Teon sat at the front of class and patiently waited for her teacher, Msr. Asher to finish his explanation. Like always when it came to magic class.

Sitting at the front was a habit that she refused to change even when she’d come down to the Institute. She’d been raised to sit at the front and focus in class and despite the stark differences between her former study and the study she did at the Institute, she intended on remaining a good student.

Staying focussed had been difficult. She still loved magic and would spend most nights tinkering with her bijous but her new classes hadn’t been what she had expected. Nor what she had been told to expect. Msr. Asher had told Teon and her friends that they’d be expected to catch up despite starting at the end of the third term of study for the year. She had expected that she’d know everything the eleventh year students knew, she was leagues above the majority of her peers after all, but she’d been shocked by how -

She tapped her fingers on the table and mulled over the word.

Elementary their practice of magic was.

Most of the students had only ever filled and activated runes and only a handful of them had even constructed a simple match bijou. Just how far the Institute’s curriculum was behind the Academy’s advanced classes had been something that Teon was eager to share with her Family.

She could write to her mother about how far back the Institute was and tell her about not just the magic classes that lagged behind the Academy but also the arithmetic and the history as well. It wasn’t that the history of the human lands wasn’t important but they lacked the nuance that was required in the Exams and the arithmetic was still focussed on operations. Her mother would be thrilled to hear that the rumours about the Hifords were true.

If her mother knew how bad the education was, she might just find somewhere else for Teon to go. Maybe Mahenia.

Until then, Teon needed to focus on staying out of trouble and revising for her Exam in the following year. She refused to get anything but top marks for her Exams and that meant she would have to work hard. Harder than she ever had.

And outside of school hours if she didn’t want to get told off. She checked back to find Msr. Asher walking around the class and talking about the dangers of pouring mana into runes. Teon swivelled back around to read the same information he had written on the blackboard. Instead of perfecting her bijou experiments or pouring over the Ancient’s relics to divine insights of their civilisations, she sat in a class at the fringe of Weidenland society, forced to relearn the basic information she was taught when she was ten.

She tapped her fingers on the table and waited for Msr. Asher to return back to the front of the class. She listened to the sound of the rapping of her nails and focussed on getting through the next twenty minutes of class.

She’d been burning the midnight early a bit too much recently. She felt the weariness weigh heavily on her shoulders. The only time she was able to work on her new bijou inventions was after training at night and if she didn’t keep tinkering with them, the layouts and schematics would fade from her short-term memory before she could perfect them.

She demanded that she would have two new bijous that she could present next year. If she could perfect them, the bijous were brilliant and so long as no one else was able to figure either of the designs before her Exams, she was going to knock the House Leads’ socks off.

She could figure out the kinks if she had the time to work on it. And didn’t forget the damn schematics.

She rubbed her eyes and picked up the rune in front of her. She turned the rune over in her hands and traced the bindings with her eyes, they all looked good with very deep and wide etch lines. She stifled a yawn and placed it back on the table.

It was the mornings and nights. And then all of the day in between. She’d been at training every morning as she was required to do so and then school and then from school to whatever tutorial Viera had organised for them. Most days, she was at the King Haddock training Fields with Ellen and Thredrin to practise for the upcoming tournament.

Thredrin had been pushing them hard in preparation for the tournament and nagging them that there was only three and a half weeks left before they’d start travelling to Dark Hold.

The Autumn Festival Tournament was one the three largest tournaments for the year and Teon was going to be entering the junior free weapon event in direct competition with Ellen. Teon couldn’t decide whether she dreaded losing in the tournament more or the idea of having to explain why she’d lost to her mother.

Teon paused and looked into the distance. She definitely loathed the idea of talking to her mother more. She’d be quietly disappointed in Teon and tell her that she had failed her Family. Teon had no doubt her mother would want a full run down of exactly what Teon had done to prepare for the Exams and when Teon told her that she was too tired to figure out her schematics, it would go like a sack of you-know-what.

