Agatha saw the greatness before her. She had known for a long time now that Christie did everything big, but now she felt it in her bones as she saw that massive wall. Christie was big, far bigger than anything she might ever achieve in her life, and that created a pressure that weighed down on Agatha.

  It wasn’t the pangs of jealousy. They were too different for envy to be born, especially when Agatha was well aware of her advantages. Blessings for each curse.

  No, her problem wasn’t one of jealousy, even if she wished that were the case. But yearning.

  Oh, how badly did the seamstress-in-training yearn. She saw a monolithic structure and ached to understand its history and creation. A twisted sense of adoration, like a historian looked toward the civilizations of yore. In a way, that was what Christie was to her, a building on agate when Agatecraft had yet to be discovered. There was an unsettling feeling that threatened to grab her and drown her beneath the waters, but the curiosity that exalted her was far more pressing, enough so to ignore her unease.

  And yet…

  She never took a step forward.

  Agatha remained in the background, always brandishing her smile, and the most painful of growths took over her, for she feared what would happen if she didn’t do so.

  ***

  Agatha did her best to ignore her stupid heart. After all, it was connected to a stupid girl. Though it continued to protest more and more the longer the time went by. It ached to shout, so that meant muzzling it even more.

  It was such a weird feeling. The girl couldn’t comprehend why she was so unhappy. From the beginning, she had known that life at the Skyscraper Academy would be difficult, but not all was bad. Not only did she sleep in a fluffy bed, wore soft clothes, and ate warm food without having to worry about starving because there wasn’t enough business, but she also had friends to pass the time with.

  Friends!

  How simple yet complex of a word… She couldn’t say she had friends at Malachite, at least not anymore. Her life there had become a stale existence vaguely accompanied by her mother and yet…

  Why am I unhappier here than there?

  Agatha thought that she had become smarter and wiser after having beaten many nobles in the midterms. She was battling against the best and wasn’t falling short, so where was that intellect when she needed it?

  The days weren’t bad at all, but a constant lingering bitter taste assaulted her, transforming every warm memory into a bittersweet one. It wasn’t melancholy that was afflicting her, but she couldn’t help but relate it together.

  Those moments in the library with the study groups… she thoroughly enjoyed them, yet this painful growth afflicting her turned it into something that whispered ‘perhaps you are better without them’. Infuriating, depressing, exhausting. Many epithets could be applied, and many would fall short.

  Classes were no longer the root of her problems. The study group had made sure that was the case, and she always ended each week understanding the whole syllabus. So, if academics weren’t the issue, what was it?

  The dirty-blond girl spent the next months avoiding the answer on purpose.

  Why worry aloud when you could just ignore your problems?

  It was better to study, hang out, tailor, and laugh with an unburdened mind. That was the answer Agatha came to ignore the most painful of growths. After all, she was too stupid to find a better solution. One that would always give the same answer, regardless of any factor or probability. She only wanted one and one outcome alone, so anything else was worthless.

  Greed was human, and Agatha wished she were a stone.

  ***

  “Good job surviving so far,” announced Teacher Dago, “but it is only now that the true challenge begins. The final exams are coming up, and as you may know, you will only have one try. If you pass, you will continue your instruction at the Skyscraper Academy. If you fail, you will be expelled. A shame, but you will still be able to boast about having been accepted in the first place.”

  Those words inflated a gust of whispers around the class. They always loved to whisper. Would that change after the final exams? How many students would be kicked out?

  It suddenly struck Agatha that she hadn’t seen Terráquea again since the start of the year. Has she forgotten about our deal? The worst part is that it was highly likely. She hadn’t interacted much with the military engineer, but that woman forgot to eat constantly judging by her looks, so if she forgot about something so essential, who was to say that she hadn’t forgotten about the girl she had summoned to the academy?

  Perhaps I should give her a visit, Agatha chuckled to herself. Who knows? Maybe if I fail my final exams this way I still can remain at the academy because she wants to investigate my agate more.

