Flinging Rocks at Bureaucrats in a Magical Academy

“Re-engage with a previously identified Residual Echo, huh . . .” Fabrisse muttered as he broke off the bread. It was just his luck that out of all the ways the glyph could phrase its request, it chose to speak ominously like a member of the Synod staff.

Mid-afternoon light filtered through the canopy in broken beams, dappling the water of the North Pond with a glint that looked almost like active glyphlight, but wasn’t. The clucklebeak swam over to him from the reedbed. It was a squat, downy creature with a body like a mossy loaf and stubby wings that didn’t understand flight. Its feet were oversized for its size, and it made a sound like a hiccup.

Fabrisse dropped a crust near the edge of the bank.

The clucklebeak waddled forward, gave the bread a cautious peck, then stared at him judgmentally.

“Yeah, I know,” Fabrisse said, settling down onto the flat stone at the pond’s edge. “No aether in it. Just grain.”

He watched it nibble with precise little head-jolts. Then it let out a soft churk and backed away a step, but didn’t leave.

“See? We’re learning to tolerate each other,” he said.

“Quack,” the bird said.

[Minor Imprint Present — Category: Passive Emotional | Trace: Comfort/Guarded Affection]

[You are now more attuned to Familiar-Grade Creatures | Perfect Resonance Progress: 44%]

Fabrisse tilted his head. “Guarded affection?” he echoed aloud, then squinted at the clucklebeak. “Don’t tell me you like me.”

The clucklebeak let out an indignant chortle and turned its back on him. It gave a final disapproving huff and waddled in a circle before plunking down in the reeds.

Fabrisse was about to offer another crumb when he heard footsteps behind him.

“Now this is not where I expected to find you,” said Lorvan, his voice smooth and wry as ever. “How are you spending your afternoon off?”

“Good afternoon, Mentor.”

Lorvan came to stand beside him and gave the clucklebeak a brief nod. “And here I thought you’d be holed up in the Wing of Substratal Studies. Have you already run out of passion for practiced thaumaturgy?”

Fabrisse shook his head. “No, no. That’s the best part, actually. Min starts with theory.”

Lorvan furrowed his brows. “Theory?”

“I know, right?” Fabrisse glanced up at him now, a faint grin tugging at the corner of his mouth. “He didn’t even let me try invocation the first day. We just walked through quartz grain types and their social habits.”

“Social habits?”

“Okay, maybe not social. But still. I was excited. It was like being allowed to stare at pebbles on purpose.”

Lorvan gave a small laugh.

But then Fabrisse’s grin faded. “I . . . didn’t go back today, though. Not for the afternoon cycle.”

Lorvan studied him for a beat. “Problems?”

Fabrisse nodded once, the motion barely visible. “A few.”

He didn’t elaborate. Not yet.

Lorvan sat beside him on the stone, folding his coat beneath him like someone raised with both manners and ancestral furniture. “Let me guess. You tried to lecture a Council member about the metaphysical rights of sediment.”

Fabrisse cracked a small smile. “Worse. I met Severa’s father.”

There was a pause.

“Oh,” Lorvan said. “How did you talk to Miss Montreal in the first place?”

Fabrisse gave a helpless shrug. “She, uh . . . insisted.”

Lorvan’s brow arched slightly. “On what?”

“On knowing how I ended up with the Eidralith. She said it doesn’t choose at random, and if I didn’t have an explanation, she’d find out for herself. Apparently, she has the authority to requisition me. I thought it was a bluff. It wasn’t.”

Lorvan folded his arms. “So she brought you to the Magister.”

“Yep.” Fabrisse plucked at the hem of his sleeve. “Because of course that’s the most normal escalation. You ask a classmate about a weird artifact, and the next thing you know you’re standing in front of a man who makes gravity feel like a performance review.”

Lorvan let out a low exhale, but then immediately furrowed his brow. “Doesn’t the Magister have a pre-binding codex? What was Miss Montreal trying to do?”

“Oh. Nothing. We just had a friendly chat.” Fabrisse held up a hand. She was obviously trying to do rather bad things, but if he dug into that can of worm he might have to confess to forging his credentials to get inside the research chambers, which was also a rather bad thing.

Lorvan didn’t seem convinced, so Fabrisse distracted him with another question, “Actually, now that you’re here, I have something to ask.”

He mentioned the third step of the ‘Tutorial’, and that the glyph demanded a previously identified Residual Echo.

“That shouldn’t be hard, should it?” Lorvan replied. “One of your rocks should be imbued with your previous emotions.”

Fabrisse stared down at the glyphnote, frowning. “But I need to successfully resonate through an intuitive response,” he muttered. “That’s the problem. I don’t know what it wants me to do. The only emotion I can resonate with is shame.”

He played with the rocks he still kept tucked in his satchel. Most of them were collected long ago, reshuffled from pouch to pouch. A few held notes of resonance, but they were chosen for texture or alignment, not memory.

Certainly not for shame.

“Not even the Stupenstones?” Lorvan asked.

“Why would anyone hold onto something that makes them feel stupid?”

