"Thea!" someone called, and she turned to see Todd waving his hand at her from a table across the room.
"Hi!" she called as she walked up and sat down.
"Good morning," he said.
"Good morning." She smiled at him. Finally, after walking through the halls alone, she felt safe by her Mentor's side. But that made her think about how he had erased her memory because a tutor had told him to. Should she really trust someone who would do such a thing?
"You have some blueberry," Todd said, pointing to the edge of his lip. "Just there."
Thea wiped her mouth quickly and looked down at the table. "Thanks." She closed her eyes, tilted her head toward the ceiling, and then rolled her eyes at herself.
"Listen, we gotta talk," Todd said.
Thea looked over at him, expecting him to finally apologize for erasing her memory.
Todd gestured at Thea's vest. "You're not serious about becoming a Spectrum Scholar, are you?" Todd had a displeased frown on his face that made Thea look away. He didn't even wait for Thea to reply. "You don't know what this means, Thea. You can't possibly understand, but believe me when I say, you really ought to choose a Focus Fragment."
Why Todd felt like he could tell her what to study, Thea didn't know. But she had always been in charge of what she learned, and she didn't want that to change, especially now that she would be learning Alchemy. This decision could completely change her life, and like her parents had always told her growing up, she was the only one allowed to decide what to do with her future.
"No, what I ought to do is follow my heart" Thea said, surprising herself just as much as Todd. "I'll be a Spectrum Scholar if I want to be. It's my life."
Todd sat up straighter and shook his head. "That's just it. This isn't just your life anymore. Listen. Last night I talked with my Mentor, and he gave me some advice. This is our lives. We're supposed to be partners and work together. But if you're a Spectrum, then we won't have time to meet together and prepare for our Joint Trial, and we'll drift apart. While you're busy learning basic lessons in every Fragment, I'll move on to advanced lessons in my Focus Fragment."
"I'll drag you down, you mean," Thea said. Inside her vest pocket, C.C. began to fidget, and Thea noticed that her heart hammered in her chest. She quickly sat forward and put her hand over the pocket.
Todd sighed heavily. "This isn't just about me either, okay? I'm trying to help you. You don't know what it means to be a Spectrum Scholar."
"How about you explain it to me, then," Thea said, her tone of voice shrill and sarcastic.
Todd held up his hands. "It's hard to explain, but it doesn't matter anyway. I can plainly see that you've made up your mind. Just ... promise you'll be careful, alright?"
A chill traveled up Thea's spine. "Careful of what?"
Todd gave Thea a significant look and said, "There are three Spectrums now. There's no time to explain it all, but trust me when I say this is serious. Promise me you'll be careful?"
Todd's sudden concern for her gave her pause. She instantly felt bad for snapping at him. "Okay, I'll be careful. ... I'm sorry if I was rude," she added.
Todd nodded dismissively. "It's not fair of me to tell you what to do. I get that. I just ... I'm worried ... about all of this." He stared at the tabletop, suddenly lost in thought, and Thea couldn't help but wonder about what it meant for there to be three Spectrum Scholars. "...There's our tutor now, Maleficus Arkose." Todd nodded off to the side, and Thea turned to look. Maleficus was a Latin word for sorcerer. Howinteresting for the tutor's titles to be Latin!
An Alchemist approached the cluster of tables. He wore red robes that nearly touched the floor, with more pockets than Thea could count. Thea noticed the Alchemist's Chimaera right away. The animal resembled a lion with wings.
"I see we have a new face," Maleficus Arkose said, his rosy face splitting into a huge grin. The Alchemist had a strong accent. "I am Maleficus Arkose, and I'm charged with imparting all my knowledge of the Cardinal Fragment. Everyone, let's welcome back Todd Alder, and congratulate his new Protégé Althea Presten, come all the way from America to learn Alchemy." The Alchemist led a round of applause. The Mentor-Protégé Pairs sitting at the adjacent tables all clapped for Thea. All the other Chemists around the Rotunda looked up curiously. "Do make sure to welcome them. It looks like Althea's chosen the path of the Spectrum, so let's all wish her the best."
Thea felt her face go hot. No doubt, she had gone red with embarrassment.
Maleficus Arkose said, "All of you, get busy with yesterday's work for a moment. I'll be along to give you further instructions." Then the jolly man came forward and lowered his voice to talk to Thea. "You'll be a busy girl," he said with a hint of sympathy. "I do hope you keep in mind that there's no shame in dropping the Spectrum and focusing on one Fragment at a time." The man patted Thea's shoulder while his winged lion Chimaera licked its nose. It blinked bored eyes at Thea and prowled behind the Alchemist's back, brushing its side against the man's legs with each pace back and forth.
