Ranvir staggered to a halt as the fourth-year student who’d been assigned to watch over his punishment signaled that he could stop. Putting his hands on his knees, Ranvir breathed heavily as he stilled the dizzy sensation that washed over him.

After celebrating Dovar’s birthday, he’d woken up late and hungover. It had then taken him too long to get Frija ready and by the time he’d gotten out of the building, his class was already done with their warm up run. So now he was doing laps around the complex at every break for a week.

“Says here it’s your last day,” the fourth-year said stopping next to him. “Congratulations on your new found freedom.”

Ranvir nodded giving him a thumbs up as he swallowed through a dry throat. He hadn’t gotten lunch yet, “I’m free to go?”

“You’re free, buddy. Though, try not to get on your teacher’s bad side again, the punishments only get worse as you enter the later years,” he leaned down clasping a hand on Ranvir’s shoulder. “One of my friends got a month of these kinds of runs for missing a class last year,” he straightened, “Take it as a lesson learned,” then his skin flashed with luminance and he took off in blur of light.

Ranvir stood up straight and muttered, “Will do,” to the empty air. He started trudging toward the Parentage. The student had, unfortunately, stopped him closer to the first-year dorms than his own actual home. He’d probably done it to be nice, thinking Ranvir belonged to the dorm as his uniform suggested.

Despite the tiring run, Ranvir’s condition was strong and he recovered quickly. Within a minute he was already walking briskly and cutting through the buildings to reach the Parentage quicker.

He passed Sigurd, the teacher on guard duty today. During the breaks they’d started having teachers patrolling outside to deter fights from happening openly, especially after Ranvir’s struggle over Frija earlier in the trimester. Ranvir personally hadn’t seen much of the fights that were happening as they mostly happened within the dorms. They were a lot easier to hide from the masters in the narrow hallways that crisscrossed the massive buildings.

Not a single fight had broken out in the Parentage, however, due to a combination of fewer students, different years all the way from first- to fifth-years, and parents not wanting to involve their children. And Ranvir couldn’t be happier about it.

Moving past the Masters’ tower, Ranvir saw the administration building and lamented on his long absence from the library. The last time he’d been inside was to look into the books on pocket-space construction before fine tuning his own space. It had disintegrated in the end, but his new creation was far more stable than the previous and he’d already taken multiple jaunts in to take a look around.

He’d finally gotten an aperture that he could maintain a connection through, whether he was inside or outside the space. It had taken a lot of tinkering, where he’d come up with a solution to hook the connection through the wall next to the aperture, rather than through the construct itself. It wasn’t space efficient, easy to do, or even that great of a workaround, but it was a functional solution. One that he’d come up with on his own.

Ranvir saw a small student emerge from the administration building, followed closely by a half-dozen other students. They spoke loudly as they followed the younger boy. Ranvir took one look at his hunched shoulders and smaller form and he knew immediately the group were up to no good.

As they’d gotten closer, Ranvir recognized the boy. He wasn’t a student at all, it was just a similar uniform. Ranvir’d seen him walking with some of the older librarians as he helped them shelve books or assisted them behind the desk. From a distance, Ranvir’d mistaken the kid’s administration uniform for a student’s. He was maybe four or so years younger than Ranvir.

“Hey!” He called out, stepping closer. “Leave him alone.”

One of the students who’d been following turned to look at Ranvir. There was a moment of silence before he cleared his throat, “Aren’t you curious what he thinks? Whether he’s with Elusria, or against it?”

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Ranvir looked around but Sigurd was nowhere in sight, “I think he’s a kid. Leave him alone,” I’m fucked, Ranvir thought searching for anyone to help him. Of course, the goddessdamned teacher had just gone missing.

“You’re not at all curious about the quality of the people we’re hiring nowadays?”

The others had moved away from the kid and Ranvir could see him racing away as fast as he could, at least he’s safe, Ranvir thought assessing the group of students approaching him.

They were all between the first- and third-year. Already, Ranvir could feel his blood firing up and angry orange energy boiled preparing him for what was to come. He still didn’t have his hammer. He hadn’t gotten a new handle for it, yet. He had the practice one mallet, though, maybe he could make use of that. He’d prefer not to, however.

