Chapter 10 – …And Then It Ends

Mirian didn’t scream, but plenty of other people did. Instead, she crouched down and got ready to run. For a fraction of a second, a brief memory surfaced. Something like this had happened before. There’d been an explosion, just nearby—

She looked around, ready to fight someone. But there was no one to fight, just broken glass spread across the cobblestones and smoke pouring out of the third floor window.

At least this time, the guards came. Two of them approached, one from the courtyard, one from a nearby street. “What happened?” one of them said, hand on his revolver holster.

“It just exploded!” a fourth year student said.

“Yeah, there was a green flash, and then… is it on fire? Look at all that smoke!” a second year student said.

A crowd was quickly forming. Mirian knew she had to get to class but she couldn’t take her eyes off the smoke.

“Get the sorcerers,” one of the guards said to the other. The other one took off running.

Another second year student by Mirian said, “We should… like… cast a wind spell or something. To put out the flames. Does anyone…”

“No!” she snapped. “Putting more air in there is just going to make the fire hotter. Or spread whatever just exploded around. There’s a reason they called for someone who knows what they’re doing.” She said it with a lot more anger than she meant to. The girl backed away from her, eyes wide.

A bell started clanging, getting louder as it approached them. It was a fire wagon, a horseless carriage powered by a spell engine, loaded with supplies. As it approached, the driver shouted at the crowd to move. Gradually, it parted, and the wagon rolled up to the building.

Two sorcerers dressed in red trousers and jackets leapt down, bandoliers with a dozen wands strapped across their torsos. “Do we know the kind of fire?” one of them asked.

“No,” Mirian said.

The first sorcerer pulled out a wand from his bandolier and held it in front of him. Bright lines traced their way through the smoke. “Probably a magic start, but it’s mundane now. Keep this area clear in case there’s a secondary explosion,” he told the guard.

The guard started yelling for the crowd to back up, and the two sorcerers rushed into the building, grabbing for a second wand. Wands only could contain one spell, but most were designed with enhancements already built in. It didn’t look like much, but those sorcerers were packing some serious power.

It took a few minutes, but then a force barrier spread across the third floor window and the smoke abruptly stopped coming out. She could see it building up across the barrier, and then it churned and was drawn back away from that barrier. Some sort of gas-collection spell, she guessed, and then sapping the heat energy from it so all the smoke became inert ash.

The force barrier vanished, and one of the sorcerer’s leaned out the window. “Clear,” he said. “Get a priest.”

Mirian’s heart sank.

The crowd started to disperse, but Mirian stayed. She had to know: Who? Probably, she didn’t know them. There were a lot of students at the Academy. And why had they been in the building so early? The Alchemistry building didn’t have classes before 6 o’clock.

The sorcerers brought out the body, and it was clear they hadn’t summoned the priest for healing, but for last rites. They’d found some cloth to veil the body; apparently none of the wands they carried had any sort of illusion spell that could do that. It was badly burned, but when the wind caught the sheet, Mirian briefly saw who it was.

Platus was dead.

She hadn’t liked Platus. He wasn’t nice, and when she’d worked with him on a group project her first year, he’d been a total pain to work with. But she’d known him. And he was… dead.

Her mind went to the cloaked figures she’d been seeing. Had they done this? What were they even after? And who could she tell? Not the guards. Could she trust the sorcerers? Or would they just tell the guards?

In a daze, she turned and walked. Where was she going? Class, she realized. Really? She was just going to walk into class, twenty minutes late, and… what? Pretend everything was normal?

Yeah, she realized. Better to get distracted by arcane theory, so she didn’t have to think about what happened.

Of course, it didn’t work very well. She kept finding herself tuning out whatever Professor Torres was saying. What had happened? Was it going to happen again? More, there was that memory the explosion had triggered. She’d forgotten about it, but it was there. When she searched for it, it was like looking through a fogged glass; it was too indistinct, but the emotions were there, and her heart kept racing.

Her focus in Enchantments wasn’t any better. And of course, third period, class was canceled. No one was being allowed into the Alchemistry building; even Professor Atger was outside.

By Arcane Physics, apparently word had gotten around. Professor Endresen started the lecture with, “I suppose by now you’ve all heard.” She didn’t say anything after that for a long time. Then, she said, simply, “It’s a dangerous profession, the one you’ve chosen. That danger is only mitigated by knowledge. Nothing else.” Endresen looked out the window then, and for a minute, said nothing. That minute dragged on, and then she said, “I suppose I’ll begin today’s lecture.”

Mirian didn’t go to dueling, like she normally did. The sky was dark, but she cast a looped light spell before she left the dorm, then left her spellbook. The spell would illuminate her way for at least an hour before her auric mana couldn’t sustain the draw. She headed for the Mage’s Grove. She ran, much harder than she normally did, pushing herself until she’d be too tired to think, and every time she thought about what happened, ran hard, ran faster. There had to be nothing left.

When she got to the dorm, Lily was there.

“Was it really him?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Mirian said. “I didn’t… know him very well.”

