Remedial Survival: A Scholomance Quest

Okay, sorry for not responding to comments for a while, to be honest I had a bit of a depression spiral shortly after posting this chapter and, by the time that was over, the better part of a month had passed and my anxiety kind of held me back from looking at the comments. I'll look over and deal with the typos and grammar errors that some people have pointed out later, but in the mean time, it seems like the vote is ready to be closed.

Keeping the shirt and testing out the coin both win by a very solid margin, and you'll be holding onto both Basic Artifice Forms and 1001 Basic Artifice Projects #761.

You take a deep breath and try to work up enough energy to stay on your feet. It's significantly harder than you feel like it should be.

You're not terrified anymore, that strange alien fear that overwhelmed you just moments before is gone, but in its place is bone-deep exhaustion. It almost feels like too much effort just to move your limbs.

You want nothing more right now than to collapse onto your terribly uncomfortable bed and pass out until it's time to drag yourself to class. But you don't think you justify doing that just yet.

You take the coin that you'll be bargaining with tomorrow into your hand and rub your thumb over it. If you're going to be negotiating for its return, you at least need to know what it does, and it seems like there's only one way to find out.

You've never done anything like this before, but as you continue to unconsciously move your thumb over the carvings that mark the coin's face, you find that you almost feel like that doesn't matter. You simply stop resisting the pull, so small that you didn't even realize that you were fighting it, and allow the coin to drink from the meager amount of mana that you have stored up until it's full.

You can tell that something has happened as soon as you do, if only because you feel even more tired that you did before, but you're not sure what until you look closely at the marks carved into the coin and realize, camouflaged as it is by the coin's natural silvery sheen, the carvings are now glowing a faint, almost iridescent blue. You suppose that means that the coin's primed to do whatever it is that it's supposed to do.

You guess that there are only two things you can do from here, and you opt for the option that doesn't carry a risk of the coin ricocheting off into the void because you aimed badly. You flip the coin up into the air and slam it against your palm as it descends.

Instantly, you feel that something has happened, you're just not sure what. The hairs on the back of your neck stand up and you feel goosebumps running down your arms as the magic settles over you like a cloak, building until it feels like your whole body is submerged within it, a faint tingling sensation settling over your skin.

And then nothing else seems to happen. The magic simply remains built up around you and doesn't seem to be going anywhere, not even leaking away into nothingness like it did when you were trying and failing to learn how to cast the echo spell.

A distant part of you notes that this is the sort of thing that you should probably be concerned about, perhaps even frightened; being around so much magic could be like soaking in radiation for all you know. But, to be frank, you are far too tired to care about that right now.

You shuffle over to your bed, which looks far more inviting than it ever has in your time at the Scholomance, and collapse into it without taking off your clothes. You know that they'll be wrinkled in the morning and, despite the very idea being something that would have mortified you just a few days ago, you simply can't muster up the energy to care.

Even the sensation of the magic built up around you, not unlike an itchy sweater wrapped over your entire body, is enough to keep you awake for long, and the oblivion of sleep takes you almost as soon as your eyes shut.


For the second time since you've arrived at the Scholomance, you wake to the sound of a girl screaming.

Your eyes shoot open and you roll out of bed, feeling surprisingly alert, given how exhausted you were last night. You would have bet anything that you would be dead on your feet this morning, but you instead feel about as well-rested as you've ever been, more so, even, than the previous nights you've spent here. Given what life in this school is like, you can't help but feel more than a little bit suspicious about it.

If nothing else, you feel more certain that the exhaustion that overtook you last night was nothing natural and, now that it's gone, you can't help but shudder at the fact that the fear that accompanied it was somehow able to reach you in the safety of your own room. You suppose you should at least be grateful that it doesn't seem to have lingered.

You briefly wonder if it's some delayed effect from using the coin last night, but your brain finishes waking up and alerts you that the effect is still there, and also that it's making you feel like you rolled around in a patch of stinging nettles.

You squirm in discomfort as you unconsciously reach to your arms to scratch the itch, even though you know that that couldn't possibly do anything because the itch is everywhere. You choose to believe that you were just too tired to notice how uncomfortable everything was last night and not that the sensation is actually getting worse, because you can't imagine that that could possibly be a good thing.

Your contemplation of what you might have accidentally done to yourself is broken when you hear the sound of loud sobs out in the hallway, which you also can't imagine could possibly be good.

You briefly consider taking off your rumpled and creased blouse and exchanging it for the shirt that Sofia gave you last night, now the one and only thing hanging up in your closet, but you push the thought out of your head. This is no time for vanity, no matter how messy you probably look.

You walk over to the door and crack it open, just enough for you to peek one eye through. You spot the source of the sobbing girl's distress.

