I jumped up, trying to act calm. ”Hey. I’m Adam.”

  “I can see that! It’s written above your little fucking head!”

  “Fair point,” I laughed, trying to ease the tension. It didn’t look as though it would work as anger radiated from every pore.

  “Why are you sitting in our dorm?” He thrust a chunky finger into my chest.

  There was an element of the ridiculous to the scene. Now that I was on my feet, I towered above him by over a foot. If I had to guess, I’d put him at around five feet tall at best. Five feet wide as well. His own version of the navy and gold uniform barely contained his wide shoulders.

  I expected he was used to being shorter in most confrontations, and it didn’t seem to bother him. I brought his identifier up so that I could get a better idea of who I was speaking too.

  Name: Torma Heldrin

  Title: Foot of the Ironguard

  Level: 19

  Class: Warrior/Mage/Tradesman

  All three classes. That seemed impressive, along with the title.

  “I was sent here by the Dean. New roommate. I’m to finish the year in the academy.”

  “Looks like you’ve been through a rough time,” a female figure said, appearing from behind me like she’d stepped out of a shadow. She was dressed in a loose-fitting example of the uniform with trousers more like Buddha pants, and a thick navy cloak. She looked to be of the same race as the Mine Mage, though she looked younger, healthier, and a little taller coming up to my shoulder.

  Name: Ressa Nessoran

  Title: Duchess of Nessoran

  Level: 20

  Class: Warrior/Mage

  I judged quickly whether I should tell them everything, and decided I didn’t have a better story to tell them and they’d probably find out most of it anyway. So with a deep breath, I laid it all out bare.

  “Well, I’ve not had a good couple of weeks. I was captured from my planet by Unalaran hunters and sold to Archons. Apparently, the portal to my planet is only open for eighty days, and after that, it closes for around fifty years. After that, I was put in a torture box for twelve days before being made to work in a mine for three days.”

  “Oof, rough ride,” Torma muttered, seeming to have lost all of his earlier hostility. He wandered off toward the kitchen area.

  Duchess Ressa continued to watch me with interest, a wry smile on her face. “They actually made you go in the Ennochamber?”

  “Yeah. Have you been in one before?”

  She snorted. “Hardly. They only use them for super low-level people. But then, if you were just taken, I assume your base level needed a little help?”

  On one hand, she seemed friendly, which was good, but I also knew why I was put here now. The Union students made sense now in the context of a stuck-up Archon saying it. Basically, any student who wasn’t Archon. But I did have one huge concern. So far, everyone I’d met had an impressive sounding title, just when I thought I couldn’t feel any more out of place.

  “Why did they move you out of the mining camp?” Torma asked. “Seems to me they’d have been better off continuing to level you there until next year’s class.”

  “Because he’s unlocked Mage, Torma,” the Duchess said in a mocking tone. “Come on, use that rockhead of yours.”

  He grunted and then frowned as he looked in the bread container. His eyes rose up slowly to look at me, all traces of good humor vanished. “It appears my bread is diminished. Any idea, Adam of no title?”

  “Never mind that,” Ressa snapped at him, then focused on me again. “What was your base Harmony?”

  This I felt a little more uncomfortable with sharing. But I was trying to make friends here, and I couldn’t see what harm it would do. “14.”

  Both of their eyebrows raised at that.

  “Damn. That’s impressive,” she said.

  “What was yours?” I asked.

  “That is a very personal question,” she said with an offended huff. “You can’t just go around asking people what their base Harmony is.”

  Torma chuckled.

  “What? You just asked me!”

  “Yes,” she said, slowly walking around me, looking me up and down like a piece of meat. “Because it’s very interesting information and I suspected you didn’t know how rude it was to ask. Consider it your first lesson here. Don’t tell anyone your base stats. Especially in this Archon cesspit. Every edge you’ve got against the arrogant fools counts.”

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  I supposed it made sense. I offered her a double thumbs up. “Did I say 14? I meant 12.”

  She laughed and dropped into the next couch along. “You’ll do well here, Adam. I think I like you already. And 14 Harmony? You could be a top Mage one day, let alone a Warrior mage.”

  “How’s your fighting?” Torma asked, coming around the couch with the remainder of the bread.

  “I’d say it’s decent. I’ve got no idea what the level of skill is like here, so it’s hard to compare.”

  Two more people walked into the room, both as eye catching as the other but for different reasons. The first was a huge figure, with bone-white skin, easily as big as the Unalarans. His uniformed top looked to be spray-painted on, showing every single ridge of muscle. He had a smooth bald head and eyes like black orbs with no visible sclera. His thin lipless mouth widened into a terrifyingly wide smile as he saw me.

  Name: Yoru Yara

  Title:

  Level: 20

  Class: Warrior/Mage

  Behind him came a red-skinned woman, and she looked small in comparison, but I guessed she was a similar height to Ressa, around five-foot-six. But where Ressa looked slim despite her baggy uniform, the newcomer was heavily muscled, wearing a navy vest that kept her arms free, and loose-fitting trousers allowing for maximum mobility, I guessed. Her catlike eyes were yellow with slitted pupils, and they were firmly fixed on me. She grimaced to reveal a row of sharp teeth, complete with extended canines.

  Name: Ellaazi Stormhold

  Title: Initiate of Roak

  Level: 19

  Class: Warrior/Mage

  I realized she wasn’t grimacing at me, but the bread in Torma’s hand.

  “You ate it all,” she growled.

  With a quick head shake and a grin, he pointed a thick, accusing finger at me. “Our new roommate snaffled your half.”