  Considering it was a last-minute thought, it wasn’t that bad of a plan.

  “Ah, and one more thing,” René Dago said as students started standing up. “For the final exams, we are going to have something more special for the Agatecraft and physical education tests. A joint exam of sorts, as it combines both. We will have an outing to the Cracal mountain range, so keep that in mind. Think of it as your first military exercise in your education.” Then he smiled with all the cruelty in the world. “Or your last one. You are dismissed.”

  Agatha felt the shivers go down her spine. That man really loves torturing his students… And she felt like he loved torturing her the most. The worst part was that he then acted as if he had never done such a thing. Is he the culprit of my current self? She knew it wasn’t the case, but she’d be fractured if that man hadn’t severely contributed to her aches.

  “Do not worry, you will be fine,” Christie softly whispered next to her as she put a hand on Agatha’s shoulder.

  “Oh, I am not worried about that.” At least not as much as I once would have been. “It is just that now I am realizing how much I hate Teacher Dago.”

  “Well…” The redhead chuckled nervously. “It is true that his sense of humor is a bit crass, but I do not think he does it to harm.”

  Oh, yeah: sense of humor. ‘Hey, Agatha, do you remember how he almost made you kill that one guy to teach a lesson?’ Yeah, funniest I have ever seen. While those were her true feelings, Agatha didn’t say them aloud or reproach Christie. Mostly because it was Christie. As of late, she curated anything she said to her roommate, thinking twice before speaking – even if she normally didn’t tend to do so – as Christie could get really sharp once in a while, and Agatha didn’t want to let her see that anything was wrong.

  Not her.

  Especially not her.

  “Are you doing something today?” Christie asked a moment later.

  “I… uh, had plans to meet with Terráquea,” her roommate gave her a confused look. “The scholar who summoned me to the academy.”

  “Oh, right. It has been so long that I had forgotten about it,” the redhead’s eyes sparkled in recognition.

  “Why the question? Did you have any plans thought out?”

  “Not really,” Christie scratched behind her ear. “You just looked absentminded, so I thought that maybe you wanted to unwind a bit before the final exams are upon us.”

  Oh, Christie. Why must you be so sharp? “Not at all, as I told you, I am not worried about the exams.” Her roommate crossed her arms and squinted at her. “Okay, not that worried,” Agatha corrected. “But feel free to go on your lonesome back to the dormitory today.”

  “Will do,” Christie calmly walked toward the door of the classroom, but before going out, she turned and faced the petite girl. “Oh, and Agatha, good luck with your meeting.”

  “Thanks,” she replied softly. Very softly.

  As she was left alone in the classroom, Agatha couldn’t help but think about what was worse. Whether being around Christie or not being around her. Both things had negative connotations, so she remained with the one that had the best positive outcome.

  It was a big exhalation, the one she made before she made her way to the laboratories where Terráquea seemed to reside. At least, Agatha had only found her there. During the more than half a year she had been at the academy, she had seen lots of different people in the mess hall: students of every year, soldiers, teachers, staff, and even researchers. Yet not once had she found Terráquea there.

  Even if it had been a handful of months, Agatha hadn’t forgotten the way there as the first time she had been trembling with so much fear that the memory of the location had been burned on her mind. Now… she wasn’t as worried. For starters, she doubted Terráquea would make her out like she originally thought. And now Agatha believed that she even had the possibility of making it through the final exams and becoming a second-year student without the help of her patron.

  Carefully, Agatha knocked on the door of the laboratory.

  She got no answer.

  She knocked again.

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  Still no answer.

  “Maybe she is outside? I have only seen her on the weekends, so maybe she isn’t here.” Not wanting to give her journey for ended just yet, Agatha reached for the doorknob and slowly twisted it. “It’s open?”

