This is what it feels like to be feared.
I leaned against the door and slid to the floor. Everyone's expressions had been seared into my mory. And I couldn't help but constantly replay the last few seconds in my head, hyper-focused on the smallest details the instinctive flinch from Devon when I stood; Lynus' nostrils flaring in alarm even as he planted himself in front of Kevan; the creak of the table as Jerric's hands tightened around the wood...
They were talking in low voices. I couldn't catch anything, but they had to be talking about . Their muffled words were stripped of aning, which made it worse. All I could hear was the undercurrent of emotion that rose and fell as their debate wore on.
The panic had drained away completely by now. There was only a sense of utter emptiness. It reminded of the despair and depression we experienced under Kevan's ensorcellnt last week.
At least these feelings are mine. Really mine.
I found that thought strangely comforting. The fact that I was comforted that I was feeling depressed brought a short bark of cynical laughter out of . And then the tears ca, burning out of my eyes.
"Stay in the here and now." My father's voice ca to mind. That was his constant refrain through the years whenever one of my manias made it too hard to bear with people or the environnt around and I worked myself up to the verge of a breakdown. It was a lifeline now as I floundered in the mire of this new despair threatening to swallow .
I tried to ground myself within the present mont, to stop myself from spiralling down endless trails of worries and anxieties by paying more attention to physical sensations. Stay in the here and now. Notice the tears, hot when they first spill, then cold as the heat leeches into the air.
The breathing. Shaky. A catch in the lungs every second or third breath. Feel the muscles tighten.
Right hand in the hair; fingertips on the scalp. This feels nice. Gently comb through it. Ouch, the watch strap.
Left hand on the floor; fibres of the carpet. Oh, it's actually quite a rich texture.
Right leg growing numb. Shift a little. Knee up. Better.
Left leg ankle hurts. Small adjustnt. Slight pain on the ball if I put it like this. Just an awkward position. Leave it there and focus on it.
It took ti, but it worked. I found enough strength to get off the floor, stagger over to the bed, and crawl under the covers. I just wanted to slip into the oblivion of sleep.
My watch vibrated. 7AM. It felt like I had only just closed my eyes a mont ago. But the room was now dark and the little bit of light that was peeking out between the window blinds had the cool quality of the early morning. Ambrose's sleeping form was in the other bed.
I lay there and listened to my own breathing for awhile. It took a great deal of effort for to finally sit up and slowly gather my things so I could get to the shower.
Devon was already seated at the table, drying his hair. He stopped and looked up as I closed the room door behind . There was a pause before he nodded at . "Hey."
I nodded back. "Hey."
"You're up a little late today," he said, resuming his towelling. "Don't take this the wrong way, but you look bad."
It occurred to that I hadn't even changed out of my day clothes before crashing yesterday, but right now it was hard to care about my appearances.
"Yeah, well... I feel bad."
"You'll feel better after you shower. Always works for ."
"Mm. I'll do that."
Here and now, I reminded myself as I got into the shower and stood under the stream of warm water. The tension of the previous day seed to leech out of and into the water before spiralling down the drain. I watched the rivulets of water swirling across the tiles, tracing transient shapes and patterns.
I spent a longer ti than usual inside, and it did help. By the ti I was out Devon was already in the kitchen area, laying out what he needed on the counter. Now that I didn't feel like disappearing off the face of the world anymore, I got changed into a fresh set of casual clothes just a T-shirt and a pair of relaxed trousers and went over.
"Need help?" I asked tentatively.
"Not really," he said, busying himself with sifting flour. He looked up and gave a brief smile, then gestured for to co around the counter. "But that doesn't an there's no room for another cook."
The brief pang at what I thought was a rebuff was replaced with relief. "What're you making?"
"Pancakes. We've got everything for the dry mix here, so we're starting with that. This can keep for a while, so I thought we might as well make more now."
Devon gave the general proportions of the flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar, and got to mix them into a container he had prepared. Out of that batch, we scooped so out into a mixing bowl and stored the rest in one of the overhead cupboards.
