I moved, and she let me go. I wasn’t sure how long it had been. The others had kept very quiet. I blinked my eyes clear. Fek had tucked himself into his bed and was reading a book. Grit sat at the table with a copy of Fendribalis’ Scriptures.
Minnelil stood up, putting her hands in her pockets. “You haven’t heard much about how studying here works, right?” she said, very casually, very deliberately.
I swallowed. I nodded, as I didn’t quite trust my voice yet. I could be tough again later. Soon. Not quite yet.
“I got a credit slip from Jextor. I made him write one, so he wouldn’t forget. He always does. Let me grab it.”
I wiped my face, sniffing.
She rummaged around in the chest at the end of her bed. “Ha,” she said, lifting a small piece of paper.
When she turned back, I had organized my face. “Thanks.”
“It was no trouble,” she said, handing me the paper. “You’d do the same for me. You can present this at the office to get assigned the credits. The teachers should do it for you, but very few of them remember.”
She was being nice again. I nodded and smiled. Didn’t even have to force it. “I’ll just give it to Falar. He put me up to this, so he can handle it for me. With this, I now have three?” I said, waving the slip.
“Yes. Usually students are expected to get twenty per semester. You can realistically get around fifteen for the lectures, the rest you have to earn some other way.”
“By doing exams? Getting killed by the chancellor?”
Fek snorted without lifting his eyes from the book.
“The latter is a tried and true method, yes,” Minnelil said, grinning at me. Her mouth was so wide. The grin showed all the molars. Such white teeth.
I shook my head. “Right, um. Channeling gave a bunch of credits, so I guess I should start with that?”
“It’s also very difficult. You might be better off doing some book exams first. You’ve already dug into the Scriptures, right?”
“Fendribalis rules!” Fek shouted from his bed, punching a fist into the air.
“She does not,” Grit groaned.
Minnelil shrugged. “I land somewhere in the middle. Still, you have three days until the next exam date. It’s not a lot of time, but you could go through our notes?”
I needed this. The warmth, talking to someone nice who smiled at me. But there had to be a limit. “You would let me do that? Why?”
“Why not? It helps everyone out.”
“But…”
“Look, I don’t think you ended up in this dorm accidentally. This place does not coddle or protect you, so we look after each other.”
So far, this place had done nothing but coddle me. I was getting free food, a warm bed, new clothes. Even Falar, despite being a total creep and an asshole, had saved me multiple times now. If I hadn’t nicked the thing off him back in Tenorsbridge, I would be shivering in rat-eaten clothes, or being eaten by a rat myself. Didn’t coddle, indeed.
I would have scoffed at her, but Minnelil’s expression was so serious that I stopped to consider. Her almond eyes watched me as I did, the tips of her ears poking out from under her silken hair. Grit rubbed her fingers against her palm as she read, the sound like scraping two stones together. Fek’s leg kept bouncing, and he twisted and turned on the bed while reading about death and nothingness, not knowing a single rune except maybe the one we had studied together.
All other students I had seen so far were humans. Jextor had said a lot of important people came to the school.
Maybe the people in this dorm really had to look after each other.
“Okay,” I said. “Okay.”
“Good, I’ll show you my notes after dinner.” Minnelil opened the chest at the foot of my bed and lifted a spare robe from there. “But you’re going to clean yourself up before that. You smell like you’ve dug yourself out of a mass grave,” she said, throwing the robe on my lap.
“Where does the water come from? How is it warm?” I asked.
“No idea. You could ask Hector?” Fek said.
I had been worried I’d slip on the tiles and not be able to get back up again, but the water had helped. Half of my skin had seemed to wash off and everything was raw. I felt like I could shatter at any moment, but I was also hungry and I didn’t want to stay behind in the dorm, alone.
I rubbed at my throat. Before, Falar’s choker had loosened when outside, but now it hung like a millstone around my neck, making me crane my head down. “Hector? You mentioned him once already, who is he?”
“The janitor,” Fek said. “He’s cool. He smokes.”
“Oh,” I said. I remembered how black smoke had risen from Falar’s mouth and eyes. I shivered. Maybe this Hector was something like the Janitors back in the city. Or another weirdo like the Bursar, Falar and Jextor. Ferne at least had seemed rather normal. “Oh! I met a floating skull. Coratorus? What is it, a mascot or something?”
“Haha, nice one!”
Grit snickered as well, but Minnelil didn’t. “The principal, actually,” she said. “They are probably the most powerful lich on the continent. I don’t think even we elves remember a time before them. That should give you an idea how long they have been alive. Dead?” She frowned for a moment. “Let’s say around.”
