Time at the Academy slowly became less of a torment and more of an experience as the days went on.

There weren’t any days that didn’t carry the anxiety of being discovered, but Bird had taken Mono’s advice to heart. When guilt arose, he tried to remind himself that he had earned his place here and was working to level the playing field. When isolation started to set in, he’d look around for Clyde and his friends to spend some time with. When he felt like too much of his presence was an act, he let his actions be a little more true to himself.

It wasn’t a perfect situation in Bird’s eyes because of all the maintenance it required, but it was something he noted with some semblance of a smile. It was better, and he knew how to work with better. It was starting to actually be fun.

The basic lessons of the Academy moved along well enough for him. They were dry, but his growing comfort and confidence let him start asking questions during the classes. The persona of Felix Barda had been planted as a young man from the countryside, who had experience with alchemy through some passerby and small constructs; it let him question basic concepts without arousing suspicion. Bird had no qualms with looking foolish from time to time, and the act seemed to put him further under the notice of the other students.

One thing Bird learned of Academy’s culture was a particular distaste and hypocrisy regarding mistakes and imperfections that had nearly gone right over his head. It was like mistakes were acknowledged in conversation and in lessons as necessary, but if you started talking to someone about their work or history every error was avoided. You weren’t supposed to talk about failed attempts on a project, you just said it was “in progress”. The books didn’t discuss all of the times something must have gone wrong before it went right.

In Lowmyre, mistakes were necessary and typically impossible to avoid given the state of most equipment. They were lessons that you had to learn to get something right, because there were no proper manuals or schools to teach a correct way to do something; everything was trial and error.

The teachers seemed mixed on the depth of Bird’s notes and his willingness to ask a question or provide an answer that might be wrong. There was an earnestness and a willingness to err that seemed so out of place in the pursuit of perfection that permeated the Academy. Some appreciated a student that wanted to absorb the knowledge the way Bird did, and others almost seemed to cringe at the almost careless abandon.

The willingness to be wrong had embarrassed him a few times, but Bird realized the practicality in spite of that. It stopped a large social circle from forming around him for one. A handful of people seemed fine or friendly, but most seemed to want a little distance from his portrayed ignorance.

That suited him just fine. Despite Mono’s advice, he didn’t want to expand too quickly; excursions to the tavern with Clyde, Bead, and Grace had been enough for him. More people meant more chances for something to slip, or for stories to get crossed.

***

Bird slid a few coins across the counter, stowing the new journals in his bag as the merchant counted out his change. The stipend was still holding relatively strong, but after two months of buying basic supplies and refreshing his stock of journals it was starting to show its wear.

The jingle of copper hitting the bottom of his pocket reminded him to start looking out for means to make some coin. There were apparently things that students and Academy members could do for coin; Bird would have assumed as much, given that even a small pile of silver wouldn’t last forever, but he hadn’t yet heard what these “contracts” entailed. It was a thought for another day, he reasoned.

His main concern at the moment was dropping off his books in his room and setting up the next bundle for delivery. Worried that a student leaving every weekend might arise suspicion, Bird had decided to start randomizing when he left; he had even left the bundles under an old stump along the way at one point, having spoken to Mono and Foresight about the idea of a dead drop.

Once that task was done, Bird gathered himself for an important meeting. He was terrified in a way, but it blended enough with excitement that he didn’t care to find out how much of one or the other there actually was.

During the exam, he had used part of his Calamity to dampen and control a volatile mana-gem to power a golem. It was a feat that warranted some amount of prestige, but his natural magic had drawn some more attention as well. Specifically, from a researcher who supposedly specialized in the studies of natural magic.

The letter detailing the meeting had been left at his door, giving him a time and place over the weekend to meet with one Rigel Brookstone. Bird had been pressed a few times by classmates and some of his lecturers for information about his magic, but his reluctance to speak of it and general ignorance of whatever buzzwords they were listening for had diminished the attention to nothing over the weeks. It was a deficiency that he hoped this meeting would rectify.

