“I’ll start,” I said, and scooped up a clay flask with a wide bottom and a narrow mouth. I tugged the cork from its mouth and took a quick breath of its contents. “Ice aspects.”
Rachel filled in the first blank on the worksheet we’d found with the flasks.
“My turn.” She lifted a heavy frosted glass beaker and unscrewed its top. “Yuck, smells like garbage.”
“You said you came from the Golden Sun Academy,” I said. “Where is that?”
“New York Undercity,” Rachel said with a shrug. She took another sniff and wrinkled her nose. “I don’t know what this is. Anyway, the Golden Sun was hardly glamorous, but it got me through the basics.”
“They have schools for people who live in the undercities?” The idea boggled my mind. I’d had no idea such a thing existed.
“Seriously?” She shook her head. “You make a lot of assumptions about people, Jace.”
“What?” I didn’t know what she meant. “You said you went to a training school in the undercity.”
“That’s where the school was, not where I’m from,” she said, her voice almost a growl. “Not that there’s anything wrong with being from the undercity. You came from the camps and look how well you turned out. Also, I can’t figure out what this stuff is.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know.” Her anger had caught me off guard. I took a sniff from her beaker. “That’s rot aspect.”
“Thanks.” Rachel blew out a frustrated sigh. “I shouldn’t have snapped at you. It’s not your fault you made the wrong assumption. It’s the whole society. People who weren’t raised as Empyreals think we’re all rich and spend our time lounging around in the overcity while servants feed us ice cream. But some of us work for a living. The assumptions are frustrating.”
That was news to me. Every student I’d met at the school was far wealthier than I’d ever imagined I’d be. I’d thought this was the only school for Empyreals because that’s what I’d been told. Now, I realized how foolish that was. For the students at the School of Swords and Serpents, this was the only academy of sacred arts because none of the others would even be on their radar. My fellow students were the rich kids.
I’d spent my whole life believing there were only two classes of people: Empyreals and everyone else. Now, I was starting to see that the Empyreals were divided into different groups, too. It was an eye-opener.
Rachel and I finished our assignment, and she gave me a quick hug when class was over.
“Thanks for helping me with this stuff.” She grinned. “If you want to see something cool, come to the eastern door of the upperclassmen common area between the last class and dinner.”
“What is it?” I asked, genuinely curious.
“You’ll see,” Rachel said with a wink. She slipped through the crowd of students before I could ask her any more questions.
Abi, Eric, and Clem descended on me and dragged me off lunch.
“Feeling better?” Clem asked after we’d filled our plates and staked our claim on a table.
“Yeah.” That was the truth. Deciding to help the elders had taken a weight off my shoulders, even if I knew it wouldn’t be easy. “I guess I hadn’t realized how all that fighting had taken a toll on me. It’s hard to get used to the idea that not everyone is a competitor out to beat me into the ground.”
“Most of us are,” Eric said and flicked a pea off his fork into my forehead.
At least, he tried to. I snatched it out of the air an inch from my face and flicked it back at him. The green orb bounced off his forehead, leaving a sticky smear of butter above and between his eyes.
“You have to be faster than that,” I said with a grin.
Abi let out a long, low whistle and shook his head. “They’ll make a prizefighter out of you if you’re not careful.”
The rest of lunch went by far too quickly. I’d forgotten how nice it was to just hang out with people who liked one another. There was no pressure while I was with my friends, not even from Abi. His suspicions seemed to have eased off a bit, even if I did catch him watching me from the corner of his eye while we ate.
“I’ll see you guys at dinner,” he said when he’d cleared his plate. “Guard duty.”
He waved as he headed off to his assignment, and the rest of us trudged to our next classes. Clem and Eric split off to their Empyreal Philosophy course, while I made my way to Professor Engel’s Military History course. I’d hoped to learn more about the Locust Warriors, even if only by the gaps the professor skipped over. Engel, on the other hand, seemed much more interested in regaling us with stories of her time serving in the Horizon Expeditionary Squadron after the Utter War.
After two hours of that nonsense, I bolted out of class and headed back to the upperclassman territory. Rachel had piqued my curiosity, and I couldn’t wait to see what surprise she had in store for me. I willed the school to take me to the common area as quickly as possible and was a little surprised when it did exactly that. I was getting better at visualizing where I wanted to go, which seemed to help the school grant my wishes.
Rachel was nowhere in sight, so I decided to do a little exploring before I headed off to meet her.
I picked a hallway at random and found one with a floor of white ceramic tile, while the walls and ceiling were seamless acrylic. Through the transparent walls I saw students working on projects in small alchemical laboratories,
