From a distance, the looming black fortress that was Noxarcer Academy had the grace of a black swan — regal, imposing, and faintly ominous. Students in crisp dark uniforms slid from regal aethercarts beneath glowing manalamps, brass buttons gleaming as they strode off to their next engagement.

  Moving among them in little bubbles of respect were the teachers, followed by golems who carried their books and other gear. They stood tall and imperious, marching about, only occasionally stopping to chat with peers as they moved between classes. It gave a sense of serenity, yet left an observer with no doubt it was all powered by frantic effort below the surface.

  Archchancellor Aldimere Brackham, seated at the head of the beast, knew better. Up close, the school was no swan — it was a belligerent goose, honking and ready to drown you out of pure spite. Those students were fourth years. The illusion magic hiding their hangovers and slovenliness was likely the only self-guided study they’d ever done. The teachers were worse somehow. Two were debating whose turn it was to chaperone a field trip, and the only reason they hadn’t used the golems to attack each other was that they were hardwired not to. The first iteration without such orders had proved a costly mistake.

  Goose or swan, the thing needed constant kicking — mostly directed at the new ‘academic excellence board,’ led by Rathbone, an utter sod who insisted the academy should be a swan: pure class and power. His approach to achieving this would have made admissions exclusive to the extreme — out with the ‘common’ folk with their ‘unrefined’ heritages, keeping only those of the old dungeon families, the ‘dynasty students’.

  Brackham had stamped that one down by pointing out those ‘serene’ prospective students were the same semi-inbred buffoons who kept failing the entry test. Whether that was because they thought they could bribe their way in, or because they were so far gone they could lick their own elbow — often doing so, even in polite company — was anyone's guess.

  Rathbone shut up only when The Great Reshelving: The Origin of the Scholarship Programme appeared on his desk. Even a ham-brained idiot knew better than to anger the Noxarcer’s librarians. They knew things — like mutagenic alchemy, and where you slept.

  The Noxarcer Emissary Academy prided itself on seeking quality. While it didn’t shy away from accepting the children of the powerful, it never stooped to admitting anyone who didn’t meet its standards.

  And it did — provided your definition of “standards” included students privately tutored since birth, with enough magical enhancements shoved up their arse to warp the entrance exam curve.

  With enough money, time, and parental desperation, even a mediocre idiot could be polished until they sparkled just enough to pass. The case for increasing the difficulty of the exam was made every year, but past experience had shown there was a limit. Raise the bar too high, and suddenly only the competent ultra-rich — the dynasty students — could clear it.

  Noxarcer needed brilliant minds, not just gilded ones.

  The academy frequently threatened to go back to forcing students to run a dungeon gauntlet to prove their worth — a tradition ended only when a past Archchancellor convinced Noxarcer that standardised testing presented an even greater horror.

  Noxarcer refused to be bribed and awarded scholarships to the 'worthy' and ignored all others. It proved its stance when the Keeper of the S-Tier dungeon ‘Black-Pit’ sent over a champion and his son to ‘negotiate a place’.

  The search parties had eventually found them trapped in an endless loop of empty men’s locker rooms, escorted out with a lingering odour of stale sweat that took weeks to clear. Noxarcer hadn’t hurt them — it had gladly exercised its right to challenge them. The academy was an ancient dungeon, older than the modern republic, perfectly capable of handling such threats without his direct attention. Had Brackham nudged the trap that put them there? Maybe. But as the Keeper of Noxarcer’s core, he had to take his fun where he could.

  Especially with the headache he faced now.

  He turned to the drooling young man slumped in the chair. Not a product of bloodline obsession this time — something had taken a bite out of the kid’s soul.

  Brackham recognised the dwarven–troll mix. The squat dwarvish frame competed with gangly troll height, leaving about five foot nine in both height and breadth. Spiky black hair, bronze skin — nothing like the pale, brown-haired dwarves.

  Brackham tried to judge students by actions, not looks or race. This one was a challenge — Ozren Grimbrow looked surly even unconscious. If his disciplinary record, which was included in the binder of documents that arrived with him and dumped on his desk, was to be believed, it wasn’t just for show. Brackham turned to the other occupant of his study, who was currently rooting through his bookcases muttering about where he’d ‘stashed the hooch’.

  Venna — S-Tier Keeper of the Colossi, alumni poster child, and proof anyone could rise to the top. And his long-time friend, and pain in the arse.

  “Students and teachers come in here, Venna. Do you really think I stash booze in hollowed-out books?”

  “Well this book smells like gin and regret.” She waved a book on the benefits of exchange programmes at him. “You always used to keep a stash! And you kept mints with it to hide the smell. Always too smart — that’s why they got you doing this!”

  “You make it sound like becoming Archchancellor is a trap,” Aldimere Brackham, 24th Keeper of Noxarcer, replied, trying to muster dignity while strangling the rebellious chorus of agreement in his head.

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  Venna gave up the hunt, flopped onto the plush sofa, and leafed through an art book.

  “I mean, didn’t old Razorra ‘mysteriously disappear’ the second you took up the core? You were only meant to be interim Archchancellor for his sabbatical. It’s been four years. Sounds like a trap to me. Especially with the board pouncing on the chance to claw power away from you.” She paused and pulled out something.

  “Oh look — teacher, there’s tits in this book.”

  “That is Olstiredel’s Lament — it is art, not tits! Now, please focus. Why have you dumped this poor child here with me instead of taking him to a hospital? And don’t give me that ‘just passing through’ crap!” Brackham snapped, trying to summon the authority his wood-panelled office, class portraits, and trophy shelves were meant to project.

