The Banton Academy Charter said it took four years to turn a talented kid into a full-fledged summoner. It said proper summoning required discipline and a deep spiritual bond with the Umbral realm. The Charter said a lot of things.
Kellen, sitting in Introduction to Summoning for the third consecutive term, understood, deeply, anyone who'd ever set fire to a charter.
His fingers drummed against the simulation table. Tap-tap-tap. Thirty-two voices rose in unison beneath the Grand Library's vaulted ceilings, chanting the same spell he'd already deconstructed three months ago.
"By ancient pact and sacred stone, I call the spirit to my throne..."
The holographic interface pulsed. Seven interlocking circles, each node timed to the chant. Kellen tracked the energy flow patterns. There. Third circle. Sacred stone. Ancient pact. Twelve percent wasted on adjectives that didn't change the binding structure.
Around him, ethereal shapes flickered. A wolf. A serpent. One girl two rows up summoned what looked like a miniature lion. It yawned, showing teeth of crystallized light.
His table stayed dark.
"Mr. Specter."
Elder Waltz stood three paces behind him, hands clasped behind his back. The older man's black and gray beard was immaculately trimmed, his midnight-blue robes pressed to fine creases. He probably ironed them himself... With magic... While reciting poetry to the fabric.
Kellen didn't turn around.
"You haven't cast a single spell, Kellen."
"I'm optimizing the mana curve." His finger traced an invisible line through the air. "The standard chant wastes twelve percent energy on adjectives."
The drumming stopped. Both hands now.
"See, here..." He pointed at the third circle. "The modifiers don't change the binding structure. They're aesthetic. Remove them, and you hit the same points at eighty-eight percent of the cost."
Waltz's shadow fell across the table. The man leaned forward, close enough that Kellen could smell pipe tobacco on his breath.
"Magic is adjectives, boy." Waltz's voice could have frozen vodka. "It's intent. Respect. The relationship between summoner and summon." He tapped the hologram hard enough to send ripples through the spell matrix. "That 'waste' you've identified? That's called craft."
Kellen finally looked up. His eyes tracked Waltz's face the same way they'd tracked the spell matrix.
"Where's the craft in wasted mana?" Kellen asked.
"The craft," Waltz said, straightening, "is in knowing when efficiency becomes recklessness." His eyes narrowed. "Summoners who try to optimize everything don't live long enough to perfect anything."
"That doesn't make any sense."
"It does," Waltz said, and for a moment he sounded tired. "Magic isn't just about getting the job done, Mr. Specter. It's about the relationship between summoner and summon." He gestured at the fading spell matrix like he was explaining to a child.
Kellen smirks, "It's not tier seven alchemy, it's common sense, no mana means no summons... what if you are in an encounter and you need to swap between different summons."
"A proper summoner would enter the battle with enough insight to summon the correct Umbral for the situation... changing it out only when absolutely necessary."
"In the real world, things don't always go according to plan... but hey, might as well keep spitting out those precious, decorative adjectives and hope for the best."
"The adjectives aren't decorative! They're respect. A way of saying 'I know who you are' to the spirit you're calling." He paused. "I don't know why I bother Mr. Specter, the concept of respect seems to elude you."
The Elder turned on his heel. His robes snapped with the movement. The walk back to his desk was perfectly measured, like he had practiced this dance with Kellen many times and knew exactly how many angry steps it took. Students began releasing their summons, the ethereal creatures dissolving back into motes of light that drifted toward the ceiling like inverted rain.
Kellen watched them go. His fingers resumed their rhythm.
Tap-tap-tap.
Twelve percent, he thought, watching another student's ethereal wolf dissolve into sparkles. Multiply that across six summons per encounter... The math scrolled through his mind. That's enough wasted mana to summon a seventh Umbral. Or to actually survive when things went sideways.
He glanced at his blank table.
Or maybe Waltz has a point.
He dismissed the thought before it could fully form. Being self-aware about your character flaws didn't make them go away. Kellen had checked.
The Dueling Ring sat at the library's heart.
Kellen vaulted the low wall separating spectators from the arena with incredibly awkward enthusiasm. Seventeen students ahead of him. He pulled out his stopwatch (an old-fashioned thing, mechanical, with a cracked brass face), clicked it once, and started counting inefficiencies.
"Nora Thedren." Waltz consulted his roster without looking up. "The floor is yours."
Nora descended the steps with the grace of a dancer and the focused intensity of an executioner. She didn't look at the crowd. Didn't look at Kellen. Her eyes were fixed on the Construct.
"Standard parameters," Waltz said. "Summon your Umbral. Maintain the bond for sixty seconds minimum."
Nora closed her eyes. Her hands rose, tracing patterns in the air that left trails of golden light.
"By blood and bone and ancient stone..."
The air around her warped. Heat rolled off her in waves, distorting the arena floor.
