Agatha hadn’t expected that they would start with the electives in the very first week of the academic year, but at the same time, they literally didn’t have anything better to do. There were barely thirty students in any grade of the Skyscraper Academy, and within five years that was only around one hundred fifty students for a massive institution. Bureaucracy was a nonexistent problem here.

  But what she truly hadn’t expected was being alone.

  The classroom had been empty when she came. And it remained empty as the time for the start of the lesson arrived.

  “Jersova yalacabasca!” A mocking voice announced over at the door. “This is deserted, huh.”

  Mocking it might be, but it wasn’t Fran?ois. Of course. Though it was a familiar face who spoke with bottomless sarcasm.

  “Yes, it is, Shayla,” Agatha said at the Intaksolfani. “I expected more classmates to be here.”

  “That is funny, because I did not,” the dark-skinned girl casually sat next to her.

  Agatha didn’t know why, but she held her breath for a moment when she did so. Shayla wasn’t Christie, not even close, but no one could deny that the citrine-eyed girl was gorgeous. And if they did, they were just blind or outright racist.

  “H-how come?” The azure-eyed girl asked.

  “Well, maybe most of the class has a Third Stratum agate, but you must remember that most students are also nobles. They are either here to make a name for themselves or spread the influence of their houses. For better or worse, Agatecrafting is considered a profession, not a military discipline. And as prestigious of a profession Agatecrafting might be, it is only that: a profession. And nobles are well-known for their inability to do any work.

  “I have got to say that I love your sharp tongue, Shayla.”

  “Love, eh?” The merchant’s daughter smirked.

  “Er…” Agatha blushed. “I like your sharp tongue,” she corrected with emphasis.

  Shayla didn’t say anything, but her smile didn’t falter in the slightest. “So there is that. Most students prefer choosing a military-related elective for the status. They are not here to learn… Huh.”

  “What?” The petite girl latched onto her friend’s sudden confusion.

  “Nothing. I just thought that we do have a classmate that is all about learning, but he is not here… Is there another elective that interests him more than Agatecrafting?” She didn’t need to speak the name as Agatha immediately knew who she was talking about.

  “Maybe Military Engineering? That sounds about right with what I know about scholarites.”

  “Probably,” Shayla shrugged.

  “So, I know that I chose Agatecrafting because it was the only other lithorica-related elective. But what about you? Have you not unlocked lapiloquia? Why are you here then?”

  “Agatha, darling, if there was a reason I came to this god-forsaken academy, it was because of Agatecrafting.”

  The dirty-blond girl wasn’t familiar with the term ‘god-forsaken’ even if she could intuit what it meant from the context, but she was deeply intimate with the term ‘darling’. She was well aware that Shayla didn’t mean it in that sense, but her body was really stupid, and it didn’t seem to understand that as a soft blush appeared on her cheeks.

  “O-oh…?” Agatha mouthed. “And how is that?”

  “Well, I am a merchant’s daughter,” she chuckled, “and Agatecrafting is a very lucrative profession. And secretive. I am basically an Intaksolfani spy to bring the secrets of the profession back to the motherland, if you think about it.”

  The fact that the girl openly joked about it made Agatha think that it wasn’t that serious or literal of a subject, even if it was most likely true.

  “Then you are doing a bad job as a spy by announcing it so brazenly,” Agatha giggled.

  “True,” Shayla locked her eyes with her. “I guess I can compensate by doing more spy-like things. Assassination is a bit too much, but how about… seduction?”

  Shayla placed a hand on Agatha’s neck, slowly raising it to caress the petite girl’s cheek. Agatha herself remained there, petrified and confused, unable to react. This had never happened in her life. She couldn’t think. Her mind couldn’t process whether this was a jest or something else.

  Then a sound came from the door.

  Her body instinctively jolted and she pushed herself away from Shayla as a figure crossed the doorframe. Oh, depths. Oh, depths! Agatha cursed as she placed a hand on her chest. It was beating fast.

  “Hmm? This might even be a record of assistance,” a wrinkly voice croaked.

  What came through the doorframe this time was something Agatha would’ve never expected in her life. Sure enough, it was an old man, but the girl was transfixed on how the man came into the room. Instead of walking, the somewhat old man came gliding as he sat in a floating, lithic chair far, far bigger than the platform Agatha normally used for flying. The agate construct resembled an armchair more than anything else with its armrests, leg rests, and even a backrest that accommodate the neck into place.

