Chapter Four: Back to School
It was only a week into classes and Elodie already couldn't wait for the semester to end.
In order to accommodate her first year applied and second year theoretical courses, her schedule was, in Lily Freya's words, absolute garbage. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday were mostly normal days; no more busy than they'd been the previous year, at any rate. In fact, Fridays she had potions right after lunch and then a free period, so there were much worse ways to start the weekend.
Her Tuesdays, however, were absolutely packed. She had her outdoor applied class first thing which meant getting up early to meet outside so she could hike around the forest — or worse, the swamp — for hours on end. Then she had a full day of regular classes followed by astronomy at night. Astronomy would become less painful as time went on, the days got shorter, and class could start earlier, but as things were, she was out and about for over twelve hours on Tuesdays with no breaks outside of meals and the time she'd spend running between classrooms.
On Thursdays, she had a free period first thing followed by the simulation class just before lunch, and a full afternoon. Elodie had optimistic plans of sleeping in Thursday mornings, but knew realistically that once classes started to get going, it would be much smarter for her to spend that time in the library. Though during her first week, she would be doing neither.
Instead, Elodie arrived early to the simulation classroom; a small auditorium with seating surrounding the simulation chamber at the centre. The chamber was a metal dome set into the floor with a row of windows wrapping around it that were blacked out, but Elodie knew that with a touch of magic they could be made clear, allowing students in the auditorium to see their classmate's simulation. The room was empty — understandable, since class wasn't due to start for over half an hour — so Elodie made her way around the chamber to its control room.
Professor Palladium had approached Elodie earlier in the week and asked if she was willing to do a quick solo simulation, to provide a demonstration for the actual first years in her class. Elodie remembered how nervous she had been her first time in the chamber (she'd had few chances to transform before that and already had an idea that there was something wrong about her magic, even if she didn't know the extent), so despite her surprise at being asked, she had agreed. Palladium had asked her to come in early to make sure everything was ready to go and Elodie wondered if he'd only asked her because he knew she had that free period.
Elodie stopped when she reached the control room and peeked inside. Palladium was there, sitting at the simulation chamber's control panel, and there was someone else with him — a man judging by the voice — who Elodie didn't recognize. He was also sitting down in what she quickly realized was some sort of high tech wheelchair rather than a stationary chair like Palladium's and all she could tell from where she was standing was that he had bright pink hair held up in a bun. While Palladium was focused on the control panel, a halo of holo screens surrounded the other man. She wondered if maybe she should have gone to orientation after all since she hadn't heard anything from other students about new staff members.
Elodie knocked on the open door to let them know she was there and Palladium turned to greet her with a smile.
"Oh, Elodie," Palladium said. "Thank you for arriving early. Why don't you come in?" He glanced at the other man and then back at Elodie. "This is Tera. He's an artificial intelligence expert from Zenith who's helping me set up the new and improved simulation chamber." Elodie nodded, still unsure if this was something she should have already known.
Tera looked over at Elodie and gave her a quick wave. He was younger than she would have expected an expert in anything to be — probably not long out of school himself — and her chest ached when she saw his face. For a moment, she didn't see Tera; she saw a little boy with the same tired yet bright eyes who would have killed for a fancy Zenithian wheelchair to race his little sister down the hall. But that was silly. When Elodie looked at him for more than a second, Tera bore very little resemblance to her brother. There was a passing similarity his thin lips and long flat nose, but Tera's short beard did nothing to hide his sharp jawline and high cheekbones which were a stark contrast to Léon's rounded face.
"New and improved simulation chamber?" Elodie asked through the lump forming in her throat, forcing those thoughts away. It was bad enough that she'd recently had a hard time keeping her parents from her mind; she didn't need every stranger in a wheelchair to trigger memories of her brother too. Besides, it would be unfair to Tera to always be comparing him to someone else.
"That's right," Palladium said, smiling. "After what happened last year, I decided it was a good time to do some upgrades. The structure was redone and the system we use to generate simulations has been completely overhauled."
Elodie had the good sense to look sheepish and hoped that Tera, who had turned his attention back to his holo screens, hadn't seen. Palladium didn't seem to notice her reaction, or at least was pretending he didn't, and continued speaking.
"The new programming is more versatile and combined with larger memory banks, that means I'll be able to create a huge variety of highly controlled yet dynamic simulations to challenge students this year."
Palladium's enthusiasm was palpable, but as he kept talking, kept getting into more and more technical details about the upgraded simulation chamber, Elodie found herself losing track of the explanations and just nodding along as he spoke. When he turned back to the control panel and started pulling up different diagrams and lines of code, Elodie completely lost the plot. At one point, Tera turned and caught her eye, grinning at her before returning to his holo screens. Elodie wondered if he understood exactly how unintelligible this talk was for someone with no idea how simulations worked, or if he was just somehow sensing the depths of her confusion.
"But I want to run some more tests before I try anything completely new, so you don't need to worry about all of that yet," Palladium concluded, turning away from his control panel and back to Elodie. "You'll get to see some of the new terrain generation and AI, but your actual scenario will be a fairly standard retrieval. Nothing you didn't experience last year."
