Danielle was nearly overwhelmed by the glare coming off the very center of the Rangers’ square in Detect Mana Source. The people inside the flimsy barrier of folding tables were too bright in her Skill’s sense to discern the human forms underneath. The rest of the nearby crowd was much dimmer, and showed only faint differences in brightness from each other, blending into a sea of lights from sheer numbers in close proximity. Then, before she could become properly overwhelmed by it all, the Skill ended, and she could see the scene as everyone else was seeing it.

  Rangers dressed in brown uniforms, like their guide from yesterday, were doing mundane tasks in their square of tables. Some tended fat sausages on rolling grills, others took cooked sausages and put them in buns like hot dogs, still others added the sausage-dogs to paper bags and brought them to the tables. At the tables, one ranger per line stood at the corner of the square and handed out the bagged breakfasts. Then the line moved inward, and someone handed out the odd brown cups, and in the center there seemed to be some kind of drink dispensers. Students – make that, Firmitatem Exiles – gathered food and drink and then had to walk all the way back between the lines before they could exit to the side to return to their buildings.

  “Which line shall we go for?” Akari wondered aloud.

  “That one,” Heather said gravely, pointing to the right.

  “Skill reasons?” Sadie asked.

  “Skill reasons,” Heather replied.

  “Good enough for me,” Danielle said. “Let’s go figure out where the actual end of the line is.”

  “Hey, good morning!” called someone sitting on the ground nearby. “Building six?”

  “Who wants to know?” Akari asked.

  “Oh, don’t be like that,” Heather admonished.

  “Yeah, I was just saying hello!” the girl said. “We’re probably building neighbors. Everyone from six is supposed to sit on the ground on either side of the alley here in front of one or five.”

  “One or five?” Heather asked, surprised.

  “Yeah, the building numbers are a little weird. Our side of the road has one and five, and the other side has three and seven, and all the even numbers are the buildings behind.” The girl shrugged and took a drink from her brown cup.

  “So six is behind five, and one is next to five?” Danielle summarized.

  “Right. And two is behind one, but I guess nobody’s in building two right now. Oh! And it’s all girls on this side of the road and guys on the other side, except for the bottom floor of building one – with the half-buried walkway instead of the balcony? – that’s guys in building one, even though it’s girls on all the floors above.”

  “Weird setup, but thanks for the info. I’m Danielle, and you?”

  “I’m Cassy,” the girl said. “Nice to meet you. Come back and sit with me if you want, when you get through the line. Like I said, we’re supposed to hang out on the sorry excuse for a lawn here until they do the rules thing, since our balconies don’t look out on the road like everyone else’s.”

  “We will, unless something else intervenes,” Danielle said. “For now though, we just keep going this way to get in line?”

  “Or the other way, to get in building five’s line. They said they didn’t care,” Cassy said with a shrug.

  “Cool. We’ll probably be back,” Danielle said. “Come on, girls, let’s go get in the actual line.”

  The four of them walked further down the walkway that belonged, apparently, to building one. The four of them all seemed to be focused on watching their surroundings, saying nothing. Out of the corner of her eye, Danielle noticed the nervous looking boys down in the sunken walkway of the building, talking and eating like everyone else. She supposed a lot of other people looked nervous too, actually. Maybe she was imagining things, thinking the boys in the lowest floor of building one looked more out of sorts than any other floor’s worth of new exiles. A lot of people were wearing swords or carrying their “walking sticks” or both.

  Eventually, they found the end of the line, where the girls who had been last were talking to girls in the middle of the next curve. The line moved, and the conversation split, revealing the end for what it was. Danielle and her friends got in line.

  “Why did you tell her we’d sit with her?” Akari suddenly asked.

  “Who – Cassy?” Danielle said, surprised. “Why not? Did you have somewhere else you wanted to sit?”

  “Well, no, but.” Akari paused, as if trying to fit words to her objection. “I don’t know, do you actually know her or something?”

  “No, I think she might be from the other school,” Danielle admitted, “but all the more reason to get to know her, right? If we’re really in the same building, then we’re neighbors, and I think it’ll be worthwhile to get on good terms with our neighbors. We want them to want to be on our good sides, too, right? The more everyone is watching out for each other, the better.”

  “I guess so,” Akari said reluctantly.

