“Pen, I got your schedule,” Lucifer announced when he returned, clicking the door shut behind him. Pen sat up and took the paper from him.

“We’ve got all of our classes together except magic,” he added, hanging his black cloak on the back of a chair. “You’ve got a Society class instead.”

“Is that learning about the dragons?” Pen asked, frowning. He was interested in learning how to fight, not in the social structure of Nydia’s creatures.

“I’m not sure. But we’ll find out tomorrow.”

The schedule consisted of two alternating days of classes. Mathematics, Crafting, Training, and Society were all on one day; Chores, Fighting, Healing, and History were on the other. Beside each class was a list naming the teacher and the building number.

“The second day looks like it’s going to be long,” Lucifer sighed, pulling off his boots single-handedly while studying his own schedule. “Chores sounds like work.”

“Why do I need to take Healing?” Pen grumbled. “I don’t have magic.”

“They work with plants,” was the factual answer. “That class is mostly for people who’re interested into going to work on the land, raising a family, that kind of stuff. At least, that’s what I’ve heard.”

Pen said nothing. He had no desire to work with plants, but there was nothing he could do.

A knock sounded at the door. Surprised, Lucifer exchanged a glance with Pen, before he kicked off his last boot and went to open it.

“Hey, how are you all?” Tory’s voice sounded through the room. “We just wanted to say hi before we go to bed.”

“Did you get your schedules?” Aurora asked.

“Yeah,” the black-winged angel answered. “Come in and we can share.”

Pen didn’t move from the bed as the two girls came in and sat down on the floor. Both of them still had wet hair from a recent shower, and they wore fresh clothes.

“What about Lynley and Tari?” Lucifer questioned, stretching his great wings out from being hidden beneath the cloak so long.

“They were tired and decided to stay in the girl’s dorm,” Tory answered. Turning, she said, “Pen, could I look at your schedule?”

Wordlessly, he handed it over so that she could compare it with her own. Her pink eyes ran down the page slowly, examining it. Finally, she spoke.

“We have Mathematics, Chores, and History together,” she noted, sounding disappointed. “I have Magic, Crafting, and Healing all mixed up. And I heard that they keep girls and boys separate for Training and Fighting.”

“I’m in all your classes except Chores, Fighting, Healing, and Training. And Society, for Pen,” Aurora put in. “So I guess we all have History and Mathematics together. I wonder what Yatii and Ed have.”

“We can ask them at breakfast,” Lucifer said. He handed Aurora’s schedule back to her. “I think it’s better if we get some rest, though. I have a feeling that the teachers’ jobs are to wear us out to exhaustion.”

“Maybe they’ll go easy on us the first day, since we did just trek across the Pindus mountains,” she pointed out, getting to her feet.

“Maybe, but who knows?” Lucifer shrugged. “They could just take the fact that we survived as an invitation to work us harder.”

“At least we know where our next meal is coming from,” Tory added, looking absentmindedly at Pen. His black eyes were staring at the floor, seeming not care about the ongoing conversation. She couldn’t decide whether his expression was sad or thoughtful. When she held out his schedule to him, he took it without a word.

“We’ll see you tomorrow, okay?” she added as she walked out, her comment directed more towards Pen than to both of them.

“Good night,” Lucifer said, and closed the wooden door quietly behind him.

“Pen, are you sure you’re okay?” he asked. He had started going through one of the dressers in search of pajamas. “You’re even more quiet than usual.”

“Yeah,” Pen said, slipping his schedule beneath the bed with the rest of his papers. He fell into the bed, trying to think of a reasonable answer to his friend’s question. “This place just reminds me of the Archives, I think.”

“You didn’t like it there?”

“I don’t know.”

Lucifer knew he wouldn’t get more of an answer for the time being, so he changed and clambered to the top of the bunk bed. The candle blew out with one sweep of a black wing.

Immediately, Pen was swallowed by the darkness. The sounds were amplified inside him: he could hear their roommates talking, their feet against the floor, their hearts pumping like little drums. Lucifer’s was louder than any of the others, slowing as he drifted into sleep.

Pen shifted and curled together, covering his ears, but the sounds continued to roar. Suppressing a shudder, he silently got out of the bed and walked to the window, allowing the light of the moon and the fading dawn to flow on him.

