Declan Thorn enjoyed many things about being house arcanist for House Ariloch at Ariloch Academy. He loved the bitter morning cold that caused his breath to come in white plumes. He could even appreciate his fellow housemates slaughtering the blazed beasts that came to kill him as he worked out. He loved every frustrating moment of attempting to bind a third mana stone to his will.

  He did not enjoy playing parent to feuding lovers, and at that particular moment, he was privately wondering if today was a good day to work on the third floor toilet that never worked correctly. Anything to end the argument.

  “I demand you kick her out,” said one of Ariloch’s newest residents. It was a tale as old as time, two star-crossed lovers meet from houses that weren’t feuding but didn’t have alliances, a forbidden or at least not-blessed romance blossomed, both moved together into House Ariloch and in five days went from having each other’s backs to at each other’s throats.

  Declan looked to the woman, a tier two arcanist who had doubled down on Flame Tongue and right now was proving it was a personality match. “And you?”

  “Throw him out and I’ll give you a shard. It’s Healing, rare shard.”

  That was interesting. The weakest Healing was technically tier two but the hard lines between tiers never worked as cleanly as people wanted. Lake Domine could kill the world with a tier 0 base rune, Healing was in theory a tier two because it had two shapes that comprised it, but it was rare in general, with blazed beasts needing to possess the powers in order to give the rune or the shards.

  Declan leaned back and thought. “Is there any other way to resolve this? I have a mana stone to bind and Instructor Skinner is going to ‘skin’ me if I don’t get it done. Neither of you are tier three, so you can’t help.”

  “Get rid of them!” They said as one.

  Declan considered the choices. It wasn’t like House Ariloch was bursting at the seams. About half the rooms were unusable, but there was ‘unusable’ and there was ‘exposed to blazed beasts in a swarm.’ “One of you moves to a different room or both of you get kicked out together.”

  “I’m not moving,” the woman declared.

  Declan made up his mind and shouted. “Chen!”

  Chen Rivers was a short man with black hair and yellow skin, and he was saving money to take his enchanters certification again, when he wasn’t sleeping in the commons room, which was most of the time. He raised his head. “What?”

  “Go to 320. Take anything personal and split it randomly between 218 and 305. You’re under no obligation to make sure you get the right stuff anywhere.” He turned on them. “If you want your shit, work out how to get it. Now, I have an actual class. If I find out you’re fighting, I really will kick you both out. You’re adults, people. Act like it.” Declan turned and headed for his apartment, grabbing the thick leather backpack that carried the one mana bearing he’d bound to his will, a mana stone he’d been given to replace his destroyed one, eaten by a monster, and the one he was supposed to be binding. He carried two more runes, a Protect that was fully charged and ready and a Strike he needed for a class.

  Everything else was locked in his apartment, hidden under a stack of empty vapor bottles that were probably filled with piss and not the drug that allowed addicts to spend hours blasted out of their mind.

  He left House Ariloch by the rear door and headed outward, away from the world wound, past House Sullivan and up toward administration, then across to where his adviser, Professor Keel Skinner held what passed for his class.

  Skinner’s hair was white, what little of it he had. The burns on his right side had consumed much of it, leaving him blind in that eye, limping with a cane and barely able to use the hand, but he smiled as Declan entered. “Ready for your first class?”

  “Yes sir.” He’d dreamed of this day. The veritable fortune he’d gotten from House Domine to keep the secret of their bloodline’s rune was going to be needed. In fact, Skinner had repeatedly said they needed more rin. “What’s first?”

  “Today you have two you won’t enjoy that are mandatory and another you won’t enjoy that is also mandatory and tonight, a session you probably will. The first two are your Academy Obligations, sessions all enrolled students take on arrival. After those two you have private history lessons with Brutus Scheffer, and tonight, a session with Fana Brieze on soul-casting.”

  Declan expected the first two. And the last. “Why am I paying for private history lessons? Why am I not learning magic? I’m an arcanist.”

  “You are also the house arcanist. You have, through no fault of your own, no idea of your own country’s history. You are embroiled in the politics of the noble houses and don’t know what each does, where they rose from or why they adopted their particular methods.” Skinner sighed. “At some point, I expect you to serve the Crown, if not by choice then by order.”

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  “History, though?” Declan asked. “Couldn’t we have done something for my arcsoul?”

  Skinner considered the question. “Who is the ruler of Genosis?”

  “Where?”

  “Genosis. Geno-sis.” Skinner waved his hands around. “Gods, boy, the country. The country you live in!”

  Declan was panicked. Growing up in Foundrytown, the brief history had covered Teralona, the regional capital and—“The Sun Queen! Don’t look at me like that. The regional capital was a week away. Places like Mazal and Rictor were just fantasy. We didn’t need to know them because most of us would never leave the town we were born in.”

  “Hence, history. Hence, private lessons,” Skinner said. “It’s no crime to be uneducated. It is foolish to understand a weakness and not address it. Go quickly, no one enjoys Academy Obligations but everyone must endure.”

  ###

  Declan arrived at the lecture hall for Academy Obligations early and took a seat at the front. The others filtered in slowly. LongDark had passed and this served as a divider of sorts, since many students would have taken certifications and ended their time at the academy. Others were eager to take their place.

