First Verification

  He remembered an empty common room. Lighting the fireplace with a tome, sitting in the armchair in front of it. Taking out the assignment Moriya had marked because Ty was late for their meeting, reading it and ignoring the underlined passages, attempting to swallow his bitter defeat.

  He remembered thinking about how he had somehow been caught up in something far greater than he could understand, something that was out of his control. Thinking about Moriya’s words to him before he had even left class, foretelling the truth—she would not show up.

  And then…he remembered running back to the study room. Listening to the prescient professor talk to him as he lowered to a crouch before blacking out completely. Waking up the next morning in the same study room with a blanket draped over him. Medicine and a cup of water to the side, which he groggily took before walking out of the empty library and back to his class common room, where he saw her sleeping at the kitchen counter. Cloak on. Head on the cold stone, her arms forming a circle around her head. Expression peaceful.

  He remembered feeling a tremendous sense of relief washing over him. Wondering whether he should leave or wake her, gravitating toward her anyway. Getting his papers where he had left them on the floor next to the chair, taking a seat next to her on the kitchen counter, putting his shameful assignment in front of him like he had been reading before he tapped on her shoulder.

  “Good morning, tactician.”

  Theo turned his head to the right, away from where Ty had once sat.

  Elias raised a skeptical eyebrow at him. “Was I interrupting something?”

  “No,” he responded immediately, returning to the papers in front of him.

  “Spacing out more than usual these days.”

  He shuffled the pages until he arrived at Elias’s checklist. “Sword and spear.”

  The duelist was holding up both weapons, one in each hand, when Theo swiveled around in his seat to face him directly.

  “Hmm, these are in better shape than I expected,” he murmured, crossing his arms and craning his head in different directions so he could examine every angle.

  Elias stood frozen as Theo hummed. “You’re not gonna try to hold ‘em or anything?”

  But Theo was deep in thought. Darius had been gone for a while, and he knew for a fact that Elias practiced every day in the duelist’s yard. There was no reason for it to be in such pristine condition unless he had left his tools for him, or—

  He straightened out, ignoring the bewildered Elias, and then promptly twisted around again to scribble his findings onto his verification report and mumble, “He taught you, didn’t he?”

  “Who?”

  “Darius.”

  “Oh,” exhaled the duelist, throwing his head back. “Yes, that’s what you meant. Yeah, he’s been teaching me here and there since first year.”

  Theo locked eyes with Elias. “Did he leave you his stuff?”

  Elias hesitated briefly before he nodded slightly, eyeing the tactician suspiciously. “Yes, before he left. But…that’s not…that’s not…”

  Theo’s stiff smile turned into a grin, waiting for the slothful student to come to the realization himself.

  “N…no. Please, no. Please don’t make me do it for the class.”

  “Too bad,” chortled Theo as he completed the rest of the verification. This next excursion wasn’t terribly exciting, but it didn’t hurt to be prepared, so he had all his classmates wear their nicest gear.

  Besides, if this all ends here, then there’ll be no more use for it.

  “Okay, you’re good,” Theo mumbled with a dismissive wave. “You can take a seat while I wait for everyone else.”

  “Oookay, thennnn.” Dragging both his words and himself across the room to the nearest couch—setting his weapons down on the table first—Elias obediently lay down.

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  Meanwhile, Theo continued working on his papers as students trickled in one by one, verifying their weapons, their tomes, and their equipment. Making sure everyone had followed the instructions he had posted the day before. All until he arrived at his last student.

  “Faris, you’re late,” remarked Theo as soon as he caught him walking through the door. “You’re the last one.”

  “I was busy.”

  The tactician looked up from his papers and tapped the back of his pen on them as he inspected his caster. “Of course you were,” he replied, neither surprised nor interested in the lack of an explanation. “Come, let me see your stuff.”

  Eyeing the other classmates in the common room chatting amongst themselves, Faris unhurriedly made his way over to the kitchen counter and placed his books on the table.

  Thump. Thump. Thump.

  Before Theo even lifted a single finger, he met his casual classmate’s icy gaze. “You have three books?”

  The other students went silent, turning their heads.

  “I see you have eyes.”

  Completely brushing the sarcastic retort aside, Theo could not hide his bafflement. “Why do you have three casting books?”

  “I’ve had three for a long time.”

  “And your pocket tome?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did Ty know about this?”

  Faris’s eyes wavered. “She didn’t do a verification on me before she left. I didn’t tell her.”

