Flinging Rocks at Bureaucrats in a Magical Academy

Fabrisse was not at the Synod anymore.

He was home.

Home-home. Not dorm-home.

Fabrisse didn’t exactly announce his return when he slipped in through the side gate. He’d been sneaking home since he turned sixteen, enough that the boundary wards had stopped reacting and the neighbor’s cat now expected treats.

His house wasn’t far from the Twelvefold campus, but it was still far enough that nobody came here unless they meant to. The Kestovar home sat tucked in the outer boroughs, where the commune started forgetting they were a commune. Not exactly wealthy, not exactly falling apart, just quietly humble, like it hoped the tax auditors wouldn’t notice it existed. Ironically, magical universities tended to be built well away from cities anyway, partly for reasons of sanctity, but mostly because spell leakage tended to make the locals burst into song or spontaneously molt.

Dormitory-bound students didn’t just leave, not unless they’d been expelled, exorcised, or caught invoking minor elementals in the refectory again. But after getting publicly whacked in the face by a god-box and potentially bound to a sentient calibration system no one else could see, he figured the usual rules were a bit more wobbly than usual.

Rubidi had nearly ruptured a blood vessel whisper-yelling at Lorvan in the corridor. Severa had refused to make eye contact. And someone (he suspected Cuman) had stuck a note on his dorm door that simply read: ROCK WITCH.

His sister, Dubbie, eighteen and devoutly uninterested in all things magical, was half-curled on the sitting couch with a dog-eared copy of The Vintner’s Affair and a mug of lukewarm steepleaf. She didn’t look up when he entered.

She was a little soft around the edges, with a cottagecore aura. Petite, with perpetually sleepy-looking eyes, she had the kind of face that made grandmothers coo and shopkeepers offer her extra stamps. To be fair, she was always the kind to nap a lot, but weirdly never went to sleep on time. At least she was good at handling her personal relationships, unlike him. The only romantic relationship he’d ever had had been initiated by the girl, and he had only realized her affection for him after she’d practically shouted her confession in his face.

“You’re home,” she murmured, eyes still on the page.

“For the time being,” Fabrisse said, toeing off his shoes and collapsing onto the nearest cushion with a sigh. “Where’s Mom?”

“She’s on shrine duty.” The Order had enchanted a local shrine, one with a creek that could cure townsfolk of simple diseases. There had to be at least two attendants at all times. Their father worked as a border guard. Naturally, he wasn’t around often.

Her son was just slapped in the face by a divine artifact god-box, and she’s on shrine duty?

That didn’t sit right. His mother wasn’t the sort to stay away when something like this happened.

Maybe the Synod had flagged the artifact as volatile, too sensitive to involve an emotionally compromised party, like the mage-mother of the boy it chose to punch. But then they shouldn’t have allowed him to go home. Knowing the Synod, though, someone may have tried to escalate the case, but it would have to go through at least three layers of bureaucracy. He got home before they reached a directive.

They’d seal the whole chamber in a defensive stasis, send in a divination team, and write a three-volume report to say maybe something had happened, maybe not. It wasn’t the danger Fabrisse minded. It was the waste. They didn’t even understand the Eidralith’s structure, but they’d drown it in protocols because it looked old and important. No wonder nothing new ever happened.

“This late?”

“They need extra hands. The shrine’s being renovated. How was the week?”

Dubbs doesn’t realize how loaded a question it is. He had no words to describe the week; in fact, he was barely processing the entire thing. Probably the only reason why he’d managed to remain so calm was that he was too confused about the whole ordeal in general.

“They made us redo the Flame Litany twice because Severa’s a perfectionist and Aldren tried to hover too close to the dais again.” Fabrisse rolled to the creaky edge of his childhood cot, flanked by a chipped glowing lantern and the faint smell of lavender-scented disinfectant. The sigils still hovered in his periphery, and he’d tried hard to pretend they didn’t exist, to limited success.

“Mhm.”

“Then the invocation took forever. Lorvan saw me. Draeth insulted my academic lineage.”

“Mhm.” Dubbie turned a page.

“I collected a new shiny Medarian pebble by the river.”

“Mhm.”

“And then I triggered the Eidralith and I became the Chosen One of the Twelvefold Flame,” he added.

