I noticed there were still lights flickering in the windows of my home as I left Azarus’s forge. As I approached the door, I glanced up briefly at the sky to see Elys sitting full and heavy on the horizon. That meant her influence was at its greatest right now, and thus, I knew Fade had to be busy. My Familiar had his own lessons to attend to in the Concord, courtesy of Taran. I could barely sense him right now as if we were separated by a great distance, so I knew he was likely in there. I probably wouldn’t see him again until after class tomorrow. Hell, for all I knew, Sena had joined him. The Shurengan had a tendency to tag along into that realm.

  When I opened the door to the warm wooden halls of the building we had refurbished, I soon discovered the source of the light. Rachel was lingering in the front living room equivalent we had, just off to the left of the entrance hall. The woman who was essentially my combination nanny and cook these days was reclining in one of our large, plush chairs that we’d gotten for cheap down in the markets. Lit by flickering lamplight, she seemed to be reading a book of some kind, and at this angle I couldn’t make out the title.

  Rachel’s eyes flicked up my way at my entrance, and she nodded at me in greeting. I returned it, clearing my throat. “Is she…?” I trailed off, but I’m sure I was understood.

  The response was a low hum of confirmation from the woman and another nod. “Yes, I put her down a few minutes ago,” She said quietly. “Bait is reading to her now.”

  I smiled at her and left Rachel to her own reading, turning away and approaching the staircase. When Azarus and I had worked to get this place livable again, I’d deliberately made sure that the old steps laid down by the previous Knight had remained creaky.

  I wanted those old boards to be loud as people stepped on them. For…a variety of reasons.

  As I walked up them, I made sure to press on them hard enough to alert Bait to my coming. He knew the drill by now, and as I crested the top of the stairs and turned left down the upper hall, I could see his, my, form outlined by the light spilling from Aveline’s room. When I reached him, I could see a familiar book held in his hands, closed around one of his thumbs to mark progress.

  Before he could wisecrack at me like I’m sure he wanted to, I tossed my school bag at his chest. He caught it with an oof and looked at me curiously.

  I just smirked at him. “I need you to go finish up a paper from Voss,” I said, to his accompanying sigh. I patted him on the shoulder almost mockingly in response. “Oh, and I tore the parchment working on it, so you’ll have to transcribe what I already did.”

  Bait sighed again, brushing my hand off. “You dick,” He said, shaking his head. “Can I at least use the Julianne’s pen?”

  I shrugged at him. “Nope, bent it. I’ll have to take it in to get repaired.”

  Aetherial Melding was cheating bullshit, but I couldn’t fix everything with it. Not the same degree as the original crafter could.

  My response was a dirty look from the clone before he shoved the book into my chest. “Page one forty one,” He grunted at me, before opening and closing the door across from Aveline’s. Inside, I caught a brief of my combination bedroom and study, before he closed the door behind him.

  I don’t know what it said about me that I enjoyed needling my own clone so much, but man.

  I didn’t want to stop.

  He'd likely get back at me later for it, anyway. These days, there was a constant back-and-forth game between the 'two' of us to see who could inconvenience the other more. It was all in good fun, and as soon as we merged back together, there was plenty of ribbing as we synced and absorbed each other's memories for the day. It was...an odd experience, to say the least, seeing every day from two separate perspectives. But something about Ringed Mind meant I was insulated from the effects of what was essentially doubled time. Some kind of interaction with Umbra Gemina Exactoris.

  I wasn't going to complain about it.

  Shaking off those thoughts, I stepped into the warm light of Aveline’s room. Azarus and I had taken great pains to make this one as comfortable as possible for the little girl. We’d even included her in the process of decorating it, just so she could feel at home. It was the least that we could do for the last of the Netherim, considering all that she had gone through.

  The result was less girly than I was expecting.

  I think, though, that was because my expectations had been born from my Terran upbringing. I’d never really known any children, and I had been expecting, I dunno, a preference for pink and lace? But no. Aveline had preferred something closer to the environment she had grown up in. The Bunker had struck me as a bit stark, considering its utilitarian design meant to hide the Netherim from the world. Maybe it had been different in its heyday, but I was unlikely to ever know. And so, Aveline had outright chosen to decorate in soft whites, silver fittings, shiny metal furnishing, and more subtle designs for her room. It was still a bit girly, but…more muted.