"I call the spirit to my throne!"
[SUMMON: LIGHT-FORGED SENTINEL]
Mana Cost: 30
Sustain Cost: 2.5 SP/s (Stamina Points Per Second)
A tear in reality opened above her, bleeding pure white fire. From it descended a knight twice the height of a man, armored in tempered glass that shone like captured sunlight. It hit the ground with a sound like a cathedral bell, sword drawn, shield raised.
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"Begin," Waltz ordered.
The Training Construct woke with a sound like grinding gears. It didn't hesitate. It lunged, a four-hundred-pound slab of iron and bronze moving with terrifying speed.
"Intercept!" Nora commanded, her voice tight with strain.
The Sentinel met the charge. Glass clashed against iron, sending sparks of raw mana showering across the arena. The impact shook the floor. The Sentinel was faster, weaving under the Construct's clumsy haymakers, slicing deep gouges into the bronze plating with its blade of solidified light.
Nora's fingers twitched, executing a complex sequence of micro-gestures.
"Haste."
Violet light flared along the Sentinel's limbs. Its movements blurred, shifting from fast to impossible.
Forty seconds.
[SUSTAIN: LIGHT-FORGED SENTINEL + HASTE]
DRAIN: 12 SP/sec
STAMINA: 32% (CRITICAL)
Nora was shaking now, sweat beading on her forehead. The cost of sustaining a Tier 3 combat summon on top of a temporal buff was astronomical. Summons require mana to bring into this world, but they need stamina to stay put... And this particular summon was like holding a hurricane on a leash that was slowly, inevitably dragging her toward the cliff's edge of exhaustion.
The Construct recovered, pivoting with a backhand swing that caught the Sentinel on its shield. CRACK. The shield held, but Nora stumbled, a sympathetic flinch that nearly broke her concentration.
Fifty seconds.
"Hold..." she whispered, teeth grit.
The Construct wound up for a finisher, its greatsword raised like a guillotine. The Sentinel braced, light flaring brighter...
"NOW!" Nora screamed.
The Sentinel lunged through the swing, driving its sword into the Construct's shoulder joint. Metal shrieked. The Construct staggered, arm hanging uselessly.
Fifty-eight seconds.
[WARNING: STAMINA CRITICAL (6/110)]
Nora's knees buckled.
The bond snapped.
The Sentinel dissolved into motes of light just as the Construct crashed to one knee. Nora hit the floor a second later, gasping for air, her face pale.
The instructors exchanged glances. Waltz actually smiled, a rare, thin expression that looked painful. "Textbook execution. You pass, Ms. Thedren."
Nora pushed herself up, wiping blood from her nose. She didn't look triumphant. She looked disappointed and overtaxed.
"Kellen Specter." Waltz turned the page. "You're up."
Kellen vaulted the low wall separating spectators from the arena with absolutely zero acknowledgment that this was probably the most athletic thing he'd do all week. He landed in a crouch that his knees immediately regretted, then straightened, pretending the landing had been graceful.
The Training Construct stood at the ring's opposite end, motionless except for the faint tick-tick-tick of its internal clockwork. Seven feet of bronze and iron that smelled like machine oil and someone else's graduation exam.
Waiting.
"Standard parameters," Waltz said. "Summon your Umbral. Maintain the bond for sixty seconds." He paused, a thin, supercilious smile touching his lips. "Try and remember your adjectives."
Kellen walked to the center of the ring. Seven feet tall. Bronze-iron composite. Four hundred pounds, give or take. The Construct's greatsword was blunted, but it'd still hit like a cart. His eyes tracked the joints: hip actuators, shoulder pivots, the gap between breastplate and gorget where the control matrix sat.
He glanced at the timer crystal mounted on the observation table. Sixty seconds glowed soft amber.
Maintenance cost on a Guardian: two stamina per second. Times sixty. He did the math in the half-second it took to breathe. One hundred twenty stamina, plus thirty mana for the initial summoning. That's a lot of effort to expend on one test.
He pulled out an Echo Tome, a training grimoire with a cracked leather spine and pages that smelled like three years of desperate students trying to memorize the difference between a Lesser Shade and a Greater Shadow. The binding was coming loose. Page forty-seven was stuck to page forty-eight with what Kellen hoped was coffee.
The Construct's eyes flared green. Combat protocols engaged.
It charged.
Four hundred pounds of animated bronze, greatsword raised overhead, footfalls shaking the arena floor like distant thunder. Three seconds to impact.
Kellen's fingers found the page he wanted. Not the Guardian entry. Not the Knight, or the Sentinel, or any of the recommended defensive summons.
He found the Imp.
"Vex."
[SUMMON: IMP (VEX)]
Mana Cost: 5
Sustain Cost: 0.5 SP/s
One word. No adjectives. No sacred pacts or ancient thrones.
