Northwest in the perimeter fence was set a deceptively small, inconspicuous cast iron gate, which served as an entrance to the forest. Vegetation grew high and dense right outside the black bars, but not a leaf could poke through the invisible wards.

  Half our class looked ready to bolt when Instructor Howard opened the gate, as if expecting bloodthirsty beasts to come pouring in immediately. But none showed themselves. The trees stood quiet, a gentle breeze rustling the foliage above, and no birds sang. It was a forest like any other, though its old age came clear at a glance.

  From the portal, a clear trail paved with split stones set forth deep into the green bowels of the woodland. The Sword course students departed first to scout ahead and take their designated posts along the winding trail, also paired. Each had a compass with a communicator function, reporting their findings, or lack thereof, back to Instructor Howard, who stayed behind at the gate.

  In a quarter-hour, we got the okay to proceed.

  The trail appeared clear of unwanted obstacles. One pair at a time was deployed into the depths, five minutes in between each pair. None came back running and no screaming reached our ears. It seemed we really were in for only a pleasant field day and fresh air.

  The professor said our destination at the host tree lay a bit over four miles away. A healthy person walked roughly three miles per hour on average, but the trail was circuitous and cumbersome, and the trip there and back again was expected to take us about five hours, give or take. We were going to be late for lunch. To ensure nobody did anything stupid like start grilling a boar in there, the academy sponsored everyone a bottle of water and a bag of light, dried snacks and apples, and no meat in any form whatsoever. The smell of dead flesh could provoke the trees’ cleansing mechanism.

  I stood next to Silla, both of us actively ignoring the other, and in a while it was us up at the doorway.

  “Ruthford,” Instructor Howard called my name.

  “Sir.”

  What did he want?

  “Have you been in the Wood before?”

  “I have. Once.”

  No reason to lie about that. No military operating was involved. It was supposed to be only a quick shortcut then, but became one of the longest nights of my life. The Wood never shied away from a challenge. The harder it was contested, the fiercer it fought back. And the might of nature seemed to have no limit.

  “Do the trees scare you?” that man asked, his sharp gaze in the bushes, betraying no hint of his thoughts. I looked up at the high treetops as they swayed and hummed in the light wind, with no obvious sign of intelligence, but all the same mindful and present.

  “I think who doesn’t fear the Wood is an idiot,” I said.

  The instructor turned to my pair. “Silla, what about you?”

  “This is my first time, sir,” she admitted.

  “You’re lucky to have a pair with experience then. Be sure to listen to her.”

  “Yes, sir…”

  The horribly cynical look on Silla’s face seemed to question the existence of justice.

  No such thing, obviously.

  In a bit, we received the clearance to go and passed through the arched gate frame into the shadow of the trees. But the forest wasn’t a dark, sinister place. Daylight rebounded from leaf to leaf, as though off a trillion mirrors, mysteriously amplified, casting a faint, green luminescence upon the scenery.

  The Domain was a semi-magical formation with its own peculiarities. On campus, the grass field had been wilted, drained of vibrancy and braced for winter. The day had been cool and damp and blustery. But the Wood was fully without wind, warm and gentle, as if in early June.

  Bees and great dragonflies buzzed between the trunks that rose like courtroom pillars around the beaten trail. The shrubs and leaves glowed with vitality, beetles with coats of shiny copper sheen crawling along them. Thick, hairy caterpillars wormed up the perpendicular bark highways, displaying their startling colors to dispel the intentions of anyone to eat them.

  Humanity’s current level of knowledge couldn't explain all the mechanics behind the separation of seasons here. Studying such a wonder closer could open new possibilities for magecraft, and made Belmesion’s position close by the Wood all the more valuable. The various rare materials exclusive to the Wood were very welcome too.

  The path unwound before us, conforming to the ebb and flow of the untended forest floor, and made distances difficult to estimate. Half an hour of brisk walking amounted to no great progress, though the sights along the way had changed many times.

