With a smile, Hugo quickly chose three random cards. From her answers to Oskar, it was clear that she had some sort of true magic. But it couldn’t be real power if she still didn’t know the answer to Oskar’s final question.

The first card she unveiled was a skeleton holding a sword. “This is the card for death, your beginnings are seeped in death, and you wonder if it is all your fault.”

Hugo shifted uncomfortably. He still had nightmares about the people that died when he got soulmarked.

“The only way to move on from that beginning is to accept your hand in it. Their deaths should not weigh on your shoulders, but you need to acknowledge your part in their passing.”

Hugo nodded, more to get her to move on than an actual admission that he would do that. He really didn’t want to think about that night.

The middle card was a repeat, another skeleton holding a sword. “What’s this then? Are you having a go?” Saskia’s voice had changed, from ethereal wisdom giver to dumbfounded dock worker. Angrily she flipped over the third card. It was the skeleton too.

“What are you trying to play at, boy? There is only one death card in the deck, not three,” she angrily said.

“What are you mad at me for? These are your cards. I didn’t mess with them,” Hugo said, indignant.

“I don’t know what you are trying to prove, messing with glamours or shadow magic. But I can read your destiny without the cards,” Saskia reached across the table and grabbed Hugo’s hands.

She held onto his hands tightly and closed her eyes. Hugo saw a wave of mana pass through him, larger than the ones before. When it passed, Saskia opened her eyes wide and said, “Death. You are already dead, how can you die and yet live?”

She dropped his hands and stood up, backing up to the door. The same man that led them here opened the door for her and looked concerned. She looked at Hugo in horror for several moments. With a shake of her head she said, “I will return your money, as long as you promise to leave and never return.” She turned and fled, leaving her helper standing there confused.

A short trip blindfolded only made Hugo more anxious. He didn’t know what all the death talk was about, but he was thoroughly unsettled. Was he going to die soon? Was the specter of death hanging over him so strong that it made her think that he was already dead?

Seeing his friend rattled, Oskar said, “Oh don’t worry about that hedgie. She was just being dramatic. You can just ignore everything she said, it was all an act or something. I bet she wasn’t even a real hedge mage.”

Hugo shook his head, “She was a real hedge mage, I saw her move mana. And scams don’t usually involve giving your money back.”

Shrugging his shoulders, Oskar said, “Maybe she was just nuts then? You aren’t dead, you are walking around. If you were a zombie, I am sure you would have tried to eat my brains by now.”

“What brains?” Hugo said with a smile, “How can I eat what isn’t there?”

Oskar shoved him to the side and laughed. The rest of the walk to Oskars house was filled with playful banter and both of their moods were much improved.

That night, while Hugo was shifting uncomfortably on his cheap inn bed, he thought back to what she said. It really didn’t make much sense. He decided to try and put it out of his mind, and try to have a restful night’s sleep.

He was unsuccessful.

...

“Raise your hand if your Fabricate skill is above eight,” Rasmus said at the beginning of class. Once the whole class had their hand raised, he said, “Good. That means I have been doing my job. The Fabricate skill only raises if you get better at creating new and complex materials. If I had let you focus on creating simple arms and armor, your skill would have stagnated at three or four. That usually happens to formation harvesters, by the way. Your skill is higher than theirs because you are getting a quality education here.”

He moved to the board and drew two slopes on the board, one raising and one sloping down, making an X. He said, “This graph should be familiar from when we talked about strength vs ductility. We want a tough product, but one ductile enough that it doesn’t shatter. Most of you are able to hit the middle of the graph, about ten in each, and your metals and resins are optimally created, strong but not brittle. But what if we could raise this optimal point? Can we get a steel with a hardness of twenty and a ductility of twenty?

“Of course we can, otherwise I wouldn’t have brought it up. Now that everyone has a high enough fabricate skill, you can enhance your creations with additional mana. The effect this has depends on the material. For example, tungsten will glow softly when you inject mana. Glass will become clearer, and smoother. Most metals will become tougher though, particularly steel. I am sure you have heard the term deep steel. That is just regular steel that has had mana injected into it. The amazing things that formation mages can do are mostly the result of this process.

“Everyone create a small bar of your alloy. The size of a toothpick. Once you are done, reactivate your Fabricate skill and start pouring mana in. You will only be able to insert a single point of mana in at a time, but keep at it.”

He walked around the room, ensuring everyone was following instructions.

“What if we accidentally put too much mana in?” Oskar asked, obviously thinking of their first crafting session. Everyone glanced at the back of the room, wondering if there were life students lurking in the back.

Rasmus laughed, “You can’t. Fabricate won’t let you. Just keep pouring your mana in. You will be able to feel when the skill cuts you off. Your pools should all be big enough to complete the task.”

It was another fifteen minutes before the first few students sat back, their little bar full of mana. Rasmus had them test the effects, they were no longer able to break it. They had taken about twenty minutes to create a small bit of deep steel.

