“Sarrah!” Allia whines as she comes up on and playfully embraces her friend from behind on the way to their lockers. “Can you believe Emil? He beat our old gauntlet score with Sylvia!”

  “Oh… I’m sorry to hear that.” Her friend says consolingly.

  “Don’t be!” Allia immediately perks up as if she was never actually upset and takes a boastful tone. “I beat his new score with Greg by 12 whole points and he had to pay me a kila because of a bet!”

  “Oh, 12 points? That’s um… good?” Sarrah’s face struggles to keep up with her friend’s mood whiplash.

  Allia laughs at clearly having achieved her intended effect. “I forgot you only took the basic course. But yeah, twelve points is an amazing lead for the high score in the intermediate class. I didn’t think Greg had good synergy with me, but then I figured out some stuff about my new insight, and I think if he were just boosting me from the beginning, I might have had time to establish enough constructs to beat the dragon!”

  “A dragon?” her friend questions incredulously. “They had you fight a dragon?”

  “Ah.” Allia dismissively waves her friend’s obvious concern away. “It was just a small dragon, only fifty feet. Probably meant to be only three hundred years at most. Besides, a real dragon would have retreated to reform its shield. Nearly had it though… Oh right! I didn’t see it cause of the illusions, but Professor Granger said I broke through the second protective layer!”

  “You broke a dragon’s shield and the second… Allia!” Sarrah grabs her friend mid-stride and turns her around. “You didn’t overdo it, did you? Your soul isn’t too discrete?” Sarrah’s face is twisted in worry.

  “What? Nah. The soul’s fine. The dragon just overcame my rate of barrier construction. I probably could have gone at least another minute before things got dangerous. Besides, the teachers checked me over after just to be safe and said I didn’t have any symptoms.”

  “Yeah, but… you broke the second barrier? If you broke the third, you would have endangered people on the outside.”

  “Pff. Yeah right. I’m glad you think so highly of me, but the third barrier is like three times as strong as the first two put together. I doubt I even made a scratch on it.”

  “Yeah… but… I guess you’re just growing so fast. It worries me, you know. A year ago, you could barely make a tiny ball with your manifestation and now you’re fighting dragons? It’s good to grow, but you can hurt yourself going too fast.”

  “Hey,” Allia says as she pulls her friend in for a quick hug. “Don’t worry. I’m not doing anything crazy to grow. I’m probably growing slower than I seem; I’m just becoming more efficient as I align myself more with whatever concept is behind my manifestation. You know, like Alex said. I mean, of course I am; is anyone aligned better with pretty light concepts than me?”

  Sarrah giggles at her friend’s mock hubris. “I don’t know,” she says slyly, playing along, “we don’t even know what the concept is. I mean, maybe the phenomenon emits light because the concept is really nasty and the light is trying to get away from you.”

  “Oh, I’m wounded!” Allia says, miming an arrow to her heart. “How could you malign me so? Surely you know that deserves a tickle!” Allia pounces on her friend and skilfully applies fingers to her sides, causing her to giggle frantically until Sarrah asks her to stop a few seconds later.

  Sarrah, panting for breath, complains insincerely, “It’s no fair that you’re not ticklish too. Now everyone is looking at us. You’re so mean.”

  Allia smiles. “Yeah, but it stopped you worrying; didn’t it?”

  Her friend smiles weakly and nudges her with a shoulder. “Yeah, I guess… But Greg, eh? He seems nice.”

  “Oh, don’t be silly. The teams were decided randomly.”

  “Yeah, but, weren’t you just talking about all your newly found synergy?”

  This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

  “Our powers, not our personality. Although I think his power is his personality… I suppose he did ask me to team with him in the end of semester competition.”

  “Oh? Why not then? Seems fated.”

  “Eh. I mean, we are pretty good together, but synergy or not, I think I might need someone who can do more damage against the bigger threats. Maybe Alex.”

  Sarrah’s face twists in distaste a second before smoothing. “You sure? I mean, could he even do anything against a dragon?”

  “I doubt they’ll put a dragon into the competition. Besides, you know all the restrictions they placed on his manifestation. The teachers didn’t release his stats, but if he’s really emulating white phosphorus, then maybe he can even get it hot enough to hurt a dragon, and he’d burn anything else to a cinder.”

