Boris led Emilia through a blue tent flap and into a small ivy-bedecked glade. The sun stood at a different position overhead as they moved in among the leaves. “Where did we go?”

His large, floppy ears twitching, Boris waved to the vine-thick trees. “I’m not actually sure. I think this might be a fragment of broken time. I could inquire with the Master of the Grounds if you are really curious.”

“Um…”

Boris mumbled as much to answer her as to himself. “In fact, now I am curious, so I will ask after we have a brief discussion and test.”

“Test, sir?”

“Oh yes, while I can perceive the talent in you and that it is quite strong, we like to formally assess our student’s abilities before we place them with masters.”

The word made Emilia’s skin crawl. For some reason, she thought of her Godmother first and Cary second. Cary’s image set Emilia’s body back into a relaxed state. But it also made her question why Cary had concealed their relationship. Surely Joshua knew about Cary and Emilia and the details of their association, right? Come to think of it, Cary and Emilia had never had an explicit discussion with Joshua about who was the servant and who was the master among them. Maybe Cary had done that on purpose.

Boris stopped before an altar with two little benches next to it. He tapped the altar with the butt of his staff. “This is the test right here. You are to open this altar using whatever methods are available to you.” Emilia tilted her head to the right and Boris added, “the sooner, the better.”

Emilia possessed little in the way of formal spells. She understood the basic mechanics of spellcraft and how to apply magic. But other than a little healing, some obscuration, and detection magics, she was a complete novice. She might as well have been full-blooded mortal for all the good it did her.

Rather that waste her time, Emilia squatted down and sniffed at the stone. It smelled of earth and sod, but also of oil and coppery metal. As if there were a mechanism within, hiding just below the surface. She didn’t want to touch it, but she couldn’t find a seam or other way of penetrating to the interior of the stone.

With a single finger extended, Emilia cast a simple detection spell. It should reveal the magical nature of the stone as well as the surrounding area. She gave her short chant to the air and opened her eyes. Argent currents swirled through the air, curling and flowing around Cary and especially around Boris. But the stone itself was utterly non-magical. It seemed to actively repel the currents in the air.

Other than the anti-magic effect around the stone, Emilia couldn’t discover anything unusual or interesting about. Over on the bench, Boris removed the strap from his books, which sent them toppling off of the bench and onto the ground. Every one of those books radiated a strong magical aura that flared under Emilia’s magically augmented vision. Boris dropped several of the books, fumbling with them as he tried to collect the lot, so Emilia finally set out to help the clumsy magician.

“Thank you, young lady. But you still have a task of your own.” He collected the last book she lifted up for him and he winked at her with his words. It was less of a scolding and more of a reminder.

Emilia still wilted under his regard and returned her attention to the stone altar. After circling it once, she determined that it lacked any external seam, marks, or other indication that it opened in the first place. It looked more like a broken plinth than an altar, thought the surface was flat and there was no indication that it had been cut from any other piece of stone.

With a tentative motion, Emilia reached out and tapped the altar with her finger. Nothing happened, though the surface felt rougher than it looked and radiated a minuscule amount of heat. For his part, Boris the ogre had take to entirely ignoring Emilia. He’d raised his book up to his nose and wrapped it around his face like a veil. He must have been struggling to read the text.

After her initial contact with the stone, Emilia put both of her hands on it, bracing herself for the stone to sting her or otherwise attack. It laid there like an inert lump of rock. She tried picking it up, but nothing happened there. It didn’t so much as shift under her grip.

Next, she ran her fingers under the base of the stone. As far as she could tell, the altar was submerged into the soil by at least several inches, deeper than she’d be able to probe with her available tools.

Growing impatient with her own failure to move the altar, Emilia summoned up her only trump card: her Consumption. With the anti magic aura, she didn’t think she would be able to penetrate the altar, but her shallow toolbox had already given up everything within, except for her talent. Boris had mentioned it specifically, so it had to have something to do with the test, right?

Gingerly, Emilia released her power into the stone, waiting for it to disintegrate or otherwise fall open like a lotus. Instead, her magic coruscated within the altar, swirling around for a few seconds as her hand stuck to the stone. Emilia jerked her hand away, but she stuck fast. A second after she’d injected the force of her power into the altar, it threw it back out at her.