"What will I need to retrieve?" Elodie asked, glad he had finally said something she could understand.
"Nice try, Elodie, but no hints," Palladium said with a grin. "This may be a demonstration for our new students, but it's an actual exercise for you. I am interested in seeing how you perform even if this simulation isn't part of the first year curriculum." He looked back to the screen and dismissed all the windows he'd pulled up, leaving only a live view of the inside of the chamber and a clock. "It's almost time for the other students to arrive, so I best go meet them."
Elodie nodded and remained in the control room after he left. Going outside to mingle with the first years wasn't her idea of a good time right now. She knew eventually she would have to interact with them more for field exercises and group simulations, but having to explain to them who she was and why she wasn't in any of their other classes felt like a daunting task. (It felt like admitting she was a failure.) (Wasn't she though?) Next week would be their first proper outdoor class rather than an orientation, so she could deal with it then. For now, she stayed in the control room, watching Tera work.
He acknowledged she was still there, with brief eye contact and a quick nod, before returning to his holo screens. Static displays and flowing lines of code both surrounded him and Elodie couldn't help but be impressed, though also a bit jealous. She had always been interested in computer coding and Zenithian magitechnology, but had never been able learn to use either. Trying to code was like learning another language and Elodie had always been awful with languages — she remembered how much of a struggle it had been when her parents made her learn Magian or when her mother unsuccessfully tried to teach her Melodian. And, well, even if she did learn the language, someone who couldn't control their magic well enough to interface with magitech had no hope of ever being able to use it properly.
Interfacing was something Tera didn't seem to have a problem with. An orb of light sat in his lap, cradled by his left hand. His fingers glided across the orb's surface, small gestures with his hand translating to large movements in his halo of screens. With his right hand, he would reach up and interact with the displays directly, beckoning one closer or dismissing another when he was finished. It was so impressively fluid and Elodie realized she must have been completely unsubtle with her staring when she noticed Tera periodically sneaking glances back at her.
"So," Elodie said, suddenly feeling awkward. "Professor Palladium wouldn't tell me anything, but do you have any hints?"
Tera grinned. "I don't think the professor would appreciate me spoiling anything." He lowered his right hand and started tapping it against the armrest of his wheelchair. His left hovered over the orb of light, though the screens stilled around him. "But, well. Say, hypothetically, of course-"
"Hypothetically, of course," Elodie echoed, willing to take anything she could get.
"Say you encountered a creature." Tera raised his right hand again and drew one of the screens towards himself. It was one that only had code on it. "You don't know exactly what it is or how smart it is. It doesn't immediately do anything to hurt you, but you get the feeling it could hurt you if it wanted to, and it's acting like it might. What would you do?"
"I would probably just run away, to be honest," Elodie said. It would have been nice to say that she'd be brave and meet the creature head on, but that would have been a lie. "Maybe find somewhere safe to hide." Though there probably wouldn't be anywhere to hide in the simulation. Elodie had learnt that the hard way the previous year.
"What if it kept following you?" Tera asked, not looking away from his holo screen. Was that his way of confirming that hiding wouldn't work? She looked again at the code he was leisurely scrolling through and wondered what it would tell her if only she could read it.
"Are they like attacking following me or just being weird following me?" She asked.
Tera laughed, but didn't reply right away. He had dropped his left hand from the orb and was tapping his fingers against his thigh. "That would depend on you and whether it sees you as a threat."
"You really think anything would see me as a threat?" Elodie asked.
Tera looked her up and down. "Yeah, probably not." Elodie puffed out her cheeks and stood on her tiptoes to try and make herself look bigger. Tera laughed. "You said it, not me. But yes, at this point, they probably see you as a threat."
"I guess I'd try to figure out why they see me as a threat and then stop being like that," Elodie said after a moment's thought. She wasn't sure how realistic that was given how hard it was for her to think in a stressful situation, but that was the best she had. "Or maybe I'd just run away faster."
"You don't want to fight them?" Tera asked. He had stopped the scrolling of his code and for the first time since Elodie walked in, all of his holo screens were completely static. When he turned to look at her, Elodie once again saw Léon's bright, curious eyes rather than Tera's.
"No," Elodie said. She turned to avoid his gaze and scratched a nonexistent itch on her right shoulder. "I'm uh not very good at magic."
Tera hummed like he'd just learnt something interesting — which Elodie supposed he had; there weren't many students at the universe's premier school for fairies who would admit to being bad at magic — and his halo sprung back to life around him. The screen he'd been consulting while they spoke was dismissed. Elodie waited for the follow-up question, but it never came.
"Your instincts aren't bad," Tera said after reorienting himself in his holo screens. "I think you'll do fine." He placed his left hand back on the orb of light and then added: "There will be more than one creature though, so be careful."
Elodie nodded. His hypothetical had obviously been a hint from the start, but she wasn't sure what to make of him giving up all his plausible deniability if Palladium found out they'd spoken. They lapsed into a comfortable silence. Tera continued to work his magic with the holo screens while Elodie wondered if maybe she should have prepared a bit more. It wasn't much longer until Palladium returned to the control room.
"It's time to get things started," Palladium said enthusiastically. He left as quickly as he came, heading for the entrance to the simulation chamber.
