Back toward Faris, still walking to her position, Ty could hear him beginning to cast the first spell. The list she had given him was a standard rotation for a single target that did not fight back—and she would do just that. Her tome had enough nullifies and dispels, and even if she didn’t…

  Poison.

  Ty waved her hand dismissively, mumbling the counter for it as she turned around and began sitting down, watching Faris’s lips.

  Malice.

  “Oh.” Taken aback, she stopped and tried to think quickly. She had no counter prepared for that—in fact, it definitely wasn’t on the list. She could cast Dispel Veil, but it would take too much time for it to be completely effective and, for some inexplicable reason, she wanted to see how founded his cocky attitude was.

  The spell hit her with full force as she knelt down, feeling her head pound and her insides swirl until she wanted to throw up. Nausea, she thought as she took a shaky breath, welcome home.

  Enduring the pain and sitting down on the rough ground, she shakily opened her journal and set it on her lap as Faris continued onto the next few spells, ones that were on the list this time. She blocked them with whispers, wincing every second or so. He clearly did not lack in skill, but the fact that he was using spells she hadn’t listed—all of which were subsequently blocked by a Dispel Veil—was mildly inconveniencing.

  And then, just as he was about to cap off his rotation with an Obsidian, looking far more antsy than usual, she suddenly looked up from her notebook.

  Those aren’t the right words.

  Sitting there, dumbfounded, Ty looked at the audience stands, where her non-combat classmates sat watching them, and then at Alex, Elias, and Callie, who were doing the same on the other side.

  She turned back to catch the end of Faris’s spell, watching his calculative, pitiless eyes as he lifted his hand up into the air.

  Finally, then: a word she could make out from it all, a singular trigger word:

  “Meteor.”

  “Oh, Graces,” Ty whispered breathlessly, clearing the lingering fog in her head and standing up, raising her hand up in a fashion similar to Faris’s, except crying out the words to the highest-level barrier she had on hand, clutching her book close. It had seen better days, but it contained all the defensive magic she needed. And all authorized—she had learned her lesson.

  A giant, rumbling noise started to shake the ground beneath her as she kept her hand held high, staring daggers at her classmate’s blank eyes, not daring to stop reciting.

  When the heat finally reached her, she looked up and saw a large, thin silver barrier surrounding the courtyard and swallowing the balls of flame that rained down from above. If she weren’t in so much trouble, she would have enjoyed watching the flames turn into wisps of white ash as they collided with the wall.

  Distraction almost took her—when in the corner of her eye, there was slight movement.

  She snapped her head toward Faris, who began casting again.

  “Are you serious?” she cried, letting her hand fall, dropping the barrier and bracing herself.

  Conjure Sabre.

  Not even waiting for the ghostly blue sword to finish materializing in her right hand, she launched it square into Faris’s shoulder, knocking him down as she turned her attention back to the sky, prepared to put up another barrier only to be met with blue skies and wispy ashes that softly tickled her face.

  With wide, innocent eyes, she touched the ones that landed on her cheek, finally giving herself in to the moment.

  They were warm. So warm.

  In the dead of night, she reached her hand out to touch the warm drops of rain that fell from the sky onto her face, kneeling in the middle of a grassy clearing. The world was quiet as she looked down at her classmate’s near-frozen body, reaching out to hold their cold hand, hugging a crimson tome to her chest as she recited the same words over and over again.

  Life for life.

  She closed her eyes, holding their hand close to her as she continued to mumble Ancient words for as long as she could, for as long as there was warmth to be given.

  Without everyone, she was nothing.

  Hours, it felt like, her reciting the same passages, getting colder and colder as she clutched her friend’s hand. Her family. Everything ached and protested, the tome on her chest felt brittle and angry, but none of it mattered.

  Then finally, when she started to feel like on the brink of death herself, the would-be corpse finally jolted awake, only to scurry away fearfully.

  “Let’s go home,” she beckoned gently, reaching out her cold hand for them to take, standing up and looking to the sky in gratitude.

  Life. A second chance.

  “Okay.”

  The hand that held hers was burning with warmth.

  “So, how’d I do?”

  Ty opened her eyes, looking at her hand that had held her friend’s. She smudged the remnants of ashes that were left before taking a long look at Faris. Cyril was beside him with an innocent look on his face, holding onto the crook of his injured classmate’s arm.

  “Still think I’m a joke?” Faris smirked after she didn’t reply.

  She cracked a tiny smile, feeling oddly tranquil after the daydream. There was no longer a tempest in her chest, no anger. Instead, there was a softness she could not describe. “No. No, it was good,” she replied slowly and gently, looking back at her hand, rubbing the ashes on her fingers until they were soft and gray with remembrance. “We’ll make some adjustments.”

  “You put up a good fight, too. Even though you cheated.”

  A weak chuckle escaped her lips. “Yes, I did. But I didn’t hurt you, right?”