Hugo didn’t of course. His twenty minutes was spent pouring into an alloy of aluminum and magnesium. It was tougher, he couldn’t break it. But it did still bend slightly. When he let go it sprang back into position. Rasmus said that his armor would be better against blunt force than deep steel, but slightly worse against piercing damage.

The effect on Lenna’s spider silk was more bizarre. At first it seemed like the extra mana had made the bit of string rigid and strong. But when she applied pressure, it started glowing. It stopped glowing when she let go.

Rasmus finished the class with a month long assignment, they were to create a suit of segmented armor. Every day before they went to bed, they were to push the rest of their mana pool into their armor. Hugo had a feeling that when the seventh month rolled around, some of his classmates would present half-finished suits of armor. If something was going to take about forty full pools of mana, there was no way that all of his classmates would stick to it enough to get it done.

...

Life at the academy was isolating. They didn’t get regular news updates, the walls blocked the sounds of the city around them, they weren’t allowed visitors. This was all by design so that the students could study harder.

Some news broke through.

There had been a massive robbery in Paarl. A warehouse of mana cores had been stolen. The tiger gang had taken the warehouse by force and killed all the guards. The city watch had been alerted, but the ones that responded to the call got murdered too. The gangsters got away with twelve mana cores.

The whole campus was buzzing with the news. They talked about the sheer brutality of the attack, and how many had been killed. There was also plenty of discussion about what they would do with that much wealth. You could buy your own island, or a moderately sized city.

It wasn’t until lunchtime that Hugo learned he knew the identity of the noble family who had been robbed. It was the Ullas family, Lenna’s parents. After formation class, Hugo broke his habit of avoiding her and walked up to her with Oskar.

Hugo wasn’t sure how she would react. They weren’t together anymore, and she must be reeling from the shock. Still his curiosity wouldn’t let him walk away.

“Hey, Lenna,” Hugo said, “I heard some rumors about that tiger gang attack. Is it true they stole from your family?”

She looked at the two of them, and just nodded.

“I am sorry to hear that,” Oskar said, “Who could have predicted that they would be so depraved?”

Lenna swore, “They were supposed to be on our side, those guttersnipes.”

“The tiger gang? On your side? Was your family working with nox gangsters?” Hugo said, shocked.

“Yes, but no. All the big families do it,” Lenna said, distracted.

“All the families do what?” said Hugo.

“Operate at a remove, they don’t work with the gangs, but they work around them. Haven’t you heard that every big city has a few gangs that never seem to get arrested? That’s the influence of the big families. In return, the gangs help out the big families when they can. They only hit unaffiliated shipments, or at least they should. None of us really work with them, we don’t pay the gangs directly, that way the light domain snots can’t snitch on us. It’s called honest deniability. We work around them, they work around us. And these tiger shits broke the unspoken agreement.”

“Really?” Hugo said, turning to Oskar.

Oskar shrugged, “I don’t know much about it, but I have heard of it.”

“Why are you telling us this? This is kind of sensitive stuff, your family could get in trouble if we blabbed. We aren’t exactly good friends anymore,” Hugo asked.

“Because I am screwed. I am beyond destroyed. And everyone knows it. All my friends won’t talk to me anymore, they don’t want me to take them down with me. You two are the only ones that will talk to me. Everything was in those cores. Dad put the entire family fortune into buying up mana cores. He even leveraged the house. Oh god. I don’t have a house anymore,” Lenna put her hands on her face and started crying.

Hugo’s heart broke.

She had dumped him, but that didn’t mean that he stopped caring for her. He put his hand on her shoulder and said, “This isn’t the end of the world.

“Are you sure about that? I can’t pay tuition anymore, I am going to have to drop out,” Lenna said angrily.

“Not necessarily. I am attending the academy without tuition,” Hugo said, “I got a loan of sorts. I will just have to work it off after I graduate. I can help you get something similar set up.”

She glared at him and said, “Only poor people do indentureship.”

Hugo frowned and backed up. He bit back his immediate retort that she was poor now. She was going through a lot right now, of course she was going to be irrational and angry for a bit.

“It really isn’t that bad,” Hugo said.

“No. I am leaving,” she said as she stood up. “Maybe I can convince mom to leave dad and we can start my project early. I just need four more levels and I can get my third element. Yeah. That is what I am going to do. This is going to work.” She started gathering her things.

“As long as you are spilling secrets, do you want to tell us about your grand plan? I always wondered about your weird element choices,” Oskar said.

Lenna paused and turned around. She leaned forward and said, “I am going to make the best damn armor ever. Every suit will be worth plats and everyone is going to want one.”

As she walked away, Hugo wondered if she was right. She had chosen spider silk and resin. So far unimpressive choices when creating armor. He wondered how her third choice would affect the result. He found himself indifferent. He didn’t want her to fail, but he knew that he wouldn’t see her again either way. Lenna never backed down from a challenge, even if it was going to kill her.