By now, the market was getting busier – more and more students filling up the place, most in their fest-day finest. And people from out of town as well, not just other wizards but travellers and adventurers, marked out by their strange clothing, a mixture of the showy and the pragmatic, brightly coloured clothing mingling with battered armour, although without weapons, those not allowed in the town. There was probably a very securely locked chest somewhere, stacked high with magical weapons! The merchants and townsfolk stood out in their comparatively plain clothing, without random magical effects bursting with flame or colour.

Hakara was quite happy to let Sharlan lead, sticking close to her. The place was too crowded, far too many people bustling around! It was nice to be somewhere a bit bigger than home, where there were only a few hundred people and the occasional travelling merchant, but this seemed a bit too far the other way. She shifted her robes, feeling the weight of her coin purse beneath, checking that it hadn’t been stolen.

‘What about this? There’s a play on later.’ She pointed at a poster, enchanted so that the figures were moving slightly, parts of their outfits glowing. ‘It’s about Carissia Iristari. Even you must have heard of her, right? All the stuff she’s done. I’ve not heard of this one – “The Thorn of Ashrest”. Wonder what she did this time?’

Hakara looked at the poster – a dramatically statuesque blonde woman was depicted with a glowing mace in one hand, the other raised in a gesture that was probably meant to be spellcasting, although the fingers were entirely wrong. She was stood in a stone passageway, back-to-back with a dashingly handsome swordsman, his shirt cut and sliced to reveal a well-muscled chest. Emerging from the darkness was another man, this one entirely shirtless and wearing tight leather trousers, arms and chest bulging with muscles, fangs visible in his mouth. On the fingers of one hand were gleaming rings of power, the rune-marks entirely inaccurate (mixing classical elven with other languages was possible, but something that no spellwright of even mediocre talent would do), the gold bright and shining. In his other hand was an oversized sword, or at least the shadow of one, all spiked and vicious, darkness made into the shape of a blade.

Sharlan made a disappointed sound. ‘Oh, it’s a made-up one. Well, entirely fictitious, you know what I mean, not based on something that actually happened. Carissia fights Kinnevar Ultremar. But the effects and fights will probably be good. As long as you don’t start tutting every time they get something about the magic wrong!’

‘They had her casting arcane spells! It’s just silly, and inaccurate.’

‘You really need to chill, Hakara. They’re for fun, not to teach people about magic. But that bit where she blasted the pirates with a fireball was cool.’

‘But she’s a priestess! She can’t do that!’

‘Eh, she’s probably worshipped a god that can grant that at some point. She seems to be working through them all. Must make for some weird prayers, I guess.’

‘It’s not that impressive, it’s just power granted from somewhere else. She doesn’t have to learn it! It’s not hard or complicated, like proper magic is.’

‘Yeah, but she can also fight. And negotiating with a god must be pretty scary. Even scarier than getting hauled in front of the Dean! Anyway, I heard that she managed to defeat Kraganth of the Scarlet Flame a while back. That’s pretty impressive, he’d been around for centuries, I think. Must have had a pretty decent hoard as well. Not that she’s got a student loan, but if she did, bet that would pay it off nicely.’

Hakara grumbled some more, as Sharlan led her away from the theatre-tent. Priestly magic might be able to heal a lot better than wizardly magic, but it wasn’t proper magic, it was all about asking other people, or gods at least, to do the work. It was only because it was easier that they had time to learn how to fight and wear armour and all that kind of thing, while she had to spend all her time mastering the intricacies of real magic.

They wandered past a stall of magical devices, the goods on offer hovering in the air, surrounded by flickering spheres of protection. The largest sphere was almost two feet across, a gleaming aura around what looked like a shard of glass. A small plaque hovered in front of it – Created by Asharhani True-Eyed. An attempt to replicate themagics of the Black Triad, this unique… She skipped to the price, a ridiculous number of zeroes on the end, then looked at the spheres, the protection spells more interesting to her.

Hakara squinted at them – there was a barely-visible thread of light linking from each of them to ingots of bright brass on the floor, each engraved with a blurry miasma of runes. She bent over, peering at the patterns – yes, that was a Pahen, which then curved into a Uphir, so that would channel the energy… She tilted her head to look at the side of the ingot, where more of the curving glyphs flowed into each other, binding and shaping the forces into the protective spheres. It was neatly done, providing a self-referencing protective barrier, although didn’t the combination of Yulen and Daen mean…

She picked up a pebble and experimentally tossed it forward – it passed through the edge of the sphere without interruption, as she mumbled an explanation to herself. ‘As expected, it wards against flesh, wood and metal, but draws power from the stone and earth.’ She suddenly realised that she wasn’t talking to Sharlan, but instead a fighter or mercenary, a slender young man wearing tightly fitted leather armour, his well-muscled arms bare. ‘I’m sorry!’ She shuffled her feet awkwardly as he looked at her, then smiled, flicking his head to shift thin braids out of the way, metal decorations clicking and clacking.

