Reg couldn’t remember why he, Val, and Jashal were sitting in Instructor Mossgate’s office with the Instructor looking at them happily over a steaming cup of tea. Reg had a splitting headache and the vague notion that earlier today he’d had cloven hooves rather than feet. Val and Jashal looked similarly perplexed as they all stared around the office in a daze.
If Reg hadn’t been familiar with Instructor Mossgate, he might have described the office as cozy. The chairs that they were sitting on in front of the desk had cushions decorated with stitched floral designs. The built-in bookshelves were piled high with books, scrolls, sculptures, and magical knick-knacks. Peaceful light from a large window illuminated everything with a soft glow, including a redwood statue of a dancing elf maiden with flowing hair that sat in the middle of the desk.
But Reg knew Instructor Mossgate too well to feel at ease in this office. Among the magical knick-knacks and sculptures on the bookshelves, Reg saw the massive black fang that Instructor Mossgate had used to inflict magical terrors upon the class sitting next to a half-burned thick purple candle that caused extreme nausea. A beetle-whip that caused horrible, muscle-clenching pain to any who grasped it was hanging casually on the coat rack. Bottles of the forgetfulness draught that they’d had to drink in their recent classes on memory rested in a wine rack alongside bottles of fine-looking wine.
The magical knick-knacks and sculptures that Reg didn’t recognize worried him even more—a mirror made of some strange metal that Reg kept his eyes firmly away from, a gentle fountain that burbled cheerily, a statue of an archer that was in a subtly different pose every time Reg looked at it, and more. If these knick-knacks and statues were in Instructor Mossgate’s office, Reg knew they wouldn’t do anything pleasant.
“Excellent work, all of you. I’m deeply appreciative that you volunteered for this” Instructor Mossgate said. “Now, scamper off or you won’t make it to supper. I’ll see you all tomorrow for your next session and interview you then. This is all so very exciting!”
Val stumbled as she stood up from the cushioned seat, and Jashal caught her elbow. The three of them made their way to the staircase down, after mumbling confused farewells to Instructor Mossgate.
Jashal was the first to break the silence on the stairs down, “I didn’t blighting volunteer for no session like that. That was beyond the roots. I tell you that thrice, and no lie.”
Val hummed thoughtfully, “I think we might have. Didn’t we get caught doing something? In the armory?” She put her hand to her forehead, “I feel like my brain was just used for throwball. Were we volunteered to help Instructor Mossgate test out class materials? What did we do?”
Reg struggled to sort through his recent memories—he had memories of dancing naked under a sky full of far too many moons while fey music pounded in his ears and silver moths swirled around him. His hooved legs had let him leap powerfully through the steps of the dance. The air had been brisk and the ground underneath his hooves had been soil—he recognized the loamy feeling from his trip to the below. Completing the dance had been the only thing that mattered. Those memories competed with his memories of the past day—normal memories of painful exercises in Arms, focused practice in Evocations, a lunch of dried fruit and nuts, and a lecture in The World Below. Reg couldn’t remember a single thing from the lecture in The World Below, but he thought that that was just because it had been mind-numbingly boring.
As he focused and talked with Val and Jashal, true memories from the past couple of days clarified in his head. Yesterday, the three of them had tried to sneak Val’s new bow into the armory, and things hadn’t gone to plan.
After archery the day before, Val had whispered encouragement to a seed, and over the course of a few minutes a short yew sapling had sprouted from the wet bark dust where she’d planted it. With careful movements of her hands, she’d shaped it to have curves that matched that of the longbows that they used in class. When she cut it at the base, its shape matched that of the longbows almost exactly. After carving some glyphs that disappeared into the wood and rubbing oil into it, it looked almost exactly the same as the class longbow.
“Looks great, Val.” Reg said, admiring her creation. “I think we could pull off the swap next class.”
Jashal grunted. He’d been resting on his heels while watching Val shape the bow. “It ain’t that easy. Bows all got a marker on ‘em. Helps keep things orderly, right? And track down misplaced gear. Rotten annoying for swapping though. Marker probably lines up with a bow rack in the armory. That’s where we need to make the swap.”
Val gazed at Jashal thoughtfully, “How do you know that? We only covered glyphs like that two weeks ago in Professor Ashsprocket’s advanced class, and you’re in the remedial one.”
“Oh, I chat with Huck sometimes.” Jashal answered smoothly. “He’s decent for an elf. Now, I reckon that we could get into the armory at night. The good stuff is locked down tighter than a chimera-cat's hug, but the sigil on the practice armory could be opened by a drunken Ironbark Beetles fan. Not that they’re ever not drunk, can’t imagine cheering for that team otherwise.” Jashal paused for a breath, “You two in?”
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Reg was pretty sure the armorer’s name wasn’t Huck and he had no clue how Jashal was so confident that he could open up a sigil lock, but it didn’t feel like the right time to shake that web. He nodded. What was important was that they had a plan to get the bow into the armory.
