The Academy [BOOK ONE COMPLETE]

“The balance of the room is completely out of whack,” Fek said. “And the bed has been in the same place for so long that the floor is a different color.”

“Look, it’s an experiment, okay?” I said.

“I liked the suggestion of getting a bigger bed. It’s true that the room looks weird when one corner has nothing,” Grit said.

Minnelil ate her porridge and didn’t say anything, only smiled. She had come to bed and slept behind me, pressing herself against my spine, but when I woke up, she had already been reading at the table.

“Where can we even get a bigger bed?” I asked. “It’s not like there are a lot of woodcarvers around here. Or wood, for that matter.”

“You could make one out of bones?” Fek said.

“No,” I said and shivered as I remembered the throne Falar had made from the three skeletons. The memory of the pain was unreal. It felt impossible I had survived that, but I had, and now I was eating porridge. Another time he had saved my life, even if he had done it in the most bastard way possible. “What a creep,” I muttered.

“Don’t be so hard on Fek,” Grit said. “It’s not that unheard of. Many necromancers do it.”

“I don’t want to be a stupid dramatic necromancer! I want to sleep in a normal bed!” I shouted.

“Focus,” Minnelil said gently. “You need your strength for today.”

“But what if I want to distract myself for a little longer?” I asked.

A skeleton had come in the morning when we had been leaving for breakfast. It brought a letter from Falar. “We enact the ritual today. Put your affairs in order,” was all it said.

“I know what you mean,” Minnelil said, ruffling my hair. “I wish I had written a third letter home.”

“It can’t be that bad,” Fek said. “I wish I could do a ritual.”

“Be careful what you wish for,” Grit said. “My back is still aching from all the bending over. Drawing runes on the floor is hard work.”

Fek shrugged. “Well, cleaning corridors with the janitor is hard work too. I think we’re almost done, though.”

“Will you still be working with him?” Minnelil asked.

“Yeah, Hector said there’s some busywork and we need to go and clean up things if anything goes wrong. He said he’s going to take an extra large bag with him.”

“Great. Makes sense. Of course,” I said. “See you at the ritual.”

---

“Oh, so that’s what you meant!” Fek shouted, waving as I stepped into the room. Hector stood next to Fek, hands in his pockets. He nodded at me. The circle of runes reached almost from wall to wall, intricate beyond belief. It was formed of two layers of runes. The one inside was drawn in something black and glistening. The outer layer had far fewer runes, scraped into the stone with what looked like white chalk. I couldn’t believe Grit had finished both circles in a couple of days.

“Finally,” Falar said. “Don’t step across the runes.”

“Why?” I asked. The runes hummed with power, but—

Jextor pushed in through the door, shouldering past me. “Everyone’s here?” he shouted, stepping right onto the circle of runes.

Just as his foot was about to land on them, the runes flashed bright blue, and a force threw him into the air, flipping him upside down.

I dodged as he landed on his stomach on the stone floor with a heavy thud. The residual magic tickled my face, but the circle of runes itself had turned inert, the outermost layer burned off in a flash.

Minnelil had both hands pressed to her mouth, face pale. Grit poked Jextor’s back gingerly with a finger.

“I’ve been enacting rituals with the Chancellor for years now,” Falar said. He stood at the back of the large, dim room. “An extra layer of protection on anything delicate is usually worth the effort.”

Jextor twitched, then rose and dusted the front of his robe. “Good thinking, Lecturer! I hope everyone else is equally prepared?”

“Good think…? Why don’t you just be more careful!” I shouted at him.

“Shh, shh,” Minnelil said, lowering a hand on my back softly. “Everyone handles tension in their own way.”

“Well put,” Jextor said. He cracked his neck and stepped carefully over the circle of runes, walking to the middle of the room. “We will explain the proceedings. You two students took part in the previous ritual. That should have prepared you for what ordeals might be in store for us today!”

“For us, and for it,” Falar hissed, lifting his hand into the air with fingers poised like a claw. “The ritual circle is a vise, a bear trap prepared with an irresistible bait. We might not be able to keep it, but we will hold it long enough to study, to peel away its secrets layer by layer.” He clenched his fingers shut, forming a fist.

