Nobody mentioned that I posted the same twice :D Here's the right one for you!
Fek yawned and stretched both hands over his head. I yawned as well. I had watched him tumble and kick in his sleep for the rest of the night. Maybe I had dozed off occasionally as well. He kept switching positions sometimes when I blinked.
“Morning!” he said, finally finishing his yawn. “Slept well?”
“No.”
“Oh, okay. How are you feeling otherwise? Head still sore?”
“Actually, no,” I said, surprised about it myself. There was nothing left of the nausea or the ache, the thumping pain that I remembered from last night. “How is that possible?”
“Falar came over and said you don’t have time to rest for a week. They dumped nearly a whole bottle of ambrosia into you,” Fek said. “I got a bit too. All good again!”
“A bottle of…” I trailed off. I knew how much ambrosia cost. The empty bottle next to Fek’s bed had been a large one. A whole bottle of ambrosia. I blinked, out of words.
The memories came rushing back. The fight, Minnelil stopping it by asking us to relax. What the hell had that been about?
“We should get breakfast here!” Fek said, jumping off the bed. “Too bad they have to bring it from the outside. Maybe they do it on purpose, so people would leave as soon as possible?” He kept prattling as he opened drawers, peeking into them.
I stood gingerly, feeling how it felt to stand. I waited for the headache or the dizziness to return, but I felt completely normal.
The door opened and a man in a black robe stepped in.
“Ah, you’re both awake. Good,” he said. The voice was familiar from last night. Maybe his face was as well, but I couldn’t remember properly, couldn’t be sure. “Food should arrive in a moment. I’ll make sure you are fine, and you can be on your way after you’ve eaten. You should still be able to get to the first lectures of the day.”
“Who are you?” I asked.
“Oh, forgive me. You were in a rough shape yesterday. My name is Marcus. I’m the physician here.”
He was young, older than me, but he didn’t look old enough to be a doctor. His hair was curly and dark brown. His nose was shaped like a potato, underlined by a thin mustache. The combination did no favors to his face.
I waved at his black robes. “Physician? You look like everyone else here.”
He walked up to me and pointed at a chair. “Sit down, I’ll check your eyes. And yes, I’m a member of the faculty, but I specialize in bodies, so I spend most of my time here instead of teaching.”
“Bodies?” I asked, letting him pull my eyelid up. In the orphanage, people had always wanted to look into my eyes after every little bump. I guess I might have hit my head there as well, been knocked against the floor or the walls. Good way to start or end a fight.
“Well, corpses, mostly,” he said, letting go of my face. “You’re fine, but after all that ambrosia, why wouldn’t you be? Any questions?”
“A few, yeah!” I said. “That’s it? There’s a fight and no one says anything about it? This normal over here?”
He stood up, flashing a quick smile at me. “The people running this place aren’t awfully concerned about things like that. Some just lack the capacity to care, some are too busy with their research to bother creating or enforcing rules. Things usually shake out during the first year. You’d be surprised at the state of people we can still put together. This is one of the safest places to get hurt in all of Velonea, honestly. As I said, specialized in bodies.” He finished with another quick smile, before walking to the door and peering out of it. “There’s the breakfast.”
“Finally,” Fek said.
A skeleton brought a large tray, with a dome on top of it. It placed it on a table in the corner of the room, turning around and walking right back out of the door. Efficient, had to give them that.
Fek lifted the dome and smelled the food. There were eggs and bacon and bread again, swimming in grease. He wrinkled his nose. “Ah, think it already went pretty stale. I’m hungry enough that I’d eat it even if it had no taste left.”
“That’s the spirit,” Marcus said. “I’ll have to write a report of the used ambrosia. You wouldn’t be heading toward the Bursar’s office soon? Could you take it—”
“Absolutely not,” I said.
Fek shook his head vigorously, mouth already full.
“Worth a shot,” Marcus said, sighing.
I chuckled, picking up a piece of bread. I had planned to ask about the floating skull, Coratorus, or whatever it had called itself, but I really was hungry. I’d only missed last night’s dinner, but my stomach rumbled and gurgled, insistent and angry. Going soft this fast didn’t feel good, didn’t feel safe, but it didn’t seem like the place was going to run out of food. After they had spent the money to heal me with ambrosia, they wouldn’t let me starve.
I ignored the thoughts about debt and gratitude, focused on chewing instead. Marcus slinked off somewhere to write his reports. The food didn’t taste like much, but it was still better than basically anything I had managed to get while in Tenorsbridge.
Was this my life now?
“Want to try channeling again?” Fek asked. “Min does it in a boring way and Grit has it rough because of the palms, but I can show you how to do it properly.”
“Can you?” I asked around the mouthful of bacon. “Are you sure you won’t just gloat how easy it is for you? Laugh at me for not getting it?”
Fek’s hand stopped, the fried egg hanging off his fork. “Why… why would I do that?” His frowned, but not in anger. He looked confused, maybe even hurt.
“I just… sorry,” I squeezed out. “I’m… not always great with people.”
“You were great with Lombarte, though!” he said, miming a punch. “Whap, kick!”
I couldn’t help grinning. The excitement was contagious. The truth was that I was great with people. That was the problem. I was worried they were great with me, too. Fek had stepped in when Lombarte and his stupid goons had come after me, even if it had basically done more harm than good.
I made my face hard, reminded myself how things always went. I couldn’t get involved, didn’t want to start caring about someone like him. He was a scrawny dummy, with no sense of self-preservation. If he hovered around me, he’d get hurt or killed before the week was over.
The only question was why he already hadn’t. “What did Minnelil do? How did everyone stop fighting? People don’t stop like that.”
