Ryan stood on a red dais in a place that was nowhere. The stained glass eye of a Teacup Salamander glittered below him. The firmament was pitch black above, dotted only with twisting orbs of color that reminded him of painted stars.

Even with everything dark, he could still see things. Everything that was anything was visible here. It made for the perfect view. He loved coming here, even if he could never stay for long.

The ground felt warm against his bare feet. If he walked, he could feel the tiny bumps and ridges of the scales, or the ledges in-between. He tried not to dwell on that too much. Acknowledge, but not dwell. Ryan tried to experiment as little as possible when the slightest mistake could kick him out and he didn’t even know what a mistake was.

Instead, he looked around and tried to settle in. He had to convince himself, his mind, that this wasn’t a dream or some figment, that this was real and he was here. He needed to make it real.

[Hot Skin] was below, those scales a part of the mural. [Lesser Fire Affinity] could be found in the red all around. When he looked in one familiar direction, brown parchment rose out of the cracks of the ground like water, with pieces of red glass here and there. It curled up into a familiar tunnel. Teacup Salamanders made of glass, ceramic, and paint ran along the ground and walls.

[Enhanced Traction]. It was what he focused on when training. When he did, the Salamanders would run faster, steadier, would become more real, a step closer to him than everything else. No matter how much they ran, they never reached him, but he could feel them inside. Like taking in a deep breath.

It was the same for [Hot Skin]. He pushed it up, closer to the skin. He wondered if the entire dais rose when he did, or if its colors flared or—

He stopped himself. He had wondered that before and been kicked out. If his goal was only to “push up” his Path Skills, he could do so with ease and, goal accomplished, would leave.

That wasn’t what he wanted.

The final thing was the eye below. An amphibian eye. Yellow and green. The revelation that had gotten Ryan his Path: they had just been normal animals once, long ago, beneath the skin. These scales that surrounded them were something else, something given.

When he was sure of where he was, Ryan took a slow … step … back.

Still warm.

No, that was a mistake, too. He tried not to think of it. He had to not think of it, of anything, and just let his unconscious mind take control, or else this would all fall apart. He couldn’t let that happen.

He waited until his thoughts drifted nowhere and took another step back, ignoring whether or not the floor was warm under his toes. He also ignored the tunnel of Salamanders growing smaller in the distance, and ignored the moment he stepped off the ledge and walked away from the colors of his [Salamander Path]. He was somewhere now, but he was not allowed to think of where.

Just so, he walked backward with slow steps until he caught a glimpse of the ledge in the corner of his eye and suddenly realized—he wasn’t on ground anymore. He was walking on nothing, standing on nothing in the middle of the air, nowhere. There was dark all around him and dark below him.

He should be falling.

He fell.

All the sudden, gravity took control and his body lurched. His heart skipped a beat, his skull felt fell a second later than the rest of him. The contents of his body shifted. He felt sick. He tried to hold his mouth, not throw up, but the wind rushed by and pushed against his face and hair. It caught his throat and lungs and he screamed in fear and scrambled for anything to hold on to, anything to save him, anything to make him stop falling. The ground was gone. The ground was rushing toward him. The ground was deadly, now. He needed something else.

He tried to twist his body in the air. The world was spinning. The twisted stars became spinning tops. They almost looked like objects. The dais of red glass above him broke apart and its pieces came raining down at him. Giant shards of glass and ceramic that could run him through and sear his flesh. It had happened before, though they were so far away.

He caught a glimpse of a giant tree in the distance, a silver giant sitting cross-legged in the air far above him, a ring of light around it, barely visible, but his spinning body drew his sight away and then his face smacked against—

“ARGH!” he lurched awake with a scream and heaved where he sat cross-legged on his bed.

Worse than any dream, because he was aware. He had honestly believed he was falling to his death.

Dammit!

“Told you so,” Brent said from his bed in the corner.

“Screw you,” Ryan snapped.

“What happened?”

Ryan frowned and looked over to where Micah was sitting on the floor. What was he doing here? Had he been here when Ryan had started? He thought about it, but he couldn’t remember. He didn’t think so.

“I fell,” he said.

Micah gave him a confused look.

“Like in a dream?”

“Oh.”

“Happens at least once a week,” Brent said. “You’re not very good at this, are you?”

“Oh, yeah? And when do you meditate, big guy?”

“I don’t have a tightrope Path, or whatever it is you’re meditating on that you can fall that badly.”

Micah looked at Ryan with wide eyes and nudged his head at Brent as if to say, Now’s your chance, hurry! Hurry!

Ryan nudged his head to the side and took a deep breath. Give me a second. That took a lot out of him. He didn’t forget it as quickly as a dream, either. There was a reason why he didn’t do it over and over again. The second time he had failed, he hadn’t tried again for a week.