There, in the center of the hall, just a few short steps away from your room, is a boy. He has short, blonde hair, corpse pale skin, and he isn't moving.

You try to open the door further, but your limbs won't respond, you can do nothing but stare at the boy and you can just barely make out the boy's horrified expression as he stares out into nothing. You can't even bring yourself to look at the other person in the hall, the one who's still alive and crying her eyes out. You can barely even think about anything else.

You don't scare easily, this is something that you know to be true and something that you've taken advantage of more than once over the few days you've spent as a student of the Scholomance. But this feels different than anything else you've experienced thus far.

Somebody just died.

This wasn't merely an attack where someone was injured but lived to walk away from it, a boy is dead and his body is lying in the middle of the floor. Had things played out even slightly differently, the body lying there might have been yours instead.

Because you're sure, deep in your bones, that the sharp spike of fear you felt last night and the body on the ground must be related.

You must have been less than a meter away when it happened.

An insane, foolish part of your brain tells you that you could have saved him, even as a much more rational part of your brain tells you that, even if you had known what was happening, there was nothing you could have done. You're far too weak to protect anybody from something like this. Somehow, that doesn't make you feel any better.

You take a deep breath and force your disobedient muscles to move, slowly pushing your door open and allowing the dim light from the hallway to enter your room.

You see the body in full now and suddenly become keenly aware that there's no longer anything to hide behind.

Some ancient, animalistic part of your brain tells you to run and not look back, simply leave and hope that the body's already gone by the time you return. You don't even think that it would make you look bad in the eyes of the other students, you catch movement from the corner of your eye as somebody on the other side of the hall seems to follow that exact impulse. But, at the same time, you don't want to do that.

It just feels wrong to leave the body where it lays and forget about it. It used to be a person and, while you're certain it's nobody you've come to know particularly well, you want to at least remember the boy's face, if nothing else. You'd want at least that if you were in his position.

But still, that small, animal part of you that's all but shouting that being near a corpse means danger, that whatever made it might still be around, is screaming at you to leave, save yourself, and-

And, suddenly, the itchy, stifling magic that had settled over you since last night finally bursts, and the little voice shouting at you to run vanishes entirely.

Your thoughts clear up, you're still uncomfortable in the presence of the body, perhaps even frightened to be near it, but it no longer feels like something insurmountable. You suppose that, whatever it is that you're feeling now, it must be the result of using the coin. The only word that you can think of that describes it is better.

You take a step outside your room and look around. You're not the only one doing so, but you're certainly in the minority. Almost everyone else is either holed up in their rooms, peeking through the crack of their door, or have taken the person from earlier's lead and run off to make sure that, wherever they are, it's far away from here.

But there are still a few people who are brave enough to step outside and take a closer look. Among them is a heavyset boy with a distressed look on his face who's wearing fancy, silky-looking pajamas, a tall girl who's looking down at the body from the upper level with a curious expression, and, of course, the girl who alerted you to the body's presence in the first place; a lithe girl with pale skin and red hair a few shades darker than your own. She's sitting on the floor, directly across from the body and still weeping, seemingly unable to tear her gaze away from the gruesome sight across from her.

You look away from them and take a few steps forward, but just a few. No matter how much braver the coin's effects are making you, you don't quite feel up to examining a corpse up close and personal. But you're close enough to make out details now.

You're surprised to realize that you actually do recognize the boy, even if only distantly. You sat near him in your creative writing class. He was the boy who seemed so very tired and stressed out as he tried and ultimately failed to produce a spell. You suppose that he never will now.

The thought casts a dark cloud over your mood as the idea sinks in that even if you never so much as spoke to the boy and didn't forge the kind of connection that should make you care about his death, you do anyway. The idea that you've now completely missed any chance to form that kind of bond sits uneasily with you and you dislike the direction that your thoughts are heading.

You do your best to commit the boy's face to memory and then look away, hoping to find something else to occupy your thoughts instead.

Your eyes eventually settle on the weeping girl and you're startled to realize that you recognize her as well. She's the same girl whose scream alerted you to the dead maleficaria two nights ago. You suppose that she must get up earlier than everyone else by habit, and this is the kind of downside that comes with doing that at a place like the Scholomance.

A part of you wants to just ignore her and leave, negotiate a deal with Thomas Wilson for the return of the coin, and go about the rest of your day like none of this happened. Another part of you recognizes that you were in much the same position a few days ago when Gideon berated you after you first arrived here and you left the cafeteria in tears. Leah helped you then, but it doesn't seem like anybody is coming to help the weeping girl any time soon.

You hesitate, but the part of you that would rather be good than be comfortable wins out in the end.