“Your runes on the table and your hands in your pockets, everyone.” Msr. Asher said loudly as he rounded the back of the classroom. He stopped by each of the students and checked the bindings on each of the runes.

He’d done the same for the last four weeks to ensure each student had bound the runes correctly. The term before, they’d learnt etching and binding and Teon was grateful she’d not had to endure how he had taught those skills.

Teon was by no means an expert on rune binding, she preferred to focus on the creation of the bijous than the filling of magic in runes that she could just buy from stores, but she wasn’t sure how so many of her peers could struggle with the basic tasks like etching and binding after doing it all year.

Teon smirked and looked down to her hands. If she was pushed to find an answer, she had an idea: the southern Houses were consistently the lowest scores for the Exams and that many of the peers she would be competing with were still in the Academy classrooms with the nation’s best teachers. The Hifords were a martial House, relying on traditional soldiers more than warmages. She supposed it must have been more due to necessity than choice, now she’d seen their classes.

Teon placed her hands in her pockets and let her mind drift back to the concentration issue of her experiment bijou. If she could find a way of concentrating the mana without heating it up in transit, her bijou could do something very cool. She smiled at herself, it would be a very cool rune.

Once she figured out the kinks. Then she’d take the bijous into the magic Exam and blow her competition out of the water. Even those students in the Academy only learnt the most basic bijous when they were in their final year of schooling, so she’d be able to distinguish herself but she’d just need to wait one more year.

And spend a year of indignity in the south. The indignity of having to do so many hours of martial training for no other reason than to appease her parents and Viera. Teon had seen Viera more at her martial training than her magic tutorials and every time Viera would tell her she was looking better every week. The fact that Viera always saw her losing had irked her more than most of the other concessions that she’d had to make in the last few months.

Viera only came a couple times a week but Teon knew she’d only ever seen Teon lose. Teon was confident that Viera must have seen her lose to every single one of her friends more than ten times over and every time, Viera would tell her that Teon was looking better.

Teon scowled and focussed on the acronym, IBEGU, on the board. She should complain to Viera that she could do more in the workshop. She was meant to be creating runes for war, not fighting in the frontline.

None of it was fair. She was younger than all of her friends and she’d been brought up to become an exceptional mage, not a close quarters fighter. Her father had pushed her to excel in the subjects she would need. She’d dedicated her life to being the best in the classroom and workshop and now she was being forced into the ring.

If Viera saw her in the classroom or looked at her test scores, she’d see she was leagues above all but her three friends. She was younger than them but she could run rings around even Riu in bijou creation and she had the best control of her magic but she had made no impression on Viera because all she saw was Teon getting her butt kicked morning and night.

Morning and night, she fumed. And Thredrin would force her to do her form and spar with them and refused her idea of letting some of the Hiford join them so she could fight someone more her level. Instead, she was outclassed and left to suffer.

For now, she told herself. Ellen was convinced that Teon was getting better with her kali sticks and Teon held onto the idea that she had technically won a few rounds against the others. Those bouts were only when they weren’t concentrating or they were using the weapons they didn’t know well but they had to count for something.

She had been so close to beating Riu with her daggers yesterday morning. They were equal on two points and Teon had rushed in stupidly and Riu had outmaneuvered right before Teon got her final blow. Riu was the first one that Teon had to catch but she was deadly with her daggers.

Teon would love to beat Riu consistently. Despite Riu’s consistently lax behaviour, she had still managed to get similar marks on all of the tests in the Institute and her natural talent had kept her in competition with all three of the others so far.

Teon swivelled in her chair to look back at Riu. She was two rows behind Teon and had her head tucked between her crossed arms. Her school books were scattered over her desk with one rune binding in front of her and the others were stacked in a haphazard pillar next to her extinguished candle. Teon rolled her eyes and turned her attention back to her work.