  As a house arcanist, Declan had been exempt from almost all of these obligations for a few reasons—first, he couldn’t actually use runes or spells, and second, he couldn’t act as a guard, slaying the blazed beasts that errupted from the world wound at times. Since guard duty was one of the most common obligations, he’d been free.

  Now, he learned about something deeply unsettling—Shard Tax. The academy was largely run by powerful artifices that shielded the alchemy labs, controlled the glint arrays, the combat enchantments, defense dummies and more. At the outer edges, past the slums, towers served to slay blazed beasts that escaped before they could reach the wilds.

  Declan had known it was theoretically possible to crush a rune or shard for power, but here it was a fact. The shard tax was reality. Tier one arcanists would need one shard a month, tier two, two, and so on. Of course, the details made him angry. Students backed by a noble house often had their shard tax paid for them, occasionally ahead of time.

  There would be no such miracle for Declan.

  It finally explained why arcanists were constantly on the prowl for a blazed beast, why they traded them in at the armory, why they hoarded ones they couldn’t use, and why the academy paid a bonus for finding (and destroying) corrupted runes. But it was a constant weight on the shoulders of lesser house students and would drive reckless behavior.

  After two hours of lecture on the value of their shards, Declan expected a short break. Instead, they were handed slips of paper as they exited. Academy Armory, read his. He often did shifts identifying runes in the armory. The pay wasn’t great but it was acceptable.

  Declan headed straight over to the armory, where he was welcomed by the researchers, who cheered when they saw his slip of paper. Of course they did, they were getting free work. “So…any chance I still get paid?”

  “For bonus shifts,” the manager answered. “It’s two shifts a week. It won’t kill you and you’ve got no hope of guard duty, which I know makes you sad. Let me show you to your station. No reason you can’t get a few hours in today!”

  ###

  At lunch he met Eden Proctor, Roland Farwen and Harris Harding, fellow house arcanists and slammed his tray down as he sat. “Shard tax is shit and ashes.”

  “Agreed!” Roland said. “Of course, we’ve got houses to pay ours. But I agree on principle. And a little bird said you’re serving your obligations in the armory?”

  Declan let the glare be his answer. “Eden. Where do you serve?”

  “Like House Drevond would ever make me do that,” she answered. “Look at it this way, you’ll get the chance to learn a lot of new runes and grow your Insight. That’s just as valuable as shards—ok, it’s really not, but it’s still valuable.”

  Harris seemed particularly struck. “Now I’m never getting a rune from you again.”

  “I have some time. I’m still technically a rank zero,” Declan said. “Things will get ugly when I’m rank one.”

  “Rank two is harder,” Roland volunteered. “You don’t have the flexibility and raw power of a rank three but you have sixty percent of the tax. Rank threes break even. From four up, it’s not like they’ll be hurting for full runes and there’s seventy tier fives, five tier sixes and it’s rumored a tier seven arcanist in House Domine.”

  “ArCore?” Declan asked. “Let me guess, not taxed.”

  “Triple taxed,” Eden answered. “But they hunt in swarms and their runes are chosen for them. The only reason they’d need shards or runes is to build their own, or if they wanted to go against the house or ArCore command.”

  “I have my first private tutoring classes. History and Soul-Casting.” Declan didn’t hide his feelings on them. “I’ll tell you what I told Skinner. I never needed history.”

  “You sure as hell need it now,” Eden said. “There’s two minor houses that are still in a house war that started three hundred years ago. And you need etiquet. And you need a makeover. Who cuts your hair?”

  “I do,” Declan said.

  “With hedge clippers,” Harris added.

  Declan shook his head. “I used my new sword this time.”

  “No…” Eden stood and leaned over, looking at the tangled ends of his unkempt hair. “No, no, no, no. You’re not some foundry workman anymore. You’re the face of House Ariloch, you’re Instructor Skinner’s assistant, and you’d get more attention from the women if you didn’t look like some feral wild man.”

  “I’ll consider it,” Declan lied. “Harris. We haven’t heard how your run combining went and I expected you’d be crowing about it.”

  Declan had seen rabbits chased by foxes freeze up before and now Harris’s eyes glazed over as he went motionless.

  “One didn’t go so well,” he said quietly. “You said it would be Fart Strike, Explosive Flatulence mixed with Strike. What we got was called Fecal Explosion and my instructor made me test it. We don’t talk about that, ever.”

  Roland bit his lip to try from laughing, while Eden’s eyes teared up as she rocked.

  “What about the nightmare rune and Claw?” Declan asked.

  Harris brightened up. “Oh, that went almost perfectly, they merged into Mind Rake and it was confiscated. Mind runes are highly restricted. That one? Extremely illegal, but I got full marks!”

  The House Perth arcanist leaned forward. “You’re going to be contacted by House Taylor. They had something I really needed. Something my family really needed, and I traded them the voucher you gave me for an Insight session.”

  “I’ve got no issues with them that I know of,” Declan said. “I have to get to my history session. It’s private and I’m paying, paying so much. I have to make it worth it. I will make it worth it.” He headed to the private tutoring complex.