‘Oh, don’t worry. It’s always interesting to learn magical theory.’ He smiled, startingly white teeth flashing for a moment – had that been a flash of gold inside his mouth? ‘So, stone can get through?’

‘Oh yes – because of the way the power is channelled through an interwoven helix of Gauf and Shenlu glyphs, then the central focus will bind itself to the ground, so it can’t be moved without deactivating the spell, and that would require the focus item. But it cannot be made to repel everything, otherwise it would shift itself into the border ethereal or further as it implodes and collapses into an inverted singularity. So the binding also acts as the axial link, in accordance with Hograth’s axiom. It’s quite cleverly done though, and neatly cut - the craftsmanship is impressive.’

He was looking slightly dazed but smiled at her again. Yes, that was definitely gold in his mouth – one of his teeth had been replaced with a piece of shining metal, catching the sun. A large tattoo covered his arm, swirling coils and scales of several snakes, blurry black lines and bright green scales, a vividly red tongue flickering onto his bicep. ‘My thanks for the lesson.’

She blushed and shuffled her feet, before a hand touched her shoulder, and she squeaked nervously before turning to see Sharlan. ‘If you’re going to stop, let me know! I got all the way to the fountain before noticing you weren’t there. Oh, and who’s your friend?’

‘Opet Adj Sekh.’ He rested a hand on the hilt of his dagger, red pommel-gem gleaming, making some form of semi-formal bow.

Sharlan’s eyes flicked to the tattoo. ‘Hey, with that mark, you must have been with the Black Serpents, right? Heard you managed to get some work done in the Bonepit, anything good?’

‘Not the most interesting job to be honest – too many undead, not enough gold! But I’m currently working on what I hope will be a lucrative opportunity with another group.’

He and Sharlan started to share adventurer gossip, of what groups were where and who was recruiting, what groups had been defeated or were lost, who was successful and who was failing. Hakara returned to her analysis of the ingots – the work was neatly and precisely done, with a minimum of power being lost to overly-showy glowing effects, high-quality material used to help ensure the spell’s power. She carefully reached out to touch one, feeling an increasing resistance in their air, a clinging thickness in the air repelling her fingers, and nodded in approval. Yes, that should deter a direct approach – someone trying to simply assault the ingots themselves would find themselves countered, at least unless they used a wholly unreasonable, and quite obvious, level of force for a market stall.

‘Hey, get away from there!’

She looked up from her probing to see an elderly woman emerge from the tent, gesticulating with a magical staff. From the amount of runes and gemstones along the shaft, it was powerful, an aura of energy already forming around the purple orb that topped it.

Hakara stood up as quickly as she could, brushing dust off her knees. ‘I was just admiring…’ Hands grabbed her from behind and dragged her away as lightning sparked from the orb, scorching the ground where Hakara had been stood. She let Sharlan drag her into the crowd, out of range of further retaliation. They came to a stop by a drinks stall, magical servants serving tankards of beer.

‘Maybe don’t show quite so obvious an interest in people’s security? They don’t like it when you do that!’

‘I was only admiring the handicraft. Whoever did them was very talented.’

‘Yeah, but did you see the costs? It was all unique and special, or weird artefacts and stuff. Nothing standard or made any time in the last few centuries. I’ll doubt we’d ever be able to afford them. And you should watch out who you talk to – the Black Serpents have a very mixed reputation, even if he’s not with them right now. Working with some Sethan crime-bosses, something like that. Although Opet did seem pretty cool. He said he was working down in the Bonepits, over Belazaan way. A never-ending amount of demons and undead, so there’s always work going down there. Not the most exciting, but can be OK money. The loot is pretty bad, unless you want demon bits, or at least that’s what my mum says.’

‘Sorry, Sharlan.’

‘Hey, he was kinda hot. Bit buff for my tastes, but not bad looking, and without too many scars. Most adventurers get a bit beaten up, and aren’t so pretty afterwards. Anyway, you want to go check out the things we can actually afford?’

‘I would like to get a few scrolls. There’s some spells that I can’t get from the library. Oh, and maybe some reagents. And some sulphur. Maybe a small lens if they have one as well? And some parchment, gum-ink, pumice. Serpent acid, if they have some.’ She started listing all the components she needed that required permission to get from the University, or had prices set out of her range.

‘Wow, that’s a lot. Please, just no more experiments in the room though? At least not first thing in the morning? Seriously, with your grades just get a lab. And then I don’t have to worry about getting blown up in the mornings. I know that Hargreen is a bit scary, but he likes you. Well, about as much as he likes anyone.’

‘Professor Hargreen’s always so busy though! And I wouldn’t want to interrupt his work, it’s far more important than mine.’

‘It’s his job to organise that stuff. You can’t just let the older students have the labs all the time. Most of what they’re doing is boring stuff, not like all that crazy dimensional stuff you do! Or at least it looks normal to me, just explosions and stuff, nothing that fancy. Or they want somewhere to sleep off a hangover in peace.’