  “It’s just a place to sit and eat,” Heather said. “It’ll be fine. We’ll get acquainted a little, listen to the rules thing, then get on with our day, no big deal.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Sadie said. “The message didn’t say a rules lecture, it said a rules discussion. That part might be kind of a big deal.”

  “I’m not sure I like that,” Akari said. “When did other people our age trying to discuss the rules ever go well?”

  “I don’t know. When have we ever been invited to discuss rules before?” Heather asked.

  “We’ve definitely never been in this situation before,” Sadie pointed out.

  “What, you mean exiled?” Akari asked in an exasperated tone.

  “Right,” Sadie said. “We’re officially adults now, we’re out on our own. The rules aren’t just being imposed on us from outside.”

  “If that was true, I’d be able to go home,” Akari said shortly.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  “OK, some of them are. The ones about going back. I bet they’re not going to lock our doors on us again, though,” Sadie said.

  “Do you think they’re actually going to have us make the rules for the camp ourselves?” Danielle asked doubtfully.

  “Maybe just part of them,” Heather suggested. “I kind of hope it’s only part of them, actually. The System may think we’re adults, but I’m not sure enough of us are ready to be adults to just hand us that kind of power.”

  “We’re kind of the only ones who can have that power, though, unless the Rangers are going to be coming around a lot more than they implied before,” Sadie said.

  The four of them fell silent, thoughtful looks on their faces as they followed the line down and then back toward the tables. Other girls got in line behind them a few minutes later, damp hair and occasional yawns testifying to the reasons for their relatively late arrival; and still more joined in behind them. Eventually, they reached the front, where a smiling Ranger handed them their brown bags. “Good morning,” she said, “Here you go. Good morning! Here’s your breakfast.” They took their bagged breakfasts with murmured thanks, and moved to the next station.

  “Good morning, choose a cup,” the Ranger there said. Danielle looked over the rack of oddly irregular-looking brown cups with a small frown. “I can almost see your questions on your face,” the Ranger joked. “These all came from people who were just trying out the craft, trying to get a Skill. Yes, they’re uneven and not the same thickness everywhere, and some of them are kind of lumpy. They’re heat resistant clay, though, and you can keep yours or bring it back afterward, your choice. They’ll hold about two cups of water, and to your right, you can see we have hot water and tea bags. Feel free to take two, they always say they’re for one cup of water. Only two though, we still need to have enough for everyone.” She gestured to the line, which still stretched all the way down the length of building 1.

  “Right, thank you,” Danielle said, and took the most flat-bottomed cup she could see, then moved on and took two waxed-paper packets with the word MINT printed on them in green, and filled her cup with water. She tucked one packet into her bag, then opened the other and slid the tea bag into the cup to steep while she walked back past the line, cup and bag in hand. The others followed suit, and they walked back to where Cassy was sitting without further comment.

  Danielle sat down near Cassy and opened her bag. Inside, there was an apple, a waxed paper packet of dried apple rings, an egg, and the sausage sandwich in a paper sleeve. There was also a paper napkin, and of course, the tea bag she had put in. She moved that and the dried fruit to a pocket, and started eating her sausage.

  “Is it just me, or have we gotten a lot of apples in the last 24 hours?” Akari complained.

  “Well, it’s healthy and self-contained and, you know, hydration and stuff,” Heather said. “And easy to toss in.”

  “Yeah, it kind of looks like they were going to give us dried fruit and then someone said ‘oh come on, give them the fresh ones,’ and they just tossed them in without taking the dried stuff out,” Sadie opined.

  “I guess it’s not really the season for fresh apples, is it?” Danielle said. “Apples come ripe in fall, right?”

  “Outside they do,” Akari said. “I think there’s orchards Inside that have their seasons staggered to be harvested at different times of year, though.”

  “Is it weird that I never wondered how we got apples before?” Heather said. “I mean, I know we have green rooms and stuff, but it never occurred to me until now to wonder if an orchard can really fit in a green room.”

  “Coming out here to live just puts all kinds of things in a new perspective, doesn’t it?” Cassy said, inserting herself into the conversation. “I actually know about the Inside orchards though. They’re made with system Skills, including the one that makes things bigger on the inside than they seem like they should be.”

  “So they use that Skill on a greenroom, and make it big enough to have trees?” Danielle asked.

