It turned out that much to his disappointment, that Wren had once again missed dinner. He’d gone straight to the Dead Fields after his elemental abilities class, not even thinking that Chadwick and his friends would have wanted to get dinner as well. He’d ended up waiting for a good couple hours in the end. It was probably for the best though, Wren still wasn’t completely comfortable in his new home and so wasn’t back to his usual eating habits. He loved food, and enjoyed what they had in the academy but if it wasn’t for the shear exhaustion Wren felt from going about the tests and lessons, he probably wouldn’t have eaten anything at all.

So instead of stopping by at the cafeteria on his way back to central campus, he instead just went back to his room and the company of his roommates who were sat up waiting for him.

“You’re alive!”

“Are you okay?”

“What happened?”

“Did you meet Chadwick?”

“Are you an idiot?”

If it wasn’t for the fact that he was stood in front of them, Wren would have thought that he had more than two roommates from the amount of questions they were firing off at him. He chose to ignore that last question, thinking himself above it.

“Yes yes I’m alive, but quite exhausted so if you don’t mind could you both please shut up?” Wren said drearily, moving over to his bed and laying down.

Both Liam and Carlos shared a guilty look, silently agreeing to tone it down on the questions. They instead decided to sit on their respective beds and allow Wren to set the pace.

“So as you can both see I’m alive.” Wren said finally, breaking the silence.

“What happened?” Carlos asked first.

“Well I got to the meeting point. Then not much else happened, he didn’t show up for ages. Then when he did, he called me a cheater and then tried to bash my brains in. You know, standard stuff.”

“Why would you go? You knew this would happen. You could have at least told the instructors.” Liam said, the voice of reason.

“I figured it was better to get it out of the way now rather than looking over my shoulder for the rest of the year.” Wren said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “And from what I can gather, informing the instructors wouldn’t have done much, they’d let us fight, in fact I think they would encourage it.”

Wren then proceeded to recount the details of his fight with Chadwick, telling them how he’d been on the receiving end of an attempted wind slice and how Anastasia had saved him. He told the boys about his conversation with Anastasia, repeating to them how infighting was encouraged with the exception of using their abilities. Neither of the boys were too shocked, being Legacies they had some sort of idea of what life at the academy was like, but still, hearing it out in the open and seeing it first hand with their roommate was surreal.

“I am curious about one thing though. How did Anastasia know I was there?” Wren asked, more to himself than anyone else.

“Um about that.” Said Liam slowly.

Wren quickly narrowed his eyes towards Liam, giving him a piercing look.

“What?”

“Well Carlos and I were having dinner after class. A nice pasta wasn’t it Carlos?” Liam said nervously.

“Indeed, you would have liked it Spectre.”

“Get on with it.” Wren said.

“Well Anastasia came up to us while we were eating. We were just minding our own business, we didn’t go looking for her or anything.”

“Yes?”

“And she asked us where you were. She said that you left your class in a hurry and seemed to be in a strange mood. She asked us if we knew what was going on. And of course we said that we didn’t know anything, didn’t we Carlos?”

“That is correct.”

“Okay, what else?”

“Well she didn’t believe us exactly, and suddenly she got really intense, and downright scary at one point, and I don’t know what happened but I kind of let it slip that you’d been told to meet someone after class. But I didn’t say anymore.” Liam said holding his hands up in innocence and giving Carlos an apologetic look.

Wren caught onto the look and turned his focus on Carlos.

“What happened?”

“Well the instructor was asking a question and I thought it best not to lie to an instructor, so I told her that you were meeting Chadwick Pound in the Dead Fields. I do apologise if I’ve gotten you in trouble, but like I said, I cannot lie to an instructor if they ask me a direct question.”

Wren leaned back on his bed and sighed.

“I suppose I can’t be too hard on you guys. If you hadn’t told Anastasia where I was then she wouldn’t have been there for the fight and she wouldn’t have saved me.”

Both Carlos and Liam latched onto the second half of the sentence with glee, both of their faces lighting up in relief.

“Exactly!” Exclaimed Liam.

“See we helped you out really. You should be thanking us.” Said Carlos.

“Oh I should thank you for selling me out? Did you guys know I wasn’t gonna get in trouble?”

“Well no.” Liam said.

“That’s what I thought.”

Wren got up to get changed, his roommates were already ready for bed.

“Doesn’t really matter now anyway. I just need to get a good nights sleep and try to avoid pissing off Chadwick from now on.”

“Yeah good luck with that.” Liam said laughing.

Wren turned over, done with the conversation and feigned sleep. He pulled up the system screen, and studied it, seeing just how much damage Chadwick had done and what going up a level meant for him.

[Status]

[Name: Wren Spectre]

[Race: Human Level 2]

[XP 20/200]

[HP 10/21]

[EP 15/21]

[Strength: 5]

[Speed: 14]

[Stamina: 7/7]

[Skill points: 1]