When the walk from the dorms took him to the main structure of the Academy, Bird began to hesitate just a little. It was an imperious edifice, comprised of several interconnected spires; the sheer height of it seemed to scrape the clouds from where Bird stood at it’s base.

The key to Goldwind and the Academy, as far as Bird had learned, was to act like you were supposed to be there. Admittedly he was supposed to be here, but the false bravado helped him keep moving, helped him ask for directions, and helped him step into the elevator.

It was a construct that he hadn’t seen in Lowmyre, and the concept scared the hell out of him. A combination of pulleys and levitation spells would lighten and move a box full of people up and down the towers. He knew that Goldwind had the money to construct things more reliably than Lowmyre, but just having an inkling of how many different ways it could break was nearly enough to make him chance the stairs instead.

The floor he was directed to was too high to be anything of common traffic, evidenced by how many people exited on floors before Bird’s destination. It made sense if this was purely for the exploration of natural magic in new students. If there was a new group once a season, and every new group only had a handful of people with Calamities - natural magic, Bird corrected, still slipping from time to time - then it stood to reason that there wasn’t going to be a constant flood here.

A short walk beyond the elevator had him questioning the point of this floor. If he was to visit a specialist, there wasn’t a reason it couldn’t be on the normal grounds of the Academy if that was all they did. The decorations, gaudy by Bird’s aesthetics and tastes, positively glowed with a pomp and circumstance that he already disliked. The door wasn’t much better.

He stood for a moment, wondering how far this meeting would go. Bird had some questions burning at the back of his mind; this was a chance to get some questions answered about Calamities. But he couldn’t get caught. He couldn’t expose his Weirdness to get those answers.

To the Academy, Bird just had great hearing. They couldn’t know about his hands until he was sure it wouldn’t blow his cover.

“Enter.” A voice called from beyond the wood, cutting off Bird’s raised hand as he prepared to knock.

Rigel Brookstone was dressed far less ostentatiously than his environment predicted, though his manicured appearance did little to convince Bird that he wasn’t going to be a prick. The pencil thin moustache turned what should have been a neutral expression into a sneer, like the world was a simple but constant inconvenience. His voice had carried through the door with less spite than Bird would have expected if he had seen Brookstone’s appearance first.

The older man was seated behind a large desk, sitting perfectly straight in a large chair.

“Hello, I’m Bir - I mean, I’m student Felix Barda. I got a notice to come speak to you about my natural magic?” Bird was happy he at least half caught himself. Brookstone seemed content to look him over for a moment, considering the statement. The scrutiny made Bird less than comfortable.

“I appreciate your prompt arrival. I am Rigel Brookstone.” He began, leaning slightly forward as he steepled his fingers. “I will be blunt. Contrary to the work of Archivist Nai’Lin, I do not believe there is a consistent way to categorize instances of natural magic. We are going to have the most brief, structured conversation I find possible regarding it and your experience with it, and I will recommend a course of action. Understood?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Take a seat.”

Bird didn’t exactly like the nature of this man, but the Weird at least gave him some credit for not being unnecessarily shitty about all of this so far. It was uncomfortably to the point, but he at least hadn’t began rambling about inconvenience and his own station; Bird had overheard so many damn conversations where people just turned a greeting into a pissing contest of endured trifles.

When he spied a white robe hanging on a hook beside the desk, Bird realized that Brookstone deserved a little more credit for not immediately being a prick about station. Based on the students he had been around, Bird was shocked this man wasn’t already swinging his dick around.

“Where should we begin?” Bird shifted his eyes back to Brookstone. He glanced to a small stack of books at the corner of the desk but did little else with them.

“What is your natural magic, to the best of your ability to describe it?”

“I can hear things that most other people can’t seem to.” For a brief second, Bird considered the rest of his Calamity. Now wasn’t the time.

“You can hear things that others cannot hear. Things that are too quiet to hear, or things that no one else would be able to hear even with sensitive ears?”

