Chương 35: Oh no! An extrovert

An extrovert Fabrisse knocked. The door opened on its own with a grinding sound, like stone relenting. The room beyond was about the kind of cold that he'd expected, and smelled of the same materials he'd envisioned: chalk, dried clay, polished brass. The first thing he noticed about the Terra-Resonant Archive was the walls. Walls generally had one job. These had apparently unionized and taken on several more. Stone had been carved, engraved, polished, and inset until hardly a handspan remained untouched.

One side of the room was taken up entirely by a modular shelving wall, extending both vertically and underground, marked clearly by a chained rune switch labeled'Subterranean Archives: Authorized Access Only.' This place looked like his dream coming true. If he'd known this department existed in anything resembling its current state, he'd have applied years ago. Well, technically he had applied years ago. Someone looked up from a slate table near the back.

Seated there was a man perhaps Fabrisse's age, maybe a little older. He wore the modest grey-trimmed robe that was supposed to be of the young apprentice and round spectacles that suited the role, but his posture radiated the kind of precision most students didn't bother to fake. A silver badge gleamed on his collar, bearing two concentric circles and a downward-pointing arrow. Not a full Earth sigil, but close.

"Magus Assistant Hajin Min," he said with a polite nod.

"You must be the student Instructant Lugano spoke of."

"Fabrisse Kestovar. I'm… interested in Earth Thaumaturgy." Hajin inclined his head.

"We'll see how long that lasts." That wasn't meant to be hostile, Fabrisse thought. He categorized the response as hopeful in a slightly withering sort of way. Then Hajin stood. With his economy of movement, Fabrisse doubted the dust had even moved.

"You may look around. Magus Exemplar Konan is below, calibrating the Strata Core. She'll be with you shortly." Fabrisse did just that. On the left, neatly stacked in padded alcoves, were Sample Classifications: Metallic and Semi-Metallics. He spent several seconds reading the labels. Only afterwards did he notice the shelf itself had a color-coded organizational system—green for inert, yellow for volatile, red for cursed. The drawers opposite contained something called Geomantic Song Tablets.

Fabrisse wasn't sure how one persuaded a rock to sing, but he desperately wanted to find out. He didn't even realize he was smiling until Hajin asked, "Are you enjoying the view?" Fabrisse jolted.

"Yes." He winced; he hadn't meant to sound surprised by his own interest.

"I didn't think the Archive would be this organized." Hajin gave the faintest of nods, either approval or indifference. It was hard to tell.

"Not here to be beautiful, these earths. But Earth work tends to become beautiful by accident, if done correctly." He moved towards a smaller shelf near the outer curve of the chamber, tapping one of the brass plaques with the back of his knuckles as he made a sound like a miniature chisel striking.

"You'll start here. Introductory resonance cores and aether-storing stones. Simple to handle and less reactive to stray emotion, they are. You'll train with these until Magus Konan says otherwise." Fabrisse squinted at the tags.

"These look like… quartz?"

"Quartz, basaltite, some resonant sandcast variants. Don't let their dullness fool you. Exciting stones tend to produce exciting accidents." He leaned down beside Fabrisse and slid open a sample drawer. The felt lining made a tiny frictionless squeak. Satisfying. If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

Inside lay an assortment of dull-colored stones, each nestled in its own padded recess and marked with a stamped brass tag: Clear Quartz — Tier I Reservoir Rivercut Feldspar — Low Yield, High Stability Redline Obsidian — Do Not Agitate (Current Charge: 22%) Min continued, "These respond to clean mnemonics. Earth rewards consistency." He stared at Fabrisse and added, "Try not to be interesting, Kestovar. Rarely last long, the interesting ones." But Hajin seems like an interesting guy, he thought.

Hajin reached beneath the counter and produced a wooden tray, containing forty-eight nearly identical pieces of weathered river quartz. He doubted any of them contained any aether at all. Hajin slid a thin brass caliper beside them.

"Your first task." Fabrisse waited for instruction.

"And?"

"That is the task." Silence. Hajin pointed at a ledger.

"Measure length, width, mass, visible impurities, fracture irregularities, then sort them into groups according to the classification guide." He tapped a thick handbook resting nearby.

"If uncertain, begin again." Fabrisse smiled so quickly it almost startled himself. This was perfect! This was, without question, the best assignment anyone at the Synod had given him in years. A slow grinding hum echoed from the stairwell. Magus Exemplar Konan was on her way up.

"Ah." Hajin glanced toward the door.

"Stop what you're doing and greet the Exemplar when she arrives." The handbook suddenly seemed much farther away. No! The handbook was right there. So was the ledger. The assignment was right there. But apparently tedious social interaction took priority over exciting archival procedures. Tall and broad-shouldered, Konan Kann stepped into the Archive and immediately became its most noticeable architectural feature. Her skin was deep brown, rich with undertones like polished hematite, and her eyes were darker still.

She wore her hair in close coils braided back into a crownbound loop, streaked with silver that didn't age her so much as mark her as elemental, like a mineral that had been compressed into clarity over time. Then came a voice behind her.

"Has the new student come? Has he come? Has he?"

"Also greet your fellow junior researcher," Hajin whispered.

"I cannot see him from here," the voice said.

"Exemplar, I realize haste is the enemy of good judgment, but if you could ascend perhaps ten percent faster, I would be deeply appreciative." Fabrisse gulped. Oh no! An extrovert. A flash of silver appeared at the top of the stairwell. Then came a pair of startlingly bright eyes peeking over the final step. Then the rest of her followed in quick succession, ascending the remaining stairs with an energy that suggested walking was merely a socially acceptable substitute for running. Her face lit up as she saw him.

"Good morning! Are you Kestovar? I'm soon-to-be-promoted Senior Researcher von Silberthal, and I'm—" Hajin coughed.

"Manners, Miss von Silberthal."

"Right. My apologies." She straightened so abruptly it looked rehearsed.

"Good morning, Apprentice Kestovar. My name is Anabeth von Silberthal. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance. I have heard plenty about your peculiar talents with inert stones—""Departmental secret." It was now Konan's turn to cough.

"Oh! Right. I will talk no more," Anabeth said. Only after she stopped grinning did he realize how eerie she looked with a straight face. Her puffy, reddened cheeks and a pair of oversized eyes gave her an expression of haunted curiosity, as if she were constantly trying to decipher some long-forgotten secret of the Pre-Order era, though he knew she could alter that expression effortlessly like a mask. Fabrisse couldn't fathom how a person with such large eyes could somehow look unsettling, but she managed it.

The way she stared at him reminded him of those centuries-old portraits of vampire-lord families: beautiful, intelligent, and just a little too interested in things they were not supposed to know. He would actually have preferred her grinning and bouncing around. Konan looked at Hajin. Hajin inclined his head and stepped aside. Then she turned to Fabrisse, gaze as flat and exact as a pressure plate.

"You must be Kestovar."

"Yes, ma'am. I mean, Magus Exemplar."

"What made you interested in Earth Thaumaturgy?" She asked. Her voice was steady and textured like distant thunder. He didn't expect the interview to begin quite so immediately. And he had no answer to that.