Professor Rael Nox Aldric had a voice built for celebration.
He stood at the front of the central plaza with his hands clasped behind his back and addressed the assembled students with the kind of warm, sweeping enthusiasm that made every sentence feel like the opening of a toast at a very expensive banquet.
"Welcome, all of you, to the Matrix Academy of Applied Mysticism! You represent the finest young Ichorborn talent from across Miton! You have worked hard, you have sacrificed, and you have earned your place here among peers of equal distinction! The Academy is proud to receive you!"
Clyde stood in the crowd and listened.
The speech continued in this vein for several more minutes, each sentence building on the one before it, the collective effect being that of someone describing an audience of future kings and queens to their faces.
"Does he always talk like this?" Clyde asked, quietly.
"Pretty much," Aurelian said.
"He is treating us like we belong to royal families."
Aurelian turned to look at him with an expression that said the answer was about to be more literal than Clyde expected. "Yes. Because most of them do."
Clyde looked around at the assembled students with fresh attention.
The clothing was the first tell, and he had registered it without fully processing what it meant. The white uniforms were standard issue, sure, but underneath the uniforms, the boots, the bags, the accessories, everything carried the quality of things bought without considering the price. Several students had rings. Several more had watches. One girl near the front of the crowd had a bag that cost more than Clyde's monthly rent in Cristae had.
"The tuition here," Aurelian said, keeping his voice low and conversational, "is fifty pounds a month."
Clyde did the arithmetic automatically, the habit of a lifetime.
One pound was twenty shillings. Fifty pounds was a thousand shillings. Per month.
"Fifty," Clyde said.
"Yes."
"Fifty pounds."
"Per month, yes."
"That is a thousand shillings a month," Clyde said, very calmly, internally screaming. "Why would anyone pay a thousand shillings a month for school?!"
"Two reasons," Aurelian said, with the easy tone of someone who had made peace with the economics of the situation long ago. "First, it is a good flex. The kind of flex that tells everyone in every room you ever walk into exactly where your family stands. Second, and more practically, the heirs of powerful families send their children here to develop and to compete. Magic, at this level, is a political tool. The stronger your heir, the more leverage your family carries. So they pay whatever it costs."
"They pay a thousand shillings a month so their children can beat each other."
"With schemes, primarily. Combat when necessary. Politics constantly." Aurelian paused. "Which is also related to why we are here specifically. We are tracking the Thaddeus family. They have been at the Academy for two generations. Influential, wealthy, and by all reliable accounts, genuinely dangerous."
"What kind of dangerous?"
Aurelian glanced around briefly before answering. "The kind that sacrifices living people and sells their organs. Rumor, officially. Multiple confirmed missing persons cases in districts adjacent to their estate, unofficially."
Clyde felt his stomach turn over.
He had a very specific, very vivid imagination when it came to things he did not want to imagine, and the image that arrived on the back of that sentence was detailed and immediate and thoroughly unpleasant.
"That is disgusting," he said.
"Yes."
"I almost just physically—"
"I know. Take a breath."
Clyde took a breath. Focused on the professor still speaking at the front of the plaza. Redirected.
A thousand shillings a month, families sacrificing people for organs, and somewhere in this student body the Thaddeus heir is standing in a white uniform looking like everyone else.
Professor Rael concluded his welcome address with a final sweeping statement about the Academy's legacy and directed everyone to their assigned classrooms. Students began dispersing in every direction, and the pleasant chaos of a new school year settling into its first hours replaced the ceremony of the orientation.
Clyde looked at his enrollment card for the class assignment.
"What room are you?" Aurelian asked.
"Fourteen."
"Same." Aurelian tucked his own card away. "Good. Let's go."
The classroom was already full by the time they arrived.
Students occupied every available seat with the particular energy of people in a new environment who have decided to establish themselves immediately. The conversations were loud and overlapping, several people already demonstrating their abilities in small controlled displays, a boy near the window creating a brief gust of compressed air that scattered the papers of the person beside him and produced a round of laughter.
Clyde found a seat near the middle. Aurelian took the one beside him.
The teacher arrived a few minutes after them and the room settled quickly, the instinct toward authority still strong enough in a new environment to produce immediate attention. She was a woman in her thirties with the efficient movements of someone who taught because she was excellent at it rather than because she had run out of other options.
"I will ask each of you to introduce yourself briefly," she said, looking around the room. "Name, Divine Ichor, and current phase. That is all."
Students went around the room in sequence.
Gale Ichor, Phase Two. Tempest Ichor, Phase Three. Forge Ichor, Phase Two. Luminance Ichor, Phase Three. Each introduction accompanied by the particular confidence of someone accustomed to the number they were about to say.