  The old man carelessly slid into the front of the class as his feet and chair-like contraption levitated half a meter from the floor, then he turned to face Agatha and Shayla.

  “Greetings, students of the Agatecrafting elective,” he announced with some vivacity, but not that much as he didn’t lift his neck and only used a single hand.

  Agatha had countless questions in her mind like, for example, why was the man using an agate platform to move around instead of walking, and as pressing as that question might be, another curiosity prevailed with an itching urge.

  “Is that chair even comfortable?” She asked at the same time as she raised her hand.

  The man chuckled. “For starters, the order is normally raising the hand and then asking the question. And secondly, yes. Yes, it is. You would be surprised how comfortable Control Liquify can make things. You can give agates the right viscosity and hardness to make them feel like pillows. Then add Heat if they are a bit too cold. And you also have to add the plus that the seat shapes to your body, which is really good for your bones. You should try it.”

  “I…” Agatha didn’t know what she was about to say, but the more she pondered over the man’s words, the more she was convinced. “That sounds rather nice.”

  “And it is,” he smiled. “Now that we have got that behind ourselves, I will present myself. I am Sergi, the Agatecrafting teacher of the Skyscraper Academy. And as you might guess from the blanket over my lap, these bad girls,” Sergi tapped his legs, “do not work. Occupational hazards, you see. My medium of transport is this agate vein I fashioned, and you will learn to do similar things during this elective.”

  “Wait,” Shayla arched a brow. “That is an agate vein?”

  “Indeed!” Their teacher answered.

  “But you said that you gave it the Control Liquify series,” the Intaksolfani countered. “Agate veins can only handle a single command.”

  “That is a bit of a misconception. Technically speaking, agate veins can hold more than one command, but that is only with their agatecrafter present. Either way, that is not what I am doing here. The vein has only a Float command inscribed inside, then with my own agates using Embed Control Liquify, I am adapting the surface and movement to my needs.”

  Float was one of the many commands in the command textbook that Agatha constantly forgot existed. In her defense, she really didn’t need it because Control Anchor was way better for her. Float required a medium to… well, float on. Levitate might have been the more correct term, but it wasn’t like someone had made the command. So it basically was Control Anchor in a single command, but with the restriction of range and shape of the terrain it was moving on. Good for floating around items and heavy objects, horrible for actual movement unless you wanted to bounce around fighting for your dear life while flying on top of trees.

  “Now that we have gotten all of the frequently asked questions out of the way, could I get your name, ladies?”

  Agatha gave a look to Shayla and she smiled at her before presenting herself. “Shayla Belkadi, Third Stratum lithorist and neophyte lapiloquist.”

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  Neophyte, I forget that’s a word, the petite girl pondered before remembering she also had to introduce herself. “Agatha of Malachite, I have yet to unlock lapiloquia, but I am a Fifth Stratum lithorist.”

  “Crown in the heavens!” Their teacher cursed. “Girl, forget about lapiloquia, if you are on your Fifth Stratum at the beginning of the third year, just continue going for the jugular! I have never ever seen such progress, even with students who solely focused on spearheading an agate’s progress.”

  “That is an understatement,” Shayla softly snickered.

  “I may have years under my belt and suffer from limited mobility, but I am not deaf, Miss Belkadi,” Sergi stated harshly. “May I inquire about what your classmate has commented, Miss Malachite?”

  “Y-yes,” Agatha said before frowning at the Intaksolfani, who answered back with a honeyed smile. “I have only a single agate, so there is nothing else for me to do but focus on it.”

  “Oh, so you are that student Terráquea was talking about?”

  “Terráquea talks with people?” The dirty-blond girl blurted in surprise.

  The greying man squinted at her. “That is the thing that amazes you?”

  “Have you seen Terráquea?”

  “Fair enough,” Sergi shrugged. “But yes, Terráquea and I talk from time to time as comrades in arms, if that is even the correct denomination. But however it might be, I am glad to be working with such a peculiar… agate.”

  That pause and tone alerted her. Please don’t tell me he’s a scholarite! Anything but that! Agatha prayed to the powers that be so she didn’t have to involve herself with another fanatic of knowledge.

  “Now that we are done with names, let us get moving,” their teacher said casually and his floating chair turned toward the door.

  “Excuse me, but where are we going? Is this not the assigned classroom?” Shayla asked.