“I was getting kicked in the face, so I’m not sure. Maybe it was some elf stuff? Anyway, let me talk you through how I do channeling!”
“What, no, wait—“ I cut myself off as my whole face started tingling.
He drew a thick band of light into the air, painting it with his whole palm. “We still have time before the first lecture, so let’s get into it! Just do it like this…”
I groaned. Fine.
Fine.
“I think you’re getting it,” Fek said.
“I… think I am,” I said, hand raised in the air. I still couldn’t draw anything visible, but I felt the tingling around my elbow more clearly.
“The problem with Min’s explanation is that it’s boring. I clog right up if I try to do it how she does. You want to feel like a pipe, with wind blowing through it.”
“A pipe.”
“Yeah, like a sewer pipe, not a pipe you smoke with. No, wait, that’s disgusting,” Fek said. “Anyway, the more you press and focus, the more you just get in the way, get it?”
I didn’t answer, only tried again. I had never done anything like this before, but it felt a bit like turning the tingling from the outside to the inside. When I relaxed my face and wanted it, something moved. The intention to feel it made the tingling start, but it was so goddamn hard. Any stray thought or movement, and the connection broke.
I grunted when something tickled the corner of my eye. I squinted, and the tingling disappear from my hand.
“It gets easier, I promise you,” Fek said. He lay back in his chair, patting his stomach. We had eaten almost everything the skeleton had brought us, some scraps of bacon and a fistful of the bread the only things left. “After some time, you don’t even have to think about it. Like breathing.”
“Really?” I asked. A bead of sweat ran into the corner of my eye and I blinked. I hadn’t even done anything, so why was I sweating?
“Well, Min said it took her a decade to get there and Grit says it’s a load of bull, but of course she would. The Jonungaard palms get in the way of the mana somehow. And elves probably take a decade to do anything, anyway.”
I shrugged. He wasn’t really convincing me, but on the other hand, Falar had never seemed like he had to think about casting any spells. That first night, he had cast the black bolt in an eye-blink.
First night. I guess it was a first night of my current life. How many nights away it had been? Three?
“Are you going to finish that?” Fek asked, grabbing his fork.
I grasped the plate and yanked it over to my side of the table. A reflex.
“Oh, go ahead,” he said, making his face official and raising a finger into the air. “Channeling uses up the reservoirs of the body that have to be replenished,” he said in a low and educational voice. I had no idea who he was miming. Not snide enough for Falar, at the very least. “Even if you didn’t get much mana out from your hands, you probably burned through a bunch. I could smell the ozone.”
“Huh?”
“Don’t worry about it. Some people think it’s embarrassing, but it’s natural to let off some while trying hard! Eat up and let’s go to the lecture!”
When we reached the lecture hall, I was still feeling self-conscious about what Fek had said about ozone. What did it even mean?
Only a few people stood in front of the door, all about the same age as me and Fek. Other first year students, perhaps. Luckily, I didn’t recognize any of the faces. They didn’t pay any attention to me either.
“Basic runecraft,” Fek said, tilting from one foot to the other. “This one’s always running. Many people end up taking it a couple of times. They rotate who teaches it.”
I nodded. This one had been on the schedule Falar had made for me, underlined twice. “Have you taken this before?” I asked.
“Just a couple of the final lectures. It was pretty boring. But important, I guess.” He sighed deeply. “Focus, Fek. Focus,” he said.
I raised an eyebrow. Fek pressed his lips together, squinting at the door of the lecture hall. The wind howled behind us, never stopping. Jextor had been right. I almost didn’t hear it anymore.
A woman in a black robe shambled to the door and waved her hand at it. A lock clicked and the door opened. “Enter,” she said slowly, voice monotone.
“Not Ferne, again!” Fek hissed. “She puts me right to sleep.”
Maybe a dozen students sat in the hall. People kept trickling in even after Ferne had already started talking. Fek squirmed and clenched his fists next to me, eyes fixed forward.
“We’ll quickly re-cap the material from the first two lectures,” Ferne said, leaning on the pulpit.
Fek groaned.
“Firstly, runes have to be exact. Don’t use any rune unless you know exactly what it is and if you’re sure you’ve drawn it perfectly. Anything less tempts fate.” She said it as if describing her grocery list. “Secondly, the direction the runes are drawn and activated is as important as the shape itself. Guessing wrong could get you killed before you even start to draw the rune.”
“Uhhhh, we get it,” Fek said.
“You, of all people, should listen. Didn’t you set your hair on fire once already?” Ferne said, turning her head slowly to Fek.
“A bit, but it was an accident!”
She pressed a hand to her cheek and closed her eyes. “That’s the point. That’s exactly the point, ugh!”
Other students chuckled and even Fek himself grinned. I was still thinking about what she had said earlier so I couldn’t focus on their banter. I frowned, scratching my head.
“You’re new,” Ferne said, turning her eyes to me. “I hope you at least take what I’m saying seriously. Won’t you?”
“Um,” I said, twitching as she suddenly started talking directly to me. Now that she was, I guess I could ask one dumb question. “Sure, but killed before even drawing the rune? What does that even mean?”
“Hexes are third year material,” she said, waving a hand. “But it’s good to know someone pays attention. Keep that up and if you could keep your friend from blurting out every dumb thought he has, that would be great, too.”
“He’s not…” I said.
Fek grinned and shrugged at the lecturer. The rest of the students snickered around us. I bristled, but maybe there was no need to say that thought out loud right now. I clenched my fists, held on to the edge of the hard wooden chair.
Ferne seemed to deflate back down, eyes half-closing again. She leaned on the pulpit, drooping over it. “I’ve done this series of lectures twice in the past three months. You only have to learn three of the most basic runes to have earned your credit. Please, have mercy on me and try to pay attention.”