In the warm glow he saw that his hands were black, covered in his own tears, although he could not remember shedding them. Feeling his strength return, Pen gazed out of the window, where, over the rooftops, he could see the mountains. Lights shone from one of the summits—University Accelerated was still in session. Sparks, so bright that they carried all the way across the mountains, flew into the night sky where magicians were training.

Pen drew Lucaya, careful not to wake Lucifer. He sat on the floor in the path of the moon’s shine and placed her across his lap, watching the light play across her blade. As the sounds around him retreated, his tears faded back into the shadows.

When morning came, Pen was still sitting below the window, his bed standing empty and forgotten behind him.

It took Pen five years before he discovered where the sounds were coming from.

“It’s a strange thing, isn’t it?” Lucifer told him while they were stringing together chain mail in Crafting, one of the few classes they still shared. Orik, as dusty and burly as always, smiled as he strode past. “To think that these little rings can hold off things like swords and arrows. Even Havoc uses them, right?”

“Yeah,” Pen responded, laying out the next row of rings for Lucifer to solder together with his magic. “You remember Panda, right? Part of his red armor was chain mail.”

“It feels like such a long time ago. I hope I get to see him again. You will, probably, when you get into Havoc.”

Pen said nothing. University Secondary allowed students to start concentrating on subject areas of their choice. Lucifer had signed up for many magic courses; he said that it was his weak point, so he wanted to get better. But Pen knew that he did it only because he wanted to be around Aurora more. The black-eyed boy had seen how much Lucifer loved to fight and train. As for himself, Pen was taking as many fighting courses as Lucifer was magic.

Lucifer, age sixteen and in his first year at the Secondary school, was already starting to grow tall. Pen, to his own disappointment, was still short and wiry. He hoped that he would be big enough in his last two years at University Secondary that Havoc would invite him.

“Five minutes, then we’re cleaning up!” Orik bellowed over the heads of his students. At the same time, a light flared on the table as Lucifer fused a ring together. Pen quickly pulled his hand back from the magic, accidentally sweeping the ring he had been holding off the table. Lucifer started to work faster, drawing his angelic symbols for fire rapidly on the chalkboard for each metal ring.

Pen, matching his speed, threaded the next ring into the others. Then, he paused.

He remembered dropping the ring, but he had just used it. Frowning, he pushed his chair back and looked under the table, but there was nothing to be found but the ashes of the smithy.

“Dropped something?” Lucifer asked, also stopping from his work. “That’s not like you.”

“I thought I had,” Pen started slowly, “but I guess I didn’t.”

He looked back at the ring on the table. It was the same one he had made earlier, there was no mistake. Pen could tell from the way the edges had been filed down.

“Let’s keep going,” Lucifer said, waving away Pen’s strange silence. “We don’t have much time to get the rest of these rings on.”

Pen pushed it out of his mind, threading the next ring in with the other. Lucifer soldered their last ring just as Orik announced the end of work time.

“Pen, is it okay if I leave you to finish putting away the rest of our stuff?” the black-winged angel asked after he had hung up their chain mail. “I promised Aurora to walk with her to dinner.”

“Yeah, that’s fine,” Pen said. He had already gotten used to Lucifer’s dedication to girls, Aurora in particular, although he did not understand it.

“See you later.”

Soundlessly, Pen put away their hammers, mallets, and chalkboard, and swept up their bench. He looked forward to leaving the hot, dark classroom; the strange event of the ring still prickled in the back of his mind.

“Lucifer abandoned you again?” Ed noted as they headed for the door, where the white-gray walls of the dorms greeted them. Since he was an elf, he had grown just as tall as Lucifer. His multicolored eyes had become a shade lighter over the years, and his hair, which seemed to retain an unruly wildness that it had gained during the trek to University, had become longer. “Why am I not surprised?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Pen grumbled. Hesitating, he looked around. Yatii, who still spent most of his time at Ed’s side, hadn’t shown up to class. “Where’s Yatii?”

“He tried to fly again,” was the simple answer. “He’s okay though—the healers fixed him up pretty well. I keep telling him not to listen to Sasheeta, but he just doesn’t learn sometimes. Come to think of it, I was just going to pay him a visit at the healers. Want to come?”

“I have to get to my combat class, so no,” Pen said. “But I can walk with you most of the way.”