She fiddled with the glasses around her neck and patted down her runing apron. So far, they’d only been filling sandstone runes but with a variety of ice, light breezes, and candle lights to use as their filling source. The classes grinded on and each time, Msr. Asher would teach them the same things again and again. He would explain the risks, the safety protocol, the procedure, and then the risks again before following with the protocols one last time to ensure they understood the risks and, of course, the safety protocols.

Like diligent students, they’d answer his questions about how to be safe and then he would then check their rune binding equipment to see if it was in good condition just in case. The whole ordeal took half their lesson but he insisted on reteaching them all of the safety every time.

The greatest danger to a mage is the mage themself. He loved the mantra and he’d stuck to it since the day Teon had begun his class. With only a short while left before lunch, they’d bound a single rune and hadn’t done any rune filling and Teon’s brain was slowly melting. The pace of class wasn’t helped with Wosche distracting the class with more of his inane questions about how Ancients or oruk magic worked.

Teon picked up her rune again and touched on its gate. It had clean edges and she was pleased with how immaculate the access point was. If all they were going to do in class was rebind the same ten runes, she was adamant she’d have perfect bindings.

“What is the minimum number of loops we etch around the rune when binding?” Msr. Asher threw the question out to the class while he moved between the rows of student tables in the middle of class.

Teon placed the rune back on the table and put her hands back in her pockets. She knew the answer but chose not to answer. Most would say four but Teon knew he was setting up for a trick question and she was surprised to see a bit of guile in his teaching.

Twice and twice again was the rule they were taught when they were younger. Four bindings were done on runes when children were less experienced with rune filling, so they’d be safer if the bindings failed. With four bindings there was enough time for an adult to step in to assist them or get them well out of the way as they stabilised the mana.

Many mages held to the rule of four even after they learnt that four bindings was overkill for the added safety. And, because of that, the minimum number of bindings was three to allow for quicker activation with some measure of safety still built into the bindings. Teon pursed her lips, the reduced number of bindings also allowed for more flexibility in creating bijous but the benefits were minimal even if she was being finicky about the answer.

Msr. Asher was no doubt expecting one of them to say four but then discuss how the warmages would use their bindings wisely and the intricacies of different mage habits for different professions. And probably something about the safe use of runes and the risks of using them dangerously.

“Twice?” Fil, one of the boys from the Institute, hesitantly tried to answer with his hand up several seats across from her.

“Close. But no. Any other guesses?” Msr. Asher picked up another student’s rune and checked its binding and gate.

“Four times.” Riu called out sleepily from her seat. Typical.

“Exactly. Twice then twice is the rule. We need to ensure that our rune has enough pathways to be able to turn it off if there is an issue with the initial bindings. So we always have a safety loop to ensure it is foolproof.” he explained as he made his way to the front of the class.

Teon perked up in her seat. She opened her mouth for a second before closing it again. She gained nothing from arguing with him about the correct answer. As much as she loathed to let the incorrect information go past unchallenged, she wouldn’t be able to sway Msr. Asher’s opinion about magic.

Msr. Asher cleared his throat and began to talk about how the four bindings were set inside the etch lines for the safety of the mage and those around them. He stressed the importance of maintaining a safe environment for the fuel and the rune and Teon felt her brain slowly melt.

She’d use the time to think about her favourite bijou project. She’d settled on developing her ice bijous despite the increased cost of importing the filled runes from the more temperate northern climates.

They were worth the cost in her opinion, given ice magic was all the rage in the capital and she could bulk order them so her parents would no doubt understand. If she could figure out a way to concentrate the cold in a similar way to the superheated fire ray runes, she had a feeling she would be able to present something very interesting for the others to see when the time came at the Exams.

