“And that should be it.” Luis finished. “Any questions?”

 

He looked at my raised hand for a second before he nodded.

 

“That should absolve us for today…”

 

He scooped up his things and started shoving them into his coat pockets. Backpacks and handbags weren’t really a thing here, forcing him to hold the books under his arms. Everyone else began shuffling around as well to do the same, even Breale.

 

“Wait a minute!” I jumped to my feet and grabbed the corner of Luis’s sleeve.  “What the hell was that?”

 

That had been… absolutely horrid. Not only had the review it met my most fervent fears about the teaching by my fellow students, it had actually blown them out of the water entirely. I somehow felt like I knew less than I had when I’d shown up, as if their inane ramblings and minute specificities over the grain of not-wheat their teacher had mentioned had literally snuck into my frontal lobe and robbed me of my lunch-neurons.

 

Not only that, all four of them had the astounding capability to be horrible at teaching for completely different reasons.

 

Luis had begun the public torture by struggling to remember even basic facts of what he’d gone through. He’d apparently written down everything in such chicken-scratch that even he couldn’t read it, let alone convey the information held within. He wasn’t even bad at the teaching itself either, as whenever he actually could parse out what he’d written it was perfectly understandable, it was just that only about ten percent of his notes were like that.

 

Nor had Breale been much better. She also had the strange quirk of being fantastic at the actual material he’d been assigned to attend, which in her case was etiquette and dance. But, as I knew all too well from the earlier lessons at both she’d given me a month ago, she was not particularly gifted at communicating that talent. It became all too apparent how hard Auro had been carrying those lessons during her presentation.

 

Hosi and Roland had the best of it, aside from myself of course. Hosi was actually a pretty nice teacher, with the unfortunate caveat of being surprisingly bad at the subject itself. She couldn’t answer any questions or explore any deeper thoughts than what the professor covered, which gave us the answers if not the why, how, or what that they represented. It was obvious she functioned on some impressive rote memorization, but I knew how that kind of learning could only hurt us in the long run.

 

Roland was by far the most knowledgeable of all of us with an exceptional grasp on chemistry and physics. His flaw instead lay in the incredibly monotone voice he slipped into whenever he started to lecture, a tone that seemed almost genetically engineered to function as a lullaby.

 

The functional conclusion of all of this being that we learned very little at all, and that what we did learn was awkward, confusing, or shallow. All of the worst aspects of student presentation.

 

Besides my own, of course. Decades of public school presentations had instilled at least the basic sense of good public speaking.

 

Everyone froze, and Luis expelled a deep sigh as he stepped back into the classroom. The door shuttered itself behind him, sending up the film of dust that had carefully been gripping the doorframe.

 

“We know, of course.” He said as he locked eyes with me. “There’s a reason we’re failing the tests every week.”

 

“Every week?” I asked in horror. “[Christ], why are you still doing the same thing then? How haven’t you failed out yet?”

 

“I actually do fine on half the tests.” Roland pointed out.

 

“We all do.” Luis scoffed. “Just, only in the subjects we attend ourselves.”

 

“Then shouldn’t we stay here a bit longer?” I asked, dreading the idea myself. “Work out the kinks a little?”

 

“I’d love to, of course.” Hosi said, only to glance suspiciously coincidentally out the window. “Ah, but, I have prior obligations to attend to in the form of archery and duelling.”

 

“I do as well.” Breale spoke up.

 

“Drat, me too!” Luis cried. “Magic doesn’t wait, you know.”

 

I looked about at them, finding that they were all avoiding my gaze as they began picking up their stuff again.

 

“You’re just going to leave? After that? We’re all going to fail if you do that!”

 

A wave of resignation accompanied them as they filed out the door. Roland was the last, stopping to give me a pained shrug.

 

“It is of no help.” He said. “Our class was not born with the talent of teaching.”

 

“That’s entirely learned. You’re not going to leave too, right?”

 

“I, too, have responsibilities that I cannot neglect.” He stepped halfway out the door. “I suggest the library if you want to pass the test. Self study might be the only way if you have the time.”

 

And then I was left with only Gideon in the empty broom closet.

 

“Well, this might be hell.” I muttered.

 

Might be? Gideon snorted. We’re already burning.

…

After a few minutes of debate, Gideon and I decided that Roland’s suggestions wasn’t really that bad.

 

Not for any hopes of scholastic achievement, of course. That was a thoroughly worthless thing to be spending our time on here. Saphry wouldn’t be able to keep it up after I left for Earth, and it was just the kind of thing that sucked up dozens of man-hours each week for very little benefit. Due to the school’s primary goal as a hostage farm, it was already very hard to be kicked out of the place, nor would it be all too horrible if we did. 

 

No, the primary reason we went to the library was to chase another goal we’d been neglecting for some weeks already.

 

It all comes back to the Lmenlis. Somehow, they generate the gold we need. If we find one of them it’s over.

 

“The only problem being that they don’t exist.” I finished, idly watching the staircase leading down to the basement floors as we talked.

