Samus sipped at her coffee with relish as the air next to Boshi literally dropped in temperature. The greeter clearly felt it, as Samus saw him shiver when Boshi stepped towards him. Boshi rarely lost her temper, but when she did it tended to be entertaining.

“You must not be from around here.” Boshi started her voice maintaining her usually cheeriness, despite the edge that Samus heard beneath it. Samus watched as frost formed on the greeter’s eyelashes. And only his eyelashes. Samus wasn’t sure how Boshi maintained such fine control. If it had been Samus, she’d probably have frosted the guys whole face. Hell, she’d been tempted to do exactly that. Boshi of course, took a different approach.

"I don't see what…." the man started before looking down to see newly formed icicles tugging at his sleeves.

"Because if you were from around here, you'd know that this is unacceptable behaviour." Boshi continued while the man's clothes were being completely encased in ice.

"I imagine where you're from, such a cold welcome is customary. I hope you don't mind me returning the favor." Boshi said as she finally finished by encasing everything but his face in a thin sheet of ice. Then she walked past him into the restaurant, signalling for Samus and Cody to follow.

Looking at Cody with a smile, Samus shrugged and followed Boshi inside, leaving the greeter to thaw. He'd be fine, if a little wet, in about fifteen minutes. Samus and Boshi had used variations of winter's presence in several practice bouts before. They'd never gone as far as Boshi had with the jerk at the door, but they'd definitely tested the limits of the spell. Knowing Boshi, he’d randomly have parts of his clothing refreeze throughout the day or something as a reminder. She was creative like that.

Stepping inside the door with Cody, Samus had to admit she was impressed. There really was a Kathinite here, his skeletal grin on display as he moved his bony hands along the black and white keys of a grand piano in the centre of the room. He wore a tuxedo that matched the piano and offset his bright white bones. To her embarrassment the sight of the skeletal Kathinite in a tuxedo sent a chill down Samus' spine. Boshi didn't seem affected and Cody seemed more entranced by the music. Refusing to let her fear show, Samus moved closer to the performer and forced herself to watch him play.

His fingers danced across the keys, strangely quiet, with none of the clicking or clacking she would have expected with bone striking wood. It wasn't magic she realized. He just knew how to play the instrument in such a way that his precision was seamless. It would appear the Kathinite reputation for perfectionism extended to their music as well as their magic. After watching him play for another minute, Samus felt the quiver in her spine receding. She almost felt comfortable, as his rendition of Eternal Crossing came to a close.

"That was beautiful," Cody said as the last note faded away. The rest of the diners clearly agreed with him as quiet applause echoed from all corners of the room. It was too classy a place to allow more than that. Samus guessed the song was alright, but she preferred music with good vocals and guitars.

"Thank you young man. Welcome to my establishment. My name is Arthur. A pleasure to make your acquaintance," the skeletal man said as he rose from his keyboard extending his hand towards them.

"Hi, I'm Samus. You've already met Cody. And this here is Boshi. She might have embarrassed your doorman a little, but he was rude." Samus decided to take the lead on introductions, shaking his hand. After all, it was the least she could do to show she wasn't afraid of him. And she wasn't. She just had a little shiver, that's all.

“Yeah, sorry about that. But he told us to go away when he saw my friend’s dinner apparel. I mean, if he’d said there was a dress code, we would have just gone and changed. But he was all ‘Your kind isn’t welcome here,’ and I kind of lost my cool.” Boshi apologized

Samus couldn’t help but snicker at Boshi’s pun, which caused everyone to turn to her. “What? It was funny,” Samus said defensively. Cody just smiled at her while Boshi looked confused for a second.

Before Samus could explain, Arthur brushed it off with a wave of his hand, "my apologies Miss Boshi. We try to maintain a certain decorum here, but any companion that you deem worthy, is obviously welcome. May we find you a table? A meal on the house for the inconvenience perhaps?"

Ah, damnit. He'd figured out who Boshi was. And it looked like he was one of those people who fawn all over famous people. That always made things less fun. At least their service would be good. Samus was amazed at how gracefully Boshi handled being the centre of people's attention. If it was her, she'd probably blast them in the face then go for a ride on Athanis, her Blue.

Because of course she bonded to a Blue. And he was the best Blue ever. Even if he did tend to nibble on his tack and occasionally hiccuped instead of belching forth lightning. But that was to be expected! He was still young. And Samus would punch out anyone who said otherwise.