The beginnings of their plan were auspicious. They met in the early evening near the armory. Jashal had dismissed Reg’s thought that they should sneak in in the middle of the night, “Sneakin’ round in the dead o night? Muddy awful idea. Looks rotten. Folks notice that for sure. Best do it when folks aren’t around, but things aren’t locked up.”
The light of the setting sun slipped through thick branches and highlighted the curving walls of the armory where it was built into a bole on the branch. It felt strange to be sneaking about during the lightest part of the day, but with almost everyone in the dining hall, Reg admitted that this was a safer way of doing things than trying to climb down from their rooms and avoid detection from nightmare-plagued warriors who’d spent decades in the mist as they crossed campus. They’d only passed two guards on their way to the armory as the guards hurried to get dinner before the stew was gone.
Jashal got them through the locked door to the practice armory quickly, holding a glowing blue crystal near the locking glyph while firmly tapping a small mallet around the lock. Reg bit back another question about when Jashal had learned to get through doors like this one. Practice spears and glaives were carefully racked against one wall—full guards used them regularly rather than taking the long trek to the Instructor of Arms’ cavern. There were baskets full of wicker balls that guards and recruits used to practice infusing magic into weaponry. Exercise equipment like heavy sleds and weighted staves were stored in careful locations on another wall. Some stilts, used by guards who patrolled the swampier region currently to the south-east of the Tree, were hung up in the rafters. And on the near wall, the unstrung longbows were carefully racked next to full quivers of arrows.
Val hurried over to the rack and started fiddling with a glyph that was carved there. Green sparks flew from her fingers as she coaxed the glyph to shift. The bow rack groaned like a living thing. Jashal was doing something with a quiver of arrows that had been kept separate from the rest. Reg lurked near the doorway, squinting his eyes against the evening light to try to spot anyone headed towards the practice armory. He settled his racing heart by concentrating on one of the exercises from Instructor Mossgate’s class—he’d faced far worse anxieties than potentially getting reprimanded for trying to help a friend. He couldn’t picture most of his instructors even being that upset. Captain Merrin would probably be the most upset. He could picture her scowling at them and lecturing them about “attacking the bush rather than the roots,” and only solving the proximate problem of Val being unable to pass archery rather than the more important problem of having an archery class that required chicanery to pass.
Reg started when Jashal gave him a gentle shove from behind. “We’re done here. Let’s lock up and see if we can still get some dinner.”
They locked up the armory, Val stashed the bow under a layer of bark that grew over it with a quick incantation, and they all headed back to the dining hall. They thought they’d gotten away with it until they ran into Hul, the one-armed armorer, heading their direction with a scowl on his face. “You three want to tell me what misty nonsense you were up to in my armory?”
“It’s Instructor Brilleye, sir.” Jashal answered immediately. “She’s such a thorny… Well, you know. We knew she kept her quiver in there, so we thought we’d put some stinging-paste on a few of her nocks. She deserves it. How’d you know we were in there, sir?”
Hul face showed that he didn’t entirely disagree with Jashal’s assessment of the prickly Archery Instructor. He ignored the question about how he’d known they were in there and said “Be that as it may be, my armory isn’t where you settle grudges. I expect to see you before the morning run so that you can fix the instructor’s quiver and Captain Merrin will see to your punishment.”
They slipped away from the scowling armorer. The cafeteria staff had cleared away most of dinner, but the ever-present pot of gruel was still there. With the strange schedules of some of the guards, some food was always available in the dining hall.
Once the three of them were sitting at a back table, Jashal flashed a huge grin at both Val and Reg, “We did it! Wonder what punishment Captain Merrin will have us do? Just hope she doesn’t dock our pay.”
Reg shrugged. “It can’t be too bad. Nice thinking on the quiver. Did you plan that?”
“Didn’t plan on getting nabbed at all. Wonder what muck I missed? If the practice armory is locked down like this, no wonder…” Jashal trailed off. “Nevermind that. But yeah, figured having another reason for us to be in there couldn’t hurt. Plan to ‘middle gate the down crimes’ as Captain Merrin always says.”
“Mitigate the downsides.” Val said, sounding slightly shocked.
“You sure? I think she’s saying that you gotta have multiple gates ready if you’re gonna do low-down crimes, you know? Makes sense when you think about it. Can’t have a one-gate plan.”
Val sputtered a bit and looked to Reg for backup. He shrugged; he liked Jashal’s saying more. As they dug into their gruel, the mood was upbeat—they might have gotten caught, but Val’s bow had been planted and exams had no terror for them.
That night, the false memories of leaping in dance under the stars plagued Reg as he tried to fall asleep. The feel of the moon above and the loamy earth below still felt real, and his heart ached for it. Feeling ridiculous, he grabbed his doll from its holster in his belt from where it hung on a hook, and focused on lighting up its eyes with his magic over and over until he could fall asleep.