by Andrew Rowe
“Ah, yes. Money. The perpetually shrinking resource of any intrepid Enchanter. I can’t help you. Even if I was to take you on formally as my apprentice, our school has tight restrictions on the resources a professor is allowed to give a current student. The rules are designed for students who want more resources to push themselves into Phoenix Hall. If we could give away funds however we wanted, it would diminish the incentive for students to work toward better grades.”
I didn’t entirely agree with that. There would always be good students that didn’t have the ability or interest to secure a mentor, and they’d benefit from getting into Phoenix Hall. Still, I could understand the intent. It was possible I needed to take working toward Phoenix Hall a bit more seriously.
“I could still use advice on how to make money without losing the limited time that I have to study,” I pushed. I’d thought about apprenticing to that automobile salesman, but I knew that would take more hours than I was willing to sacrifice.
“Have you considered selling enchanted items? Finished products can often sell for considerably more than the material costs.”
I nodded. “It’s occurred to me, but I’m not sure how I could compete with factories that mass produce the most useful enchanted goods. I mean, maybe I could make something more obscure that a climber might find useful, but then I’d have to spend time finding someone who wanted to buy a niche item.”
“Let me test something.” She placed her left hand over her gloved right and stepped over to my side of the table. She pressed two gloved fingers against my forehead. “Your mental mana here is abysmal. Have you even been practicing?”
I withered away from her touch. “Um, I sort of don’t like to use my mental mana?”
She shot me a look of disbelief. “Whyever not?”
“I, uh, really don’t like the idea of losing my mental acuity. Or, you know, killing myself by accident.” My shoulders rose defensively.
“Like you did with your sword, you mean?”
“Okay, okay.” My hands went up in surrender. “I accept that I made a mistake with the sword. But,” I added, “that doesn’t mean that showing caution about something else is a bad idea.”
She snorted. “Have you been using your attunement?”
“A little bit, here and there.”
Her fingers jabbed my forehead again. “And what mana, exactly, do you think you’re using for that?”
I didn’t have a good response to that. The answer was obvious. “I didn’t think...”
She didn’t wait for me to finish. “And have you been killing yourself when you use the attunement? Or losing a significant degree of mental acuity?”
“In fairness, I’m not sure I’d be able to tell if I was losing my ability to think clearly.”
“You would.” Her tone brooked no argument. “Your headaches will reach a crippling intensity long before you lose any significant mental acuity. If you’re impairing your ability to think, you’ll know, and you can stop. It is imperative that you practice using your mental mana, and not just through using your attunement. It is the only reliable way to advance your attunement to a greater stage. And if you truly wish to make useful items for your friends, or to make a profit, you need to be able to reach at least a Carnelian-level in that attunement.”
“I... understand.” I sucked a breath in through my teeth. “But I still don’t know if I’m going to be able to make myself do it.”
“Keep your attunement for at least a few hours each day, then. See how it feels. It’s not as effective for building your mana as larger expenditures would be, but it’s mild exercise, and you’ll begin to feel the side effects gradually. And for you, any progress would be better than none.”
I felt myself nodding slowly at her rebuke. “I’ll try. But you mentioned that the gauntlet I made was already Carnelian-level... doesn’t that mean that I can make Carnelian-level enchantments as it is?”
“Not all Carnelian enchantments have equal complexity. The difference between an E-ranked Carnelian Mage and an A-ranked Carnelian Mage is about a three times difference in power. I would rate your enchantment at the bottom of the Carnelian scale, and it took you considerable effort — and a major mishap — to complete it.” She paused, looking thoughtful.
“I will find some practical enchantments that you can use to practice your Mind Magic, and then sell at a profit. I will sell them for you, putting my own integrity at risk, for a portion of the item’s cost. Once you are close to Carnelian-ranked yourself, I will teach you a broader variety of things to build.”
I nodded. “I suppose that’s the best I could ask for. Thank you, Professor.”
She rubbed at her temples, walking back to slump in her seat. “Get that sword out of my sight, Corin. I will expect to see you here again next Wyddsday and each subsequent Wyddsday at ten o’clock. Until further notice, weekends will exist only in your fondest memories.”
They say the mark of a true swordsman is a cut so swift you never feel the wound until you begin to fall.
No weekends? The professor taking an undisclosed portion of the profits on items she taught me to make?
It was only after exiting Professor Vellum’s office that I realized how thoroughly I’d been outplayed.
***
I headed to the dining hall next. I desperately needed food; the test had taken a lot out of me. I planned to bring something back to my room for Sera as a token of gratitude, but I found her already there, seated with most of my team.
Only Jin was missing, presumably off doing mysterious Jin things.
“Hey!” Patrick practically bolted out of his seat when he saw me. “You’re okay!”
I nodded. “Yeah, let me grab some food and I’ll join you.”
I picked out more than I’d probably end up eating, then sat down across from Sera. She looked a bit better now. Presumably, she’d managed to get a couple more hours of sleep after I left.
Patrick prodded my arm. “Are you feeling up to moving around? Shouldn’t you still be in bed?”
I smiled at his concern. “I’m fine, really. I think I just needed to sleep it off. Vellum’s lecture hurt more than the ice, believe me.” I shook my head at the memory, wincing.
