Chapter Thirty-Two: The Cells (and Announcement)

First years at Varin’s Academy typically only learned the basics, but by the time many students reached the end of their third year, their runework had grown in complexity—and in risk. One of the early headmasters had realized that allowing students to blow up the school repeatedly wasn’t conducive to learning, and she’d built a half-dozen rooms deep below the Grand Lecture Hall. The students colloquially referred to these small, solid granite rooms, lined with silver for magic flow and encased with chromite to dull any disasters, as the cells.

So far, to Eola’s knowledge, there had been seven lethal or near-lethal incidents in the cells this year. Four had been backlash from failed Second and Third Order runes. One was an alchemical process that got out of control, which had killed the student and two others. And the other two had only been referred to as ‘unknown magical procedure, First Order.’

Eola was desperately curious about the cells, but a first-year student needed a professor’s permission to gain access.

So, when the attendant third-year not only waved Patrice through the first triple-thick oak door, but didn’t even bother to check that she had a signed note, Eola knew something was up. “Cell Four, Clerk,” he said without lifting his feet from his desk.

“Can I have Cell One instead? I’ve got a visitor.” Patrice slipped her hand around Eola’s, then held it up for the young man to see.

The third year raised an eyebrow. “Clerk, you know visiting hours are—“

“I know, I know. Noon to three. I’m asking for thirty minutes, Jaime. No one should be signed up for it right now,” Patrice said.

Eola kept her mouth shut and, after an appraising up-and-down look, Jaime nodded slowly. “Cell One. Thirty minutes. Shut the door behind you. I’d ask for your casting plan, but—“

Patrice’s grip tightened around Eola’s fingers. “No plan survives contact with the worst student at Varin’s. Thanks, Jaime.”

The second set of doors opened, and a…smell…hit Eola’s nose like a thrown brick. It was impossible to describe, sulfury and sugary at the same time, with an acidic, burning undertone that melted into a gravy scent, then transformed into…Patrice winced sympathetically. “Cat urine, yes. It’s been like this since the alchemy mishap. They’ve tried cleaning it with magic, but I doubt anything short of a Worldshaper’s going to fix it. Come on, we’re the first door on the right.”

Five minutes later, Eola sat in a tiny, damp room about the size of an outhouse. The smell—the one from the hallway, not an outhouse’s aroma, thank Y’aer—lessened after she shut the chromite door, leaving a narrow viewing slit as her only way to see Patrice. “I’m ready,” she said through it.

“Great. Just great.” Patrice’s voice sounded muffled, and when she muttered something under her breath, Eola didn’t catch any of it. “Pay attention.”

She drew a rune. Even as she did, Eola recognized the phrase—Old Alemic, a line, a triangle, and two lines. Bright Ball. Patrice drew the rune lazily, almost as if she didn’t care where the lines were. It didn’t matter, really. Child’s Magic was built for errors, and no matter how badly Patrice drew it, she’d still cast—

The room ignited. Eola screamed as a fireball crashed toward her. It hit the chromite barrier between her privy-sized room and Patrice, shaking the stone around her. When the smoke cleared, her friend stood in the middle of the blast zone, unharmed save a burn mark on the reinforced leather suit she’d changed into.

“What was that?” Eola asked after she got her breathing and heart back under control.

“My attunement,” Patrice said.

“There’s no possible attunement that makes Bright Ball do that, especially not something to do with cloth. You told me you were a cloth-attuned mage.”

“I wasn’t lying, just…look, it’ll be easier to explain after you see what’s happening here.” Patrice took a deep breath and reached out with her finger. She sketched the same rune, just as carelessly, and Eola flinched.

This time, though, a shimmering shield appeared between them, right over the view slit. “Safe Shield?” she asked.

“This time, it’s Safe Shield. But…” Another cast, and this time, a tiny, ethereal bird dropped to Patrice’s feet, chirped loudly, and flew around her twice before disappearing into thin air. “Not this time.”

“You…have no control over your magic, do you?” Eola asked.

