The lunchroom paused—every finger sandwich freezing in front of open mouths—as Det and the other two walked in. When it was clear he didn’t have calamity-kitten with him, there was a release of tension, as no violence would need to be committed. No call to war over who would get to cuddle the ink-kitten. In the next second, the eating and chatter resumed.

  “Okay, that was a little odd,” Sage said, eyes scanning to make sure there weren’t any ambushes lying in wait.

  Really, the only two still even looking in Det’s direction were Neferan and baby-face, though they weren’t standing together. Each stood with a small group of other cadets—who didn’t seem to care about Det at all without his rendition—and equally glared daggers in his direction.

  With Beast’s voice echoing in his mind about how he’d needlessly escalated with Granite, Det forced his face to stay neutral, then went over to one of the lunch tables. One he would hopefully not get thrown into.

  “These are so good,” Eriba said quietly, a plate full of finger sandwiches magically already in one hand, while her other ferried food to her mouth.

  “They really are,” Sage said. “I’ve never eaten so many sandwiches in my life.”

  “Do you think it’s because Beast makes them prep these?” Det said, likewise tucking in. Neither of the other two were wrong. These were some of the best sandwiches he’d had in his life. Well, other than what Zedic made, but comparing anything to that man’s food just wasn’t playing fair. Still, they weren’t like the crappy finger sandwiches from back on Earth, where somebody would carve up a bigger sandwich into three smaller ones.

  No, each of these was individually prepared, on tiny loaves of bread or rolls. They were art. Delicious, wonderful art.

  “Hey neighbour,” Aria said, sauntering over with Trium and Crazy Legs at her side. “Get in trouble with the teacher?”

  “Kind of,” Det admitted. “Apparently, my final creation was a little too distracting. I’ve been forbidden from making any more.”

  “Whaaaaaat?” Aria said, forlorn by the news. “How am I supposed to focus or concentrate without my emotional-support kitten? I’m going straight to HR!” She even took a step like she was heading out of the room before Trium caught her arm.

  “No more kittens at all?” Trium asked the clarifying question in Det’s direction, though it was clearly meant for Aria’s benefit.

  “Normal ones are okay,” Det explained.

  “Turtles too,” Eriba said even more quietly than usual, with the new additions keeping her head down.

  “Crisis averted,” Crazy Legs said.

  “I’m sure I’ll spend the first few minutes after lunch making everybody a new pet,” Det joked. “But, my problems aside, how did you all do with the training this morning?”

  Part of the question was just small talk, while the bigger part was Det’s competitive side. Sure, he might be willing to share perks with his roommates, since they were also his teammates, and would be responsible for keeping him alive when they eventually went into a Wordless dungeon, that didn’t mean he didn’t want to ‘be special’. Getting those benefits would get him ahead of the regular cadets.

  Beauty said he had the potential to get to B-Rank. That wasn’t good enough. Det was aiming for S-Rank.

  “I have no idea what we’re supposed to be learning,” Aria complained immediately. “Stronger arms for my spirit? He’s an earth elemental! He doesn’t have muscles. How am I supposed to make him stronger? He doesn’t even lift, bro.”

  “I’m having the same problem,” Trium admitted. “My magic doesn’t have different parts like you two do. What am I even trying to do with this exercise? Beast and Beauty need to give us better instructions if they want us to do something.”

  “I don’t think the instructions were bad,” Crazy Legs said. “The exercise is just difficult.”

  “Oh?” Aria said. “Have you figured it out then?” With the way her eyebrow was raised, it was like she was daring him to say he had. Lucky for him, he caught on to that fact.

  “I… not exactly,” Crazy Legs said. “I am starting to get the hang of moving my energy to particular locations within the image of my magic, but I have no idea how to do the infusion part Beauty was talking about.”

  “What is your image, anyway?” Det asked. Considering the nature of the man’s magic—a kind of illusion?—it could be anything. Maybe even himself…

  “A voodoo doll,” Crazy Legs said.

  “Not creepy at all,” Trium said.

  “Nothing about my magic is ‘not creepy’,” Crazy Legs replied, complete with air quotes. “I’d say the image is very fitting.”

  “What about you two?” Aria said, attention turning to Sage and Eriba, who were each shoveling sandwiches into their mouths almost as fast as Det was. “Did you get your toys to work?”

  “What’s up with that, anyway?” Trium said.

  “My magic,” Sage said, then corrected when he looked at Eriba. “Our magic, I guess, requires a medium through which to work. Like Captain Simmons needs a sword, we need… toys.”

  “You can’t do anything without that stuff?” Aria said, and Sage gently shook his head. “That sucks. Good thing we have those artificer guys.”

