I was still in shock from his words, sitting with my hands lying limply on my lap. The robe felt stifling and I wanted to pull on the collar to breathe, but it would look like I was fiddling with the choker on my neck, so I only sat in place. I thought I’d be angrier, that I’d have flipped his desk over by now, but I couldn’t muster the energy to do it.
Falar took the schedule and reworked it, pushing back the class to reanimate a skeleton, pointing out more lectures and books to read. I watched silently as he muttered and wrote down more and more lectures to attend and books to read.
“You sure that’s enough?” I asked, as the list kept getting longer.
“I think it’s too much, but you can finish it all just to spite me,” he said, putting down his quill and lifting the paper to peer at it. “You’re behind, but you have nothing else to do except to focus on your studies. Many students leave to spend at least some weekends elsewhere, but they are soft and mostly lack the drive to excel. You have nowhere to go and nothing but drive, if you only could direct it toward something useful for a change.”
“You never leave out the insult, do you?”
“Not even by accident, not until you make me respect you enough to stop,” he said, poking a finger toward me. “You almost did, earlier.” He brought his hand to his neck and craned his head to the side with a grimace. There were still cracks in his lips, skin stretched tight over his skull.
My cheeks started to flush, but he continued before I could speak. “I said I wanted to hear how you managed to pump yourself full of darkness, but I can’t make myself listen to you fumble and grope your way through the explanation before you have at least some idea of the underlying art.” He tapped the paper on the table with a finger. “So you will focus on the discipline of physical reinforcement for the upcoming weeks.” He waved his fingers at me, painting a few quick runes into the air. They flashed and disappeared without doing anything, except causing a slight tingling to run through my whole body. “There. The relevant book will be brought to you. Once you pass the exam, we will continue this discussion.”
“Can’t wait,” I muttered.
“Good. So be ready for the next exam in two weeks,” Falar said. “You have your task. Don’t disappoint me.”
I slammed the door behind me. The moment I got out, I deflated, breathing out a shuddering breath that left me with nothing. That could have been so much worse, facing him after what had happened during the freezing storm. I shook my arms and legs to drive out the tension, the memories of the piercing pain, of being turned inside out. I rested the back of my head against the wall, closing my eyes. I wouldn’t have blamed him for throwing me off from the walkway to fall down all the way to the bare stone down, down below.
If someone had come at me like that, I would have made them pay. Dearly.
The thought was sharp and dark. I enjoyed the sharp violence of it for a moment, before it lost its luster.
A twisted little thing, biting at everyone, he had said. Was that true? I pulled my head away from the sickly warmth of the wall, nauseated by it all.
A student walked past me, stopping to stand in front of Falar’s door. I had maybe seen him earlier, but it was hard to say as he was wearing the same black robe as everyone. He reached his hand toward the handle of the door.
“Knock first!” a voice boomed from the inside. It sounded like it came from the bottom of a well.
The student stumbled back. He raised his eyebrows at me and grimaced.
“Don’t worry. He’s in a good mood,” I said.
Falar had managed to get in so many insults and vicious remarks that he probably was still rubbing his hands together and giggling at himself. I scoffed at the thought and turned to go.
“But he never is?” the student said.
I stopped half way to the dorm. I couldn’t go straight back there. Falar’s words ached in my mind. I wanted to wrap my fist around them, squeeze them until they shattered or cut my fingers off. He had said I had nothing but drive, and that might be the closest thing to a compliment he could physically manage. Part of me wanted to prove him wrong, give up entirely. I knew I wouldn’t, but I would have liked to.
Could I provoke a skeleton to fight me? There were enough of them everywhere. My limbs would pop out from my body if I didn’t do something. I started running, taking the stairs down three steps at a time. My boot slipped on the ice and I thudded down half the stairs, boots skidding and bouncing on the steps. I landed on my knee, crunching it on the planks.
Hurt like damn. Like nothing had hurt when I had been full of Null. Like the faintest shadow of how bad it had hurt when he had ripped the Null away from me.
Falar said I should focus on physical enhancement. Could I learn to do it? Enough to keep things from hurting me, but not too much to end up shredding myself?
Nowhere to go, nothing but drive.
I’d show him.
A skeleton was waiting for me when I got to my dorm. It had a massive black book, which it pushed into my hands as I walked up to it. I lurched as it let go of the book. Based on the weight, it had to be written on sheets of metal. It vibrated in my hands, tingling with power. “T-thanks,” I said, teeth chattering.
The skeleton clacked its jaw at me three times, then spun around and started marching away.
Weird.
I shuddered at the touch of the book and pushed open the room to my dorm. My home, I guess. As Falar had said, I had no other place to go.
“Hi,” I said as I stepped inside. Grit was spread out on her back in the middle of the floor, arms and legs splayed.
Fek sat at the desk, feet resting on top of it. “Oh, hi, what’s the book?”
I threw the book to my bed to get it out of my hands as soon as possible. “Something Falar sent me. Why’s she lying on the floor?”
Grit’s head bounced up to look at me. “How come you get to talk to him constantly? Can you take me along next time?”
