Dungeons and Dalliances

Under Tess’s tutelage, Natalie made surprisingly good progress. Certainly more than she had by herself, bashing her head against a wall back at Tinford. While Titus—her, Jordan, and Sofia’s primary mentor—knew his way around weapons, he was as poor at spellcasting as Natalie. That might’ve been one of the reasons she’d been hopeless at it. With proper training, she hoped she could crawl out of mediocrity. Or maybe to mediocrity, by Tenet standards.

At 9:20, a bell rang through the training facility, announcing that personal hours were over, and that it was time for Natalie to make her way to her class for official training—spars, primarily, which doubled as combat instruction.

Admittedly, she was anticipatory as she trekked through the polished halls of the facility, headed for the sparring room her schedule indicated. It was time to meet her class … the fifteen other individuals she’d be spending the year with. And fighting against.

Or, thirteen. She’d only be meeting thirteen of them, because two, she already knew. In either a stroke of unlikely coincidence or intentional arrangement by Tenet—Natalie suspected the second—she, Jordan, and Sofia had been put in the same class; they’d noticed it at lunch by comparing classroom numbers.

Sheer chance seemed unlikely, so Tenet must have grouped them together intentionally. It was a given the process wasn’t entirely random, because they needed to balance a classroom’s composition to have a roughly equal spread of roles—some mages, some fighters, and so on.

But that they lumped students together with more deliberation than just composition did come as a surprise. Not that Natalie was complaining. It meant she and Jordan were in the same class. Though, Sofia too, so not wholly ideal. But worth it, in the long run, especially since the three of them were teaming. It wasn’t like Natalie hadn’t already spent years tolerating her rival’s presence. Just part of life, at this point.

Finding the appropriately marked number, Natalie walked into the sparring room she would be becoming intensely acquainted with over the following year.

Naturally, Natalie’s eyes sought out Jordan, who had turned to see who had arrived—probably waiting for Natalie. Natalie raised a hand in greeting, gave a begrudging nod to Sofia as well, who was next to Jordan, then scanned the rest of her classmates as she walked over.

Most had arrived, though at a brief survey, one or two hadn’t. They still had a few minutes before they’d be late.

Natalie recognized another of her classmates, which, considering the size of Tenet’s years, was more than she could have hoped for. It was the girl with short black hair—one bright streak of blue—who had been talking the ear off of a rather unenthusiastic-looking blonde bed-neighbor back at the barracks.

Like the first time Natalie had seen her, she was chatting up a storm, and again, to someone who didn’t match her eagerness in half. Though, that’d be hard, considering how animated the girl was. The boy at least didn’t look like he wanted to be away … he just seemed bored. Though, more of a passive boredom, like an expression he always wore. He nodded along here and there, adding to the conversation when appropriate.

Natalie could swear she recognized him, too, but she scraped her brain and came up empty. It clicked a second later, when she caught a snippet of his voice: Natalie recognized him as ‘Mister Adair’, from the briefing Harper had given. One of the interrupters.

Someone whose face Harper had put to a name to … so someone important? Though, Harper hadn’t been afraid to insult him, either. That might be because Harper herself had her own family name protecting her. Most people weren’t in Natalie’s situation—a girl from the middle of nowhere, without a single connection to speak of.

Arriving at Jordan’s side, she gave the usual, “Hey.”

“Hey. How’d it go?”

“Good, actually. Made some progress.” She frowned. “It’s weird being around a bunch of mages, though. And a headache.”

“Headache?”

“Spells flying everywhere? I was in this big courtyard, lots of other people. Everyone kept their stuff contained, but it was still … annoying.” With the arrival of Natalie’s class, she’d gained a passive awareness of magic she hadn’t had before. She could feel it. In the back of her head, whenever a spell went off. Multiplied by however many dozens of people had been there, it’d been more than a bit annoying. There had been stronger spells going off, too, by higher level Tenet students—or instructors. Those left more than just a hum. They vibrated her bones, even with the distance between her and them. “You recognize anyone here?”

“No. You do?”

“Well, sort of.” Natalie nodded at the chatty girl. “She’s in my barracks. Recognize the dude from yesterday’s briefs. Haven’t talked to either, though.”

“We’ll need to, eventually,” Jordan said thoughtfully. “We ought to get to work on putting together a party.” She scanned the thirteen students—the last two had arrived—and nodded idly. “Hopefully most of them aren’t taken. Doesn’t look like there’s too many cliques.”

Funny enough, she, Jordan, and Sofia seemed to be the established group. There were a few people talking, but they didn’t seem like friends—at best, they recognized each other, but only in a casual sort of way. Six or seven were standing aside, arms crossed or hands in their pockets and leaning against a wall, waiting for their instructor to arrive.

Which happened in short order. Almost at the exact moment the bell went off, in strode a tall woman with white hair. White, like Sofia—a Theliosian. They had rather distinctive looks. The darkest their hair got, as a general rule, was shiny silver.

“Good morning, class,” she said in a brisk tone. “My name is Instructor Robin.” Her eyes flicked across the gathered students, mouth moving barely as she counted heads. “Sixteen. All of you. Good. Let’s go. If we’re quick to the armory, before things are crowded, we can get out quick. Then, we might be able to some spars in.” That said, she strode out the room, waving a hand for them to follow.

Natalie blinked at the brusque introduction, as did most of the students, but they set off after her.