  The student opened the door, and the moment she did so, her nose got violated by a foul musk. That of dust and paper. The same that had first welcomed her, but now it was far worse than at the start of the year. She peered sheepishly into the room, but the curtains were drawn so she couldn’t see much. Carefully, she removed her agate from her necklace and removed the Compact command, which made the little sapphire grow on her palm. A second later, she endowed it with Control and Light. The first one not only allowed the agate to fly, but it also allowed her to control the intensity of the light so it was a candle instead of a second sun.

  Half a year practicing and I still can’t manually modify the intensity of commands, Agatha sighed in disappointment and self-deprecation. Such a trivial exercise was still on her to-do list. And that just kept growing and growing.

  The lone sapphire levitated ahead of her as it had it easier to traverse the paraphernalia-laden terrain. At this point, Agatha wasn’t worried about stepping into something, but rather, not tripping and breaking her neck into something.

  As the light of her agate was too dim to see anything, she slowly intensified its luminosity. Until she saw it. A body lying on the ground, surrounded by debris.

  “Ah!” Agatha gasped in horror as she covered her mouth. “Is… is she dead?”

  Carefully and frighteningly, the girl tapped on the body with her agate. One tap. Two taps. A groan.

  “Oh, thank the earth!” She grabbed her chest and exhaled in relaxation. Never before had she felt that much gratitude in her life. Agatha wasn’t close to Terráquea or anything like that… but she really preferred not having to deal with a corpse. “Uhm…” She muttered as she realized she was still dealing with a near-dead person. “Are you okay, Terráquea?”

  A series of incohesive and unintelligible grunts followed, but at least she had verified that the woman was alive.

  “I am afraid I cannot understand you,” the student explained softly. “Could you try… making yourself heard?” She was going to say something far different and crass, but then she realized who she was dealing with.

  “Watah!” The emaciated woman protested as she thrashed her arms around, which didn’t look that different from sticks.

  “Got it! On my way!” Agatha shouted before making her way out of the laboratory.

  She rushed for the mess hall, for that was the first place she could get a cup from, but also she thought that maybe water wouldn’t be enough for the nearly dead woman. A lot of things could be said about the food and the mess hall, but it was always open, and that had to be respected. Though at the same time, it really wasn’t hard to heat up that myriad of gruel-filled pots and serve them around the clock.

  Agatha secured a ration and two cups of water for Terráquea and carried them frenetically across the corridors of the Skyscraper Academy. However, she now had a little advantage in what carrying ability was related. Thanks to the Control Anchor series, Agatha was able to make a tray that moved relatively fast and didn’t sway whatsoever as she could lock her agate in the vertical axis.

  This had been one of her fantasies since young, having agates do the heavy lifting for her, but she soon found out that the Control command wasn’t enough in most cases as agates had very small weight limits while under that command. The Anchor command was really a game-changer.

  It didn’t take her even a quarter of an hour to be back at the laboratory. She removed the tray from her little sapphire and picked it up in her hands as she used the agate to illuminate the place. Carefully, she knelt down and placed the tray on the ground. Then, even more carefully, she lifted Terráquea from her back.

  “Here, water,” she offered the emaciated woman one of the cups. It was also paranoia that made her get two in the case Terráquea spilled one as she had seemed to suffer from seizures.

  Their biology classes were more centered on first aid rather than anatomical practices as that was what was expected from soldiers, so she panicked greatly when the water went into the woman’s mouth, yet she didn’t hear any swallowing sounds.

  “Hey, hey, hey!” Agatha shouted as she softly slapped Terráquea and pushed her head downward. The water spilled down, but at least it didn’t seem like the woman was drowning. “Can you drink?” She asked a question that she should have asked before shoving the cup into her mouth.

  Terráquea mumbled and grunted incoherently.

  “You are really going to make me do this?” The girl approached the cup to her lips and groaned. “This is certainly not like how I imagined my first kiss to be, but at least the gender isn’t wrong.”

  She took her victories where she could.

