Declan met his private teacher, Brutus Scheffer, who looked like a workman, talked at a thousand words a minute and had a pot of coffee on the table, a plate of biscuits and jam and a passion for turning history into something that mattered to the present. “See, everything you’re living through now is built on what happened in the past. Take Skinner. You know he went to war with the Defiler. But you don’t know how that war shaped the current noble houses. I hear you have a bit of an personality conflict with Alister Rush.”

  “Only because I have a personality,” Declan said, trying not to scowl. “Not like I’d stab him if there are witnesses. And his father is worse.”

  “Let’s start there!” Brutus took a seat. “See, the story of how you wind up with a house like Rush begins generations before with a house called Calisto. How? What does House Calisto, a house so thoroughly erased you can’t find them in modern records, have to do with Rush?”

  Declan leaned forward, interested in that. “You tell me. No, you teach me.”

  “The answer is both as straight as an arrow and twisted as a tree root,” Brutus said. “It really helps if you understand the Sun Queen’s stance on house wars. She’s reigned for over a thousand years. She’s seen them grow, die and be replaced and mostly lets such things work themselves out.” Brutus began to sketch on a chalkboard. “And about two hundred years ago, House Caliope owned the arcite mines in the east. They owned the arcite smelters in the west, what you call Teralona.”

  “I’m from Foundrytown,” Declan said. “House Sullivan runs it.”

  “Now. Funny, what a little house war can do. So, let me tell you how it plays out…”

  ###

  Declan wasn’t sure he understood House Rush any better than before by the time they were done. He was certain he hadn’t enjoyed history that much, ever. And House Sullivan, turning on the Caliopes just as the Rushes struck had changed what should have been utter destruction into the rise of a set of ruthless lords.

  Fana Brieze’s classroom was the location of his soul-casting lesson and though it was late, Declan was excited to show his progress. They waited in their class, along with two other students.

  “Did I get the time wrong?” Declan asked.

  Brieze waved him in. “No. Those two are working on mana sensitivity and are paying you to observe. When one can’t soul-cast, the best way to learn is to observe someone who can and they’ve observed me to death. Show me something better.”

  First, he began with Deflect, the first rune he’d successfully soul-cast. Using the method they taught, outlining the rune in his mind and then glazing it with mana before flooding it. His outline was not the best, the glazing of mana too thin, but he managed to hold back the mana so that both branches of the inverted V filled almost simultaneously. “Now, watch this.”

  He didn’t so much trigger the rune as push it. It activated but instead of flashing into existence and out, it hung in the air, frozen for the count of three seconds. Then it began to drift downward, incandesed and flashed out of existence. “See?”

  “Well done!” Brieze said, clapping. “Did you mean to do that?”

  He shook his head. “It feels more stable if I use your method but it doesn’t stay stable. I literally can’t adjust anything or the rune activates. I don’t think it’s supposed to drift or explode.”

  “Well, that’s obvious.” Fana waved their hand. “No more deflect, I told you to practice Strike. Show me progress there.”

  He’d rather do more Deflects. The rune for Strike was simpler, a single diagonal line, and the rune he’d chosen felt the simplest of the lot they offered, and yet it had forced him to work at it. “I’ll show you but I can’t activate it yet.”

  This time, the outline of mana he imagined was razor thin, almost a hair of light that followed the slash downard and across. The turn upward was where trouble started. Declan’s focus felt stretched as the line grew upward and he pushed it faster. Thank the gods, he managed to finish the shape, the imprint in his mind locking. Then he began to apply mana, the thinnest glaze possible, sweeping down from the top to the bottom. His grip began to slip and he flooded the rune with mana—only for it to shatter into motes of light before it could form. “See?”

  “I do.” Brieze crossed the room and rifled through their drawer. “Let’s shift our goals to match your needs. Its not about the number of lines, not purely. You need to develop your focus. Skinner has you binding a third mana stone, for obvious reasons, and this will help with all three aspects. Rune, please.”