  “And girls,” Trium said. “One of them has a shop in town. Have you two been there yet? She sells some wild stuff.”

  “I haven’t,” Sage said. “Whereabouts? I wouldn’t mind seeing what she has.”

  “I’m going to grab some more food from the other table,” Det said while Trium started to explain where the artificer’s shop was. It wasn’t likely Sage or Eriba would be able to use anything from the place—at least no more than somebody like Det could—unless it was Wordless equipment. Then again, since mistships were so widespread, there could be other Wordless gear floating around the open market.

  I should tag along when Sage goes to look. Knowing more about what his controlled Wordless do could help when we have to go into a dungeon.

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  Mind occupied with wondering what Elestar’s version of an electronics shop looked like while he hit up the buffet-style salad bar, Det didn’t even notice somebody had walked up beside him until they spoke.

  “Proud of yourself?” a voice said, pulling Det out of his peaceful internal musings. “Showed off on the first day.”

  Det glanced over at baby-face standing beside him.

  “Not showing off,” Det said while putting together something equivalent to a Greek salad. He didn’t see any olives, but it’d have to do. “Just working on the lesson Beauty was giving us.”

  “You don’t expect me to believe that, do you?” the man pushed.

  “Believe… what exactly?” Det asked, turning to fully face the other cadet while he put a long piece of red pepper into his mouth. The crunch of it between his teeth made baby-face’s eye twitch in annoyance.

  “That you were actually learning anything,” baby-face said. “You and the other princesses are getting special treatment. We all know it.” He gestured around the room to the other eighteen Arsenals, though the rest of them—other than Neferan—weren’t paying attention to Det.

  “So?” Det asked, putting another pepper in his mouth. Crunch. “You heard the headmaster. If you want special treatment too, there’s only one thing you have to do.”

  “Oh, and what’s that Mr. Show-Off? Come from a famous family or a sixth strata pillar? Make a generous donation to the academy?”

  “Get good,” Det said.

  Another twitch from baby-face’s eye told Det he’d scored a hit.

  “You have no idea what I can…”

  “Nope,” Det interrupted. “I don’t. Don’t care either. Could you, maybe, go away?”

  Baby-face’s eyes narrowed dangerously, while aura-like energy began to vibrate in the air around him. From his pockets, a handful of sand streamed out to…

  “Find the olives?” Sage asked in a slightly-louder-than-necessary voice, drawing attention from all over the room in Det’s direction, as he walked over.

  Immediately, baby-face’s magic retracted, though he kept his eyes locked on Det.

  “Nothing even close to olives,” Det said to Sage as the other man approached. “Is there some secret fruit that is like an olive here?”

  “No, just olives,” Sage said, pulling the lid off a container in the salad bar to reveal exactly what Det had been looking for.

  “Damn,” Det said. “Totally missed those.”

  “Were you looking for the olives too?” Sage asked baby-face.

  “We’re not done,” baby-face said to Det instead of answering Sage, then turned to leave.

  “Pretty sure we are,” Det said.

  Another twitch of the eye, then baby-face was gone, stalking right out of the lunchroom without making eye contact with any of the cadets. The other two who’d been talking to baby-face before looked from the door to Det, then back again, but they didn’t follow the other man.

  Det gave them a polite nod, then got back to more important things. Namely, olives.

  “Making more friends over here?” Sage said, with both their backs to the crowd while they pulled things from the salad bar.

  “That was the other cadet who was with Granite on that first day in the arena,” Det said.

  “Granite…? Oh, the cadet who threw you at our lunch?”

  “That’s the one,” Det said. “Same kind of nonsense coming from this guy’s mouth, too.”

  “Which was?”

  “Accusations of us getting special treatment,” Det said. “Suggesting we bribed our way… somewhere… with money, or because we are from a famous family.”

  “Well, I am from a famous family,” Sage said. “And I think I’m starting to see the connection.”

  “Care to share?”

  “I know who that cadet was,” Sage said. “His name is Aarak. From a first-strata pillar. I asked around a bit about Granite too. Can you guess the connection?”

  “First strata?” Det said, since that seemed to be what Sage was getting at.

  “Yup,” Sage said. “Different pillars, but neither were wealthy. If anything, they might have been even worse off than Radiant. Since you were below the Mistline, Radiant had an excuse—kind of—for the troubles it faced. Their pillars, both of them, didn’t have a good reason, beyond not having any real natural resources worth anything.