“I… wouldn’t know. Both, maybe?”

“Give me an example.”

“I can hear very quiet things, like conversations in other rooms or small animals scurrying about.” Bird tried to gauge his reaction to the eavesdropping potential. There wasn’t much of one. “At the same time, I can hear noise from constructs, and things powered by mana or filled with it. It’s like a hum.”

That peaked a little interest in Brookstone’s eyes.

“I understand that you were able to uniquely manipulate a mana-gem during your entrance exam. Was this due to this hum?”

“Yeah. I could hear it, like it was at a certain pitch. I happened to be tapping at the glass containment jar for the golem I was repairing, just trying to think. After a few moments, I realized they sounded really similar.” Bird shrugged when the older man motioned for him to continue. “I don’t know; I’ve heard about similar sounds being able to cancel each other out before, or if two things vibrate out of sync they’ll lose some of that energy. I experimented in the moment and it worked out.”

“Interesting. Tell me, what is magical in this room then?”

The request caught Bird off guard.

“I have no idea.”

“You said you could hear the hum of mana. Listen, and tell me what is magical.”

There were a few things that were obvious just by looking around; the motes of light in the lamp above them, for example. That wasn’t the point though. Bird closed his eyes slowly and listened, trying to search for the hum he head heard from the gem. It was something he had heard before, working on constructs with Foresight and tinkering in his own room with miscellania; before now he just hadn’t made the connection between that hum and mana so distinctly.

Brookstone watched as Bird started pointing somewhat generally, before beginning to hone in very accurately. There were a few things that anyone could have pointed out; magical lights and a few curiosities that he had picked up over the years. Then, Bird began to call out the locations of less obvious enchantments and constructs. An enchanted book on the shelf, a suit of armor that hid a golem, and even a few items in his desk.

Then, unbidden, Bird opened his eyes and started rattling off which of the items he thought was the most powerful. There was some room for debate based on usage and user, but Brookstone admitted himself a little impressed at the general accuracy. Bird was unable to remark on what kind of magic a given object had, but the ability to identify the presence of mana was impressive regardless.

“Interesting. Accurate, but there’s room for improvement.” Brookstone leaned back, thinking. “You may have a rather unique talent. It may be considered less useful at first glance, and perhaps a weakness given the right opposition, but I think it has potential.”

“Less useful than what? I’m not too familiar with what common natural magic is.”

“Common is the wrong word for it; it is a rare gift.” Brookstone corrected, eyes closed in thought. The response seemed practiced, and didn’t seem to interrupt whatever other train of thought he was riding. “With no real physical indicators, there are few ways to determine if a person has natural magic short of examining aptitudes or strange abilities. The invention of the scanner you utilized after the examination was a welcome step in streamlining the process, but it is not infallible.”

Bird sat silent for a moment, a question percolating in his mind.

“Does it ever manifest physically? I’m not from around here, but I saw some people on my way in that -”

“If you are referencing the Weirds, do not bother. They do not have natural magic.” Bird’s expression faltered for a moment.

“Why are their bodies like that then?”

“They are not infused with natural magic like you, they are polluted. Contaminated. Their bodies have mutated because of poor alchemical practices, and now they reap the consequences of that with warped bodies and a lesser ability to utilize magic. I find it laughable to insinuate their bodies could have natural magic.”

That statement hit Bird in just the wrong way. He clenched his fists under the edge of the desk, just out of Brookstone’s view. His mouths ground their teeth as he struggled to keep his face straight.

“I see.”

“Do not dwell on them. They stay in their slums well enough.” He waved off the thought, finally opening his eyes. “I will be in contact with you soon, I believe. There is something I wish to look into regarding your hearing. Now, are there any other talents associated with your natural magic that you know of?”

“No, just the hearing.” Bird smiled, tugging his gloves up just a little higher. He didn’t think it wise to mention the mimicry or the mouths. He didn’t want to.

What he wanted to do was deck Brookstone in the face.