The tents already them were notably shabbier now – still bearing obvious enchantments but needing more overt physical infrastructure to hold them up, or with patches of differently-coloured cloth sewn over damaged parts. But the prices were far more affordable! Hakara poked at a tub full of crystals, a medley of colours, all too cracked and damaged to be useful for any major magic. Maybe she could grind some of them down and use them for prismatic spells? She needed some refined sapphire dust as well.

Hakara hovered her hand above a tub of glittering shards of metal and cast a spell. Immediately, all of them started to shine in a glittering prism of colours, as the stall-keeper stepped away from haggling with another student.

‘That stuff’s all broken – watch out, sometimes it…’ The colours flickered, before spewing forth a dart of fire, catching Hakara’s finger before she could withdraw it. She snatched her hand back and blew on her fingers, trying to cool them down. ‘…reacts strangely.’

‘Ouch! Sorry. I should have been more careful, it was my fault. Do you have any bezoars? And some sulphur please.’

Sharlan rolled her eyes, then leaned in to help with the haggling, driving the price down, waving Hakara aside despite her protests. The prices weren’t unreasonable to start with! But Sharlan managed to push it further down, before finally settling on an amount, the merchant starting to bag up her purchases, carefully decanting bright yellow powder into a leather pouch, filling up small glass tubes with viscous liquids, assembling a package of goods, carefully putting them into a padded satchel. As this was done, Hakara counted out her coins, waiting until everything was together before handing the money over. The bundle was satisfyingly heavy, although it probably wouldn’t take her long to get through them.

She kept the satchel close, making sure to keep a hand wrapped tightly about it in case someone tried to snatch it from her. ‘Is there anywhere you want to go? That play doesn’t start for a few hours.’

‘I think I saw some interesting stuff over by the Tomb. Sure you’re OK carrying that stuff?’

Hakara hugged it close, not wanting to entrust it to anyone else. ‘It’s fine.’

As they moved around into the shadow of the Serpent’s Tomb, the temperature dropped. She scrutinised the dark black stone – strangely, it wasn’t mentioned in any of their lessons, or in any of the histories they had to study. The inscriptions were still crisp, although some were hard to see beneath the graffiti that had been splashed and daubed over the stone by generations of students, with special care taken by them to ensure it couldn’t be removed by simple cleaning spells or lots of soap and water. Trying to pick out the symbols made her eyes water, the shapes warping under her gaze. She touched a hand against the stone – it was firm and solid and cold, the effect purely illusionary. Was it the Unreadable Tongue? It was an interesting subject – a concept-space seemingly broken from the normal world, yet still materially existing, even as the world tried to reject it. But there were so many other subjects she wanted to study first!

‘Ah, there you are, I was hoping to see you again.’ Opet stepped around the corner, a wide smile on his face, the glint of his teeth blinking out as he stepped into the shade. A commotion could be heard somewhere close by, muffled by the tents and the cries of the merchants and traders. It sounded like someone was yelling that there had been a thief. Hakara clutched her bag a little tighter and looked about suspiciously, glaring at people, in case any of them were pickpockets.

He stepped close in to Hakara, far too close, making her squeak nervously. He was short for a man, only a little taller than she was, braided and decorated hair falling across his face. ‘Thank you for your lecture early, it was very informative. And profitable.’ His strong arms were suddenly around her waist, her bag shifted out of the way as he drew her closer in, as guards ran past, spell-light heavy about them as they searched for the thief.

‘Would you like to watch the play with me later tonight? I’d love to hear your thoughts on it.’

‘Mmmmpph?’ This close, she could see that his eyes were a vivid brown, seeming to fill her senses, his hands lightly brushing against her bottom.

‘She means “yes”.’ Sharlan was stood close by, a wide grin on her face, clearly enjoying Hakara’s discomfort.

She wriggled around, feeling her cheeks burning up, trying to compose herself and show something approaching the dignity a wizard should possess. ‘Um, yes. Thank you. That sounds fun.’

‘I’ll see you later then!’ He let her go, her back suddenly feeling cold without his arms around her, stepping back with an overly-formal bow, before fading back into the crowd.

‘Well, that was unexpected. Guess you’ve got a date! That your type then – bit rough around the edges, the bad-boy thing? He’s definitely got that.’

‘I, um…’ Hakara trailed off, trying to fumble for words through the fuzz of heat that seemed to have blossomed in her skull and backside. ‘I hope the play is good.’

‘Heh, like you’re going to notice! Well, I guess I can hang out with you until then. Hey, they’ve opened up the Tomb, it looks like. Didn’t realise it even could open! Want to have a look around? Cool your head down with some ancient architecture?’

She pointed – part of the wall of the Serpent’s Tomb was indeed open, a patch of darker shadow against the dark stone. Hakara trailed along behind her, a sense of interest in the ancient construction conflicting with the hazy fuzz permeating her brain.