"The people on the train," Clyde said, as they walked. "The ones causing the commotion in first class. They were all Ichorborn."
Aurelian was quiet for a moment, which for Aurelian was unusual enough to mean something.
"Ichorborn causing a commotion about the bleeding moon on a train to Matrix," he said slowly. "That combination worries me."
"Same."
"Could be bandits," Aurelian said.
Clyde looked at him. "Bandits."
"Yes."
"Like in books."
"Exactly like in books, except real and considerably less romantic." Aurelian glanced at him sideways. "What did you think bandits did?"
"Steal money," Clyde admitted. "I assumed."
"Money is the least of it." Aurelian's voice stayed easy but the content shifted. "Ichorborn bandits take people. Human beings, other Ichorborn, anyone they can grab. Then they sell the hearts on black markets. The Astral Cards inside them."
Clyde went quiet for a second.
People, he thought. People, sold for their hearts.
He had processed the dangers of this world as information and filed them under things to manage carefully. Howlings, corrupted ichor, the phase gap between himself and someone like Noxar Vellum. He had categorized all of it and moved forward.
He had missed this category entirely.
I thought poverty was the hardest part, he thought. The arithmetic of survival. But that was always the small version of a much larger equation. I need power. Real power. And I need it before the wrong person on a train decides I look like an easy target.
He kept all of this inside and kept walking.
"How is ascension going?" Aurelian asked, in the tone of someone changing subjects to something adjacent.
"Barely touched it recently," Clyde said. "I still haven't unlocked my final chain. The last ability of the first phase keeps escaping me."
"We will figure it out." Aurelian slowed his pace. "We are here."
Clyde looked ahead.
A hut.
Small, plain, wooden, the kind of structure that communicated storage rather than importance. The door looked like it had stopped being impressive sometime in the previous century. There was a sign above it but the sign was so faded that reading it required a commitment Clyde decided against making.
"This," Clyde said carefully, "is the Matrix Academy of Applied Mysticism."
"Yes," Aurelian said, with complete cheerfulness. "Shall we?"
I paid one hundred shillings to travel to this city to attend school in a hut.
Inside, a young woman sat behind a small desk with an open register and the composed efficiency of someone who had seen every possible reaction to this situation and had stopped being interested in any of them long ago. She looked up.
"Enrollment cards."
They produced them. She checked both names, made two marks, handed them back.
"Through the wall," she said, pointing at the brick surface directly behind her. "Welcome to the Academy."
Clyde stared at the wall.
She is pointing at solid brick and asking me to walk through it. This is a completely reasonable instruction from a completely reasonable person in a completely reasonable situation.
Aurelian walked forward without hesitating, stepped into the brick, and disappeared.
Clyde stood there alone.
He closed his eyes. Walked forward. Felt the air change around him.
Opened his eyes.
Oh.
A city.
A genuine, full-scale city existing behind the hut, extending in every direction further than his sight could comfortably reach. Buildings of pale stone and glass, wide paths, open plazas with water channels catching light and scattering it in every direction. And the light itself came from above, a source suspended at the highest point of the enclosed space, warm and golden and steady, filling everything with the quality of illumination that the outside world had lost to the Cataclysm centuries ago.
Pillars rose from the major buildings toward this artificial sun, each one channeling energy upward toward a card mounted at the apex. Clyde activated his Hollow Eyes at low output and looked at it directly.
The frequency was familiar in the way that a described thing becomes familiar before you have experienced it directly.
Luminance, he thought. Light intensity control.
"The Luminance Astral Card," Aurelian said, appearing at his shoulder. "Whoever built this space knew exactly what they were doing. The whole Academy runs on the light it produces. Every structure, every instrument. Lunar Ichor channeled through Luminance."
Clyde looked around at the buildings and paths and the students moving between them. His Hollow Eyes confirmed it. Everything here carried Lunar Ichor in its structural material at a saturation level far beyond anything in Cristae. The architecture could do things ordinary stone and glass refused to do because the materials themselves had been fundamentally altered.
Then something cold settled into the air around both of them.
A quality added to the atmosphere, the presence of a significant and very controlled Lunar Ichor signature arriving nearby. Aurelian went still beside him, which communicated more than words would have.
Clyde turned his Hollow Eyes off immediately.
Let whoever this is think we are ordinary students.
They turned around together.
A girl stood a few feet behind them.
Long straight white hair, the white of it genuine and pure, the specific white of something that had always been that color, falling straight past her shoulders. Pale skin. White eyebrows and white eyelashes, which on anyone else might have looked unusual and on her looked like everything about her appearance had been considered. Her eyes were a very clean, very pure blue, and inside each iris sat a symbol, a snowflake, rendered in silver lines so fine they were barely visible and absolutely present once seen.
She wore a white uniform with a light blue jacket trimmed with fur at the collar and cuffs, light blue trousers, and carried a bag with the unhurried ease of someone who was always this composed and had stopped noticing it.
Her gaze when it landed on them carried the temperature of clear water. Present, direct, the chill in it belonging to her nature rather than any particular opinion about them.
From somewhere to the left, from behind a bush, came the barely suppressed noise of several people being genuinely terrible at staying quiet.
