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\'One, two, three…\' Cerlius thought, counting the number of steps from Mage\'s Shadow to the first floor of the Magic Academy.

\'You should be careful around that Trenton fellow,\' Larque warned. \'He was testing you.\'

\'Fifty-seven. He is of no concern to us. Fifty-eight. I can handle him. Fifty-nine.\' He counted out two-hundred steps to the first floor. Trenton and Lance halted for a second to catch their breath but Cerlius didn\'t share their fatigue. \'Maybe it\'s because I\'m a kid…or I guess I\'m supposed to be an adult.\'

He was led from the stairway to the academic area\'s hallways. He kept his distance from the Watchmen but was still close enough to read a few more plaques. A pattern made itself clear: the closer a Watchmen was to his classroom, the newer its plaque was. Cerlius read descriptions of mages from centuries ago, a group called "Human Elementals".

These people had studied a single elemental property of magic and had furthered the academy\'s understanding of it to the extremes. Volcanoes erupted with a single fire spell, islands formed with a single earth spell, wind spells moved fleets of ships, etc. Each and every one of them had gone missing under the same circumstances: "Evidence of a struggle at their place of residence. Assumed dead." Their faces looked familiar. He could almost hear their screams.

The group continued past Cerlius\'s classroom, passing the statues of more recent figures. Cerlius had gotten distracted counting steps and reading the various plaques and accidentally bumped into Lance, who had halted in front of one of the Watchmen, or at least what was left of it. There was no head, no torso, and barely the remnants of robed legs.

Cerlius apologized but Lance wasn\'t looking at him. The instructor sighed, knelt in front of the graffiti-covered legs, and drew a filthy rag from his spatial ring. Some of the statue\'s plaque had been scratched but Cerlius barely made out the name: "Sozo".

Trenton lowered his head and waited for Lance to wipe the insults off. By the end, some of the ink had smeared onto his already ink-stained sleeves. "Do you mind me asking," Cerlius chose his words carefully. "What this statue meant to you?"

"I don\'t really know anymore," Lance said as he put the rag away. It seemed as if his heavy eyes drooped even more. "I thought I once knew her enough to call her my sister, but her mind was corrupted by dark magic. She betrayed me and the academy." He showed his three-fingered hand, now stained with ink. "She attacked me so I had to kill her. I\'d appreciate if you don\'t spread this story around. There are many who would look at me different because of this, and not in a good way." Cerlius nodded.

Trenton lifted his head and put a hand on Cerlius\'s shoulder. It was warm, as if he had been clenching it. "Come, let\'s get you to your room. You and Lance both need some sleep."

It was four hundred steps going from Sozo\'s statue to the other side of the academy. Lance and Trenton opened a section of wall with their Allpasses to reveal a long hallway, much like the instructor\'s quarters, except that this hallway had plain wooden doors squeezed into the walls. Each door barely had the clearance to swing open, like a cheap inn. The only exception was the stone door at the end, slightly tarnished with age.

The white stone tile had continued, but the ceiling and the few bits of wall between the doors had become mirror like surfaces. Cerlius was pushed down to his own door, near the end. Trenton drew out a key out of his spatial ring and unlocked the door before pushing Cerlius in the room. "I don\'t get a key?" Cerlius asked.

"Why would you need a key?" Trenton asked. "You\'re not allowed to leave your room unless instructed to." He closed the door and locked it. Cerlius waited for a moment before putting his ear to the door. The duo\'s footsteps faded.

He smiled and took out the small pouch of gunpowder which he had hidden in his sleeve. He might not have a gun but pure explosive force had its many, many uses. However, he didn\'t need it in that moment, not that day, not that week, nor even the month. For now, that pouch was nothing more than a liability. The Watchmen, the instructors, and the Demis were all obstacles in his way, ones he needed to understand before he could plan around them.

Cerlius glanced at the bed, feeling a burst of weariness that nearly brought him to a knee, but he couldn\'t allow himself the luxury, not yet anyway. He pulled at the drawers to the wooden desk under his single square window, finding only basic school supplies but nothing else of note. A dozen gray robes were neatly hung in the small broom closet to the right.

There was no trap door under the red circular rug at the center of the room. The small nightstand with bread and water was made of metal so he couldn\'t splinter a leg off. He knocked on every inch of wall, ceiling, and floor, finding that none of it was hollow. The mattress was tied to the bedframe, and the pillow to the mattress, but that was only a guess as Cerlius didn\'t see any rope nor any other sort of binding.

\'Where are you planning to keep that stuff?\' Larque asked. \'Under your pillow? In your spatial ring? I bet they\'ll search your room when you\'re away, and your spatial ring might have some kind of monitor on it. The blackpowder also has a smell so you can\'t keep it in the open.\'

\'Then I won\'t hide it.\' Cerlius thought as he placed the sac of blackpowder on the desk. He loosened the binding so that the innards were in danger of spilling. He then placed an ink well next to it and stabbed quills into the blackpowder, covering the smell and disguising the powder as a holder for his provided quills.

\'The instructors will find that easily…\' Larque sighed.

Cerlius clicked his tongue. \'I don\'t think that the instructors would waste their time searching the rooms of students. They\'ll rely on the Demis. Olpi, she will have spread the word to the other Demis about me. Even if they find me out, they don\'t know what blackpowder is and they might take my side. By saying thank you, I may have gotten on the academy\'s bad side but the reverse is true for the Demis. I showed understanding, care.\' He changed into a grey robe and lay down in the bed. His gut sank along with the rest of him into his unnaturally soft mattress. The sheets were soft but the pillow was softer.

He held his hand in front of his face and pinched his nose. The small pain brought him a smile. \'It\'s hard to believe that this flesh was once bone.\'

\'That\'s why you need to escape, to remember who you once were.\'

\'Escape…I\'ll do that at some point.\'

The demon scoffed. \'Some point? Escape should be your main objective. This place is not where we belong.\'

\'So I thought,\' Cerlius responded as the darkness of sleep began to overtake his mind. \'But I can\'t help but think that this place is hiding something, something which was once mine.\'