  “Oh, it definitely is. But being only three people is depressing. I have the rest of the students of the fourth year in another class; I am just going to merge them as we are not enough people to justify separating them in the first place.”

  “Is that not going to be a problem?” Agatha inquired. “We do not know anything about Agatecrafting.”

  “Not at all!” The wheelchair turned to face them but continued moving in the same direction. Watch command, Agatha noticed. “The second year of Agatecrafting is mostly practice; I am just there for supervision. So the theory part will just be instructed to you two. Come on, make haste!”

  There was something deeply annoying about the man who couldn’t walk and was calmly resting in a chair being faster than them as he zoomed through the corridors. Shayla didn’t even hesitate to make a platform for herself to move faster, and because Agatha didn’t want to be left behind and also not break a sweat while in the academy uniform, she reciprocated with her own.

  She didn’t even need to recall her agate, as right now she was using Control Compact instead of several uses of Duplicate. Changing Compact to Anchor was enough for her to create a flying platform, not even a thought at this point, but a reflex.

  It didn’t take but a minute for them to reach a vast laboratory with several columns of agate in the middle. It was a stark contrast with Terráquea’s dimly lit laboratory for this one was more of a lively workshop, which was also colorfully lit as the light refracted into the myriad-colored surfaces of agate. The light itself wasn’t potent as it was just the sunlight coming from the windows, but the saturated colors did mess with Agatha’s head a bit. Enough for her to be tempted to summon an Invert Light agate to just dull her senses.

  Dulling senses… She was now struck by an idea. If I had my eyes closed and used the Control Watch series, then I could selectively choose what and how I saw… I should try it sometime. That was the curse of lithorica, there were so many things and interactions that she constantly forgot about them as new interesting thoughts superseded each other and the end result was just a lazy graveyard of unexplored and untapped ideas.

  “So here is your new class!” Sergi said with his arms extended. “Ignore those three, they are occupied.”

  “We really are not,” a man responded. Though man was a bit of a misnomer considering he only had a year more than Agatha.

  “Then you should be!” The chair-bound teacher protested.

  “It is the first class of the year. You still have not instructed us on what to do!”

  “Huh,” Sergi hummed. “That much is true. Sorry, ladies. Give me a moment before I dump homework on these lads.”

  A female student next to the one who had spoken out hit him in the shoulder with a lot of strength. The message was clear: snitches get stitches. Shayla and Agatha shared a gaze and then proceeded to inspect the workshop from a safe distance. There weren’t traditional desks as such, but one of the big tables of the workshop was put in front of a teacher-looking desk, so they sat there on some stools they had found on the way.

  “Sorry for that, ladies,” the aging teacher came floating next to them.

  It was a bit weird for Agatha to be referred to as a ‘lady’. I guess Shayla looks lady-like. Agatha was, of course, ignoring the fact that Shayla was wider than most boys in their class with all the recent bulk she had gained.

  “Well, as you might know, Agatecrafting is the discipline that imbues commands in existing, natural agates. Sort of a middle ground between lapiloquia and lithorica.” The chair rose a bit more from the ground and Sergi started scribbling on the slate. “Now, there is some discourse already if Agatecrafting is even a discipline of Agatecraft, but I am a bit radical in that sense, and the discourse I like to give is: it should not be called Agatecrafting.”

  “Why so?” Agatha asked after she had raised her hand and the teacher had acknowledged her existence.

  Sergi nodded, as if proud of his student’s fast learning. “Easy, it is very confusing. We are using the same word for one of the three disciplines, so there is bound to be some friction.”

  “And how would you call it then?” It was Shayla who asked this time.

  “Some would say golemancy,” he answered with a smile.

  “Are golems not…” Shayla started speaking, but she was swiftly cut over.

  “The legendary lithic undead? Yes,” Sergi responded. “Whilst not exactly common in literature recently, and especially not in any historic discourse as some historians like to disregard golems as fictitious – like dragons – they are something everyone has heard about once in their lives. Beings of stone moved the rancor of the forgone.”

  Agatha’s knowledge of golems was severely limited, though it wasn’t like there was much to know about them beyond the description Sergi had already given. The village elders would always tell spooky campfire stories about them, though legends would be more accurate. Then there was that one essay their History teacher, Novela, had made them write that linked up caravanseraineers and golems together. In that sense, both the ancient civilization and the lithic undead were equally mysterious.