She’d run through a few of her favourite bijous, her mending rune for one, probably her icy spray, her electric whip to show she had some material and electric magic, and a vines rune for good measure. Then, she’d raise the stakes with her two new runes, her frost ray and the ice shards. If she could just figure out how either of them worked at distance. She had nearly given herself frostbite with her last schematic, she had the bijou producing more than enough cold but she wanted the cold to project outwards which means she needed a way to funnel the magic. Of course, without heating the mana up through the reduced exit path.

Msr. Asher’s voice pitched high as he spoke about concentrating the energy before filling and Teon snapped back to attention. He was on the part of his speech where he discussed the importance of ensuring the integrity of the rune’s gate and she relaxed again. He was working his way around to the back of the class again and she still had some time before he’d be finished.

Msr. Asher continued on, oblivious that most of the students had tuned out just like her. Teon couldn’t help but snap back to something Ellen had said when they’d spent their first week in his class; Msr. Asher was a balding middle aged man with a collection of creased shirts and matching tan linen pants that we wore on rotation through the week; he fit the out-of-touch Ol’Haran Institute perfectly.

Teon could help but agree. The four of them had only been in the school for a month and a half and she could tell he had no more than four shirts in his entire wardrobe. He was average height, an average pot belly that barely stayed inside his average clothes thanks to his average belt holding his average pants up.

He really was an excellent human analogy for the school in which he taught would be how Teon phrased it. Both he and the Institute were neither offensively bad nor horrifically incompetent, just out of touch and lacking any real note in the world outside of Hiford province.

Teon had been told about the Institute when she was in the capital with her parents. It was the sort of school that the middle class sent their children when they couldn’t afford the Academy. That was her step-father’s opinion before Teon had been expelled from the Academy and she’d ruined her life.

When she’d ruined her chance to study at the finest academic institute in the world, Ilreana University. The largest magic university in the world and the hub for the greatest mages of their time. A university centred in the jewelled city of Ilreana at the very centre of the Peaks of Mahenia.

Attending Ilreana University had been Teon’s dream since she was young. She wanted to follow the footsteps of her parents and aunties and her mother had promised that she would be able to go so long as she received the appropriate scores from her Exams.

She felt a wave of nausea hit her from nowhere. Neither her mother nor step-father had discussed if she would still be able to go to Ilreana University if she got high grades. If she got the Lead student, it couldn’t hurt her chances but there was no more discussion of her future. If she could prove that she was still destined to be someone special, maybe she could bring it up when she saw her mother next.

If she could beat the others in the Exams and prove that the last year had only been a hiccup. If she could survive the humiliation of the upcoming Autumn Festival Tournament and not be publicly disowned. If she could survive the contracts that Viera made them go on.

Teon grabbed her canteen from her bag and took a swig of water.

She found it bizarre that none of her friends had discussed what happened in Suttrail yet. She was still shaken up by the fight and she’d caught herself thinking about the rats when she let her mind wander. Everything had happened so fast and it had been pure chaos. She’d been waiting for one of them to bring up the rats so she could tell them how she had realised just how close the entire situation had been to going wrong.

When Teon broke down their plan in her head, she could see where they’d gone wrong. They’d moved too fast and they’d not checked that the other holes were properly filled nor built up enough traps. She didn’t think they were necessarily incapable of fighting but they hadn’t been prepared anywhere near enough and Thredrin should have forced them not to stir up the rats.

Teon had not slept well since then. The nightmares would wake her in the early mornings and dogged her steps during the day. She would be dreaming at night about something nice like rice pudding or ponies and the rats would crawl through the edges of her dream and then grow larger and larger until they towered over her. Then, she’d wake up with a cold sweat.

“Teon, if you could be so kind?” Msr. Asher prompted loudly and Teon jumped in her seat.

“Sorry, sir. What?” She blinked away the daydream and looked across at Ellen. Ellen mouthed something to her but Teon had no idea what it was.

Msr. Asher sighed theatrically, “How much time should you give between activation and the drawing of energy from the source?”

“Three seconds to complete final checks before you can begin to pull the heat from the source,” Teon answered automatically, “Oh or cold or air or whatever you are pulling from the source.”