  There came an occasional fork in the path, but not far down those side branches awaited Sword course patrollers, posing quietly like statues of ancient heroes, to ensure nobody got lost in their hunger for adventure. But their positions were far apart, with a lot of ground to cover. It left a lot of blind spots.

  I’d committed the map to memory and let Silla hold onto it and the compass, and we walked without talking.

  Maybe half an hour had passed when I noticed the group of students ahead.

  Four of our classmates hid in the great bushes of mallow by the path, and two others lurked further off uphill among the trees. They weren’t Tarachian commandos, that was clear. I could hear them snickering and rustling from fifty yards away, even without any magic. Clearly, they were regular students planning something stupid.

  Silla seemed oblivious to their presence, though.

  My reticent companion stayed lost in thought, staring at the map in her hands, and visibly jumped when the students suddenly sprang up from the wild to block our path. Apparently, they'd been waiting for us.

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  More precisely, they were waiting for my partner. I was altogether ignored.

  “Hello, Alice~!” Audrey Trudeau waved her hand at Silla with a smile that had no warmth. “Took your sweet time, Miss Four. We were getting pretty tired of waiting, you know?”

  “What are you doing?” Silla asked, frowning. “We were told to maintain distance.”

  “Were we now?” Trudeau sarcastically echoed. “Ah, yes, you need to tread with care, or a big, bad treeman will come and eat you! Hahaha! Please! You can’t be that dense! As if the school would let anything actually dangerous come anywhere close! Somebody important could get hurt, and then their daddy would shut this place down faster than you can sneeze! You know better than that. It’s all just a show! ‘Blah blah. Respect nature!’ ‘Even the little bugs have feelings!’”

  The gang erupted in shrill chortling that echoed far out into weald.

  Only one of the four didn’t laugh along. It was the small Elisa Canth, who didn’t really fit in with the rest. I didn’t know she was friends with Trudeau, whose boisterous personality disagreed so heavily with her timid character. But that explained why Silla didn’t pair up with her roommate, as much as they worked together during classes. Those three had snatched the girl first for their game.

  “You should keep your voices down,” Silla cautioned them.

  Trudeau’s face soured.

  “You just live in your own world, don't you? More importantly, I’ve got something to show you, Ms Four. Guess what it is…” The girl rummaged through her purse, soon to pull out a shining metal item. A thin silver bracelet, elegantly shaped, patinated by age, and ornately engraved. Clearly antique. “Ta-dah! Recognize this?”

  “Hey!” Silla exclaimed, quick to forget her own advice. “That’s mine! You’ve broken into my locker!?”

  “Wasn’t me~!” Trudeau exclaimed, feigning shock. “I’m innocent! The true culprit is—over here! Aww, a tragic betrayal by a roommate.”

  Trudeau stepped over to Canth and draped her slender arm over the shoulders of the fidgeting girl.

  Silla frowned in disbelief. “Elisa…?”

  “I’m really sorry, Alice!” Canth pleaded her case, her voice anxiously hoarse. “I had no choice! My father works for the Trudeaus’ company! I have to do as she says! Please understand!”

  “You little coward!” Silla exclaimed, then to extend her hand to Audrey. “That bracelet is very important to me. Give it back now, and I’ll pretend this didn’t happen.”

  “Very important, I’m sure,” Trudeau replied, spinning the relic in her fingers. “How did it go again? It belonged to your great-great-great-great-grandmother, who was a big shot in the Second Age? Imperial Oracle, was she? This relic can store the wearer’s mana and retain it with significantly reduced decay over time…Something like that? Must be a handy thing to have. And probably costs more than my family home. God, isn’t being a noble just wonderful!”

  Silla looked at Canth in dismay. “You told them everything?”

  “I’m sorry! I—it was a good story! I didn’t know what she was going to do!”

  “Damn,” I said to Silla, “you’re like some kind of bullying magnet.”

  “Look who’s talking…”

  “Anyway,” Trudaeu resumed, “just handing it back now would be a little too boring, right? Since we went to the trouble to set this jig up, how about we race for it? Just to liven up the day a little.”