  Agatha filled her mouth with water and then pressed her lips against the dry and chapped lips of the military engineer. The feeling was awful, but she knew better than to protest when someone’s life was in danger. Feeling like a momma bird, she made Terráquea take in the water and then swallow it down.

  “Mmm~” The woman moaned in satisfaction after she drank a whole mouthful, and she looked far better soon.

  It took another mouthful and a handful of minutes, but color came back to Terráquea’s skin, along with a glint of intelligence in her eyes.

  “Are you conscious?” Agatha asked.

  “Yeah…” The corpse of a woman said as she clicked on her palate slowly and also smacked her lips, not that different from an older woman without teeth who had just eaten porridge.

  “What happened?”

  “Oh, lots of things, really,” Terráquea tried to cough, but only a nasty cough came. Agatha offered the second cup, and this time she was able to drink it by herself. “Exhaustion, lack of sleep, starvation, dehydration, but what was the coup de grace was a bit of anemia.”

  “Have you thought that maybe, just maybe, that anemia was provoked by all the former afflictions?”

  “Mayhaps,” the woman grinned, and it was the most disgusting and horrifying smile Agatha had seen in her life. Perhaps you should add lack of vocal hygiene too. “I tend to become too focused on my research and sometimes I forget about… life. Everything really.”

  “One thing, are you a scholarite?”

  “A scholarite? No, I would not say so. I was raised like one, but I am not an active practitioner. Though I admit that The Preserver’s words echo with me.”

  “Of course…” Agatha sighed. If there were people crazy enough to kill themselves out of negligence, it was the scholarites.

  “Enough personal questions, I feel like I am dying,” Terráquea protested.

  “I have brought gruel, if you want?”

  “From the mess hall?” The student nodded. “I prefer dying then.”

  “Do you really?” Agatha looked over the already-dying woman’s shoulder.

  “I guess I still have research pending…” The engineer said defeatedly. “Give me that gruel…”

  Terráquea slowly – but loudly – ate the gruel with little to no gusto. Agatha could see the woman recover a human semblance in real time. Quite the striking image as she doubted that even potted plants that hadn’t been watered for ages could recover this fast.

  “You… look far better,” the girl didn’t know how to put her thoughts into words. “Like, er…, it has been a handful of minutes and you no longer look dead.”

  “Oh, dear, I always look dead,” the woman chuckled, and this time it wasn’t accompanied by coughing. “I guess I am used to being in a state of near-death constantly. Lithification certainly does not help in the slightest.”

  “The what now?” Agatha arched a brow.

  “Ignore my words,” Terráquea squinted aggressively at her, her tone becoming deeper. “Just the ramblings of an ailing mind. I guess I should take more sunlight.”

  “I… can open the curtains instead of being under agatelight,” the student offered, but she was suddenly very uncomfortable.

  “Sure, do that,” the emaciated woman dug again into the gruel.

  Carefully, Agatha made her way across the litter of the laboratory and opened the curtains. Even she was blinded after spending this while in the dusty room’s darkness. Terráquea fared even worse as she heard the woman shriek. Fortunately, it was a one-of-a-kind thing and the woman wasn’t running around maniacally or something like that. Very fortunately, indeed.

  “So, how come you are here?” Terráquea said once Agatha sat next to her again.

  “I just was… well, wondering how you were. And it seems like it was a good decision.”

  “Indeed it was, girl. You are the only person that I have seen in a while, as I was rather occupied, though I also guess it was time for another meeting. We have not seen each other for a month or so, after all.”

  Agatha gave her patron the nastiest and most confused of gazes. “Terráquea?”

  “Yes, Agatha?” The woman replied innocently.

  “We have not seen each other for months. It is almost the end of the academic year.”

  “Ah.” It was both brutal and praiseworthy how a single syllable could carry so much meaning and emotion.

  “Are you… okay?” The girl didn’t know whether to be worried or confused.

  “W-why… yes!” Terráquea chuckled. “It would seem that I just lost a bit of my notion of time.”