  “Yep!” Cassy grinned. “And they also make the grow lights, using different Skills. It’s one of those places where there’s secretly a lot of mana being used Inside. I gather there’s a lot of regulations about where and when they can use high level Skills like that, though. Something about mana density.”

  “That’s so cool, though,” Heather said. “I’d love to learn the Skills for that, and make a greenhouse around here somewhere. It could just look like a little shed from outside, right?”

  “That’s something to add to the list, I guess,” Sadie said.

  “What list?” Cassy asked.

  “Oh, you know, the list of things we’d like to do out here if we can get the time, mana, and food security to do them,” Danielle explained.

  “Planting the seeds in the boxed dinners was already on the list,” Heather added.

  “We should start writing the list down,” Sadie said, then added, “Is it just me, or are there Rangers in a lot more places than there were before?”

  Danielle looked around, and saw what she meant. Rangers were starting to appear on the corners of balconies, and near the stairs to the lowest floors of the visible buildings. There was also a woman Ranger leaning as if casually against the corner of building five, but something about her posture suggested she wasn’t quite as relaxed as she wanted to look.

  “The line is almost through,” Heather pointed out. “Maybe they’re spreading out to help moderate that discussion, like the message said. Nobody will be able to hear each other unless they have something to help with that.”

  “They might be able to hear us, though,” Cassy said. “A lot of higher-level people have incredibly good sight or hearing.”

  “Do you even know a lot of high-level people?” Akari asked skeptically.

  “Oh, well, um. You know,” Cassy stammered, blushing. She was saved from having to construct a coherent answer, however, as a Ranger stepped up onto a table in the center of the Rangers’ square, and a voice boomed out over the group.

  It wasn’t the same voice as the wake-up message, and he wasn’t using the same Skill, but there was clearly a Skill involved in projecting his voice so loudly – or else a non-mana microphone that they just couldn’t see, but then, Danielle didn’t see any speakers either.

  “All right, ladies and gentlemen! We’re almost done serving breakfast, so I’m going to start off with a couple announcements and a request. First of all, after the camp government discussion, we’ll be setting out bins for trash and recyclable plastic. After today, dealing with your trash will be your own problem, but right now, you probably have a lot of packaging trash from stuff you just got at the Necessities Store. This is your chance to get it out of your room. We’ll leave the cans out until dusk, and then we’ll pick them up.

  “In a related request, the Rangers ask that you not dispose of trash inside the Rooms area, especially the remains of dead animals. They really stink the place up. Also, while some of you might not mind the fact that they attract scavengers, they also attract bugs and disease, and we really don’t want to deal with an unexpected epidemic here. We’re not going to be patrolling this area a great deal, but if we do have to respond to an epidemic of something that we’re not used to seeing, we’ll be looking into trash issues and there will be penalties for anyone who contributed to the spread of disease by not getting their trash outside the borders of the Rooms. To prevent stench and pests, we recommend you bury or burn your trash, or both. If you have plastic or metal trash, you can bring it to the trade fairs, which happen three times a year – the first normal one for you will be the Fall Fair, this November, when it starts to get really cold.

  “Speaking of the fairs, I’ve been asked to tell you that in consideration of your unusually young age, we will be offering some limited services this Summer Fair, in four weeks. You can’t come to the gates this time, because frankly, older Sent will be coming and that’s not a safe situation for anyone as newly advanced as you, regardless of age. However, we will be coming here on the first day of the fair – again, precisely four weeks from today – with a catalog of things you can buy with mana tokens. It’ll be a lot more limited than the real fair, but it will give you a chance to fill in some holes in your preparations if you need to, maybe buy some more emergency rations, that kind of thing. We’ll take your orders, and bring back the goods three days later.

  “Now some of you are probably wondering if this breakfast and talking thing is normal, or if it’s another thing that’s special because of your age. The answer is, we always do this. The Rooms here are basically going to be a small town for as long as most of you are still living here, and we find that it’s helpful to get things started on a good footing by encouraging you all to talk about your expectations and set some ground rules. Many Sent find it useful to form an organization for the camp.

  “I’m going to try not to add too much of my own to the discussion. However, with my Skills active, I can hear all of you from the balconies up there and make myself heard to everyone. The plan is to let people speak, and I’ll repeat what you say for the rest to hear. You can raise your hands or ask in a normal conversational volume, and I’ll call on you.

  “Does anyone want to go first?”

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