The Academy [BOOK ONE COMPLETE]

Shalameth put Clickens down and stood up. “Very good. You will be informed how things proceed. Focus on the ritual next. Both the Chancellor and the Lecturer are quite excited about it. It’s making the rest of us nervous.”

Clickens mewed and a small cloud of dark fog puffed out of its mouth.

“Great,” I groaned. I could just imagine them standing side by side, looking at a magic circle and rubbing their hands together.

The old crone took a step toward the door, but stopped. She glanced at me, squinting. “Now that I’m here, is there anything you would like to ask? You’ve been here for a while, but your route to our institute was not entirely common. I hear you’ve still managed to progress in your studies admirably.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I guess? I don’t really know for sure. Not a lot of stuff has been explained to me.”

“And you haven’t asked either, hmm?” she said, squinting even harder. A smile played on her thin lips. “Now’s your chance.”

“Who is Falar, really?”

She looked almost as surprised as I felt. “Hmm?”

“I mean… he’s called a Lecturer. That doesn’t sound as impressive as everyone seems to think he is. Himself included.”

“It’s not my place to spread gossip. That question you will have to ask him yourself, girl,” she said, crinkling her eyes.

“Ugh, I won’t. And why would it be gossip? Don’t you know for sure?”

“You are pretty sharp, aren’t you?” she said, the grin growing on her face. “No questions about the school itself? About what you will grow into if you stay?”

Clickens wandered over to me and I picked it up into my arms. “I’m not sure if I want to become a skull. Is that the only option?”

She laughed at that, a hearty laugh that reminded me of Jextor. “One step at a time. Becoming a lich is a longer road than any other, and not for everyone.”

“Well, what are the other ones? I think I’m pretty good at this stuff. Or can be. What does it mean for me?”

“From what I have heard, I think you are correct. Those are questions every child asks. What do I want to be when I grow up? Some will have it told to them, but even they need to decide for themselves. You have the luxury of having no excuses.”

“No family to tell me to become the next Rodn or Lombarte?” I said. It did feel like a luxury, if I skirted around the edges of the thought, didn’t think through the reasons. “That doesn’t answer my question, though. What do necromancers do?”

“You’re committed to being one? You know that most of our students don’t end up taking the profession? Most work as mages with a few extra skeletons to handle household chores.”

“I heard. That’s dumb.”

“Hmm?”

“Well… that wouldn’t be real, would it? I don’t even know what mages do, but enchanting street lamps would be pointless when I’m able to do all… this?” I said, lifting Clickens up at her.

“Not many of our students understand that, or feel the same way,” Shalameth said, nodding. “I’m happy that you do.”

“But what am I going to do with it? Having a dead cat isn’t a job!”

“I fear I’m going to sound like our esteemed Lecturer next,” Shalameth said, sighing, “but the answer is that if you truly learn what we are teaching you, you can do anything you want. Anything.”

She held my gaze for a moment. I swallowed and nodded.

“Good,” she said. “I hope I’ll see you at some of my lectures soon enough. Do try to survive the ritual.”

I scoffed. “You’re all alike.”

She grinned, flashing me a row of teeth that looked sharper than what Clickens had. “It does come with the profession. No one will take you seriously as a necromancer if you don’t add some drama into it.”

I hesitated, but it was time to start taking things seriously. That had been the point of this whole discussion. “How dangerous will the ritual actually be?”

“Not more dangerous than the things you have already survived,” she said. “Keep dancing on that edge, girl.”

“So dramatic,” I groaned.

---

“What are you looking at?” I asked Clickens.

The cat glared at me, the fog rising up from its eye sockets. It was too dark to be fog, but too thin to be smoke. I tried to shoo it away from its head with my hand, but Clickens mewed and swatted at my hand.

“Fine, keep it,” I said, picking it up and cradling it in my arms. “I guess it makes you look more like a cat than a collection of bones.”

Shalameth was gone, having left me to think about everything we had talked about. She had asked if I had any questions, but hadn’t really given me any answers. Somehow I still felt like I knew a lot more than before her visit.

A necromancer, eh? I guess I did want to become one. How could I think of anything else, after being through everything I had?

Power to do anything I wanted, she had said.

I would figure out what the anything might be later. A month ago the answer would have been a warm bed and some food that hadn’t been thrown away by someone else. I had those things for now.

