SOUL FORGE CHRONICLES
Chapter 18 — After Hours
After the last class ended, the students scattered across the academy grounds in loose clusters, voices low and tired.
Aldric walked back to the dormitory alone.
The first day had been useful. He had a clearer sense now of where the gaps in his knowledge were, and where he was further ahead than he had realized. Meditation had been straightforward — four hours in the Soul Sea had felt like nothing. Spell theory had given him a framework he could build on, even if the class itself had only scratched the surface. The creature observation class had been the most interesting of the three, not because it was difficult, but because it reminded him that reading about something and actually looking at it were two entirely different experiences.
He passed a group of students debating something loudly outside the dormitory tower entrance. From what he could catch, they were arguing about whether the creature observation instructor was going to make them actually fight the wolf creature at some point, or whether the whole class would stay observational.
A few of them glanced at him as he walked past. He nodded once and went inside.
The lion's head above the door gave a quiet creak as he entered, which he was starting to suspect was its version of a greeting. He had applied the rust-removing salve two days ago and the mechanism seemed to move more smoothly now. Small things made a difference.
He stopped briefly at the ground floor and checked the board near the entrance — a simple wooden panel where residents left notes for each other. Nothing addressed to him. He went upstairs.
He changed out of his robe, sat at his desk, and spread his notes from the day across the surface.
They were thinner than he liked. A few lines from each class — more questions than answers. He added to them, filling in the gaps while the lectures were still fresh, then read back through what he had written.
The spell theory class had raised something he wanted to think about more carefully. The instructor's point about spells with the wrong trigger producing nothing — it had sounded like a warning about carelessness, but the more he considered it, the more it seemed like something else. A spell that failed silently was a spell that left no trace. No feedback. No way to know the problem existed until it was too late to matter.
He wrote a small note beside the entry: *silence as the most dangerous kind of failure.*
Then he picked up the alchemy book.
The subject was wider than he had anticipated. Most students probably thought of alchemy as potions and enchanted objects — practical tools with practical purposes. The introductory chapters alone suggested it extended considerably further than that. The properties of living tissue. The behavior of magical energy under sustained conditions. The way substances interacted at levels that weren't immediately visible to the eye or even to basic mental energy sensing.
He read slowly, taking notes where the text opened into something worth following up on. An hour passed without him noticing it.
He set the book down, stretched his neck, and looked out the window.
The academy had grown quieter. The glowing dandelions along the pathways had fully opened for the evening, casting soft yellow light across the stone paths below. A few students moved between buildings in the distance, their robes dark against the pale light.
His eyes drifted to the commercial district buildings at the far edge of the academy grounds. From this height, he could make out the faint glow of shop windows still open for the evening.
He thought about the creature observation class again. The instructor with the scar on his cheek had made an offhand remark near the end — that the students who performed best in advanced field work were rarely the most powerful. They were the ones who noticed things. The ones who could stand still long enough to understand what they were looking at before acting.
Aldric wrote that down too.
A knock at the door interrupted him.
He opened it to find Elara, still in her academy robe, holding a small paper bag. She held it out without much ceremony.
"From the commercial district. I bought too much."
Inside were two small pastries. Aldric took one and stepped back to let her lean in the doorway.
"How was it?" he asked.
"Overwhelming." She looked around his room briefly — the notes on the desk, the books stacked beside them — then back at him. "There's far more in the commercial district than I expected. Ingredient shops, artifact stalls, a place that apparently sells live specimens for research." A pause. "I didn't go into that one."
"Sensible."
"There was also a notice board outside the library annex." She pulled a folded sheet from her pocket and handed it to him. "Mostly study group postings and equipment trades. But there was this."
It was a simple announcement — a senior student offering alchemy tutoring sessions in exchange for a modest number of academy coins per hour. Name, room number, a brief note about areas of focus.
Aldric read it through once and handed it back.
"Are you thinking about it?" he asked.
"Maybe." Elara tucked the sheet into her pocket. "Instructor Anna's lecture moved fast. I think I missed about a third of it trying to keep up with the terminology."
"The parts that moved fast were introductory." Aldric ate the pastry and glanced at his notes. "She'll cover them again in more detail in the next session. The terminology will make more sense once you've seen the applications."
Elara looked at him. "How do you know that?"
"I was paying attention."
She was quiet for a moment. Then she exhaled. "You could have mentioned that during class."
"You didn't ask."
She made a noise somewhere between irritation and relief, said goodnight, and left. The paper bag sat on the edge of his desk where she had set it down. He noticed she had also left the announcement.
He set it to one side, finished his pastry, and went back to the alchemy book.
Another hour passed. The lamp flickered once and he replaced the magic stone powering it without looking up from the page. The material was dense in places — not difficult, but the kind of writing that rewarded re-reading rather than speed.
He paused at a section describing the early history of alchemical practice. According to the text, alchemy as a formal discipline was relatively young in the context of the sorcerer world — no more than a few thousand years old in its current structured form. But the principles it drew on were considerably older. Some of the foundational techniques had been reconstructed from sources that predated the academy system entirely, recovered from ruins and fragmentary records left by civilizations that no longer existed.
The author didn't elaborate on which civilizations. A footnote directed the reader to a separate volume the library apparently carried.
Aldric noted the title and moved on.
By the time he set the book down for the night, his notes had grown considerably. A list of terms to look into. Three titles to find in the library. Two questions he wanted to raise with Instructor Anna if the opportunity presented itself.
He looked at the announcement Elara had left on his desk.
A senior student willing to teach. That was not a small thing. Most of what he needed right now couldn't come from books alone — practical alchemy required someone who had already made the expensive mistakes and knew which ones actually mattered and which ones just looked alarming on paper.
The announcement gave a room number in one of the older residential towers on the academy's west side. The listed areas of focus included potion fundamentals and basic artifact inscription — exactly the two areas where theory without practice left the largest gaps.
He picked up the announcement and read it again more carefully this time.
The price listed was modest. Three academy coins per session. Affordable, even at his current rate of spending.
He folded it and put it in his desk drawer.
Outside, the academy had gone quiet. The dandelions glowed steadily along the empty paths below. Somewhere in the distance, a door closed.
Aldric turned off the lamp and went to sleep.
— End of Chapter 18 —