A hundred eyes bored into Wulf’s back. In his previous life’s stint at the Academy, it probably would’ve stressed him out enough to make him fail, but right now, he had nothing to prove.

  He’d thought about it a lot over the past hour. What he really wanted. To pilot an Oronith? To make potions? Both?

  Both. But there was a difference between looking like the strongest, and actually being the strongest. This was an opportunity to practice his fighting skills and get used to his new body, not a test that would determine his fate or his ability to pilot an Oronith.

  He’d considered that, too—whether he actually even wanted to be a Pilot. But the answer was resoundingly a yes. The Ranger and Artificer were important roles, but they couldn’t sway a battle as much as a Mage or Pilot could. And the Pilot, the team leader, always garnered the most respect.

  If he was going to convince anyone to listen to him about the end of the world, he’d need to be a Pilot. If he was going to have an adventure, if he was going to live his life properly while he was at it, he’d need the mobility an Oronith afforded its crew.

  DeMark snapped his fingers, signalling Wulf and Kalee to begin. It snapped Wulf out of his trance.

  He always started defensively, but Kalee had the same idea. Both circled each other, light on their feet. Kalee pushed herself up on her clawed toes and leaned forward, giving herself the perfect stance to react to any attack. Defensive.

  Well, someone’s gotta do it, Wulf thought.

  After a feint to the right, he darted to the left. Keeping himself tight and contained, he threw a set of tight punches without overextending himself. She blocked them all with smooth movements, then countered with a high roundhouse kick right at his head.

  Thankfully, she bent her clawed toes down, and instead only contacted him with the patch of scales atop her foot.

  For a second of mild amusement, he considered that pangians were almost like halflings, with their exposed, callused feet, until she kicked at him again. They were much taller and feistier than halflings. He pressed his hand to his head and stuck out his elbow, so that her shin hit the point of his elbow.

  She hissed in mild discomfort, then sprang back.

  Interesting. No enhanced strength. Or, nothing that she’d used right away. Just skill.

  “You’re good,” Wulf said.

  “I aspire to be,” Kalee responded, taking deep breaths. A bead of sweat trickled down her forehead. “I have to be. No one will look after me except me.”

  Wulf was starting to get tired, too, though. He’d spent all afternoon fighting, and though his face wasn’t flushed like the other students, sweat still dripped down his brow, and his muscles were starting to ache.

  He’d have to do something about his endurance. Yet another problem for the list.

  This time, Kalee leapt back into action, unleashing a flurry of spinning kicks. Normally, Wulf would’ve thought it impractical—a martial art that was more art than martial—but with her scaly tail acting as an extra limb and protecting her back, it just let her attack faster.

  Wulf backed to the edge of the mat, blocking each blow, but not finding a chance to counter. If Kalee kept this up, she was going to wear him down.

  He dove to the side, and she chased him with a perfectly placed plunging kick. He caught it just in time, though, and her eyes widened—but only for a second, before springing backward out of his grip and landing in a crouch.

  “How did you catch that?” she panted.

  Wulf shrugged. “I’ve…been in a few fights before.”

  The crowd around them fell silent, all except DeMark, who announced that the fight was halfway over.

  But Wulf wasn’t going to last another two and a half minutes.

  Without letting Kalee catch her breath, he charged forward, tanking a soft punch to the shoulder and blocking a knee before it hit his chin, then tackled her at the waist. She landed hard on her back, and for a half minute, they grappled. Wulf had been fearing how slippery her scales might have been, but they only ran halfway up her forearms and shins, and only covered her tail. The rest was regular human flesh.

  Finally, they both locked each other’s arms and pushed, both applying a light, warning pressure.

  Wulf met her gaze, and she stared back.

  Without a word, they pulled away, and said together, “Yield.”

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  Everyone was silent. Wulf registered Irmond in the crowd, watching with a gaping mouth. A few boys with Fletcher badges sneered, and slowly, whispers built up in the crowd.

  “You didn’t use any strengthening Skills or Marks,” Wulf whispered to Kalee.

  “Neither did you,” she whispered back.

  “Did you have any?” he asked.

  “I’m a Mage.” She shrugged. “So…unlikely. You’re a Pilot?”

  “It is a draw, then,” DeMark snapped, raising a hand to quiet the crowd—and Wulf and Kalee. “An impressive showing, to be sure, but two guildless farm-dwellers won’t stay in the lead for long. You might have experience, but it is nothing in comparison to resources and arcane advancement. You are dismissed.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Wulf tried to catch up to Kalee after the sparring class, but she disappeared into the crowd of students almost immediately.

  What DeMark had said about them both being farm-dwellers intrigued him more, and he wanted to ask about it, but he never got a chance. She was already gone.

