The four gather their lunch boxes and scamper down the hill before splitting up for their next classes. Sarrah lingers after the boys leave.

  “Hey, so I talked with Professor J, and she can fit me in after school, so I won’t be walking home with you tonight.”

  Allia tilts her head. “You sure? I can wait up for you.”

  Sarrah hesitates. “She said assessments can take several hours. I wouldn’t want to inconvenience you.”

  “Oh, I know. But it’s no inconvenience. I have some assignments that will be easier with the school’s equipment anyways. Besides, there’s no one waiting for me at home and I wouldn’t want you to have to walk back alone after dark.”

  Her friend smiles at her insistence. “Let’s hope it doesn’t take that long. Though it’ll probably be longer if it’s not a standard passive. But thanks… How about this? Since we’ll be going home late, why don’t you have dinner at our house? I’m sure my parents will love to have you over.”

  Allia smiles broadly at the suggestion. “I’d love to… but I wouldn’t want to impose.”

  Sarrah shakes her head. “No imposition. In fact, I think they were thinking about asking you over every night. You know, since… I mean, I know your parents are working hard to send you here, but them being so far away can’t be easy.”

  “It’s not so bad. I like making food for myself. I can experiment more that way, since if I mess up, the only one who has to suffer is myself.”

  “Yeah but, I mean, it doesn’t have to be every night. Some variety will be nice, right? And if you’re worried about imposing, I’m sure they would love to have you help out. Especially since I was never really into cooking.”

  Allia considers then smiles. “Okay. At least for tonight. I’ll decide about more if they ask.”

  Sarrah smiles. “Great, I’ll send a sprite to let them know… and um, if you’re sticking around, could you maybe walk to the assessment room with me? I know I put up a front, but I am still a little nervous about it.”

  “Of course! Meet you at our lockers then.” Allia says, then waves goodbye as they split towards their respective classes.

  Allia goes through the halls of smiling students discussing their next classes or classmates and shortly arrives at her intermediate enchanting class in a quarter full auditorium.

  “There you are!” a voice calls as she finds her seat.

  “Oh, hey Chloe!” Allia says, smiling at the petite pink haired girl in pigtails.

  “Don’t ‘hey Chloe’ me,” Chloe says with a pout, hands akimbo and attempting to loom over Allia despite being the same height as Allia’s sitting form, “I saw you eating lunch with Alex and Emil again.”

  “Oh, why didn’t you join us?” Allia asks, head tilted.

  “What, and be like you? Everyone who sees you thinks that you’re just trying to get close to the two lordlings.”

  “Well, yeah. They’re pretty nice. Why wouldn’t I want to be close to them if they’re being friendly?”

  “Have you no shame?”

  Allia looks completely baffled. “Shame? Isn’t that just what people say when they secretly want to do something but talk themselves out of it because they think they’d be embarrassed?”

  Chloe blushes but turns it into a scowl. “I do not want to eat lunch with them. This is about you, not me.”

  “Hmmm. Well, I don’t really see what the problem is.”

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  Chloe lets out a low growl. “Errrrrr, you’re impossible to…” she’s interrupted by the teacher entering the classroom. “This isn’t over, Tredwel. You need to listen to what I’m saying,” she says as she makes her way to her seat down the auditorium, tripping on a stair as she walks down it backwards to maintain eye contact, but catches herself before she falls.

  Class is an informative lecture detailing certain conceptual resonances and dissonances, and how example designs use or avoid them. The first example being the standard bullet wands, which use classical basic concepts of both love and strife but avoids the normal dissonance between them by simply adding concepts until it turns into a resonance.

  The principle is simple, but complex in execution, the same as most of the class. For now, it’s mostly just memorizing standard designs that are known to work, but she has ambitions of innovation.

  “Hey, Professor Enklerson. I had some ideas about sprite variant enchantments and I was wondering if you could take a look at my diagrams.” Allia says as she opens a notebook to show him.