The forces of palpable draining invaded her skin, drawing a scream from Emilia’s lips as her own personal energy collided with the now foreign invasion of the Consumption sent by the altar. Pieces of her fragmented power shot into the altar, swirled and burst into her skin. The wrack surges of draining sucked Emilia’s strength away.

At last, after several rounds of the cycle repeating, the altar released her hand and sent her stumbling away from the stone surface and onto her butt. Emilia lay twitching, with tears running from her eyes while she gathered her breath. Neither Papa Butch nor Cary had warned her that might happen. And Boris was utterly silent about the test. He didn’t so much as glance up as the altar blasted her back to the ground.

The muscles of her right arm still twitched as she stood. Ozone clogged her sinuses, as if she’d burned a bunch of hair off with her experimentation. As far as she could tell, she wasn’t injured. But she was severely enervated, exhausted almost to the point of passing out where she stood.

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Mustering her courage for another approach, Emilia came up empty. She couldn’t open the altar with her hands, her magical sight didn’t help her, and the lone power she possessed that might open the altar rebounded back against her in a feedback loop Emilia never cared to experience again.

“I give up.” Looking over at Boris, he’d activated a little floating lantern with a pair of rotors on the top like a helicopter made by Davinci.

“Is that so? You don’t want to spend a few more hours at this?” He quirked an eyebrow up at her without raising his gaze from his book.

“It’s been hours?” Emilia shook her head. This wasn’t as bad as the average evening with Cynthia, but Emilia had no intention of inflicting more pain on herself needlessly. “I am good. Can we go?”

She expected Boris to sigh and shake his head at her in disgust. If she’d thought they would kick her out of the school, she wouldn’t have quit. But based on what Boris had intimated, they wouldn’t do that anyway. At least Emilia had convinced herself of that.

Boris just shrugged in response to Emilia’s concession of defeat, fumbled with his book until he had it re-latched, and stood with the aid of his staff. “Then we best get back to camp before the kitchens close. I do hate missing pie day.”

“Pie day?” Boris had piqued Emilia’s interest and earned her full attention. They apparently weren’t going to boot her from the school.

“Indeed. I adore a good meat pie as nothing else.” He tottered with his hands on his staff. “Come, come child. Let’s go.”

“So… I failed, right?” Boris nodded, his face blank. “And you’re not kicking me out, right?”

“Of course not. What kind of school only teaches pupils who already possess the requisite knowledge?” Boris tapped his nose with his staff. “Though I’ll admit some academies require a minimal amount of knowledge from their attendees. Relax, that is not how we work here. You will simply be assigned to a set of classes fit for your skills and aptitudes.”

“Okay, thank the Gods.”

Boris nodded at Emilia, as if she’d asked him a question. They didn’t speak for the rest of their short trip back to the camp. Though Emilia had paid attention to their trek, she couldn’t tell when the darkened forest gave way to the open field and its sparse collection of tents and other temporary buildings. One moment, she dodged low-hanging branches and the next she stood in the plain with a small group of people and otherworldly things darting back and forth. The only common factor between the forest and the camp was the fact that night had fallen in both places.

Hobbling over to a small green tent, Boris beckoned for Emilia to follow. She ducked under the flap, which the kindly old ogre held for her, to find a banquet hall as large as any she’d seen on television or read about in any book.

People of all types, humans, elves, fairies, goblins, and more demons than she could count, bustled to and fro eating, playing or delivering dishes. Most of the servants were demonic in nature, their types recognizable to Emilia from the books Cynthia had her study when she was younger. Those books were the only things she missed from that part of her life. Except maybe Betsy, Max, and Regina, who all sat together at the end of one of the least ruckus tables in the hall.

“There she is!” Max stood up and waved to Emilia. Regina and Betsy turned and flashed wide grins at her.

Boris had disappeared into the chaotic crowd. He hadn’t given her any further instructions about how to conduct herself, so she assumed the rules were fairly loose here. Emilia rushed over to join her friends at an empty seat. “Hey guys! It’s good to see yall!”