  He returned the Strike and accepted the one they offered, a circle. Gather. “Is this easier or harder? And where do I start?”

  “It’s a little easier and a little harder and you have to find the right starting point for you, but the curious thing about Gather is that it’s the most primitive rune, more so by far than Strike.” Brieze began to draw on their instruction board. “There are four distinct segments to Strike even though it’s the most commonly used one. There’s one for Gather. But the shape requires so much more focus, I have students who master Claw before Gather.”

  Declan didn’t need to bind the stone, but he began with something different, pushing mana into the rune and letting his weakened version of Insight absorb the details.

  Gather: Gather mana to to, dependent on ambient mana thickness. Mana Cost: minimal, fixed. Tier Zero Rune.

  It was a circle and one wouldn’t think there were many details to that, but instead, he chose the feel of the curve, imagining mana arcing upward. “This…may take some time.”

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  “By all means.” Brieze turned to the observers. “This matters. You’ll learn more about how you do something by comparing how someone else does. Not a word, feel. Feel with your arcsouls.”

  Declan began at the bottom, pushing mana upward and driving it to bend. The line was too thick but right now he wanted to capture the arc. It wasn’t so much that pushing it upward was hard, it was that as the line grew longer, each point stretched his attention. The arc of the curve had been set from the very begining, and this was too large, too long. He could have let it go but preferred to drive it onward as far as he could—which wasn’t far. The imprint shattered without even sealing.

  Undaunted, Declan started over again, this time forcing the mana to turn quickly. Too quickly. What it produced was a right angle, and trying to get that to turn again produced another, and frustrated, he forced a final one and drew a deeply misshapen square with rounded corners, one he proceeded to flood with every drop of mana he had.

  To his total shock, the Protect flashed into existence for an instant, a blue square that shattered as quickly as it came. “That sucked. That was worse than the first try. How do I set out to make a circle and make the world’s worst square?”

  Fana Brieze wasn’t answering. They were shaking, laughing so hard their face had turned purple, breath not coming. Moments passed as they rocked back and forth, but the first words they spoke weren’t to Declan. They were to the watchers. “What was it you were saying, Kelsie? Protect can’t be soul-cast? Maybe you’re right. Maybe it can’t, intentionally. Or maybe you’re wrong and you just saw one get mangled into existence. Declan, Gather is graceful. The moment you feel an angle like that, it’s over.”

  “I knew that, I just wanted to see what would happen.” Declan began again, once more, striking a mental arc of the rune in his mind. This one felt right, the curve was what he’d call perfect, and yet before he could reach the top of the circle, his mental grip slipped. “Wrong again.”

  “No,” Brieze said. “That would have been perfect, but Gather requires focus you haven’t developed. And the way you’ll do that is with plain, boring practice. If you find you’ve made too gentle an arc, push it. Fight to hold on, go as far as you can. We won’t have another private lesson until you can reliably soul-cast Gather. Let me go ahead and save you the trouble of asking, you could probably cast Combine, the triangle. You lack the focus to hold a base rune, Combine and another.”

  Declan glanced at the time-keeper. There wasn’t much time left. “Can I ask a question that’s only a little about soul-casting? Healing is a Protect and a Gather at its most basic form. What makes Healing rare when Protect and Gather are both rank zero runes? Can’t we combine a couple Protect and a couple Gather and have an Inscriptionist mash them into healing?”

  He’d expected Brieze to be someone upset that he was asking about a different subject, but they only smiled more. “You want to apply to my Rune Recombination Theory class? Perhaps get to tier three first. Normally tier three is the minimum but I could make an exception. Crawl and then we’ll discuss learning to fly.”

  “Thank you. What does Gather actually do by itself?” Declan asked.

  “It gathers mana even in mana starved environments, so you don’t have to carry a mana stone. Right now, mana stones are critical for you. And that reminds me—your mana channels are a priority. If you can’t afford treatments, consider booking a series of alignment sessions with Luthier Kirk. He teaches the ArCore but the difference between these sessions are night and day.” Brieze turned to the observers. “You were watching. I hope you were paying attention. Now, let’s see if it helped.”