Elodie and Tera both nodded and Tera pulled up an entirely different set of holo screens as Elodie headed for the door.
"Good luck," Tera said, without looking back.
"Thanks," Elodie replied. She stopped at the door and looked back at Tera. "Go easy on me." It was only half a joke.
Tera turned and shot her a wry grin. "I'm not making any promises."
As the simulation chamber hummed to life around Elodie, she couldn't help but think it didn't seem much different from the previous year. Some of the ceiling panels were a slightly different colour from the rest, but that had been done during the initial repairs, immediately after Elodie had melted them. So most of the structural upgrades were internal, then, and the panelling probably wasn't any more Elodie-proof now than it had been the year before. That was unfortunate.
She was still staring at the ceiling when the boot up sequence finished. The ceiling panels morphed into rocks as the inside of a cave shifted into existence around her. The chamber's windows, filled with the curious faces of first years and letting in plenty of light, were gone, leaving Elodie in near total darkness. A lit lantern sat on the ground just in front of her, casting a soft warm glow on her surroundings.
Elodie immediately relaxed. Of all the things that scared her, the dark wasn't one of them. Her eyes being hypersensitive to light was detrimental under the Magian sun, but gave her a leg up in environments like this. Still, her night vision was far from perfect, and there was no reason to do anything stupid. Behind her was a dead end, so Elodie picked the lantern up off the ground and headed forward.
The cave was gently sloping upwards and uneven underfoot. Elodie was glad she'd had the foresight to wear her most comfortable running shoes. With no guidance from Palladium about what the simulation might be, she'd had no way to properly prepare for it. Good shoes and her sunglasses, hanging off the neckline of her shirt and bouncing against her chest with each step, were all that she'd brought.
As she climbed, Elodie occasionally passed branching side passages in the cave. She'd stopped at the first few and looked inside briefly for any signs of movement, but had seen nothing. With the thought of the creatures Tera mentioned at the front of her mind, she had, at one, closed her eyes and cast out her awareness as far as it could go without needing to draw on her own magical energy. The ambient magic in the darkness of the cave only showed her a little bit farther than her eyes, but it was something, and it showed her nothing. Oh well, if the simulation wanted her to stay in the caves and get attacked by creatures that lived there, then that's what would happen.
After just a few more minutes of walking, she saw natural light filter around a bend in the tunnel. Elodie slipped on her sunglasses and picked up her pace. It would be just like Palladium to send a cave creature at her when the surface was in sight, trying to catch her off guard. But nothing came, and Elodie emerged from the cave to find herself at the bottom of a dirt slope. She looked up and squinted against the blazing midday sun, even behind her sunglasses. Elodie wondered if Palladium would be willing to turn down the sun during her future simulations. There was no good reason why it needed to be so bright. It wasn't testing anything other than her eyesight and she already knew she would fail that test every time.
She quickly rubbed the bright spots from her eyes and headed up the slope towards the city that sat atop it. It was strange. Not the city itself — from where she was standing, it looked very similar to the downtown core of Magix City — but the fact that there was a city at all. Palladium had always been big on of the voice of nature and after a year of simulations that took her to forests and mountains and even deserts, Elodie had started to wonder if the simulation chamber was able to create urban environments at all. Maybe it hadn't been and this was a feature of the upgraded chamber's new software. Or maybe this had always been in the programming and it just took putting a Zenithian in the control room to bring it out. Elodie stopped. Was Tera in charge of the simulation or just making sure it was running properly? She shook her head. It didn't really make a difference.
Reaching the edge of the city, Elodie stepped onto the road. Rather, she stepped onto half a road. The border between the dirt slope cut the road cleanly in half, leaving only one lane. She ran her foot along the seam, found it was perfectly smooth, and suppressed a laugh. The simulation chamber might have been new, but it looked like it would need some more work before it could really be considered improved. The terrain generation had been much smoother the previous year.
Out of habit, Elodie looked both ways as she crossed the half street into the city. The road extended into the distance in both directions. Elodie couldn't see any cars driving on it and wondered if the simulation chamber would even be able to handle creating a fully populated city with moving people and cars. That would take a lot of computing power and magic, and she'd never seen it create more than a handful of animals — or monsters — at once.
Elodie took a closer look at the lantern in her hands once she was safely on the sidewalk. It didn't look like anything special and she couldn't feel any magic coming off it, so she figured it really was just a lantern to help her through the dark cave. It was weighty in her hand, so she decided to leave it behind, setting it down on the sidewalk.
Satisfied, Elodie headed into the city. There were no immediate hints about where to go — no conspicuous signs or trails of magic to follow — and after a few minutes of nothing sticking out at her, Elodie decided to just head for the tallest building she could see. It was pretty close by, and a high building with a flat roof would be a much better place to have a look around.
She debated transforming and flying over, but decided not to. Tera's creatures hadn't made an appearance in the cave and the streets looked deserted from street level, so what if they were looking for a flying target? It would be safer to walk until she saw one. Besides, even if transforming and flying didn't take that much magic, she didn't really want to do it needlessly. If Tera's creatures did attack her, she might need all the magic she could safely muster to fend them off. And if it was flying when she was perfectly capable of walking a few blocks that put her over the edge and made her lose control, she would be mad at herself. The last thing Elodie wanted to do was damage the new chamber the same way she'd damaged the old one, especially not during her first simulation in it.
