“Did the girl you mentioned get on someone’s bad side?” Elara asked, her fingers resting lightly on the edge of her textbook.
Kelira shook her head and leaned in a fraction closer, as though the chance to share details was reason enough to drop her voice.
“Word is she brought an elven grimoire with her, something meant for someone far more advanced. She figured since she was accepted as an apprentice, she was ready to read it. They found her in a flowerbed this morning.”
She dipped her chin, adding a raspy, gravelly edge to her voice to play up the drama.
“She mutilated her legs and tried to bury them in the dirt like roots. By the time anyone spotted her, she was already close to bleeding out.”
Elara looked at her neighbor, recalling the illustrations that had triggered headaches after only a few seconds of study.
It wasn’t long ago she had wondered why certain books felt like deliberate traps; now she had another vivid reminder not to mistake raw curiosity for preparation.
“Can she be saved?”
“No idea. When I got there, they’d already hauled her away,” Kelira replied, making little effort to conceal her disappointment.
“Doesn't that kind of thing frighten you?”
The girl rested her chin in her hand and stared straight ahead for a moment, as if the question only warranted thought because she couldn't fathom what feeling fear would actually change.
“I knew a bit about the world of sorceresses before I arrived. Back home, people died sometimes too, and nobody could ever say why.”
She didn’t elaborate, and before Elara could decide whether to press further, Kelira smoothly pivoted to her visit with her own mentor the previous day.
It turned out she had shown up to the meeting carrying a bucket, having evidently taken the first class as a sufficiently unsubtle hint about the instructor's physical needs.
“I think she actually wants to teach me, but it's miserable trying to keep up with hauling away whatever she throws up,” she explained, wrinkling her nose. “The bucket reached almost to my waist, and she filled it in under an hour. I have no idea when she even managed to eat that much.”
Elara let out a dry snort before she could stop herself, though the lingering memory of fingers scattered across stone ensured her amusement was tempered by a total refusal to picture the bucket's contents.
Kelira tilted her head, studying her with faint satisfaction.
“You finally smiled. When you walked in, you looked like a walking corpse.”
Elara’s smile thinned, and her right hand rose reflexively to graze her cheek. She hadn't bothered to inspect her face in a mirror this morning, but after a fitful sleep and her conversation with Gwenna, the assessment hardly came as a surprise.
Good to know I at least look the part for my chosen discipline…
General Knowledge was taught by a second-rank apprentice so emaciated that her sunken cheeks and sharp jawline gave her the look of someone who had abandoned regular meals months ago.
Her loose robes hung off narrow shoulders and an almost completely flat chest. Her monotone drone managed to reduce even the most bizarre phenomena in the textbook into something resembling a tedious equipment inventory.
She made no effort to engage the lecture hall or verify whether anyone grasped the material. She droned through line after line, turning pages at long intervals with her eyes glued to the text. After a few minutes, Elara simply opened her own copy, deciding self-directed reading would at least allow her to set her own pace.
Preoccupied with meditation, the laboratory, and sheer survival, she hadn’t found time to prepare for this subject yesterday. But the textbook's contents quickly hooked her attention.
General Knowledge was an odd synthesis of biology, chemistry, history, and geography - except almost every subject exhibited properties that defied anything from her former life.
In the section on flora, she caught a passage describing a herb capable of expanding the body's internal pool of Aether. A spike of interest seized her, and she leaned over the desk.
Only several sentences later did the text explain that consuming the plant obliterated human consciousness, leaving behind a husk useful primarily as a living incubator for harvesting magical crystals.
Elara finished reading the entry, then slowly lifted her finger from the name.
Is there even a single way to expand your reserves here that leaves you capable of deciding what to eat for breakfast?
The curriculum spanned ten volumes, each so dense it was impossible to treat them as light reading between classes. Rather than attempting to memorize everything in sequence, she began skimming for what felt immediately practical, pausing occasionally to roll her shoulders and rest her eyes from the cramped print.
During one of those brief pauses, she caught sight of Doria and Rikka leaning close to Deyra. They were whispering, and a darting glance in her direction gave away the gist of their conversation.
Kelira had ignored them at first, but noticing where Elara’s gaze had settled, she glanced back over her shoulder as well.
“They're trying to turn the others against you,” she muttered, returning to her reading. “As if they have nothing better to do with their time.”
Elara didn’t answer; silence had just fallen over the lectern. The instructor had finished reciting the first section, cracked open another volume, and buried herself in private study, apparently considering her instructional obligations complete.
Several girls began pulling out materials for other subjects. Kelira eyed them ruefully, running a finger along the binding of the solitary volume she had brought.
“No wonder the senior apprentices didn't bother showing up. They already knew what a joke this was.”
Elara turned her quill over in her fingers for a second, then finally voiced the request she had been sitting on, having run out of alternatives.
“Would you lend me a few magic crystals?”
Kelira’s head whipped around.
“For what? I’m not parting with my resources just because someone happens to ask.”
“I want to borrow two books from the Hollow Archive.”
“I literally just told you about a girl who lost her mind from reading, and you still want to go down there?”
“I’m not picking books at random,” Elara replied, though she knew full well that narrowing her topic didn't eliminate the risk. “I need references we weren't issued with our starter kit.”
