J takes both of them through a door in the back of her office to a larger, mostly empty room made of sterile, white, smooth tiles with target mannequins on the far wall and storage cabinets full of precision measuring devices on the near one.

  J motions Allia to take a seat by the corner, then pulls out a smooth hand length tube on which she presses a button, causing the shimmer of a shield effect to spring into existence around Allia in a wide cylinder coming down from the ceiling before fading into invisibility.

  “For safety, just in case,” J explains. “I’ll be fine even if Sarrah causes an accident, but it would be irresponsible to risk a student.”

  Allia nods at the explanation then examines the visible enchantment work. From the symbols, it should just be a straightforward one-way shield effect (allowing her to leave at any time) with additional attributes to better protect from an array of standard energy effects. In addition, there are symbols that would block out all sound or sight from the rest of the room if activated, likely for privacy concerns. There doesn’t seem to be anything that might change the shield into a two-way barrier – trapping whoever is inside – but there may be other functions hidden in the ceiling.

  J proceeds to set up a number of complex measuring devices taken from the cabinets. Some of which she sets up around Sarrah, while others she attaches directly to her. About ten minutes of calibrations later J finally nods to herself, ready to begin.

  “If you don’t mind, I’ll draw some more blood first,” J says, to which Sarrah agrees. J applies a glass tube with a symbol etched to the wax stopper to Sarrah’s arm, causing it to rapidly fill up without piercing her skin. “Good,” J says, peering at the red liquid, “normal colour, no obvious abnormalities – the same as the sample I took this morning. If this one comes back the same from testing, then I’ll feel confident that you don’t have any blood mutations. Very fortunate – it’d be inconvenient if your blood no longer carried oxygen.” She laughs as if she had told a joke.

  Sarrah tenses at the laughter then sighs in relief, having apparently been somewhat worried about the unlikely possibility.

  “Not out of the woods yet. Blood’s the most easily fatal mutation, but there are others. Now put this on.” J hands her a transparent mask that covers the mouth and nose to trap breath. Once on, J measures her breathing for a minute, then has her perform some light, stationary exercise before measuring again.

  “Good, good. No abnormal emissions, and…” she flips through several papers in a file, “significant increase in performance since your last test a month ago. About twenty percent by some metrics. Standard. Heartrate also steady. I’ll schedule you with my assistant for a more extensive physical, but I’m confident you won’t just keel over before then. Meanwhile, contact me immediately if you have any of these symptoms.” J hands Sarrah two sheets of paper, the first full of tiny text. “The second page has a schedule of sprite coordinates where you can contact me. I live near the school, so I can meet you here, or the hospital if you think it’s necessary. Pay particular attention to unusual fatigue; you wouldn’t be the first to starve to death as we frantically try to figure out a unique dietary restriction.”

  “How often are blossomings fatal?” Sarrah asks, calm but strained.

  “Hm?” J intones as she continues to work her devices and takes samples from Sarrah’s skin, hair and saliva. “Oh yes, we don’t normally publish the exact figures, but in general? Not many. Most just get the hair mutations. A smaller but sizable subset get something minorly impacting, like webbed toes or sudden lactose intolerance or, less common, tolerance. About 1 in 10 have a major lifestyle change, such as obligate carnivorism or veganism. 1 in 100 gain a condition that requires medication to manage or other intervention for normal life. 1 in 1,000 have a mutation that would be fatal without intervention. 1 in 10,000 get something that requires intensive care or analysis, and 1 in 100,000 die even with the best medical professionals trying to figure out a solution. So, it’s a little bit more dangerous than we let on, but not anything I think you need to concern yourself with very much. Very few problem cases get past their first day without sign of trouble, and in a month those odds drop to 0.”

  Sarrah gives her friend in the corner a worried look, who, in turn, gives her a smile and thumbs up gesture.

  The testing continues. There’s a span of a minute where J turns the shield between them and Allia into a pitched black curtain for privacy, but otherwise the health screening portion progresses smoothly. They move to the magic portion of the test. Keeping the measuring devices on, J has Sarrah perform an array of standard freeform spells. A few offensive ones against the target dummies or manipulating various objects and measuring the results, such as seeing how much she can pick up from a set distance or timing how quickly she can freeze a volume of purified water. Finally, she takes another vial of blood in case the activity caused a reaction.

  “Good, good,” J mutters as she goes over the initial data. “About a 30% increase in potency over projected gains across the board – well within expected bounds for a blossoming. I expect you’ll have a doubling in power for most effects in roughly one month. Nothing very much better than anything else, so no clues for your manifestation. But worry not, I’ll find it.”

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  J turns to Allia. “I am afraid, however, that this is the part of the exam where I must ask you to leave. We will be wheedling out Sarrah’s manifestation and cannot risk you learning something about your friend that she would come to regret.”

  Sarrah objects. “I don’t mind if she learns about my power, whatever it is.”

