Gabriel flicked out a forked tongue and tasted the air. “It looks like a mist form, but that’s Ethereal isn’t it?” He flexed his hands and replaced his claws with silver. “That’s easy to work around.”

  “Lovely nails.” I retreated half a step, leaving the tip of my foot on the tile. “We should get ours done together some day.”

  He rushed me. I lifted my foot and the mass of ice under the tile flung the rock at his face. A claw swiped it out of the air, creating a small cloud of dust at eye level. I grabbed his other claw and turned to feint a judo throw. When he firmed his stance, I crashed my heel into his crotch and smacked his nose with the back of my head.

  The two strikes left him dazed enough that I could twist out of the grapple and put distance between us. I didn’t say anything about how he only seemed moderately pained from the kick or how little obstruction I felt.

  Porcupine needles extended out from under his scales. “What? You think I would voluntarily have a weak point that you like to exploit?”

  “Are you telling me or yourself? It’s easy for us to master lying. We don’t have to give any physical tells. If you repeat it enough, you’ll trick your brain into believing it, but not your shade. The truth of who we are isn’t so malleable.”

  The needles retracted and his physique compacted into a leaner form as all his scales turned black. “We write our own legends.”

  Gabriel exploded at me, shattering the stone beneath him. I created a wall of ice designed to break a specific direction and deflect his blow enough that I could dodge it. When he rushed past, I grabbed his tail with my right hand, pivoted to him, and swung an ice-mace with my left. He caught it without looking, turned, and drove a claw to my eye.

  I still held the tail, so I yanked it and leaned left. Gabriel adjusted for his twisting body and still had his claw on a collision course with my orbital. At this speed, my headbutt was more of a nod, but it caught his fingers and spared my vision. While I focused on that, his tail had reversed the grip on my hand and seized it.

  This time he yanked, pulling me down and to the left. His right hand chopped at my neck, sending me to the ground. I slicked the floor with a thin layer of ice and conjured two angled slabs above my head to give me enough time to slide away and stand up.

  Grappling a shapeshifter was always foolish. Additionally, with his monstrous muscle fibers and nerves, he was faster and stronger than me even with a weaker shade. I had surpassed that natural gap with skill, but he improved rapidly in the last week in both his hand-to-hand and shapeshifting. This was a very losable fight. Potions? No, too much toxicity. Weapons? Would as easily turn on me than hurt Gabriel with this curse. Poison? No, left the berries with my other Crafting supplies outside the arena.

  Not content to let me strategize, Gabriel stomped the ground and kicked rocks at me while spitting venom. I parried the rocks with an ice-sword and went intangible for the loogie. While I was mist, Gabriel charged. I surprised him by floating up and then turning solid to slash down his back.

  He caught the blade with both hands and stabbed the new spike on his tail toward my abdomen. I deflected the tip with an ice-shield, dropped the sword, and slammed an ice-flail onto his head. Gabriel expanded his maw and chomped through the chain of the flail. The entire weapon exploded into mist, obscuring my own intangible repositioning to his side.

  This time, Gabriel missed the spear I wedged into his armpit—or so I thought.

  “Got you!” His left arm clamped down on the spear and grew into a tentacle with silver thorns that wrapped around my right arm. Despite the metal, I went intangible anyway to avoid the explosion of spines from Gabriel’s skin. The thorns held me in place and seeped an ominous chill through my essence.

  While firing waves of spines, he clawed at my face. I avoided most of the damage, but the silver did leave three vertical lines around my nose and mouth. My misty left hand wrapped around his throat, turned solid, and squeezed. Without a lot more practice, I couldn’t only turn parts of my body solid, so Gabriel’s needles lodge into my flesh around my armor and pumped a mild paralytic into my veins, slowing me further.

  He grabbed my neck with his free hand and choked me while wrapping my leg with his tail. We both fell to the ground and rolled as we maintained our grips. Gabriel grew gills on his cheek and chest to suck in air, but the top gills weren’t connected to his lungs or his heart. His eyes grew unfocused while tiny hearts formed around his head to pump blood in a separate circuit from the rest of his body. He couldn’t have managed a fraction of shifts this complicated when I fought him last.

  I realized it then; I had nothing that could put Gabriel down. He could shift away any wound I inflicted faster than I could place them. Meanwhile, any damage I took would be far slower to heal until I could drink a potion. Putting myself in that state would place my companions and team at greater risk throughout the school day, and ultimately, I didn’t need to win this fight to survive.

  With great reluctance, I didn’t turn into mist, force my arm free, and take several wounds in the process. Instead, I created more ice and snow around us. It chilled Gabriel’s more reptilian features, weakening his grip and slowing him down.

