The woman by the lectern stared at the finger stuck to her sole for a long moment. Then, she carefully set her foot down and leaned against the podium, as if the energy she had entered the room with had abruptly drained away.
Her polite smile vanished, replaced by exhaustion and what Elara read as profound disappointment in an incredibly botched start to the class.
“My name is Liora Kess. I am a second-rank apprentice,” she finally said, gesturing to the stack of booklets. “Come up and take your rulebooks and forms. Spend the first ten minutes reading.”
Even her voice had lost its earlier cheerfulness, but a few apprentices clearly saw this as a golden opportunity to prove themselves helpful. They stood up almost immediately and began distributing the materials.
Liora pushed herself away from the lectern. Now that her hands were free, she recited a short incantation in an incomprehensible language and made two precise gestures.
The air shifted near the floor. The greenish sludge and the remains stuck within it vanished, leaving the stone as clean as it had been before the first mentor’s arrival.
Elara watched with interest. But after the transformation of her own hands and the candidate's death at the examination table, the simple removal of a stain hardly warranted much astonishment.
The rest of the girls also remained fairly calm. Liora glanced around the room as the spell concluded, her shoulders slumping just a fraction more.
Guess she expected a bigger reaction…
Under different circumstances, maybe she would’ve gotten one. We just started the day with much worse things.
The two apprentices sitting on the other side of Kelira returned from the front with extra copies and placed them on their desks as well.
Kelira accepted the materials without hesitation. Elara pushed her scroll aside to make room and thanked them.
The bright-eyed girl blinked, as if slightly taken aback by such an ordinary response.
“You’re welcome. I’m Doria Veil, and this is Rikka Thorn,” she said, gesturing to her companion. “We live in six-thirteen and six-fourteen. We could study together, it’ll be easier.”
Elara nodded but didn't make any promises. She didn't even know how classes were structured once they picked their mentors. In a normal school, this would be a perfect time to make friends, but here, affinities and fields of study could quickly separate people currently sitting at adjacent desks.
She lowered her eyes to the form and began reading.
There were five mentors to choose from. Below each name was a brief summary of their primary elements and specializations.
Most taught one or two core paths, but their fields of research varied wildly. Elara scanned the entries carefully, trying not to confuse a branch of magic with its specific application.
She recognized the entry for the woman who had delivered the rushed lecture and vomited by the front row. Right next to it was the name Vespara had told her to pick.
Caldra Mourne - Primary Element: Darkness. Specializations: Necromancy, Spirit Research, Corpse Preservation, Limb Transplantation.
Elara ran her eyes over the list once more, then glanced at her left hand resting on the edge of the parchment.
It was hard not to see the connection between those fields of study and what she had recently endured, though she wasn't sure if that should reassure her or make her even more cautious.
At least I won't end up with someone who sees this hand and orders me tossed out with the rest of the trash…
Assuming, of course, that Vespara doesn't have some hidden agenda in all of this.
She marked a check beside Caldra's name, set the form aside, and opened the rulebook.
The booklet contained significantly more detail than the rushed lecture. She started comparing the first few pages with her own notes, finding explanations for things she hadn't managed to write down earlier.
As a maid, she had mostly known prohibitions and chores. Now, she was handed so many rules that just reading them would take far more than ten minutes.
Perhaps it didn't mean an apprentice's life was more orderly, but simply that she was finally considered a person who deserved to know more than just where to clean and what could get her killed.
Beside her, Kelira had been sitting perfectly still for a while, frowning at the form and chewing on the cap of her quill. Elara looked at her curiously, wondering if her neighbor had spotted some particularly nasty condition.
“Does something not add up?”
Kelira popped the cap out of her mouth and turned. Her expression was so grave she looked ready to expose a flaw that undermined the entire recruitment process.
“My strongest affinity is Fire, and none of these mentors specialize in it.”
Before Elara could reply, the girl leaned back over the list.
“Which leaves me with Metal as my primary path. Damn it, this isn't how I wanted to handle this.”
Despite her words, the tension in her face eased slightly, as if finding a less-than-ideal option was still better than staring blankly at a limited list.
Elara looked at her own form again, reasoning that the Spire clearly had no intention of providing every apprentice with a perfect set of choices.
In her case, the decision seemed much simpler, since out of the listed mentors, only Caldra indicated Darkness as her primary element.
Only after a moment did Elara realize what that alignment actually meant.
Vespara had told her to choose Caldra before she even took the affinity test.
She stopped her fingers on the edge of the form, recalling the conversation by the table and the calm voice of the futa who hadn't even cared to ask her name.
She hadn't asked about her aptitudes or past test results, yet she had pointed to the exact person whose specialization matched the longest segment of the painted circle.
A coincidence?
Did she notice something during the experiment?
Or was this choice supposed to be the 'right' one for a completely different reason?
Staring at the name didn't provide an answer, so she pushed the form away before her imagination could spin an elaborate conspiracy she had no way of proving.
Still, the lingering doubt was much sharper than before.
Liora had managed to recover some of her good mood. She stood tall behind the lectern once more, brushing her lavender hair off her shoulder. Her turquoise eyes swept across the room, and the friendly smile returned to her face.
“If you have any questions, you may ask them now.”
Hands shot up almost instantly. Some apprentices wanted clarification on the rulebook, while others had the same problem as Kelira - they didn't know what to do when their affinity didn't match an available mentor.