  However, she seemed happy about it, and that was all that mattered.

  Cast in the shadow of her bedside lamp, I saw Aveline perk up at the sight of me, sitting up in her bed. She smiled widely at me, if not a bit sleepily. “Nate! Did you just get home?”

  I returned the smile, stepping inside and closing the door behind me. “I did,” I said softly, approaching the stool next to her soft, white bed, with its steel frame. Once I sat down, I thumped the cover of the book I was holding. “How was your day, Lina? Have fun at school?”

  Something I was surprised to discover was that there were schooling systems in place for children. They weren’t the public schooling system I was used to back on Terra, but they apparently functioned well enough. You had to pay for the entrance of a child, and you typically had to choose either from a private institution or something run by the Gyreite church, but they worked to educate the children of the upper crust. If you could pay, you made sure that your child got a good head start before their Awakening, both academically and practically. My understanding was that Grey had been a driving force in setting the current system up, which wasn’t a surprise. My mentor was famously known for his fervent belief in education.

  And while that was all well and good, it had been discovered that Aveline was much farther ahead their her peers, academically, and often knew more than even her teachers. Not a surprise, in retrospect, when I considered the likely advanced level of education that the Netherim provided to their children through the GLEAMs. But I’d still kept her in classes, because school is more than just a place you go to be taught.

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  It was a place where you learned socially as well.

  Aveline was… a fairly isolated child, up here at the lighthouse. She didn’t have any neighbor kids to play with or befriend, and so it was my hope that she could find her footing at her own little Academy. Both in Herztalian society as a whole, and with friends among the student body.

  She was having…mixed results.

  “It was okay,” Aveline responded quietly, shrugging her shoulders carelessly. “We didn’t do much.”

  I eyed her quietly for a moment and then decided not to press. If she was having a problem, then I’d wait for her to approach me first. She didn’t seem like she was in distress, so…

  Kids needed to learn how to solve problems on their own, sometimes. Nothing good would come from hovering over her, especially on a world as harsh as Vereden.

  At least, more than I already was. Some days Bait watched over her, and some days he worked as our artisan persona.

  I dropped the subject and opened the book. “Alright then,” I said, to Aveline’s sigh of relief. “Now, we were still working our way through The Tales of Esquerrie Equinea, right? Page one forty one,” I cleared my throat, eyes tracking the open book before me and affecting a voice. “But Sir Canina, I don’t want to be a cheesemaker…”

  ………………………..

  The next day, I saw the girls off as Rachel walked Aveline down the slope to school. As usual, Azarus barely grunted more than a terse ‘good morning’ to me before he disappeared in a shower of sunbeams. The Dwarf was such a workaholic that the teleportation Skill was actually a boon to his academics. I had no doubt he’d worked through the night once I was gone, and was looking forward to doing more work on campus.

  I, meanwhile, had to wing my way over there quickly as well. Today was a day I was more likely to be casting, so I hadn't left Bait with the girls before they set out. Beyond that, it was a long shot, but I was hoping I would be able to catch Grey before he descended into his endless series of daily meetings. It was a faint hope considering he tended to deal with his Order duties earlier in the day, over in the chapter house. It was a lot of work managing both the Academy and the Order.

  Which, huh.

  Now that I thought about it, I still hadn’t thought to visit the chapter house. I…don’t think it was on campus, per se? I believe it was just outside of it, on the far side beyond the main gate entrance to the Academy. I hadn’t explored the entire city of Blutstein yet, with how busy I was.

  But alas. When I reached Draymoor, the replacement maid Grey had hired after Rachel ditched him told me that he was already gone. It was no use trying to catch him now; my only chance would come after class.

  Speaking of which, it was time for me to get to it. Today was one of my favorite days of the week.

  Abjuration day.

  ………………………….

  A giant leather-bound tome, roughly half the size of my entire torso, slammed down onto the thick oaken desk at the front of the classroom. The impact was great enough that the entire edifice, nearly as long as a tree itself, creaked under the blow, while some loose pieces of parchment blew away to float down to the floor.

  The entire class was so used to this by now that none of us even flinched.

  Professor Markus Stendahl, a tall, grizzled old man with steel gray hair, an eyepatch over one eye, and an actual peg leg, scowled out at us. “Shut the hell up and pay attention!” He barked into the classroom.