  J gives her an acknowledging yet stern look. “Many said this before the policy, some regretted it. You must understand Sarrah, your manifestation will be a large part of you, will define you in many ways and not always good ones. Not all powers are straightforward. Some are horrifying or distasteful to many; others cause envy. We cannot allow her to know until you have a chance to consider if she should. If it might destroy your friendship or your life if the knowledge spreads.”

  Sarrah looks intently at her friend, then nods in agreement. “I still trust her, but I understand why you can’t trust my trust. It’s fine, Allia, I’ll be ok.”

  J smiles then turns to Allia. “I’ll give you a few moments together before you leave; it might help keep her calm.” J then switches places with Allia and turns on the sound dampening.

  “Hey,” Allia says, “you doing ok? I’m sure she won’t mind if you put off the rest until later; you already did the important part.”

  “No…No, it’s fine. Better to get it over with.” Sarrah laughs, looking around. “I didn’t expect all this stuff. Was it like this for you?”

  Allia laughs. “Ah, no. I blossomed before moving here and, well, let’s say the facilities in my hometown weren’t as advanced as these. No dedicated blossoming school, so it’s always a bit of a surprise when it happens there.”

  “Yeah… you don’t really talk about it much… Your hometown, I mean.”

  “Hm? Oh, not much to talk about. Just a small mining town in the middle of a small island. Only a couple of hundred people on the whole rock. Good library though, and enchanting shops – for the size. I guess I don’t have any strong feelings besides being glad I left. There’s so much better access to everything here.”

  “Yeah, I understand that.”

  Allia shifts nervously. “Right… By the way…Well, um, sorry. I mean, I um… When I manifested in my hometown? They just did some simple tests. They didn’t go through all the odds of something bad happening. When you told me you blossomed, I assumed all the danger had already passed. I probably would have reacted differently if I knew.”

  “It’s fine. I already did some home tests, so I figured I didn’t have the most common bad mutations. But thanks… and thanks for being here. It really helped.”

  “No problem. I’ll stick around outside for a little, just in case. After that, I’ll be in the enchanting lab doing some assignments until you come find me. It’s just a few buildings over.”

  “Thanks,” Sarrah says again as Allia goes.

  Allia exits the lab and then J’s office to wait in the hall, leaning next to the door with ears strained for alarming sounds.

  A few minutes into her vigil, there’s a slight scuffle followed by a low grunt which draws her attention down the hall to an open door. Creeping up to it, she finds the ‘Fire Witch’ – Naomi Winters – inside, pinning a male student against the far wall with two arms held out straight in front and speaking in a low voice with her back turned to the door.

  She’s not in the school uniform, but in a loose, padded black leather jacket of the sort used in the monster defence class, black cargo pants and combat boots. In one boot is a stiletto dagger and bulging from under her armpits are two cylinders that are most likely bullet wands.

  “Oh!” Allia says in face reddened surprise, alerting the two inside to her presence.

  Naomi snaps around, glares at Allia, then back at the boy. There’s a faint click as she releases him with a step back and growls slightly, “consider it”, then turns and walks away.

  “Oh, hey Naom…” Allia starts but trails off as the fire-haired girl strides past her without sparing her a glance.

  “Sorry to have interrupted,” Allia says to the thin, not muscular boy with glasses and short-cropped brown hair still leaning against the wall to catch a breather.

  “What?” The boy asks, clearly confused. “What do you…? Never mind. I need to go.” With that, he too rushes past her without another word.

  “Huh,” Allia says, watching him go in the opposite direction of Naomi. After both disappear, she turns back to J’s door and stares for a moment before turning the other way and heading to the enchanting lab.

  Allia has the basic handheld tools to enchant at home, but the lab has much more precise and robust ones that make the process easier in every way. When she gets there, there are a dozen other students already working on their own projects. Trying not to disturb them, she signs in with the campus security and finds an open workstation.

  The work is dull, with no designing involved. Just referencing standard enchantments and carving them onto pre-made standard item bodies. It was a bit more interesting earlier in the semester when Allia had to shape the item body herself, but since then, it’s been dull repetition interspersed with slight tension as she tests each object out for the first time. No inherently exciting items either. It would be interesting to try a bullet wand, but that’s restricted until she gains her certification. Until then, it’s just mildly useful household objects like toasters, heating pads, cooling pads and sprite feeders. Though the last one is at least a bit complex.

  Allia doesn’t mind the repetition, though, but leans into it. Not content to just create the assigned objects from a reference, she decides to try to make them from memory. She has two failures and one fire, which she smothers with her manifestation, but eventually gets the temperature control on a pad to work.

  Looking up from her work, she sees that the shadows have long since lengthened and faded into the darkness of night. The other students have all gone and even the older student assigned to monitoring them has drifted off.

  “Huh, I guess it must be really complicated,” Allia mutters, looking at the building J’s lab is in through the window. “I guess…yeah, nothing else to do here.”

  She puts all of her creations in a box, which she seals and labels with her name, then puts in the correct storage area, signs out with security, and then heads out to the courtyard.

  However, just as she reaches the large double door leading outside, she finds herself knocked to the ground as all the windows to the outside shatter inwards with a deafening boom.