In the face of overwhelming agony, heroes tended to respond with anger or cool focus. Anger would flush the body with adrenaline and shades responded well to the emotion, granting the hero strength and greater vitality. A calm mind could isolate the sense and make it distant so that the hero retained their composure and made smart decisions.

  Both approaches had their merits. That’s why I blended the approaches and trained myself to be furious while retaining my discipline. As the pain from the lost limb washed over me, it cleansed all trivial concerns and only left a battle-hardened warrior seeking the death of her enemy.

  I flexed the muscles around my stump and flared my aura to slow the blood loss to a trickle before turning my gaze on the bladedancer.

  It stood twice my height. The thing’s main body was separated into a head, a torso with four arms, and a spherical bottom joint that spouted with four legs. Each limb had two segments that articulated on ball joints. The exterior segments were bronze single-edged blades. Its head was covered in a black cowl that only highlighted the abyss that was its face. The creature had replaced its mental core and faceplate with pieces of golem minds and miscellaneous electronics to create an ad-hoc consciousness. Its body was riddled with patchwork fixes and cursed items.

  While it stood on the giant’s corpse and scraped its blade together in warning shrieks, I rushed it. The area we were in was roughly five by five paces long. A host of shelves wreathed this dead end and were filled with decaying monster parts.

  The bladedancer leapt back to those shelves and then sprung toward me in a corkscrew motion with all of its limbs. I batted the attack away with my glaive. Even one-handed, my strength was more than a match for the creature.

  Instead of counterattacking, it accepted my deflection and braced itself on a wall before charging Bianca, who was still staring at my arm. X2 intercepted the attack and caught the creature by its arms. Blades tore into our classmate’s uniform, but stopped at its built-in armor.

  While it was immobilized, I cut off one of its legs while Jeremiah threw a frost potion followed by a runic grenade at the bladedancer’s head. It cut both items with two separate blades. The grenade halves still exploded and shattered the now frozen blade. The space around Jeremiah warped, and he had both items back in his hands.

  The bladedancer sacrificed the two arms X2 held and regained distance with us to dice Jeremiah with its remaining four blades. Our peer kept reforming as the bladedancer minced faster.

  I chucked my glaive at the creature as Bianca fired nothing at it from her gauntlet. Void wasn’t, making it difficult to observe. You had to look at the effects, and a line from Bianca’s hand simply stopped existing.

  The bladedancer caught the tip of my glaive with its shattered blade. My weapon finished obliterating the fragment, but the creature’s joint grabbed the haft with a magnetic field and made the glaive its new limb. It wasn’t fast enough to dodge Bianca’s void and gained a hole where half its ribcage would be. It then skittered around the room and avoided Bianca’s aim.

  Jeremiah’s face was a rictus of pain as he lay on the ground and let his gauntlet of deaths wash through him. Cold eyes locked with the bladedancer as he drew a revolver and shot exploding bullets at it. Rather than reloading, he rewound time and regained his enchanted slugs.

  While the bladedancer was dodging and determining a countermeasure, I kicked off my boots and grabbed a chakram with both of my feet. My toes weren’t great at gripping, but it should be sufficient for a foe this fragile. I then glanced at X2, who hovered around Bianca and had tilted its head at me. I said, “Please throw an open healing potion my way after this.”

  “After wha—” It attempted to ask, but I was already off.

  My jump placed me in the creature’s path as my remaining hand wrapped my flail around the creature’s glaive-arm. Its other arm and one leg chopped toward my attacking limb. Rather than pull away and be driven back, I let my arm be removed and hit the creature chest to chest before biting its neck joint. The taste of sludge, MP residue, and snapping silicone boards filled my mouth as my teeth cleaved through weakly enchanted bronze. It tasted like a shit covered firework whispering secrets.

  The bladedancer flailed and slapped limbs into me, but this close, it couldn’t articulate any of its blades to cut me. I kicked my chakrams into its chest over and over again. This fucking thing thought it could use one of MY weapons and LIVE? Such audacity cannot be tolerated. My feet bored a hole through the creature as my bite kept me leveraged against it.