  This, too, was so common that none of us had been speaking in the first place. According to legend, Stendahl had been starting his classes like this for literal decades, ever since he’d retired from the Army. Apparently, it wasn’t because he had dementia or anything.

  He was just an extreme creature of habit. Presumably, an early class of his back in the day had been real chatterboxes.

  Stendahl stared out at the assembled Abjuration students with narrowed, suspicious eyes. Whatever he was looking for, he didn’t find it, because his scowl lessened to a slight degree. He glanced down and opened up the enormous tome he was always lugging around with him, and rapidly flipped through it. “Alright, alright,” I heard him mutter from my seat next to a tall window in the middle rows. I was thankful that the Academy had tiered lecture hall seating. I always had more than enough room to myself, especially in less popular classes like this one. There were barely over a hundred people in the Neophyte Abjuration course, which, believe me. Was way less than some of my classes. “Neophyte course, we were on…”

  “Monster repelling wards, Professor,” A well-meaning fool piped up from the first row eagerly. I winced at the words, noticing I wasn’t the only one to do so.

  We all knew what was coming next.

  Stendahl’s head snapped up to fix his singular eye on the speaker. “Did I ask for your opinion, maggot?!” He screamed, before promptly raising one hand. The Professor pointed one finger at the offender, and before the student could even react, a small, bright-blue orb of Mana about the size of a marble shot from the digit…

  To impact the forehead of the speaker.

  He immediately conked out, slumping over to fall asleep on his open notebook. In moments, faint snores echoed out from his position. Without even twitching, I noticed that the person next to him flipped the poor fool's own cloak up over his back and over his head, to better block off the sound.

  The well-meaning student had been, as I’d heard described, ‘Stendahled’. He’d have to get notes from someone else if he wanted to catch up. That sleeping hex wasn’t wearing off for a while.

  “Right,” Stendahl grunted, finding his spot in the book and turning around to the massive slate blackboard on the back wall. “We were on monster-repelling wards. Now, any fool with a rune chisel can carve out the appropriate string on a Ward Stone. The real test of skill is casting an actual free-standing, independent Ward Spell…”

  As the Professor finally got the lecture underway, I made sure to take my own notes with one of my less expensive backup pens.

  That was the thing about Stendahl. He may be a crotchety old fart, but he really knew his way around Wards.

  I hadn’t even known free-standing, temporary Wards were a thing before I took this class.

  ………………………………….

  Several hours later, Stendahl was finished with his lecturing, but I was surprised when he didn’t dismiss the class like usual. Instead, he just stared out at us with a gimlet eye. “Alright then. You’re all that’s left after the midterms. Those who failed have already been washed out.” He said smugly. Our tests had been a few days ago, and looking around, it looked like we were down maybe a fourth of the class.

  Huh.

  I hadn’t thought they’d been that hard.

  “Which means it’s time to saddle you layabouts with a project,” He said, outright smirking now. In response, a low moan echoed out from the class, and Stendahl outright laughed at us. “That’s right! Free rides over. Time to get to work. Now, it’ll be a duo project, and I’m assigning you a partner for it. You’ll have until the end of the semester to work on something. A completely unique Ward Stone. It doesn’t have to be fancy, just creative. If you turn in a standard Monster Repeller, I’m going to fail your slacking ass!” He barked, shaking a fist at the class. “Why, one year, I had a team turn in a stone that repelled just bees! Bees, of all things! Straight A’s! I made sure they got a scholarship! Now, listen up for your partner!”

  As Stendahl cleared his throat and began listing out the last names of students, I sighed quietly to myself. Great. More work to pile on, in addition to everything else going on in my life.

  But, I suppose this was something I had quite literally signed up for when I joined the Academy.

  I snapped out of my wool gathering when Stendahl said my name. “Hart!” He barked, pointing at me. “With Itzelan!”

  Who?

  I…wasn’t the most social of people, but I thought I knew everyone in the class. I didn’t recognize that name.

  I followed the finger of Stendahl to find he was pointing it at someone I’d never noticed before. They were feminine, I could tell, but they were wearing an abnormally long version of the grey school cloak, hiding their form. They also had their hood up, but I could still tell when they looked up my way from the lower rows. As they did, I was able to make out the faint protrusion of very small tusks jutting from their thin, grey-skinned lips.

  I blinked.

  Huh.

  One of the Orc students, I suppose.

  Interesting.