“Arenya, you are called to report.”

The Dean was not much like Professor Kazurist. He was short, pale, balding, humorless, and wore a perfectly tailored suit over his robe. Arenya could not possibly imagine him smiling.

Of course, the situation they were in did not help. She couldn’t even focus on where they were - it may as well have been a black void for all she could focus on in the room. The peering gazes of all the professors made Arenya want to curl up into a ball and cower… but of course, that was not an option. Instead, she stepped forward. “Yes, Sir Dean.”

“You stand accused of unauthorized access to the graduate laboratories and malpractice therein, including the use of improper magic with intention to incriminate a fellow student. How do you plead?”

Arenya gulped. “Not guilty, Sir Dean. Not to most of it.”

The Dean tsked. “Not to most of it, you say. Let us consider the charges. Did you enter a graduate laboratory?”

“Yes, Sir Dean.”

“Did you enter the laboratory with the proper permission of either a graduate or equivalent, or an exemption from such rules?”

“S-sort of, Sir Dean.”

Another professor, one Arenya couldn’t see behind the tall lecturn, handed a paper to the Dean. This seemed to be normal procedure - all on the council could present questions, but they had to be asked through the speaker. “Sort of? Elaborate.”

Arenya stopped for a moment. She’d schooled herself on ‘proper talking’ when the accusation came in, but it was so much harder when everyone stared at her so. “I do not have independent permission to enter the graduate labs. I entered as lab assistant for Cartalis, who let me in. You already spoke to her.”

The Dean nodded. “While in the lab, did you use improper magic to incriminate a fellow student?”

“No Si - Yes, Si - umm… Not really, Si…” What did Kazurist tell me it was called again? “Permission to elaborate, Sir Dean.”

“Granted.”

“Magic was used to be made aware of whether a student did so… took a particular action. It was Cartalis’ idea, but I didn’t argue against it. The magic was not improper. I didn’t want to report it to you, but we felt it important to know for ourselves if he did this.”

Another piece of paper was passed to The Dean. “If 'he' did this. There was one particular student you were worried about, and one specific action you believed he would take. Is this correct?”

“Yes, Sir Dean.”

“What was the action?”

“Mal… malfeasance and, umm… improper…” When Arenya searched her mind for the sterile, official terms, her brain stumbled and her mouth failed her. She sighed. “We thought he might screw up Cartalis’ research.”

Several agonizing minutes passed as Arenya watched professors exchange notes.

When The Dean spoke, it was with a different tone of voice. Although Arenya could not quite tell what the difference was, she knew things had - somehow - just gotten more serious. “In light of this accusation, we demand you tell us precisely what happened within and near the lab. Leave out no detail you can recall.”

“Yes, Sir Dean.”

“Ruby.”

“Ruby.”

vmmmmmm

“Arcane flame.”

“Arcane flame.”

Arenya stifled a yawn, trying to rub her eyes before remembering she wore goggles. Fascinating things were going on, she was sure, but she had no idea what they were, and Cartalis - for once - wasn’t bothering to explain.

Well, that was unfair. Cartalis hovered over a piece of increasingly molten metal, staring at it with utmost focus as she tried to focus a very narrow strand of mana through only the fourth channel… or something like that. The explanation before they’d entered mostly went over Arenya’s head, but she had the gist of it. It apparently took either extreme attention to not make a mistake or specialized equipment, and given Cartalis had invented the process herself, the latter didn’t exist. As such, Cartalis was so focused she couldn’t spare the time even to get items herself.

Arenya wasn’t sure whether that was true, if it was just an excuse to justify getting Arenya access to the graduate labs, or if Cartalis was so excited to be working in a lab after a month that she didn’t want to waste even one second getting equipment if she didn’t have to. Either way, the end result was that Arenya stood next to an increasingly large pile of items and handed them to Cartalis as she asked for them.

She was almost relieved when she saw the door open, until she saw who stepped through.

“How’s it hanging, Arenya? Blond Ice Queen?”

“Fine, Zander,” Arenya forced out through gritted teeth.

Cartalis didn’t seem to notice he’d even entered... before standing upright and staring at him. "Wait. What year are you in?"

Zander grinned and ran a hand through his blond hair. "Third."

 You're one of the three lower-year students allowed in the graduate labs?"

Zander shrugged, approached and began placing supplies at the station next to theirs - unnecessary in the otherwise empty lab. “What can I say? I do good research. I was about to ask you the same thing. What’re you newbies doing in these la-”

“Tongs.” Cartalis had evidently turned back to her work, not interested in answering his question.

“Tongs.” Arenya contemplated, just for a moment, “accidentally” flicking her tail in his face as she turned to retrieve the tongs, but ultimately thought better of it. “If you must know,” she said after Cartalis had taken the tongs from her, “Cartalis has been granted special permission for the graduate labs so that she can experiment with post-forge channel straightening. She’s testing whether a reheated blade helps with her current technique. I’m her lab assistant.”

“Mana conductor.”

“Mana c-” Zander grabbed the mana conductor from the pile and moved it to his station just before Arenya could take it. “Don’t you have your own equipment?”

“Yeah, but this one was closer. We share the equipment, don’t we?” He took the opportunity to take a step closer to them.

