Just a Bystander

A Breath of Relief

I peeled off before we arrived back at the dorm and told Ambrose that I would be going to make a call back home. It was partly out of obligation, but I was really just using it as an excuse to defer the moment when I would have to return to the group. The faces of Devon, Lynus, and Kevan kept springing to mind, their expressions crystal clear as they fought against my compulsion.

Ambrose made no comment and nodded before he went up, leaving me to pick my way across the campus grounds. The students' services centre was right next to the registration office, so I didn't have to expend any precious arcana to call up a Minor Query for directions. It was late afternoon, and the orange light of the sun bathed the scene in a comfortable glow. If not for the huge revelations that had been thrust upon me over the past few days, this would've been a wonderful and serene walk.

Instead, my mind was churning over the many things that had come to light. There was also a mild sense of panic at the fact that it had only been two days since I first started at the Academy and I was already reeling from all the arcanophanic revelations, to say nothing about the Chosen One business. What might one whole week bring? It felt like life itself was threatening to swallow me up, like some unfathomable, monstrous denizen of the deeps descending on a minnow.

And it felt so unfair. I was the Top Scorer, so why did it feel like I knew nothing at all? After all the effort I had put into getting to where I was, how could people like Kevan and Jerric just crawl out of the woodwork and do things that I had never even known of?

And my father was in this marvellous world for years and years, and in all that time he never prepared me for the sheer depth of knowledge out there. All our lessons, for all their sophistication, now seemed to be nothing more than idle splashing in the shallows by the shore. And now I was supposed to know how to plumb the lightless chasms of the ocean?

It took me a moment to compose myself when I walked through the doors to the students' services centre. There was only one person at the counter - a middle-aged woman.

'New arcanist?' she asked with a welcoming smile. 'What can we do for you?'

'I want to make a telepresence call,' I said, trying to return her smile but only managing to come up with a brief twitching of the lips.

'The first week can be hard,' she said sympathetically, pulling out a file as I approached the counter. She extracted a form. 'Just fill this in and I'll give you a card. You'll be able to use the telepresence rooms whenever they're available.'

'Even after the centre is closed?'

'Yes, they're through a separate entrance around the side of the building. You just need to come here to register the first time, or if you need permission for a session that goes beyond the usual 20 minutes. Otherwise, they're available at all hours.'

That was good to know. It made it easy to avoid crowds or having to queue if I came at off-peak times. I filled out my details and handed the form back to her.

With a little burst of arcana, she traced a glyph I didn't recognise over the paper, then pressed a plastic card onto it in a space that had been densely packed with more glyphs. With that done, she handed the card to me and placed the filled form in a thick binder.

'There you go, all done. You need anything else, just drop by. If you've got something urgent that needs doing while the centre is closed, you can use a Major Query by the door while you've got your card on you, and that should give you access to most things that you need.'

While I wasn't a stranger to this kind of application of arcanophany, it was surprising that they had tied so much functionality into the card. It was worth taking a closer look later.