Wulf returned to his room, then immediately began an experiment. He crumpled a few leaves of bloodwort into a ball, then placed them in the bottom of a wine glass, before pouring in a glug of vinegar.

  He’d let it sit throughout the day and come back in the evening to see how his first attempt at making a tincture went.

  Then, with a small sip from his balance potion, he opened up his storage pendant for a few seconds—enough time to place the rest of his wine glasses, his canteen, his holding rack, and burn-box inside the rift.

  It sealed, leaving him with a haversack and two flasks. A luck potion and a balance potion.

  Almost as soon as he closed the spatial rift, the morning bell chimed, signalling that breakfast was ready, and that classes would start in a half hour.

  ~ ~ ~

  Wulf went about his day and paid as much attention as he could during his classes. Out of curiosity, he kept an eye out for Kalee, but she was nowhere to be seen today.

  The fact that he wasn’t alone in having a new life, he decided, was reassuring, so long as her goals aligned with his. If he had to deal with someone else like him who was working against him…well, he didn’t know what he’d do. Being a Mage, she’d gain tiers faster than him, which meant gaining more Skills and establishing her Baseline.

  For every sub-tier before reaching Copper, an Ascendant gained a new skill, whether it was active or passive. These became their baseline. After that, the rewards for advancing a tier became more varied. Skill upgrades, mana storage upgrades, and more.

  Not a problem to worry about now. He attended his first lecture: Introduction to Mage studies, which, while he wasn’t a Mage, would be helpful to learn, as he’d be working in teams with a Mage.

  The professor, Dr. Timme, was an older woman with short gray hair and thick-rimmed glasses. She wore a long violet dress and carried around a staff, which was the weapon of choice for Mages (as Wulf understood, the lack of a blade helped them concentrate their spells better).

  “A Mage’s most important ability is conducting spells through stone,” Dr. Timme said in a scratchy voice—too many years of smoking, Wulf guessed. “Although it is not a Skill that one earns through the Field, it is nonetheless necessary. As a Mage, you are the second most important member of an Oronith crew. You are responsible for operating an Oronith’s weapons systems.

  “With your spells, you will either enhance an Oronith’s weapons, create ranged attacks, or defend against enemy spells. Thus, it is important for us to understand how different spells move through stone, and above all, understand how different stone types react with our spells, so as to not interfere with a Pilot’s control. Our second topic of the semester, which will take us the longest, is our discussion on stone and spell conductivity…”

  After that, he attended his Introduction to Scouting and Spotting course, where the professor continued lecturing them through the details of scouting patterns and formations. Rangers climbed around the outside of golems, observing and watching their surroundings while picking off smaller enemies with their bows. Though the Oronith cockpits were good, they didn’t provide perfect visibility.

  After lunch, Wulf sprinted over to a different theater on the other side of the academy’s central butte, where he attended his ‘Introduction to Golem Piloting’ class. It would probably end up being his most boring class, as he knew more than the basics of being a Pilot, so he used the time spent sitting in the back of the lecture to make notes and theorize on how he was going to use his abilities to actually make a golem move for long enough to win a fight against an equal opponent.

  On the first day, he’d scrawled plenty of notes, but made no headway, and it turned out the only helpful thing he gained from that class was learning exactly when their piloting labs were—on Sixthday evening.

  But when Wulf was leaving the class, Irmond intercepted him at the doorway.

  “Hey, Wulf,” the elven boy whispered, jumping on his tip-toes as he followed. “A bunch of us are going to the village tonight. New tavern opened, and they’re giving discounts to all Academy students. C’mon, it’ll be fun. Like, like really fun. Is that how humans say it? Okay, I’m still learning how to interact better with humans, so I kinda need this too.”

  “I…I don’t really have any silver or gold,” Wulf whispered back. He walked with the current of the crowd as they left the theatre.

  “It’s no problem. Sounds like Prince Eèras is footing the bill.”

  Wulf raised his eyebrows. Considering the Academy was the best school in the confederacy, of course there’d be a few higher nobles. He simply remembered Prince Eèras as a hardened commander, leading an army against a swarm of demons and somehow pulling off a victory. Not as a young boy going around buying drinks for everyone.

  “Fifth in line for the Confederacy All-Throne still gets a big stipend, hm?” Wulf muttered. “Sure, I’ll come along. But…alright, I can’t stay too late.”

  ~ ~ ~

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  The village of Arinilka was one of the Academy’s satellite cities, which helped provide staff and resources to support the massive institution. It was to the west of the Academy grounds, still located on the rising and falling hills, but with the shadow of the mountains in the background.

  The sun was setting by the time Wulf and Irmond made it out to the village. Though Wulf’s only clothing was his Academy uniforms, Irmond had loaned him a casual doublet with leaf-pattern embroidery. Its top buttons didn’t do up very well (which Irmond insisted made him look more casual, and was a good thing).

  They passed the village outskirts—a watermill with a cobblestone base and a half-timber upper half, topped off with a thatched roof, and a few shacks.

  Villagers strolled the streets. Most were fair-skinned humans, but there were a few travellers from across the Confederacy. They swept the brick roads and tucked their wares indoors for the night, but the windows of their two-story half-timbered houses still shone amber, and silhouettes moved behind them.

  Wulf only saw one Ascendant who wasn’t academy-aged. Natural-born Ascendants were rare, he reminded himself—only about one in a million could interact with the Field, which was why there were so few Oronith Academies. They could, however, pass their power down through bloodlines.