As she approached the skyscraper, the city around Elodie started to change. Some of the buildings she passed looked fine on the outside, but open or missing doors revealed damaged interiors, burnt out and blackened with soot. Rounding the last corner before the skyscraper, she saw some with visible fire damage. There was no smoke or ash, so she suspected the damage must be old, but the distant memory of watching her childhood home burn from the inside tickled at the back of her mind and the smell of smoke crept into her nostrils. She crossed the street to give the damaged buildings a wide berth and quickened her pace.
When Elodie reached the skyscraper, she was relieved to see that its doors slid smoothly open to reveal an undamaged interior. She made a beeline for the elevator which came when she called and Elodie hit the button for the highest floor.
The elevator opened into a hallway rather than the roof. Elodie walked its length, inspecting the doors as she went, and found one with a label on it reading: "Roof Access." The door was locked and even though it felt flimsy enough that she thought she could force it — a bold thought for someone without much physical strength — Elodie decided that maybe it was time for a bit of magic. She cast her awareness into the darkness of the lock and found that the shadows inside remembered the shape of the key that would unlock it. With a small pulse of her own magic to give that shape form, the door clicked open.
A short flight of stairs later, Elodie found herself standing on the roof. There was no wind and she wondered if that was a choice to save processing power or a mistake. Either way, it was unnerving. She walked to one edge of the roof and saw where she came from. The rocky slope she emerged from was pockmarked with cave exits, so the tunnels must have been more extensive that what she'd walked through. Beyond that was a forest. It was nothing but trees, as far as the eye could see, that suspiciously lacked detail or variation past a certain distance. Not the way she was supposed to go, then.
She jogged to the other side of the roof and looked out over the city to see something significantly more interesting than a tiled forest texture. In that direction was more city, interspersed with strange spires. They were glossy black and reflected an oil slick of iridescent colours, and reminded Elodie of the beetle shells she would sometimes grind to use in her potions. Some came to sharp points while others had flat tops, and Elodie guessed that whatever she was supposed to retrieve would probably be on one of those flat rooftops.
Her instinct was, once again, to just look for the tallest one. It was situated at the edge of the city — which mercifully looked to be a lot smaller than Magix City — exactly opposite the slope with the cave. Something on its roof reflected golden light. Definitely the way she was supposed to go, then. She thought about flying directly there, but again remembered the creatures had not yet made an appearance. Maybe her assumption they were looking for a flying target was correct after all. Walking would be safer and easier, and it looked like she was already half way there, if not more, so it wouldn't be too far.
Although — Elodie glanced back at the door and thought about how long it would take to climb back down the stairs, wait for the elevator, and make sure she was going the right way once she was back at street level — she supposed she could save a little bit of time. The first years had to be getting bored watching her just walk everywhere, even if it was the prudent option. As long as she stayed close to the skyscraper, a little bit of flying shouldn't attract too much attention. She hopped over the safety railings on the edge of the roof and jumped off before she could second guess herself.
For a moment, Elodie was weightless, but soon enough gravity started to tug at her. Her stomach lurched and felt heavy with exhilaration as the air rushed up around her. She flashed into her fairy form about half way down and slowed her fall. By the time she landed, it was as if she'd only jumped a few feet rather than dozens of storeys, but that didn't stop her from stumbling. Elodie hadn't transformed all summer and had forgotten just how high the heels on her boots were. At least she still had the hang of using her wings.
Elodie detransformed and continued on foot in her much more comfortable sneakers. It wasn't long before she started seeing the black spires appearing between buildings. The pavement around them was torn open as though they'd pushed their way out of the ground and seeing them up close, she realized they were buildings in their own right. They had jagged cutouts at ground level that could serve as doorways — though they were taller and narrower than human-built doors would be — and square-ish holes in the walls that could be windows. The insides were empty, other than a spiral staircase in the centre.
Elodie caught her first glimpse of Tera's creatures as the tallest spire came into view over the city skyline. It was peeking out from behind the empty doorframe of a burnt out building and it appeared to be some sort of insect creature, with compound eyes and an exoskeleton that had the same iridescent quality as the towers.
They locked eyes and the creature tilted its head, a curious gesture, before it withdrew into the building and out of sight. Tera had said they wouldn't attack unless provoked, but he'd also said their behaviour would seem aggressive and Elodie wasn't sure she agreed with that. It might look strange — like some monster from a low budget horror movie that looked too fake to actually be all that scary — but it was still just watching her from a hiding place.
She proceeded cautiously anyways. When she reached the forest's edge, she found herself a few blocks over from the tallest spire. Just like where she'd emerged from the cave, there was half a road running along the border between the trees and buildings. Some of the road had been torn up by lumps and tendrils of the iridescent black material, but it would be easy enough to go around or over them. It was, however, a very good thing she'd worn her best running shoes.