  Theo sighed and examined the tomes, recalling how she had secluded herself in her room on the day of her final verification without a word until the next morning. But there were more important things to worry about in front of him, things that weren’t just memories, as he picked up the first book. “Okay, this one is Moriya’s.”

  “Yes.”

  He set that aside, as the professor had checked it the day before. “Okay,” he continued to nod, picking up the next one, “and this one is the one Ty had Darius make for you.”

  “Yes,” acknowledged Faris again as Theo stacked it on top of the first tome.

  Before Theo picked up the last book, he took the time to give Faris a severe glare. “You should have told me about this. Or at least Darius, before he left. We would have been able to get you another book instead of having you carry so many around.” He sighed again, lowered the severity in his face and tone, spun back around, and then finished his reprimand with weak words. “I can’t believe you still can’t ask for help after all this time.”

  Faris just stared.

  “Ugh. What did you even use this book for?” Theo muttered under his breath as he flipped through the contents of the unmarked monstrosity of a tome, seeing page after page haphazardly sewn and glued together. “This is so wasteful.”

  Continuing to mumble to himself while he flipped through the contents of the odd book, Theo suddenly stopped to glance at his eerily silent student.

  A hand was over his face, another shaky hand on the table.

  “Is something wrong?” he asked as if it were such a straightforward task to get Faris to admit that he needed help with something.

  “No,” responded the caster quietly, giving Theo the contradictory answer he expected. “My head hurts. Hurry up and get it over with.”

  Doing as he was told and authorizing the spells in Moriya’s tome without issue, he then moved on to Ty’s when he stopped.

  “Oh,” he breathed, noticing that there were entire pages that were no longer usable because the base number of uses had been exhausted. “You can’t use this anymore.”

  But just as the words left his lips, he knew what his classmate’s answer would be. And it would be that he did not want to give up his tome. It was a feeling he knew well.

  “Maybe…maybe we can get you another one when we get to Syarktos,” he thought aloud while noting down the depleted spells. Odds were that he already had a lighter tome back in his room that he could give him. Three combat books were tough to carry around, but at least he could do his best to lessen the burden. “I think I might have something back in my room. I’ll go look for it after.”

  “Okay.”

  When he finished examining everything else and penning in the changes, he reached into his inner breast pocket and produced a ring, which he gingerly slipped onto his index finger before pressing the correct dials to pull blood out. Then, a few spells to cap off the authorizations.

  “Okay, all done,” announced Theo loudly when his first ever class verification was complete, stretching and letting out a yawn as he grabbed everyone’s attention. “Well, before we break for the night and set off for Syarktos tomorrow morning, anyone have any questions or concerns?”

  The eyes that met his were clear.

  Selene was sitting on the edge of the couch Elias was sleeping on, legs crossed and oddly looking more royal than ever.

  Korinna was standing alertly, yet silently beside her, arms folded with a smile on her face.

  Callie, sitting with her legs facing outward at the dining table, was alone.

  Faris, face in his hand, gave away nothing.

  Elias, of course, was asleep.

  No one else. Not even the shadows of those who had once graced their halls. They would no longer come back; these five remaining people were the ones he had to protect.

  “Everyone is okay with this, right?”

  “Why wouldn’t we be?” piped up Callie first, a sincere look on her face.

  “This isn’t exactly…what we all signed up for when we joined the Academy,” explained Theo with a wan smile.

  “Technically, none of us signed up for this, including you,” shrugged Kor casually. “So who cares what we do? There’re no consequences—what are they going to do, expel us? Especially when Moriya’s around?”

  The class lead nodded faintly. “Mm.”

  “I’ve never been to the west,” beamed Sel, optimistic for a change as she kicked her feet. “They’ll be nicer than the other cities, right?”

  Again, Theo nodded. “Yeah. The trek will take a bit, but once we get there, we can do whatever we want for a while.”

  “Better than staying cooped up with barely any classes to take, waiting for the next mission.”

  When Theo turned his head to Callie, seeing her join in on the encouragement, he couldn’t help but chuckle. “Okay, okay, I get it. We’ll be okay. Everything will be okay.”

  And then, just as the class quieted down, Elias’s voice echoed in the silence. “Everything will be okay.”

  But hearing it come out of someone else’s mouth, Theo knew deep down that things were far from okay—things likely would not be okay for a long, long time, and this was only going to be the beginning. He was sure of it.