As it turned out, while Mountain Hall shared little similarity to Blackmist at first glance, the colleges were laid out in similar patterns. While the appearances of the buildings had changed, every major building had a mirror.

Many of the building were even laid out in similar locations, and Damien was able to point out the general store before they could even see the sign. He pushed the door open and strode inside, nearly tripping over his own feet as he made eye contact with the clerk. It was the same man that worked at Blackmist’s general store.

“What are you doing here?” Damien asked, baffled. “Aren’t you running the store in Blackmist?”

The clerk studied him for a moment. Then his eyes lit up and he chuckled. “Sorry about that, I had to check my saved memories. I run the general stores at all the colleges, Damien. It’s a version of matter magic that lets me have a bunch of clones that can independently control themselves and share information with each other. I didn’t realize you were a Year Three already. I could have sworn that you should have still been in Year Two.”

“Special circumstances,” Damien said with a shrug. “I need some healing supplies. Do you have anything like the healing water in Blackmist?”

“I do. All the colleges have some equivalent of that, although they work to varying degrees,” the clerk said. “Do you need something that acts faster? If not, I can sell you a waterskin of the healing stuff for five gold. And, before you ask, most of that cost is for the waterskin itself.”

Damien grunted and pulled the requested coins out of his travel bag. He handed them to the clerk while Xil watched him warily, trying and failing to hide the extent of her injuries.

“Here you go,” the merchant said, handing Damien a waterskin. Damien tossed it to Xil and nodded to the man before heading back out of the store.

Xil hurried after him, pouring water over the worst of the wounds and drinking the rest of it with a relieved sigh.

“Where’s the south mountain?” Damien asked, glancing around. While the buildings were mirrored with Blackmist, the mountains surrounding the school were not.

“This way,” Xil said, her words less strained than they had been a few moments before. The two of them continued through the campus, drawing a mixture of curious and angry looks from the Mountain Hall students as they passed.

“Man, you guys really don’t like outsiders,” Damien drawled. “Or is it just me?”

“Mountain Hall doesn’t think much of anyone that comes from outside the school that isn’t a potential permanent student. It’s pretty obvious that you’re just visiting for a month, so that’ll probably cause you some problems.”

“I couldn’t imagine,” Damien said with a shake of his head. “I suppose I’ll be sleeping with one eye open. But how do they know I’m only here for a short time?”

“You aren’t wearing Mountain Hall colors.”

Damien blinked. Now that she mentioned it, everyone that he’d seen so far was wearing the brown and drab yellow colors of Mountain Hall. Blackmist had a fair number of students sporting its colors, but he and many others chose to wear their own clothes instead.

“This place is really strict,” Damien said with distaste. “Seems more like a prison than a school.”

“You have no idea,” Xil said bitterly.

They arrived at the foot of one of the large mountains, where a huge pathway sloped down and under it. As they started down it, Damien realized the pathway followed similar magic to the one leading to his own room at Blackmist.

It brought them straight over to room twelve. Part of Damien feared he’d be greeted with an empty cave, but he was relieved to see that Mountain Hall had provided him a door at the least. There was another door on the other side of the hall, and a metal plaque above identified it as room eleven.

Damien pushed the door open with a squeak, revealing a single bedroom. It was a little smaller than his original room at Blackmist, but since it was only meant for a single person to live in, the space provided was actually a little larger.

Another door at the back of the room led to a small bathroom. Damien poked his head in and grunted, shaking it in distaste. “I’d forgotten what having such a plain room feels like. I miss my spot in Blackmist already.”

“Where am I supposed to stay?” Xil asked nervously, shifting from foot to foot. “There’s only one bed.”

Henry, do you want to take care of this? I don’t want to show her any of my stronger magic and I really can’t be bothered to spend a bunch of time grinding the wall away with destructive energy. There’s no way in the Eight Planes I’m letting her anywhere near my bed.

“Lazy,” Henry mocked, but he reached out and took control of Damien’s body.

Xil stiffened as Damien raised a hand. Dark energy coiled around his arm. It bulged and popped, sparking as it touched the air. Tendrils extended from it and stretched out like the branches of a tree.

Dust cascaded from the walls as the magic ripped through the wall, tearing stone apart like paper. Within minutes, Henry had sectioned off an entirely new room. It was a little larger than the bathroom, with rough walls and a bumpy floor.

Xil’s eyes looked like they were about to pop out of her head. “How? Do you have unlimited Ether? That would have taken me days!”

Henry gave Damien control of his body back and slipped back into the recesses of his mind. Damien gave Xil a small shrug. “I got lucky, I suppose. I wasn’t just using normal destructive energy to do that, either. If you used a stronger spell, it would probably go better too.”

“I don’t have any spells like that.”

“You had ice magic, didn’t you?” Damien asked, tilting his head to the side. “I haven’t really fought anyone with strong ice magic other than Yui, and she was mostly using it for offence rather than utility. I’m sure there’s something, though. Shouldn’t Mountain Hall have given you some books to learn from about it?”

“Wait… Yui? Princess Yui?”

“Never mind that. Answer the question.”

Xil gave him a flat stare. “No. My talent and abilities weren’t high enough to receive resources. The only books I’ve managed to read are the ones that nobody else is currently using, which are usually the worst ones that are either incomplete or meant for Year Ones.”

“Man, Mountain Hall is pathetic,” Damien said. “What’s the point of even staying here? You could have transferred to a different college.”