  It wasn’t enough.

  As I passed out, I saw a euphoric expression on Gabriel’s weary, oxygen-starved face.

  My unconscious state slipped into regular sleep, so I didn’t wake up until Nyla dragged me through the showers. I sighed. “Five more minutes.”

  Nyla immediately dropped my foot. “I can’t believe you lost to that asshole.”

  “A friendly spar among allies doesn’t call for the most desperate contingencies.” I turned to my side. “I’m also cursed, sleep-deprived, and on the edge of toxic shock.”

  She helped me to my feet. “The fuck happened in your seminar?” She knows my schedule? I didn’t learn any of theirs. Was I supposed to? Is that the friendly thing to do? I needed Riena’s bond for this.

  “It was challenging, but running a tier 4 dungeon with a second year friend of mine inspired me to spend all night Crafting and fuck it up.”

  Nyla squeezed my shoulder. “Those kind of nights suck.” She let go and patted my back. “Well, see ya later. Try to avoid more pointless risks and make something to kick Gabriel’s ass.”

  I did have several ideas for that. My brainstorming session lasted until I sat down in manufacturing class, and Bianca burst into laughter. “What’s so funny?” I asked.

  Jeremiah nodded to me in solidarity. “I see today is your turn to be the butt of jokes.”

  Bianca pointed at me as her mirth calmed down. “You cursed yourself and are stuck in the gear. That’s the Crafter equivalent of running around with a full diaper.”

  I blushed. “In my defense, I underestimated the altered MP capacity of my materials.”

  “Wow, relying on storied mats to push up a tier. I can’t laugh. That kind of foolishness is deadly.” Bianca closed her eyes and counted to three before opening them. Her glasses flashed for a second. “Weaponless? If you weren’t a named hero, I’d be picking out a dress to attend your funeral.”

  “Oh, I won’t have one of those.”

  “If you keep doing things like this, you will.”

  “No, it’s in my will. Those are expensive, and I’d rather not devote a whole day to my blunder.” While named heroes normally receive a city-wide day of remembrance, my father didn’t nor did any of my unnamed allies. When my older brother died from shade infection, where was his celebration? He could have been as great of a hero as I was, but he didn’t get the chance.

  X2 looked completely fresh from our run. “It’s not concerning at all that you already have a will.”

  “Absolute makes all the named sit down and write one. You try telling that woman ‘no’.”

  Jeremiah bit back a laugh and turned away.

  “What?” I leaned closer until he had to choose between falling off the table or facing me.

  “Fine!” He held up his hands. “I wouldn’t say ‘no’ to her either.”

  “Boo,” X2 monotoned as Bianca shook her head.

  Gyro spared Jeremiah from more critiques on his humor by starting the lecture. “For today’s class, we’re going to briefly explain a bit of traditional programming. Bear with me, it’s relevant.

  She called down a chalkboard from the ceiling and drew two rows of circles with arrows between them.

  “In ancient times, memory could be stored through magnetic charges. Some of you are incredulous, but before the background MP radiation made such technology impossible, humans achieved impressive feats of engineering.

  “To access that memory, the computer had to remember where it was. Pointers were that stored location information. The details had many interesting applications, but what we should focus on is how the machine could perform math on the pointers directly to jump between memory sections in a computationally efficient manner—as an aside, ancient computers processing power was limited by physical reality, but I only expect the budding drone jockeys among you to appreciate that fact.

  “What’s important is the notion of manipulating that which points to something else. For our purposes, pointers don’t have an equivalent, but every material you work with is emulating concepts on the metaphysical level. When you mix, meld, or fuse materials, that changes where your item is ‘pointing’ NOT the actual concept. It’s a subtle difference, but one that can be ruinous if done incorrectly.

  “You won’t see any reference to ‘pointers’ in your textbook. The editor thought that was too confusing. Keep it in mind as we look at the governing equations and theory for Meta-Meaning Fusion, a regretfully confusing term. See…”

  Gyro’s lecture illuminated my error from last night. Both the dire bear fur and Akashic crystals were less storied than the Oni’s armor. My estimation for the dilution of the Oni’s influence assumed it was a matter of material ratio shifting the concept, but I had it from the wrong end. The overall aesthetics were more important, and the mixed materials had a greater impact there, which lowered the MP capacity slightly below the expected value and left the MP affinities misaligned with my enchantments.

  As I reworked my math on a fresh sheet of paper, Bianca laid her hand palm up next to it. “Alright, let me see your schematic, and we can figure out how to fix your armor.”