  In a show of pride, Faris wrenched his arm away from Cyril’s grasp, his slight wincing giving him away. “Hah. That was nothing. You’ve got damn good aim.”

  “Thank you,” she murmured, unaccustomed to flattery and instead working on patting herself down. “That Meteor caught me off guard. Shame on me, I didn’t remember the words.”

  “How about that Malice—fluke?”

  “Guess.” She couldn’t help herself from grinning.

  “Must have been a fluke.”

  This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  “Hmm.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Should do it again sometime.”

  As much as she wanted to stay in the moment, she gave her classmate a bittersweet smile before starting to walk to the tall figure at the edge of the courtyard that had been standing there since her reverie. “Maybe after we hear what the Headmistress has to say.”

  * * *

  “Did you really have no problem casting that onto your tactician?”

  He shrugged.

  “What if she had gotten hurt?”

  “There was a healer and physician around.”

  The Headmistress shook her head. “No, you see, Faris, that’s not the point.”

  Ty finally couldn’t help but interrupt. “It was my idea. You shouldn’t be blaming him.”

  Expecting the interjection, she smiled at the tactician. “So, you knew he was going to cast a grade V trigger spell and let him?”

  “I—”

  She continued. “Did you expressly authorize it?”

  Backed into a corner, and far too late, Ty finally realized that she and Faris were not there to defend themselves, but for the sole reason of getting reprimanded.

  “Trigger spells are not permitted in class practice. Tests, exams, privately scheduled practices with a professor, sure, but you are not allowed to practice them in class, and especially when the person on the receiving end isn’t expecting it.” She directed the last part at Faris with a menacing glare. “She is your tactician, not your training dummy.”

  It’s not fair, Ty thought to herself, gritting her teeth, inhaling, occupying herself with the thick black books on the shelf behind the Headmistress rather than look her in the eye. Of all things, she did not wake up expecting this, but here they were. The feeling of weightless freedom was gone now, disappointingly ephemeral.

  “You want to say something, tactician?”

  She clenched her jaw harder, trying to accept it like the gracious, calm class leader she wanted to be. It was a challenge. A challenge that she wasn’t supposed to take.

  The heavy silence weighed over them for only a few seconds before Ty found herself unable to hold it in any longer. “I just—I just don’t understand why you’re directing your anger toward him rather than me. It’s quite clear whose fault it is, and it’s not his. I asked him to do it and dealt with the spell accordingly.”

  The Headmistress’s demeanor softened slightly as she sat back in her chair and turned to Faris, shaking her head with disappointment and disbelief. “Why is it, whenever there’s any magic shenanigans, it’s you, Faris? Ty can’t cover for you forever, you know.”

  “I’m not c—” Ty immediately protested as Faris remained silent.

  “No, I’m not done.” The Headmistress held up a finger to Ty while still facing Faris. “You and I both know that you have no reservations about hurting others. And your tactician here doesn’t have any reservations about getting hurt. Convenient, I know.” She raised both her arms up in the air dramatically. “But not when you burn the Academy down. So, let’s all agree on avoiding things that we’ll severely regret, because the next time you get caught, you are going to be facing much more than just a reprimand.”

  When the Headmistress didn’t continue, Ty finally stole a glance at Faris. Eyes distant, he looked apathetic with his head tilted back slightly, like he was clearly used to being told what to do and didn’t intend on changing his ways. Even in the presence of the Headmistress.

  She would have sighed and hung her head at the futility of it all if she did not need to keep up her own fa?ade of agreeableness.

  “Are we clear?”

  “Yes,” both students immediately answered in unison.

  “Good. Now go.”

  Faris met Ty’s gaze for a brief second before getting up. “Thanks,” he said curtly as he walked out of the office, letting the door slam shut behind him.

  Ty watched him leave, about to apologize for him again when the Headmistress interrupted her.

  “Did you get hurt?”

  In the middle of gathering up her belongings, Ty stopped. “No, I know how to protect myself,” she answered stonily, unsure why she was even asking when she could clearly see that nothing had happened. “Even if I did, I had someone on standby.”

  The Headmistress nodded, looking strangely wistful. “Yes. Theodore.”

  A switch flipped. She pointed to the Headmistress, disenchanted by the whole charade of niceties and respect. “There. There it is, again. Why—you and the professor—Nate—why do you both keep doing that?”

  She didn’t even blink. “Doing what?”

  “Like you both know everything that’s going to happen. And who I am.” Ty shook her head. “You’d only be acting like that if you wanted me to ask or find out—so why don’t you just tell me?”

  The Headmistress continued to look confused. “We’re faculty. Of course we know things about our students.”

  “That can’t be it.”

  “Well, it is. I’m not sure what you want to hear.”

  Ty faltered, considering for a moment whether she should let the Headmistress know about her dreams. “I...I don’t know what I want to hear. It just can’t be that simple.”

