Just a Bystander

Cracks

The rest of the week passed without as much 'excitement' as I feared. There were no further ground-shattering revelations in our lessons about the nature of arcanophany and the world, nor did Ambrose drop any dire pronouncements. After that one incident in the dorm and our subsequent session in the duelling chamber, he seemed largely content to simply go back to the patterns of behaviour we had established before I found out he was the Chosen One.

We had a Principles of Advanced Arcanophany tutorial in our smaller groups, and at first I had been more than a little intimidated to find out that Reeves would be taking my group (while Jerric was turning green with envy). Thankfully, Reeves was quite different in the setting of a smaller group. We were all pleasantly surprised to find that he was a very patient and methodical instructor as he helmed a discussion on the philosophy behind arcanophany itself, and I left the class with a better appreciation of the field as a whole even though we hadn't touched on any technical aspects of arcanophany.

The school week ended with our first practical session in Advanced Glyphs, where we were tasked with deconstructing a commercial artefact into its constituent glyph sequences. After what we had learnt so far, we were aware that it could be a highly dangerous endeavour, and attempting something as fiendishly difficult as that after only one lesson on theory, and on the first week of school, seemed absurd. But when Celwyn produced a wall clock, there was an audible sigh of relief from almost everyone. It did prove surprisingly challenging since there were plenty of advanced glyphs being used and we weren't completely familiar with the expanded vocabulary, but together the class managed to break it down and identify every sequence and function. It was amazing how much arcanophany went into such a common household artefact.

Before I knew it, I was facing my first weekend in the Academy.

'Do you guys have anything planned?' Ambrose asked.

It was nine in the morning on Saturday. Everyone was seated at the table, getting ready to tuck into a breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon, and buttered toast (proudly prepared by Devon), except for Kevan who was still asleep. I noticed Lynus quietly setting a portion aside for his brother and placing a cover over it.

Jerric looked curiously at Ambrose. 'You've got something in mind?'

'I was thinking we get started on learning how to resist Reeves' compulsion,' he replied earnestly.

There was a palpable shift in the mood. Devon froze for a moment, then tried to cover it by noisily resuming his meal. Lynus let out a soft huff. Jerric raised his eyebrows, looking perturbed. Ambrose's face fell at this almost-universal negative response.

'We've got to do it eventually,' I said slowly, looking around at the others. 'And we'll all make sure that we don't have a repeat of what happened that day.'

'Do you think Kevan will be okay with it?' Jerric asked Lynus, looking worried.

Lynus didn't reply immediately. He looked like he was choosing his words with great care. 'He'll be on board. But we'll all need to be very upfront about what to expect. And we need to set some rules for everyone to follow about how this practice is going to go.'

Ambrose nodded. 'It's not a parlour trick. Jerric pointed out that there are serious ethical issues here. We're learning it because we have to, and we'll make sure that we don't abuse it, especially on each other.'

There were cautious nods around the table. It was a bit of a pity how the topic had put such a damper over the morning because Devon's cooking was excellent. Unfortunately, the rest of breakfast passed in complete silence as everyone darkly contemplated what we were going to do later that day.

Kevon woke an hour later and was taken aside by Lynus. I sensed some tension as the two of them spoke in hushed tones in the room, although they left the door open, but when Lynus came out and spotted me he gave a thumbs up and a small smile.