“There’s no mention of dark mana or poisoned mana veins,” Declan said as he put the book back on Skinner’s desk. “I’m certain. It’s about the period before modern arcanists. Runes were carved in arcite ore embeded in circles and the ‘mages’ turned in circles. Then they advanced, making machines that rotated the rings for them as fast as the mage could draw in energy. There’s a crank version they ran by hand and a diagram of one run by windmills for massive spells.”

  “And then?” Skinner asked. “You can’t just leave an old man waiting. What happened?”

  “The first true arcanist. Not a modern one, but a true one. He could throw rune stones and force them into an orbit. It sounds primitive but it made him vastly more powerful and also able to move on the battlefield. Able to advance.” Declan had almost fallen asleep at the end. “The term ‘throwing runes’ is a reference to that. But he lost to the false arcanists. They held rune-stones and cast them without orbits. First to use mana stones to gather mana faster than a mage would alone, and they were slaughtered by true arcanists who could orbit runes, gather mana and weren’t limited by the number of runes they memorized.”

  Skinner had leaned back, unfocused. “Who should have won? Aren’t the false arcanists more versatile? They were limitless, no? Why would they lose a battle when they were in effect the perfect counter to any enemy?”

  “Arcsouls.” Of this there was no debate. “True arcanists had arcsouls. They could deepen their mana channels, store more runes than they could carry in a sack, hold more mana, cast faster. The false arcanists were completely outclassed. But there’s literally no reference to mana veins or dark mana.”

  Skinner nodded. “That’s unfortunate. Even a hint would have helped. I have a duty to the Crown. I’ll be leaving by glint this morning and gone for the next two weeks, consulting the royal arcanists and the army. In that time, you will report to Instructor Atkinson each morning and memorize details of a new rune from the atlas. I’m certain you’ll have Insight as a blood-rune and training you is as important as training with it.”

  “Sir?” Declan asked. “May I ask what you’re consulting on?”

  “You may not.”

  It wasn’t truly a surprise.

  ###

  Declan spent the afternoon working on the windows, which had been the hands-down winner for first improvement. The enchanted crystal wasn’t terribly expensive. Having the frames repaired would have been, but he’d pulled the entire metal block and taken it to the crystal enchanter, which backed up to the worker housing for the Academy.

  The academy was a source of immense wealth. The merchants who served it drained some of that, and with every step outward, every ring, the glitter and glory faded. “You’re ring ten. Why is ring eleven even allowed to exist?” The squalor was terrible, the lack of hope so dense Declan couldn’t breathe.

  The enchanter finished the long weld. “You’re too young for filthy truths. Some people, you give them a hand up and they’ll take it. Some people, you give them a hand up and they look for the knife in your other hand. You offer them food, they see poison. You offer comfort, they see control. The outer ring’s what happens when you tell people to leave and there’s no place to go. Then you make them go.”

  It didn’t surprise Declan. “Why don’t the blazed beasts slaughter them?”

  “They’re smart and tough. They hide. They lock up. They endure better than anyone, Soul Rot and all, they endure” he answered.

  “Soul Rot?” Declan asked.

  The enchanter pointed inward. “Mana’s thick here and if you have no exposure to arcite, it makes you sick. It makes you strong. Then it makes you literally insane. You want a whore, you don’t go there. Let this cool and you can pick up by evening, though it won’t be really set until morning.”

  “No rush, we’ve got it boarded. Tomorow?” Declan asked.

  “It’ll be ready.”

  Declan was on his way out when a thought struck. Metal barrels lined the back of the enchanter’s workshop, barrels that held the reagents for enchantment. “Do you sell the empty ones or send them back?”

  “They come with the reagents. But the tops rust out after a while, and you can’t drink from ‘em, it’ll kill you before you know you’re dying.” he answered. “You want to throw it from a building like some kind of ape?”

  “I want to fill it with sand,” Declan said. “Or rock, or something heavy. How much? And how many could I buy? I can’t afford them all right now. But I’m a workman and there’s always work to be done.”

  “Saw the tools. Why don’t you take one to start and test and we can talk about more tomorrow?”

  “How about I give you forty rin, and you deliver them tomorrow with the window?” Declan asked, handing over the coins. It was a risk, but everything was a risk. A cheap risk, costing mostly time. But for now, he had work to do, a different kind of work.

  Eden Proctor was waiting as he approached House Perth. “Did I not vote for you to go to medical? What’s the point of having housies if you ignore them?”

  “You want me to try and fix this arc circuit or you want to complain?”

  “I want to complain while you work.” She stopped him at the door. “Listen to me. No one cares about the house arcanists, so we have to care for each other. If I died tomorrow, you think Perth would give a shit? Yes, because they’d need a new one. But that’s the only reason.”

  “Workmen are built different,” he answered following her up four stories to the top of House Perth. The carpet was rich, the lights gentle, the smell of baking delicious. “We just are.”