"Now for the wet ingredients." From the fridge, Devon procured eggs, poured out milk in a asuring cup, and set aside several sticks of butter in a shallow dish. "We want the eggs and milk at room temperature, not cold, otherwise they'll make the mix too inconsistent. Normally you have to take them out earlier and wait, but we're arcanists," he winked.
He spent a minute running through a glyph sequence in his head, which hastened the process. I touched the side of the asuring cup, marvelling at how it was no longer chilled. The butter had also softened considerably. "That's not Basic Set stuff."
"Nope. We can talk glyphs later. For now, the rest is pretty simple, just toss everything into the mixing bowl. But crack the eggs first."
"I know that," I muttered, rolling my eyes.
"I didn't," he grinned. "I think I was four or five, and the cook told that, so that was exactly what I did. I tossed it all in."
That got a brief but proper laugh out of . Following his instructions, I started mixing everything as he heated up the skillet and oiled it.
"Dev, about yesterday"
"Okay, the mix is ready," he cut in as he looked over at the mixing bowl in my hands.
"But it's still got so lumps in it?"
"Trust . If the mix is too smooth, the pancakes won't turn out right either. There's a balance. Now we let it rest for about five minutes."
I set it aside and tried to broach the topic again. "Okay. So, yesterday"
"The heat's got to be just right." He was focused on the fire, though there wasn't much to do there since he was just waiting for the skillet to warm. "Too much and the pancakes will burn. It should be hot enough by the ti the mix has settled."
"Devon."
He sighed and turned to with the air of soone who was bracing for a blow. "Yes?"
"I wanted to apologise again. Especially if I scared you."
"Yeah, there's plenty to be scared of," he murmured, looking away.
"But we're still good, right?" I asked hopefully.
"Uh, yeah. We're good." He looked uncomfortable, like I was forcing him into sothing. A feeling of helplessness washed over . Would the others be like this too? Would I ever be able to nd this breach?
"Devon, I... I don't want to force you to be friends with . And I understand that the stuff I did yesterday was way over the line, and... and I don't want you to be nice just because you're scared of or sothing."
He took in a deep breath. "It's not that. Well, not completely. I think you're a good person, but... the past two weeks have been weird. It's not just you. Everything about life has been weird. And then yesterday what you did was just the biggest cap of weirdness on top of everything, and it was also scary, and it's... a lot to deal with."
I blinked, having only just been slapped out of my self-absorption far enough to realise that of course I wouldn't be the only one feeling the effects of Ambrose's Prophecy. The others were apparently a part of it too. Surely they'd have their own improbable, wild monts. What had the past two weeks been like for Devon? Or any of the others, for that matter? What had their lives been like, especially during those tis when we weren't together?
"You wanna talk about it?"
"About... the weird stuff you've done?"
"About this, that, all of it." I gestured vaguely to encompass everything. "We've been so busy with studying, we haven't exactly stopped to think of how crazy all of it is. I an, with the Prophecy, and the Chosen One, and just the Academy itself, right?"
"Yeah. Yeah, you're right. And with what Jerric and Kevan were saying yesterday, I an... I didn't co here to be a part of so Empire-level stuff either. I just wanted to make my parents happy. Do my best, beco an arcanist, do my bit for the family, live my life. You know?" Devon let out a sigh as he scooped so batter and ladled it into the skillet
"Er, has it been five minutes?" I pointed at the mix.
"What? Oh, it's fine. I go by gut feeling anyway." He jiggled the skillet to encourage the mix to spread evenly. "But anyway... ever since we started here, it's been one wild thing after the next, and it's almost nothing like the prep schools. Where's all this heavy stuff coming from? It doesn't feel like the prep schools got any prep done on at all!"