“Then we need to find a physical imprint. Remember that exercise in Physical Resonance where you had to hold some objects and feel the memories in there?”

“The only Echo I got anything from was that phyllite block Min gave me. And I didn’t even mean to connect with it. It just sort of . . . happened.”

“Then try again,” Lorvan said. “Grab another item from the room. Konan should have more than one rock with an imprint. Do you know what that means?”

“Yes?”

“You should go back to class.”

The quartz in Fabrisse’s palm was blue-veined, clouded at the center like a trapped breath. It wasn’t polished, but it had been handled. He could feel the worn points where fingers had gripped it again and again, where the shape had bent almost invisibly under human habit. It was cool, then cooler—a kind of stillness that seeped into his fingertips, into his breath, until his own heartbeat felt quieted by it. These were the same kinds of stones he’d dismissed before, in earlier modules, where theoretical density charts had failed to stir anything in him but a passing curiosity. But this one had resonated, as if someone else’s anxiety had been baked into its lattice, layered and waiting.

Fabrisse closed his eyes.

And there it was.

[Residual Imprint Detected — Emotional Imprint: Anticipation / Focus / Fear]

[Category: Handheld Conductive | Physical Trace: Ritual Use]

[Emotional Anchoring Achieved — Intuitive Response Unlocked]

[Earth Thaumaturgy Mastery +1]

A low flutter passed through his ribs. It wasn’t quite pride. But close.

Fabrisse opened his eyes slowly. “Someone held this,” he said. “A student. Maybe not long ago. The edges are smooth here, which suggests repeated handling. Their hands were sweating from nervousness, probably. They used this in a trial or test, but not in combat.” His fingers turned the quartz slightly. “It’s too light for an invocation core. But it buzzes near the thumb ridge. I think it was used for focus regulation. A stabilizer, maybe.”

There was a pause.

Min Hajin, standing across the counter, gave the faintest lift of his brows. “Correct.”

Fabrisse blinked. “Wait. Really?”

“It was keyed to a low-drift concentration charm, that particular quartz, and used in meditative calibration,” Min said, then tapped the corner of the drawer with a gloved finger. “The student it belonged to failed their glyph structure exam but passed their spell focus retake six weeks later. The stone has since absorbed three cycles of disciplined usage.”

Fabrisse let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. “I didn’t think I could do it again.”

“You still cannot create the emotional spark yourself,” Min said evenly. “But unusually attuned to what others leave behind, you are. There is value in that.”

Fabrisse turned the quartz one more time in his hand. It didn’t glow or pulse, but it felt . . . known.

Min moved past him, organizing the drawer as if that moment of connection hadn’t happened at all. But before he shut it, he said, without looking back, “You’d make a good geologist.”

[PHASE 3 COMPLETED: Imprint Recognition and Response]

Completion Rewards:

✦ Unlock XP Counter ✦ Elemental Mastery: Hidden Threshold Unlocked

Note: Please await further instructions to complete your tutorial.

Fabrisse turned the quartz one more time in his hand. Maybe he could do this.

If he could keep this up—if he could keep linking echoes and tracking emotion through touch—then maybe he had something real to offer. Maybe he could start applying for field apprenticeships early. Some of them allowed partial term students to do low-level analysis, paid by entry. It wasn’t much, but even a stipend would help.

He opened his mouth.

“But you’re not ready,” Min said without turning around.

Fabrisse’s mouth stayed open for a moment longer, then shut.

Min turned back to face him. “Tell me. Have you learned Aetheric Grain Analysis yet?”

Fabrisse hesitated. “I’ve read about it, but only the resonance theory part, not particulate interactions.”

Min raised a hand and spoke a single, quiet incantation. A ripple of silver light brushed over the quartz. In the gleam, a faint lattice of fractures appeared beneath the surface, like the echo of a spiderweb, visible only for a second.

“The core structure of this quartz has six major fracture lines. You didn’t mention them. Nor did you catch the presence of low-grade amber dust contamination on the western flank. That disqualifies it from ritual use in climate-bound regions.”

Fabrisse had never seen Min use so many words before. His face flushed. “I didn’t—I didn’t even think to check for dust drift . . .”

“You weren’t trained to. I’m not criticizing.” He let the silence settle before adding, more gently, “But even in theoretical research, you’ll need some magical finesse. Intuition alone is not sufficient.”

“H-how can I learn it?”

“How good is your Synaptic Control?”

“I—” Fabrisse looked down at the quartz again, its cloudy body now opaque, quiet. His grip tightened slightly.

“Come back to me when you’ve scored a 30 in Synaptic Resonance I and Synaptic Control I Practicals.”

Ah. So he has looked into my academic results. He had wished Min hadn’t, but there wasn’t any way they wouldn’t have double checked before deciding to take him in.

“I understand,” he said.

All right, he thought, staring at the stone’s surface. This would be a great time to give me a quest. Something like ‘Beginner Aetheric Grain Analysis.’ Maybe a prompt. A side quest. Anything.

He waited.

Nothing showed up.

Maybe I really wasn’t ready.

The quartz sat in his palm, unchanged. He sighed and slid it gently back into its place in the drawer.