Chapter 191: 191: The First semester XIV

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Fizz exhaled a breath he did not need and managed to sound smug and deeply relieved at once. "Ah," he said to the night. "Don’t worry. He does this."

John did not posture. He did not shout. He set the black hole sphere on the road between them and let it chew a small, careful hole in the dust that said: there is a new gravity in this field, and you do not own it.

The nothing man had the kind of brain that understood arithmetic. He looked at the hole, then at his two friends, and decided to recruit another poor fool somewhere else. He touched two fingers to his brow as if tipping a hat he spared no respect for and backed away, never turning. The laugh returned to the laugher as relief. The spitter re-invented swallowing.

When they were pale shadows among paler thorn, John let the sphere thin until it was a memory and then a story and then not even that.

Fizz floated around him three celebratory circles and then jammed his nose nearly against John’s ribs. "Sing it," he whispered. "Say it."

John did not need to say it.

[System Notification: Circle Two established inside the Heart.]

The words arrived anyway, a bell rung under water and still unmistakably a bell. With them came the numbers that meant not pride but tools.

[System Report: Mana capacity increased: 3000.]

[System Reward Unlocked: Mobility Artifact — Mana-Bike M15 (compact, fold-array, road-legal in three kingdoms, illegal in two, questionable in one).]

[System Reward Unlocked: Technique — Void Draw (Minor): Convert residual ambient impurities into usable mana at low rates; best in enclosed, dirty environments.]

Fizz read none of that; he had his own way of knowing. He bristled with joy. "You did it," he breathed, then immediately repositioned to the subject that mattered most to him. John pulled out the bike from the system.

"John what is that? Say the word. Say the word with the wheels."

"M15," John said, dry as dust, and the little bright thing did a backflip that would have impressed gymnasts and irreparably injured poets. "It’s a travel things. Like horse carriage."

"The steed of destiny," Fizz declared. "Let us ride it immediately in celebratory circles until dawn and possibly into a river."

John shook his head once. "Road-watch. Ears on the hedges. We wait for the right time."

Fizz’s delight deflated into a theatrical sigh and then puffed back into mischief. "I will make posters advertising your restraint. People will not believe them. You will gain a reputation for mystery."

They did not light a fire. John sat again and learned the way the second circle liked to be breathed with. It was not the same as the first. It wanted longer counts. It wanted stiller shoulders. It wanted him to forget his own name for five heartbeats and then remember it in a way that did not ache.

The night in the field rolled forward. Somewhere a wagon broke an axle and the curses floated like prayer flags. Fizz told a brief, quiet story about a pastry in a city so good that the shop closed for a year after making it, "because art," and the void inside John bent around the story like it did around stones in a stream.

Near midnight, he tried the new technique the system had added without asking his permission. He let the second circle sip the taste of the road — the grease in the dust, the breath of horses ground into the grit, the old smoke that remembered accidents. The circle drank slow. The taste was bad and useful, like medicine. A thimbleful of mana came back to him, honest as earned coin.

"Dirty trick," Fizz said, watching his face. "In both senses."

"It will help," John said, thinking of long nights ahead where money bought soap but not sleep. He did not know then how much muck he would end up owning. He did not know a room would one day ask him to make its floor new with only lye and fury.

He closed his eyes and let the circles run the way mills like to run when the river is good.

He dreamed of a sound he had never heard: wheels singing on an honest road.

Dawn took that night without asking and traded it for a gray morning outside a gate that charged too much and cared too little. John kept the M15 folded in the place where he kept his knives and his hope, and Fizz sulked with artful dignity the entire walk into the capital.

There were too many people on the streets who liked being seen, too many guards who believed their whistles were horns in a song only they could hear. John bought bread that looked cheap and was fairly priced, paid extra to a woman who adjusted his collar without judging, and was twice as careful in alleys that pretended to be friendly. By the time the academy’s first towers shouldered the sky, the new circle had settled in him like a coin snug in a purse — weight you forget until it keeps you from being blown off a bridge.

Fizz’s whispers returned to their usual volume. "When do we test our two wheel horse?"

"Later.... When the road is ours," John said.

"Greedy," Fizz said approvingly. "I like it."

The memory thinned like smoke as sleep in the dorm turned over. John’s breath in the present matched the breath in the past, four in, four out, and the two circles in his chest answered each other like old friends who had once decided not to be enemies.

He woke before the bell, a little smile at the corner of his mouth that would have puzzled anyone who had never earned a tool by earning an ache first. Fizz blinked awake a heartbeat later and muttered, "We will go so fast the air will write us letters of complaint," which is how you know he’d been dreaming good dreams too.

The flashback ended.... Back to the real time.

Morning rang the campus awake with a bell that believed in punctuality more than most people believed in gods. Fog lifted off the quad in finger-width ribbons. John was already dressed, boots laced, token on its cord, the line inside his chest steady as a taut string. Fizz snuck a final swipe of honey from the breakfast counter —"for road morals"— and zipped back to hover at John’s shoulder.

"Checklist," Fizz said, paw up like a tiny quartermaster. "Token. Water. Dignity. Snack that might be illegal in three kingdoms. Attitude. Backup attitude."

"Token. Water. Soap," John said, sliding a small wrapped bar into his pack because Black Jungle sounded like a place that punished optimism. "And we are traveling separately until we are through the city gate. No showy... wheels." He watched Fizz’s whiskers perk. "Until the road is empty."

Fizz clasped both paws to his chest. "My restraint will be legendary. Bards will compose silence about it."

They joined the stream of first-years moving toward East Gate Court, each wearing the expression of someone who had been told that adventure was educational. On the dais, Warden Lutch and a pair of staff proctors worked two lines with the efficiency of well-oiled hinges. Students handed over slates, signed out assigned field ledgers, and received charm tags that would ping if the wearer stopped moving for too long or in danger. A local healer team stood by with a case of marked vials and the kind of tired eyes that had seen too many brave plans.

John stepped up when it was his turn.

"John," Warden Lutch said, reading the slate. "East House. Curfew violator. Beast disposal conqueror."

Fizz puffed. "We prefer ’perfume paladins,’ but yes."

She ignored the title. "The rules are the rules outdoors too," she said to John. "No family intervention. No merchant ’accidents.’ Teams formed off-site must be registered at the Black Jungle proctor tent. You will carry the return token at chest level at all times. If you are bleeding badly, be vain and show the token. We will find you."

"I understand," John said.

"Good," she said, and slid forward a small oval of slate strung on red cord. "Field tag. Don’t scratch it. Scratches make it think poorly of you."

Fizz examined it. "Does it also judge fashion."

"Yes," she said without blinking. "It hates plaid."

The corner of John’s mouth threatened a smile. He signed the ledger, received a stamped pass for the city gate, and stepped aside so a boy with three knives and a fourth that wanted to be noticed could take his place.

They left East Gate Court into a city that smelled of wet stone and bread. Two blocks away, under the statue of a horse that had never actually existed, Fizz’s fan (senior students) club members had gathered to cheer the first-years. Hand-made badges read "League of Fizz" in uneven glitter. A girl with a ribbon waved a pennant with his face drawn on it surprisingly well.

Fizz turned toward them with the gravitas of a touring monarch. "Remember," he announced, "hydration and admiration. In that order. Also, if you see a bad mushroom, do not eat it. If you see a good mushroom, consult a responsible adult. I am not that adult."