material was surprisingly difficult. That is, the cost of the ink she would need to write the glyphs to perform the spell, or the cost to hire a mage that could do it, would exceed the cost of new sheets. Parting with the silver at the bedding shop pained her, but it was a necessary expense.
Then she hurried to the other shops for those other annoying things she needed like “food” and “school supplies.” She splurged on buying two small copper sheets, just in case whatever maintenance was doing didn’t take, or another mysterious hole formed.
In her errands, Mirian had also acquired baduka boar ink, so she spent the evening transcribing heat metal and form metal spells into her spellbook. Since her room was currently being occupied by three artisans, she did this in one of the common rooms, annoyed at the noisy students who kept disrupting her concentration. Mirian was glad at least the flooding hadn’t damaged her spellbook or her notebook—she didn’t know what she would have done if that had happened.
She ate alone in the cafeteria, not at all in the mood to say anything to anyone. At night, she slept in one of the chairs in the common room again, and slept poorly.
Seventhday, she studied. She still had her Myrvite Ecology and Arcane Mathematics finals next week, before the break started. Again, they were still doing construction in her room to replace the damaged ceiling, so she stayed in the commons. She couldn’t bring herself to return to Bainrose Castle Library.
After dinner, Mirian went off to the Luminate temple.
The temple was another of the truly ancient structures, at least two thousand years old. It had been repaired, remodeled, and expanded dozens of times. It was placed where the edge of the Academy met the town of Torrviol proper, north of the Market Forum. The nearby Artificer’s Tower was a bit taller than it, but the Temple had a certain presence to it that made it seem bigger than it was. It was hard to pinpoint which feature made it feel so different than even the other ancient buildings. Perhaps it was the huge pillars at the entrance and the colossal letters in old Cuelsin, unreadable but familiar. Or perhaps it was the dynamic reliefs of the Gods that emerged from the walls, that made it seem like the Gods might step from the stone itself at any moment. Perhaps it was the dark cavernous entrance, beyond which only candles flickered, so that when one entered it was as they stepped into a night with flickering fires for stars.
The temple Mirian had gone to as a child had made her feel small too, though it had been nowhere near as grand. Her family had not been especially devout, but they had taught her the importance of visiting the Gods once every Seventhday. Everyone in Baracuel belonged to the Luminate Order. The priest gave his sermon about the benevolence of Ominian, but she only half-listened. It was much the same as other sermons she’d heard. She left much the way she’d come—head bowed, speaking to no one.
“You doing okay?” Lily said when the construction was finally done and they were both back in their dorm room.
“Yeah,” said Mirian. Lily gave her a look that said I know that’s not true, but since it was clear Mirian didn’t want to talk about it, she dropped it.
Mirian lay down to sleep, but instead stared at the ceiling, thoughts still racing. She liked understanding things. What bothered her most about these strange infiltrators in the academy was that she didn’t understand. What was this even all about?
Her trust in authority was also being rapidly eroded. All her life, she’d followed the rules and done what she was told. She had thought of city guards as protectors. Were they?
She distracted herself by listing off myrvite species and interactions that would appear on her exam, refusing to think about the problem because she couldn’t think of a solution and didn’t want it to keep bothering her. Bog lion, habitat swamps, marshes, and nearby forests. Hunts mammals, especially baduka boar. Spell organ is the algae-like mane. Baduka boar, habitat swamps, marshes, forests. Likes thick underbrush. Tusks are spell organ, and have a special interaction with the metal iron that allows them to pass through it easily. Eats mushrooms and roots, especially likes magical mushrooms like golden cap. Chimeras. Actually a category of any infertile but magical animals that are a composite of traits….
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
Eventually, she drifted off.
She dreamed again of that strange throne with the colossal creature on it, except this time the huge needles that had pierced it were gone. The black ichor around the wounds had hardened, and now resembled obsidian. Now, the wounds leaked a violet vapor, the gas drifting in lazy wispy clouds. The room hummed with the deep vibrations of machinery, and on the walls, glyphs lit up, then dimmed. Some of the glyphs she recognized; others she had never seen. Unease gripped her as she stood in that room.
The nails in Mirian’s alarm candle clanked onto the metal sheet, and she woke with a groggy groan.
“Last two exams,” Lily said hopefully.
“Yeah. Good thing, too.” Again, she had not slept well.
It was drizzling again, so Mirian appreciated the excuse to keep her cloak’s hood on and her head down. Best to stay anonymous, she remembered her father saying.
She hung her cloak and sat down in Myrvite Ecology without a word. Professor Viridian looked tired, and for once, he didn’t have a neat plant to show off. Exam day, she supposed. He made a short speech about how much he enjoyed teaching them, though his heart didn’t seem to be in it like it normally was, and then passed out the exam.
