After only three days of helping to care for the plant known alternately as “The Worldeater” and “Rick,” Benji was already so stressed out that his classwork had begun to slip.

  Someone tapped him on the shoulder and he jerked awake, realizing he’d been face down, drooling into his plantworking textbook. Jurni looked down at him with amused concern, her face awash in the flickering shadows cast by the library’s magelights.

  “Riveting stuff, it looks like.” She had her bookbag slung over one shoulder, readying to leave. The massive iron clock on the wall ticked well past one o’clock in the morning.

  Benji groaned. “I have an exam tomorrow. Matilde has been calling it our ‘quarter-terms,’ as if that gives any sign how hard it’ll actually be.”

  “I doubt snoring into the exam material is going to help you.”

  “You’re probably right. Are you walking back to the dorm?”

  “I was hoping a friend might accompany me.”

  Jurni waited patiently as Benji recovered his books, including a couple he thought might have references to Worldeaters or other illicit plants. He’d found nothing specific so far. Worldeaters were rare. He’d pulled a copy of The Complete History of Eith off one of the overflow shelves after coming across it in the bibliography of one of the reference books. The preferred edition now used by the history department was much skinnier than this one, as much of the previous historian’s research had turned out to be optimistic exaggeration, and the rest of it outright fabrication. While the older edition was much longer, it was also a much better read, featuring numerous asides about the author’s adventuring exploits in the myriad gnomish ruins nearby, often without any effort to draw the text back to its allegedly historical concerns.

  “How are you finding plantworking so far?” Jurni asked as they reached the bottom of the steps and turned out through the main atrium. “It was never my subject but you seem to have at least some aptitude for it.”

  The air was bitterly cold outside, and they pulled their cloaks up to cover their necks. Behind them, the library’s layers of triangular outer windows glowed.

  “It’s honestly the only class where I can remotely say I know what I’m doing.”

  “And hopefully less risk of death than metalworking.”

  “You haven’t had Matilde see you mess up your spellwork.”

  Jurni laughed. “A large part of why I nearly failed my first-year plantworking class. She always made me so nervous that I couldn’t hear the plants. Or whatever it is you’re supposed to be doing in plantworking.”

  Their path took them up the steps toward the west side of the campus’ main square. This route was quieter and less well-lit, but it would take them back up to their dorm far quicker than the wide avenues in the University’s center.

  “You’re lucky you have Nella as a classroom assistant,” Jurni said. “Mine was an asshole named Keith, who liked to put venomous ferns in random places in the classroom to ‘test our plant recognition abilities.’ I used to go home covered in rashes. Apparently it was a tradition. Can’t imagine Nella doing anything like that.”

  “Definitely not,” Benji said. “The only way I could imagine her hurting anyone is if she was so busy taking care of plants that she forgot to take the kettle off the stove and accidentally burned down the dorm.”

  Jurni studied him, the amount of mischief in her eyes making him supremely uncomfortable. “I hear you may be interested in more than just her instruction in plantworking.”

  Benji choked so loudly that he had to pretend he’d fastened his cloak too tightly. Jurni smiled placidly.

  “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Benji said. “Also, who told you?”

  “I probably could have figured it out just from seeing you two during metalworking, if I’m honest. Luckily I’ve also befriended a certain six-foot-six humanoid of uncertain origin, who happens to like running his mouth.”

  “I’m going to kill Maynard,” Benji said.

  “Good luck. I’m fairly certain he’s immortal. Immortal, and a shameless gossip.”

  “He’s just amused by anything that makes me uncomfortable.”

  “We’ve got that in common, at least,” Jurni said. Benji mimed shoving her off the narrow cobblestone path, which earned him a real shove back. “In all seriousness, why don’t you ask her out? She might have one major character flaw—hating me and the Completists—but she’s a good person, and a hell of a plantworker. You’re both adults.”

  Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

  “You can’t date your classroom assistant!” Benji blurted.

  “You can’t, maybe. Crossing fine ethical lines is a time-honored tradition at the university. Or wasn’t that on the exam the last seventeen times you took it?”

  “Fourteen times, and no.” Desperate for a change of subject, Benji said, “What about you? I haven’t heard you talk about any romantic prospects.”

  Suddenly the air grew even colder. Jurni pulled up short, under a streetlamp bathing the street in a cool glow. It felt like they were under a spotlight, the rest of the darkened lane and the houses that ran alongside it falling out of sight.

  “Alright, I should have expected that,” Jurni said.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to hit a nerve.”