  By the time it stilled, several of my teeth were cracked and melting from various acids and chemicals. I pried myself from the wreckage and stumbled to my right arm. A precise kick sent it back to my stump where I held it in place with my mouth.

  The world was getting blurry from the searing agony and blood loss, but that only made me more focused. With my aura, I increased the magnetic attraction between the steel parts of my scale mail; I didn’t make the whole thing from serpent scales.

  Once it was held in place, I saw Jerimiah offering me an opened healing potion with a concerned look on his face. I bit the neck of the bottle and poured a little on my wound before tossing the bottle up and catching it by the hole to drink half of it. I focused on guiding the vital energy to my nerves first. Once I could flex my fingers, I grabbed the potion from my mouth and stumbled to Bianca.

  She tried to press my left arm to my stump. While I appreciated the effort, she would get the placement wrong, so I pulled my limb from her with my teeth to set it with my aura. I then grabbed the potion with my mouth and performed the same trick on my left, emptying the bottle.

  With that done, I squatted into a meditative position to hold my arms against the stumps without my aura. That freed effort turned inward as I guided the potion’s effect to reknit the blood vessels and bones first before working on the muscles. After the sturdy anchors were repaired, I didn’t have to worry about my limbs falling off. This level of damage would render them weak for the rest of the day, but I was no longer in danger of needing to spend months regrowing one.

  The world came rushing back in as my task was complete. Jeremiah and X2 were whispering about me while Bianca delved into the giant’s corpse for the part she was looking for.

  “Will she be alright?” Jeremiah asked.

  “She was all right before killing a bladedancer with her teeth,” X2 replied, clearly amused.

  “You’re the only one I know that is so casual about losing limbs in a fight.”

  “My tactics result in further upgrades from Bianca. I can only speculate as to Mari’s ulterior motives, but it's probably a trauma response. Anytime you meatbags puzzle me, I assume it's that.”

  I rose to my defense. “That was an optimal, low consequence means of defeating our foe. Jeremiah’s own suffering was greater.” I proceeded to collect my weapons, put on my boots, and see if anything was worth scavenging.

  “Definitely a trauma response.” X2’s eye glowed smugly.

  “And I suppose my upperclassmen had a better plan?”

  Jeremiah shrugged. “We would have fought the creature off rather than killed it. Next time, we would prepare a countermeasure and put it down then.”

  I went to rub my chin, but a pain shot up my arm like lightning, forcing it back down. I gritted my teeth and said, “That… approach would have been… fine if I didn’t want it dead.” The grinding of my molars reminded me that a few of them were still tender. Healing potion does wonders for tooth damage, but I still needed to give my gums more time to recover.

  X2 chuckled. “Can constructs like us really die? We were never alive in the first place.”

  Gingerly, I gathered mechanized giant’s bones and the bladedancer’s blades and fibers. “Undead aren’t ‘alive’ in the traditional sense, but you can still slay them. Semantics are for philosophers, not monster hunters.” Besides, every glance at the bladedancer’s corpse brought me the immense satisfaction of a successfully slain monster, so of course I killed it.

  “Ah, but…” X2 and I continued to bicker about whether or not X2 was meaningfully alive enough to kill. Neither of us were emotionally invested in the conversation, so it made for light chattering that caused Jeremiah to be uncomfortable.

  After gathering materials, we started walking back. Jeremiah glanced at the careful way I was holding my arms to not jostle them and asked, “Do they hurt?”

  “Immensely,” I responded. Without the adrenaline and focus of combat, the lingering agony lapped at my attention like a neglected puppy. No matter what I did or tried to think about, it would shove itself in my face and distract me.

  Bianca tried to hand me a bottle. “Would another potion fix it?”

  “Thank you, but my potion toxicity is high from yesterday. I need to lay off the potions for a while.”

