Chapter 25

“I’m heading out,” Fabrisse said, slinging his satchel over one shoulder and trying to sound casual about it. 

The clock struck eight. Outside, the stars had begun their slow reveal across the velvet dome of sky, scattered like forgotten chalk dust across a blackboard. The campus had quieted, save for the occasional echo of a wardstone adjusting itself or the metallic chime of an unsupervised experiment misbehaving two quads over.

Greg, cross-legged on the floor with his back against his desk, was scribbling something into one of his four color-coded notebooks. A stack of assigned reading lay open beside him, each page neatly marked with flagged tabs, margin annotations, and runic translation notes written in two different inks.

It was definitely a spellcraft assignment—one of the dense, theory-heavy ones where you were expected to critique the mnemonic sequence of a 3rd-era invocation without ever casting it.

Which was exactly how Greg preferred it.

Fabrisse had never once seen him attempt practical Thaumaturgy inside the dorm. The closest he came to casting was tapping his pen with exactly the right rhythm to sync with his outline.

“Out where?” Greg asked.

“Training,” Fabrisse replied, trying not to fidget.

That got Greg’s attention.

He turned so slowly that it teetered into theatrical territory. “Training? You mean . . . Thaumaturgy?”

“Mm-hm.”

“You don’t even train during normal hours.” Greg stopped for a second and said. “Did the blond girl put you up to this?”

Fabrisse hesitated. “I mean . . . not exactly.”

“You don’t train. But you’re about to go training with a girl.”

“Well—”

“So you like her.” 

“What? No! I didn’t say—” Fabrisse fumbled with the strap of his satchel, nearly dropping it. He tried to fix it, then gave up and just stood there. “When’s the last time you—uh—had a girl in your life?” He immediately realized how much more aggressive that line sounded than everything else he usually said, and that got him biting his lips.

“No girl’s visited you since your sister, and before that, the transfer student from the Eastern Jade coast. And none of them climbed the window.” ‘The transfer student from the Eastern Jade coast’ was Fabrisse’s only ex-girlfriend, sort of. Her name was Zan, and their relationship didn’t work out because, well, she was a transfer student.

I mean, Greg wouldn’t know much about Liene. She went away before he moved it.

“Liene is a bit hyper.”

“You two seem like friends,” Greg turned back to his notes, as if the matter had already been settled. “There’s no friendship between guys and girls.”

“That’s not true.”

“Ninety-seven percent of mixed-gender friendships contain at least one unspoken romantic tension. I can cite the source.”

Fabrisse opened his mouth, kept it hanging for a couple seconds before speaking, “We’re doing spell drills. That’s it.”

“Mhm. What does she get from it?”

“Uh . . .” He didn’t know. “I don’t know.”

“She likes you.”

Fabrisse opened the door.

Then turned his head back, halfway through a defensive comeback. “It’s not like she’s—”

Thump.

He walked straight into someone.

He stumbled back a step. A pie box tilted dangerously in the air.

“Oh!” came a familiar voice, cheerful and terribly unbothered as she un-tilted the box. “Hi, Fabri~”

It was Liene.

She stood just outside the doorway, one foot over the dormitory threshold, holding a paper-wrapped parcel and grinning like she hadn't just been the subject of a statistical debate. The moonlight caught her hair like a very smug halo.

Fabrisse’s voice climbed an octave. “How—how did you get in here? This is the boys’ wing.”

“I climbed the ivy trellis,” she said brightly. “The wards on this window are outdated and very climbable. You should report that, Greg.”

“I’ll file a note,” Greg replied without not looking up from his notes.

Fabrisse wondered how much of the conversation she’d heard, but decided not to ask.

She held up the box. “Anyway, I brought pie. Mingleberry from the kitchen annex. One for you, one for Greg.”

Greg said, “I’m good.”

“You’re never good,” Liene chirped.

“I meant I don’t want pie.”

“Your loss,” she said, already pushing the box into Fabrisse’s hands. “Now come on, Rock Witch. We’ve got spells to cast.”

Fabrisse glanced back at Greg, who gave him a tiny shrug which was equal parts judgment and pity.

***

“I don’t know how to levitate rocks,” said Liene, the supposed Stone Thaumaturgy mentor stand-in.

Fabrisse didn’t look all that surprised. “I thought so.”

She tilted her head. “Oh no. Am I being demoted from mentor to decorative sidekick?”

He shrugged. “Earth Thaumaturgy’s an elective. Half the people I’ve asked think it’s just a theory class about dirt. No one signs up for it.”

“Because dirt is deeply unsexy,” Liene said. And supremely hard to control, sadly.

Fabrisse cracked a smile. “Not wrong.”