Xil shrugged helplessly. “They only give that option to students who perform well enough for other colleges to want them. I didn’t even learn any new magic after Year One. If I left Mountain Hall, I wouldn’t have been able to become a mage at all. At least this way I had a chance.”

“Scum,” Henry muttered within Damien’s mind. Damien had to agree with him.

“I’m starting to see why you tried attacking me,” Damien said. “I trust we won’t have that issue again, though? I might understand where you’re coming from, but I wont’ let somebody live after trying to kill me twice."

"You’ll get no trouble from me,” Xil said nervously, taking a step back and raising her hands. “Besides, if you die, I’m dead too. Hawk will kill me.”

“Somehow, I suspect that all would be forgiven if you managed to off me,” Damien said dryly. “But I’ll take your word for it at the moment. Tell me – do you know Quinlan?”

“She’s a Year Four, I think,” Xil said after a moment. “I haven’t met her myself, but she’s really strong. Pretty cold too, from what I’ve heard. She won the Ranking Battles two years in a row. Why?”

“I’m looking for her.”

Xil’s face paled. “The students were right. You are hunting the talented kids at Mountain Hall!”

Damien burst into laughter. “Trust me, I couldn’t care less about Mountain Hall. Quinlan is my friend.”

Xil crossed her arms in front of her chest. “Quinlan is notoriously standoffish. I’m not buying that.”

“Would you care, even if I was trying to kill her?” Damien asked, cocking an eyebrow. “I’d think you wouldn’t like the stronger students at Mountain Hall. After all, if they were gone, you might have gotten some resources.”

Xil blinked. Then her face fell and she shrugged. “Even if that was the case, I’m no longer a student at Mountain Hall. It doesn’t matter to me.”

“True. Either way, I need to find her,” Damien said. “How can I figure out where her room is?”

“There should be a directory in the library,” Xil said. “For the record, you aren’t supposed to just go around and kill other students. You’ve got to issue a formal challenge first. If you keep killing people, the professors will step in.”

“Keep killing people?” Damien asked, shaking his head. “Man, the standards here keep getting lower. It’s a miracle anyone would ever want to go to Mountain Hall.”

“Well, the mages that do graduate are really strong,” Xil said defensively.

“I’d rather try my luck training alone,” Damien replied. “Which I think I’ll do right now. Meanwhile, I want you to go to the library and find out where Quinlan lives.”

Xil swallowed and nodded. “Can you write that down on something in case someone tries to stop me? I can take some of the other failures, but if one of the good students catches me, I might be dead.”

Damien dug a piece of paper out of his bag and scribbled his instructions on it with chalk before handing it to Xil. “There. Would people really just attack you for no reason?”

“If it has a chance of improving their standing? Absolutely.”

Damien sighed. Xil bit her lower lip and straightened her shoulders before stepping back outside the room and heading up toward the base of the mountain.

“Why waste your time with her?” Henry asked curiously. “She isn’t particularly strong. Are you thinking she’ll somehow be useful against the Corruption? Or did you just want an errand girl? It wouldn’t be that difficult for us to find Quinlan on our own.”

Because of what you told me. I’m worried the Void is changing me too much. I think the Damien that I started off as would have wanted to help everyone he could. Maybe I can reconnect with that part of myself by helping her.

“So she’s a pity project.”

Look, it’s better than nothing, right? If I’m doing something good, even if the reasoning is a little self-serving. Imagine what would have happened if I’d gone to Mountain Hall. I could have been in her position.

“You had me,” Henry said. “We would have crushed our competition.”

But who did Xil have?

Henry fell silent and Damien sat down on his bed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. He wished Sylph were here, but she was off at Kingsfront, hopefully having a lot more fun than he was.

After a moment, he stood back up and extended his senses toward the endless expanse of gray that hung at the edges of his vision. Sending Xil away hadn’t just been because he was lazy. He needed to practice with the Void, but there was no way he was about to show anyone in Mountain Hall more of his strength than he already had if he could avoid it.

Damien’s world took on hues of gray as the Void rushed to meet his call. His emotions and errant thoughts muted themselves and fell into the background as power flooded his body. With a supreme force of will, Damien held himself back and studied the Void magic flowing within himself.

It wasn’t Ether – that much, he was certain of. It was very similar, but there were stark differences. While the Ether was composed of countless motes of energy, the Void seemed more like a raging river. He could scoop up small portions of it with his mental energy, and the portions resembled the motes, but they were more volatile.

Instead of staying within his core, the Void washed through his entire body. It was difficult to grasp properly, but he eventually managed to lock a small portion of it down. Since Henry hadn’t warned him to stop yet, Damien brought some of the energy out.

Gray light pooled in his palms. It shared the hue of Delph’s magic, but this felt cold while the professor’s magic just resembled normal magic. Still, Damien filed that away for later conversation. Delph was hiding a lot from him, and he wouldn’t be surprised if Havel were the one casting a lot of the magic that Delph looked to be using.

That thought gave him pause. Delph had created portals when Havel was off training Sylph. That shouldn’t have been possible.

“You might need to come back to this,” Henry said, rising up from Damien’s shadow.

“I thought you could only read my surface thoughts?”

“You were thinking really loud, and it wasn’t hard to figure the rest out when the words Delph, Void magic, and Havel went through your mind. But if you really want to spend time on your pet project, you might need to move.”

“Why? What’s happening?”

“I just did a quick scan to try and work my deteriorating senses, and it looks like three people have stopped Xil pretty close to the base of the mountain.”

Damien sighed. “Of course they did. Let’s go.”