  She stowed her potion. “You should drink less if you’re in the habit of losing limbs.”

  “It’s not every day I run into highly specialized mid tier monsters. I can assure you; dismemberment is rare for me.”

  “Hmmm, you’re at a 200% rate so far. Hopefully, you end this semester with a better average.”

  The pain had me irritated at her lack of thanks, so I kept my mouth shut. Logically, I knew she was thankful and putting on bravado, but the dull ache made my temper short.

  When we returned to the table, I funneled energy from my captured elemental into my armor to repair the damage. Completely severing the arms broke the enchantments. I had to redraw several of them with oil before the repair functionality could kick in. My elemental was still drained about halfway through the repairs and whispered terrible retribution.

  That wasn’t a good sign. I didn’t speak any kind of elemental language, but I heard close proximity with one could teach it your language, slowly letting it verbalize complaints about its situation. While this one should have been too young to have that level of sapience, its learning rate suggested otherwise.

  I suppressed a sigh. Until I captured another elemental, I would have to put up with it.

  We stayed until Bianca finished her project, which was well after the professor left and class was over. While many other groups lingered to make use of their own storage runs, we were still one of the last to leave.

  The ache had crescendoed to a raging bonfire by the time I sat on a white marble bench outside my Introduction to Alchemy class. Two rows of columns lined this larger hall. Between them, crystal windows let in rainbow scattered light that flickered and danced with passing clouds. This high up, the Crafters were even more at peace as deadly drones patrolled above us. The annoying things buzzed with pulsing electrons, spinning fan blades, and the shearing of gravity.

  Several of the damned things stopped their patrols and pointed sensors at me. The fuck do they want? As their weapons powered on, I realized my aura was leaking from the agitation at my wounds. After several calming breaths, I retracted the moderate pressure I exuded. Shit like this is why I don’t visit the upper city. The unpowered wealthy were always antsy around those of us that could smear them in an instant.

  Wrangling my aura and the pain distracted me until the stone rolled out of the way of my class door.

  “Commmme innnn!” A voice as soft as granite with all the warmth of a blizzard invited the waiting students into her lair/classroom as green vapors and a swarm of spiders poured from the door.

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  The spiders deftly avoided our footfalls as we rushed into the room to avoid the first row of seats. Maleficum was a Crone that manifested in this alchemy lab during the university’s construction. Crones were notoriously difficult to get rid of. Scholars debated if they were demons or spirits due to their ability to cheat death. Maleficum herself didn’t care about the distinction. She devoured mid tier monsters and sleeping students in her classroom while babbling alchemical secrets to anyone that sat in there. Rather than go through the arduous process to dislodge her, Headmaster Danger made her a professor.

  “Sit. Sit. Donnn’t bbbe shyyyy. There isss plenty of rooooom up front.” The woman was a caricature of a batty professor. Her slippers squeaked and writhed with each footfall like the mutated rats they were. Her robe and dress were splashed with enough reagents that the original color was impossible to determine. Pockets were sown in random places and stuffed with bits of animal, powders, and knickknacks. Her long white hair stuck out in all directions under a remarkably cute witch’s hat. The garment was black like midnight and had a little crook at its tip. The woman’s face and hunched frame were exaggerated beyond all believable human dimensions. Her nose was hooked enough to gut a fish, and her eyes moved independently of each other as they flashed through a rainbow of colors.

  Vanya and I searched the perimeter of the table we selected. We didn’t talk about being lab partners for this class. A quick nod was all that we needed to establish our alliance. I kicked one of the wooden legs, and a boar-sized crab fell from under the table. Its legs wiggled, and its pincers snapped before it righted itself and scuttled out of the classroom, where a drone promptly blasted it.

  Before Vanya sat down, I pointed at an Erlenmeyer flask and said, “Slime.” Vanya stabbed the green substance with an arrow, freezing it solid.

  With our table cleared, we sat down and Maleficum began to lecture. She was… awful. I only understood half of what she was saying because I read the book. The Crone’s understanding of alchemy was so deep that she struggled to use simpler terms to describe any concept to us mere mortals.