“Right,” I said.
We walked in silence for a moment as I wondered how long elves actually lived and how old that would make the floating skull. Climbing the stairs made my heart thrum and left me short of breath. I slid one hand on the wall to steady myself. The wind was back to howling in the middle of the black arch, leaving us to walk in comfortable warmth.
“You actually met them?” Grit asked. “No one ever does.”
I stopped again to pant. A long answer was out of the question. “Yeah. It came… they? He, she?”
“Just pick something,” Minnelil said. “I don’t think Coratorus remembers or cares. Can’t really matter much at this point, can it?”
“The teachers complain they’re impossible to find. Always appearing and disappearing at random,” Grit said.
“Hector actually said he plays cards with them pretty often,” Fek said. “Maybe that’s why?”
One thought kept circling my head as I steadied my breathing, hand pressed on the fever-hot wall.
How could this place be this dumb?
“So, help me figure this out,” I said, pointing a fork with a pickle on it at Minnelil. My hand still trembled and the pickle shook. “If the Academy has existed for a thousand years, where are all the necromancers? There’s a ton of people here.” I waved the fork around the room, taking in the almost hundred students eating and chatting with each other. “Even if only a few graduate, where are they?”
“Many necromancers go on to be normal mages and wizards. It’s a good education, even if you don’t keep wearing black robes for the rest of your life,” Minnelil said.
“Being a necromancer is also pretty hazardous,” Grit said. “People tend to overstep sooner or later. Raid enough graveyards and some adventurer is going to stick a sword into you. There’s a whole lecture about the ethics of death, but people usually sleep through it.”
“There’s only so many ways you can tell people not to steal someone’s dearly departed,” Fek said. “It was pretty boring, to be honest.”
“Right,” I said. Fair enough. I bit into the pickle. It was crunchy and tart. Bit weird, but okay.
“You seem different,” Fek said, squinting at me.
“Hmm?”
“You’re not as scary as before.”
“Hmm.”
I had wondered about that myself. I had been so angry, so alone, for such a long time. Scraping to stay alive, hoping not to. My thoughts flinched away from the memories, the village burning around me. I shrugged at Fek, smiling.
“I have a guess,” Minnelil said, reaching a hand toward me. “Can I try something?”
She waited for my reaction. After hesitating for a moment, I nodded at her. At least she had asked.
Her fingertips brushed my neck, light as a breeze. “Based on what you told us of the ward, I think it might be affecting how you feel.”
Her brow furrowed and she kept touching my neck. It was making my cheeks flush, and I pulled back, leaning away. “It tickles,” I said, sniffing and looking to the side.
She raised both hands. “Sorry, I wanted to get a feel of the ward. I can’t say what it does exactly, but it’s very strong. It might be filtering out so much of the Null it’s… well, making you happy.”
“Are you actually serious?”
“Hey, Fendribalis writes about this too!” Fek said. He stuck out the tip of his tongue and squinted at middle-distance, before starting to talk in a low, ominous voice. “Everything living has a dark side, a connection to the nothingness, a yearning for the end.”
“Fendribalis didn’t sound anything like that,” Minnelil said, rolling her eyes. “But the quote is accurate.”
Grit leaned over the table, covering her mouth with her hand. “She didn’t actually know Fendribalis, she’s just yanking your chain.”
I chuckled. “Right, right, but isn’t it weird? Should I feel angry about that? I bet I would have been, before.”
Minnelil shrugged. “No one can decide that except you. It’s very early. You could get used to the effect after a while. Ask Falar about it when you have your meeting.”
That confirmed something was wrong. The suggestion should have made me bristle, snap at her, but now it sounded reasonable. I frowned and started to rub my face, but my skin was so tender that touching it hurt. I had never cared what I looked like, but I had to wonder: was my face just raw flesh stretched over a skull? That was a bit what it felt like.
Every time I opened my mouth to speak or eat, the corners cracked open. The choker hung around my neck, heavy enough that I wanted to rest my head on the table.
It all felt mildly inconvenient.
“Dang,” I said. Dang? “Okay, I will ask him. This feels odd.”
“I can’t believe you get to hang out with him all the time,” Grit said. “Next time you do, take me with you!”
I chuckled at her exaggerated pout.
“You might as well enjoy it!” Fek said to me. “I sure am. It’s nice not being scowled at constantly.”
Minnelil and Grit both groaned, rolling their eyes at him.
“Well, I hope it was good while it lasted,” I said.
All three of them laughed. A student at the next table smiled at me.
I smiled back, feeling the corners of my eyes crinkling.
“I’m going mad,” I whispered.