  But ignoring their rancorous nature as undead, golems weren’t that different from monsters. Only that they supposedly had some semblance of intelligence, even if it was redirected to – once again – supposed vengeance on the living. Not all monsters attacked on sight, while golems were said to do so.

  “So why golemancy?” Shayla inquired. “Are we performing some kind of dark magic here to resurrect people?”

  “Oh, not at all,” their teacher chuckled. “No, it is a name that originated because the discipline reminded people of those golems.”

  “But Agatecrafting does not produce… moving rocks?” Agatha almost said living rocks, but that wasn’t the epithet she was looking for either. She could only trust that she was understood.

  “Not the Agatecraft you are used to, no,” Sergi admitted.

  “There is another kind?” Shayla asked.

  The floating teacher smiled. “I am going to teach you the most dangerous command that exists in lithorica. Read what I have written down.”

  Autonomy: This command allows the lithorist to release the latent cognition of the agate. This factor seems to only increase with the innate quality of the agate, so further increases in quality do not appear to make much difference. Using the Autonomy command with a First Stratum agate will render it inert and will be ineffective. It must be noted that the Autonomy command will give freedom to the agate to pursue any command it wishes, so it must never be used alone under any circumstances.

  Agatha read several times the contents on the board, for she couldn’t believe what she had read. Is this…

  “Is this real?” Shayla voiced the question she hadn’t dared to ask.

  “Of course it is,” Sergi said with a satisfied smile. “You know Agatecrafting, or what some would call inert golemancy. But this… this is animated golemancy. The Autonomy command is the utmost dangerous command in all of lithorica by virtue of being so unpredictable.”

  “Wait, wait, wait,” Agatha pinched the bridge of her nose. The teacher’s words and writings confused her to no end, because they implied something… harsh. “Are you saying that agates are alive?”

  “Alive? No. Not quite, at least. That is why we use animated instead of ‘living’ or ‘alive’. Agates, for lack of a better word, are cognizant. Not quite sapient, but partially sentient. Agates are part of your mind, but it would not be farfetched to say that each agate has a small mind of its own. Something closer to that of an insect than an actual animal – let alone a person – but still not quite negligible.”

  “So not alive?” Agatha reiterated.

  “As I said, not quite,” the man shrugged. “There is still a lot we do not know of Agatecraft as a whole, let alone the somewhat recent field of golemancy.”

  The petite lithorist was inclined to agree, as she hadn’t known that Agatecrafting was even a thing until she came to the academy and was met by the massive lift. Or the massive flying island. Now that I think about it, that must be the work of Agatecrafting.

  “But yes, whilst not the whole field of golemancy hangs from the Autonomy command; which, for starters, I prohibit you from using without my direct supervision. Truth be told, I cannot stress this enough. Do not use the Autonomy command or even try to do so.” The man patted his lap, and that was more than message enough for the two girls. “Where was I? Right, Autonomy. The whole field is not dependent on it, but it cannot be said the same for Embed. As you might have realized with the lapiloquia practice the previous year, the Embed command is far more complex than just embedding agates into things. We do not know why it works like that, but it allows us – agatecrafters, both lithorists and golemancers – to connect with stones and agates without the use of lapiloquia.”

  Even though Agatha hadn’t unlocked lapiloquia just yet, she knew what their teacher was talking about. The Embed command formed a… connection when it was applied to stone. Though she couldn’t affirm the same with agate as she hadn’t tried. Wait, didn’t I already think about this with Terráquea? That and using Christie’s sea of stones? Is this why she didn’t answer me? Because she thought I would get the answer myself…?

  “I am going to be honest with you, ladies,” Sergi pulled his floating chair closer to the ground. “Golemancy, at least the inert kind, is astonishingly simple. Time-consuming, like any good profession and discipline is, but simple. The field is just not developed enough for me to teach you much. In a single year, I will literally teach you everything I know. The rest will just be you treading on uncharted territory. Dangerous uncharted territory. So the only thing that I can offer you beyond my knowledge is an environment as safe as possible to do so. So, after having heard all of this, do you still want to remain in this elective?”

  Shayla and Agatha looked at each other. Their gazes almost uttered the same words. This elective was way weirder than they had originally expected, but also way more interesting. In a single lesson, they had had all their logic and common sense uprooted, so what would the future hold for them?

  “Of course!” Agatha said with eyes glittering as if commanded by Light.

  It had been a while since Agatecraft had made her feel this passionate. She blamed a certain girl for being so passionate that it made everything else dull.

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