I ate breakfast, a simple, dark red biscuit served with a few unfamiliar fruits and a dark tea that made me long for coffee or energy drinks, by myself. I spent much of the time shooting glances at the door, wondering if Fallon would knock, hoping she would, and considering if I should make the first move instead.

  But I didn’t.

  Hey, look at that. I’m more and more like a rogue already, hiding from danger instead of confronting it.

  After I ate, I slipped out of the simple clothing I had been given the night before and back into the slightly less simple clothing I had woken up with. The weird, unnatural fabric felt comfortable against my skin compared to the roughness of the linen I had worn for the night. I felt a little more ready to handle my day once it was back on, felt a little more like the girl who had fought and scrapped and survived in the depths of the dungeon I had woken up in.

  A little more like the girl Fallon had-

  Nope. Not going down that route, Dani.

  I was still considering if it would be inappropriate for me to conjure my armor when there was a brisk knock at my door.

  My heart soared with hope for a stupid, naive instant, but I knew immediately that the sound wasn’t Fallon’s gentle, nervous knock.

  I sighed, approached the door, and opened it to find Almara, the Amethyst Magister, waiting for me with crossed arms. Her dark eyes slid up and down my body with the general air of examining a new dress she found uninteresting but acceptable, and nodded sharply. “Come with me.”

  She turned and strode away without a second word, forcing me to skip a step to catch up with her–but I still took a second to turn around and check Fallon’s door.

  It was already open, and the room inside was empty.

  She had left without me.

  Ouch.

  Almara escorted me out of the hall that held our rooms and down another hallway. For a moment, I thought we were going to the Small Hall again, but she soon took another turn that led us into an unfamiliar hallway, this one lined with closed doors placed so closely together that the rooms on the other side of them must’ve been tiny.

  I considered asking Almara just how big this place, the Entrarium, was, but I already knew she wouldn’t tell me anything useful. She had made her feelings about me remarkably obvious with all the skill of a disapproving mother-in-law from a 90’s sitcom.

  Finally, she stopped at a door, gesturing me towards it briskly.

  I arched an eyebrow. “Yes?” I asked. Use your words, Almara.

  “In,” she commanded simply, her tone making me bristle.

  “Where are we?” I asked instead of following her direction.

  Those dark eyes narrowed. “These are the exam rooms. You will wait here until any of the magisters come to offer you an examination.” Her tone made clear she considered that unlikely, at best.

  I nodded, as if this was revelatory information, which it wasn’t, because I wasn't nearly as dumb as she apparently thought I was. “So is Fallon in one of these other rooms? If we’re both waiting, I’d rather wait with her.”

  “Fallon Starcrossed has already gone down to the drillyard for the Steel Magister’s examination.”

  She was already gone? I thought we might at least have a chance to talk after last night… “Why did she get pulled so much earlier than me? We were both told examinations would start after breakfast, I figured we’d be grabbed together.”

  Almara gave me a look that practically reeked with satisfied superiority. “Demand,” she answered simply. “Now, in. I do have other duties to be about today.”

  I didn’t come up with an appropriate comeback before she left, and I knew that she was the type to just smirk at me if I called her a swear word.

  “What a deeply unpleasant woman,” I observed to the world at large.

  As the word at large was currently me, an empty hallway, and a hundred closed doors, there was no one there to vocalize their agreement, but I had to feel that the world at large was on my side with this one.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Of course, with Almara (I refused to use that stupid title for her) gone, my refusal to enter the exam room just left me standing in a hallway like the very idiot she clearly took me as, so, reluctantly, I turned and walked through the door she had indicated, to wait for whatever magister decided to offer me a spot in their school.

  #

  Half an hour later, I started wondering when someone would show up.

  An hour later, I started getting annoyed.

  Two hours later, I started wondering if Almara had purposefully brought me to the wrong place. Seemed like something she’d do.

  The exam room was stiflingly small, without so much as a window. Which I guess made sense, considering I was in the middle of some kind of dungeon, but at least my bedroom had a big window that let in some light from… somewhere. I couldn't see out of it, for whatever reason.

  This place was weird.

