The Academy [BOOK ONE COMPLETE]

I closed my eyes. The bustle of the workshop faded around me. Maybe it only felt that way, or maybe people stopped what they were doing to watch. It wasn’t relevant. Nothing was, not when working with the Null. My nose started itching and I knew I was getting close, but this time I had to keep going.

Behind the mana, the light and the movement and the energy, was nothing that was something, or the other way around. The light swimming behind my closed eyelids became dark. Bruises glowing purple and black swam against the dark red. The bruises grew, filling the world. It was like licking frozen metal, but with my whole body.

How was I supposed to get it out? The Null was ground glass inside my veins, my whole body trying to flinch away from around it. Pushing this stuff through my nerves like I did with mana would be suicide. I’d grate myself from the inside like a chef would grate a carrot. How the hell did Ferne let me try this by myself?

I held my eyes shut and steadied my breathing.

Figure it out.

I held on to the Null and let it sit like a glacier lodged in my chest. I would line myself with life, reinforce the rest with Null, keep the channels from turning brittle and cracking from the power. A pipe with wind blowing through it, as Fek had said.

I grunted as the Null started flowing, murmuring as it continued. Life, cold, life, layered on top of each other, keeping me from turning myself into jagged ice, funneling out the dark.

Something clicked and creaked. I kept up the pressure, a bit higher on the inside than on the outside, to keep the nothingness flowing away from me.

It moved under my hand. Metal whistled, the sound of a tuning fork resonating. I tried to open my eyes and gasped as they wouldn’t. My eyelashes had frozen together and I had to blink for a moment before they gave.

Everyone in the workshop was staring at me, mouths open and silent.

The cat tilted its head and opened its bony jaw, filled with teeth that looked long and sharp without the flesh and fur. The movement pulled the wires taut with a high metallic sound not unlike a mew.

“Yes!” Fek shouted, punching his fist into the air.

The workshop exploded in cheering and applause. Ferne rose from behind her pulpit and patted her fingers on her palm, smiling at me. She tried to say something, but her voice was drowned out by everyone else shouting.

At least three people slapped me on the back at the same time. Fek reached a hand out to the cat, and it bit him immediately.

Fek had a thick wad of gauze around his forefinger. “I just wanted to give it a scritch. Ferne did it too!”

I groaned. “She did it before it was awake.”

The cat snapped its jaw shut next to my ear. I flinched and it started to rub its skull against my head.

“I hope that’s it being affectionate,” Marcus said. “Cats are a nuisance in general, so turning one undead has to be one of the most suicidal…”

He trailed off as the cat mewed at him. The sound was similar to what the Bursar made when she was angry, metal stretched by unnatural strength.

“There, there,” I said, patting the cat’s head. “Nasty Mustache-man just doesn’t know how to appreciate your elegance.”

“You can’t call a thing elegant when it has metal wires sticking out of its bones,” Marcus muttered. “The noise is like nails on a blackboard. Anyway, his finger should be fine in a couple of hours. I used a bit of ambrosia to make it heal quicker.”

“It still hurts. You could have used a bit more,” Fek said, pouting at his bandaged finger.

“The pain will remind you to keep your extremities away from vile undead,” Marcus said. “Now get out of here before that mewing drives me insane.”

The noise was a bit creepy, to be honest. The cat walked to the other side of my head, balancing on my shoulders, and its claws pricked right through my robe. Should have cut them before reanimating the thing. Now they were laced with Null and harder than steel.

Ferne had said that maybe it could hunt skeleton mice better this way. There were supposed to be some around from the time when they were still reanimating whatever remains they managed to get their hands on.

“You realize you got eleven credits for that?” Fek said.

“One for the workshop and ten for channeling the Null?” I said. “Pretty nice.” I hadn’t listened to Ferne talking as I had been so focused on figuring out what to do with the cat that kept climbing all over me. Fed had been screaming and bleeding all over the place too.

“It’s half of what people get during a whole semester. You’re even more talented than me. Minnelil is going to be gutted.”

I stumbled on the stairs. The cat screeched in my ear as I wobbled, swinging my arms to regain my balance on the ice.

“Whoa, careful,” Fek said. “You can’t keep scowling at me for slipping if you fall and Hector has to scrape you off the ground.”

I leaned on the wall to stabilize myself. “What do you mean?” I would have continued, but the cat bonked its head on my nose and I yelped.

“What I said! He could probably use one of the big snow shovel things to do it. They have a pretty sharp edge and can hold a person. We used them to slide down a—“

“No! I mean what do you mean about Minnelil being gutted? Besides, I’m not more talented than you. I just can… do that stuff.”

Fek scoffed and waved a hand at me. “Don’t worry about it. I won’t mind. There are a lot of amazing people here. One of the Rodn family finished the school in a single year.”

I wanted to strangle him, shake him until he got to the only part that interested me. “What do you mean, Minnelil would be gutted?” I said slowly and clearly, rubbing my temples with eyes closed.

“Do you have a headache?” Fek asked, but stepped backward and grinned as I growled at him. “Haha, sorry, I’m joking. Minnelil works hard. At least as hard as Grit, probably harder. She still can’t channel the Null, and you’ve been here for less than two months.”

“Well, I couldn’t have done it without her helping,” I said.

“Maybe,” Fek said.

He continued talking, but I didn’t listen. I bit at the inside of my cheek as I realized what I had said. I had defended myself from the attention, but I had walked right into admitting something real. It didn’t help that they paid her for it, as she needed the money. I could debate the exact amount of how much I owed her, but I knew I did.

Nothing was as dangerous as owing the person I wanted to take my face in her soft hands and plant her mouth on mine. I would push my tongue— No! Focus. How much power could I give someone? Probably not much more than I already had given.

“Damn it,” I muttered.

“Okay,” Fek said.

I flinched and waved my hand at him. “I was thinking about something.”

“I was saying that your cat is gnawing on your cowl. It’s getting pretty tattered.”

“I reanimated it in the workshop,” I said, holding said it as far from myself as I could with my arms straight. “It likes to gnaw on things.”

“They fit each other perfectly,” Fek said. “Look, it almost bit off my finger!”

“They let you keep it?” Grit said, standing up from the table and walking closer. She reached out her palm slowly, approaching with bent knees. “It’s really cute. Can I touch it?”

“Did you listen to anything we said?” Fek asked.

“Not really. Look at its funny little bone paws. They’re so tiny and sharp! The tail is like a bony snake.”

“I wonder if a snake could be reanimated,” Fek said. “Do they even have bones?”

I put the cat down gently on the table. It kicked its legs around and tilted its head from side to side, then pushed Grit’s book off the table with its right paw.

“It’s so much like a real cat,” Grit said, picking up her book. “How did you do it? Skeletons are usually pretty boring.”

“We met one that was really angry,” Fek said. “I get to reanimate that one.”

I groaned, rubbing my face. It had been a long day and the amount of banter was making me want to lie face-down on the bed and pull the pillow over my head.

“What is it called?” Grit asked.

“Fergor the Void called it Mr Mittens,” Fek said.

The cat walked around the table, paws clicking on the wood.

I grinned. “Mr Clickens.”

“That’s awful,” Fek said.

“Yeah, basically animal cruelty,” Grit said.

“Look, it’s made of bones and it’s mine! Lay off, it’s a great name.”

The cat jumped off the table and landed on the floor. It walked around the room once, bonking its head on the furniture. Grit yelped as it hit her shin, the sound a sharp clack. The cat stopped at Minnelil’s bed, thought about it for a moment and climbed under the covers, pushing the duvet up with its bony head. It slipped under the covers, vanishing from sight.

I wished I could do that too, but where was she?