  I continued writing. “I appreciate the offer, but I don’t write those down. The more physical a process is, the more my ability will assist me. If I properly designed my equipment ahead of time, then I would be Crafting to the design rather than to an intent. My current issue stemmed from thinking I understood the theory, so more thorough design work would only increase my problems.”

  “Bollocks.”

  “What?”

  Bianca emphasized her point. “Bollocks. Every Crafter should have a journal for brainstorming purposes if nothing else. Correct me if I’m wrong, but Exemplar doesn’t improve your memory, right?”

  If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  “While a photographic memory is trainable, I don’t use the technique often. The mind forgets to protect itself. If I’m putting together a rune structure, then I’ll make use of the technique.” I was currently using paper because most of my thoughts were occupied in pondering Hunter’s item. It would have to be a weapon, of course.

  “Humph! I find it hard to believe that anyone could memorize exponentially more complicated mid-tier rune formulas.” She sighed. “But fine. I still don’t understand how a Crafter isn’t pondering designs at all times and writing them down so that she can bounce between whatever idea is most interesting at the moment.”

  Jeremiah chuckled. “Like me, Mari is new to this life.”

  “What was your role before Aspiration?” I asked.

  “Well…” He rubbed the back of his head. “I was also a Vanguard, though far less accomplished than yourself.”

  I regarded the man again. “I can see it. Those resets could let you duel most monsters endlessly. With a grenade or two, you wipe out hordes. That naturally led you to Crafting.”

  Jeremiah puffed up a little. “I wasn’t too bad.” He deflated. “But not great either.”

  Bianca rolled her eyes. “Yes, this meathead was so much worse the first year. Almost as bad as Mari.”

  X2 gasped. “Bianca! I know we poke fun at Jeremiah from time to time, but his ‘Vanguard brain’ never approached the lifestyle Exemplar makes it.”

  Another lovely compliment from X2 lifted my mood on this dour day.

  “For related reasons, I need more titanium-derived mithral. A crate should be in the north-east corner on the first floor of the workshop. Shall we procure it?”

  We all readily agreed and spent the rest of class exterminating a colony of steampunk cyborg rats guarding the treasure. They fought until their last squeak, and their dirigible airships packed decent explosives, but their odds were hopeless.

  After class, I met Vanya for coffee, and she expressed more frustrations at the lack of clues for Axel.

  “Hopefully, Professor Danger has info. Otherwise, I don’t see how we can find him without exploring all of Aspiration and its dungeons.” Vanya finished her drink and threw it in the trash.

  “I’m not against that method. More dungeon crawling is always optimal,” I offered.

  “No, if we have to do that, then we’ll need more people and that means working with Scarlet, which I doubt she’ll make for a good ally.”

  I shrugged. “I’ve worked with worse.”

  “Any of them want your people dead?” Vanya furrowed her brows. “Never mind, you’ve worked with Trow.”

  “More like, we had a mutual understanding, but yes, both of us wanted the other species purged.”

  “Regardless, Scarlet wouldn’t trust me, and I don’t trust her.”

  “She also believes me compromised.” I scoffed. “The nerve…” I took a deep breath. “Okay, we have class. I’ll ask that you watch me. I’m less rested than is wise.”

  Vanya agreed, and we both braced ourselves for more mind-numbingly complicated jargon. Maleficum surprised us by starting with a demonstration. “Alchemy isss farrr mmmore than potions, bombs, and elixirs. You don’t need enchanting to mmmake a magical item—nor do you need scripts for enchanting, but that’sss beside the point. The greater meaninglessness of the distinctions between magical arts issss not relevant.”

  In front of her was two cages with a rat and a very sick pixie.

  “With proper alchemical principlessss, anything can be mixed into any form.” She snapped her fingers and two glass bowls were around the cages. “When working with complex materials, you wantttt to preserve the complexity while following the seven stepsss in spirit. There are actually more than seven steps or not depending on your philosophical outlook, buttt that isn’t a concern for this class or most humans.”

  She covered both creatures in oil and lit them on fire for three seconds before dousing them with purple liquid. “For calcination, you don’t want to reduce an organism to ash, but burning their hair and skin counts. Dissolution is also tricky without a catalyst. Many witch—alchemists see making and using the catalyst as another step. I don’t, but you can argue it eitherrr way.”

  The two creatures dissolved in the slurry. Our professor gently stirred the bowls and the bodies separated into organ systems.

  “Keeping the nervous systems alive is a trick of the catalyst. We’ll need that preserved for the result to have any ussse.” Once both creatures were entirely separated, Maleficum poured the two together in her cauldron and started cackling. “Great insight is required to know what you don’t want.” She mumbled a spell and organs from each creature rotted.

  She poured in a blue potion that sparked when it hit the water.