  “Like the ArCore? You’ve seen them enought to know that’s ash and shit mixed together.” Eden opened the door to a room and activated the light over and over. It just didn’t turn on every time. “See? And when it goes off, it stays off. I’ve got a stack of lights, a stack of controls and no working light. And we’ve paid for repairs six times.”

  Declan began by consulting the code again and confirming the pieces were at compatible in theory. “Just in case, I’m going to run the line calculations. I hate doing those, but it’s the most reasonable explanation. You know what would help? Whatever they’re baking.”

  “At this point, I will hand deliver your own tray,” Eden said. “I make more off end-of-class bonuses, than I do any other way and that depends on people remembering me as the reason they didn’t ever need to worry.”

  “No school year, no end of class?” Declan asked.

  “Classes don’t follow set schedules here. Plus half the time it’s the point at which someone declares they’re done and leaves. Or Drevond decides they’re done investing in an arcanist’s grown. House dues are five thousand rin at enrollment and a thousand on their birthday and the experience has to match.” Eden waved down a servant and a moment later, made good on the threat of baked goods.

  Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

  “Try it now,” Declan said.

  She clicked the control rune and it came on. “Thank the gods.”

  “Not yet. Keep clicking it. Just keep clicking.” He’d compared all the controls. Swapped light-stones. Measured the arc circuits. He kept coming back to the controls.

  Fifteen clicks on. The sixteenth, it failed.

  Declan swapped in a separate control engraving and this time hammered it over and over. Twenty and it failed. Now he replaced it with another spare and did the testing again. “Do these look right to you?”

  “It’s supposed to like the sun,” Eden said. “You want one with a different decorative engraving?”

  Declan took the panel out and held it to his cheek. “It’s hot. Show me a working room.”

  She took him down the hall to an immaculate room with bed made up and the crisp scent of mint. “This is ready for enrollment.”

  In moments he had the control panel disconnected and swapped. Out-loud, he counted, clicking each time. Eighteen and it failed. “Look at the rune when it activates. It’s blurry. Did the same arcman do the work?”

  “We contract with Nestor Arc Services. We pay for genuine Sunswa artifice work. We test and certify them.” Eden took a control panel and turned it over. “Give me another.” Whe she stopped moving, held her breath, he did too.

  Then she escorted him out the door and locked it. “The light-stones are basically disposable. You’re welcome to keep a control or two and I promise there will be an abundance of cookies shortly. We’ve been sold fakes. They’re quality fakes, but that’s stealing from House Drevond.”

  “What will you do?” Declan asked, collecting the promised panels.

  Eden’s smile made his blood turn cold. “Write a report to the house seniors. And while I do, I’ll call Nestor out to repair it, of course. I’ll pay them again, of course. And this time, there will be a random inspection, one I certainly didn’t arrange and couldn’t control. One that fines me for, say, an unlicensed change in the kitchen circuits and six overloaded rooms where non-standard splitters were in use. One that checks the maker’s mark on that panel. I won’t do anything. The Crown will rescind their charter.”

  He decided right then, he’d never, ever offend Eden.

  ###

  Harris Harding had collected so many sayings, and most of them were nonsensical, like ‘Morning comes at you early.’ Declan emerged in the predawn darkness to find Rohan Taylor waiting. “Ready to get started again? Trust me, I’ve been lectured by everyone about appropriate teaching for people who aren’t members of the ArCore. I was eight when I started alignment exercises.”

  “Why did it have that effect? I’ve read, we all have mana channels.”

  “And they develop blockages based on your environment. Alignment lets your natural mana movement clear them, but the channels aren’t used to conducting that much power. Every moment you’re growing, you’re accumulating impurities. Purging them lets you keep growing.” Rohan struck a new pose, one that looked like he had eaten a bad bowl of stew and was desperate to find a toilet or make one. “There are seven major paths, this form exercises one rather than four at once.” He worked with Declan until the familiar burn began to pull at his soul. “There you go. Ready to channel?”

  Declan nodded. “We’re not going to ‘ten.’”

  “We are. Tegan will kill me if I don’t start with ten. But she didn’t say anything about how many tens, did she? Now, channel mana.”

  This lit a fire down Declan’s spine. “What’s with the fake cheer?”

  “There’s nothing fake about it.” Rohan had lost his normal humor. “I have the power to make things better. I choose to make it better. I have the gift of being able to walk into a swarm and cut a path through it. I’m not doing it because I have to, I’m doing it because I choose to. And I believe anyone could make that choice, too. I have to set an example that says they could.”

  Declan would have called bullshit but the fist of an angry god punched his spine so he didn’t collapse, he just folded onto the ground. “Don’t tell anyone. Same time tomorrow. That’s my choice.”

  ###

  Days turned to weeks, and Declan’s theoretical knowledge of runes grew, though he rapidly concluded he was attacking the problem wrong. With no better way to handle it, he approached Instructor Atkinson after escorting Lake to class on foot. She’d grown used to his presence, but not to his voice. “Ma’am. Is there a better way of classifying these? Like, by base rune?”

