Ranvir must’ve waited in that room for hours, feeling the choking silence while lost in the room. He reached out with one hand, trying to touch any of the other walls than the one he was leaning on. It didn’t work. He couldn’t reach them. His breath started coming faster. The colors he’d thought had lost most of their vigor bloomed into alarming oranges and suffocating deep dark blues as he flailed for anything.

Locked in the darkness of his own mind, his breath picking up. Reaching further, he hesitantly jumped along the wall. The only wall. Darkness ate everything but the wall next to him. His leg was getting tired from taking all of his weight for so long. He tried to blink his eyes open, but the bandages were squeezing them shut.

He tried to pull them off with a shaking hand, but his clammy fingers couldn’t get a hold of the fabric. As he struggled to get the choking cloth off, his efforts got more and more frantic. Panic driving him, he hopped forward to find something, anything else. His eyes stung with unshed tears as he fell.

He hit something mid-jump and entirely lost his balance. Landing awkwardly, he slammed his bad leg into the ground as his chest landed on something soft. Something thin and grasping wrapped over his left arm.

Ranvir let out a yelp and flailed to get away from it, his breaths coming even faster now. He was getting dizzy as he fell on his ass. His wounded leg burned with pain enough to make his voice rough. He found the wall, pushing his back against it, feeling the ‘something’ that had wrapped around his arm land on his legs.

He let out another screech as he tried to push it off. The texture felt familiar as he let out weak sounds of fear and desperation. It had a rough feel to it, light and breathable. Calming down slightly, he felt it closer and realized it was just a duvet that had been put on top of the bed.

Judging from the smell, it was his own duvet. Pulling his legs up, Ranvir curled the blanket to his face and screamed into it. He didn’t know how long he clutched the fabric to his face, but when he heard the door opening again, his breathing had calmed a little.

He looked up despite his current limitations. There was a beat of pause, before footsteps rang through the room and they headed towards him.

“Here you are, Ranvir.” Pashar said. “Sorry, it took a little long. There was a slight administrative problem that couldn’t wait. Though, I see you got comfortable.”

Her voice was warm and deep for a woman. It had a soothing effect on him, as had the hand she gently laid on his shoulder.

“Come, let’s get you up, then we can get you to your friends. That should be quite a bit quicker than getting the crutch, as they’re already waiting in the reception.”

She got him to his feet, and they began walking after she handed him the crutch.

“How long until the exams?” Ranvir asked, once he felt like he’d gained enough control to speak.

“Your tether exam starts tomorrow morning.” Pashar said, her words even and calm, in the tones people used to soothe angry drunks, children, and animals.

Not hours, then. He noted in his head. He reached up to wipe at his eyes, but found the bandages in the way. They were beginning to itch.

They walked for a while. It probably took longer than it needed to, since Ranvir wasn’t good at walking with a crutch. Especially since he couldn’t see. He was having a lot of trouble keeping a straight line. Ranvir did his best to use Pashar’s hand on his shoulder as a guideline for going straight.

A little more to the left next time. He adjusted and suddenly got very close, though she somehow maneuvered around his blunder and keep a professional distance between them.

“Sorry.” He muttered, blushing.

“It’s okay. It’ll take some time to adapt. No one reasonable expects you to be fully functional immediately.”

“The principal does.”

The hand on his shoulder paused, and Ranvir caught himself before taking another leaning half leap on his crutch. “The principal is neither reasonable, nor doing it out of interest in your wellbeing.” Pashar’s voice had a hard edge to it. “Do you understand? He’s expecting you to fail, and he’s expecting to get away with it, because you’re a commoner, and it makes it more likely that a noble house can buy your labor, you understand?”

Ranvir turned his head in her direction on reflex, before nodding.

“Say it, then.” His voice allowed for no bargaining.

“I understand.”

“Understand what?”

Ranvir coughed to clear his throat, then wet his lips. “I understand that the principal is setting me up to fail.”

“So that his friends on the Lord’s Council can do what?”

“So that they can buy me as a status icon.” Ranvir knew they didn’t have free rights, but his only other choice was going to the army and he wouldn’t be joining as a tethered, but as another foot soldier.

“Are you going to let them treat you like that?”

Some flicker of life, a spark of fear and anger, lit inside him. Something that wasn’t afraid of the dark around him and its potential permanence, but fear of what would happen should he let that darkness win. Anger that someone would use him like that.

Ranvir’s voice was thick, and he had to struggle to make his words sound clear. “No.”

“Good. Let’s continue, your friends are waiting.”

Ranvir lacked both a grasp of distance and time as he limped along next to Pashar, but he heard it the moment they crossed into a different space. The acoustics changed dramatically.

One step, his wooden crutch thudded against the stone floor, sounding close and oppressive, the next the thud was wide and distant. He immediately felt more exposed.

Motes of pale purple fear began circling inside him as he heard other noises. Then the call of voices.

“Ranvir!” Es’ voice was the loudest as a horde of footsteps approached him. Ranvir felt himself tense, knowing people were approaching, but he couldn’t tell who, nor how many. Someone wrapped their arms around him and he reflexively tried to hit them, though his frantic panic took away his leverage and force. He came down wrong on the crutch and he lost his balance. Strong hands grabbed his arms and pulled him back before he could begin flailing.

Somehow, he avoided putting his weight on the wounded leg and he started calming down as the various voices of his friends surrounded him. He calmed down and began picking out their individual tones.

Grev’s was the deepest of the voices. It would’ve made Ranvir blink if he could. Grev spent so much of the time being flippant and mischievous that Ranvir’d never made the connection, but when Grev was speaking intently or seriously, the deeper notes in his voice sprang forth, taking over the amused higher notes that usually filled it.

Next that jumped out was Kirs’. Her voice was the brightest and lightest of all. Though Ranvir was less able to make out the individual words over their collective rambling, he could quite easily make out the tone. Excitement and nervousness predominantly.

Sansir’s voice was on the tipping point. His voice was just starting to experience the transition from boy to man, and while it lent some depth to his voice, it also made it sound unstable. Like it could crack at any moment. Though Ranvir didn’t remember Sansir’s voice ever breaking, it must just be coming upon him.

Es’ was the most familiar to Ranvir, and it was nothing special, not the deepest, nor the brightest, just the loudest. It was the one he knew the best, the one that spoke of home. Cold winters throwing snow at each other until they had to warm up by his mother’s forge. Playing under the boiling summer sun, watching as Esmund approached a hive of flying insects, ‘just to see what they were’, then running from the wasps back to his mom, so he could get some salve for the new stings he’d gotten.

They were the voices of his friends, and they surrounded him, wrapping themselves around him almost like a physical blanket. Ranvir swallowed convulsively as a swirling tumult of color and emotion boiled up inside him.

He wrapped his arms around them, trying to hold as many as possible, as tightly together as possible. He couldn’t tell the specifics, but they quieted down a bit as he did, followed by some shuffling, moving, more people joining the hug, and arms wrapping around his shoulders and back.

Everything was going to be okay. Ranvir realized, with his friends he knew he could make it, no matter the obstacles.