Elodie had noticed more and more of the bug creatures as she'd walked, but hadn't paid them much attention since they'd all been timid like the first. In the forest, however, they were more numerous, and bolder. Some completely emerged from behind the trees to watch her, their carapaces splitting to reveal gossamer wings that twitched and hummed. Okay, that she was willing to consider aggressive behaviour, and she was suddenly very glad she had decided to stay on the ground. But still, they were staying in the trees, so it was fine.
Elodie had just finished climbing up an area of torn up road and iridescent tendrils when suddenly it was not fine. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a creature hurtling towards her and she threw herself to the ground to avoid it. The creature sailed over her head and slammed into the building behind her, damaging the brickwork before it popped out of existence. Was that supposed to happen? She didn't have time to think about it before the floodgates opened and more creatures started throwing themselves at her.
Unsafe on her tendril perch, Elodie jumped down, landing hard, the impact reverberating up her shins, and started to run. What had provoked them? All she'd done was a bit of climbing! A creature slammed into the ground in front of her before disappearing and Elodie stumbled backwards, falling onto her butt. Did they not like her touching the iridescent material? That wasn't the first time she'd done it, but was it the first time one of them had seen? She scrambled to her feet.
Realizing she had no other choice, Elodie transformed and lept into the air, narrowly dodging another creature that soared through the space she had just occupied. Elodie flew into the shadow of a nearby building and put her back to an intact part of the wall, trying not to think about how bad an idea it was to corner herself.
"Consuming Shield," she murmured.
Elodie reached her awareness into the shadows around her and they shimmered, growing darker and more solid under the direction of her own magic. The shield was completed just in time. A creature slammed into it and Elodie felt the impact in depths of her bones and her magic, but her shield stayed strong, even as more creatures line up behind the first. She honestly hadn't been sure it would hold since this shield was really meant to defend against magic attacks, but it was all she had and she was glad that it worked, even as each impact chipped away at her magic reserves.
Looking out past her shield, Elodie saw that creatures were popping into existence — glitching into existence because they looked pixelated and incorrect until they started moving, and now she was sure this wasn't supposed to be happening — near the tree line just to throw themselves at her. She hissed as she realized that playing defensive wouldn't be enough if the simulation wasn't working properly or playing fair.
She carefully, carefully, withdrew some of her magic from the shield, saying a silent prayer to any magical gods that would listen that the shield would still hold, and flung it at one of the creatures. It wasn't a defined spell — just a little bit of formless shadow magic — and Elodie had hoped that based on the creature's reaction when it hit, she'd be able to gauge how much magic she'd need to put into a proper offensive spell to knock them down. But there was no reaction.
The magic hit its mark and the creature instantly dissolved into ash that faded out of existence before it hit the ground. Oh. Well. Perhaps in this instance, the simulation glitching could work in her favour.
She pelted the oncoming creatures with weak magic projectiles and found they were all as effective as the first had been. For a moment, it looked like Elodie was chewing through the creatures faster than they were coming at her. She was holding them off; it was working! Then, she was thrown to the ground by an impact from the side. One of the creatures had come up in her blind spot (her entire right side was a blind spot and she should know how to account for that by now, but she didn't) and rammed her shield when she was unprepared.
Her shield didn't break, but it wavered. It caved inwards at the next impact, soft and malleable, rather than staying strong. When Elodie stopped her attacks to repair the shield, the creatures redoubled their efforts. With every hit, Elodie felt the deepest reserves of her magic being drained, a pressure building in her chest. She refocused herself to reinforcing the shield and suddenly remembered what Tera had said about her instincts being good. Perhaps there was no real way to beat the creatures and she needed to cut her losses and run away.
With one last burst of magical strength, Elodie uncoupled her shield from the ground and formed it into a complete sphere before shooting off as fast as her wings would take her. It wasn't fast enough. The creatures weren't just keeping pace, they were overtaking her, ramming her from all sides. The spire drew closer, but much slower than it should have given the speed they were flying.
The tightness in Elodie's chest kept growing, making it hard to breathe. She didn't land so much as she stumbled to the ground, half a second away from crashing, blackness closing in on the edges of her vision. On unsteady feet, breathing heavily, one last creature rammed Elodie's shield and broke through, slamming into her. It hurt less than she expected — but that made sense, she thought; even if the danger felt real, Palladium wouldn't want any of his students getting seriously injured — but still shocked her and knocked her off her feet.
In the split second before her magic exploded, Elodie started to do what she always did: Use what little control she had left to focus her magic, reduce the collateral damage, and avoid hurting anyone. But then she realized that was silly. She was in a simulation. There was nobody else around for her to hurt and focusing her magic was what had damaged the chamber last year.
Instead, she let her magic go. Let it expand, push outwards. Her vision was almost all black already, but Elodie still shut her eyes and hoped that any first years watching through the windows would do the same. She knew what was happening even without seeing it. A wall of fire erupted from her body — it was uncomfortable, but not painful; a warmth prickling at her skin like she was standing just a bit too close to a lit fireplace, and the shimmer of neuorpathy tingling down her burn scars — and consumed everything in its path.