The first time, he had thought it’d been a flunk and went right back at it.

When he caught his breath again, Ryan asked, “What is your Path?”

Brent leaned up on his bed as if to ask, Who, me?

Micah nodded eagerly.

“I’m a [Cook]. You can imagine which kind.”

After a moment’s thought, Micah said, “Awesome.” He looked like he was about to jump into a game of twenty questions.

“What are you doing here?” Ryan interrupted him.

“Well, you see—” Brent began.

“No, not you. Him.” He nudged his chin at Micah. Why would he want to know why Brent was here?

“I wanted to steal your bedclothes, but then I found out you were sitting on them, so …”

Ryan clutched his blanket defensively.

“ … Why?”

Micah nodded and slipped his backpack around. He fished around inside and brought out a jar of bright blue fluid that might have looked like a milkshake if it weren’t so viscous and almost glowing.

He held it up proudly. “I made laundry detergent. I wanted to experiment.”

So he made laundry detergent out of the slimes after all. They had sold the golem hearts, though, because they really needed the money and those sold for a good bit. Micah could make stone skin potions some other time.

“Experiment?” Ryan asked. “No. What if you give me a rash again?”

“Rash? That was Janet, not me.”

“[Alchemist], [Alchemist]. Same thing.”

“Oh, so if one [Alchemist] makes a mistake all [Alchemists] are at fault?”

“Basically.”

“I thought you wanted me to spoil you with alchemicals?”

“Tested alchemicals. With recipes and a receipt, please. And why are you working on soap? The exam is coming up soon. Shouldn’t you be experimenting with something to prepare for it?”

“I am,” he said and wiggled the jar. The liquid looked like it was crawling up and down inside. Not helpful. “This is just practice. Ingredients for good potions are expensive, so I need to practice my essence alchemy on something less expensive first to make mistakes and learn from them. I want to see how much I can get out of just essences in comparison to patterns.” He considered his jar. “They don’t tend to last as long, though. You need good patterns to hold a lot of essences.”

“They dissipate?” Ryan asked.

He nodded. “Yep. Ingredients, patterns, mana, essences. Unbound essences go first. The potion gets weaker over time. Then the glue holding it together starts to fall apart. Then the patterns start to fall apart. They lose their essence. Or, depending on the ingredients, the ingredients start to rot and their patterns … change. And, then they fall apart as they would normally.”

“So the method Lisa showed you of picking essence only helps for right after you make the potion?”

“Oh, no, no, no. Only when I’m stuffing in more essences than the potion can hold. Like if you stack your arms full of groceries, there’s a high chance something will fall off the pile. I can still hand-pick the best groceries. I discovered “soap essence” yesterday.” He grinned from ear to ear.

After a moment, it turned into a grimace. “Tastes just as bad as soap, though. Not a good idea to breathe it in.”

Ryan eyed the blue liquid, still unsure. “How about you test it on your own bedclothes first?”

“I have. Twice. Didn’t go too well.” He scratched his arm. Only now did Ryan notice the red lines under his sleeves there. It seemed he had scratched them a lot. “I had to wash them again and I don’t want to wash my stuff fives times in two days. But I fixed all of the problems I could find, so it should be good now. Besides, I added scent. I wanted to surprise you with making your bed clothes smell great.”

“No. Why would I want my bed to smell like you?” Ryan’s sense of smell was important to him.

“Not me. Perfume.”

“Same thing.”

“I can … give you your own scent?”

“How about you try it on your own again until you’re absolutely sure it works? And aren’t there recipes for this?”

“There are …” he huffed, sounding a little bummed out.

“You guys didn’t touch my stash, did you?” Brent asked, eying them suspiciously. “Because you sound crazy as fuck. Why not just use little washcloths to test your batch beforehand?”

“Because I don’t own a bunch of little washcloths?” Micah asked.

“That’s just sad. Clothes?”

“Don’t want to ruin them.”

“Aw.”

Micah nodded as he began to put the jar back away. Ryan’s other roommate spoke up, then.

“You can wash my stuff.”

Micah looked apprehensive. “Really?”

Kyle shrugged. “I have to wash it anyway. Best-case, I get a free wash with alchemical detergent. Worst-case, I itch for a day and have to wash it again.”

“Right,” Micah said. “A day.” He said it in a tone that made it obvious the itching would last more than a day.

“I’m hardy.”

“Hm … and about the ‘free’ aspect—”

“You slept in my bed.”

“That was six weeks ago.”

“You still should have washed them out of common courtesy, even if you only slept in them once. You didn’t.” Kyle got up and started to pull the covers off his pillow and mattress. He didn’t even wait for confirmation.