Phase Two, Phase Two, Phase Three, Phase Two.
Clyde became aware, as the introductions moved around the room toward him, that he was the only Phase One in this classroom. Possibly in this building. Possibly in this entire hidden city.
When his turn came, he said it plainly.
"Clyde Nox Pvolae. Hollow Star Ichor. Phase One."
The room absorbed this with the specific quality of a room that has registered something and is in the process of deciding whether to make it an event.
Then there was the white-haired girl.
She had been sitting three rows ahead of Clyde and slightly to the left, and when her turn came she turned her head just enough to be heard and said two words with the economy of someone who considered the introduction format already excessive.
"Glacier. Phase Three."
No name. Just the ichor and the phase.
Half the room was looking at her when the break bell rang.
Ding!
The classroom noise resumed immediately as students stood and stretched and divided into their social groups with the efficiency of people who had been in new social environments before and knew how to navigate them. Clyde stayed in his seat for a moment, reviewing his notes.
He heard the voice before he saw who it belonged to. Loud enough to carry across the room, calibrated for an audience.
"Phase One," the voice said, with the particular tone of someone discovering something they find amusing and intend to share with everyone nearby. "Hey, Phase One. Your family forget to pay for your training, or you just born broke?"
Clyde looked up.
The boy was broad and carried himself with the physical confidence of someone who had been told his entire life that his size was an asset. He was laughing at his own joke before anyone else had responded to it.
Several students nearby were watching with the attentive neutrality of people who had decided their position in this situation would depend on how it resolved.
The ice girl was watching from three rows ahead without any expression Clyde could read.
Clyde looked at the boy and said nothing.
The boy took this as encouragement.
"Seriously though, Phase One at this academy?! What are you even doing here?! Did you wander in from the street?!" He laughed again, louder this time.
Clyde breathed steadily.
He is a student at an expensive school who needs an audience, Clyde thought. This is fine. This is manageable.
Then the boy leaned forward and spat.
The sound it made when it hit Clyde's desk was small and specific and landed with considerably more impact than its size warranted.
Something shifted in the quality of Clyde's attention.
His Lunar Ichor moved into his right hand the way water moves into a space that has been opened for it, immediate and total, the purple of it visible through his skin as the resonance built. Aurelian, sitting beside him, watched this happen with the expression of someone who had just seen something they recognized and were very concerned about.
Because what was building in Clyde's hand was exact. Every particle of ichor in the resonance was doing precisely what it was supposed to do, the wave perfectly aligned, the amplitude controlled to the specific point where output and structure were completely unified.
Absolute resonance.
Aurelian had seen good resonance before. He had seen excellent resonance. He had never seen anyone at Phase One produce this.
He got between Clyde and the bully before the punch could travel.
His foot connected with the bully's side in a clean, efficient kick that sent him stumbling sideways into a desk, which produced a loud crash and the immediate attention of the entire room.
"Leave," Aurelian said to the bully, in a tone that was perfectly pleasant and meant none of it. "Now."
The bully looked at Aurelian, reassessed several things, and left.
Clyde let the resonance drop. The purple faded from his hand. He sat back.
The ice girl held her gaze on them for a moment longer than everyone else did, then stood and walked out of the classroom ahead of the bell.
Clyde watched her go.
What is her name? he thought, still genuinely not knowing.
Outside in the corridor, Aurelian kept his voice low and direct.
"That resonance in your hand just now."
"I know," Clyde said.
"Absolute resonance. Every particle perfectly placed. Soren mentioned your control was unusual but I have never seen it that clean at Phase One." Aurelian looked at him seriously, which was different from his usual expression. "But the stronger the resonance, the more visible the frequency output. At absolute resonance, you are broadcasting at a level that a sufficiently sensitive perception, or a sufficiently attentive goddess, could detect."
Clyde went still.
"Noxella," he said.
"Absolute resonance at Phase One is the kind of signal that reaches things you would prefer it not to reach." Aurelian said it plainly. "Keep a low profile here. You can do what you just did. But do it quietly."
Ding!
The break bell ended and students began filing back toward their classrooms. Clyde and Aurelian rejoined the flow.
Three teachers were being introduced for the afternoon sessions. The first taught alchemy, the second chemical reactions, and the third resonance control.
Clyde looked at the resonance control teacher and thought about absolute resonance and Noxella and a goddess whose eyes were closed and whose ears, the manual had warned, were anything but.
Low profile, he thought. Right.
He sat down and opened his notebook.
Same as regular college. Except the stakes are considerably higher and one of the teachers exists to help me avoid accidentally signaling a dormant deity.
Great.