Kelira studied her for a moment longer, but didn't ask for the titles. Finally, she produced a small pouch and tipped five small, dark crystals into her palm - semitransparent and cut into crisp rhombs.
“I can spare five. In three months, you pay me back…” She paused, weighing an acceptable sum.
“Ten,” Elara offered.
“Done.”
The agreement came so fast that Elara looked at her with a blend of resignation and amusement before pulling forward a clean slip of parchment.
“Do you want this in writing?”
“Obviously,” Kelira said, leaning over the desk to supervise the wording.
They drafted the sum and the deadline, then signed the brief promissory note.
Elara stowed the crystals carefully, feeling their light weight through the fabric of her pocket while trying to ignore the reality that in three months, she would not only need to prove her Aether capacity, but also drum up the means to settle a debt.
The next class focused on Rune Construction - one of the foundational pillars of spellcraft - and the atmosphere in the hall was noticeably more focused than during General Knowledge.
Elara arranged her tools on the desk, hoping for something more substantial than another textbook recital, though the instructor once again turned out to be a second-rank apprentice.
She was an adult of average build, dressed in a tailored vest whose fastenings strained against a full bust whenever she raised her arm to demonstrate.
She sketched out the strokes for a basic rune, highlighted the crucial focal points, and promptly instructed the class to begin independent practice.
A few girls pleaded for a second demonstration, having failed to track the stroke order, but the instructor rattled off the fee for personal tutoring with the practiced ease of someone who had planned on monetizing the lesson from the start.
Elara lowered her eyes to her parchment.
She had no intention of burning borrowed crystals before reaching the library, so she relied entirely on memory. Closing her eyes, she reconstructed the instructor's hand movements, finding to her surprise that the sequence of lines surfaced in her mind with remarkable clarity.
Reaching for an ordinary quill, she drafted the pattern, then cross-referenced it with the diagram in her manual.
The stroke order, arcs, and junctions matched so cleanly that she double-checked the drawing, hunting for any subtle error she might have overlooked.
I memorized the entire thing from a single pass?
Was I always this receptive?
Pushing unnecessary questions aside, Elara closed the manual, arranged her proper drafting tools and specialized ink, and set to work - this time channeling Aether into the nib of the pen.
Directing energy proved far more demanding than merely replicating a shape; the physical stroke had to stay in precise alignment with the flow of power and mental focus.
A sudden surge or a momentary hitch could collapse the entire structure. Elara drew with measured care, refusing to rush even when she anticipated the next curve.
As she closed the final junction, the ink flared with a soft, pale glow, and a faint hum of magic stirred above the paper.
Kelira turned, staring wide-eyed at the completed rune.
“You finished one already?”
Elara barely registered the question, wholly absorbed in checking the result against the manual's specifications. After studying the rune for a moment, she located the next foundational pattern in the text and prepared another sheet.
Her second attempt concluded with a similar flash of light, and the third retained proper form and a stable resonance of Aether as well.
On the fourth, however, the nib dragged across the parchment without resistance, and the emerging matrix fizzled out before she could close the perimeter.
Elara frowned at the dead line.
She remembered the pattern, hadn't botched the stroke order, and her hand hadn't wavered. But when she reached within to channel more power into the ink, the well was dry.
Three basic runes… Is that seriously my ceiling?
She drew a slow breath, trying to disentangle raw disappointment from an objective review of the exercise.
She couldn't say whether she was expending more energy than necessary, but for the first time, the brutal divide between understanding a problem and having the raw capacity to execute it was laid bare.
Mara’s bowl metaphor flashed through her mind alongside the image of the vial twirled in Vespara’s fingers. The cold confidence both women had shown felt far more suffocating now.
I knew my reserves were pathetic.
This didn't tell me anything new.
Stop glaring at a broken line and figure out how to draw the next one.
Setting the quill aside, she retrieved her crystal sphere and opened her meditation manual to the familiar diagram.
A tiny reservoir had at least one practical advantage: replenishing it took very little energy. She treated the pause as part of the regimen rather than an excuse to give up.
She failed to notice the stares drifting toward her desk.
Three consecutive functional runes had caught the attention of newcomers and senior apprentices alike, and even the instructor had briefly paused her private consultation at the lectern.
Several girls who had been preparing to pay for additional instruction glanced toward Elara, though the sight of an apprentice dropping into meditation after only three drawings quickly stirred fresh skepticism.
Perhaps she had butchered the technique, perhaps her strokes burned through an absurd amount of power, or perhaps it simply wasn't worth breaking her concentration to find out.
Deyra leaned toward Doria and Rikka, whispered a few words, and scooped up her sheets to head down to the front. The instructor received her warmly, and after a brief exchange, began murmuring explanations while pointing out specific sections on her parchment.
Deyra nodded with intense focus, her face brightening as though she were receiving the vital key everyone else had missed.
Back in the rear corner, Angeline turned her attention away from the lectern.
Her pale blue eyes swept the room and settled on Elara, who remained seated with the sphere in her hands, oblivious to the murmurs and the silent comparisons being drawn against her performance.
Angeline's calm, gentle smile never wavered, but her gaze lingered on her laboratory neighbor with far sharper scrutiny than she had shown in Caldra's presence.
Elara cared only about recovering enough Aether to finish her fourth rune, completely unaware that the three before it had already drawn the gaze of another women.