Vitl managed to pull the archive door out of its recess using the mag-pick. He fussed, grumbled, and sweated, but in the end, the iron slab, screeching resentfully, yielded. To close it, he jammed several of the latches with pieces of metal and wood splinters found in the same room. Now the archive could not only be opened but also closed—primitively, but effectively.

  At first, they just sat on the floor in the dark, but Esh brought a small flock of light-lines from the storeroom, and under the blue light, the dusty chamber came to life. The three of them dismantled several rotten shelves and cobbled together some extremely ugly tables and chairs. The furniture threatened to fall apart at any moment and looked like the furniture-analog of a defective homunculus, but it was better than the cold floor here. Besides, it had, albeit a brief one, a history. Their history.

  In the archive, they discovered a strange anomaly: a bubble of accelerated time seemed to fill the space. Or perhaps the rest of the school was in slow motion. Here they talked, trained, and laughed, and time itself seemed to lose its grip as it watched them.

  And one day, during a lecture on aether-dynamics, Ortahn, while listening to his own explanation, suddenly saw the aether. He had always seen it—vibrations, fluctuations, movements in the corners of his vision, as if an invisible oil were flowing under the blanket of the air. But only now did he realize what it was. It was as if he had been looking at his mother's dress and suddenly perceived that the ornate patterns formed clear images of flowers—he just needed to focus his gaze correctly. He hadn't seen something new, but had recognized something old.

  It seemed to Ortahn that the aether was flowing under Vitl's chair, and the aether agreed. The chair lifted off the floor, spun around, and a bewildered Vitl tumbled onto the floor. Hitting the ground, he groaned, then looked at Ortahn with an admiration that was almost childlike.

  "Was that you, Ortahn?" he whispered. "So, you've finally started to control your gift? This is what real male magic looks like! I can barely move a speck of dust. And I always feel like it's just because I'm waving my hands around."

  Esh cried out with joy, forgetting that they were in a forbidden place at night, and threw her arms around Ortahn's neck, forgetting about Vitl entirely.

  After Ortahn gained control over his magic, explaining it became much easier for him. Under his guidance, Vitl was able to push a chair across the room with his will. With great effort, of course, with hand gestures that spent more energy than the magical pushes themselves, but he did it. After that, Vitl insisted that any movement of objects in the archive should be the work of his magic, which greatly increased the time required for simple actions.

  Esh also tried to cast spells, but nothing happened. Ortahn wanted to support her but didn't know what to say. And once again, Esh came to his aid.

  "It was worth a try. What if no one had even attempted it before?" she smiled, but shadows formed in the corners of her eyes. "Maybe it's for the best that I don't have magic. I'll be the perfect control sample in experiments. And I'll be conducting many of them."

  But nothing in Ortahn's life could be so smooth for so long. One day, Yaron and Samar blocked their path.

  "You seem to be forgetting your old friends, Vitly," Yaron said, examining Vitl with deliberate intensity. "And where do you disappear to after class?"

  "If we had a girl, we'd also try to spend our free time away from everyone else," Samar noted.

  "Maybe we can team up again, Vitly," Yaron added a sweetness to his voice that clearly didn't suit him. "We're ready to accept you, along with this Zazaran. But we'll have to get rid of the fat-walker." Yaron eyed Ortahn thoughtfully, as if appraising discounted goods in a shop.

  Vitl answered. He shoved Samar with magic, and Samar fell over in surprise.

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  "You wouldn't dare do that to Yaron!" Samar cried out, offended.

  From the look on Vitl's face, it was clear that Samar had hit him too. He was afraid of the enormous Yaron and wouldn't have touched him with his hand or his magic. But Ortahn would. Yaron flew back a couple of steps but didn't lose his balance, only dropping to one knee.

  "I'll get ya now!" he roared. "Enhancer! Enhancer! Me! You!" Rage had robbed him of the ability to speak coherently. His muscles bulged, but he was in no hurry to get up, only twitching convulsively.

  "Calm down, Yaron," Ortahn said. "In a few moments, I'll let you go, and you'd better not try to find us. Mind your own business."