  “Just there, at the end of the street,” Irmond said, pointing to a larger building at the end of the street, almost in the exact center of the village. Like the other buildings, its first floor was cobblestone, and its upper floors were made of wood, wattle and daub, and thatch. Chimneys puffed smoke, and a sign hung above its door, reading: The Bounding Bobcat.

  Wulf inclined his head to the side. He’d never really been one for going to parties, and he hadn’t exactly taken Irmond to be the type, either. “You’re full of surprises.”

  “Oh, come on, it’ll be fun.” Irmond himself had donned a sleeveless tunic with swirls of autumnal embroidery down the front, fitting for a Maple Elf.

  “Didn’t take you for the partying type,” Wulf said.

  “What? I mean, alright, maybe I’m not the top elf here, but…” Irmond marched on ahead. “Back home, I was a lord’s son, and we put on plenty of parties. Like, elven parties, I suppose, so it probably went differently. But compared to these guys, I’m a peasant. You helped me, and now, I’m dragging you along with me. You can’t just sit at the back of the class all the time and pout.”

  “I don’t pout.”

  “...Yeah.” Irmond shook his head, then pushed open the tavern’s door.

  Immediately, a wall of sound and colour hit Wulf. Fiddles and lutes strummed in the distance, and he thought he could hear a zither, too. People banged on empty kegs like they were drums, and half-drunk students sang songs, egged on by the barmaids.

  No one was in uniform—they didn’t have to be if they went off campus—and a wall of bright colours flashed in the candlelight. Wulf rubbed his forehead and blinked, then clenched his teeth and forced himself to make sense of the chaos.

  There had to be at least fifty, if not a hundred students milling about in the first floor of the tavern, weaving between thick supporting pillars, stacks of barrels, and tables. Some smoked pipes and cigars, and Wulf coughed on the haze. They wore vibrant silks and embroidered tunics, trousers and skirts and shorts, all probably more revealing than they would’ve gotten away with at home. Tankards of ale clinked in their hands, tables shuddered, and cheers erupted from the corner.

  Wulf exhaled, then breathed in the life of the place. Someone pushed him from behind, and the crowd swept him up, and everything blurred. After a few minutes of following Irmond, his mind began clearing. The tension lifted out of his shoulders.

  Then, when the fiddlers began a new song, he joined in, singing with the others and even at one point jumping over a table. He helped a struggling satyr boy pack pipeweed into his pipe, then caught a serving tray when an elven girl knocked it off a table.

  It was like a coat of dust had been brushed off his soul. His body was young, but his soul had still been ancient—up until now. Everything, even his mind, was that of a nineteen-year-old student, and he could have a little fun. It was just…memories.

  What if he truly was a different person?

  He had memories of the end, consciousness of the end, but those had been all the Field sent back.

  He pushed those thoughts aside, and stored them away for good. The mechanics didn’t matter in the long run, so long as he did his job.

  Finally, Irmond caught up with him. They stood beside an artificer’s construct—a heap of stone and brass and runes, that slowly shifted as it consumed mana. It projected a moving painting—a three dimensional portrait of arcane-suspended pigment, like a statue, but constantly shifting.

  At the moment, it displayed an image of a woman playing a harp, though up close, it was pretty blurry, and her movements didn’t match the fiddlers’ song at all.

  “Why are you here?” Irmond shouted over the din of the crowd.

  “Me?” Wulf shouted back.

  “Yeah!”

  “You brought me here!”

  “Like…at the academy!” Irmond called. “Do you actually want to be here?”

  “Well…” Wulf shrugged. “It’s not the worst, not the best. But it’s a means to an end! Moments like this, I admit, make it much better! What about you?”

  “I’ve never wanted anything more than to be on an Oronith crew!” Irmond yelled back. “I’d be the first one in my family to ever do it, and it’d be a great honour for us!”

  Wulf chuckled. “That it would. I—”

  “Hey, dogs!” someone shouted, and Wulf wouldn’t have even thought it was meant for him, until a group of Fletchers pushed through the crowd. There were three of them, again, but Wulf wouldn’t’ve recognized them if it hadn’t been for their proudly displayed pins—they weren’t in uniform. All three were Middle-Wood.

  Two humans, one with long blonde hair, and one with gelled, combed-over black hair. Wulf could’ve hit it with a hammer, and it probably would’ve been fine.

  And, in the lead, a skyhorn—a humanoid race with vibrant blue skin, black hair, red eyes, and fleshy horns sticking straight up out of their foreheads. She was almost as tall as him, and she wore a sleeveless shirt, proudly displaying an arm covered in rune-etched bangles. She was probably an artificer.

  Wulf groaned, but his stomach dropped slightly. “Ugh, these guys again.” He tilted his head back and sighed. “What is it, now?”

  He didn’t know what he’d done to get the nickname dog, but it seemed somewhat widespread. Now, Irmond was getting it, too.

  “You beat up Ferbig,” the skyhorn girl said. “Umoch knows.”

  “Who?” Wulf asked antagonistically.

  The girl scowled, and Irmond provided, “That’s the son of Lord Umoch, head of the main branch of Fletchers!”

  Wulf rolled his eyes.

  “Sorry, headmaster…” he muttered. “But I think I’m getting myself in more trouble.”

  She reached out and tapped his chest with her finger. “Watch your back, and check your door. Umoch made sure that we’d tell you this: you won’t make it long here.”