  Enklerson, a young man in his late 20s with a slightly muscular physique, floppy yet neat turquoise hair and an elegant pair of silver spectacles, gives his student a patient smile and reaches for the offered sketches. “All right, Allia, let’s see what you have. Hmm…” He takes a minute going over the diagrams before respectfully handing them back. “Not bad. At least I don’t see any obvious fatal flaws. Don’t know if it’ll be an improvement over the present forms, but I can see it maybe increasing range at the cost of efficiency or possible errant snaring. Just remember that enchantments are less teleological than freeform casting – even an expert can’t be certain what will come out without testing, and you'd better not be testing them until you’re certified. Blowing yourself up is in no one’s best interest.”

  Allia smiles at the faint praise. “Of course not. Just sticking to paper diagrams until I made it to the advanced class.”

  Enklerson nods sternly. “Good. But since you understand that, I do have a few suggestions to test once you do.” He then goes through several ideas to improve Allia’s designs, all while keeping to her original ideas.

  Allia vigorously takes notes, then says goodbye with a smile. Outside the classroom, Chloe is waiting.

  “Must you suck up to everyone?” she asks sternly.

  Allia tilts her head in confusion. “What do you mean?”

  Chloe sighs exasperatedly. “I mean, first the two lordlings and now Thomas Enklerson, one of the most popular teachers at the school. You seem intent on gaining the favour of all the people who will gain you the most attention. The most jealousy.”

  Allia frowns at this. “I was just asking a teacher for advice.”

  “You were showing off.” Chloe accuses.

  Allia scoffs. “I just wanted help figuring something out. If you’re jealous, you should do the same.”

  “T-hat…” Chloe stammers. “For the last time, I’m not jealous of you, but others will be. You need to be careful.”

  Allia is about to respond, but is interrupted by a flash of purple light.

  “Hey, Allia!” Emil says, emerging from the light with a smile, then frowns as he looks between the two. “Sorry, was I interrupting something?”

  Allia shakes her head. “No, that’s alright. Are you headed to Monster Defence?”

  “Yeah. I figured something new out with my manifestation during the whole tree thing, and I thought I’d see if you wanted a shortcut.”

  “Sure,” Allia says, holding out her arm to him. “See you, Chloe!”

  Emil gently grabs the arm, then, with a nod acknowledging Chloe’s existence (who in return gives them a stern look), winks them away halfway across the campus in front of the massive gymnasium. It’s by far the biggest structure on campus, taking up nearly a fifth of the total area with multiple stories. Class is being held in the central chamber, which is hundreds of feet wide, but there are dozens of smaller rooms for smaller classes or personal training.

  “Huh,” Allia says, stepping away from Emil, “It was unexpected last time, so I didn’t have time to focus on it, but the experience is really interesting.”

  “Yeah,” Emil agrees, “nothing else is quite like it. Though it’s weird that you don’t experience disorientation. The other two I tried it with took a bit to recover. Maybe it’s part of whatever is going on with your weird manifestation?”

  “Mmm, maybe? You think it has a passive effect in addition to the active? Like how some fire mages are immune to their own fire? Though those are usually for weaker manifestations, but it’s hard to say since I don’t know of any like me to compare my power to. Or maybe there’s some subtle change in my perception that was necessary for my manifestation to work? I’ve heard of a few like that. I guess this might be a clue to figuring me out, thanks.”

  “…No problem… but um, about just now. Chloe wasn’t bothering you, was she?”

  “What? Chloe? No.” Allia laughs, finding the notion comical. “She was just giving me some advice, that’s all.”

  “Right… I mean, you’d tell me if she was bothering you, right?”

  “Yeah, of course, we’re friends, right?”

  “…Right.”

  Allia smiles brightly without care. “Don’t worry. Chloe and I have known each other for a long time. I guess she’s changed a little bit after coming to the big city. She seems to worry about stuff more. I don’t know why.”

  “Oh, well, that’s okay then. Just let us know if that changes, alright?”

  Allia nods, and they go into their separate changing rooms.