The exam itself was interesting. The first few pages were questions about ecology diagrams and terms. Then, it posed a novel problem for them to solve: Local wyverns were harassing and killing local sheep and eximontar, much to the chagrin of the farmers and nobility. However, the magi in the area needed to preserve the wyvern population, as it was a crucial supply of wings for the local artificer’s guild. How to proceed? That was the crux of it. He also listed a bunch of other information that at first seemed irrelevant, but was actually critical to the problem.
The eximontar would need to graze in the nearby forest, or they wouldn’t have the magical plants they needed to live. That, in turn, meant there was less food for various magical herbivores that the wyverns depended on, which was why they were flying into town to get easy prey there.
There wasn’t any one solution, as far as she could tell, just a bunch of compromises, some of which people might find tolerable, some of which would pick only the interests of one group to protect. Mirian tried to describe a plan of limited forest grazing, land use, and purchasing that was balanced enough, making sure to elaborate on the ecological connections.
Then, it was off to Arcane Mathematics.
Professor Jei only stayed for a moment, then handed the class off to two proctors who distributed the exam. The way she hurried out of the classroom made Mirian think she must be busy indeed with whatever special project she was working on. Again, she wondered what it was.
The ecology exam had been easy to engage with; this one was a struggle. Mirian liked mathematics, but poor sleep required her to reread each question, and several times she found herself getting answers that were at least a magnitude off of what they should be. It was time consuming to go back through, and each question only got harder. By page four, she was beginning to suspect that they hadn’t even covered some of the required material, and the single problem on page five had her staring and blinking while she tried to figure out how to even begin. She had thought she knew the material at least decently, but now she wasn’t so sure.
She kept working until the bell tower chimed out the hour. Her only solace was that everyone else in the class was working too. In the back, someone was softly sobbing. Mirian sympathized as she handed her test in.
Usually, there was a sense of relief when the quarter was over, but Mirian just felt useless, like she’d worked all the time and wasn’t even sure if anything had resulted from it. At least she didn’t need this specific class to graduate, but it would impact the accolades she received.
Exhausted, she headed back to her dorm.
***
With all her exams done, Mirian was able to take Secondday to recuperate, then Thirdday was registration for the next quarter and the official start of a break. She wrote a letter to her mother and father, and included one of the drawings her little brother liked so much. This one was of the Artificer’s Tower. It wouldn’t arrive any time soon; Mirian’s family lived about as far southeast as one could be and still be in Baracuel. Arriroba was also a small enough town it wasn’t on most maps, and there still wasn’t a train that connected to it, so it always took about a month for mail to travel there.
Registration went smoothly. She signed up for another Artifice Design course from Professor Torres, as well as an Artifice Physics class from Professor Endresen. She hadn’t had her before, but heard she was good and fair. Mirian also signed up for Spell Engine Alchemistry, which was another newer class that would certainly give her a leg up in getting work in a spellforge factory. Once again, though, the enchantment class she needed was full—except for one course from Professor Eld. She grimaced at the thought of having him for another quarter, but there wasn’t much alternative. She only had two quarters left before she graduated, and most of the classes she needed were requirements.
The last class she took was related to spell engines, but not quite about them. It was Geoarcanology, with this course aimed at arcanists who needed to know more about myrvite fossils and where to find them. That also seemed to be a skill in high demand. Back in her home town of Arriroba, she had constantly watched expeditions pass through on their way to Persama. For whatever reason, that region was where almost all the myrvite fossils were. Of course, it wasn’t a simple matter to retrieve them; the locals were often hostile, and she’d learned in her schooling the region was full of conflict. Occasionally, the raids would spill into south Baracuel, and the army would be sent out to crack skulls until things calmed down again.
She didn’t know much about the history or the politics of it all, but at the very least, it seemed wise to learn a skill that was in such high demand.
For the next few days, she just tried to relax. She went running in the Mage’s Grove, where beautiful nature trails snaked through a well-kept wood. She went dueling in the Stygalta Arena. She read, and talked with Lily.
It took her a few days, but she finally worked up the courage to visit Bainrose Castle again. After all, she would need the books there, it wasn’t like she could afford her own copies. She didn’t know what she expected. Something… dramatic? Strange? Cloaked figures crawling from between the shelves with knives?
None of the terrible things she imagined happened. It was as it always was: packed with busy students, researchers, and visiting guests. She found copies of her textbooks and checked them out.
The librarian didn’t glare at her suspiciously. The bored guard standing by the entrance didn’t tackle her. Before she left though, curiosity gripped her.
She went up a floor and walked by the museum.
The lavatory tower was locked. A sign indicated they were doing restoration work inside. That was, by her estimation, total bullshit.
It made her feel better, strangely. It hadn’t all been a crazy hallucination. It was real.
Mirian left. It was comforting to know she wasn’t crazy, but also comforting to get the hell out of there. She made herself a little nest of blankets and pillows by the heater in her dorm building’s upper commons room and started reading through the textbooks.