Magnar opened the door as I charged in, empowering myself fully with aether, ready to fight the professor. Hargrave was barely holding himself up by leaning on the table with the device. His entire body was trembling, and his eyes were bloodshot. The only part of his body that wasn’t erratically trembling was the hand he held next to the tuning fork.

  Seeing him in this state my stomach turned heavy. ‘I shouldn’t have brought this here to test with him here…’ I ran ahead and snatched the device then propelled myself back towards the door. Professor Hargrave howled in a fury and gave chase.

  Magnar cut him off and stopped him. All I heard was a furious sound of collision as I didn’t dare to look back. The sun entered in my eyes from a window. Suddenly I felt that my earlier fear was actually a good idea. This was only on the first floor…

  However, there was no such thing as an open window. They were made out of stained glass. If I were to try and jump out, I would only break the windows. Suddenly I heard booms like rocks falling and sliding of a mountain behind me. Hargrave’s steps. I wasn’t fast enough…

  Knowing there was no way for me to escape or prolong the chase until Professor Hargrave gave up, I could only break the tuning fork. So, I decisively took the tuning fork in my hand and squeezed it. I bent and rolled it while running and carrying the rest.

  The explosive steps came closer and closer, until… I was greeted once again with the familiar darkness. I woke up later in a familiar room. I was once again in the infirmary. Having learned from previous experiences, I did not try to sit up from my bed.

  I had enough headaches from doing that suddenly after blacking out… ‘I passed out enough times to have experience in avoiding bad things to do…’ I smiled wryly. ‘I’m never leaving my stuff with others again after this… And Hargrave is banned from approaching me.’

  ‘I bet Magnar feels the same…’ I raised my legs to make some blood gather and go up to my head. I continued doing some leg lifts. Then finally sat up on the bed. That strange medic or doctor or whatever he could be called popped his head in from after a curtain.

  “Oh, you’re up! I did not expect you to be back here again so soon…”

  “Believe me that I didn’t wish to be either…” I answered shaking my head slightly.

  “Heard you touched the obsession of one of the professors… I have no idea how you managed to do it so quick, but I have to say, you are getting beatdown too much.”

  “Are you done laughing at me?”

  “Now seriously. What was it? I wasn’t told the specifics, and it feels strange that you managed to annoy a professor enough to strike with so much force.”

  “I figured out a way to record the hum of arrays… And that was while trying to confirm arrays had a hum in the first place since I didn’t have the technique needed to identify it.”

  “So, Hargrave was the one that struck you?”

  “Yeah…”

  “Pfff… No wonder. That old guy has been trying to gain some recognition and leave his name in the history of arrays yet kept failing.”

  “Are you sure it’s alright to tell me that?”

  “Why wouldn’t it be? Sooner or later, he’ll blow the array laboratory again and the news will be spread throughout the academy. He’s very studious but lacks creativity and restraint. If anything, he’ll go down in history for his array explosions. His are particularly spectacular. At some point the headmaster started spying on him to see if he wasn’t actually researching explosive arrays…”

  I pursed my lips. “Do you have bad blood with him?”

  “Of course I do! I got caught up in his explosions, got badly injured and now I can’t progress anymore. If only it was his fault…”

  “Why’d you stop at the interesting part?”

  “Enough! You’re good to go, you shouldn’t be having any issues from the hit in the future, but I can’t guarantee. Your neck was almost broken. Next time you see any of the professors, and I mean any of them, in a crazed state, stay as far from them as possible!”

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  “Alright… I will try…”

  “Good. Who got you near that laboratory anyway? The first period hadn’t ended yet when you were brought in.”

  “Another professor… I’ve seen him hang out with Professor Hargrave before, I have no idea about his name.”

  “Describe him a little then, I’ll know who it is.”

  “Tall… Taller than Hargrave, with a clean shave, looks young but the corners of his eyes give him away as someone older, has brown hair and green eyes. He also looks particularly skinny…”

  “That’s enough. Alright, go. The second period hasn’t ended, but you don’t need to worry about it. I’ll file you in as in need of more rest.”

  “Aren’t you going to tell me the name of that professor?”

  “It would be pointless for you to know; besides you can ask Hargrave himself. I don’t need to tell you.”

  I turned to leave, annoyed by his attitude.

  “Ah, one more thing.”

  “What is it?”

  “How come your aether pool grew bigger since last time?”

  I shuddered. This fucker was prying around in my body shamelessly while I was unconscious! I couldn’t afford to get in here again… Who knows what else he was doing to me… I left in a hurry, walking as fast as I could.