  Declan headed out onto the academy campus, picking up a pair of guards who followed him. With no arcsoul, blazed beasts would be more likely to attack him and he couldn’t blame them for sticking close.

  As he approached House Ariloch, he felt house-sense kick in. The house was packed with people and only a few of them were engaged in fights. Several were engaged in a different kind of battle but most of them were…dancing? He slipped in through the back of the house and was assaulted by the smell of beer, the steady beat of a drum and people chanting as they sang.

  Declan passed rooms with the doors wide open. Inside each, tiny light artifices spun, throwing different colors on the walls, and as he passed the kitchen, Hadyen had a dozen people gathered around the table, hands on a bottle of liquor as they counted down from twenty.

  When he reached the commons, Anthony Bon, Declan’s sword instructor, stood on a table in the center, hands raised as he led them in a chanting dance—then he spotted Declan. “My friend! It is Declan Thorn! He has a good heart. One day it might be strong.”

  Declan gave the man a hug and pulled him along. “I have to show you what I got in Foundrytown. What’s going on?”

  “We are celebrating the days growing longer. And this morning, Rohan killed a tier four Nightmare Domain Lurker! Rohan!”

  On the stairs to the right, Rohan was busy kissing a woman, and Declan didn’t mind his focus. The ArCore leader was on leave and had declared that he was primarily interested in food and sex. Hopefully not both at the same time. Declan opened the door and reached inside to grab his sword from the wall. “Look at this! I killed a bunch of scale monkeys and a scale ape and even cut up a manape, though I couldn’t kill him. I have to get better. It was too close.”

  “My friend, this is a wonderful weapon.” Anthony held it parallel. “Yes indeed. Tomorrow you will bring this. Tomorrow, we will help you learn, you, me, and this sword. Will you dance?”

  “No.” Declan bowed away, then opened his door and stepped inside. The bathroom was still dimly lit, but the walls of the house arcanist apartment muffled the constant pounding of dancing and stomping outside.

  “Before this gets awkward, I need to explain.”

  Declan froze, his hand on the sword. But he knew the voice and triggered the light stone. “Tegan. You just keep showing up in my bed.”

  “On your bed. Big difference.” She motioned to the light. “I have a headache and this is the only place dark and moderately quiet. I just need someplace to sit, ok? And you still don’t have furniture.”

  “Move. I need to sit, too, and I don’t have anywhere else.” Declan took one end of the bed and dropped his backpack, then removed both his mana bearing and both stones. “You can stay here if you’re quiet. I need to work on soul-casting and binding my mana stones. There’s another room there, if you can get past the mountain of junk.”

  “The floor is fine, I just need it dark. This is overwhelming. Rohan’s party has been going on since noon. A little party is good. A lot of party is too much.” She sank to her knees and sat cross-legged on the floor.

  Declan put one mana stone into orbit and dropped his bearing in his lap, then began to focus on the third one. One, two, three. He switched his attention in a smooth, constant pattern, one, two, three. Anissa had told him this was the key. Slow was easy. When he began to speed up, he felt the connection break. Holding on to the two was easy, but spreading that attention failed every time. So he returned to counting.

  When the stomping outside shifted to a shuffle and the drum faded to the twangs of a lute, Declan shifted to soul-casting, holding Gather and forcing the mana up in an arc and holding that arc as long as he could. Maybe it was a split second longer by the time he quit.

  Tegan snored on the floor, laid back on the stone like it was comfortable. Declan adjusted the heat rune and tossed her the second pillow.

  “I’m not sleepy,” she said, settling down on it anyway.

  Sure she wasn’t.

  Declan lay back and smiled. House-Sense didnt make him psychic. It did give him a decent sense of the general attitude and the people were happy tonight. Tomorow morning would be different but for now, he fell alseep in peace.