All three of the others bobbed their heads, though Max had resumed stuffing his face with a mass of meat and puff pastry in front of him. Betsy stood up and hugged Emilia before she sat, followed by Regina. When Max continued to stuff his mouth, Betsy elbowed him. “What? This is good yall!”

Rolling her eyes, she motioned for Emilia to sit. “He’s not wrong.” Betsy leaned into Emilia and shouted over the crowd. “You met Boris. What do you think?”

“He reminds me of a nutty professor or something. Like he’s barely keeping all of his notes and marbles together.”

Regina snorted and nodded her head. “Yeah, he seems a little touched or something, right?”

Betsy said, “I heard he’s fantastically intelligent, like smarter than almost any other teacher.” She pointed to her own forehead. “Apparently three-eyed ogre magi are supposed to be super geniuses.”

“Huh. I didn’t know what he was. I did think ogres would make bad magicians, cause they wouldn’t be that intelligent or whatever.”

Regina nodded, but added. “Ogre-magi work different. And a lot of stuff the legends say about the otherworlders is just wrong. Like goblins can be really smart and really strong, they just have way more variation from baseline than most races. And the smart or strong ones tend to end up as leaders.” She spoke with total conviction, to which Betsy rolled her eyes and waved at Regina.

“Don’t mind her, she got into a bunch of advanced classes and likes to show off.”

“Advanced classes? Do you think they’ll let me in those?” Emilia didn’t feel particularly advanced, but she wanted to keep up with her friends.

“You opened the altar, right?” Betsy asked her question as if the answer were assumed. It added a dose of pain to Emilia’s failure.

“No. I gave up.”

“Really?” That got Max’s attention, who asked his question through a mouthful of the pie. Regina and Betsy both froze in surprise at Emilia’s reply.

“Yeah, really. What?” The looks her friends shot her made Emilia’s skin crawl, like she’d done something to earn Cynthia’s ire back at the bookstore.

“It’s just… we all thought you’d do it in one.” Regina answered for the others while Max returned to filling his mouth with pie.

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, I guess. Sorry to disappoint though.” Her friend’s suprise colored the air and added weights to Emilia’s shoulders that exacerbated her fatigue. To change the subject, Emilia said, “how do we get food here?”

At her question, a woman appeared dressed in an black and white tuxedo, complete with a tail and dark green vest. She displayed a platter to Emilia and plucked the lid away. A fat piece of meat pie sat in the center, dropping with sauce and with a small trencher of more sauce on the side.

“Thank you, ma’am!” Emilia hardly noted her server’s face as she stared at the pie.

“You are most welcome, madame.”

The voice was unmistakable though, Emilia started and looked up at the woman serving food. This was Cary. “Cary?! What are you doing here?” Emilia jumped up and hugged her wayward master and lover. “Holy shit, I’ve missed you.”

Cary wilted under the contact, but still managed to bury her mouth beneath Emilia’s hair, close to her ear. “It is good to see you too, sweets. We need to keep the nature of our relationship circumspect here, though.” She pulled away from Emilia with a wink and an air-kiss. Then, like that, Cary faded into the crowd.

Regina and Betsy all stared at Emilia as she turned back to the table. “Pooh.” The pie didn’t look quite as appetizing as before. When Cary had announced herself, Emilia her her hope rise that Cary might join them for dinner. But the fact she walked off without comment quashed her hope. The pie might not taste worse with Cary gone, but it wouldn’t taste better.

“They sent her off to the servants’ quarters, huh?” Regina asked as if she’d expected it, but wasn’t sure the administration would do that to Cary.

“Is that where all the demons go?” Cary poked at her pie, worried now that she wouldn’t be able to spend as much time with Cary.

Betsy and Regina shrugged, but Max blurted out, “yup,” again, through a mouthful of food.

Before Emilia could add anything to that, Betsy said, “I’m sorry, Em. I know it sucks.”

“Yeah. Do you think it’s for the full term or does that change later?” Emilia had all but lost her appetite, if not the growing pit in the center of her belly that demanded food.

“I don’t know.”

Emilia ate her pie, despite the balanced flavors and thick gravy, it tasted of ash and failure to her.