The sun was already melting into the horizon by the time the last class ended. Bells chimed across the academy like some cruel announcement of freedom, too little, too late. Kael and Seret were dragged along with the herd of glassy-eyed students into a domed hall with rows of desks arranged in a circle around a towering bronze obelisk.
At the center, a decrepit automaton scribed glowing exam papers into existence from a spool of parchment and ambient stress.
"Please sit," it wheezed in a metallic croak that sounded like it had swallowed a kazoo. "Begin the written examination. You have one hour. Any attempts at cheating will result in a mandatory spinal recalibration."
Kael blinked. "...That's a threat, right? That's definitely a threat."
Seret grunted as she slammed into a seat beside him, practically falling forward against the desk. Her expression was the kind of deadpan you'd expect from someone who'd survived war crimes only to be asked to fill out paperwork.
The paper hovered down. Fifty questions. Essay form. All based on the mind-devouring barrage of magical theory they had just endured.
Question One: Describe the difference between natural mana flow and arcane filament resonance in less than sixty words.
Kael stared at it.
"What the hell is a filament resonance again?" he hissed.
Seret squinted at her own page, then whispered, "It's the thing where your aura… like… vibrates when you overchannel your will? Or when you eat spoiled fish. One of those."
"That is absolutely not it."
"Then you answer it, genius."
Kael grumbled, scribbling something that definitely sounded confident but was mostly just a repetition of words he vaguely remembered the professor saying.
Seret read over his shoulder. "'Mana filaments are semi-sentient and hum in response to conceptual density.' Are you just making magical slam poetry now?"
"It sounds smart, doesn't it?"
"No. It sounds like you licked an arcane battery and then tried to explain jazz."
Kael hissed at her and turned his page defensively.
Question Four: List all known rune categories and their applicable risk thresholds.
He paused. "Okay, this one I actually remember."
Seret was already writing. "Fractals, Spirals, Forks, Brands, Lattices, Chains, "
"There weren't six!"
"Yes there were! Forks were the stupid reflex-trigger ones, remember?"
"No, those were Chains. Forks were the memory spells!"
"Wrong. Chains are illegal binding glyphs used by sadistic cults, like the one that raised us, ring a bell?"
"Oh."
They stared at each other for a moment. Then both muttered, "Fair."
Kael went back to scribbling. Question Ten asked about the maximum rune load a Threadform could sustain before destabilization.
He paused. "Okay, was it seven or nine?"
"Seven," Seret said instantly. "Unless you want your ribcage to explode."
"No, no, I swear the guy said nobles could survive nine if they had soul-weaving done."
"Kael. Do you have a Threadsmith? Is that your little secret? Are you secretly rich and just slumming it with me for fun?"
"…It might've been eight."
Seret reached over and stabbed his page with her quill.
"Write. Seven. Or so help me, I'll personally detonate your kidneys."
Kael, now bleeding metaphorically and possibly literally, complied.
The exam dragged on. Thirty-five minutes in, Seret's head was resting on her folded arms while she scribbled answers like she was defusing a bomb with a hangover. Kael was halfway through a long-winded explanation of spellback recoil ratios when he let out a tiny wheeze of despair and tore up the page. He wrote the whole answer again but added a note at the bottom:
If this is wrong, it's because the professor whispered his explanations like a haunted librarian.
At minute fifty-nine, the automaton clanked forward, extending a clawed hand.
"Submit your answer sheets. Resistance will result in academic evisceration."
Kael slapped his paper into the claw. "I didn't even answer number forty-seven."
"What was forty-seven?" Seret asked.
"'Describe the soul-scarring side effects of emotion-bound glyphs.'"
"Oh. Those are the ones that make you cry blood if you break up with someone, right?"
Kael blinked. "Please never learn how to use those."
They stumbled out of the testing hall just as the moonlight kissed the courtyard stones. Both of them were hunched like ancient peasants, dragging their feet through the gravel like it owed them money.
Seret groaned. "I'm ninety percent sure I spelled 'mana' wrong on half of my answers."
"You spelled it wrong on purpose because you thought it was a metaphor," Kael snapped.
"Well, excuse me for applying creative interpretation to my magical education."
"You interpreted 'describe the risk of body runes' by writing, and I quote, 'You go boom and it sucks.'"
"It does suck! That's not even wrong!"
Kael couldn't argue with that.
They reached the dorms. The lamplight flickered softly as they ascended the stairs. Neither spoke for a long moment.
Then Seret muttered, "I kinda miss the cult. At least there we only got tortured physically. This is like being stabbed with homework."
Kael nodded slowly. "At least cult exams didn't involve pop quizzes. Or lecture diagrams that exploded into gore."
They paused in front of their doors, adjacent rooms. Just before retreating into her own, Seret glanced sideways.
"…Think we passed?"
Kael opened his mouth. Closed it. Then shrugged. "If not, we'll just summon a forbidden rune demon and make it grade on a curve."
"Deal."
The doors clicked shut behind them.
Tomorrow would be worse. They could feel it.