When the intense heat died down and all that was left was the residual warmth in the asphalt against her skin, Elodie opened her eyes. She was lying on the ground, no longer in her fairy form, looking out into the forest which had caught fire. The creatures were gone. That made sense, she supposed, as she shakily picked herself up off the ground. They had dissolved when hit with weak projectiles, so they hadn't stood a chance against the unrestrained and uncontrolled might of her full magical power. Elodie's legs felt weak, but the world only spun around her for a second as she rose to her feet. An improvement from the last time.
She looked back at the burning forest and saw that some of the trees had started glitching in and out of existence like the creatures had. As the last of the adrenaline seeped out of her body, she idly wondered how much processing power the simulation chamber could afford to devote to a raging forest fire before it would crash. She decided not to stick around to find out.
On shaking legs, she started towards the tallest spire. It approached much faster than she expected it to. Elodie wasn't sure if it was another glitch or if being drained of all her magic had altered her perception of reality, but it didn't really matter. She was finally making progress.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw another creature emerge from a building. She stopped walking, cursed, and braced for the impact. With no magic and little energy left, there wasn't anything else she could do. But the impact didn't come. The creature sped past her and towards the burning trees. Elodie watched dumbstruck as more creatures flew past her, joining the first. How long had they just spent relentlessly attacking her, and now they were ignoring her? Unbelievable. But Elodie wasn't going to stand around and complain.
When she reached the spire, the door was unobstructed and unguarded, and peeking inside, Elodie didn't see any of the creatures. Had they all gone to the forest fire? What, were they trying to put it out? It didn't matter. Knowing that she was almost there, Elodie caught her second wind and started up the spiral staircase that snaked up the centre of the spire. The steps were much shallower and longer than stairs built for human feet. She stumbled a few times, despite her best efforts, but pressed on, ignoring anything that wasn't the stairs.
When she made it to the top, Elodie was breathing heavily and her calves burnt. It had been prudent to conserve magic earlier in the simulation by not flying everywhere, but it sure would have been nice to fly up those last stairs. What would have happened if she had just flown right here from the skyscraper? She hadn't been flying when they attacked, so she was probably wrong about walking being safer, less noticeable. Elodie would be incredibly mad at herself if it turned out the simulation could have ended much earlier and easier with just a bit of flying.
The staircase opened directly onto the roof and Elodie walked to the edge. Creatures were still gathering around the forest, but they were no longer flying towards it; instead they were standing with their legs together and arms out, choppily hovering towards it. The fire itself was continuing to spread dangerously quickly, but as it got farther from the source, the flames were no longer animated. Static fire simply popped into existence above far away trees. Elodie somehow found it in herself to laugh. While it was certainly quite different from last time, she had once again managed to break the simulation chamber.
Elodie turned away from the mess that was unfolding on the ground and walked across the roof. On the opposite side from the stairs was something shiny and golden: A teapot bearing the Alfea logo. How charming. As soon as she touched it, the simulation dissolved into pixels around her.
It took a minute for Elodie to convince Palladium that she was fine. Probably because he knew she was lying. But, well, her legs had stopped shaking and she was able to breathe again, so that was fine enough as far as she was concerned. While Palladium returned to the first years — likely to assure them that that wasn't normal, actually, and please don't be afraid of getting into the chamber yourself — Elodie slipped back into the control room.
Tera was still sitting at the control panel with so many overlapping holo screens surrounding him that Elodie wasn't sure how he could even see what they all displayed. She saw snippets of scrolling code, strange graphs, and — she felt her cheeks get hot — video replays of her at various points in the simulation. Tera turned when he heard the door open and nodded to Elodie.
"You did really well," he said, looking back to his screens. "Despite the uh problems with the simulation."
"Just a few problems."
"Yeah, a few." Tera continued to look forward at his screens. As Elodie approached to get a better look at his holo screens and the control panel, she noticed his face was flushed too. Was he embarrassed about things going wrong? Elodie couldn't help but smile and wonder if he would be as easy to tease as her brother always had been, though testing that when he would be involved in planning her future simulations was probably unwise. (It became hard to breathe again as soon as that thought was fully formed and Elodie did her best to push it away because she did not need that right now.)
"Why didn't you stop it?" Her voice cracked, but if Tera noticed, he didn't react.
"I couldn't," Tera replied. He flicked a holo screen over to Elodie. She couldn't understand any of the code, but the big red error messages that ended with: "Abort Failure" were fairly unambiguous.
"That seems like a pretty big problem to have," Elodie said. She scanned the code, trying to figure out when he'd first tried to get her out, but didn't see any time stamps. At least it gave her time to breathe evenly again.
"But surprisingly the easiest one to fix," he said. "Palladium asked me to add some emergency auto shut down conditions and those were fine, but whoever wrote the code for the manual shut down did it in an incredibly dumb way, so that broke."
Elodie couldn't help but smile at his enthusiasm. He met her eyes and immediately looked away again, flushing. Definitely embarrassed.
"Sorry," he said, running a hand through his hair. "Do you ah know anything about coding?"
"No," Elodie replied. "But I do know that most computers and machines have an off switch you can hit."
Tera laughed. "You're right about that," he said. "But Palladium told me that I shouldn't do a full mechanical shutdown when someone's in the chamber unless it's an actual emergency. Said it's really unpleasant for anyone who's caught in it."
