My mind roamed disconnected fields of thought as my hand mechanically operated, working on writing assignments in the undisturbed peace of my dorm room. Even now, a small portion of my brainpower was occupied by the other problem at hand, though I was making no progress there, despite all that I knew, only recycling the same thoughts over and over. Maybe there was something I'd missed?

  The dragon rings.

  The hoops actively repelled mana, but despite this trait, an elaborate, magical lock mechanism had somehow been put into them, as well as a monitoring system that sent out a signal if any of the five seals were released. I only had the General's word on this, though. I couldn’t verify the truth for myself and investigate the formulae, since the rings deflected sensory magic the same as everything else. Maybe at full strength, I could’ve put enough power into my sight to see through the rings’ mysteries, given time, but not when I was wearing them and weakened by them.

  But i had no reason to doubt the mechanism. I'd been instructed how it was used.

  The seals were an engineering feat like encasing a droplet of cold water in the heart of an erupting volcano. It wasn't sufficient for the water to stay liquid; it had to be fully untouched, ice-cold and still, or else it couldn't survive.

  So how were these things made?

  I could only approach the problem with the ways of a non-magician. Thoughts, not spells.

  What was known so far?

  Like the Corridor of Sages, golems, and magitech showed us, there were methods to place magic onto an object and leave it to work independently. By infusing the spell with a dedicated base charge, which it consumed over time like a lamp its oil. The same as Professor Woodrow and her campfire.

  The flaw of this method was that it was temporary. A detached mana pool was susceptible to outside manipulation and dissolved quickly over time. Its lifespan was hours, weeks at most. How to make stationary techniques last then?

  The solution wizards came up with was etching. A physical mark of some kind was made upon the material with magic and mana bound to that. A natural object and pure fabrication, joined as one. As long as the mark existed, the mana in it was secured and wouldn't be easily erased or taken. Better than that, it was found that certain types of markings retained mana much better than aimless scratches. Refining this further, mages developed methods to transcribe previously formless mental information into iconography, representing equivalent data, and which could communicate with mana.

  Casting the spell in advance was no longer necessary. Etching a full ritual structure, a Schema, onto a material, all you had to do was inject mana to manifest the technique.

  Industrial revolution.

  Then they realized you could etch Schemata onto people too, if you disregarded the fact that the process was immensely painful...But never mind that.

  Etching rituals on dragon scales should have been no different from trying to write a novel on ocean waves. Making any kind of inscription on them was difficult, given their hardness, and that didn't explain how mana was entered. I couldn't even see any markings on the rings. The small blocks they were made of were smooth all around. Unless it was the seams in between...?

  Somehow, the devilish minds of Mysterium had found a way.

  To disable the rings at will, I had to learn the method they’d used.

  The most straightforward answer was that they got a mage powerful enough to overpower the rings' mana-repulsion effect to etch them. I suppose, if only one block was processed at a time, even a Tier 6 caster could've done it. Even so, the task would've been like writing a microscopic letter with a flamethrower. It was unbelievable to me that a human mage could've done it.

  Then who else? God?

  Or maybe there was some kind of trick to it. A metaphysical loophole that let the crafter bypass the resistance with minimal effort.

  I still didn’t have enough information…

  A knock on the door interrupted my solitary struggle. I went to open and found someone much smaller on the other side.

  “Got mail for you, Ruthford!” dorm manager Ruby barked, thrusting a narrow envelope at me. Under her strong arm, the dwarf carried a large leather bag (a normal-sized leather bag that looked comically big on her frame), and it was stuffed full of letters and small parcels. Apparently, mail delivery fell among the dorm manager’s duties.

  “Who is it from?” I asked, before accepting.

  “From home, by the looks of it! Only a wolf would miss a wolf, I suppose.”

  “You really are too rude, Mrs Manager. It’s my family you’re talking about.”

  Manager Ruby snorted haughtily. “What are you gonna do? Cry to mommy? Ha! I could tell you tales about the so-called ‘Iron Valkyrie’ that would make your ears red!”

  “...Would you like to come in for a bit? Can I get you anything? Tea?”

  “I did not expect a reaction like that…Oh, whatever! I’m not much for tea, but get me a bottle of Bluemoor, and I might spare a story or two, sometime!”

  “It’s a promise. Don’t forget. I will hold you to it.”

  The dwarf shuddered at my seriousness.

  “Don’t take this personally, kid, but I think you might love your mom a bit more than is healthy…”

  The manager carried on down the hallway and I closed the door, then to examine the letter closer. There were no special sealing methods on it. Only an ordinary letter with a blob of wax shutting it. As said, the sender was marked as the Ruthford House in Canelon. Windsworth Park 6. In the envelope was a plain white card with only the following spelled:

  If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  The family head will see you on Sunday at noon.

  The auto will pick you up from the school gates at 10 a.m.

  -Charlotte

  I scanned the letter for hidden messages, but those few lines really were everything.

  How strange. What was I being called back for? Moreover, the General was coming to the capital in person? Had there been new developments with the supposed Tarachian commando unit? Or new orders entirely? I couldn’t imagine. There were too many possibilities.

  If they were going to tell me to drop out of school now, I could only be happy I didn’t waste any more time here. Building useless connections...

  I went to open the window, incinerated the letter and the envelope, and blew the ashes out.

  Before I could return to my assignments, somebody knocked on the door again. Had the manager forgotten something, or did she change her mind about the whiskey? No, the hit was too timid to belong to the dwarf and came from too high up.

  Who else then? War mages didn’t especially love surprises, so I spoiled the answer for myself by glancing straight through the door, and then went to open.

  “Emily?”

  “Yahoo. What’s up, boss?” Outside stood my summer student. The girl waved at me with a bashful smile. “Did I interrupt anything?”

