Anu was a determined child.

At 12, without telling her parents, she had marched into the local forge and demanded to be made an apprentice. Duncan, the smith, had said yes out of pity, not expecting this tiny but loud mess of red hair to turn up the next day.

She did. Six days a week she’d turn up, and do the most menial of tasks. Chopping firewood. Fetching supplies. Handling customers. After a month, he’d given in, and taught her for real. He’d taught her the basics of forging, and inscribing equipment. After a year of that, she was ready to handle some of the smaller jobs. Another year, and she was handling some of the inscriptions herself.

Anu was a determined child, who hated the isolated mining town she grew up in, and saw forging as her best chance to escape. Stubborn down to her last breath, she’d worked in the forge for almost four years, saving up for her chance to move on.

“Duncan, here’s the ward. I may have tweaked the inscription a little”

Three months before her sixteenth, Anu looked much the same, albeit a little taller. Brown eyes, fiery red hair, same olive skin.

She’d found Duncan, sitting at a workbench in the back of the forge.

“Thank you Anu. I’ll put the money aside as ever”

Duncan examined the orb in his hand, a barrier ward. Anu had cut a few extra lines into the magic circuit. He was a little too curious about the changes, and completely ignored Anu talking.

“Three more contracts and I’ll finally be taking my savings, I have enough! I’m finally going to the academy. The entrance examination is in a few months, too”

“Huh, what”

“The Academy? Verse City? Don’t you remember, Duncan?”

“Of course I remember! I just didn’t think you were that serious. I thought you’d wait a little longer”

Anu frowned.

“Fine Anu. Serious. So, I assume magic circuits are your first, but what’s your second discipline? That’s why I couldn’t get in, only good at equipment”

Anu replied with a confused look.

“Oh, Anu.”

The academy was divided into four schools: Artists, Scholars, Soldiers, Smiths. The entrance exams were technically open to all, but, he explained, she’d need two schools to accept her.

The soldier, school taught weapons, swords, offensive and defensive magic.

The scholars, taught accounting, languages, history, and the study of nature.

The artists, taught music, painting, sculpture

The smiths, taught forging, but only of magic equipment.

“... Anu?”

Duncan looked at the now petrified Anu. Staring, eyes wide open in shock. Anu had assumed she could get into the academy on her magic circuits alone.

She had no talent for the sword, and almost no magic ability. The small mining town she called home offered no real opportunity to grow, or to escape. The forge was the exception, a specialist brought in to maintain the mining equipment.

Anu was watching her best chance to leave crumble in front of her.

“What do I do?”, Anu looked up at Duncan, she was the most hopeless he’d ever seen her.

“Right now? Nothing. You’re done for the day. Actually, Anu”

Duncan leaned over in his chair, and pulled out a lump, wrapped in a leather cloth.

“This was meant to be your 16th birthday present, but, maybe this might help”

Anu snapped out of her mild panic to examine the gift. A large, leather bound book, worn around the edges, with a handful of extra notes stuffed in the back.

“I thought you could do with a third book”, Duncan smiled.

Anu had two prized possessions. Books on magic circuits.

The first was an introductory volume, explaining the mechanics of mana, how circuits collected, aligned, and emitted mana. It was technically Duncan’s book but he’d never found the courage to ask for it back. The second was “A treatise on folding mechanics, part II”.

Anu hadn’t ever seen part I, or part III. The book, missing a few pages, and without its siblings, had become affordable. Anu had bought it immediately. She’d spent many nights pouring over the intractable dry prose, trying to make sense of it.

The book in front of her, would make three: A history of Verse City.

“Anu, I may not have able to get into the academy, but I did work in Verse for a little while, before getting posted out here. Verse, and by extension, the Academy, is not a place governed by rules. It’s governed by exceptions.”

Anu wasn’t entirely following Duncan’s logic.

“The Academy was set up by the first emperor, open to all, and well, today ...”

Today, The Academy was notoriously exclusive, as well as expensive. Where royals, nobles, and the wealthy, sent their spoilt offspring to be transformed into useful people: not just to get stronger, but to be well connected in the next generation.

“.. and the extra fees? That’s for mandatory accommodation, not the teaching. Anyway, that’s why they still have entrance exams: yes, they’ve priced people out, outsiders have to join two schools instead of one, but, technically, they still have to give everyone a chance”

Duncan pointed to the gift.

“I’m not saying the answers are in *this* book Anu, but, knowing Verse, there’s always a loop-hole. Remember your training. Ask the right questions, enumerate the possibilities, double check your answers. Always twice: once to see if you’re wrong, once to see if you’re right”

“Well I guess I’ve done the first bit, I got it wrong”

“and now Anu, now you have to try to get it right.”

After three words, Anu joined in, repeating Duncan’s words exactly. This wasn’t the first failure he’d talked her through. Magic inscription was an time-consuming, frustrating trade. Duncan had drilled into her that it would always take patience to make progress.

Duncan laughed, Anu joined in.

“Look, you’ve got three months left, right?”

Anu nodded

“I’ll be paying you a full wage, not the half you agreed to back then”

Anu made a confused face, although this time, a little happier.

“I’ve been putting the entirety aside. You’ve been a diligent apprentice, and I’ve never needed to fix your work either! Take these next three months to see if you can’t come up with a plan, given you’ve already saved enough for the academy.”

Duncan could see that Anu was beginning to be lost in her own thoughts

“And Anu?”

“huh”

“Anu, if you don’t come up with a plan, you’re always welcome here. I can always put in a note to my boss, i’m sure I could find you a job. It might not be in Verse, but”

“Thank you Duncan, and for the book too”

Anu mulled over Duncan’s advice. For, ‘Asking the right question’, Anu decided to find everything out about the admissions process and examinations.

Anu took her new gift, and went home to scheme.

It wasn’t entirely bad news for Anu. Duncan was right, she needed a second school, but, it might be a little easier than she feared. She needed two recommendations, a major, and a minor, to enter into the Academy. The examinations and requirements for the minor were much simpler.

In her search, she had outright rejected the Soldiers, and focused on the Scholars and Artists. She’d found loop-holes, but she wasn’t going to pick up a musical instrument quickly, nor learn a new language to speak.

She put it to one side, and went back to the Soldiers exams, to discover her loop-hole: The exam for Magical Beasts (Summoned or Contracted Familiars).

Using animals to fight was older than the human use of magic, and even the the earliest magic spells were to complete a contract. Humans would offer some of their mana, giving the beast the opportunity to grow, and in exchange the beast would follow and defend the human. Summoning was different: Using untold amounts of mana, a magician could bring over incredibly powerful beasts.

Anu wouldn’t be able to contract anything stronger than her, or offer much mana, but it didn’t matter. The examination was buried in a footnote, and the entry requirements were simply to have a familiar.

There was one creature she might be able to form a contract with: a spider.