“We’d been in so many classes together. Then… he wasn’t there. I mean, I… I don’t want to speak ill of the dead. But everyone else was there, and he wasn’t. And we heard… shit. Does anyone know what happened?”

Mirian shook her head. “I don’t know.”

They hugged each other, but they didn’t say much after that.

That weekend, Mirian enmeshed herself in studying. She found that if she focused everything on studying, then ran until exhaustion, she could avoid thinking about it.

Seventhday, she went to the temple. The sermon was about Altrukyst, the Traveler. He spoke of the great journeys of life, but all Mirian could think was, what if that journey ends too soon?

After the sermon, she waited to talk to the priest. “Holy one, why is there death?” she asked.

“That’s the question, isn’t it? One of the prophets asked the Ominian. The response seems to be that it’s an inevitable part of the universe. That doesn’t make it any easier, though, does it?” The priest looked at her with sympathy. She could tell he’d had this conversation before. In the coming days, perhaps a lot more.

“No, it doesn’t,” she said.

“My next sermon, I will discuss it.”

Mirian nodded, and headed back to her dorm. The next morning, they found a notice posted on the doors: Classes canceled for 26th of Solem, Firstday. The Academy would be doing a security review of the academic buildings.

So she and Lily spent the day talking and studying. Lily took her to the practice range, and Mirian let off some steam by using her flame beam spell on a target, while Lily showed off her ability to spear a target with an enhanced force missile.

Then they went for a walk in the Mage’s Grove. It was near the southern part of wood that Mirian saw movement in the brush as they rounded the corner. Mirian held out her hand. “Let’s go a different way,” she said. “I don’t like that trail. This one’s nicer.”

Lily was confused, but when they were farther away, Mirian whispered, “Did you see that?”

“See… what? No?”

Great, she was going to sound crazy again. “There was someone hiding in the bushes. Maybe someone looking to pull a prank or something. I just didn’t want to have to deal with it.” That wasn’t what she’d seen, though. There was no orange tinge or white fabric. It was that black cloak again, that damned black cloak. “Or maybe it’s something worse,” she said.

“You’re good. All good,” Lily said. She could see Mirian was worked up, and maybe she’d thought of why that might be, even if she was wrong.

“Thanks,” Mirian said, and kept her eyes darting about for anything else. “Let’s go home.”

***

It was nice to return to the normality of classes the next day. The Alchemistry building was still closed, but a second notice had been posted to all the doors (and around the plaza) of where all the alchemistry classes had been moved to. It was a bit more of a walk, but the windows could just make out the corner of the Market Forum, so Mirian spent some time gazing out the window while Atger pretended he wasn’t reciting the textbook.

“Have you found out anything about Nicolus?” she asked Xipuatl.

“No,” he said. “And Calisto doesn’t know anything either. In fact, she was very distraught to learn he just left. Spent some time camping outside his dorm, but he’s definitely not there. Unless he’s turned nocturnal.”

“Calisto is… stalking him?”

Xipuatl sighed. “Anyone with a whiff of power has to deal with people like that. They think if they attach themselves like a remora to the person, they’ll get to share that power. I suppose it sometimes does work.”

“Does it happen to you?”

“Rarely. The dark skin throws them off. Mostly, I get people speaking to me really slowly like I’m an idiot because they assume I don’t speak Cuelsin or Friian. It’s really annoying, but I suppose it could be worse. Anyways, off to Arcane Physics. Oh, and let’s cancel the study session. No Nicolus, and apparently he—well, his knight—didn’t reserve the room for today. If he’s still gone by Fourthday, we can just meet at one of the study desks, I’m not shelling out the silver to reserve it myself.”

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She said thanks and bid him goodbye. Well, there was another unsolved mystery. She’d had such a good feeling about the start of the quarter, too. Now it felt like she was just waiting for more things to go wrong. What was next, another hole in the ceiling?

***

On Thirdday after classes, she decided to go dueling instead of running. No cloaked figures there. Not as many people showed up at the Stygalta Arena during the week, but she was sure she could find someone to practice with. She was in her dorm room, and had just finishing buttoning her drakeskin jacket on when she heard the noise. It was loud—really loud, this CRACK sound that echoed off the buildings. Her heart started racing. Then she heard another, and another.

Lily turned. “What is that?” she asked.

Then, another cracking sound, and the window of the dorm shattered.

“FUCK!” Mirian shouted, and hit the ground. The glass had shattered, spreading itself all over the floor. One of the shards had embedded itself in the dueling glove. She plucked it out and threw it across the room away from Lily.

There was another sound, a thundering clap that was even louder, even though from the echo it sounded further away.

Lily screamed, and Mirian said, “We have to go. We have to go! We have to get the burning hells out of here! Grab your spellbook.”

Mirian, for her part, grabbed her rod she’d been working on for class. She’d finished it over the weekend. With the rod in one hand and dragging Lily’s arm with the other, she dragged them through the door. Other students were emerging from their rooms.