As Samus slide into their booth beside Boshi, she did a quick scan of the restaurant. Looked like it was mostly upper crust in here. She wouldn't hold that against the place until she'd sampled the menu. They'd been to every restaurant in Zazzle district several times, and usually the food in a place this fancy was all presentation. There were a couple where it tasted as good as it looked though.

After they ordered they passed the time in quiet discussion as they all started thinking about tonight's practice. Boshi had gotten her hands on an original copy of the initiation ritual. They'd decided to take a shot at it, but they called it practice to keep anyone from understanding what they were really doing. It wasn't technically against the rules to perform their own initiation. It was just tradition to perform the ritual as a community. But Boshi was worried.

So they were going to do one tonight, on the summer solstice. Seeing as it only let them know their affinities, Samus wasn't too concerned. If her affinity was anything other than lightning she'd be shocked. But Boshi insisted that they join her. After all, it took the same components to do the ritual for all three of them as it did for just herself. She'd been damn adamant about it, to the point where Samus had agreed because going through with it would be less hassle than fighting Boshi.

When the food came Samus had to admit it was pretty good. Her own Salmon a la Batten was delicious, (she had no idea what Batten was, but it seemed like some kind of green leafy vegetable) but Cody's chili was especially tasty.

Apparently the Kathinite's had perfected aging their foods for maximum flavour. The patience of the dead was literally their national motto, so it didn't surprise Samus. While they were eating Samus noted that the Kathinite only played once an hour, with the more standard magio (magical radio for you out-of-tower types) playing pop hits in the background. Samus hoped they didn't try to butter Boshi up by playing one of her songs. While Samus thought Boshi's music was pretty good, Boshi was horribly embarrassed by what she called her "pop-healer" phase.

Luckily they made it through their meal without Boshi dying of embarrassment. They were preparing to leave when the magio faded away. Cody stopped, tugging their sleeves in a silent request. Considering how rarely Cody asked for anything, Samus stopped immediately. If Cody liked the music that much, they'd probably be coming back here regularly. She and Boshi wouldn't even ask him as he'd shrug it off as being unimportant. He was silly like that.

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Samus say through another beautiful piece, this one, a rendition of When The Valkyries Fly. By the end Samus was fighting not to yawn. It was pretty, but it was so boring. Some of the restaurants they visited only played renditions of the imperial classics. Not as skillfully, of course, but there were only so many times she could hear them before she started blocking it out. But Cody didn't ever ask them to go to those places, so they'd quickly phased them out as they found other favourites.

As Arthur finished his piece, there was again a round of pillow applause. With the three of us standing nearby, since Cody had urged us closer as we listened, Arthur once more turned to us.

"Ah, I hope everything was satisfactory."

"Oh, yes sir." Cody answered, "it was fantastic. If I may ask sir, where did you learn that rendition of 'When The Valkyries Fly'? It sounds very familiar."

"It is the oldest version practiced in the city of Kathin. Only a skilled Kathinite can properly do it justice. It certainly can't be reproduced on magio. Perhaps you caught it when a wandering bard passed through. I know we've had a few pass through the tower in recent years." Arthur answered as he clasped his hands in front of him. Samus found it eerie how everything he did made no sound. She wasn't sure, but she thought skeletons were supposed to make more clickety clackety sounds.

"Hmmm," was the extent of Cody's reply, as he did that thing where he got lost in thought during a conversation. Honestly, it was a good thing Samus and Boshi were here to look out for him.

"Thank you sir, for everything. We'll be sure to come back." Boshi said as she steered Cody towards the door. They did have a lot of prep to do before the ritual was ready, so Samus could understand Boshi's hurry.

Stepping past the busser at the door, Samus chuckled at the terrified look he gave Boshi as she passed. It was especially funny for Samus to see that one of his eyebrows was slowly melting while the other was slowly freezing. Typical Boshi. For her part Boshi didn't even acknowledge him, already preoccupied with getting them back to the clubhouse.

It didn't take long to get there, between Boshi's side-steps and all three of them speed walking. It may not have been Samus' idea, but she was kind of excited to be a part of the ritual.

When they arrived in the clubhouse, Samus noticed that Boshi had already started preparations. She'd even moved Cody's rack. That must have taken her a while. That damn thing was such a hassle to move.

"So Boshi, it looks like you've got things mostly set up. What do you need us to do?" Samus asked as she looked around the cramped room. They should probably move some of the spare mattresses out. They didn't really need twenty plus mattresses for target practice.

"The most important part. We need to craft our foci. I can't just grab the college's." Boshi said as she held up a bare stick.

"Oh, well, that's not so bad. You've got the designs right?"

"Of course. Can you do the lightning and arcane foci? I'll do water of course. And earth? Unless you want earth Cody?" Boshi asked holding two pages out to Samus.