“And precious seconds for you to do the final checks on both your mind and the rune.” he corrected, “Binding is an incredibly technical ability and to do it safely requires our complete concentration. From the back, we will check our environment, complete our binding checks, our personal protection equipment, check our rune gate, and do our final testing checks, and then, and only then, will we access the source for filling. IBEGU.” He moved away from Teon as he talked and circled the classroom towards the back rows. Teon let out a slight groan before she caught herself and cleared her throat to disguise her disdain.

Msr. Asher. observed each student hawkishly while they went through their checks. Teon moved her rune several centimeters so it was in the exact middle of her desk and settled in to wait for him to come back around later. If he started at the back, it would be near the end of class before she and Ellen would be able to have their turn. And by then, they’d not have the time to fill their runes and have him check them.

From the pit of her stomach, a small fire burnt at the injustice of everything. Just like she practised, she pushed the feeling down and ignored it. Being upset would do her no good. She would just have to wait for the Exams and then she could put her time at the Institute behind her.

“I notice he didn’t specify a final testing of both the rune and our mind. That feels a bit irresponsible, don’t you think?” Ellen nudged her playfully and whispered.

“I am sure he will go through it next week.” Teon responded sarcastically, “I hear we will be learning important things like how to blink and how to suck eggs.”

Ellen gave her a confused look, “How to suck eggs?”

Teon let out a laugh but quickly stifled it, “Oh, something my dad used to say. It is lame.” A memory of her father riding with her around the pine forest of the north came to her and swept her up in a wave of melancholic nostalgia.

“What is lame is that we are yet again stuck doing the same bindings in what is meant to be our Practical Magic class.” Ellen seethed next to her.

“Right! How are we still on the basics of bindings? I can’t believe they are wasting our time with so much safety protocol.” Teon joined her in angry whispering after she checked Msr. Asher was far in the back of the class again, “I was thinking we could ask for an additional test and then further practical application of magic during lunch from Msr. Asher so we don’t fall behind the others at the Academy.”

“Oh, to the hells with more time with Msr. Asher. I am going to tell Viera that he is wasting our time and see if we can’t get a new teacher. I didn’t come all the way down here to get told how to suck on eggs.” Ellen looked across quizzically at her, “Did I use it right?”

“Yeah, that was it.” Teon smiled, “But I don’t know if we should bother Viera. She told us to go to Msr. Asher’s class so I am sure she wants us to learn from him.”

Ellen grimaced in response, “I feel like she wouldn’t want us to be sitting bored in class. She loves magic even more than you do, T. And when we have our lessons with her, we aren’t wasting our time learning how to bind runes over and over again.”

“Binding runes is an incredibly important part of magic, thank you very much,” Teon responded dutifully and put her finger up before Ellen could contradict her, “and just because I don’t like binding runes doesn’t mean I don’t value its education.”

Ellen smirked, “Of course. But if it came down to it, you’d prefer we go back to classes like Magic Manipulation Theory and Practical Magic Application or is this more helpful?”

Teon rolled her eyes and refused to respond. She instead organised the equipment in front of her. Msr. Asher was going through the checks faster than normal and Teon watched as several students started to pull heat from their candles.

Teon placed her matches next to her flame and tutted at the state of the candle. It was half burnt already with soot inside the dried well of wax beneath the wick. So much for the pristine conditions that Msr. Asher always harped on about.

“I just don’t understand why we even need to do these classes. We,” Teon paused to find the right word, “left the Academy in the second semester but we now have to join the end of the eleventh year before we go through the first and second semester in the Institute for another final year.”

Ellen scoffed, “Yeah, starting the year over is annoying but I far prefer this to staying at home. And, the good news is we get to cruise through the year again and get top marks without even trying. I cannot believe they compare the Institute and the Academy in terms of preparation for the first tier Exams. It is like chalk and cheese.”