He also had a full ritual kit in his pocket-space, which included four sharp kitchen knives should he need them. “I don’t want to get my first warning, I don’t want to risk getting thrown out of the academy. Let’s just leave as it is and all have a good rest of our day?” the words, however pleasant he’d tried to pick them, came out through gritted teeth as he noticed they were spreading out.

He didn’t have a lot training fighting against multiple people, but letting them get behind you was usually a really bad idea. He could mitigate it somewhat with his senses, but he still wasn’t able to fight in three-hundred-and-sixty degrees.

One of the older boys, a third-year smoke by the sense that lingered on him, stepped forwards with narrowed eyes, “Tell me, are you Ranvir?”

Orange boiled into red as alarm bells signaled in Ranvir’s mind and he lunged forwards, grabbing the student’s head and launched a knee into his face. The third-year managed to get a hand up and stop the blow. He ripped out of Ranvir’s grip, the nails biting into the sensitive skin around his head. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

At that, every single one of the other students broke forwards. None of them had yet embraced the pressure, which was hopefully a good sign that they didn’t intend to hurt him too badly.

Backing up, Ranvir spread his Veil wide, trying to process who was going to hit him first. I need to break through someone, otherwise I’m not going to last long, examining his enemies Ranvir picked the biggest, strongest, and dumbest looking of the bunch. Ranvir lunged towards him, compressing the distance using his powers.

They collided much harder than the other student expected and Ranvir took him to the ground, straddling him. Delivering a single compressed strike, a hot pop sounded through Ranvir’s hand as he slammed the fist into the taller man’s jaw. Ignoring the pain, he pushed off and started running.

Behind him, he sensed the others briefly pausing as the biggest among them was taken down with a single punch. “Get him! Somebody!”

Four of them began running after him, a few stopping to embrace the pressure, the only two who didn’t was the leader and the big guy. Latresekt was finally coming awake, rising within the boiling red of Ranvir’s anger. I really don’t need you stoking those, right now.

The beast roared sensing the challenge, but seemed content to let Ranvir run. It was more whole than Ranvir’d seen it since Ayvir and Svenar’d done their work. The yellow pinpricks had nearly fully returned to filling a third of its form and its outline was no longer fuzzy and indistinct.

Ranvir’s legs were already tiring from his previous run, and he was slowing down too soon. They weren’t going to catch him just yet, but the closest would soon reach Dagger range. He felt a few of them poking in the back of his Veil, and he tried striking them down, but the effort was too unfocused.

Looking over his shoulder, Ranvir wanted to slap himself. He was running toward the Parentage, instead of the Masters’ tower. Then one of the Daggers touched him and he caught a sense of their power. Two of the students following him were smoke, one was an obsidian and this one was warp.

Ranvir staggered to a disbelieving stop sensing him gathering power. Anger and fury filled him as he sensed the warp sending a blade towards his leg.

Latresekt lunged.

Reaching through Ranvir’s own powers, Latresekt forged a dense line of space in the air. The line moved in right angles along the fabric of space, moving from in front of Ranvir down and to his right. When the warp’s attack hit Latresekt’s move, it was diverted into the ground along the line to Ranvir’s right.

Then, Latresekt severed the first-years’ connection to Vednar. The kid fell off the ground, rocketing into the sky for just a moment before the connection reasserted itself and Ranvir’s horror managed to badger Latresekt back.

The student started falling, “Catch him!” Ranvir yelled, gesturing to the other students but no one moved, looking equally as stunned as Ranvir. A stream of gray smoke so dense it seemed more like water hit the ground below the student and billowed. On impact, the smoke collapsed around him and cushioning him. Moments later, Sigurd came running up. He knelt next to boy who’d had the wind blown out of him, but seemed no worse.

“I think he’s fine,” the master declared and Ranvir sank to the ground in shock at what had almost happened.

So much for a harmless ability, he thought his hands shaking, even as over-expression started settling in.