“Mhm—wait, what?” She slapped her book shut around her thumb like a startled clam.

Okay. His family definitely didn’t know.

“It was more of an accident, really. I tripped. Possibly resonated. And now there’s a semi-visible arcane apparition giving me tutorial objectives.” He gestured vaguely to the space next to his head, where a glyph was slowly blinking [Pending Calibration – 4 Tasks Remaining] in a stiff font he’d never seen before. Every letter looked like bricks from different molds. The white color of the floating glyph sheet was unmistakably the same one as the Eidralith, however, so it was difficult for him to deny that whatever he was seeing was brought by that dumb box.

Dubbie stared at him, then at the empty air, then back at him. “Have you been licking the stones again?”

“I have never licked the stones,” Fabrisse said. He did lick the stones once, and fortunately, it did have unique properties. Unfortunately, that unique property was hallucination. Dubbie had seen the fallout. Wasn’t his proudest moment, but at least there was plausible deniability. “Besides, even if I had—which I haven’t—the apparition says ingestion is ill-advised. Also, it called me a calibrator. I don’t think it’s a job. It hasn’t specified a pay.”

Dubbie stared at him for a second longer before standing. “Is this Eidralith a stone?”

Ah. She isn’t an enrolled student. She wouldn’t have heard about it.

“It is possibly a more complex mineralic structure.” With terrible tastes, too, possibly mineralogical, judging from how it chose him.

Most known aetheric stones gave off faint aetheric traces, which were useful for passive enchantments or limited fuel sources, but their use cases were narrow. Rarer stones were too volatile for most spellcasters to absorb directly. But the Eidralith was different.

Its appearance certainly didn’t help the debate: a dense, irregular mass of veined quartz, webbed with threads of metallic shimmer that looked almost deliberately structured. Though fractured and layered, some faces aligned with an uncanny symmetry that was too precise to be natural. The surface was cool to the touch, with breaks that didn’t feel random—more like the result of intention than damage, as if the stone had been shaped by a logic no one had yet deciphered. No known natural stone looked quite like it, nor had any been linked to the sudden acceleration of three separate spellcasters upon binding.

“How big a deal is it?”

He started listing facts. That was safer. Listing facts made things feel manageable. Contact triggered artifact. Artifact responded. Eidralith activation. The moment he stopped, the weight of it all threatened to tip sideways in his head. He pressed his palm to his forehead.

“I’m not sure, actually. The Archmagus makes students greet it every other year, and keeps telling us how receiving its blessing is a top goal to work towards. But it’s never done anything, so I thought it’s just another meaningless ritual. Until now.” He scanned the information given to him on the floating glyph again. “There’s still no pay, Dubbs. This divine artifact is going to exploit me as forced labor.”

“I’m making the tea,” she said with a sigh. “The one that helps with hallucination.”

Fabrisse watched her go, half-offended. “It’s not a hallucination. I can’t hallucinate concepts I didn’t know existed.”

“Mm-hmm,” came her voice from the pantry. The clink of ceramic followed. “You said the same thing about that moss-covered spoon when you were twelve.”

“That spoon bit me,” Fabrisse muttered.

Dubbie didn’t reply, but the water started boiling.

She’d always been like that—calm, slightly acerbic, and annoyingly unshakeable. A sensible girl in every way their mother approved of: unassuming, non-magical (by choice), with an ear for recipes and a terrifying knack for budgeting. Which was a shame, really, because she had more natural talent for magic than he ever did. When the recruitment missives had come, she was the one they’d wanted. She’d smiled politely, thanked them for the offer, and declined.

Fabrisse had signed his name in her place before anyone could stop him. Anything to get away from their mother, who’d banned him from rock collecting and confiscated his prized Arcanosaur-themed stamp book during what he still referred to as The Incident.

He sagged further into the cushion and stared at the air just above the chipped lantern. “This is why she banned the rocks, isn’t it?”

The glyphs had stopped blinking. In their place was a quiet, clean prompt, sitting like a polite but insistent guest at the edge of his thoughts:

[Calibration Interface – Dormant State Detected]

You are eligible for Guided Orientation.

Would you like to begin the introductory tutorial?

