Ranvir paused on the way out of the dormitory. The ring road leading into the academy around the Master’s Tower and out again was stuffed with carriages, carts, and wagons. He’d heard the murmur of a crowd through the doors, but it was much more expansive than he’d expected.

Horse whinnies and mule cries saturated the area, interspersed with shrieks from chickens and dogs, and he was sure he heard a cow somewhere. Masters in the elegant uniforms he’d come to recognize filed about the crowd, alongside second, third, fourth, and fifth years, and a few others. Older people walked among them with the same intricate markings as the fifth years, though they were way too old.

It had been a week since he’d talked with Pashar, yesterday Esmund and Grevor had both told him to stop by the administration desk for information of their trimester final. An exam. Apparently, he’d missed the announcement while training, something about him being alone in a field with no teacher to tell him, or something.

Taking in a deep breath, Ranvir steeled himself, settling his anxious emotions under a heavy iron gray blanket. It took some doing, but he managed to get around the crowd and back towards administration. It delayed him an additional ten minutes. Not that he was too worried about it.

Sansir and Grev had gone ahead to the rime oak, while Es had stopped by the library to invite Kirs, even though Ranvir had been going in that direction, anyway. The thought of Esmund’s insistence still caused a little smile to stretch Ranvir’s lips.

Entering the building, Ranvir turned to Himir sitting behind his desk.

“Ranvir! Hey!” The receptionist greeted him.

“Hi. Do you know what all the fuss is about?” Ranvir thumbed back to the busy carriages and stressed teachers just as the door closed.

“Well, it’s the first trimester exam of the year, so they’re going to the front lines. Do a few fake missions to emulate real military. And they get to tour a few of the less important locations, like the camps, some command tents, and maybe a siege station.”

“Siege station?” Ranvir raised his eyebrows.

“Yeah! They’re this new thing develop in Sankur, that allows multiple tethered to work together in a single expression of their power, maximizing the effect. I think there were some limitations, though.” He leaned forward and whispered. “Can’t remember them, though, not much for warfare, myself.”

“Sounds interesting. So they’re going to the front lines, but we aren’t?”

“You’ve had no military training, beyond some tether and physical exercise. You need to learn a *lot* more, before it’s safe to put you anywhere near an active army, especially one with multiple nations working together.”

Ranvir had to accept his words as true. He literally didn’t even know the military structure for a start.

“So what’s our exam about?”

“I can’t tell you the specifics, but essentially, they—meaning tether and physical—will land on the last day of the trimester, after which you will have the two weeks off in celebration. Do note, this is the only time when you can actually fail out of the academy. If you do not succeed in these exams, you will be sent to a boot camp and made into a foot soldier.” His face was grave as he spoke.

Ranvir swallowed, nodding slowly. He did not want to join the army as a footsoldier, not when he remembered his talk with Sansir about regular soldiers being led into certain death by an incompetent but powerful tethered.

“I’m sure you’ll do fine. As motivation, there’s something I’ve got for you…” He trailed off, opening a drawer in his desk and pulled out a letter. Ranvir was a little surprised to feel the quality of the paper, or rather, the lack thereof. It was thin and he could clearly feel the uneven lines and the raised bumps of ink on the paper within it.

Turning it over, he read the sender. Gunnor and Frey. Mom and Dad. He took a deep breath, grabbing for his necklace with his free hand. Footsteps stopped outside the reception.

“Oh, Ranvir, you’re still here?” Kirs’ voice made him look up.

“Yeah, just getting some things done.” He replied absentmindedly.

“Remember to get those things we talked about.” She turned to her partner, that was walking her out. “Let’s go.”

“See ya.” Esmund called.

He smiled and nodded goodbye to them before returning to the letter and opening it up. The first thing he saw was his mother’s careful handwriting, followed by his father’s smears.

Hello my Hearthfire.

It was good to hear from you, at least a few times. I’m sure you’ve been very busy and there’s still a letter, or two, on their way, as we’re writing this. I just wanted to tell you I missed you, and that I love you very much.

-Mom.

Hello Ranvir.