Teon bristled at Ellen’s surprising non-chalant attitude, “We are falling behind down here, Ellen. Am I the only one that cares that we are in the most important time of our lives and instead of pushing our boundaries, we are just stagnating?”

Ellen turned to Teon and grabbed her hand, “T, not so loud.”

Teon took a breath and looked over to Fil, who had decided to ignore them, “Right. Sorry.”

“It’s fine.” Ellen let go of her hand and her face softened, “But we are being tutored by Viera Courfelt herself. I hate that we got expelled too but we can’t do anything about it now. Except trust Viera. She said we are going to be doing things that our friends in the Academy can only dream of. She’s promised that we are going to be trained by the best of the south and then welcomed back to Kudraul. That is a promise from the Viera Courfelt.”

Teon checked to find Msr. Asher several tables away still and well enough out of earshot, “If we make it back. We nearly died the other day. It was sheer luck that none of us got mauled by a gigantic rat.”

“Oh please. We did fantastic.” Ellen scoffed haughtily, “Even Thredrin said that we couldn’t have done better. It is a bit rich that -” Ellen stopped before she finished her sentence.

“What?” Teon prompted her. Teon knew what they thought of her. That she was completely out of her depth.

“We are still getting ourselves sorted down here, T. And we’ll do better next time. The fighting is always a bit of a shock, but I assumed that your aunties and uncles would have told you all about fighting and magic. They’d have some stories.”

“If my aunties and uncles found out what we did in Suttrail, they’d come down here to personally whoop all four of us. And then take us home.”

Ellen drew back and pulled a face at the idea, “They’re not the gung-ho kind of warmages?”

“They’re in the Mage Corps.” Teon replied, exasperated, “They do not know I am going to be doing contracts, I promise you that. That’s if I do contracts, I didn’t agree to going on contracts. I told Viera that I wasn’t sure about them.”

A flurry of untempered emotions flickered over Ellen’s face before her usual cool mask suppressed them again. Ellen was a good friend of Teon’s for many years and she was almost always cool, calm, and collected. But when she wasn’t and the mask broke, it was unnerving to see what lay behind.

“You’re totally right. If it isn’t for you then it isn’t for you. But we don’t have much choice in the year. We don’t have many options but to do our final year down here.” Ellen swivelled back to face her rune and the front of class,” We can agree on one point though, these classes are beneath us.”

“Like most of the Academy classes weren’t just re-teaching us the same information as what our tutors told us five years ago,” Teon joked lightly and waited for the tension between them to pass.

Ellen laughed lightly but then stopped all of a sudden as she looked above Teon’s head, “Good afternoon, Msr. Asher.”

“Girls.” Msr. Asher rounded the table and walked to the front of their desks. Teon’s rune and supplies were still in perfect order thankfully and he passed by her to stand in front of Ellen’s messy table instead.

“The rune should be always facing upwards, Ellen.” He noted dourly.

Ellen said nothing and flipped her rune.

“Ok, please take me through the safety checks.”

“IBEGU - Investigate the environment, Bindings check, Equipment check, Gate check, Check yourself.” Ellen parroted off the old acronym for Msr. Asher.

His face contorted into a forced smile, “Very well. Start your safety checks.”

Ellen moved through each of the steps, clearly exaggerating them and ignoring Msr. Asher observing her hawkishly.

Teon sat facing the front and forced herself to think about something other than the safety checks. She would visit the Baked Buns Bakery after school, she had earnt it. But if she went to Baked Buns, she’d need to go before combat training started. Preferably with a bit of time for her stomach to settle. She’d told Ellen and Wosche that she’d stay behind after school for some gym or chase but she wouldn’t be able to make the bakery and hang out with them.

Teon looked up at the ceiling and pondered silently. They’d not miss her surely and they always caught her in their chase games so quickly; it wouldn’t be a big deal. And she really didn’t like the idea of exercising on her empty stomach.