Clyde glanced at the bush. Aurelian had already clocked it.
"Is she popular?" Clyde asked, under his breath.
"I genuinely have no idea," Aurelian murmured. "I think pretty people are just permanently famous whether they ask for it or."
"Are you new?" the girl asked. Her voice was light and carried the same quality as her expression, clear and cool and making no particular effort to perform warmth it did not feel. "The main school building is in the center. Follow the main path."
She walked past them and kept walking.
Clyde watched her go.
What is her Divine Ichor.
He turned his Hollow Eyes back on at low output and focused on her as she moved along the path ahead.
The chains on his Astral Card began to vibrate.
His perception shifted the way it shifted when the Hollow Star had been building toward something and had finally found the right conditions to show it. He caught a glimpse, the edge of her inner world, visible for a fraction of a second. A light blue glow, cold and very precise. Silver metallic quality to the ichor structure. And at its core, a snowflake, its points geometrically perfect.
Ice.
Then his vision cracked.
He was in his own inner world. The darkness, the card, the chains. The final chain, the one holding the last undiscovered ability of the first phase, shattered.
CRACK.
His Astral Card pulsed hard, driving itself downward toward something below the established architecture of the Hollow Star, and hit a barrier. Transparent, completely solid. The card pressed against it with everything it had and the barrier held, impenetrable, the sealed gate between the first phase and whatever came after it.
He came back to the real world.
Stood there for a moment.
Then pressed his hand against his forehead.
My final ability, he thought, is detecting other people's Divine Ichor. I could have chosen the one that collapses bones. The one that ruptures organs through vibration. The one that dissolves materials at the molecular level. I chose the stalking ichor.
"Why are you spacing out?" Aurelian asked.
"I broke the last chain."
Aurelian's expression changed immediately. "All of them?"
"All of them." Clyde lowered his hand. "My final ability is detecting other people's Divine Ichor."
Aurelian opened his mouth. Closed it. Said, with visible diplomatic effort, "That is a genuinely useful support ability."
"You were going to call it weak."
"I was absolutely going to call it weak."
"I know," Clyde said.
"It has applications though," Aurelian said, rallying. "Tactical. Knowing what you face before engaging."
"I know," Clyde said again, with the tone of someone who had already had this exact argument with himself and come to terms with the result.
"Do you see a barrier on your Astral Card?" Aurelian asked.
"Transparent, completely solid."
"Then every chain is broken and the barrier is the ascension gate. You need the Hollow Star Holy Spring for baptism." Aurelian paused. "How certain are you about the timing? A genuine holy spring costs a minimum of a thousand shillings to access. Or you collect ten purified Astral Cards and synthesize a temporary spring yourself."
"Ten purified cards," Clyde repeated.
"Which also costs money to purify individually."
"So even as Ichorborn, money decides everything."
"Always," Aurelian said, with the cheerful resignation of someone who had processed this reality long ago and moved on. "There is one more option. Perform well enough here and you may qualify for a scholarship. Part of what scholarship benefits cover is access to a holy spring through the Academy's own resources."
"So I need good grades."
"Exceptional grades."
Clyde looked at the enormous school building ahead of them.
Magic college, he thought. Magic college is just regular college with higher stakes, worse financial outcomes, and a barrier on my heart that costs a thousand shillings to remove.
Ding! Ding!
A bell rang from the direction of the main building, clean and carrying, and the students on the paths adjusted their directions toward the central plaza. A man walked out from the main entrance toward the gathering crowd. Mid-forties, the kind of face that had made most of its major choices and wore them comfortably. Average height, average build, the kind of person whose presence expanded once he opened his mouth.
Clyde turned his new ability on him quietly.
Hmm, he thought, reading the signature. Echo Ichor.
The man raised his head and addressed the assembled students, his voice arriving at a volume that the plaza's size should have made impossible, the Echo Ichor amplifying his projection to fill every corner of the space without distortion.
"Students! Welcome to the Matrix Academy of Applied Mysticism! My name is Professor Rael Nox Aldric and I will be your orientation coordinator! Please gather in the central plaza! Orientation begins in five minutes!"
The students moved. Clyde and Aurelian moved with them.
"Professor Rael," Aurelian said quietly, beside him. "Echo Ichor. Phase Three, by the feel of him. He has been here a long time."
"How can you tell Phase Three from the feel?" Clyde asked.
Aurelian grinned. "Spend enough time around Ichorborn and you start to develop a sense for it." He paused. "Also Eira told me about him beforehand. She attended the advanced track here two years ago."
"So half of that was Eira's research."
"More than half," Aurelian admitted, without any embarrassment whatsoever. "Come on. Let's see what the orientation tells us."
They walked toward the plaza, the artificial sun warm and golden overhead, the Luminance card at the apex of its pillar array pulsing its steady light down across everything, the white-uniformed students moving in from every direction around them.
Somewhere ahead in the crowd, a flash of white hair moved through the press of bodies, and the air around it was several degrees colder than the air around everything else.
Clyde filed her away.
A new school. A broken final chain. A barrier on his heart that cost a thousand shillings or ten purified cards to pass.
A new chapter, he thought, looking up at the artificial sun. Same arithmetic, higher stakes.
Let's get started.