  “Pfhmhmhm! Don’t ask me questions if you can’t afford to answer mine!” his shout echoed from behind.

  I went around the medicine ward to look for Magnar. He, after all, outright brawled with Hargrave, I doubted he was in good condition… But it seemed like I underestimated his toughness, or perhaps Hargrave’s determination to get me.

  “What do you mean he isn’t here? He went headfirst into fight with a professor…” I asked a nurse.

  “Oh, well he brought you here then left, saying he had to return to class…”

  I returned to the tower and proceeded to make a second tuning fork. I didn’t know if I could still recover the feather though, so halfway through the process I started to question if it had any use at all, but I continued since I had already started.

  Once the tuning fork was done, I went ahead and put it near my bed, since that was where I’d use it. Then I hurried back down. I’d have liked to forge something, but Magnar wasn’t here to help with the fire so the results would be subpar.

  As a result, I just let the coal burn out. Instead of forging I continued doing some pottery. I planned to add some more twists and turns to the chimneys and try to cover them in terracotta. This would give me three massive heat banks on every floor.

  To do that however I needed to make tiles and to do that I needed to first mix the clay with sand and more crushed pottery. I had already bought both, so I got working on the last missing instrument needed, a mold.

  I finished it fairly quickly. Considering I needed to line the inside of all the chimneys in the tower with these, I did my best to get an even surface when carving the stone. Then I added sand that I spent some time crushing to make it thin and some dust collected from the grinding stones to make sure the surface would be as smooth as possible.

  I started mixing the clay. Later Magnar came in the courtyard and looked at me kneading the clay. Pushing it down and away from my body with the heel of my hand, then pulling its end, twisting it and pushing it down again.

  It was an important step in preparing the clay for baking it. It removed the air and aligned the particles inside so that air would be pushed out more easily. Shortly after his arrival I was done with it, and we placed clay in the trays then slammed the trays down to remove the shaped clay.

  We spread out all the stone blocks we had left in order to increase the surface area we had for letting the tiles dry. They had to be dusty dry to be baked, otherwise they’d crack, and all the effort would be for nothing. This wasn’t just some lining that could be easily removed so I had to follow all the steps and make sure my work and materials aren’t wasted.

  “So, when do we put them all in the kiln?” Asked Magnar once we emptied the tray with the last tile.

  “Tomorrow or the day after. We’ll keep them over low fire to help them dry out faster. But it’s kind of risky… They could explode if the temperature goes too high.”

  “Why’d they explode? It’s wet dirt.”

  “Well, you saw how water boils right?”

  “Get to the point!”

  “The moisture inside would turn to steam and create internal pressure making it blow up. Now it wouldn’t normally be an issue if one explodes, but if we load the kiln to the brim for fuel efficiency, one of them exploding would destroy plenty others too.”

  “Alright.”

  “Don’t worry I’m getting impatient too, I want to cook my own meals. I’m sick of the Mess Hall’s gross food. I want to fire it up and get my earthenware too…”

  “You can buy those at this point…”

  “Yes, but it’s another kind of pride to cook in a pot you made yourself!”

  “If you say so…” He said looking at me as if I was saying another incomprehensible thing. Then he continued after a while. “How about I invite you over to the noble’s dining hall?”

  “I think we’d garner a lot of attention for no reason… Anyway, we can’t continue here until the tiles are done. It would be pointless to build more of the chimneys just to take them apart later.”

  “Then what do we do? It’s too late to start the forge now.”

  “Actually, I started it earlier… Too bad you weren’t here…”

  “Why’d you start it? You just wasted coal…”

  “It was an impulse thing; I made another tuning fork. I scrapped the last one to get Hargrave to relax.”

  “You made another of those accursed things?”

  “I need it! It’s not my fault Hargrave has no restraint… I’ll need to get the record of the aether gathering formation array. That will be hard to get without letting Hargrave know I made a second tuning fork…”

  “You’re just as crazy as that Hargrave…”

  “At least I’m not almost killing others over my craziness… Don’t group me with the likes of him. Besides if I succeed in what I want to do it will be one more technique for you to learn once you get into Core formation.”

  We parted ways. I went to the Mess Hall while he went to the dining hall of the nobles.

  Before heading to sleep I tried to arrange the shards in the Aether gathering array twice more, failing both times. I stopped earlier and went to sleep. The next day came an intensive shopping and forging day, I needed the sleep.

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  ?? Author's Question:

  Vex handles that dagger a little too well for a guy who just patches people up in the infirmary. Any theories on what his actual background is before he became a 'medic'?