It might have been in Shaya’s imagination, but she was pretty sure fewer people shot her derisive looks when she was walking around next to Samorn. That or the start of the semester occupied their thoughts more than she did now.

Get over yourself Shaya, she chided, these people have way more going on in their lives than the existence of one berserk mongrel.

“Hey ladies,” Bri said as she and a smug-looking Cyren joined Shaya and Samorn on their walk. Shaya’s fellow giant had to slow her walk down considerably to allow Samorn’s petite legs to keep up. “On the way to Conjuration class?”

“We are,” Shaya replied, “How’d you guess?”

“There’s not too much out here,” Bri explained, gesturing to the open, barren mountainscape around them as they approached the inner edge of the campus, abutting against Mount Arcadia’s core, “except for the Wards, so...”

"I can’t wait,” Cyren said, his voice suggesting he could happily wait.

“I definitely can’t wait,” Bri said, elbowing him, “Shaya, you’re going to love the instructor. She teaches my Intro to Pyromancy and is really cool.”

“Will I like her?” Samorn asked in mock offense.

“Iunno,” Bri shrugged, “You will at least respect her, I reckon.”

“Will I like her?” Cyren asked with melodramatic haughtiness...that was not so melodramatic compared to what Shaya had already seen that day.

Bri stroked her chin as she considered this. “You will be confused and frustrated in equal parts, I believe.”

“I don’t know how to take that,” Cyren replied, eyebrow cocked with honest curiosity.

“We’ll find out soon enough,” Bri promised, “the Wards are just up ahead.”

The Wards was a heavy slab of a windowless building built directly into the mountain, with even its ‘ground’ floor mostly underground. Circles of gold were embedded in the earth around it and directly into the structure, each ring etched with warding runes to prevent extraplanar creatures from crossing the barrier. Some of the larger runes were embossed with crushed Ambercyte, able to further strengthen them for short periods of time if something went truly awry in the facility.

Shaya and her friends walked down the steps and swiped their slates to enter. Within the first chamber, they had to check their belongings with heavily armed blue cloaks – wardens of the Order of Heiwa charged with the Academy’s security – and get patted down to ensure no one was smuggling in restricted materials that could be used to augment summoning. While their search wasn’t invasive, the blue cloaks were thorough and their cold, professional demeanours were more than a little off-putting.

I wonder if joining the Order of Heiwa requires getting a stick shoved up your ass.

Minutes later, they were allowed to enter the next room.

Each of them breathed a sigh of relief.

“You know,” Bri said, breaking their silence as they walked down the narrow hallway with a ceiling so low the two giants worried about scraping their heads, “I don’t think I’ve ever been treated like such an object before. You wouldn’t think those blue cloaks were living, breathing people the way their hands flew over us without stopping to appreciate us.”

“You know, that could be easily corrected...” Cyren began, trailing off when Bri shot him a warning look.

Shaya snorted.

“We should be thankful they take their jobs so seriously,” Samorn said, “you can't imagine the damage a rogue summoner could cause. Even introducing a corrupted ingredient could twist an otherwise sanctioned summoning ritual into something damning.”

“Now that you mention it,” Bri tapped her lower lip, “you would look good in a blue cloak, Samorn.”

“I’d look good in anything, Bri,” Samorn shot back with a tight smile.

“Ha! I’d pay to see you in a suit of platemail,” Bri laughed, “for some reason, I still picture you in the kitchen while wearing it.”

“I think you just described a fetish,” Shaya said.

“No!” Bri looked mortified.

“Definitely,” Cyren confirmed.

“I can’t believe you just see me as an object Bri,” Samorn tsked, “I thought better of you.”

Bri groaned and remained silent for the rest of their walk.

Heavy wooden doors etched with more warding runes and reinforced with iron bars lined both sides of the hallway they passed through, each door requiring their slate to unlock. The door at the end of the hallway opened into a tight, spiraling staircase befitting a castle. While Cyren and Samorn’s lithe bodies had no trouble going down the stairs, Shaya and Bri’s shoulders rubbed against the walls awkwardly the whole way down.