"Nah, I can do fire and air," Cody replied taking the pages from Boshi.

They started working on their respective foci, making room around the clubhouse table.

"Can you pass the fairy sneeze, I need some glue," Cody asked as Samus worked on her arcane focus. Lightning was super easy. She'd just worked a few blue dragon scales into a steel rod which she'd then imbued with the stolen spirit of a zeusian kitten. She was having trouble with the arcane focus though. The prism wasn't syncing properly with the alabaster setting.

She'd used the first few drops of venus breath like the instructions said, but there wasn't a reaction. Looking at the drawing again, she noticed a small notation in the bottom corner. She was supposed to use a flawless diamond as a prism.

Sighing, she turned to Boshi, "don't suppose you have a flawless diamond tucked away somewhere do you? Says we need one."

"Oh that. No, I couldn't find a flawless diamond, but I found a note that says you can substitute diamond dust mixed with dragon blood. Just rub it on the prism," Boshi answered pointing at a small vial on the table. Picking it up, Samus looked at it carefully. It was an insignificant amount of blood for a dragon. Whichever dragon Boshi had requisitioned it from, probably hadn't even felt her take it.

Shrugging, Samus worked the blood into the prism. When she was done it was a smaller perfect prism. It hadn't even taken her much effort to reshape it, the magic moving to her intent. Placing her upgraded prism in the alabaster she added another drop of venus breath. Immediately the focus shifted, resetting and becoming harder.

Looking up she saw that Cody had finished his air focus, but was still working on the fire focus. Of course Boshi had finished both of hers already and was inspecting the circle again.

Moving up next to Boshi, Samus asked the question that really bothered her. Boshi had said this was going to take them a long time, but so far it'd been pretty quick, "So, what's the deal? Why did you want Cody and I to book all night for this? We're practically ready to go."

Boshi shook her head slowly, "no, we're almost ready to start practicing. We're nowhere near ready to cast it on ourselves."

Holding up a doll, Boshi continued. "we're going to practice on this little guy until we get it right. And if things go really wrong, we might have to redo the foci."

Nodding Samus wordlessly set the doll in the centre of the circle saying, "damn, here I was hoping you just wanted to have plenty of time to talk about our future once we had things figured out."

Boshi laughed as they rejoined Cody at the table. He'd finished with the fire foci, now moving to loom over Boshi and Samus' work with a critical eye. Boshi may have been the better mage, but they all knew Cody was their best crafter. Which is why it tickled Samus pink that he wore the reg-13 suit everywhere. He could make better clothes any time he wanted.

Waiting for his seal of approval, Samus was a little disappointed when Cody adjusted both of her focuses, adding more blood to the arcane foci and using some venus breath on the lightning foci. She wasn't really surprised though. Nodding as he finished each piece he then moved on to Boshi's.

He wasn't satisfied with her seashell water focus either, carefully adding a smidgen more troll toe. He'd been much more careful around troll toes since that incident at Grenshin's, Samus thought as she smiled to herself. With that focus complete he moved on to the earth totem. Earth was an affinity none of them worked with much. It was mostly the domain of the labourers and farmers, though a few maintenance workers used earth magics as well.

Cody inspected it closely, but Boshi's creation seemed to pass his inspection. It didn't really look like much more than a ball of mud to Samus, but then maybe that's all they needed. Magic could be weird like that.

There were twelve foci in total, but they'd finished most of the more elaborate ones earlier. With their foci ready they set them in place around the circle. The last step was for Boshi to link a grey slate to the crocks that would let them read the results. Sitting down around the outside edge, they started practicing the initiation ritual.

……

Six hours later and Samus was feeling better about their ability to perform the ritual. Their first attempt had left her worried. The doll Boshi placed in the centre had gone up in smoke leaving no trace it had ever existed. Luckily after a quick review they'd determined they had accidentally teleported it a few kilometres away. Adjusting for Boshi's overactive dimensional magic, they started making progress. After that display, Samus was pretty sure they didn't need to finish the ritual to determine Boshi's specialization, but she knew Boshi wouldn't be persuaded.

Their last attempt had finally displayed the result on the grey slate. The key had been transitioning to Cody as the ritual leader. It was the first time Samus could remember where Cody had been better at magic than Boshi. Boshi had taken it in stride of course.

Now that they were ready, Samus was feeling pretty nervous. A lot of their future would be tied to what the initiation revealed.

They'd decided that Boshi would go first.

Starting the ritual properly, Samus watched as the grey slate revealed their future, one character at a time.