  From what I could gather, she was explaining the seven stages of alchemy and how they interfaced with the concepts behind the tangible MP to create potions. Calcination, dissolution, separation, conjunction, putrefaction, distillation, and coagulation were the seven steps. The best potions were made from ingredients that went through each step, but not all were required.

  Maleficum demonstrated burning live-harvested goblin livers into ash before suspending them in pure water. She then put the substance into a contraption that spun the vial as she pedaled. After several minutes of whirling, she retrieved the glass and used a pipet to extract a middle clear layer in the separated substance. Next, the Crone mixed her substance with the essence of an amaranth flower and infected it with maitake spores.

  “Now, youuu wonnn’t be able to dooo this next part. It’s one of thisss old lady’s tricks.” Maleficum mumbled a curse over her concoction and the fungus expanded rapidly. “Lazzzzy witches—I mean alchemists skip this step, but I assuuuure you that patience is rewarded.”

  She poured the substance in a retort and placed it over a fire before hooking a flask in the retort’s other end. A stream of water flowed from mundane plumbing over the flask to cool distilled vapor into the final substance.

  Our professor spent the time it took to boil to discuss highly theoretical concepts and tangents that made my head hurt. Vanya and I were wobbling in our seats, fighting unconsciousness. The Crone’s droning tones made the pain of my arms more distant, but I saw her stalking towards a failing student.

  Before we lost a peer, I spat in his ear. He startled awake and looked outraged before noticing the approaching professor. Maleficum gave me the evil eye before walking back to the front of the lecture hall.

  I spent the rest of the class fighting off the minor curse with my aura. Curses attacked the concept of who you were directly. Your shade normally fought them off after enough time, but there were ways to aid in the struggle. This curse was relatively simple. It made aura more difficult to use unconsciously. All I had to do to fight it off was to squeeze my stool with my legs while reinforcing the object with my aura. Between my opposing wills, the curse was ground to dust.

  Vanya and I stumbled out of the classroom as soon as the giant boulder sealing the room rolled away. She leaned against a column and rubbed her face. “Holy hell, I was lost immediately. How about you?”

  I stared longingly at the pure red potion in Maleficum’s hands. “I only understood half of it, and that was only because a quarter of it was in the book. She’s clearly a master without peer. I doubt the potion she made has any toxicity in it. Damn, it’s a shame the putrefaction step takes so long. Who has time to let potions ferment?” I wonder if Riena has a workaround.

  “No, it’s good stuff, but I just… Does it have to be that impenetrable?”

  “She does eat students that fall asleep. The lecturing style is probably intentional.”

  Vanya blinked. “I hadn’t considered that. Even after you said it, I’m not inclined to believe it.”

  “The pacification mist probably increased your trust in her. How else would anyone sleep around a mid to high tier monster?”

  She scowled. “That’s devious. Do you want to grab coffee before this class?”

  The mundane beverage did little to me, but I enjoyed the ritual. “Sure.”

  “If you don’t want to, that’s fine.”

  “No really, I do. My arms are still reattaching and that’s distracting me from the proper vocal inflections people expect.” Interacting with my fellow humans can be exhausting.

  Vanya carefully examined me. “You are not beating the monster allegations.”

  “To monsters, I am a monster. The definition is relative.”

  “That’s easy to say when you’re treated like a human.”

  I thought back to the last few months in my Ward, the otherness of their regard. “Not always…” My face must have betrayed me because Vanya’s own softened. “Anyways, my arms are killing me. I shall retire for this evening.”

  Vanya’s confused gaze followed me out the hall.

  Back in my dorm, I sat my collected materials by the couch and lounged with my rune book. Given the state of my arms, I couldn’t Craft or hunt without damaging them. Sketching designs was an option, but I didn’t need blueprints to make pieces that worked together. All I needed was a rough idea and my practical skills filled in the details.