"Clyde is the most beautiful faleo ever created," the Alchemist said with pride. "I combined a lion and a falcon. He's really a marvel, isn't he?"
Thea nodded absently, watching as the faleo licked his feline fangs.
"Well, let's get down to your lesson for the day. Your task is to use the Insignias of the Cardinal Fragment to Convert the Focus from a solid to a liquid to a gas, and back to a liquid and finally a solid again! Todd, make sure you help Thea discover and explore. Give her a friendly hint when she needs it!" Maleficus Arkose smiled and added, "Todd holds the record for the fastest first attempt! I'm timing you!" With that, he moved on to one of the other six partnerships sitting at the nearby tables.
Todd handed her a shiny round stone. "Here's the Focus; it's obsidian," Todd said in a rush, gesturing for Thea to get started.
Thea swallowed and looked around the table at the four Cycle Insignias she would use to complete this task. This felt like another mini Trial.
Thea almost grabbed the Insignia for melt, but then she realized that if she melted the obsidian, it would go all over the place without a container to catch the liquid. Then she would have no way of designating a Focus for the Evaporation Conversion. Thea imagined a cloud raining obsidian. Wouldn't the rock solidify in midair? She imagined tiny rain droplets turning into sharp slivers of obsidian and taking out somebody's eye, and she cringed.
Thea would need to freeze the liquid, assuming of course that the obsidian would stay liquid after the Condensation Conversion. Which meant she would have to somehow catch all of her obsidian rain in a container in order to freeze it back into a stone. But she didn't have a container.
"Boy, you're slow today," Todd said with a little smirk. "You are not going to break my record like this."
Thea resisted the urge to glare at Todd. Instead, she closed her eyes and visualized herself melting, evaporating, condensing, and then freezing her obsidian stone. Finally, Thea grabbed the four Insignias engraved on stone tablets. She stood up, stepped away from the table, and knelt down on the floor.
Todd followed Thea, watching her warily, as she set up the tablets precisely on the floor-the Dispersion Insignia in her hand, with the Evaporation Insignia on the floor directly below, and the other two Insignias close by. Thea carefully studied each Insignia, looking for that tiny notch in the design where her Kundalini could enter the Insignia to power the Alchemy. After making sure she knew where she would focus her Energy, she took three slow breaths, set the obsidian stone on top of the Dispersion Insignia, and held it up in the air above the Evaporation Insignia. She tilted the Insignia just a little and said, "Dissoluendo!"
The Energy gathered around her in a rush and flowed into the Insignia, turning it red, and the tiny black rock immediately melted and ran down the Insignia to splash on the other Insignia on the floor.
Thea set the Dispersion Insignia down and touched the Evaporation Circle and said "Evaporo!" The black liquid slowly evaporated as the Insignia turned red, and simultaneously, Thea grabbed the next Insignia from the floor and sprang to her feet.
A small wisp of black cloud formed. Before it could float toward the ceiling and would be out of reach, Thea said, "Condenseo!" and held the Insignia upside down right above the small cloud as it slowly floated up.
The cloud began to rain tiny black drops. Liquid obsidian. Thea dropped to the floor and set the Insignia aside; she cupped her hands together to catch the shiny black raindrops. It took only a moment for the obsidian vapor to begin liquefying, and Thea caught almost all of it in her hands.
Thea looked up and spotted an expression of shock on Todd's face.
Thea put her hands above the last Insignia and said, "Duratus." The Conversion Circle turned red and the liquid rock in her hands hardened into a smooth black stone again, in the shape of Thea's palm.
Thea jumped to her feet and tossed the stone at Todd.
Maleficus Arkose stepped up, smiling with delight. "Astonishing! Simply astonishing! Three minutes, Todd! Three minutes. Althea, you have broken the record for fastest completion of my first assignment! I do believe you completed the task in half as much time. Well done! Simply marvelous!" Then he turned to Todd. "It's only fitting that your Protégé would break your record, right Todd?"
The Maleficus smiled at Todd, who shifted his feet and looked down.
"Now, I'm sorry to say that I could not anticipate such a marvelous display on your first task, Althea. I admit that I am not prepared with another lesson at the moment, so you will need to give me some time to gather another set of materials together," Maleficus Arkose said, but then he made a thoughtful face at Todd. "Or perhaps you'd like to start your Elemental Sparring lessons early today, hmm?" he said, and Todd smiled.
"Thank you, Maleficus Arkose! Come on Thea!" Todd waved for Thea to follow him, and the two young Chemists left the Cardinal Rotunda.
Thanks for reading! I'd love to hear your thoughts. Don't forget to vote! See you for the next chapter!
~A.C.