“Quite so!” Jextor shouted, slamming his fist into his palm. “The unknown menace shall wither before the combined—”

Minnelil cleared her throat. “Chancellor, Lecturer, perhaps I could explain the practical proceedings?”

“Fine,” Falar said, opening his fist and flicking his hand.

Jextor grumbled something about spoiling the mood, but crossed his arms before his chest, settling to listen.

“The circle has been designed to act as a lens, sending the call toward the north and focusing whatever attention arrives to this place,” Minnelil said. “There’s a hidden matrix underneath the runes that acts as a barrier for both physical and, for lack of a better term, ethical attacks.”

“That sounds like something Fendribalis would write,” I said.

“I was just going to say the same thing!” Fek shouted.

“Shh,” Minnelil said. “The difficult part is drawing in enough of the entity to glean information from the contact, while keeping it from engulfing and drowning out everything in here.”

“Though we welcome it to try!” Jextor shouted.

“Shh,” Minnelil said.

“Sorry,” Jextor said.

“As the Chancellor was about to say, he and Lecturer Falar might be able to withstand or even match whatever the entity is able to throw at us, but it is not certain. Therefore, the ritual circle has failsafes and ablative patterns to delay and thwart any attack, even if the entity’s power would take us all by surprise.”

Hector took out a cigarette from his breast pocket, but then seemed to reconsider and put it back in. Fek shuffled his feet next to the janitor.

“So what do we all do?” I asked, pointing a finger at myself and then at Grit and Minnelil.

“You will hold the center with the Chancellor,” Falar answered, making me flinch. His voice was deep as it rang out from the back of the room. “The thing has your scent, and the Chancellor will provide the raw power to attract its attention all the way from the mountains. You will meet it halfway, on its terms. It won’t be pleasant, but it will be educational.”

“Jextor will keep you safe,” Minnelil said so quietly no one else heard. “I discussed the ritual with him. This, he will take seriously. I made sure.”

“Thank you,” I mouthed back. Almost no voice came out. I took her hand and she squeezed my fingers. The touch made me feel safer than any promise she could make about Jextor.

“The rest of us,” Falar continued, “will observe and spring the trap when it is time. I will talk everyone through each of the steps. My assistant will keep an eye on the runes, repairing any fraying that occurs. The janitor is here to make sure we leave the place tidy once we’re done. He will clean up the runes, or the remains.”

“Um,” Fek said.

“And you’re here to keep me company,” Hector said, hands still in his pockets. “I won’t let you wander into the corridor by yourself. You’re too excited about the door.”

“Aww, I could have cleaned that one room and spent the rest of the day poking it.”

“Exactly,” the janitor said.

Him cleaning up the remains sounded bad, and I didn’t like the idea of a bear trap being sprung around me. I tensed my jaw and nodded at Falar. I had said to Coratorus I would handle the thing. It was time to make good on that promise.

Jextor stood in the middle of the circle and held a massive hand out to me. I hopped over the runes and walked up to him. Standing next to me, he was really damn big. He lifted his bearded face to the ceiling and breathed deep, closing his eyes. Magic throbbed beneath his skin, flowing thick and steady like an ocean current. Compared to Fek, he didn’t blaze or roil, but it was only because the power was under control. My skin felt like it wanted to escape to the side of my body farther from him. Maybe what Minnelil had said about him actually made sense.

“Ready?” he said.

“Does it matter?” I asked.

“Immensely,” Falar responded. “This ritual hinges on everyone doing their part. Even the Chancellor, after a small reminder, understands this is not the place nor the time for nonsense.”

Huh. Fine, then. Grit crouched near the circle of runes and brushed off dust from near one of the black runes. She glanced up at me, red eyes reflecting the light. Minnelil walked behind a table, opening a large book with blank pages on it. She picked up a quill and nodded at me.

Fek showed me his thumbs, pointing them up. I wish I had brought Clickens too.

“Good luck, kid,” the janitor said.