  Hours passed. The others arrived one by one. Casimir was shocked to see me, but he sat next to me for a bit while playing on his tablet to administer the ‘hanging out’ he prescribed. Nyla came back long enough to change outfits and let us know she would be out tonight.

  Derek limped through the door, causing Casimir to stand and examine the injury. “What happened?”

  “Nothing.” Our Guardian grimaced. “It’s nothing. Just pulled something.”

  “Let me see it.” Casimir prodded. “I should know what I’m healing.”

  “I pulled my groin, okay! I had to duck a phoenix, and I wasn’t limber.”

  Casimir shook his head. “We’ll look at it in the bathroom. That ‘burn’ you’re feeling could be actual fire. Phoenixes are tricky.”

  Derek grumbled the entire trip up the stairs.

  Riena was the next to arrive. She was panting. “Why… are… our dorms… so high?” She took a moment to stretch her arms. “The least they could do is add an elevator.”

  I continued glaring at this troublesome rune that refused to stick in my brain. “Unobserved light ceases to count as illumination, letting celestial demons spawn.” All of them were mid tier at a minimum and had a passionate desire to purge humanity. None could be reasoned with. “Elevator shafts this close to high tier portals would either spawn hordes of regular demons, gumming the mechanisms, or call a malevolent creature beyond humanity’s abilities. We must suffer stairs.”

  “Boo. Demons suck.” Our Commander went to the kitchen and made herself a grilled cheese sandwich before sitting down next to me. “Hey, I got a common sense question: what do people exactly mean by low, mid, and high tier? Everyone acts like it is standard lingua franca, but I’m only familiar with the ten tiers.”

  “Sure, I’ll trade you for help on this rune. Low tiers are 1 through 3, mid is 4 through 6, and high is 7 through 9. There is nothing special about it.”

  Riena finished a bite of grilled cheese before asking her follow-up. “I notice tier 10 is missing from that list.”

  “Those are Titans. They don’t really fit the scale. An army of tier 9 monsters could swarm a Titan and only annoy it.” The dragons had been coy about why there were so few elders, but we suspected their previous council tried to kill the Primordial, the first Titan, the creature that had started the war.

  “Huh.” She gobbled the rest of her sandwich. “So what rune are you having trouble with?”

  I sighed. “I can’t get the Void rune to stick in my head. What is nothing? It isn’t, so how can it be?”

  “Ah yeah, that is a tricky one. How many runes do you know?”

  “A few dozen. Why?”

  Riena nodded sagely. “That’s part of your problem. For an abstract Rune of Creation like Void, you need to know hundreds of other runes first. A thousand would be ideal.”

  My brows furrowed. “How would that be needed to memorize it?”

  “And that’s the rest of your problem. You don’t memorize runes. The Runes of Creation aren’t a tongue anyone speaks. They are found in portal worlds etched on stone obelisks at nexus points, which you know, but I don’t think you get what that means. Every instance of the rune—in books, on stone, or in your mind—is the same. They all share existence and help the rune define itself. You don’t memorize runes; you know them.”

  She stood and gestured with her hands while she talked.

  “In a sense, the rune is living within you. Once you internalize the meaning, that self-defining concept persists. It’s why forgetting a rune is nearly impossible. You either know, or you don’t. Once you learn enough of them, part of your mind is partitioned into the logic they exist with. That net lets you snare more ephemeral concepts. Void is one of the worst. The rune for the rune language is easier, and most Crafters save that for last.” Riena had a bitter smile.

  “There is a rune for the language in the language? What does it do?”

  “It… Learning it shows you the limits of the language. You learn why it can’t be used to speak. Essentially, the Runes of Creation are incomplete. That knowledge tends to kill your motivation to learn more runes, but it does help you learn other magical languages faster.”

  I closed my book and pinched the bridge of my nose. “I have whiled my time fruitlessly in this venture, then. Thank you for the guidance, Riena.”

  “Don’t mention it!” She looked into my bag. “Why are your materials out here? I always squirrel my stuff away.”