“Mana conductor,” Cartalis repeated. Arenya wasn’t sure if she was even aware of what was happe -

“I refer to you, womanizer. Give me the Zorniz-damned mana conductor and then return to your station, or I’ll wrest it from your hands like your namesake.”

Well, that answered that question. Even Arenya couldn’t help but find that a little harsh, until she remembered the story of how they’d become enemies.

“Fine, sheesh. Give a guy a break.” He handed Cartalis the mana conductor before going to the chest of spares in the corner.

The next few minutes passed in a tense silence, broken only by Cartalis asking for one or two more tools as the process began to wind down. Arenya couldn’t help but glance at what Zander was working on. It was some mysterious-looking device, with wires, coils, and dials all over it. He kept bringing up various tools, glancing at readings, and then making the most minute adjustments. Its purpose was unclear, but Arenya was forced to admit, it looked interesting.

She kept looking Zander's way until he caught her eye and flashed her a smile. At that, Arenya and looked over the rest of the lab, lest Zander get the wrong idea. It was a sight more impressive than the lab all students used, or at least much cleaner. The equipment was newer, the safety wards much more potent, and a variety of chemicals and devices were available that the regular labs didn’t have access to. It was all safe as long as you knew what you were doing, she’d been assured, but nevertheless it was a bit unnerving to be in the same room as items that - if mishandled - could explode in their faces.

A lot of the equipment was far beyond anything covered in class. Arenya wasn’t even sure what a mana conductor was, other than a way to focus channels more precisely.

“All right,” Cartalis said after a few minutes more passed. “I’ve set the metal in the kiln. It will cool over the next day and a half, and then we can return to see how the channel straightened. Let’s put things away.”

Arenya began returning the items to all their locations throughout the room, but as she returned from returning the third, she noticed Cartalis slipping a pen and piece of paper into the pile. She looked at it.

Tripwire? Zander gets close so he can ruin it, we’ll know. Y/N

Arenya grimaced. Cartalis was so confident Zander would try to ruin the experiment that she wanted to set a tripwire? She hesitated…

When she closed her eyes, the memory of their first meeting played on her eyelids. She picked up the pen and circled “Y”.

As they exited the room with the final items put away, Arenya whispered, “How confident are you that… it’ll be needed?”

Cartalis waited until they were safely in the hallway to respond. “Almost entirely, I am afraid. He’s not above such petty things. If he does, I want to know.”

“Do you want him to, so you can get him in trouble?”

Cartalis stopped walking for a moment, then stared at the wall. She sighed. “Do you think I should want him to?”

“Well… didn’t he try to, you know -”

Cartalis interrupted with a derisive snort. “The tale grew in the telling. He tried to drag me to a date he’d planned at the park, not his bed. He’s an idiot, a womanizer, and petty, yes, but he’s not a molester. We needn’t involve the higher-ups, at least not yet. Now let us get something to eat. My brain needs nourishment after so much reshaping.”

“While we were eating, Cartalis reported the wire was tripped. She said we could check tomorrow to see what he’d done, because if he’d broken it it was too late anyway and maybe it was a false alarm. Then the next day we were stopped by a professor and, umm… told we we’d done something bad in the lab and we had to report to the council that afternoon. Then it was now. Sir Dean.” Arenya cursed herself for her awkwardness telling the tale.

The Dean folded his hands. “So you never looked at the lab after you left. You do not know what happened in it?”

“I have guesses, Sir Dean. Permission to elaborate?”

“Denied. You a-”

“Grant it, Ben.” That was another Professor - Arenya hadn’t the faintest idea whom, though it sounded like a woman’s voice. The voice was followed by several gasps.

The Dean - Ben - rubbed his temples. “Fine. Granted.”

“I believe…” Arenya cleared her throat. “I believe that Zander approached the kiln with the intention of subtly disabling it to throw off Cartalis’ work. He found the tripwire only after he tripped it, but he must have been doing a mana analysis on the kiln or the metal and found it then. Cartalis is good, so she wouldn’t have made something he could see without looking closely. If he was just adding his own work to cool in one of the other bays, he wouldn’t have been looking for that kind of thing, and anyway we would have figured out he hadn’t done anything when Cartalis checked the focus. So when he saw it, he knew we’d caught him, and then he must have reported us to get us in trouble out of revenge.”

“Do you believe that Zander did, in fact, sabotage the work? Permission to elaborate granted.”

Arenya shook her head. “No, Sir Dean. Cartalis said that he probably did, but I think that he tripped the wire and changed his mind.”

The Dean leaned back in his chair. “We shall begin our private deliberation phase now. Normally, this takes about one hour, but this case has proven to be complicated. Expect to be there some time. You are dismissed.”

Arenya was led into a small side room, with one door back to the questioning hall and one door leading to who knew where. Both were locked. All that was there was a small bench and a few old textbooks.

After a few minutes, she heard a knock on the door. “Arenya, you have a visitor,” called out a voice. Arenya sighed in relief - the voice was Professor Kazurist. “Normally the rules don’t allow visitors, but he’s from out of school and definitely wasn’t involved, and you might be in there for a while, so I managed to convince Ben that it wouldn’t hurt. You get the final say, though.”

It dawned on Arenya who the visitor must be just after she said “Let him in.”

She found herself blushing madly as he entered. “So, uhh… Not how I expected to find you. Things going well in the city?”

Arenya found herself trying to hide behind her hair. “Hello, Daniel.”