  “Eh,” her friend intones, unimpressed, “that’s a big assumption. The white light could just be from an abstract aspecting. It could even make it less effective than other fire mages. Really, all we have is his word for it that his flames are anything special.”

  Allia suddenly stops, causing her friend to do likewise after a couple of steps. “You… really don’t like him, do you?”

  Sarrah stands still, not looking back,“…No, I don’t. But that’s fine – I know you do, and I can at least tolerate him.”

  “Sarrah, come on. You shouldn’t have to tolerate anyone on my account. You’re my best friend; I’m not going to subject you to him if you don’t want me to, just because I think he’s nice. At the very least, I can limit my time with him to when you can’t be around.”

  “No!” Sarrah says sharply, then winces at her intensity. “No… I mean. What sort of best friend would I be if I chased away your other friends just because we don’t get along? Besides, you misunderstand; I don’t find him unpleasant, I just don’t like him. If you’re going to be around him, it’s better for me to be there too. Someone needs to watch out for you.”

  “I don’t get from what, but thanks for the sentiment.”

  “Oh, you know, from whatever.”

  “Well, I guess I’ll be looking out for you too. You know, from whatever.”

  “Heh, yeah, I’ll be counting on it.”

  The two make it to their lockers and quickly put their books away before heading the short distance to Professor J’s office hand in hand.

  “Hey, Professor J??k?skürden!” Allia says to the willowy middle aged woman with an eye-patch, white lab coat and neon-orange bob haircut as they walk through the door.

  The woman sighs as she extinguishes her cigarette and sets down the papers she was working on, speaking in a clipping ascent with a default harshness that no one ever seems to take seriously. “You’re not in my class anymore, Allia. I can’t give you extra point for being the only one who pronounces my name correctly.”

  Allia laughs. “You never gave me extra credit for that… did you?” She looks genuinely worried at the possibility.

  “No, of course not. Wouldn’t be fair. Now, I see you brought Sarrah for her examination. So good of you to support your friend.”

  “Oh yeah! But I also thought I’d report a new insight into my manifesting.”

  “An insight? Good. We might finally figure it out. Go on.”

  “Right, so you know how we were treating my power as a directed energy attack, like fire or lightning magic? Well, we were in a tree, and Alex fell, so I instinctively caught him!”

  “Would that be Alex DuFont? The Marquis’ son?”

  “Oh, yeah. Does that matter?”

  “…No, just an… interesting coincidence. But you caught him? That was very dangerous. If your power didn’t work that way, it could have injured or even killed him.”

  Allia looks sheepishly. “Yeah, I know. I just reacted with the assumption that I could do it and didn’t think about it until after.”

  “Hmm, not entirely uncommon, I suppose. Any other insights besides the physicality of your light constructs?”

  “Oh yeah, loads. So naturally, I used this in monster defence and came to all sorts of conclusions. First, you know how we thought it was weird that I couldn’t increase the speed or force of an attack by limiting the number of constructs? Well, I think I’m not generating the force each time I move them. I think the force is self-contained in the construct and I’m just directing it. Still haven’t figured out why the constructs are slower coming back to me though, or why I can move them perpendicularly to me without problem.

  “Oh, also, super important. I’m still limited by the number of constructs I make at once, and maintaining them is a strain, but it turns out the longer I keep them around the more… established, I guess? Yeah, the more established they get and the easier it is to make more. By the end of the gauntlet, I had over a hundred, though I cheated a bit by breaking some up into smaller ones. I could have had more if they hadn’t thrown a dragon at us. Nearly had it, too.”

  “Very intriguing. Is there a limit to this, or if you maintain it long enough, will they be completely self-sustaining?” J asks.

  “That’s definitely the first thing I’m going to test when I have time!”

  “Very good,” J says, putting down her pen from taking notes. “If you like, I can schedule an hour for testing. Though since it’s not a new manifestation and just an insight, the earliest I can make it is next week.”

  “Sounds great!” Allia smiles excitedly.

  “Yes, no doubt. Now, forgive me for neglecting you, Sarrah, but if you wish, we can go to the testing chamber now for your scheduled appointment.”

  Sarrah nods. “Can Allia come watch?”

  J nods. “Just for a while to help you get comfortable. After that, she’ll have to leave so to not distract us and to make sure nothing private gets leaked by accident. Policy.”

  Sarrah nods again and smiles questioningly at her friend, who nods and smiles reassuringly back.

  “Excellent,” Jay says, “let us get started then.”