“Combat is fighting without weapons, right? I might take that class next year, if I have time.”

“It’ll be tough if you haven’t already taken a lot of other fighting classes,” Pen put in. He knew that Ed had put archery classes before sword fighting, and therefore had little experience with one-on-one combat. “Besides, you don’t have to know a hundred different ways to break someone’s arm in order to be a good archer.”

Ed shrugged. “I guess you got me there.” He laughed and added, “Besides, with friends like you and Lucifer, there won’t be anyone trying to pick a fight with me anyway.”

“Your own skills speak louder than words in situations like that.”

The healer’s white, tent-like house waited at the corner, where the path turned to go back to the training grounds. As Pen and Ed drew close to the entrance, the cloth curtain that served as a door was whipped back, and out skipped a lovely little angel with incredibly long brown hair and soft, pale blue wings. When she looked up and noticed them watching, she blushed, tripped over her own legs, and fell childlike into the grass.

“Are you okay?” Ed asked, coming to her side and helping her back to her feet.

“Y-yeah,” she stuttered, still blushing, as she swept her white skirt clean. She giggled nervously. “I’m so clumsy, I’m sorry.”

“Haven’t I seen you before?” Pen questioned, sweeping his memory as best he could. He knew he had heard her voice somewhere.

“I don’t know?” the angel said quickly, unable to meet his eyes. “I… I remember when you came here from the Caravan.” She started fingering the pink edges of her white, long-sleeved shirt. When Pen did not respond, she said quietly, “I spilled my drink on the stairs.” Somehow, that simple statement seemed to bring her to the verge of tears, and she spun around to run back into the healer’s tent.

“Hey, wait!” Pen said, and, surprising himself, he caught her by the wrist. “Wait. If you were at University Secondary five years ago, why are you still here?”

She slowly met his eyes, and Pen released her. “I had to stay,” she said. “I had no choice. I can heal, but I can’t control it. That’s why I’ve had to remain here with the healers. I want to get better so I can use my magic, but I’m really not much good at it.” She giggled and brushed away a tear. “I’m sorry.”

“But your friends—“ Ed started.

The angel shook her head, her tears still coming. “They all graduated to University Accelerated. But it’s okay. I need to learn, after all.”

Pieces of a puzzle were starting to fit together in Pen’s mind. “You…” he began, unsure how to phrase his question, “… are you the angel who healed my friends, that day that we arrived here?”

“Yeah,” she whispered. “It was an accident. I just knew that they had no time, and I wanted to help them. I hope it was okay.”

“Yes,” Pen said, unsure of what to say to the shy angel. “I… thank you for what you did. Don’t be sorry.” He lowered his eyes. “What’s your name?”

“Jalena. You?”

“Pen.”

“Want to be friends?” she asked, with a little giggle. “I’m really not good at anything, but I can try to help if you ever need it.”

“Thanks.”

Not knowing what else to say, Pen walked away down the path, keeping his eyes planted firmly on the ground. He wished that there was some way he could express his gratitude, but he didn’t know any words or actions that could show how he felt. The only thing he knew how to do was fight.

And that’s all I need to know how to do, he added to himself.

Pen’s combat class was filled with older students, many of them having once wanted to go to Havoc but failing to be invited or accepted. Most them now pursued a martial degree at University Accelerated. As a result, the black-eyed boy was an outsider in age as well as appearance.

He had been lucky to get into the class. Originally, he had signed up for a lower level combat course, but the trainer promptly rejected him and sent him to the highest level. Pen was happy for the opportunity, but he also felt isolated among the big, muscular boys. The worst time was when they were getting ready for their lesson, and he was singled out. But when he was fighting, he was always their equal.

On the training grounds, Pen forgot all about the mysterious incident of the ring and about Jalena, but as he walked past the healers’ tent on the way back to the dorms, he was instantly reminded. Again, the incredible urge to want to thank the angel returned to him, but he pushed it forcefully to the back of his mind.

Their room was dark by the time he returned to it, and Lucifer was nowhere in sight. Not bothering to light a candle, Pen took a seat on the floor and proceeded to finish the little paper homework that he had been assigned that day. The stars were already out by the time Lucifer joined him.

The black-winged angel’s homework load was much heavier than Pen’s, but he got to work without a word of complaint. Pen watched as he spread charts of magic symbols out in front of him and silently started to write.