Reality tore.
The summoning didn't happen in front of him. It happened inside the Construct, a fist-sized distortion that appeared directly within the machine's chest cavity, where gears and mana conduits intersected around the central control matrix.
The Imp materialized for exactly zero-point-two seconds: a twisted little creature of claws and spite, all elbows and malice. It didn't have time to orient itself. Didn't have time to shriek.
Kellen dismissed it before it could take a breath.
The distortion snapped shut. The Imp vanished.
The Construct's chest cavity exploded outward in a spray of gears, mana-oil, and crystallized residue. The smell hit a half-second later... hot bronze and scorched air. Metal shrieked. The greatsword tumbled from nerveless fingers as the machine staggered forward (one step, two, three) before its legs locked.
It crashed face-first into the arena floor.
The impact shook the marble beneath Kellen's feet. Smoke curled from the hole in its back. Something inside still ticked, winding down like a broken clock.
Kellen closed the grimoire. Checked the timer crystal.
Around the arena, silence.
Then someone coughed.
Elder Waltz rose from the observation table slowly, like a man who'd just watched someone piss in a sacred fountain.
"Mr. Specter." His voice could have frozen fire. "You didn't maintain the bond."
Kellen stepped over the Construct's smoking corpse. "The threat is destroyed. Why would I pay maintenance mana for a fight that's over?"
"The exercise..." Waltz descended into the arena, robes billowing. Three other instructors followed, led by Elder Vesra, a woman small and withered enough to be mistaken for an unravelled mummy. "The exercise was to demonstrate sustained channeling. Bond stability. The partnership between summoner and summon."
"I believe we demonstrated a very fruitful partnership..." Kellen gestured at the wreckage. "Target neutralized in under a second with minimal resources expended. I beat your game... and in a fraction of the time."
"This is not a game!" Elder Vesra jabbed a bony finger at the destroyed Construct. "You exploited a loophole, using a minor summon. That Imp..."
"Is in the approved grimoire," Kellen said. "Page seventy-three."
"Because no one with sense..." Waltz pinched the bridge of his nose. "Because competent summoners don't materialize Vex Imps inside training constructs."
"You didn't specify how to neutralize the Construct." Kellen's voice stayed level. "Just that I had to maintain a summon during the encounter."
"You maintained it for zero-point-four seconds!"
"It's not my fault the construct couldn't last any longer."
Vesra made a sound like dry parchment tearing. "This is exactly why your performance reviews are abysmal, boy. No discipline. No respect for tradition. You treat magic like it's a..."
"Tool?" Kellen offered.
"A trick." Waltz's eyes were dismissive. "You optimize. You calculate. You find the angle that requires the least effort and call it a day."
The word hit Kellen like a physical thing.
"A trick? Are you kidding me?" Kellen asked. "You know how long I studied that grimoire? How many hours I spent researching, practicing, working out the math? And you call me lazy?"
He felt it coming. Third time. Third consecutive failure.
"We grade the result, not the effort," Waltz said. "And your grade is an F."
"Bullshit." Kellen muttered.
Vesra spit words soaked in venom, "Watch your tone, boy!"
Waltz signals her to stand down, "Sixty seconds. You were required to maintain a bond within that timeframe. You achieved zero-point-four. Complete failure."
"Nora lasted fifty-eight," Kellen said, holding up the cracked brass stopwatch. "I timed it. You passed her. So clearly 'sixty seconds' is a suggestion, not a law."
"It is a standard of intent, Mr. Specter," Waltz said, his voice smooth and utterly unbothered by the math. "Ms. Thedren summoned a Sentinel. She accepted the spiritual burden. She faltered, yes, but she faltered correctly."
"Correctly?" Kellen repeated. "I didn't realize we measured failure on a spectrum. Seems like it should be black and white."
"Would you prefer I fail Ms. Thedren? In keeping with your narrow vision of success," Waltz asked.
Kellen looked down. "No."
"That's what I thought."
They're wrong, and they won't listen because the proof doesn't fit their hymnal. Which, admittedly, was exactly the kind of thinking that had gotten him failed twice before.
"You're dismissed, Mr. Specter," Waltz said without turning around. "You've failed Introduction to Summoning for the third consecutive term."
Kellen walked toward the exit. His footsteps echoed in the silence.
Behind him, someone whispered, "Heard he's been called for the Rite of Selection."
Someone else snorted. "I thought the Codex only chose the best..."
"Guess six years of silence makes the Elders desperate. They're trying everyone now... even the losers."
The arena door closed behind him with a sound like a tomb sealing.
Kellen stood in the corridor beyond, alone. Light filtered through stained glass windows, painting the marble floor in reds and blues. He pulled out the stopwatch again. Looked at it.
Point-four seconds.
He smiled.
New record.