  The only furniture was a simple wooden table with a chair on either side. As one of the chairs was plain, unadorned wood, without so much as a cushion, and the other was elaborate and comfortably padded, it was pretty obvious which one I was supposed to sit in.

  By the second hour, I gave up and moved to the comfy chair instead.

  Without anything else to do, I just started poking at the little crystal screen with my stats on it, what the ellids had called my status crystal.

  [Danielle Starcrossed]

  [Level: 1]

  [Primary Class: Rogue]

  [Status: Healthy, 0/20 AP]

  [Experience: 11/30]

  —

  [Abilities: 1/5 slots assigned]

  [Equipment: 2/5 slots assigned]

  [Class Pool]

  [Action Log]

  Experience? That was new. I had a good chunk of it, too.

  I could only think of one place I could’ve gotten experience, and my action log confirmed it.

  > [Prey shadow] defeated, 2 experience gained

  > [Prey shadow] defeated, 2 experience gained

  > [Prey shadow] defeated by party member, 1 experience gained

  You get the point. There were a bunch of them. Between us, Fallon and I had killed seven shadows, and the experience I had gotten from them wasn’t nothing.

  From there, though, the Action Log kind of dried up, I guess because I hadn’t been using any of my abilities or doing anything else more interesting than eating, sleeping, being talked down to, and kind-of breaking up with my maybe-girlfriend. I suppose it was just as well that the action log didn’t give me a play-by-play of that conversation.

  By the third hour of waiting, I had given up sitting around and instead summoned my armor and daggers again. The weight of the longcoat and the constriction of my long gloves was somehow reassuring, and the daggers sat comfortably in my hand.

  I started moving through some basic strikes, the sort of repetitive movements I half-remembered from my childhood karate classes. Swings, cuts, thrusts, chops. I even did some stretches and small exercises, squats and toe lifts and crap like that I had learned in high school gym. I always knew I should have been doing them more often, but with video games and my phone to distract me, it had always been easier to just… not.

  But now, I found the movements oddly relaxing. They helped me burn off some nervous energy, and my strengthened muscles just felt so good to use this way. I built up a light sweat, not pushing myself too hard, and had just gotten down on all fours to do some push-ups when the fucking door opened.

  I sprang up, but I was just winded enough that I stumbled a little bit. My left foot went out from under me, I banged my hip on the table, and my whole leg buckled, leaving me on my ass on the floor.

  “Fuck,” I muttered, rubbing my side.

  Then I remembered what had startled me in the first place.

  I looked up, and saw Elbexas lounging in the doorway, as dark and paunchy and amused as ever.

  “Fuuuck,” I moaned a little more emphatically.

  “I’m guessing that’s a human swear word?”

  “Yes.”

  Elbexas snorted a soft laugh and slipped into the room, closing the door behind him. “Sorry to keep you waiting so long.”

  “It’s fine,” I lied. “You busy trying to recruit Fallon, too?”

  The Watchful Magister replied with an amused breath. “Not quite. I’ll be honest, I’ve been waiting to see if any of the others would make you an offer.”

  I frowned, still sitting on the floor. “So I’m guessing you being here means that’s a no.”

  “Unfortunately, it appears so.” A frown briefly creased Elbexas’s face, and I felt a tiny tug of recognition, but it fled as quickly as the expression did. “The Arcane Conspectus bowed out early. Their exam is the most academic–they only want those with the base understanding of magic to progress in their study–and as humans from outside of our world, Merreira knew neither of you would be likely to pass.

  “I expected Helda to go after you, but apparently something in your demeanor soured her. The Iron Curriculum keeps to a lot more of the old military traditions in their practice, and they like their students deferential and respectful, neither of which describe you very well.”

  I snorted. “Yeah, you might be right there.”

  “And then the Chorus…Well, they caught me by surprise. I expected them to try to get both humans in their numbers.”

  Both? “Then… Fallon?”

  Elbexas blew out a long sigh. “Yep, looks that way. Nothing official yet, but…”

  And maybe she suggested I wouldn’t be a good fit?

  “So that just leaves Vigilant House for me then?”

  “Perhaps,” Elbexas told me, his face suddenly not seeming very amused. “But first, your exam.”