They stood in a half-cleared courtyard behind the alchemy shed, under a sky smeared with moonlight and a few drifting glyphlights (lamps powered by aether) from nearby wards. Someone had dragged an old practice dummy into one corner, possibly Cuman.

Fabrisse dropped his satchel and pulled out a smaller Stupenstone. “I, uh . . . recently learned this spell. Sort of. It slings this thing like a projectile.”

“You throw a rock,” Liene said.

“Aetherically,” he clarified, with more pride than he should’ve.

She laughed.

He turned it in his hands. “Thing is, it’s not consistent. It kind of . . . arcs weird. I think it’s my focus. Or maybe how I’m holding the emotion. Or the—uh—what’s it called when your brain has to catch up with the spell in real time?”

“Synaptic clarity?” she offered.

“That.” Fabrisse nodded. “That. I’m bad at that. You’re good with long-range casts, right? Your Lightstrike was clean enough to make Miro cry.”

“He tripped,” she said. “But yes.”

“So, I figured . . .” He gestured vaguely at the air between them. “Maybe you could help me? With, like, keeping the mental channel clean when you cast at range. Or aiming while your head’s still full of other emotions.”

“You aim spells while emotionally spiraling?”

Fabrisse looked dead serious. “It’s the only way I know how.”

Liene arched an eyebrow, then stepped back and began pacing in a spontaneous circle around him, one of her habits when she was either planning something or stalling for dramatic effect. 

Finally, she stopped. “Are you familiar with the basics from Synaptic Resonance I?”

Fabrisse responded. “Is that the one where they hook you up to a focus circle and ask you to think calming thoughts while someone screams minor hexes nearby?”

“That’s Synaptic Control I. And yes, that too.” She crossed her arms. “Resonance I is the precursor, which is about aligning emotional impulse with aetheric timing. Meaning: if you’re going to let your brain fire off a thought like ‘I’m humiliated and also angry,’ the trick is to not cast until that thought has finished being loud.”

“So I should wait until the shame has cooled?”

“Is embarrassment still your primary emotion control?” She stepped closer and attempted to pinch his cheek. “Cute.”

He swatted her hand away. “Just answer the question.”

“No.” She grinned. “You should learn to cast before the shame peaks.”

Fabrisse made a helpless little gesture with both hands. “And I assume that’s easy for you?”

“Not at all. I’m just used to casting while feeling too much.” She stepped toward him again and held out both hands. “Okay, stand still. I’m going to show you what this looks like first. We’re not spellcasting yet. This is just a synaptic control exercise. You don’t even need mnemonics; all you need is mental-to-gesture alignment.”

He tried to nod seriously, but ended up mimicking her posture awkwardly.

“Close your eyes,” she said, moving behind him. “Breathe in. Hold the stone in your dominant hand like you’re about to cast, but don’t. You’re just going to move as if. That’s it.”

Fabrisse inhaled and lifted the Stupenstone.

“Now. Picture the emotion. For you, hmm . . . that should be the one that usually fires off when you miss.” Her voice was softer now. “The part of you that cringes in advance.”

He grimaced. “That’s not hard.”

“Good. You’re going to move your hand as if you’re going to cast, but slower. Match the movement to when the emotion crests.” She moved her hand slowly for him to see.

“Okay.” He swept his arm forward at a speed that was nothing like that of Liene’s.

“Stop,” Liene said.

“I did it wrong.”

“Obviously.” She circled him again. “You flinched before the feeling peaked. Your arc was messy and your shoulder was ahead of your wrist.”

He glanced back at her. “I thought this wasn’t casting.”

“It’s not. But your posture is still garbage.” She poked his elbow. “Don’t worry about it. Let’s do it again. Match motion to emotion.”

Fabrisse rolled his shoulders and reset. Again, the feeling welled in his chest—failure, embarrassment, that froggy shame he'd just barely turned into something useful before.

He moved his hand.

“Still early,” she said.

“I don’t know how long to wait!”

“It’s not a time thing, Fabri. It’s a rhythm thing. You’re listening to the wrong part of the feeling.”

“Which part am I supposed to listen to?”

“The part that hurts a little less. Right before it turns into self-loathing.”

“Oh, that’s helpful.”

She chuckled. “One more. Then I’ll show you how I do it.”

“Okay,” Liene said, brushing her palms together like she was clearing a chalkboard. “Watch this.”

She took three measured steps away from him, then stood in a half-caster’s stance. Her feet were offset, her shoulders relaxed, and her wrist turned slightly upward as if holding an invisible thread.

Then she glided her hand in an arc. He caught it in real time.

[Synaptic Thread Recognition: +1% Progress]

[Reward: SYN +7 ~ +15; SYN attribute unlocked]

Huh?