“Why do you go to so much trouble for something that doesn’t interest you?” Pen finally interrupted. “I can tell you’re not particularly intrigued by all this busy work.”

“It is interesting,” Lucifer said. “And this is the hard part. Once we get the technique down, we’ll be doing a lot more practice with magic itself.”

“Yeah, but you were raised to fight, and you love it,” Pen continued. “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather do the kind of stuff I do?”

Lucifer gave no answer.

“Do you know what you want to do after University?” he asked, attempting to get any kind of answer out of his friend.

“I want to have a family,” he said simply.

Pen shook his head, unable to understand the motivation that would drive a person towards such a mundane lifestyle, but he held his peace. Stacking away his homework, he took Lucaya off his belt and fell into bed, where he lay in silence, letting his fingers run across the hilt where her name had been inscribed.

“Hey, Pen,” Lucifer said, seeming to remember something. “Do you still have that old paper with the magic symbols on it? You know… ‘Awaken power’?”

“Yeah, I do. Why do you ask?”

“I might be able to decipher what it means. Or, at least, what it says.”

“You’ve already read the symbols for me, though,” Pen was confused.

“I sounded them out all those years ago, when I thought that it was a spell of some kind, but the more I’ve thought about it, the more likely it seems that it’s just a message. It doesn’t give you instructions for any kind of layout required for the spell to work, anyway.”

Convinced, Pen rolled out of bed and found his collection of precious papers beneath the bed. He handed the right one to Lucifer.

Immediately, excitement dawned on the angel. He whipped out a clean sheet and a pencil and began to write.

“I knew it!” he exclaimed. “It’s actually quite simple, you see, because wild magic is only a backwards version of regular magic. If you read it the normal way around, the symbols say, Tsenotse Tsefiname Ephila Tseihe Yewa Genitse, but if you sound out the symbols backwards… let’s see… the first word would be, tse-in-ge.”

“Sing,” Pen said, translating the phonetics. He looked over Lucifer’s shoulder, sounding out the words as he went. “Sing, away….”

“He-i-tse—“

“His.”

“La-i-ph-e—“

“Life.”

“Me-na-fi-tse? Or maybe, me-na-f-i-tse.”

“Manifest.”

“Tse-no-tse. Se-t-no-tse?”

“Stones, I think,” Pen suggested. He looked over the entire sentence. “Sing away his life manifest stones. It makes sense, but I have no idea what it means.”

“I would guess that it has something to do with wild magic, since that’s how it was written,” Lucifer pointed out.

“Sing… Lucaya,” Pen muttered. “I wonder if they’re related. Gerrit said that she had wild magic in her, too.”

“It seems like a very unlikely coincidence. What chance is there that a random piece of paper you found could relate directly to a sword that was given to you?”

“I was researching two-name swords when the paper showed up,” he reflected. Nevertheless, it did seem unlikely that the message and Lucaya were related.

Checking his watch, Lucifer sighed and started stacking away his notes. He stripped down to his boxers and flew into bed, blowing out the candle in the process. In the darkness, Pen placed the paper back in its space under the bed and lay down beside Lucaya. Mysterious name or not, she served him well, and he desired no other.

The darkness quickly washed over him, even faster than usual. A heart was beating quickly; it was being chased… fear and hate flashed before his eyes. She had to escape… she was sprinting… why was she running? She should stand and fight… but she would be killed… it wouldn’t leave her alone… and then, she was falling, falling…

Pen caught her before she hit the ground, not knowing how he had gotten there or how he had known of her dream. But there he was, looking down at an elvish girl two years older than himself, her golden hair streaming over his arms and her eyes winking up at him in the darkness. Her blanket had slid off the bunk bed as she had fallen and now covered the floor around them.

He set her down on the blanket as gently as he could, praying that her tired eyes could not make him out in the darkness. Sleep, he told her, knowing that she could hear the words in his head. Dream not such dark dreams, he added, pulling another blanket from her bed to cover her. Her eyes began to close again.

Remembering the heat of her body against his own cold touch, Pen reached out for the stone wall. The entire dorm was within his reach… no, the entire school, as far as the darkness stretched beneath the moonlight. His senses faded away, and he found himself in the morning, sitting beneath the window of his dorm room. Lucifer was still sleeping.