  “Right…”

  “To be fair, it is mostly your fault,” the adult woman said, looking at the teenager without a hint of shame.

  “My what now?” Agatha scowled softly at her as she still – technically speaking – her patron.

  “I mean, you should have come to visit me in like a month after I talked with you, not half a year later.”

  “To be fair,” the student countered, “I was rather busy with the midterms.”

  “The midterms? Bah!” Terráquea swatted with her hand. “Those do not matter at all! Even less after a lot of nobles got angry that their sons and daughters kept getting expelled from the academy because of their failing grades!”

  That… explains a lot of things. Agatha now understood why she was still in the academy.

  “But whatever, the damage is still done, and I am unfortunately still alive.”

  “Unfortunately?” Agatha arched a brow again.

  “Yes, I think I saw The Preserver in my near-dear stupor.”

  “Out of morbid curiosity, how did… they look?” Only now did Agatha realize that she had no knowledge about scholarite faith and only her very valid preconceptions and prejudices. Does The Preserver even have a gender?

  “Lots of eyes,” Terráquea said taciturnly.

  “And what else?” The girl extended the last syllable as she prodded for details.

  “Lots of eyes,” the woman reiterated matter-of-factly.

  “Right,” I don’t know why I bother. “Anyhow, here is my agate,” the little sapphire plopped onto her palm as she removed the Control command. “You said that you wanted to give it a look.”

  “I indeed wanted to, yes,” Terráquea snatched the stone out of the girl’s hands and inspected it closely. Too closely. “I am not going to lick it, if that is what you are wondering.”

  Agatha relaxed and pushed her back backward. “No, I was not thinking about that at all,” she said with a smile.

  “But I am disappointed.”

  “About not licking?”

  “You will never let it drop, eh?” The military engineer sighed. “No, I mean about your agate. Considering that you reached the Second Stratum at the beginning of the year, I thought you would have reached the Third Stratum by now, considering that we are at the end.”

  “Is that not… too soon?”

  “Not really, no,” Terráquea thoughtlessly chucked the agate back at Agatha. It took the girl by surprise, but she was able to anchor it in place before it hit her face. “We need to take into consideration that you only have a single agate. Most people would have spent the rest of the year getting the rest of their agates to Second Stratum. Have they not?”

  “Well, only a handful of students have gotten to the Second Stratum, and it is not like I have asked them, but I guess that is the case.”

  “Only a handful? Meh, it does not matter. Most students tend to get to increase their Stratums over holidays.”

  “How is that?”

  “Well, progress is never linear. In anything, at that. It is more about the quality of the time, rather than the quantity. Most of the time you will be too occupied to give a thought to your agate, that is why only during holidays – where the mind is free – can people give them the time they need. That is also why you do not really see commoners with the Second Stratum, let alone higher. Stress is also an influence, so most soldiers only progress their Stratum during their training, and once they are deployed on the field, they rarely get an increase in Strata.”

  Wait, the plural of Stratum is Strata? No, no. That’s not what you should be thinking about, Agatha.

  “I have been very worried and stressed about exams, so I guess that is why I have not been able to give my agate much thought.” That, and Christie. Though I guess I have already made peace with that. I am supposed to become the world’s best lithorist. I can sacrifice my happiness and other wishes if it means achieving that…

  Agatha blinked.

  Terráquea blinked.

  “You are seeing the same as I am, right?” Agatha asked, though her eyes weren’t looking at the scholarite.

  “Yes, I am, Agatha.” The woman blinked several more times and then rubbed her eyes. “Huh.”

  “Huh? That is all you have to say?”

  “Well, I just told you, progress is not linear. Sometimes it is constant. Sometimes it is on a downward spiral. And sometimes… it is just explosive.”

  “I do not know if I would classify this as… explosive. It is just… sudden. Anticlimactic.”

  The girl and the woman looked at the air in confusion as an agate remained locked in place. An agate that had grown a layer of cracked lightning atop its glass-clear layer.

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