  Instead, he returned to the communal bathhouse. He remembered expecting, many years ago, in his first life, the bathhouse to be run-down and dirty, as most communal bathhouses were, but the Academy had to cater to the luxury expectations of the guild kids. It was clean, with warm water and towels, and a washbin to clean dirty uniforms and gym attire while they bathed. Not to mention, they provided perfumed soaps.

  That was probably on behalf of the faculty. No one wanted young students running around, reeking of sweat and the day’s activities, if it could be helped.

  Afterward, Wulf gathered his uniform and headed to the mess hall, where he gathered dinner—a flatbread of some sort, with sausage, tomato sauce, and cheese melted on top. Much more flavourful than their lunches.

  But before he walked back to the dorms, he had one more problem to attend to.

  Eventually, as he expanded his potion-making setup, it would catch people’s attention. He couldn’t just leave it in his room. Hells, Ján might just run his mouth and say something, even if Wulf asked him to stay quiet.

  He headed back to the Artificers' labs, where the evening experiments were taking place. He climbed up the stairs, staring into each room, until he reached the top floor. On the far side of the building, tucked into a dark corner, where the spatial experiments took place. Artificers could create certain equipment that made spatial anomalies. With the right rune formations to influence the Field, they could cause it to warp the fabric world and create tiny pocket realms.

  In an unlit lab, Wulf spotted the remains of what looked to be storage pendants (a magical device whose sole purpose was to create pocket realms) cast aside and left in the arcane waste bin.

  He quickly unclipped his pin when a non-Ascendant janitor walked past, sweeping the floor with a broom, then walked past with utter confidence, once again pretending that he was a teaching assistant. He could just claim that he’d forgotten his badge.

  When the janitor passed, Wulf turned and pushed open the lab’s door. He hoisted the waste bin and dumped it out onto the table. A bunch of brass and iron pendants rattled out. Most were a simple ring on a chain, but some were disks, and some had more complex shapes. A few let off blue sparks as they clattered along the table, and Wulf pushed those into a pile at the end of the table.

  He normally wouldn’t have expected to find anything good in the wastebins of a lab. If an aspiring Artificer made a fully-functional storage pendant, the faculty would keep it. Spatial manipulation was a third-year course, and they like to display and brag about the results of their best students.

  But Wulf knew institutions like the Academy. Their problem was that they were rigid in their rules, and so firm that it was to their own detriment. And the teaching assistants, who would be monitoring the labs, were no better. They wouldn’t recognize something that was almost there, if it was too far off their known standards.

  Wulf sifted through his pile of potential storage ring candidates, all while glancing over his shoulder for anyone who might come and interrupt him. All the candidates were decent, but some of the runes were too messy, or they’d messed up the rune-lines altogether.

  While he wasn’t an Artificer himself, he’d worked with one in his crew. Lisa, who he’d met later in life, had shown him a couple tricks, and had made him a storage pendant of his own.

  Now, to put that knowledge to use. When he found a pendant—a copper tube that had been wrapped around into the shape of a bow, allowing it to better conduct mana and fold the Field, he found his candidate.

  It was unorthodox, and the Academy would’ve discarded it almost immediately, but they wouldn’t have seen that it just needed a little tweaking to function. Wulf downed the rest of his strength potion, then set to work.

  The copper was still slightly malleable from the solvent they’d doused it in (Artificers weren’t blacksmiths, and rarely forged metal themselves) and with the help of the strength potion, Wulf manipulated it with his bare hands. He undid the bow shape, careful not to stress the metal too much and snap it.

  The bow shape bent the runes over, which was a first good step in confusing the Field, in making it stumble over itself and create an anomaly, but if you bent them too much, the Field would notice and ignore the object altogether.

  Wulf instead folded the runes into a simple loop, with its ends crossing over, then pressed the junction together so it’d stay. After a few seconds, the aura he’d created with the strength potion took effect, and the etched runes of the pendant lit up with blue light.

  Wulf grinned, then held the pendant up. Through its loop was a rift in space, and beyond, a tiny pocket world barely large enough to fit a bed. It had blank walls that looked exactly like the night sky—a starry void—and a floor of white mist.

  He raised the pendant and drew a circle in the air with it, creating a larger opening. The rift expanded, filling the space he’d drawn. It was large enough to reach through.

  He put just his hand through the opening and tapped the misty floor. It was slightly spongy, but it held under pressure.

  “And there we go,” he muttered. “The start of a portable alchemy lab.”

  Silently, he thanked the student who was almost there, but fell victim to the rigidness of the academy. After a few seconds, his aura sputtered out, and the runes on the pendant darkened. The rift sealed.

  He attached the pendant to a brass chain and hung it around his neck, then swept the rest of the discarded pendants back into the wastebin and returned it to the corner of the room.

  He turned around, about to leave the Artificers’ lab, when the door creaked open. A silhouette stood behind it.

  His stomach dropped. He’d need an excuse, and fast.

  “What are you doing here?”