  Vitl, Esh, and Ortahn disappeared around the corner, leaving behind Samar's dark glare and Yaron's enraged eyes.

  "This is a problem we'll have to solve, or it will solve us," Esh whispered.

  Ortahn didn't answer, because he had nothing to add to his friend's words.

  Another time, on a rare occasion when Ortahn was walking alone, he saw her. Ildara emerged from a side corridor, clad in a high-necked dress that concealed her figure, leaving no hint of her usual decolletage. But the main thing was her gait—usually confident and sharp, it was now uneven. The Black Blood witch was holding onto an elegant levitating handle in the shape of a black coldheart skull with emeralds in its eye sockets, which took some of her weight. Their gazes met, and the steel of her eyes pierced Ortahn with the purest, undiluted hatred.

  "Someone received a dose of her beloved 'discipline and pain,'" the thought made Ortahn smile, but only after he had hidden his face from Ildara.

  The archive gradually transformed from a secret meeting place into a semblance of a home. In the night's silence, broken only by whispers and the creaking of homemade furniture, stories that no one had dared to tell before began to surface.

  Vitl stopped hiding behind jokes. Ortahn learned that Vitl's father had been a clockwork mechanic on wind-paths, and his mother an engineer who worked on closed-cycle aether engines for astral-craft. When Vitl's abilities manifested, his parents hid him (magic was highly undesirable in a family of engineers). But the orbital eyes see everything, including his "strange absence," and soon he was "invited" to the school. And so, according to Vitl, his "brilliant" career as a mage began.

  Esh related that she and her twin brother had been sent here as part of a "strange phenomena exchange" program between countries. "We were a real miracle," she declared with pride, as if it had been their choice to be born in such a configuration. "A woman without magic and a male mage from the same womb."

  Her brother was not with her, and whenever he was mentioned, Esh's voice would drop slightly, as if under the weight of the words' meaning. Ortahn didn't ask questions, sensing it might disturb the fragile balance of her smile.

  When it was his turn to confess his past, Ortahn told them about his job as a garbage collector, about his pre-high-rank aunt and her madness, and about the tragedy that had dragged him to The Scar. Vitl didn't believe the ministerial part, and Esh said it sounded like the beginning of an ancient myth.

  Taut would sometimes visit the archive when Esh didn't manage to settle him for the night. Once, he turned toward Ortahn, who was juggling lumps of paper without his hands. Ortahn moved closer so Taut could see better, but the soul-deprived man's empty gaze slid past him, probably following some insect on the wall.

  Life in their little sanctuary flowed quickly. But sometimes the reality of the school would catch up with them. One day, Tulila handed out treats to the class—little balls that changed texture and taste at will. Almost all the men turned them into juicy meat, and the room filled with contented chewing. Tulila explained it was in honor of Unification Day.

  Her kindness, however, had a double bottom, (un)skillfully disguised by the smell and appearance of food (but it was enough for the men). Unification Day meant the wild, spasmodic approach of exams, which would be administered not by her, but by the Chancellery.

  "This will be a special test," Tulila announced, casually examining her nails. "They use a special kind of magic, so I won't be able to... you understand. Help you with the answers the hardcore way, bypassing your hands and heads. For the integrity of the process, you'll need to give blood for special ink. You'll have to strain your own thinking organs, and you'd better strain them hard." She looked pointedly at Ortahn, as if hinting to the others about him. "Because you're the dumb ones, but I'm the one who'll be punished for your stupidity. My anger at you for that will create an undesirable dynamic in our group, girls. And not only that..." Tulila's voice became thoughtful, as if she hadn't decided until that very moment whether to say the next words, but the monologue was proceeding unstoppably, and she added, "It will also prove the effectiveness of our teachers' different educational models."

  A silence tinged with ominous understanding fell. Even Yaron seemed to grasp it (or maybe it was just a shadow falling across his face between grimaces). This was not just a test, but a showdown between Tulila's methods and Ildara's terror. Their failure would mean Tulila's defeat and her rival's victory.

  A catastrophe, in other words.