“Correct in one. The tutors my parents brought in to identify my attunement called it Fate Unwoven, but they don’t know what they’re talking about. It’s broken, that’s all it is. I actually got lucky here—usually, all I get are ridiculously dangerous spells or worthless Child’s Magic. Two out of three spells that are functional and safe is well above average.” Patrice sighed. “There was the greenhouse incident, of course, but the worst one was when I was fourteen, and I tried to cast Bright Ball as a night light. I accidentally levitated the entire family out of their beds. Total nightmare. Curse Y’aer. I just wanted to be a normal mage. I don’t even have a familiar…”

Eola didn’t have anything to say to that, so she just stayed quiet. Patrice’s attunement was far, far worse than hers. At least when her spells had failed as a child, they’d just fizzled out. “So, you haven’t actually done magic since you were a…”

“A toddler, basically, yes. And no. I’ve cast very rarely.” Patrice stared at the ground. “I’ve done more magic in the cells here than I have anywhere else. And when you found me, it wasn’t because the monster had ambushed me. There wasn’t a monster at all—at least, not after my spell went off, there wasn’t. But it hurt me as much as it did the monster, and I couldn’t admit I’d lost to a Y’aer-cursed trog without looking like a failure. I should have stuck with my hammer, but I panicked. I always panic.”

She sniffled and held out her arms from her sides. “So, there you have it. I’m the worst mage in Varin’s Academy. See?”

“No, you’re not.”

Patrice stared at the viewport skeptically as Eola unlocked the shielded door and joined Patrice in the cell room. It smelled like fire, fur, and the pervasive, overwhelming stench of that alchemical accident. She ignored it as best she could and took Patrice’s hand. “I mean, it’s definitely not good. But we can figure something out—we just need more time. Let’s head back to the dorm, sit down, and get some work done.”

The next day, Eola arrived at Instructor Tarik’s office, stared at the complex booklet sitting on his desk and the equally complex stack of ungraded, third-year ideograms, and sighed.

The three of them—not Roth, who’d holed up in his room the moment Patrice and Eola walked in—had stayed up too late, tinkering with Patrice’s attunement. All they’d done was brainstorm possible controlling factors for her Fate Unwoven attunement. Colin had been the driving factor there. His attunement and Patrice’s felt diametrically opposed, and he was convinced that if he simply found the rules, his Order would overcome her Chaos.

Patrice hadn’t found it helpful. Eventually, she’d told Colin to knock it off, that she’d already been through every Y’aer-cursed experiment he could come up with, and that if he had any Y’aer-cursed ideas, he could keep them to himself so she could get some Y’aer-cursed sleep. Then she’d slammed her room door loudly enough that Roth’s harp had stopped.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

So now, Eola was tired, grumpy, and worse, she had a pile of Third Order runes to look over.

Third Order runes were the worst. She could figure out most of the Second Orders after a quick glance into her spellbook or Instructor Tarik’s notes; they had mostly universal rules. Starblaze Orb, for example, was a relatively simple Second Order spell, and students almost always botched it in the same three or four places.

But Third Orders were different. Eola cracked Instructor Tarik’s pamphlet and started reading.

Dreamwalk is an excellent test ideogram for mages looking to attempt the archmage trial. A handful of my students think they’re ready for it. They’re all fools. Prove them wrong.

In order to pass this lesson, not only must there be no mistakes, but the ideograms in question must match the sketch below perfectly. Show no mercy, Miss Lemiene.

“No mercy, huh?” Eola sighed and got to work.

As she marked up rune after rune, she made a game out of it. How many modifying marks could she find before the end of her work hour? It wasn’t likely that any students would pass, so if she missed a mistake or two, it wouldn’t be the end of the world. After all, a single mistake, or even a single variation, would fail them. So, given that, what was the harm in practicing her mark identification?

She’d managed to identify seven different marks—and was on the last couple of runes—when a pair of voices interrupted her. They were muffled by the door, but even so, Eola could tell they were right outside.