This is Gunnor, your dad, but you already knew that. There’s so much you’ve missed since the city lord arrived and she’s really set fire to the whole village. Not literally, of course. But so many things are happening and it’s all so strange. She made sure to get Alser and Miny married soon as she arrived. Since then, she’s gone around and has had quite a few talks with some of the other young folk. I’m sure if you were there she’d have a stern talking with you, too. I doubt you would’ve shoveled dirt into her house. Now there’s a forged in stone bitch. My Goddess, she could rip the teeth out of me and I wouldn’t dare complain. But she’s done so much good for the community, brought more lumberjacks with her and we’re getting a real mill setup that can run almost constantly, with it’s own maintenance man. Though, she’s a woman. So I guess it would be maintenance woman. Goddess, I miss you son. I hope you’re doing well out there in the big wide world, quite unlike ol’ Cobblehand, the idiot can barely wrap his hand around an axe any longer. Man’o’man, you should’ve seen him trying to fell a tree yesterday, I tell you. As the moron gets less able it seems he starts to think higher of his own ability. He picked one of the darn biggest trees we could find. Idiot worked at it all day, before giving up and going home. You should’ve heard the uproar when we saw how little he’d cut away. That man never was any good at this job and now he’s getting too old for it. Some people just don’t get it. Remember that Ranvir, if you can’t do it, don’t even try.

Love your dad, Gunnor.

P.S. On a read through, that last comment sounded a little weird. Maybe it needs some work, but you know what I mean.

Ranvir squinted at the paper, trying to make out his father’s already near illegible writing. His father often had trouble keeping a straight line while he wrote. That trend only appeared to get worse the more he wrote. It took Ranvir nearly three times as long as it should have to parse through his words.

At least, he seems to be having fun. He thought to himself, turning back to Himir, who was working on something Ranvir couldn’t see over the desk partition. Ranvir stepped over to the desk, causing Himir to look up at him. Ranvir glanced back at the envelope. Other than his parents’ name and it being addressed to him at the Royal War Academy of Elusria, there was a date showing that it had been sent nearly two months ago.

“Do you know when the next letter might arrive?” Ranvir asked, tapping the letter against the wood of the desk. “Or how long it will take if I send another one?”

Himir worried at his lower lip with his index finger. “You live up north, right? How’s the weather get during fall?”

“Weather? It’s normal.”

“A lot of rain?”

Ranvir nodded.

“It could take months, then. If the weather’s terrible, travel back and forth to your village is going to slow down. I’m guessing you don’t get a lot of traffic through winter.”

“None.” Ranvir shook his head.

“If you send a letter now, it might not arrive until spring. If theirs get to a large enough city before the roads get difficult, you might get a letter.”

Ranvir nodded his thanks. “There was something else I was wondering about.” After the incident when they’d been assaulted in the city, more cases of violent protests had cropped up. Luckily, there hadn’t been any deaths, but students were banned from entering the capital during their day-offs. “I was wondering if you could be my middle man for two commissions for me.”

Ranvir took his time walking to the rime oak, enjoying the summer sun on his skin. He’d stopped by the dorm to change his uniform coat for an undershirt, tying the coat around his waist since it would likely get noticeably colder later at the rimeoak. It was a bother always having to lift it to stop it from falling down, but it was better than leaving the rimeoak early because he was getting too cold without it.

Embracing the pressure, Ranvir opened his senses, for the first time that day, to space. Purple filled the immediate space around him. He noticed it barely registered the light moving through it, nor the earth under his feet as he walked. This wasn’t the first time he’d felt it, but he was wondering if the way he was feeling Purple-space differed from when he’d first been trying to feel space. This took very little concentration from him, though it was also a lot less detailed and non-specific.

“Maybe I’m feeling two different kinds of space. Or it’s like seeing a fabric and touching a fabric, two different senses of the same thing.” He thought out loud, a little out of breath from the general upward slope that he’d been going.

Ranvir finally strode past the last turn and saw his friends sitting on two blankets relatively far from the tree. The first two he saw were Kirs and Esmund talking excitedly. She had a hand on his shoulder, the other gesturing freely. Esmund paid her the kind of attention Ranvir had only seen on predators with their eyes on a target, and teenagers in love. It told him that Esmund probably wasn’t processing a lot of what she was saying, while still intently observing her.