“Ooh, I’ll bet.” He popped a carrot into his mouth, munching loudly.
I glimpsed across the table toward Marissa. She was looking down at her food very deliberately. It seemed she wasn’t comfortable being friendly with us yet. That was fine. We’d get there.
I turned to Sera. “How’d your team do?”
She made a hushing gesture with a finger. “Can’t talk about it here. Oh, you were out when they mentioned all that. No talking about the test in mixed company. You can talk to the team, but that’s it. No one else. Not even teachers.”
“Seriously? That’s absurd.” I made a face.
“They’re going to ask us if we told anyone outside the team about the test when we go to the next one, and again after that periodically. Under truth spells, of course. Anyone fails? Out of the school.” She waggled her fingers.
“Seems a little extreme,” I said, blinking.
“It works, I suppose.” She shrugged one shoulder with disinterest.
I nodded. “Let’s finish this food up and go talk elsewhere, then?”
Sera nodded. “Sounds like a good plan.”
***
Cramming four people into my tiny dorm room was, however, less of a good plan.
Sera and I ended up sitting on the bed. Marissa got the chair. Patrick lounged comfortably against a wall.
Jin still wasn’t with us, but knowing him, I’d be shocked if he didn’t have some kind of way of listening in on things in my room.
That thought was simultaneously comforting and terrifying.
“Okay,” I turned to Sera. “Let’s talk.”
She nudged me. “How’d your team do?”
I folded my arms. “I’m pretty sure my team ‘died’.”
Sera snickered. “Seems l
ike that’s the idea,” she told me. “You’re just supposed to get as far as you can. We lasted longer than you did, but not by much. We’ve got another group test in ten weeks, and I suspect it’ll be the same test to see if we’ve improved.”
That made sense. There was way too much going on in those rooms to get them right on a first try. I still had no idea what the deal with the box in the first room was, and that rotating statue...
I grimaced as I remembered it turning toward me.
Yeah, that one was definitely designed to beat us on the first try. The pulses of the fire were made to show us a pattern, and then they broke the pattern deliberately.
“Any idea how we scored?”
“The team shares a score. We got a sixty three. Average was fifty, highest was eighty seven.” She sounded satisfied. “Not bad for our first team activity.”
I scratched my chin absently as I absorbed that. “What’s the cutoff for failing out?” I wondered.
“It was thirty for this test. And it sounds like about ten percent of the teams fell below that. The passing threshold for the next test is seventy five.”
I blew out a slow breath. If I failed and got expelled, I could be stuck with going straight into military service. Then I’d have to wait several years before I could take another shot at the tower.
That was unacceptable. “Seventy-five seems like a pretty high bar just to pass.”
Sera shrugged. “Yeah, but it makes sense if you think about it. These tests are designed to see if we’re ready for going in a Climber’s Gate. That’s much more dangerous than our Judgments were. If we can’t pass a simple test like this, we’re not ready. Honestly, I think there should be mandatory tests like this before anyone is allowed to take their Judgement.”
I strongly agreed with her on that point. I also thought we did better with this group than I would have with any other team members, so I was pleased by how far we’d made it.
We’d just have to prepare better for the next one to make sure we passed.
“Okay,” I said, “good. If you think we’re going to go back in the same rooms, we should probably go over the specifics of our rooms. Anyone got paper?”
The only blank paper I had on hand was a magic talking book, and I wasn’t exactly thrilled at the idea of using that for discussing a test. Fortunately, Patrick had some paper in his backpack.
“Let’s draw out what we found in each of the rooms.” No one disagreed with me.
We spent the next few minutes drawing our maps, then I explained what we’d encountered in the two we’d seen. Some of it was new to Patrick, since I’d been the only one who’d made it into that flame statue room. Patrick filled in things that I didn’t know in exchange.
“Jin used some kind of identification magic on the box,” he told us. “All he got out of it is that the box is keyed to open when the right item is pressed on a certain spot. There’s definitely something inside it, too.”
“There was a key in our room we didn’t find any use for,” Sera explained. “It’s possible we’re supposed to switch members across rooms to get it to your room. There were some places on our side we didn’t get to, though.”
“You said you got further than we did — what was your side like?” I shifted to get a look at their maps.
Sera pointed to a circle in the center of her room map. “We started out on this little platform surrounded by water. There were these pillars that came up from the water that we had to jump to, but there was a serpent in the water.”
She pointed to some smaller circles. “There were a few platform paths. We started with the one that led to the left door, got about halfway before the serpent tried to chew on us. Then Marissa hit it with her explodey punch.”
Marissa scratched the back of her head, reddening a bit. “Uh, it’s actually called Star Descends from Sky, Miss—”
Sera waved a hand dismissively. “Right, right. So, she exploded the serpent, which made things a lot easier. Got to the door, but it was locked. Spent a while hopping between platforms. One of ‘em was empty, one led to seemingly nothing, but a couple led to switches. We hit those and a key showed up on the empty platform.”
Marissa looked like she wanted to say something, so I nudged Sera to stop talking. Sera flicked me with a finger, but she apparently got the message.
