Chapter 119: 119: The Academy Test XXIX
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The morning air kissed his skin, cold and honest. The fifth bell rolled overhead, deep and unhurried, and the city finished waking. Doors slammed open. The smell of fried onions mixed with the sharper tang of horse sweat. Apprentices in gray coats streamed toward the academy, their voices carrying like a flock of birds.
Fizz hovered beside him, still trailing sparks. "Well, that was a satisfactory amount of roasting," he said with a sniff. "But not enough. I have more fire in me. Always more. They have no idea."
"They will," John said, eyes scanning the street. He saw the Bent Penny’s crooked sign swaying at the end of the lane, tongue-shaped and ridiculous. "First we get the token."
They ran, dodging carts and baskets, slipping through a gap between a washerwoman’s dripping sheets that smacked John across the face like they were insulted by his haircut. He did not have time to care—until Pim saw him.
The boy was standing in the inn’s side yard with his keyring clutched like a weapon, yawning so wide his jaw might unhinge. When John skidded in, hair ragged and uneven from Edda’s last desperate slash, Pim nearly dropped the keys.
"Great gods," Pim said, staring. "What happened to your head? Did a goat chew you, or did you wrestle a broom and lose."
John ran past him, up the creaking stairs, ignoring the way Pim’s eyes followed his shredded fringe.
"I preferred it before," Pim called after him. "Now you look like a half-plucked chicken. A serious chicken. A chicken with exams."
Fizz, who had followed John in a bright streak, stopped midair to add his opinion. "It is true. Your head is now... lopsided. Very stylish. Women like symmetry, master. You are doomed."
"Shut up," John said, but his ears burned. He tore the broken chair aside and saw the glint of bronze beneath the splinters. The token. Cold metal. Proof. He scooped it up, closed his fist around it, and held it like a beating heart.
The sixth bell tolled.
Down in the alley, Brann, Edda, and Rusk regrouped. They crouched in the shadow of a doorway, hidden from the crowds that now streamed toward the academy.
Edda’s voice was sharp, all edges. "We cannot show empty hands. If we return without the boy or the jar, we are finished."
Rusk, still trying to tug his tattered trousers higher on his hips, scowled. "We will catch him on the road. We will ambush him there. We cannot fail the job."
Brann gave his small, neat nod. "On the eighth bell. He will be desperate then. Desperation makes angles crooked. Crooked angles break easily."
Fizz, hovering near John’s ear, his instinct caught the faint drift of their plans. His sparks hissed like angry bees. "My ultra instinct brain is telling me they might be plotting. They will attack us on the road. They should plan their funerals."
John’s field tightened around the token. "Let them plan. We run."
He shoved the door open, and morning swallowed them whole.
The seventh bell rolled across the rooftops like a giant clearing its throat. The city stretched itself awake. A pair of old men argued about fish prices. A woman with a tray of buns slapped a child’s hand away. John’s lungs were already on fire, his legs pistons pumping air and stone.
The eighth bell had not yet rung.
They turned onto the road that led toward the academy. For one glorious moment John thought they had outpaced the danger. The street opened, sunlight spilling across it, and the distant bulk of the academy walls rose like a patient animal against the sky.
Then the shadows moved again.
Brann appeared first, stepping from between two wagons as if he had always been there. His eyes were still cold, still neat, still measuring. To his right, Edda slid from behind a stack of crates, her braid smoking faintly but her grin sharp as cut glass. Rusk lumbered into view from the left, his tattered trousers threatening to fall again, his burnt eyebrow twitching in fury.
The eighth bell will ring soon. The seventh bell was near. One heavy note rolled out, deep enough to thrum in John’s bones.
"Now," Brann said simply.
Edda snapped her arms wide, ribbons of air coiling like invisible snakes. Rusk roared and charged.
Fizz flared beside John. "Yes. My moment. My roast returns." Sparks spat from his fur in a wild halo. "I will cook them into soup. Thick soup. Chunky soup. The kind you cannot drink politely."
"No." John’s voice cut like iron. He did not stop running. "We do not fight. Not now."
Fizz made a squeak that was half snarl. "You deny me vengeance. Again. Do you know how many speeches I have saved up."