  “Ideally, you rottt away what you don’ttt neeeed. If you can’t yet, then examine Exemplar’s rodddd. Yes deary, I smelled it from yourrr satchel, and it doesss old Maleficum proud to seeee students emulate her.” She hummed contently and stirred while the rotted bits evaporated from the Cauldron. “The other catalyst facilitates distillation. Either what remains or what evaporates has gone through the process, an important bit to remember.”

  When her cauldron boiled down, she emptied a healing potion into it.

  “All complete alchemical potions can be used in the coagulation step. It’s not ideal, but this recipe calls for healing to reseal it.”

  A tiny groan could be heard from the pot followed by shrill screaming and the flap of wings.

  “This poor fairy came to Maleficum for a remedy. Sadly, the sweet thing was destined for death, so I cheated. Always cheat. That isss the essence of magic!”

  A creature crawled out of the cauldron. It looked like a wererat with leathery pixie wings. Instead of dust, it constantly shed glowing fur and dandruff. In clumsy flaps, it fluttered to a mirror on a student’s desk and started crying.

  “See, rats can’t get sick. Well, they can, but not from her disease, so the new person is cured.”

  The rat-pixie fled the classroom with her hands over her face.

  “Ah, another satisfied customer! Now, more broadly, the conflux of metaphysical primary elements can greatly augment the desired result. This is mainly seen in catalyst forming through a sympathetic reduction…”

  The Crone’s lecture returned to barely understood gibberish that I eagerly listened to. During her demonstration, all the previous lessons coalesced into understanding. Our professor had been laying the foundation and only now did the pieces contect to make a small raft of knowledge in the sea of our ignorance. This revelation probably served as a way to keep luring students into her lair, but I couldn’t miss such insights.

  Vanya shared in my inspiration and was already brewing. I grabbed the unused equipment and worked on the tool for my next spar with Gabriel. It couldn’t be a weapon, so I mixed the sludge brains from the imp dungeon with the flame slime core, the poisonous berries, and a pint of my blood. Using my fermentation rod and several workarounds, I put the ingredients through all seven stages of alchemy and ended up with a ball of red ooze that felt like an appendage.

  “Ooh, your very first homunculus!” the Crone cooed from by my face.

  I was too excited by my creation to jump. With a flick of will, the ball flattened into a disk and then sharpened into a spike before morphing into a hammer. “It can burn, poison, and transform. My Anytool should be quite generally useful.”

  “Working around curses can take a young witch to pathsss of power she wouldn’t have previously considered. Keeep that in mind as you break yours.” Maleficum then puttered to another table. With everyone so alert, the Crone focused on teaching rather than snacking.

  Vanya attached a bayonet to her submachine gun and grinned. “Are you ready to face Danger?”

  I gave her a flat look. “That was terrible.”

  “Pfff, you’re just mad you didn’t say it first.”

  She was right. I kept that to myself as we finished class and headed to the headmaster’s office. My Anytool was wrapped around my right wrist as a bracelet when I wasn’t playing with it or running it through obstacles made out of ice. I wonder if anything remains of heroes who made up the sludge brains. Do they feel satisfied ‘living’ again or is this a continuation of their suffering? I shaped it into a heart and showed Vanya.

  “Gross.” She turned away.

  “Our ancestors used to adorn cutesy things with hearts.”

  “They still do, but they use the heart symbol, not actual hearts.”

  “What!? Are you telling me that valentines and the Qixi Festival were far less interesting than I imagined?” Ancient lovers gave each other the hearts of their enemies, right?

  “We still use the heart symbol today. How have you missed it? It’s still on cutesy things.” She made the symbol with her hands.

  “That looks nothing like a heart. I’ve seen it before, but I assumed it was another weird symbol like the emojis.” The prewar hieroglyph language never captured my interest.

  Vanya pinched the bridge of her nose. “Right, we still need to take you clothes shopping. And by ‘we’, I mean we’re at least bringing Riena. I need another person there to tell you when something is normal.”

  While I didn’t see the point of casual clothes—there was never a casual setting and armor was more comfortable—the only time I went shopping with the girls was our last trip into the city. Part of me at least wanted to try even though I hadn’t experienced most of the luxuries Last Stand had to offer due to a lack of interest. I yearned for those traditional teen-girl bonding moments like smashing gremlins hiding in purses or banishing spirits from dressing rooms. Alas, the past was an elusive foe, forever out of reach.

  As I reminisced on the life I didn’t have, we reached Professor Danger’s office and knocked.

  “Come in!” Rick shouted.

  We entered and I ran through my list of niceties to say so that people didn’t think I was rude, but then remembered this was a man of action. “We need to see Axel’s records. The first year Commander may be alive and working against the school.”