“I don’t know why anyone would want to talk with that creepy guy. Especially with his face is all cracked and white now.”
“Yeah, I saw,” Grit said and lay her head back to the ground. She sighed, letting out a fluttering breath. “So cool.”
“She’s lying down there as she couldn’t handle the tension anymore,” Fek said. “We should get the results of the exam soon.”
“Don’t remind me,” Grit said, rolling to lay on her stomach and pressing her hands on the back of her head. “I think I did pretty well, but I thought so the last time as well. Stupid Fendribalis.”
I shrugged and sat down on the bed. The book tingled next to me. I collected a fistful of duvet to push it farther away from myself without touching it directly.
“Come on, what is that book? I’ve never seen it before,” Fek said. “I would remember a big one like that.”
“On Embodying Death,” I read aloud, then my eyes happened on the writer’s name. “Oh, whoa, it’s by the flying skull.”
Grit snapped her head up and crawled up to my bed so fast I reflexively raised my feet up. She grabbed on to the edge of the bed and pulled her face to peer at the book. “For real? Coratorus made only two copies, and the other one is in Tenorsbridge! Minnelil is going to murder you in your sleep to get to read that.”
“She can just ask,” I muttered, shivering as the book pulsed with power. “But okay, it sounds pretty important. I guess that explains why it feels like it does.”
“I can’t feel anything. How does it—“ Grit asked as she reached to touch the book. A white spark zapped her palm, cracking loudly. Her hand shot backward like it had been punched and she fell to sit on her butt on the floor. “Aah! Damn, that hurt!”
I was reeling just by sitting next to the zap. My head swam and the smell of ozone rolled over me. The magic swirled and thickened around the book, like a cat curling back into a ball after slapping a mouse dead.
Grit was clenching and unclenching her fist and wiggling her fingers. There was a darkened spot on her palm where the lightning bolt had hit it. “Oof, makes sense it’s protected.”
“I lucked out there,” Fek said. He hopped his feet off the desk and walked up to my bed as well. “That looked like it would have taken anyone else’s hand clean off. Thanks for poking it first!”
“Don’t mention it,” Grit said, blowing on her palm. “I’ll warn Minnelil when she’s back.”
“When is she going to be back, anyway?” I asked. She had been gone for four days already. It felt like a long time to just leave, but on the other hand, there hadn’t been lectures during those days at all.
“Tomorrow. She’ll want to be back for the lectures,” Fek said.
“People take five day breaks often around here?”
“Well, you have to, if you want to have time to do anything outside.”
“Except Minnelil. She could spend a month at home for all we know,” Grit said. “She said that Silloin has places that are even faster.”
I closed my eyes and leaned my head on my hands. Of course. It explained everything, but no one had spelled it out before. The long winters, the piercing cold, the pale sun. “How fast does time run here?”
“About twice as fast as normal,” Grit said, shrugging from the floor. “You can find out exactly how much faster next semester. They’ll take us to attend the What Day Is It festival!”
“Not that clown show,” Fek groaned. “They just had that two years ago. How can they have forgotten already?”
Grit spread herself back on the floor, eyes on the ceiling. “It’s a fundamentally difficult question.”
I threw the duvet over the book to dampen the tingling a bit. I hoped I would get used to the feeling, or reading it would be miserable. I stood and walked to the other end of the room to get away from the smell of ozone still lingering in the air. “Who actually cares what day it is?”
“A lot of wizards do,” Fek said. He walked back to sit at the desk. There was a book on the table, but it had been opened only to the first empty page after the cover. “Well, they care about having an excuse to drink and argue a lot.”
“There are also a lot of good lectures on the nature of time and ambronite and everything,” Grit said. “But yeah, okay. I guess part of the reason we’re going is so that the teachers get to drink and argue with all the other wizards.” She rolled on the floor and groaned. “Ugh! When will the stupid results be here?”
The knock came almost immediately. A sharp thwack, bone on wood. The skeleton opened the door again without waiting for a reply. It walked toward the desk, but Grit bounced up from the floor and dragged the scroll off its hands.
For a ridiculous moment I wondered if the skeletons were ever annoyed about people pulling things out of their hands constantly. Grit unrolled the scroll and hooted, lifting both hands into the air.
“Guess you passed?” Fek asked, grinning with his whole face.
“We all did! Whoo!”
I was about to say it was just one credit, but Fek whooped as well, while Grit collapsed back on the floor to laugh. The skeleton shrugged at me and walked out.
I shook my head, a smile creeping on my face too. Fine, I guess it was nice and important. I smiled, but the smile froze. If passing an exam made these people act like this, how little had they been through before?
I had celebrated less after finding the abandoned shed, and without it, I would have slept out on the street, exposed to the rain, cold, and people like Jordan.
I brought my hand to my neck and rubbed at it. All this was hollow. The smiling, being part of their little group. The feeling passed, replaced by a chuckle as Fek and Grit slammed their palms together and Fek crumbled into a ball, hugging his hands to his chest, howling and laughing at the same time.
Giddy with life. What stupid rot.
I wanted to cry, afraid it would end.