[Yes] [No] [Request More Information]

There was something unnervingly cheery about the text, like a helpful waiter offering a tray of knives. His fingers twitched as he stared at the glowing interface. Somewhere beneath the tangle of wonder and apprehension, his mind kept circling back to one maddening question: why had the Eidralith reacted to the stupenstone?

He hadn’t forgotten. He couldn’t forget. The moment of contact, the jolt, the light fracture across its core, the sudden spike in aetheric pressure. It had responded. Not to him directly, or to his casting, but to something in the stone.

He’d turned the Eidralith over in his hands a dozen times before it was retrieved by its warden, itching to crack it open, probe its structure, maybe even run aetheric resonance testing through the residuals. It would have been great if he were able to bring the Eidralith to a Stratal laboratory where necessary tools would allow him to assess the composition of the materials. However, the Synod had possibly clamped the entire chamber under restriction seals. There was no way to get to it now.

Fine. I guess the only way to find out is to interact with this apparition.

Fabrisse sighed and nudged the mug aside. “Show me the part where I explode.”

He mentally reached for the option marked [Yes].

The air shimmered.

A new pane unfolded, ornate as a cathedral window and approximately as helpful:

Welcome, Apprentice Kestovar_28

INITIATING TUTORIAL MODE [PHASE I – Orientation & Spatial Awareness]

Please remain still. Calibrating meat vessel . . .

Fabrisse stopped sinking into his seat. “Pardon?”

Do not be alarmed. The disorientation is temporary.

[SYSTEM NOTE: Tutorial Mode may not be available again. Proceed with care.]

He was already alarmed.

PHASE I: Orientation & Spatial Awareness

Phase 1 of 4: Access your Aetheric Self-Registry.

[HINT: Generate a localized mental ping toward your core identity object. Not emotionally, but conceptually. Preferably with metadata.]

“What does that even mean?” Fabrisse frowned. “‘Localized mental ping’? Toward what object? That’s not even a coherent sentence.”

He saw ‘core’ and ‘mental’, and he assumed he had to concentrate on something. He tried focusing, mentally groping for . . . well, himself, as if rummaging through a disorganized closet. Something clicked. Not quite a thought nor a memory, but a sensation like tapping on frosted glass.

A translucent panel slid into view just above his right eye, displaying unfamiliar, overly formal text:

CALIBRATOR PROFILE — FABRISSE KESTOVAR_28
Class: Thaumaturge (Magus-Student)
Field Role: Inert-Adept (Dormant)
Rank: Unverified
Epochal Registration: Legacy Validated
Status: Conscious – Mildly Concerned

Focus (FP): 30/30
STR (Strength): 5
DEX (Dexterity): 11
FOR (Fortitude): 5
INT (Intuition): 22
RES (Inner Resonance): 2
EMO (Emotional Attunement): LOCKED
SYN (Synchronization): LOCKED

[SYSTEM NOTE: Full stat unlock can only be achieved upon the Completion of the Tutorial]

The aetheric overlay was too fast. Not painful, just . . . grating. The blinking rhythm didn’t follow a loop. That was the worst part. It changed every few seconds—slightly faster, slightly dimmer, inconsistent. His brain kept trying to find the pattern, and failing. It made his jaw clench. Loop it or stop it, he silently begged.

He focused on a single glyph and let his eyes blur.

One thing at a time, he reminded himself. One thing was manageable.

RES. He stared at the RES attribute like it had personally insulted his grandmother. Then his eyes widened.

Hold on . . . RES stands for Inner Resonance. The Eidralith can quantify how good I am at handling spell.

Hope bubbled from within him. If RES could be quantified, would that open doors to potential measures to change that number?

Maybe . . . Just maybe . . . There is a way for me to become a good spellcaster—

Another glyph jumped at him.

[ADDITIONAL NOTE: As a Legacy Calibrator, your stats may differ from modern magical standards.]

Unlocked data reflects your baseline potential. Progression will update values as objectives are fulfilled.

He muttered silent curses and tried to dismiss the screen. Instead, another rectangular apparition opened to the side:

[MENU ACCESS GRANTED]

[Profile]

[Inventory]

[Quests]

[Skills] → [WARNING: Skill recognition protocol out of sync with local definitions.]

[Spiritual Alignment (UNSTABLE)]

[DIAGNOSTIC: Residual Rock Affinity – Medium High]

Skills? Does it note down the spells I’ve learned throughout the years?