I also had Fek, Grit, and Minnelil. Especially her, but the thought made me squeeze Clickens so hard it screeched and started to thrash in my arms. Falar had said that if I became powerful enough, I would lose no one again.

It sounded dangerous.

I shook my head, blinking hard to drive away the thought.

I walked around the room, cradling Clickens in my arms. I shivered at the touch of the dark fog surrounding its tiny skull. On a whim, I pinched at the fog with my fingers. It was thick and cold, and held its shape for a while after I let go.

“Hmm,” I said. “Do you want ears?”

Clickens mewed.

I placed the cat on the table, opening my senses to the stuff surrounding it. The fog wasn’t really Null. Maybe the dumb cat had lapped up more Null leaking out from me than a thing could have, and it was now spilling out somehow. A residue, darkness filtered through bone and mixing with the living world. Trying to describe it felt like grasping at a dream.

I pinched at the fog and pulled up, stretching the darkness into a long and pointy cone.

Clickens tilted its head around like it was trying to look at its brand new ear.

“Stay still,” I said, molding the next one. I stuck my finger into the fog and drew a single line of real Null rising from its skull in the middle of each ear. Maybe that would hold the shape together. “I’ll find you a mirror later if you want.”

The ears looked fun. The tips moved as it kept twisting its head around, more fog billowing and following the shape I had stretched it into. Clickens pawed at the ears and they flopped around.

I snickered at the sight. Power, doing anything that I wanted. Maybe I just wanted to have a cat and watch Minnelil’s expression when she saw the new ears. Clickens walked around the room shaking its head. It stopped to rub the new ears against the chest at the end of my bed, then pushed the lid open and slid inside.

“What, no! Come out of there,” I hollered and jumped to the chest. Clickens was digging its way to the bottom of the chest. I picked it up and my hand bumped against a thick book that didn’t look familiar.

“What’s this?” I asked, picking the book up.

I opened the first page and a small paper slip fell out.

“A useful distraction at best. Internalize the lesson, nevertheless,” the paper read in Falar’s handwriting.

“How Not to Be Seen,” I read aloud from the cover. “Why do I get a bad feeling about this one?”

The cat didn’t answer, so I opened the book to a random page and groaned at the way the sentences twisted and tangled. The first sentence I read talked about how the sight of a perceiver remembers the light more than it sees it and how the conscious act of recognition leans against familiarity more than real sensory input.

“Don’t tell me…” I muttered and turned to the first page. I groaned as I saw who the author was. “Fek is going to be elated.”

---

Fek came back an hour later and squealed with joy as I handed him the book. “Fendribalis rules!”

“Maybe it would be a good idea for you to read it,” I said. “You’re the one who needs to be less conspicuous all the damn time.”

“Not a bad idea! Falar told me the same thing once.”

“He did? For real?”

“Yeah! He said I disrupted his experiment by walking too close to it and that I would need to tone it down. How can you tone down walking?”

“Hmm,” I said. That made sense. When we had gone to meet him, he had been worried about even light touching the whatever he had been up to. The power rolling off Fek would have put it off kilter for sure. Now that I knew to feel for it, my face tingled just being near him. “Well, knock yourself out. I can hide already normally. Use it as a reason to figure out how to channel Null, maybe?”

“About that,” he said, looking at me with a serious face. He held the book tightly in one hand as he thought before continuing. “Could you teach me how to do it?”

“Sure,” I said. “You taught me earlier. I’m not sure if I know how, though.”

“Well, I didn’t know how to teach channeling mana either, and it didn’t seem to matter too much. Maybe it’s for the best? The way they explain it isn’t working. I’ve tried at least twice!”

I groaned. “Ok, but no promises. There’s a lot of action inside you,” I said, making a swirling motion with my hand at his stomach. “It might make it hard to go still enough, I think?”

“That’s what Marcus said too! But I want to try it out. I was thinking that maybe you get me?”

“I get you, Fek,” I said, sighing.

He grinned back at me, and started blabbing about something that had happened on the Beach, showing me a shredded slipper for some reason. I was lost in my thoughts. This was what I was choosing: having friends, helping people. Not because I owed them or needed them to owe me, but because I wanted to. Part of me was telling me that these people would get me killed, Fek especially, but maybe I could keep them from getting killed too. I picked up Clickens again and nestled my nose between its ears.

Clickens made a long, slow noise, rubbing its skull against me. The ears tickled my face.