"Ninth bell," John said. "If we stop here, we will fail the exam. The gate closes. Everything ends."
Another stroke of the eighth bell rang. The kidnappers lunged, but the crowd had swollen, a river of gray coats and bread baskets and yawning apprentices. John slid between shoulders, slipped past knees, let the void field tug him forward like a sling. Fizz darted above, shrieking.
"Make way. Boy with tragic haircut incoming. Do not stare at the uneven fringe. He is sensitive."
The crowd, startled by the tiny glowing ball with too much authority, parted just enough. A fishmonger dropped a carp in surprise. A dog stole it instantly. Chaos bloomed behind them.
Brann cursed under his breath as he was jostled back. Edda’s ribbon caught a laundry pole instead of John, snapping clothespins loose like startled teeth. Rusk tripped on another cabbage, because the gods enjoyed symmetry too.
John kept running. The gate was ahead. He could almost taste the stone dust of the academy yard.
The seventh bell’s echo had barely faded when John and Fizz slipped back into the river of morning life. The streets were awake now. Boots slapped on cobbles. Merchants shouted about their onions as if onions could save the world. A boy with ink-stained hands ran by yelling something about fresh pamphlets. Laundry dripped from overhead lines and smacked John’s cropped hair with damp cloth. He didn’t even flinch. He was busy counting steps, running his inner numbers like a miser counting coin. Four in. Four out. Four in. Four out.
But Fizz flitted backward midair, little wings buzzing, eyes burning like tiny lanterns. He twisted, sparks crackling from his whiskers. "Master. They are behind us again."
John didn’t need telling. He could feel the shift. The air itself warned him, tension rippling along the field inside his chest. Shadows stretched across the cobbles in front of him before the bodies appeared.
Brann slid from between two fish carts, coat uncreased despite the chase, his fingers already sketching circles that shimmered faint blue.
Edda appeared from the left, her braid a frayed rope trailing smoke, her grin sharp enough to cut a loaf of bread and insult it at the same time.
Rusk staggered in from the right, one eyebrow gone, one eye blazing with outrage, his trousers hitched up by sheer stubbornness and a waistband that squealed in pain.
The eighth bell began to toll. The sound rolled down the street like a hammer dropped on an anvil, deep and deliberate.
Edda’s mouth twisted. "Now."
Wind snapped from her palms, twin blades of pressure slicing toward John’s knees.
"Finally," Fizz roared, sparks bursting like fireworks around him. "I was beginning to think you three only existed to waste oxygen."
John didn’t slow. He angled his field low, palms flicking like he was swatting invisible flies. The black hole formed again, small and dense, a fist-sized wound in the world. The air around them shifted—dust, scraps of cloth, even one of the fishmonger’s knives jerked off the stall and whipped into the singularity.
The knife spun, howled once, and vanished into nothing.
The fishmonger stared at the empty space where his best blade had been. "That was my sharp one," he muttered. "The blunt one owes it money."
Rusk charged. His boots slapped wet stone, trousers sagging lower with every step. He swung his bare, bruised fists at John’s head, roaring loud enough to shake a shutter loose.
John’s field bent, dragging at the waistband of Rusk’s trousers again. The cloth shivered. The button popped with a sad little ping.
The trousers surrendered to physics.
Down they went, puddling around Rusk’s ankles like a loyal dog that had decided to nap. His pale thighs flashed in the morning light, gooseflesh catching every golden edge of the sun. The crowd of gray-coated apprentices gasped, then erupted into stifled laughter. Someone dropped a book. Someone else applauded before pretending they hadn’t.
Rusk looked down. "Not again."
Fizz shrieked with delight. He somersaulted in the air, sparks leaving rude punctuation marks on the wall. "Behold, the warrior of shame. Defender of drafts. Conqueror of breezes. The only man who can lose his pants twice before breakfast."
Edda’s face burned hotter than Fizz’s sparks. "Rusk, pull them up!"
"I am pulling!" Rusk bellowed, hopping in place as his trousers tangled with the cabbage leaves he had trampled earlier. One roll burst under his heel with a wet crunch. The smell was cabbage plus morning air plus humiliation.