Behind them, sitting equally close to each other, were Sansir and Grev trying to stifle their giggles as Grev mimicked Kirs’ flirting with Esmund. They were mostly successful in stifling their giggles as Grev did a particularly flamboyant flick of his wrist and placed it on Sansir’s forearm, though Ranvir thought he noticed the hand lingering for longer than the joke needed.

He rolled his eyes as he walked closer. For a moment panic blanked Grev’s and Sansir’s eyes, and they struggled to disentangle themselves so hard, they nearly knocked over Es and Kirs.

“What are you doing?” Es hissed. “Stop it, both of you!”

Ranvir couldn’t stop his own laughter from ringing out, which caused both Es and Kirs to jerk their heads in his direction. Spots of red blossomed on Es’ cheeks and his ears turned a completely different shade than the rest of his skin.

“How long have you been there?” He asked, sounding almost accusatory.

Ranvir winked at him. “Long enough to know that you’re not that subtle.” He looked at Sansir and Grev as he spoke, then to Kirs. “I assume you finished taking their results?”

She rolled her eyes, but nodded. “Yes.”

“Let’s hear it, then.” Grev popped to his feet, dusting off his shoulder. Sansir only slowly getting to his feet behind him.

Ranvir walked closer to the rime oak, wanting to cool down after his uphill walk. The little patch of the forest with the rime oak wasn’t large. Trees interspersed the area densely enough that laying down two blankets directly next to each other was difficult, so they’d displaced them slightly with one closer to the oak than the other.

Lights and shadow played over the ground and trees, the leaves blocking out most of the sun, but not all of it. It resulted in an almost idyllic feeling, as natural splatters of light to spread throughout the area. There wasn’t a lot of undergrowth except for a few bushes off to the far-side away from the academy.

If there were any critters in the canopies of the nearby trees, they were keeping very still since Ranvir wasn’t seeing them.

The others joined Ranvir where he stood as Kirs lined up in front of them. “The results aren’t far from what we predicted, though. One thing has come out of your insanity regarding your sensory capacity, it appears.” Kirs turned her notebook, revealing the small table.

Person

Smallest

Largest

Ranvir

3,9 - 2 min 2 seconds

14,4 cm

Esmund

4,0 - 1 min 58 seconds

17,3 cm

Grev

4,3 - 1 min 59 seconds

15 cm

Sansir

4,5 - 1 min 53 seconds

15,3 cm

Gold and yellow fireworks went off inside Ranvir as he read the results of their training. They’d all seen some growth in their power. Esmund had clearly had the largest jump with a seventeen centimeter display, and Ranvir was still dead last in that capacity.

He could barely keep still as he saw the results of their smallest working. He’d done it! Sansir looked over at him, clearly about to say something, when he looked down. Ranvir blinked and followed his gaze. His toes were visibly wiggling in his shoes.

“Congratulations.” Sansir said, clapping him on the shoulder.

“Yeah, dude.” Grev reached over and slapped his back.

Ranvir glanced at Esmund, knowing he was a lot more competitive than the other two.

Esmund was pursing his lips violently. They stuck out from his face to where the muscles started quivering. Ranvir knocked his shoulder against him. “I was afraid you were going to be mad.”

Esmund’s ‘carefully’ managed expression broke into a grin. “No, no, no.” He waved away Ranvir’s worries with a lazy hand. “Why would I worry about who can make the smallest effect? The least powerful move? The best control of pawns?”

“That doesn’t mean what you think it does.” Sansir said, a small amused smile on his face. Grev stifled a laugh and Kirs approached them, standing next to Es so close their hands grazed each other. Immediately, everyone else lost all importance to their short friend.

“Let’s just get to the lazing about part of the day. We’re taking a break!” Grev yelled, throwing his hands in the air.

“That means you, too.” Sansir said to Ranvir.

Ranvir opened his mouth to reply, but Sansir simply lifted a single brow. Ranvir let his shoulders slump.

“Fine.” He muttered and let go of pressure and slipped from tether-space.