  “What they did have were bad reputations. Some of the highest crime in the kingdom, a string of failed businesses, corrupt politics, etcetera. Granite’s pillar—Skytooth—is actually huge, bigger even than Mount Avalon, but mostly untamed. Mountain ranges dominate the place, so the regular population is pretty small.”

  “Regular population?” Det said, focusing on the two words Sage had stressed.

  “There’s a rumor Skytooth is a haven for pirates,” Sage said. “The Mistguard have investigated a few times, but never found anything. Or, at least, nothing substantial. Between the mountains and forests on the pillar, there are just too many places to hide.

  “Especially if the regular residents are helping.”

  “You think they hold it against us because they believe we had a better start to our second lives than them?” Det said, rolling his eyes as he spoke. Of course it would be something that… lame.

  “The simplest answer is usually the right one,” Sage said. “And, normally, I’d kind of feel for them. I know how much of a silver spoon I had. How many advantages…”

  “Like being able to watch the Get Cored trilogy as it was released,” Det said.

  “Definitely top three in my list of advantages,” Sage said with a grin. “Back to what I was saying, though, I get it. There is a huge disparity between people on the first strata versus the sixth. Even more so when you talk about pillars below the Mistline…”

  “I turned out okay,” Det said. “Calisco…? No comment.”

  “She could be exploding everybody who pisses her off,” Sage said. “Which she isn’t doing. So, all things considered, she’s decent. Aarak and Granite, though? There are plenty of things wrong with the Nivelhime Kingdom, but pirates are some of the worst of it.”

  “Top three?” Det said.

  “Yes,” Sage said. “They prey on the weak, pardon the dramatic expression, and do nothing but take, take, take. They need to be wiped out.”

  “Isn’t that what the Mistguard is for?” Det said to remind his friend they’d be part of the solution. Except… Sage didn’t have the same excitement on his face.

  “Mistguard isn’t perfect, either, Det,” Sage said, then shook his head and waved a hand like the comment didn’t deserve any more attention. “Back to Aarak and Granite. I’m not saying those two are working with pirates or anything like that, but they probably have a higher opinion of them than they do of anybody from a higher strata. There’s a lot of hate on Skytooth for anybody on a taller pillar. It’s one of the things that keeps them going.”

  “Meaning it’s something we’re going to have to deal with here,” Det said.

  “Yup,” Sage said, his face hardening in a way Det hadn’t seen before. “And if there’s only a few things I dislike more than pirates. One of them being bullies. If they think they can push us around, they’re in for a rude awakening.”

  “Like an alarm on the other side of the room?” Eriba said in her quiet voice, somehow right beside Det and Sage without either of them having noticed her.

  “A lot of like that,” Sage said. “And there’s only one real way to deal with it.”

  “Hit it with a hammer?” Eriba said.

  “Not… exactly what I was going to say,” Sage said with a laugh. “I would suggest standing up to it first, with the hammer as plan-B.”

  “I’ll build one this afternoon,” Eriba said. Her free hand came up with a thumbs-up. “Doing my part.”

  “I should’ve asked you both earlier,” Det said. “How is your magic training going? Eriba, did my advice help at all?”

  Sage sighed, while Eriba ducked lower behind her bangs.

  “Uh…” Det said.

  “Your success is very much the outlier,” Sage said. “Mine—and maybe Eriba’s, if she’s having the same trouble I am—is on the opposite end of the spectrum.”

  “It can’t be that bad…” Det started.

  Sage waved a finger sandwich to stop Det right there, then proceeded to toss it in his own mouth. When he’d finished chewing—Det waiting patiently and eating his own food—Sage continued.

  “It’s not just the lesson. It’s our particular kind of magic, I think,” the other Arsenal explained. “I can’t keep the… the artificer’s toy powered for more than a few seconds. It’s exhausting. I barely get it started, and I’m drained.”

  “Me too,” Eriba said. “The toys are energy-hogs. When I used my magic last time…” she paused to emphasize last time being when she was in a Wordless dungeon. “I could pull things apart and put them back together like they were always meant to be that way. This morning, even making one small change makes me out of breath.”

  “Any idea what’s wrong?” Det said.

  “Yes,” Sage said. “Normally, the toys have their own power source if they’re used… where the artificers intend them.” Meaning, the Wordless dungeon somehow powered the Wordless. Outside of the dungeon, Sage and Eriba had to do all the ‘powering’ themselves. “At E-Rank, it might be too much for us.

  “It’s a good workout, though.” Sage shrugged like he was clearly trying to find a silver lining aside from the finger sandwich he tossed in his mouth.

  “Maybe the afternoon will be different?” Det suggested.

  “Only one way to find out,” Sage said, and the three put down their now-empty plates to head back and get an early start.