  His eyes lingered on the massive Dungeon Runner Cup — an excellent whisky stash. He’d need it once Venna left.

  “I need help, Aldo. Technically, I’m his guardian until he gets his class.” She sighed, eyes fixing on the drooling figure.

  “Explain,” Brackham said, his crimson gaze steady over the steeple of his long, pale fingers.

  “It’s from the war. His dad’s dead, lingering soul corruption from the Battle of the Dozen after too many rapid respawns. Crippled his soul to save me and everyone else. It killed him, even if it took twenty years for the Rift of Crows to collect. Back then I said I’d look after his kid if he died.” Venna was fidgeting — more than usual, her brash voice unusually subdued

  It made sense. Few knew the truth: that battle nearly killed her in a hospital bed. Only the handful of brave souls who stood defending them had stopped a disaster.

  “Urstal was one of only three that survived,” she added quietly.

  “You’ve never mentioned this.” Aldo knew Venna. She talked — a lot.

  “Well, me and his wife didn’t get on, so I agreed not to interfere unless I had to. They were in some frontier realm. I paid a local to check in. He kept saying everything was fine — but the bastard wasn’t doing his job. Didn’t even tell me Urstal died.” Venna glared at the book she was fiddling with, her power churning in the air. Whoever this fool was, he was going to regret his failures.

  “I only found out after I got back from the front. A letter said he’d had his ticket stamped — and some pencil-pusher was contesting his Key of Valour, because medals mean bigger payouts.” Venna growled — a deep, orcish sound.

  Her elven looks masked her true parentage, something she often regretted. She’d wished she’d picked evolutions that showed more orc — not just a greenish tint to her night-blue skin and the small tusks behind her lips.

  “Either way, I go to check on the kid. I’ve been sending him cards for his birthday as basically our only interaction. He only knows me as V. I figure he’s eighteen — I’ll just keep an eye on him, wasn’t even going to tell him who I was.” She tried to look calm, but Brackham saw her eyes drifting back to the boy — searching for any change.

  “Had a disguise and everything. No answer when I knock. I go in anyway and find the kid frothing with an empty draught of pure Ambrosia in front of him.”

  “Nasty stuff.” Brackham had opinions on the new drug. Ambrosia — a slurry of powdered dungeon essence crystals mixed with alchemical reagents — had appeared only five years ago. Even the most mercury-addled alchemists had winced at the recipe, yet still it spread, offering a literally mind-blistering fast way to absorb essence.

  Brackham couldn’t help but wonder where Oz had got something so dangerous and expensive. Why he wanted it wasn’t a question — essence meant power. But it was a monkey’s paw. There was a reason you had to carefully expand your power, to level and grow, to take the blessings of the weave in steps. A dungeon could remake you — but if there wasn’t enough of ‘you’ to go around, it had to take something else to make up the difference.

  “Yeah, I don’t know what he was aiming for, his brain’s fried. I’ve used a bit of power to keep him from deteriorating, but I can’t fix this. You’re the smartest person I know, and an expert on souls, so I thought you might have a solution.”

  “And we’re not doing this in a hospital because?”

  “Is this the Keeper Colossi’s new ward? Did the Colossi do this through her merciless training regime? Think of the children, we must investigate!” Venna’s voice turned mocking and dark, but her eyes scanned the boy again. Something was off.

  “Something else is bothering you?”

  “My gut says something is up. Urstal was a health freak, and his wife was the kind of woman who was anti-violence, anti-drug, anti-fun really. It’s odd he’d be playing around with this stuff — that, and how in the nether did he get something even the dynasty kids struggle to get a hold of? It stinks.”

  Brackham sighed. He didn’t dismiss her as paranoid — as many wanted her toppled as they did exalted her triumphs. As someone now all too familiar with politics and the press, he could see the nightmare this could become — a perfect line of attack.

  “So I brought him to you, my old chum Mad Doctor Brackham.”

  “Former mad doctor. They made me hang up the lab coat and winch down the lightning rod. Apparently mental instability is undesirable around young minds. Utter nonsense, I’ve met teachers here that even my old colleagues would call eccentric.”

  “Well, then my Archchancellor Brackham, the entirely sane, of Noxarcer, master of all things regarding soul magic, I humbly come to you for your help.” She paused and let out a sigh, her tone darkening as she looked at the young man again. “You’re the only one I could trust with this.”

  “While I may have more options than most, his soul is in pieces. That essence has scrambled it. Even if we could trigger a respawn, that’s not getting fixed. There’s no coming back from that. I know you know this — you’ve been a Keeper as long as I have.”

  Brackham walked away from the window and slumped into his seat. Part of the reason he’d remained calm was because of how hopeless it all was. Unpleasant as it was, there was nothing to do for Ozren — so there was no emergency to fret over.

  “Right, so I did have an idea, but I wanted to check with you before I tried it.” Venna’s smile was dangerous.

  “Go on?” Brackham asked, seriously considering getting out his hidden bottle, even if Venna would drink half of it. Her ideas usually had merit — but they often felt like a repeat of their student days, full of trouble waiting to happen.

  “So my solution is this — let’s make him a student, awaken his class!”

  “Are you suggesting we patch up his soul with something summoned from the inbetween? And you’re suggesting I, a protector of the young, consider this horrible ethical violation that neither of us should have any part of because?”

  “What if I promised to help you deal with the board and its plans to shred your scholars?”

  “Venna, go get me the house cup trophy, you know the one. I feel like I’m going to need it if I’m going to listen to this.”