"Tell about it," I muttered, thinking back to the indignation I had felt last week after having my expectations subverted in Double Thau and in Kant's class. "My parents are both arcanists, and then I et people like Kevan and Lynus and see their Double Thau stuff, and go through Kant's class, and it's the first ti in my life I've even known about how you can sequence things this way. And all that stuff about fra-shifting from Reeves? Life would've been easier if I had known that from the start."
"You know what, though?" Devon flipped the pancake with a deft flick of his wrist. "This sounds crazy, but I think I'm learning faster here. Things just click, you know? I used to be a lot slower with things. Like with glyphs? I get them now. And it feels pretty good. But it's also... not normal. I don't know how to explain it."
"Yeah, about that" there's a Prophecy that probably has sothing to do with it. But a sense of panic rose again and choked off the words. I clenched a fist, then decided to go down a different branch of the conversation. It eased enough for to speak. "... I've been feeling that too. Guess that cos with good lecturers."
"I don't know," he said dubiously. "I feel like everything's mud to in the classes. But things click later. Even if I'm just listening in, I pick things up from the discussions you guys have. If anything, being with you guys has helped the most."
"That's" because there's a Prophecy, and I think it's making us learn faster. "...nice to know."
"So what I an is... even if you scare a lot with the things you've done, Caden, I'm... glad you're here? Because like I said... you seem like a good person. And I get the feeling you've got a better handle of all this than most of us, so I'd appreciate it if you just..." He slid the first pancake onto a waiting plate and smiled ruefully at . "Don't let drown and disappear."
"I won't," I said solemnly. At the very least, I could tell him that in my own words and an it. He seed considerably cheered up.
After that, Devon insisted I try my hand at the skillet. The next two pancakes were horribly misshapen, but he refused to take over. Instead, he prepared a second skillet and start pumping out pancakes alongside , and demanded that I continue so that I got so practice in. By the end, we had one stack of pristine pancakes and a second stack that went from barely passable at the top to utterly wretched at the bottom.
"Everyone starts sowhere," he said encouragingly as he eyed the ones I had made, though his lips twitched.
"They all look the sa when we eat them and they co out the other end anyway," I grumbled. He made a face of mock disgust and laughed.
"Okay, now we just keep them warm until the rest are up. This is the sequence I use." He gestured and brought up a line of glyphs. It was extrely brief.
"That's for proximate ambient arcana." I paled a little. "Did you"
"Yeah, ran it by my Advanced Glyphs tutor before I used it. She said the theory's good. So the central parts are the glyph for heat, obviously, then proximate ambient arcana to act as a sort of wrapper, then the Basic Set glyph for deceleration. The rest are just so clauses to tighten the aning so you don't need to focus so much."
"Why not surface ambient arcana? And why not seal it completely?"
"Surface makes a smooth layer, but it's a little too perfect. Proximate makes it fuzzier, which is what I wanted. That lets the heat leech out a bit. You could seal it completely with either, but for so types of food, if you keep all the heat in, it becos overcooked even in storage. So this actually slows the cooling process, it doesn't stop it entirely. You can add in so numbers to tweak speed, but if you concentrate enough on the glyph and you're focusing clearly, you can do without the numbers."
"This is great work, Dev," I said, recognising how much more elegant it was compared to the clumsy modifications we had made to our bolts in Double Thau and Thaumaturgy classes.
"Thanks," he grinned. "It feels good to be good at sothing, for once."
"Dev, I told you, don't sell yourself short."
I fixed the sequence in my mind and sent a small wisp of my auric arcana around my stack of pancakes, where it fused with the ambient arcana and shaped it accordingly. A shimr briefly played across them.
The door to the twins' room opened. Lynus and Kevan erged just in ti to see my casting.
"Don't blow us up," Kevan muttered darkly as he sank into a chair. Lynus gave a slightly apologetic shrug and lightly cuffed his brother.
Devon patted my shoulder, grinned, and put the saddest-looking pancakes onto a plate that he slid over to Kevan. "He can have the shitty ones."
As Lynus dissolved into laughter while Kevan spluttered indignantly, I felt the weight over my heart lift a little more.
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