  “Why would we group them like that?” she asked, genuinely curious. “Two Protect derived runes may require wildly different counters. There are half a dozen Strike like runes and the best solution is different for each. The mana feel will tell you before the rune activates.”

  There were few things Declan was truly confident in. Things he had proven, like his ability to eat an entire sheet of cookies. “Instructor Skinner told me to learn new ones every day. I want to make sure I’m learning some from each family. Most of the time, I get a feel for what a rune does and related ones are easier.”

  “What you see is a projection from the arcanist’s arcsoul, we call it a rune-seal. It rarely matches the actual one and for duelists, rarely is ‘never.’ The drawings we have are those contributed, the names the agreed ones, the descriptions the best combination from years of conflict.”

  She must have seen the frustration on his face. “You are welcome to try. You don’t need to write your own book. Write an index by family, grow it as you learn. There’s a minor swarm coming, you could spend a few days working on it.”

  That seemed more possible, and something that would fulfill his assignment. His other project was also developing, and now he rushed back to oversee the work himself. Which was to say, he told the members of House Ariloch what to do and they did it with enthusiasm but wrong.

  Two hundred rin had transformed into a stack of rusted barrels that completely filled the vast porch. Each had been coated in sticky slime and allowed to dry, producing a barrel that wasn’t remotely usable for drinking or reagent storage.

  Every other house had a maze designed to trap the blazed beasts that gushed up from the World Wound when mana surged. Ariloch had a patch of mud that had been stripped bare, bare no longer, as they moved the empty barrels into place, forming a funnel that led to a maze that was less “maze” and more ‘twisty corridor.’ Re-purposed arc-lanterns hung throughout so that even in the dark, arcanists could see to fire runes from the safety of the house.

  When each was in place, Hayden filled them with water and then Declan sealed the top. It wasn’t indestructable, but nothing was. It was a start.

  “There aren’t nearly enough of these yet, but this design lets us widen the killing corridor barrel by barrel.” Declan moved on to the next stage, something only he did, because only he had the workman’s gloves. He strung arches of razor wire high above each turn. People would walk through without harm, but flying beasts could get caught in it and leapers would become entangled—maybe. For the rin it was worth a chance.

  In the afternoon, he rested, admiring the sunlight through the repaired window and how great it felt to be the hunter, not the hunted.

  “Declan?” Lake called. She’d gone up to the second floor and waited for him to join her. “We did a little preparation of our own. Those of us who are full arcanists have second floor rooms on this side. I’m in the middle, Rogers is on the far end where his Shield Wall can slow them down, Trias is at the front using Slowing Cloud. We’re going to split shards, assuming we kill anything. Everyone’s welcome to use a window, but the best positions are going to those of us who can actually kill.”

  This was a level of organization he appreciated. “Thank you. Thank you all. Every other house sees a swarm as opportunity. That’s got to be true here, too.”

  Opportunity came to those who took it, and Declan had a new plan for this swarm. He couldn’t kill blazed beasts. He didn’t want to cook, and inscribing weapons like Harris did was fantastic assuming one started learning five years ago.

  “Swarm’s not far off, but it feels strange,” Lake said. “Like I want to vomit and just can’t. Like the vomit is stuck in my throat and if I had another throat to puke with it would be fine, but I only have one.”

  “That’s most people,” Declan said.

  He’d worried about her every moment but thus far, the Domine house had chosen to fight elsewhere. “We’ll go into lockdown a few hours before the swarm is due. I bought Hayden some toys and he’s itching to try them. We’re going to be hurting when the man leaves.”

  “I doubt it,” Lake said. “People are talking about House Ariloch and for once it’s not horror stories. Like my uncle always says, we’ll burn that corpse when we come to it.”

  House-sense told him the danger was mounting, but it didn’t function like an active arcsoul. He knew it was coming but with no sense of when. For now he scurried about, checking windows and doors and cursing the two rooms whose arc lights still wouldn’t come on. Then he climbed onto the roof with a brush and pitch, making patches. It simply wasn’t safe to go near the front of the house where lightning crackled from the figurehead.

  He saw the mana storm long before he heard or felt it, a smothering cloud of greenish blue that boiled on the northern horizon. It stormed often out at Foundrytown, spitting hail so large it broke crystal. It wasn’t right to say he feared the storm. It was right to say he had experienced the destruction one could cause.

  Moving smoothly, not quickly, he descended to the roof access and locked, then barricaded it behind him. As soon as he reached the common room, he shouted, “Barricade the doors! Mana storm’s coming.”

  Academy Warning: Shelter in place. This includes ArCore. Do not enter the mana storm. Do not engage with blazed beasts. Close windows, turn out lights, barricade doors. Tuition will not be refunded in case of death.

  The first gust of wind struck the house, shaking every window and making the timbers groan.

  Then the pounding on the door grew louder. “Please, let us in!”