  “Race? Are you out of your mind?”

  “The rules are simple: the first one to tag the Grand Maple wins. If it’s you there before us, maybe you can get your fancy toy back in one piece. If it’s us...Well, could be that you’ll never see it again. Hey, surely this isn’t even a challenge for the high and mighty Tier 4 sorceress? Or what, are you scared you’ll lose and embarrass yourself? Imagine that! Losing to a bunch of talentless nobodies like us, who know nothing about anything? How could you ever recover from that?”

  “Aren’t you at all ashamed to do something so childish?” Silla said. “Out of mere envy?”

  “Yeah, we’re so childish! Boo-hoo!” the pranksters jeered. “Hey, Ms Four, let me ask you, don’t you ever get tired of being so high-strung all the time? Every damn day in class is just, ‘Me, me! I know! I know everything!’ ‘Look at me, I’m so much smarter and better than the rest of you!’ Surprised you’re not trying to get in the professor’s pants! Maybe he’ll give you ‘bonus points’ if you perform well enough! You make me sick! You think so too, don’t you, Ruthford?”

  Trudeau looked at me.

  “Sorry,” I said, “I wasn’t listening. Are you going to get out of the way soon?”

  I looked at the ground, at the pile of cigarette stumps by the path. They'd been smoking while waiting for us? That was not good at all.

  Trudeau clicked her tongue at me.

  “So now you want to be a role model, you weirdo? Aren’t you just the perfect pair!” Shifting fluidly into a leer, she turned back to Silla. “Well, Alice, if this thing’s really so precious to you, I can tell you a faster and easier way to get it back. All you have to do is get on your knees and ask us real nicely. Depending on how sincere you make it look, I might just give this back to you right now. How about it?”

  For a moment, I wondered if Silla would actually do it. Since she was a pervert who seemed to relish being hurt and humiliated. But no. She glared at the thieves, trembling with rage, and gave off waves of fairly competent animosity.

  “I refuse!”

  “So a race it is then!” Trudeau shoved the bracelet back in her purse. “Starting—right now!”

  I’d wondered why the two others remained in hiding, and the reason was revealed now. One of them threw a home-made smoke bomb on the path that filled our view with bright sparkles and crackling and swirling fumes. The rest of the gang wasted no time turning tails and fled among the trees, dragging Elisa Canth with them. By the time the smoke cleared, the bullies had vanished.

  They may have been all subpar mages, but they sure could run.

  “Damn it!” Silla grunted and dashed off to chase after the fleeing rascals.

  And then fell onto the path, groping at her burning back, when I activated the engram.

  “Owwww—!”

  “Cool your head, fool. Don’t leave the trail and don't get separated.”

  She returned a murderous glare my way.

  “Couldn’t you just try to keep up!?”

  “I happen to hate running. The way left to the tree and back is long, and anything can still happen on the way. Conserve your stamina.”

  “That relic has been in my family for over a thousand years! You can’t imagine what it means to me! If they throw it out there or break it, it’ll be a piece of my house history, gone forever!? I can’t let them get away with it!”

  “Being attached to mere matter is disgraceful for a mage. Would your great-great-great-grandmother want you to embarrass yourself and your name for one of her old trinkets?”

  “Don’t try to take the high ground! You just don’t care one whit about me or anything that’s mine!”

  Silla looked about ready to cry again. What a pampered princess she was.

  Well, for a mage, the fact that someone got through your security and stole from you was a scorching humiliation of its own. Going to weep about it to the teachers would only make her a laughingstock to the whole academy. She sure got herself into a sticky situation by trusting the wrong person.

  “Don’t enter battle on the enemy’s terms,” I told her and walked on. “Are you a witch, or what? Use your head, not your feet—and read the map. This is the only route back to the campus. I doubt they plan to live in the Wood, so we’ll see them again soon enough. If they discard the relic on the way, I can find it. But if they still have it when we catch them…Then settle it like a mage.”