They suffered for a few long minutes as the group traveled down a dozen flights of stairs. When they reached their exit, Shaya looked back and had to wonder just how deep the Wards went. Eventually it would cross into other plateaus of the Mount Arcadia, but it was at the innermost edge of the mountain...so it could go down all the way. Maybe even below sea level.

“Shaya?” Samorn asked when she noticed she stopped following.

“Ah, sorry,” Shaya replied, looking up and down the narrow stairwell, “Just wondering about how deep this goes. And just how effective those wards are given that the stairs and hallways are tight enough to hold against an army – or prevent a giant monster’s free movements.”

“I’m sure the precautions were put into place because of only one bad day,” Samorn re-assured her half-heartedly.

The twelfth basement level opened into a large classroom, eldritch lights illuminating its wide space and cavernous ceiling. The room’s central area was occupied by two rows of three tables facing the back of the room, while the outer edges were divided into cells by clear walls of force. Each of those cells possessed its own golden ring built into the floor, etched with the same warding runes found everywhere else.

Shaya wanted to rush over and study the cells to see how one opened and closed the force walls to admit people into them, but she restrained herself.

She had no doubt she’d get the chance later.

Each table conveniently sat four people, so Shaya and her friends found an unoccupied one in the middle of the room and settled in. Unlike the other classes Shaya had seen so far, this classroom was full to capacity and the space didn’t feel underutilized. It helped that Conjuration wasn’t tied to a single Spectrum and that every mage wanted to make cosmic powers do their bidding.

Shaya noticed Apricot sitting at one of the front seats, chatting with their professor. It was probably the first time she looked relaxed, if not excited, and Shaya was glad to see it. After a few more minutes, the rest of the students had arrived and they broke off their conversation.

A murmur swept across the classroom as the professor rose to her full height and moved to the front with a grace that made her seem like flowing water. She stood as tall as Shaya, but weighed half as much at most, giving her a ghastly thin frame that she gave a façade of curves to with layers of sleeveless, white and red robes that flared at her hips and a bright teal scarf she wrapped around her shoulders like a shawl. Her skin was a deep cinnamon, with the right half of her body covered in swirling white tattoos and the left half of her body covered in jagged obsidian tattoos – both of which ran up to her face.

Behind slim glasses that rested on an aquiline nose, eyes like solar eclipses scanned the classroom. Gaunt, angular features were framed by the professor’s long, wispy hair the colour of burnt orange, but through the mass of hair Shaya still spotted the pointed ears she expected of Apricot’s mother. Then came the woman’s third eye. Larger than her other eyes, it appeared to be an orb of smooth onyx with a small, permanent spark as its pupil. Looking at the spark was painful, like staring directly into the sun.

“Hello everyone,” the professor’s voice was...shockingly plain given everything else about her. Despite being foreign, she spoke Imperial Common without the hint of an accent, “My name is Doctor Amaurea Telemnar and I’ll be your shepherd while we explore the multiverse together.”

She sighed, sitting back on the professor’s table and crossing her legs.

“Yes, as you can all tell I am not from Arcadia,” she said, “I hail from the Protectorate of Vulkhad, situated east of the Empire. No, I am not representative of what the people from there look like – most of us are no taller than your average human, Binders are about as uncommon, and I’m the only one crazy enough to carve a hole in her forehead to attach something like this to it.

“But, we are distant cousins to some of you. Many of us are descended from the children of Vynderwynd and Astoria, who left the Empire to found their own kingdoms and empires after that sordid business with your first War of Succession.”

There were a few gasps around the classroom as she casually mentioned one of the most taboo topics in the Empire. A few of the students even grumbled about it.

But Amaurea didn’t seem to care at all.

“Awesome, right?” Bri whispered, leaning in close to Shaya.

“Absolutely,” Shaya replied, in awe.

She looked at the tattooed woman and her devil-may-care attitude towards the Empire’s dogma, and recognized someone who possessed the knowledge she needed to become the very best Warmage in the Empire. Hells, maybe even beyond it.

She can fill me in on so much information the Empire tries to suppress, Shaya thought, information that the high borns probably keep to themselves to maintain whatever unfair advantages they can.

Now I just have to make sure she’s willing to share that information with me.