  She received an expectant look.

  “You can’t possibly tell the future.”

  The Headmistress’s eyes beamed at this. “Of course not. No one can.”

  “But you act like you already know it. Like Nate.”

  “To act like and to know are two separate things, Ty.”

  “Yes, but—” Her head hurt. “But why do you even act like it if there’s no reason behind it? It’s like you’re trying to mess with me.”

  Silence finally descended upon the office as the two stared into each other’s eyes: one filled with contempt, one with pity.

  “I can’t solve this for you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s not as easy as just telling you the answer,” the Headmistress smiled kindly, slowly shaking her head and clasping her hands together.

  “Tell me, and I’ll decide for myself.”

  The Headmistress leaned forward in her seat. A loud, anguished sigh escaped from her thin lips. “Sometimes history repeats itself so often that you know what’s going to come next. That’s it. The Academy has collected so much information over the years that we can calculate the most likely occurrences over a finite number of possibilities. And sometimes we use it to our advantage. Nothing’s written in stone, and we can’t tell the future, but we can make some damn good guesses. Good enough?”

  Ty very much wanted to believe her. To believe that she wasn’t going crazy, that Theo was right: she was making up dreams and nightmares in her mind, interactions with people she had never met before. That it was all just some by-product of data and calculations, mathematics that she couldn’t quite grasp because she knew nothing.

  But it felt wrong. It felt like only a half-truth, like the Headmistress wanted her to continue guessing, like she knew that she wouldn’t believe it. This wasn’t it. This couldn’t be it. There was another reason why the Headmistress and Nate were being so cryptic with her, and it wasn’t anything to do with information. It was something greater than that. Something far greater.

  “So that’s it, you’re not going to tell me?”

  “I can’t.”

  The words were sad. The Headmistress’s gaze did not shift, but she looked old, sounded defeated. She didn’t even try to mask it.

  Defeated by time.

  Crumbled buildings. Fire and ashes. So little time.

  Ty bit her lip hard to chase the illusions away, quickly gathering her belongings and leaving.

  Door slamming behind her, she stopped at the sight of her classmates. “What are you three still doing here?” She checked her timepiece. “Class has been over for a while now.”

  Cyril stuffed his book into his knapsack. “We were waiting for you and Faris to finish up so we could invite you to supper with us. Callie’s idea.”

  “It’s just a casual thing, nothing formal,” Callie chimed in, blushing. “Look, even Faris is coming.” Hand threateningly holding onto Faris by the sleeve of his coat, she beamed pleasantly at the frowning sorcerer.

  With little say, the caster unfolded his arms and started walking. “Let’s go. I have work to do after.”

  “You don’t even know where,” complained Callie hurriedly, joggling slightly to catch up with him.

  Cyril raised an eyebrow at Ty. “You sure you want to do this? I know you usually don’t like all this social stuff.”

  For once, Ty was sure of her answer. “Yes, I’ll be fine.” She tried to offer him a convincing smile, but she could feel it turn into a grimace instead, awkwardly hurrying after the two upon receiving a critical—yet mischievous and telling—look from her healer.

  The Headmistress’s floor of the lecture building was vast. One would have guessed that it would be furnished ornately, full of rich decor like that of the libraries or of the other lecture rooms. But it was sparse. It felt empty and hollow, lacking much of the life that was contained down below.

  An entire wing devoted to the Headmistress and various administrative rooms, one for staff accommodations, another for admin service counters, a smaller one for study rooms, and finally a lobby filled with study tables and general-use items like a kitchen and washing rooms. Yet there were barely any people walking down the halls, hardly any people in the lobby seeking administrative faculty, and no signs of life other than the four first-year students walking down the hallway at that very moment.

  Lonely, that was the word Ty had been searching for as her flat shoes shuffled down the hallway, listening to the click-clack of Callie’s heeled boots sharply bouncing off the stone walls. Everything felt hollow and empty. But somehow, familiar. Her heart stirred.

  Letting her classmates walk ahead, she stopped briefly to look out a window, gazing at the students in the courtyard below. Ants. They were all so tiny. All with places to go and classes to attend. The library and dining hall were across, slightly below them, so that one could really marvel at the precision of the pointed roofing. And there, in the bottom right corner, was the practice courtyard from the first week, open for anyone to see from above. Same with a lot of the other practice courtyards around the Academy that were reserved for specific disciplines. There was no hiding. No secrets for one so high.

  A finite number of possibilities.

  The sound of footsteps stopped, and she looked to the side, at her classmates looking back at her. “Yes, I’m coming,” she answered without prompt, feeling the overwhelming loneliness seep deep beneath her skin as she continued walking, looking inward for her own purpose, people to occupy the large, empty spaces of her isolated existence, people to make noise that bounced off the walls and echoed throughout time, whispering, ever so quietly, I was here.