"And me being attacked by endless waves of buggy bug creatures doesn't count as an emergency?"
For the first time, Tera turned, looked her directly in the eye, and with a straight face, said: "Nope." It didn't take him long to crack, and he laughed. "Actually though, once you started tearing through them with magic, I figured you were fine. I didn't expect, well, what did you actually do in there?"
His face and tone held nothing but genuine curiosity, but still, Elodie stiffened and felt her face flush. Of course he was asking; everyone who saw her lose control like that would want to know what was wrong with her magic (wrong with her).
"Sorry," Tera said immediately. "I didn't realize that was a weird question. I mean, I have some magic—" he gestured vaguely to his orb of light "—but I'm not very strong, not nearly strong enough to transform into a fairy, even if I wanted to. I actually don't know how these things work." He spoke very quickly and lapsed into silence when he finished. "Sorry," he repeated.
"It's fine," Elodie said, flicking the holo screen back towards Tera and turning away to hide her face. "It's just that it's not a normal fairy thing; it's a problem with me."
"It's a problem that you're that powerful?" Tera asked.
"It's a problem that that just happens and leaves me with absolutely no magic afterwards," Elodie said. Power without control was useless. (Power without control was dangerous.)
"Oh, so you walked to the tower at the end because you couldn't fly anymore?"
"Why else would I walk at that point?"
"I thought you'd figured out that the creatures became more aggressive when you were using magic," Tera replied. Elodie's eyes widened. "A big attack to get rid of the guys around you, followed by dumping a huge amount of magic into the area to attract any others hanging around, and then running away on foot is the perfect way to deal with them."
Elodie opened her mouth to reply and immediately shut it again. She wasn't sure how she felt about unintentionally stumbling into the right answer, it was nice to know that her assumptions hadn't been completely off base. Flying and using magic were synonymous for a fairy, so her walking hadn't been for nothing after all. Still, that explanation made sense as far as the fight was concerned, but— "I wasn't using any magic when they first attacked me though."
"Right," Tera said. He flicked two holo screens over to Elodie. One showed a still image of Elodie inside the cave and the other was blank. Tera gestured to the second screen. "When I start the replay, that's going to show how the simulation chamber tracked your magic use. If you see something that doesn't make sense, let me know."
Elodie nodded and Tera started the replay. On the video screen, past Elodie zipped through the cave at several times normal speed while the blank screen started tracing a flat line. It stayed flat until Elodie unlocking the door in the skyscraper created a small bump. When she transformed to fly down, the line peaked and, above a certain point, changed colour from white to yellow.
"That's the magic threshold you need to meet for the creatures to spawn in," Tera explained.
Elodie crossed her arms and sighed. "So I could have avoided all of this by just taking the stairs again?" That did explain why it had taken her so long to see one though, despite them being the subject of Tera's warning.
"If you want to see it that way, sure," Tera said with a laugh. "I can't blame you though. Flying always seemed like one of the bigger perks that come with being a fairy. Besides, you would have needed to transform eventually."
Elodie replied with a noncommittal hum. Would she have transformed? The replay continued and the magic tracker flatlined as soon as she returned to her human form. She hadn't used magic again until after the creatures attacked her, so she very well could have made it to the tallest spire without attracting them in the first place.
"Actually though, that tower door only opens if you pass the magic threshold earlier in the simulation," Tera said, glancing over at her. "You would have gotten there, hit a wall, and probably transformed to try flying up. Then boom: the swarm appears."
"So they are supposed to swarm like that?" Elodie asked. The replay had continued and sure enough, her line stayed flat until she transformed to protect herself from the charging creatures. The chamber had registered her magic use correctly.
"Yes, they were supposed to swarm like that," Tera confirmed. He glanced back over to the replay where Elodie was being battered by creatures and ran a hand through his hair, grinning sheepishly. "But ah they weren't supposed to appear out of nowhere like that."
"I figured," Elodie said. The graph peaked and dipped during the replay of the fight until the final release of magic caused it to start moving erratically. Elodie raised an eyebrow and glanced questioningly at Tera.
"The white noise means whatever you did was above the detection range," he explained, stopping the replay. Ah, no wonder he had called her powerful. "That was accurate, right?"
"Yeah," Elodie confirmed.
Tera sighed. "I figured it was, but that means the problem is definitely with the creature AI. It's going to be a lot more annoying to troubleshoot that." He gestured for the screens in front of Elodie to return to him, but they didn't budge. Abruptly, all of the screens in Tera's halo that were displaying scrolling code or video stopped. "Shit," he swore. A flick of his wrist dismissed his orb of light, but the screens remained frozen in place around him.
"What's wrong?" Elodie asked.
"Computer froze," Tera said. He wheeled himself over to the main control panel and started typing on its keyboard. Nothing changed. With a grunt of annoyance, Tera pushed himself out of his chair and before Elodie could react, he had vanished underneath the machine.
"What are you doing?"
"You're not in the chamber anymore, so I'm turning it off and on again," Tera replied. Sure enough, the control panel went dark and a moment later the holo screens disappeared. Elodie crouched down to see what he was doing and found Tera lying on his back on the floor with a bundle of cables in his hands. After a few seconds, he started plugging them all back in and the simulation chamber hummed to life.