Liora patiently explained that in such cases, they should consider their secondary element, and if that didn't fit the available paths either, they might even have to base their studies on their third or fourth.
She didn't frame it as a grave injustice, but rather as a minor inconvenience that simply had to be accepted.
For the next half hour, she answered question after question, often elaborating more than the initial inquiry required. Thanks to this, Elara finally began to find order in the information she had scrambled to jot down earlier.
When the older apprentice didn't know something, she admitted it plainly and pointed out what to be careful of, instead of pretending the issue didn't exist.
Elara listened more and more intently, gradually pushing the thoughts of Vespara aside, until she felt a light nudge against her arm.
Kelira pulled her finger back and flicked her eyes toward a spot to their right, a few rows closer to the platform.
Sitting there was the girl who had been ahead of Elara in the testing line. Now, she was staring at her with resentment once again - this time so overtly that it couldn't be dismissed as a random grimace.
When their eyes met, the stranger held the glare for a moment longer before turning back to the front.
“Who is that?” Elara whispered, leaning slightly toward her neighbor.
Kelira remained sitting straight, keeping her eyes fixed on the lectern.
“Deyra Morr. Her best friend died on the way to the Spire. The third-rank apprentice leading their group refused to help her.”
“What does that have to do with me?”
“She said they had too many people anyway.”
Elara remained silent for a moment, trying to connect those words to the fact that the missing spots were filled with maids.
To Deyra, the sight of extra candidates might look like proof that her friend's death hadn't even been necessary under the cruel rules used to justify everything else.
However, that didn't change the fact that Elara hadn't known she existed, hadn't been part of the journey, and certainly hadn't made any decisions about leaving anyone to die.
“I had nothing to do with that,” she said quietly.
Kelira gave a short snort, though it was hard to tell if she found the response, Deyra’s behavior, or the very idea that such an explanation would solve anything amusing.
Elara returned her gaze to her notes, fighting the urge to look to her right again.
She can't do anything to a third-rank apprentice, so all she can do is glare at me…
Great. I haven't even started my studies and I’m already pissing someone off just by being alive.
Meanwhile, Liora was wrapping up her explanations.
“If you dedicate most of your time to the basics and work consistently, there is no reason to fear your first evaluation,” she assured them, then clapped her hands lightly. “Alright, my mouth is starting to get dry. Has everyone filled out their forms?”
A rustle of paper swept through the room, but before anyone could stand, the older apprentice raised a finger and cleared her throat.
“Before I collect them, I would like to say a few words about my own mentor, Anvera Rootmere. You will find her at the very top of the list. Her primary domain is Earth, and she also teaches Wood, but she conducts research involving Water and Poisons as well.”
She smiled wider, and Elara slowly shifted her gaze to the first entry.
“You do not have to give up immediately if your primary element isn't listed in the brief description. Mentors are fully-fledged Magistras, which means their knowledge far exceeds a single specialization. Even an apprentice with an affinity for Darkness can choose Mentor Anvera, and the older students will also be happy to assist you with your studies.”
Elara stopped her quill when she heard the familiar element, but she didn't raise her head fast enough to check if Liora had glanced in her direction.
“We would be absolutely delighted to welcome you into the ranks of Mentor Anvera’s apprentices,” the futa concluded, spreading her arms with a cheerful warmth that made the proposition sound almost like a dinner invitation.
In several spots across the room, forms immediately rustled as quills scratched out previous selections. Doria and Rikka leaned over their own papers, and the former shot a look at Kelira and Elara.
“Let’s all choose her. Liora explained so much to us today, I’m sure she’ll keep helping us later. We’ll have a much easier time together.”
“No,” Kelira answered without a second's hesitation.
Elara also shook her head, leaving her checkmark firmly beside Caldra’s name.
She didn't know if Liora’s offer was bad, but a friendly smile alone wasn't enough to make it good.
Most of the girls here were new to the Spire. They might still believe a kind tone implied selflessness, but Elara had already seen how quickly behavior changed when someone's usefulness was evaluated.
She remembered Vespara, the supervisor delivering the delayed medicine, and the bones currently hidden beneath her left sleeve.
First she helps answer questions, then she mentions how choosing her mentor is the best idea…
Maybe she genuinely wants to help, but I’m not testing that just because she was the first one not to try and eat someone.
When Liora finished praising Anvera and asked them to bring up the forms, Doria offered to take their sheets along with hers. This time, both Kelira and Elara stood up, preferring to hand in their own choices personally.
Walking beside her neighbor, Elara glanced at her paper and noticed the checkmark next to the mentor who had stormed into the room, rushed through the rules, and left the contents of her stomach on the floor.
She looked at Kelira’s serious face but didn't comment on the decision.
So Metal won out after all… You have to admit, after a show like that, it's hard to suspect she made that choice because of a charming personality.
Once the documents were collected, Liora dismissed them back to their rooms, explaining that the necessary equipment would be delivered by the servants. The apprentices began filing out in much higher spirits, bidding her farewell and exchanging comments about their chosen paths at the door.
Soon, the hall emptied out, and the sounds of conversation faded down the corridor.
Liora remained by the lectern, squaring the forms into a neat stack and tapping their bottom edges against the desk.
She ran her eyes over the first few sheets, smoothed out a curled corner, and then a quiet, amused chuckle escaped her lips - one that sounded far sharper in the empty room than it had before.