  “No, it’s okay. There hasn’t been anyone this year. I went through a bad breakup at the end of last year, and I’m still putting the pieces back together.”

  “What was their name?”

  “Kayla.” Jurni said the name with a powerful, wistful mixture of love and pain. “She was a tenth-year. I should’ve known it would end once she graduated. I thought we at least had the summer, though. I even took an internship in Heathermark to be close to her, despite having a top fellowship lined up here. Never make an important decision under the influence of love, Benji. It never ends well.”

  “So what’d you do?”

  “I went to my internship.” Jurni’s breath curled out in a haze of steam. “I kissed as many pretty girls in Heathermark as I could, and felt as empty as I’ve ever felt in my life. I did stupid things trying to make her jealous, I tried to throw my flings in her face. She was the mature one and wouldn’t rise to the bait. It was all very pathetic and predictable.”

  “I don’t think you’re pathetic,” Benji said.

  “Then you’re a lot nicer than I thought,” Jurni said with a grateful smile.

  Benji shrugged. “I’ve never had a relationship that inspired that level of drama, so maybe I’m just jealous.”

  Jurni looked up into the lights on the Spire to the west, which shone with the constancy of its purpose as the home of every serious place of business in Thelspoint. As if to remind everyone that, whatever the petty concerns of their lives, the machine of magically augmented industry would continue to churn. She began walking again. Benji matched her measured pace.

  “I’ll have my eye out for someone suitable,” Benji said. “You deserve someone as great as you are.”

  Jurni’s smile still felt like it was begging him to change the topic, so Benji decided to probe a bit in another direction. He wanted to know if Nella had accurately explained the risks of harboring Rick, and thought he might make use of the approximately five minutes before they reached their dorm to learn something from Jurni. Hopefully he wouldn’t have to tip his hand in the process.

  “Hey, since I’m new to this University thing, there was something I was wondering about,” he said. “Do bioworking students ever work with more dangerous animals?”

  “Like dragons?” Jurni asked.

  “Sure.”

  “What do you think I was doing in Heathermark? The biggest industry there is the airline run by Heathermark Flight Group. They have a whole research lab there focused on how to optimize dragon speed and carrying capacity.”

  “Oh, of course,” Benji said. “I was more wondering about things that weren’t part of an internship or class.”

  “Such as?”

  “I don’t know, does anyone ever keep dangerous animals as pets? I imagine there’s a fair amount of cockiness among the more talented bioworkers—no offense—and keeping a live predator in a dorm room seems like it would be a mark of pride for someone who thought their bioworking could tame it.”

  Jurni cocked her head suspiciously.

  “I was wondering how the university treated that sort of thing,” Benji rambled. “If they turn a blind eye, or just give rulebreakers a slap on the wrist. Hard to imagine they’d discourage the best bioworkers from conducting research, even the risky kind.”

  “You’re definitely new to the university, no offense,” Jurni said with a smile. “True, they like taking on risky research. True, there’s a nearly comical lack of safety precautions when it comes to magical instruction. Here’s the distinction: The University loves risk that it can oversee and manage. It loves to be seen taking the risky bet that boldly pushes research in a new direction. But it has to look intentional, like it’s intentionally courting danger for the sake of progress. It can’t abide unintentional, haphazard danger to students. And, maybe more importantly, it can’t stand not getting credit for new discoveries.”

  There was a lot to unpack in this explanation. Benji was far less concerned about the University’s views on research, but didn’t doubt Jurni’s assessment.

  “Sounds like it’s safe to say that a bioworker keeping a dangerous creature in their room would be putting themselves in not just the path of the creature’s danger, but also of disciplinary action from the university?”

  “That’s the formal way to put it, I guess,” Jurni said, caught between amusement and concern. “Let’s just say this. You were right that certain cocky bioworkers have tried to study creatures that aren’t allowed in even the most advanced University lab. They’ve invariably been found out. And they’ve invariably been expelled.”

  They’d arrived at the dorm, and Benji held the door open for his friend. The warmth inside greeted them. Benji felt himself relaxing, knowing he’d be asleep before too long.

  “I guess I’ll just have to tell Maynard to put that thirty-armed octopus back where he found it,” Benji said.

  “Wouldn’t that make it a triacontapus?” Jurni asked.

  “Maybe that’s why it was so angry. He’s been calling it the wrong name this whole time.”

  Jurni’s goodnight hug had plenty of eyerolls layered into it. During his walk with Jurni, Benji had felt the darkness and anxiety recede. As he turned to open the door to his room, both came back as forcefully as ever, as he pondered the names of things, and whether a plant was more Rick or more Worldeater.