  Once again, I raised my hands in a conciliatory gesture. “Yeah, sorry, I wasn’t sure of the etiquette here, but…”

  She leaped across the room in a terrifying burst of speed. I could have dodged if I was in any way prepared for the suddenness of the move. Instead, I fell back into the couch with her hands on my chest, sharp nails digging in, and her feet either side of my waist.

  “…I was starving.” The words came out way higher pitched than I would have liked.

  “So you stole my bread?” Her face was only inches away from mine now.

  “Probably should have tried some fruit,” the mountain named Yoru said, plonking down next to me. “Ressa and I are not half so precious.”

  “Yess!” Ellaazi hissed. “Fruit. Take fruit! No one will miss that.”

  “It won’t happen again,” I promised, gently trying to push her back. “I didn’t recognize any of the fruit. For all I know, it could poison me. Bread seemed a safe choice and…”

  She pushed her claws a little deeper, not quite breaking cloth or skin, but it hurt. “Eating bread can kill you too,” she warned, then leaped off me and stalked away to her bed, laying down on it facing away from us, clearly sulking.

  Yoru patted my shoulder with a huge hand. “They should have delivered more snacks for your coming if they knew. Typical that they didn’t. Not even a bed for you.”

  “He smells like a greedy rat,” Ellaazi said from her bed. She’d rolled over and was glaring at me. “He should sleep on the floor.”

  “Come on, Ellaazi,” Ressa said. “He said it was an accident and he won’t do it again. Be nice to our new friends.”

  “He’s no friend of mine. I don’t like his smell.” She rolled back the other way, huffing to show her continued anger at me.

  “I wouldn’t like the smell of me either,” I replied, trying to ease the tension with her a little. “I’ve been in these clothes since I was taken.”

  “I didn’t want to say anything,” Ressa replied. “But you should definitely get a wash.” She pointed behind the kitchen. “There’s a tub through the back.”

  I hadn’t even noticed another door.

  “That’d be great… I, er, is there anywhere to wash clothes?” I gestured to my ruined rags which now had additional holes in the chest from my brief interaction with Ellaazi.

  “Those need burning not washing,” Yoru suggested, putting his feet up on the coffee table and leaning back with hands behind head. “Have they not even sorted your uniform out yet?”

  “I think it was all a bit rushed, so I doubt anything’s been sorted out for me. These are the clothes I have. Hell, this is everything I have.”

  “You’ll definitely get a uniform,” Ressa said. “You won’t be allowed in class without one. They pride themselves on it so we’re all equal here. Apparently.”

  I chuckled at the sarcasm. “How’s that working out for you all?” I asked.

  “About as well as you’d expect,” she replied with a grin. “Tell you what, though. You get in the shower. I’ll go up to reception and see if we can sort you some clothes out until they fit you for your uniform.”

  I was genuinely shocked by the offer. ”You would?”

  “I just said I would,” she replied with a frown. “But now I’m not sure if I want to. Don’t you know how to take somebody at their word?”

  “Sometimes, but we already have history over the Harmony thing, don’t we?”

  She shrugged, a cheeky smirk crept on her face.

  “Do we have towels or anything?”

  She nodded. “Yes, plenty of clean laundry through there. Just don’t use the brown ones.”

  “The brown ones?” I was curiously.

  “They’re Yoru’s. He has… tummy troubles now and then”.

  The man-mountain next to me bristled. “You…” He looked to me. “I…”

  Torma laughed. “Poor cleaning staff couldn’t get the stains out first week, so now they just deliver brown towels and save themselves the trouble.”

  Yoru finally managed to pull his words together into an outraged but mostly coherent sentence. “It was once! I am being punished by the hierarchy ever since! Institutional bullying, I tell you. And when I graduate and become a powerful Warrior Mage, there will be repercussions!”

  Chuckling at the interaction, I also decided it was a good time to extricate myself from the conversation. As I passed the counter, my stomach rumbled, and I pointed at the fruit container. “Any of the fruit edible straight away?”

  “Yeah,” Ressa said. “And you’ll be glad to know, there’s plenty going spare as only Yoru and I eat it.”

  “Try the pink one with the green spines,” Yoru said. “It’s my favorite, and before you ask, no, it doesn’t cause toilet issues.”

  “Good to know,” I said, picking one up. It was hard and unyielding like a plastic toy. “Any special way to eat it?”

  “Throw me one over,” he said.

  I launched the star-shaped fruit in his direction. He snatched it from the air and took a mighty bite straight into the middle. His broad, flat teeth sunk in effortlessly, and he began to chew, looking happy as a pig in shit.

  I nodded appreciatively, picked up another and took a bite of my own.

  My teeth sank in a little on the pink flesh, but the green ridges were like biting into a tree branch. Bitter juice squirted into my mouth. Heat rushed to my face and my eyes began to stream uncontrollably.

  “Gah! What the hell!” It was spicy and bitter all at once. Burning and stinging, my lips and inside my mouth felt like I’d drunk acid.

  Everyone was laughing apart from Yoru, who was still happily munching the horrid thing. Even Ellaazi had rolled over to face me again so that I could see her laughter.

  “You not like it?” Yoru finally asked, wide grin stretching his face.

  I was too busy splashing water into my mouth and across my face from the sink.

  “It is considered a delicacy on my planet. Maybe you prefer something sweeter?” He walked over and nudged an oval, yellow fruit toward me.

  I recoiled. “I think I’ll take a shower and work out what’s edible later, thanks.”