Ryan didn’t say anything. Micah could handle his own.

“You’re right,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

Or maybe not.

Kyle didn’t say anything. He just held the bundle toward him. But when Micah tried to take it, he didn’t let go. He leaned in close and said, “If you intentionally mess with my things, I will come for you.”

Micah met his glare with a suspicious squint. “Does adding scents count as messing with things?”

“Nothing too strong. Nothing too girly.”

“Hey, wait a minute,” Ryan said. “I don’t want his stuff to smell like you, either, Micah.”

That would be even worse.

He broke his glaring match with Kyle for a second to glance at him. “Is there a scent you want?”

“Just choose one he hasn’t smelled before,” Kyle brushed him off.

“Oh, well that narrows it down considerably.”

He frowned and opened his mouth ask something.

Micah used the moment to snatch his bundle away from him, hook his bag through one arm, and scurry out the door.

Kyle looked after him but didn’t give chase. He turned to them. “Am I going to regret this?”

“Your mom regrets your being born,” Brent said.

He scowled and stalked toward the door. Lisa barred his path with Micah’s arm in a vice.

“I … don’t think you’re allowed to be here,” Kyle said.

“Do you really care?”

“No.”

He brushed past her.

Lisa looked after him with a curious expression on her face. “So that’s the new roommate?”

Ryan sighed. “Yeah.”

“Why, do you know him?” Micah asked. He was leaning back, relying on Lisa’s hold to watch as he left.

“Nope,” she said. “Never seen him in my life.” She turned the same curious look on his room.

Theirs wasn’t one of the more filthy rooms. It was clean, but not perfectly tidy. Possessions piled up in the limited space. Two of his roommates had dirty laundry chairs with small piles on them. A few closets leaned open, giving a glimpse into how disorganized they were. Things poked out from where they had been stashed under beds and mattresses. They didn’t have a window, only grates in the walls, so they tended to air the room with an open door when someone was in.

Brent shifted to lie sideways on his bed and propped his head up with an arm. When Lisa’s eyes passed over his bed, he smiled and said, “Hey, there.”

She looked right past him.

“What are you doing here, Lisa?” Ryan asked.

She blinked and shifted her stance to something more urgent. “Looking for you, of course. What else? The deadline for the team sign-ups is in a week and you still haven’t joined. What have you been doing all week?”

“Well, sorry for hanging out with my little sister,” he grumbled and pushed himself off the bed. “You know, who was just born?” He immediately groaned when his socks touched the floor. Meditation legs. Uncomfortable.

“Little sisters definitely take precedent,” Brent agreed. “People are taking this whole team business too seriously. And congratulations, by the way.”

“Thanks?”

Lisa was busy getting Micah to drop his bundle of clothes. “You can wash them later, Micah.” Only when he did, did she turn back on Ryan. “I still want to see that baby someday, you know? I bet it’s cute.”

“Of course, she is."

Four people minimum were required for a team, but only three were needed to start one. If you had more members, they could join before the deadline. The school was aware some people might not find teams at all or not gather enough members, so by having groups of three sign up, other groups of three or single ones could be sorted to join them later based on their needs. That way, everyone found a spot. Of course, this would reflect poorly on assessments as people would be forced to group up with strangers a week before the exam, so it wasn’t a popular choice.

Nobody wanted to be stuck on the first floor.

Lisa, Anne, and Sion had officially started their team, it seemed. Somebody who was already on it needed to sign others in. Lisa did that for them.

They headed for the general secretary’s office in the front building. A bunch of other groups of teens clustered with paperwork in the hallway and office. They needed to wait a moment before it was their turn and then she asked for their team’s roster and signed something. There were individual papers they needed to fill besides those, either on a nearby table or in the hallway outside, and Ryan needed to make an appointment for a last minute check-up for his new spell. He would just swear he had gotten it to someone with truth-detection abilities. It would be added to his Proof Of paper instead of making an entirely new one, then.

“You finally got [Create Fire]?” Lisa asked when he asked. “When? And why didn’t you say anything?”

“I got it when my parents brought my sister home. ‘Figured I didn’t want to distract them and then kind of … forgot.”

“Oh. Well, congratulations.”

Micah nodded earnestly. “Congrats.”

“Now you can get started on your next spell, huh?” She smiled.

“We’ll see about that.”

The secretary came back to collect their papers and laid the form on the counter with a pen. Micah eagerly leaned over to sign his name in one of the six slots. He paused. Ryan looked. There was only one left.

“Hm?”

He blinked. Ryan counted again, but where there should have been two fields left, there was only one. Teams were only allowed to have four to six members and five were filled out.

Annebeth Heswaren. Lisa Chandler. Sion Shala. Navid Madin. Thomas Mathers.

“What?”