The crowd shuffled forward, a river of grumbling students being herded by the academy’s staff. They flowed away from the familiar, grand halls and down corridors that shed their ornamentation with every turn. The air grew cooler, the scent of polish and old books giving way to the damp, mineral tang of deep stone. Confused whispers rippled through the group.
"Where are they taking us? The servant’s quarters?" a girl with an upturned nose complained.
Cane walked with them, Kai a quiet shadow beside him, Cassius a loud one. The polished marble underfoot became rough-hewn flagstones, and then something colder, smoother, and darker, a type of reinforced stone that drank the light. The corridor opened up without warning, spilling them into a vast, circular chamber. The ceiling soared into darkness, so high it felt like an artificial night sky. Along the far wall, a series of great metal rings stood mounted, each one as tall as three men. Intricate, silver-blue runes were etched deep into the dark metal, humming with a low, constant thrum that vibrated in Cane’s teeth. The contained power was a physical presence, pressing on the air.
It took the assembled students about two seconds to put it together. Gasps echoed through the hall.
"Teleportation gates," someone breathed, their voice full of awe.
"How long has this been here?" another student asked, her voice high with disbelief. "They never mentioned this in any orientation."
Cassius, however, didn’t gasp. He folded his arms across his broad chest, tilted his chin up, and adopted an expression of profound, rehearsed smugness. It was the face of a man who had been waiting for this exact moment.
He leaned toward Cane, his voice a low, self-satisfied rumble. "I’ve known about these for ages, actually. Family connections, you know. Nothing the rest of these commoners would have access to."
Cane gave him a long, flat look. "I am truly humbled to be standing in the presence of such a towering intellect. A mind so vast it required insider family gossip to arrive at the conclusion that a school of magic might have infrastructure it doesn’t advertise to first-years."
Cassius’s smug expression faltered, a flicker of irritation replacing it. "If you’re so clever, then you tell me. How do you think they’ll divide everyone into their teams? Since you’ve clearly got an opinion on everything else."
Cane shrugged, the motion easy and unbothered. "It’s obvious. They’ll split by class rank. Top students in one bracket, middling students in another, and so on. They’ll put all the useless shit-heels like us together in one sad little group."
Cassius actually laughed at that, a short, sharp bark of genuine amusement. "That’s exactly the kind of thing someone with your academic record would assume. The academy would never do something so blatantly unfair. They’ll need a balanced spread in each group, otherwise the whole exercise is pointless before it even starts."
A slow grin spread across Cane’s face, which only seemed to annoy Cassius more.
"What’s so funny?" Cassius demanded.
"Name one time," Cane said, his voice mild as milk, "that anything in the real world actually worked that way. Balanced. Fair. Everyone getting an even shake regardless of standing."
Cassius opened his mouth, his confidence absolute. "Of course it has. There’s plenty of—" He stopped. The confident set of his jaw went slack. He visibly searched his brain for a single example and came up with absolutely nothing. The certainty drained out of his expression in real time, leaving behind a baffled sort of confusion.
Cane didn’t let the silence fester. "In the real world, the strong band together. That’s just how it works. Powerful families ally with other powerful families. Resources flow toward other resources. And the people left with neither get to scrap over whatever falls on the floor." He paused, letting the truth of it land. "Nobody allies with the weak out of the kindness of their heart, Cassius. Not unless the weak happen to be sitting on something worth taking, like a fat dowry or a really nice ass."
He let his gaze drift pointedly over a nearby girl who was adjusting her skirt, the motion pulling the fabric tight against the curve of her thighs. "An academy that claims to prepare its students for the real world has every reason to build that exact lesson into an exercise like this."
Cassius was quiet for a long moment, turning the logic over in his head. He finally let out a long breath. "It does track," he admitted, his tone grudging. "More than I’d like it to."
A wry, crooked smile touched his lips. "If your read is correct, that means you and I are getting split onto opposite teams, doesn’t it? Since one of us is a scholar of some repute," he declared with a dramatic press of his hand to his chest, "and the other is, well... you."
Cane laughed, a genuine, barking sound. "Probably. We’ll end up on opposite sides of the field trying to kill each other." Then his expression sharpened, a slow, wicked little grin spreading across his face. The shift was so abrupt it made Cassius flinch back half a step on pure instinct. "And just for the record, being on opposite teams doesn’t mean I’m going to hold anything back."
Cassius coughed, recovering quickly. "Drop the theatrics. I’ll be on a team with genuine powerhouses. People who could flatten you without breaking a sweat. You should save the bravado for someone who hasn’t seen your stat sheet."
Cane’s grin didn’t falter. "Stat sheets are for virgins who don’t know how to improvise. I’ve beaten better odds than a school exercise on considerably worse days."
Cassius squinted at him, trying to decide if it was genuine confidence or just more noise. Finally, he just shook his head. "I’ll believe it when I see it. Not a second before."
The line shuffled forward. Cane watched Kai step through one of the humming gates, his entire body dissolving in a brief flare of blue light.