  “I am waiting for my arms to heal before facing the monster in my bedroom. No, you can put down the drones. I will handle it.”

  Riena plopped back down on the couch before grabbing the remote. “If you’re sure…” She then turned the TV on to a station reporting the latest in MP conduit advances.

  Rather than continue my frustrated study session, I closed my eyes and focused on meditative restorative techniques. Derek and Casimir joined us at some point. The three of them laughed and joked before retiring for the evening. Deep into the night, Nyla returned smelling of blood and fire while humming to herself.

  Just before dawn, my arms were healed, and I opened my eyes. I better do this quickly.

  I grabbed my pack and navigated to my room door. After calmly opening the door, I knocked on the frame. “Monster, I wish to make an accord.”

  Several tentacles of various colors emerged from the bed. Two of them ended in eyes that turned toward me. “Why Exemplar, there is no need to be so formal.” The voice was both high and low pitch as several tones harmonized with themselves.

  “Fyrnell?”

  “The one and many!”

  I laughed and shut the door behind me. I couldn’t believe my old Bed Monster had found me again. From the cracks between reality, their kind’s progenitors send polyps to infest the dreams of children. With such a diet forming their egos, Bed Monster were almost entirely benign. Only the youngest of them would accidentally eat their child, and even then, only if the child was foolish enough to look under their bed or stick their feet out from under the covers.

  Like house centipedes or huntsman spiders, Bed Monsters ate more malevolent creatures and were thus tolerated. After enough time, they eventually developed real sapience. Most young heroes banished their monsters when they wanted true privacy in their room, but I had kept mine for years later than normal because Fyrnell was one of few entities I could talk to about my secret wants.

  I shook my head. “From what impossible realm did you track my trail?”

  “Ah.” Several of the tentacles lowered. “You finally dreamed again! I was able to follow you here from that, but I’ve been lingering on the other side and eating your nightmares. Exemplar, you have so many of those.” Their tentacles rubbed each other. “I was worried.”

  I patted one of the close appendages. “Fear not, my mind dwelled on horror because I slew horrors. Surely, you’ve done more than suckle on my dark musings.”

  “Yes, I visited my progenitor. It was… I can’t describe it without breaking your mortal mind. This part of me is only the portion that can interact with your realm. Most of me is busy in planes of reality beyond your comprehension.”

  “Oh, of course! You are a massive eldritch being like you always dreamed about. You’re certainly not fudging any mystery to gnaw on what I imagine.”

  Several tentacles poked at me. “Don’t ruin my fun. Most of what I am can’t exist in your realm, so it is essentially not real to you. Those suspicions are right and wrong.”

  I batted away their limbs. “Fine, but we need to discuss what you will do in this reality with the parts of your mind that still comprehend these lowly dimensions.”

  “What is there to discuss? I eat the monsters that form in your room like always.”

  “Nay. I need the monster parts for my Craft. You may have 1 in 3 parts of any monsters that spawn as long as you do not touch any materials I store here.”

  Tentacles raised vertically and wiggled in outrage. “Ridiculous! Robbery! The lowest I will go is half, and that is because I like you.”

  I waved a hand. “No deal. My development as a Crafter is paramount to my new dreams. You surely care about those, right?”

  Several pairs of their appendages folded together as they hummed. “How about this: I butcher the monsters and give you anything useful, but you need to actually sleep at night to compensate.”

  The offer was generous, but… “Fyrnell, I love you like a sibling, but I can’t trust you to keep me safe from the threats at this university.”

  “I could wake you for anything dangerous. Besides, you need real sleep to process the wounds on your mind. I’m glad to see my princess has grown up, but emerging pained you greatly.”

  That word again. Both Fyrnell and Izy had insisted on calling me that when I was fighting myself. It's why I drove them away. “I need… to head to class. Don’t eat my things. We can discuss the monster division later.”

  “Exemplar wait, I—”

  I dumped my things on the desk and hurried to sparring.