Tera manoeuvred himself out from under the control panel, but when he tried to stand back up, his knees buckled. Without thinking, Elodie reached out and steadied him with a hand on his shoulder. He winced at her touch — stupid; she should have asked if he needed help first — but then reached out and took her other hand. Braced against Elodie and the control panel, Tera easily lowered himself back into his wheelchair. He was heavier than Elodie expected, but maybe she was still weaker than she thought from her simulation.
"Thanks," he said.
"Sorry," she replied.
They lapsed into a silence broken only by the sound of Tera's fingers on the control panel keyboard.
"Well?" Tera asked after a few minutes.
"Well what?"
He turned to give Elodie a weary look. "Usually when people see I can use my legs despite being in a wheelchair, they have questions."
"I uh know what an ambulatory wheelchair user is," Elodie said.
"Oh yeah?"
"My brother was one." (Stupid.) A knot started forming in her chest, but she forced herself to keep breathing evenly.
Tera opened his mouth to respond, but didn't. He simply turned back to his screens and continued typing.
"Well?" Elodie asked, bracing for a question about Léon. The simulation had been a lot, overwhelming, but it hadn't been so much that she was going to let herself cry in front of a stranger, no matter how nice he seemed to be.
"Well what?"
"You looked like you wanted to say something."
"I did," Tera replied. "But then I realized you used the past tense to talk about your brother and thought better of it."
"Thanks," she said. The knot dissipated.
"Sorry," he replied. For what, Elodie didn't know.
They lapsed back into silence. Tera pushed himself away from the keyboard and summoned back his orb of light. Elodie sat down in one of the chairs by the control panel and wondered, mostly to distract herself, if the orb was his actual magic or somehow a manifestation of the simulation chamber's programming. She supposed she could just ask him, but instead she closed her eyes and cast out her awareness. Even with her magic drained, she could at least do this. The orb immediately stood out to her as being linked to Tera; intertwined with, but separate from, the technomagic that thrummed through the control panel.
The sound of the door opening pulled Elodie back to herself. She opened her eyes to see Palladium striding into the room. He smiled at her.
"You're looking better," he said, relief in his voice.
"Am I?" Elodie asked. She didn't feel much better than when she walked out of the chamber. She was still drained in every sense of the word.
"Absolutely," Palladium confirmed. "Your hands aren't shaking anymore and you have some colour back in your face."
"Are you sure?" Tera asked. "She still looks like a ghost to me."
"You're one to talk," Elodie said, puffing out her cheeks. She might have been pale, but Tera was translucent. The dark circles under his eyes looked like deep bruises.
Tera looked over at Palladium and smiled. "She's feeling well enough to talk back too. I think she's fine to leave, Professor."
Elodie started. Would Tera and Palladium have stopped her from leaving if she'd tried?
"I think so too," Palladium agreed. He nodded towards Elodie. "I already dismissed the first years, so there's nobody left to bother you if you want to leave now."
"Oh, thanks," she said, standing up.
"Though if you wouldn't mind, I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't tell the other second years about the simulation you just went through. I'm planning to use it as their first exercise of the year. Or, rather, I was—" Palladium glanced over to Tera and his holo screens "—though perhaps I'll need to save it for later if we can't get it working properly."
Tera flushed and kept his eyes glued firmly to his screens.
"I won't tell anyone," Elodie said. Though she couldn't help but wonder if showing off the simulation to first years was the best idea if Palladium was trying to keep it a surprise. Then again, Elodie could count on one hand the number of times she'd been confident enough to talk to upperclassmen during her first semester. Cori had made fast friends with a few older students, but she was the exception rather than the rule. Then something else occurred to her. "Is a simulation that basically punishes us for using magic really the best way to start a class that's supposed to help us learn to use our magic?"
Palladium grinned. "Actually, I think it's the perfect way to start the year. First year is about learning to use magic, but second year I want to teach students how to use magic judiciously."
"I'm not sure that using magic judiciously is something I have trouble with," Elodie said, flushing. Her problem was control. That's why she'd been held back.
"I would agree," Palladium said. His gaze softened with something Elodie couldn't quite place. "But this year is going to be difficult for you in a lot of ways, so I don't think starting you off with an exercise I knew you would do well in is unwarranted." Ah. It was pity. "Although it didn't turn out quite like I had hoped." Palladium looked almost as sheepish as Tera. "Nevertheless, you preformed admirably. This exercise isn't in the first year curriculum, but I think you deserve some extra credit for it."
Elodie opened her mouth to protest, but then stopped herself. She wanted to succeed because she deserved to succeed, not because the professors were taking pity on her, but she had done a full simulation. "Thanks, Professor," she said.
"You deserve it," he replied. "Now go and enjoy some free time before lunch. I doubt I'll be letting you out of class this early again."
Elodie nodded and stood to leave.
"I'll let you know once I figure out what went wrong," Tera called to her, without turning away from his screens.
"Thanks," Elodie replied.
Palladium sat down in one of the control panel's chairs and Tera tossed him some of the holo screens. Elodie left them to their work. As the control room door shut behind her, all she could think about was whether or not there was enough time left before lunch to take a nap.