 

The two of us sat around the table with a stack of books around us, each one at least tangentially related the mythical crystals we needed. It was a short pile, admittedly, and two of the ten had turned out to be semi-fictional tales from explorers who had hunted for them.

 

The librarians had been quite amused as they’d helped us pick them out, chuckling with phrases like ‘little miss scholar’ or ‘fool’s stone’. Despite their premier place in the holy stories, it seems that not even the people who worshipped the Star fully believed in their existence. They were mythical in their eyes, the thought of different strands of magic as foreign to them as it had been to be just a few months ago. Not that I could blame them either, for the only actual accounts of having seen them were second or dwarven, the latter of which vehemently hated speaking about the matter while also simultaneously claiming to hold onto the Lmenli of Fire.

 

They exist. Gideon said firmly. Or one of them do, at least. I’ve- Silst’s seen it with his own two eyes in the halls of the Great King Morn. The Font of Fire burned intensely within it, of that I have no doubt.

 

“An enchanted gem is one-” I began.

 

It was no trifling ‘gem’, Ryder. That was a Lmenli. 

 

“...right.” I rolled my eyes. “But did you see any [gold] around it? While interesting- and it really is so interesting- I don’t have so much faith in our skills to proclaim we just up and steal the thing.”

 

I was a good cat burglar but that seemed a little high for my pay grade. A literally mythical gem of the Star crafted in the elder days of the world? If I even truly believed that it was what Gideon said it was, I was under no delusions it would be an easy grab. The magical defences alone would be unsurmountable for Saphry.

 

It’s pretty far anyway. Gideon admitted. The Blue Mountains are months away from here, on the complete other side of the kingdom. Even if we had the full support of the Markee we’d have trouble making the journey. Nor are the dwarves very hospitable in Morvechi over the Mountain.

 

“Morvechi?”

 

The Noble Mountain, where the Great King Morn has reigned ever since the beginnings of the Age of Mountains. It is said to be filled with the great works of a thousand generations, of the warriors of a hundred clans, and with enough silver to flood the world over.

 

“Is said? Haven’t you seen it?”

 

Silst only visited the throne room of the paranoid race, and I doubt the main one. Though even that was magnificent enough.

 

I leaned back in thought.

 

The dwarf lead was a far-shot. They were reclusive and strange by Gideon’s account, though Fredrick and Breale claimed they had found the one they’d met nice enough. They probably wouldn’t just let us go on in without a serious diplomatic mission on our tails, and I had even less hopes of being able to purchase some [gold] from them. Even the mention of the substance was hard to find in the books, such that most of the scholar’s opinions I’d read didn’t even believe this ‘skysteel’ even existed. And that was on top of the doubt around the Lmenli’s existence.

 

“Do you think we could leverage Andril to get us some?” I sighed. “Or perhaps if he wasn’t wanted by his own country.”

 

That does put a damper on that. Gideon agreed. We have two loyalist duchies between us and the Blue Mountains anyway, and as I already said: it’s too far.

 

“It just makes everything so much more difficult.” I muttered. “Maybe we could just send a letter? We might be able to purchase some through the mail if we leverage Father’s name.”

 

Gideon raised an eyebrow.

 

Father?

 

I scowled as I shook my head. Across the room, a student peeked at me from over their book.

 

“You know what I mean.” I whispered. “The [gold] itself isn’t holy, right?”

 

That’s an awful lot of trust you have in the postal system. Gideon said. The messengers would just as likely be robbed as they would be to just steal it themselves. Or eaten by monsters. You’d have to send a whole regiment to protect it.

 

“It’s worth a shot. The Markee can be convinced to send one if you press the issue. Dragons have clout, remember?”

 

I idly watched another person descend into a lower level of the library as I talked. A gem around their neck glowed as they crossed the threshold. Jackpot.

 

It’s something, I guess. It’s either that, find another Lmenli, or transmute gold itself.

 

“The second option uncertain and likely to take forever and the third being just plain impossible.” I stood up suddenly. “Why don’t I pen a few letters then? You keep looking into alternate ways to transmute without it, and I’ll send them off tomorrow. Sound good?”

 

Gideon arched his brow as I began gathering up the books to take back.

 

What’s with the sudden hurry? Dinner’s not for another few hours.

 

“What’s the point of waiting? Procrastinating never got me anywhere!”

 

I picked him off the table and pat his back. 

 

“Now hurry along. I don’t work well under watch.”

 

Wait, what are you-

 

“I’m sick of researching, Gid.” I pushed him a little further towards the door. “And today’s been tiring. I can at least get a few hours alone, right?”

 

He stared at me in an effort to puzzle out what I was planning, but just smiled back. After a few seconds of staring at the very picture of innocence, he bowed his head towards the door and shook his bandaged wing. 

 

I suppose it has been. Hopefully my wing will be healed soon so I don’t have to follow you around all the time. Watching you preen in the lectures got old really quickly.

 

“I’ll see you later!” 

 

I waved him off as he plodded towards and out the door. As he disappeared around the bend, I fixed my gaze once again on the staircase down and at a small group of students standing beside it.

 

Right next to the magical archives.