  “Ah, the other group that asked forgot to mention he would be filed under the fallen. That should be over here.” He stood and walked to a cabinet near the window. “Luckily for you, I hold onto the records of those who go missing in the first week a bit longer. A surprising number of them portal hop and eventually find a way back.” Rick rummaged for a bit. “Here it is!”

  He grabbed the red folder and sat back at his desk before flipping through it.

  “Yes, Maze had him marked as a potential risk. We faculty have to keep an eye on these things to avoid the crossfire and to make sure not too many school ending threats hit at once.” He closed the file. “Now, why should I hand over confidential information about a student who hasn’t been proven guilty of anything?”

  Vanya opened her mouth to say something and then closed it to ponder the question further. I had no time for this. “Please, who has time for privacy? That can’t be a real concern.”

  Professor Danger laughed. “Not everyone lives in the outer districts. Many frivolous concerns crop up from the middle and upper city. Axel is unlikely to care. He’s also a refugee, but the privacy rules are for everyone. You need a valid reason.”

  “Bah, not only is he a danger, an orc assassin is hunting for him. He needs our protection. Learning more about his abilities and psychology will help us find him.”

  Rick grinned. “There! That’s a proper heroic reason. Excellent work, Exemplar. Most only consider murdering traitors. It takes a big heart to see the broken human underneath.”

  As he handed over the envelope, a red blur darted onto the desk and resolved into Gentle Night. The orc grabbed the file and tried to blur out of the room, but I had interposed myself between the exit and her. “Not so fast, Gentle.”

  Ice-katana met steel as she attempted to cut her way through while shooting both Vanya and Rick. Vanya blocked the shots with her gun and rolled while the Professor ducked under his desk and whipped the pistol out of the orc’s hand.

  “Attacking in my office? I thought the orcs knew better.” Rick Danger kicked over his desk and unloaded his gun at the woman while assaulting her with his whip.

  The orc’s weapon blurred, striking my blade, Danger’s whip, and every bullet from both the Professor and Vanya. Is that Flurry? The woman appeared focused on hitting weapons attacking her. To test my theory, I one-handed my katana and reached to grab her. She knocked my hand aside, but three of Vanya’s bullets and one of Danger’s hit her armor.

  Rick whipped a vase off his shelf and spirits sprung from it to possess other artifacts in the room. “Are you prepared to dance with Danger?”

  Gentle swiped her blade and a wave of energy burst apart a mummy forming out of an ornate cigar box. “I can survive anything you can, human, but can your students?”

  “Ha! It’s my job to endanger them.” He shot open a weird looking box and looked away from it, so did the orc. I followed their example, but Vanya caught a glimpse and swore before turning away and applying ointment to her eyes.

  “A poor master wastes his disciples.” Gentle whispered a spell and covered the room in darkness. Neither Rick nor I slowed in our assault at all. The flaming skull circling the ceiling and screaming riddles couldn’t find us, but Vanya’s bayonet glowed red and pointed at the orc through the darkness. She continued her barrage.

  While we clashed, my ice-katana slowly morphed into an ice-zweih?nder and my armor gained plates of rime, increasing my weight and letting me hit harder. I slicked the floor, but Gentle’s own aura manipulation maintained her friction.

  “Enough of this.” She blurred and dove out of Danger’s window. The man let her pass and only shot off her right earlobe.

  When the glass finished shattering, our Professor glanced around and declared, “We should depart.”

  After scrambling out his door and barring it shut, I asked, “Why did you let her go?”

  He continued to brace his door shut as more of his artifacts awakened and rampaged. “Leaving her alive led to the path with the greatest risk and reward. I doubt she’ll find Axel with that folder, but your route to finding him will be more beneficial because the orc stole it.” The door thumped again, and he grunted to keep it shut. “Everything I do is for the students… Um, would one of you let Burn Bright know of my predicament?”

  Vanya sighed and turned with me to walk away. “Fuck, we’re going to have to deal with Scarlet, aren’t we?”

  “Uh, girls?” the Headmaster pleaded.

  I nodded. “Yes. I’ll talk with her and coordinate our efforts around each other. She’s a bit too fanatical for you to meet directly.”

  “Oh, I get it. Leaving me here alone is my path to the greatest risk and reward. While that’s true, I’m tired and have a date tonight.”

  Vanya rubbed her temples. “I’ll see if I can get more of the monster students to search. A few of them don’t seem to care.”

  I turned the corner with my companion. “If that’s all our plans, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Unfortunately for Rick Danger, neither of us knew where Burn Bright spent his off-hours.