  “What would a maiden do alone in a room that shouldn’t be interrupted?”

  “Please don't ask me to answer that!” she replied and flushed, then to peer past me. “Huh, you really are alone?”

  I gestured for her to get in and closed the door. Emily wandered around, surveying every nook and cranny of the barren and undecorated room with an awed look, as if it were any different from her own.

  “Waah, how come you get to have a whole room to yourself? I’m so jealous! My roommates are such a rowdy bunch, I can’t get any real work done in there!”

  “Suppose I was the odd one out when rooms were handed out,” I said.

  “Geez, keep your secrets then!”

  With her own permission, Emily took a seat on the edge of the unoccupied bed on the left. She’d left her uniform jacket off, only the shirt on, the ribbon on her neck unraveled, the ends dangling down across her chest. She didn’t wear stockings either, but white knee socks that left a lot of skin showing around the knees. I felt it was a very risky state of dress and shut my eyes to escape seeing it.

  “So? Did you only come by because you missed me?”

  “Hey,” Emily chuckled, “it’s been only a week and change since we last saw each other. I don't get lonely that fast.”

  “I missed you, though.”

  “You did?”

  “Of course.”

  After a silent beat, she burst out laughing.

  “Haha! No way! You know, a black bear tried to eat me in Thorpe Grove on the way to Canelon, and if that bear came to say it missed me now, it’d be more convincing than when you say it.”

  “I’m going to be upset.”

  “Sorry, sorry! Then, how’s the school going for you, Boss?”

  “Normally, more or less. There have been no major problems. How about you?”

  Emily leaned on her crossed knees and sighed.

  “Aah, I ended up in such a crazy class! You wouldn’t believe it. Already on the first day, when we were doing the roll call and were asked to say something about ourselves, there was this noble guy, Cladius something, who declared, ‘I’m going to become the most powerful wizard in the world!’ in front of the whole damn class. Like, what is he, twelve!? Does he have no shame? And I was like, ‘Fat chance of that!’ But I said it a little too loud and he heard me and got all uppity like, ‘Fight me if you dare and I’ll show you!’”

  Getting into trouble already on the first day?

  “So Professor Woodrow—Who’s our supervisor, by the way—had us settle things with this little game, like tug of war. Professor Woodrow is so nice! I love her. She’s not at all strict and annoying like the other teachers! She put this rubber ball there on the teacher’s desk—it’s some kind of trendy toy everybody plays with everywhere—and she told us to try pull the ball with Telekinesis at the same time. So, you know, the ball will move towards whoever has better phenomenon control. Because the stronger magic always supersedes the weaker, or something like that. Really complicated. But when she gave us the signal to start—it was like pew! The ball was in my hand before any of us even knew what happened. The whole class was like, ‘Wooow, how did you do that!?’ Even the Professor was super impressed, because it was my first time using Telekinesis and I only had the roughest idea of what to do. And I was just, ‘It’s all thanks to my mentor’s guidance…’”

  I found myself laughing at her spirited chatter.

  “Sounds like you got into a fun class. Good for you.”

  Emily waved her hand. “No, it’s terrible! Even after I humiliated Clady like that, he always keeps trying to turn everything into a competition. He never wins at anything, but won’t just drop it, and it’s so annoying! Well, guess I’m standing out, just like you told me to, huh.”

  Though she acted exasperated, she was smiling and clearly having a good time. I was happy for her, even as her story made my own class look like a miserable nightmare by comparison.

  “But hey,” she said. “Have you turned in your free electives form yet? Maybe we could take some courses together? As long as it’s not advanced math. I can’t do math.”

  “Sure. It’s not like I have any head for numbers myself.”

  “You’re kidding. You look like you solve math problems for breakfast. At least when you’re wearing your glasses.”

  “Then the disguise is working.”

  Professor Couren did say to turn in the form asap, but I was so fixated on optimizing my choices, it wasn’t done yet. Now, I suddenly felt like it didn’t matter and I was making a big deal out of nothing.

  I left the choices to Emily in most cases, and we signed up for Spectrology, Enchanting, and Advanced Alchemy. Our opinions differed on Astronomy and Form Security, she taking the former alone and I the latter. Since we only had to choose the first year’s electives for now and the mandatory courses didn’t leave room for many, the work was quickly over. Suppose I really was overcomplicating it.

  Done checking the choices, I noticed the hesitant look on the girl's face.

  “What is it?”

  “Ah.” Emily stirred from her thoughts. “Eh, well, I was wondering if you were going home this Sunday.”

  “I do have to visit the house. Why?”

  “Uhum.” Emily played with her curls, as she tended to do when nervous. “I know it’s shameless to ask, but could I hitch a ride with you then? I should send a letter home to my mom, to tell her they haven’t kicked me out yet. I thought I’d attach a small souvenir on the side too, you know. To prove I’m really here. Something locally made. The town next door didn’t have anything too nice, so I figured I’d look around again at the capital markets. But feel free to say no, if it’s a bother! I’ll go by myself some other time.”

  I went over to her and drew her chin up with a fingertip.

  “Emily. We’re friends. Collaborators. Co-disciples. Partners in crime. To me, that’s the same as family. No, more than that. It’s not only Ms Asia who wants to help you. If there’s anything you need, whatever it may be, all you need to do is ask. Don’t call it shameless; it's only obvious. The auto leaves at ten on Sunday.”

  “Hope.” Emily smiled at me, a little flushed, and averted her eyes. “If you keep spoiling me like this, I really will turn useless…”

  “If a free ride is enough to ruin your character, what does that say about you?”

  “Ugh, touché…”

  So the decision was made.

  But the weekend was still far away, many hurdles left to cross before it.