Given a window of silence, Marissa chimed in. “There were things under the water, too. I saw a grate, and another serpent — a bigger one.”
“Probably just to eat us if we fell in the water.” Sera twitched her nose. “I guess the grate could be a thing, but we found the key to the door.”
I thought back to my own misadventures going through a grate in the floor of a tower room. It was a real possibility that thing represented a second exit. “Did you try going down there?”
“Of course not.” Sara sounded irritated. “At a minimum, we needed to check the obvious door first, and we did. The key from the platform opened it.”
I scratched my chin. “What about the platform that seemed to go nowhere?”
“Seemed like a false path,” she said with a shrug.
“Might have been an invisible platform at the end,” I suggested.
Sera frowned. “Neither of us had any way of seeing invisible stuff.”
“That’s what swapping team members is for. Jin or I could have handled it.”
“Maybe,” her words were clipped, “but we were doing fine on our own.”
“Not trying to knock you down here, Sera. You did better than we did, and that’s great. But we should be scouring every inch of these rooms. That’s going to take teamwork.”
Sera took a deep breath. “All right,” she said, rubbing the bridge of her nose. She took another breath and rotated her shoulders, loosening her posture. “You’re right. I suppose we could have used some magic eyes. If we get stuck in the same room next time, I’ll swap Jin in to take a quick look.”
I nodded. “Assuming we use the same teams next time.”
Patrick gave me a dejected look. “You think we should change them?”
I held up a placating hand. “Maybe, maybe not. If we think we’re going to be in the same rooms, it might be advantageous to switch things up and get new skills in each of them. Or maybe I’m overanalyzing things and we should just do the same stuff faster next time.”
“Faster?” Sera looked thrown at the shift.
“Toward the end of my test, I started hearing a bell ringing in the distance. It was going faster and faster. I’m pretty sure I was running out of time; that’s part of why I rushed my second room.”
“Never heard anything like that on our side. Did you, Mara?” Sera looked at Marissa, who shook her head in response.
From the context, I picked up that ‘Mara’ was a nickname for Marissa I hadn’t heard. I liked it.
Sera expression grew contemplative. “Maybe specific things give us time extensions, or take time away.”
That made sense.
“All right. What was in your second room?” I asked.
Sera grinned, which I supposed was an improvement from her poor mood earlier. “The dragon.” Or perhaps it wasn’t.
I pursed my lips and glared at her. “A dragon.” My tone was dry. It seemed she was done being serious with the conversation.
“Yup,” she said, amusement in her voice. “Big ‘ol dragon, sleeping on a pile of treasure. Right out of a story book.”
“Dragons aren’t real.”
“Right,” she agreed cheerfully. “But they can put whatever they want in a test.”
I rolled my eyes. “I figured they’d want to make this as much like a real tower climb as possible.”
“Eh, we’re hearing new stories coming out of the towers every year,” she countered dismissively. “They change. Maybe eventually there will be a dragon in one of them.”
“Okay,” I sighed. “So? What’d you do?”
“Well, after we were done staring...” She paused when Marissa coughed and
sent her a wink. “We snuck over, quiet as we could, and gawked at the treasure. Tons of magic-looking items in the pile. When we got near the top, we could see a door on the other side. Buuut,” she threw out her arms in exaggerated despair, eyes turned to the ceiling, “it was locked, of course. We tried to play it smart. Looked through the pile until we found a key.” She pointed to a point on the map on the map. “It was on the far right side, underneath a helmet.”
I took note of where she indicated. It sounded like the kind of test where any kind of greed would wake the dragon early.
“The dragon woke right up when I touched the key. Roared like thunder having a bad day. By that point, we were running for the door.”
I leaned in, hooked despite myself. “And then?”
“Thing takes a deep breath, breathing fire all over us.” Sera jerked a thumb at Marissa. “Mara steps in front of me, waving her hands in this circly thing, pushing the fire back like a fan. We still get a little scorched, but the sigils absorb it. I make it to the door and try the key — it doesn’t work.”
Oh, those bastards.
Sera continued, “The dragon flaps upward, flying over the pile, and lunges straight at us. Mara jumps at it, hitting it with her explodey punch, right in the jaw.”
Marissa winced at another use of “explodey punch” to describe her technique, but didn’t say anything.
“There’s a flash as the punch ignites the air, but the dragon is unfazed. Doesn’t even slow down. Snaps its jaws right around Mara’s chest.” Sera put the back of her hand against her forehead. “I screamed in vengeful woe for my fallen comrade, summoning a storm of ice to tear into the dragon’s scales. It screamed into the air, injured,” she ignored Marissa’s mortified mutterings in the background and lifted her chin, “and breathed another blast of flame toward me. I raised an ice wall, but the dragon’s flame was too intense, and I didn’t have Mara to protect me.”
Marissa was flame-red. She had one hand up to cover her eyes.
Sera dropped the dramatic pose. “The next thing I knew, I was waking up outside the test room.”
I considered the story. “Probably did better than I would have,” I concluded.
Sera shook her head. “Actually, I’ve been thinking about that. Your sword might be the key to that fight. The dragon was definitely weaker against ice.”