You keep your distance from the body, circling around it as you make your way to the wall that the girl is sitting against. Despite your best efforts, you can't help but get a better look at the boy's face as you do. It's not purely terror in the body's face, you can see it in the jaw, open so wide it must be dislocated, the streaks of tears still visible near his eyes, and the visible strain of his facial muscles. Whatever happened to this boy, for as bloodless as it apparently was, it was still painful.

You force your attention away from the corpse and back to the girl, crouching down to her level. She doesn't even notice your presence until you speak up, "It will be alright, you're still here and nothing is coming for you."

The girl's tear-filled eyes shoot open and she stares at you in confused terror, her weeping not abating for a moment.

You give as gentle a smile as you can manage given the circumstance and say, "It's always helped me to concentrate on my breathing. I can do it with you."

You take a slow, deep breath and, as if she's not in a stable enough condition to refuse anything you tell her to do, the weeping girl does the same. You slowly let the breath out and the girl mirrors you. You keep this up and the girl manages to follow, even if her breathing is still broken by the occasional sob.

After about ten cycles of the exercise, the girl seems to calm herself. She's still obviously terrified, of course she is, anybody would be, but she allows you to help her up when you offer her your hand. She keeps her eyes firmly away from the body and you lead her down the hall, headed in the general direction of Thomas Wilson's room, though you're not planning to take the stranger with you to your negotiation.

Once you're well out of sight of the gruesome scene you just left behind, you ask the girl, "Are you alright?"

"N-no," the girl says, a tremor still in her voice. "But…" she takes a deep breath before finishing, "I think I will be."

She fidgets slightly before offering, "Thank you. For helping me get control of myself back there. You didn't have to do that."

"It was something I have experience with and it cost me nothing to try. It was the least I could do."

"Still," the girl says, swallowing nervously. "I didn't exactly do myself any favors by crying in the halls like a baby. It would have been worse if it went on any longer." She frowns despondently before adding, "I really hate this place."

You give her an encouraging smile and reply, "I think that's a sentiment that most of us would agree with."

She gives a weak smile of her own and replies, "Yeah, I guess so."

You're not certain you should push the girl while she seems so fragile, but you feel a need to anyway. "Did you know him?"

The girl shakes her head and says, "No. It's silly, I've seen worse happen to people I actually knew, I saw my own uncle get bisected by a Luren and I kept enough presence of mind to at least run, but I scream my head off at the sight of a dead mal and break down completely at the sight of a stranger who didn't even bleed when he died." She sniffles before adding, "I guess that's the difference not having your mother around to tell you that everything is going to be alright, even though you know it's not."

You can't really imagine your mother comforting you over much of anything, but you smile and nod nonetheless.

"I…" the girl starts and you get the impression she just needs to get everything off her chest to anybody who cares to listen. It's still early, you have enough time to provide that.

"When I saw him on the floor, I didn't realize he was dead at first. There was no blood, so I stupidly assumed he was passed out, or stunned, or something. And then I tried to wake him, but he was so cold, and stiff, and he had that look on his face!" The girl gives off a full-body shiver as she continues, "And it was like he was just staring at me, and then I remembered last night, and that fear!" She looks at you hopefully and you nod to indicate that you felt it too. Relief blossoms on her face as she finishes, "I thought it meant that it could have easily been me instead. Or that I might be next."

"I can't say that I didn't think the same thing," You say in return.

"Yes, but you didn't turn into a blubbering mess about it," the girl says, self-reproach obvious in her voice.

You shrug and say, "I don't frighten easily. I never have." You also had a little help, but you leave that detail out. "I also didn't touch him, which may have blunted the blow slightly."

"Yeah, I guess," the girl says, not sounding like she quite believes you. She shakes her head and says, "But I've been horribly impolite, dumping all of this on you without even introducing myself." She wipes her face and says, "I'm Tara, by the way."

You give a polite smile and reply, "Áine."

Tara nods and says, "Well, thank you, Áine. I think I needed that. Tell me if there's ever anything I can do for you."

You almost tell her that she doesn't need to do anything, but you manage to keep your mouth shut at the last moment. If she's decided that she owes you, that's not something you should refuse.

You simply smile and say, "We'll see. I suppose that I'll be seeing you around?"

Tara nods and says, "Well, it's not like either of us are going anywhere." She says it like a joke, but her face drops after she says it, as if she's only managed to remind herself about how horrible her situation is.

You do her the favor ignoring that little stumble and simply respond, "I guess that's true," with a light smile.

Tara nods once more and lets out a quick, "Right," before heading off to… wherever it was she was going when she got up so early this morning. Probably homeroom, you suppose. That feels like it makes the most sense.

You nod to yourself and head off on your own, almost immediately realizing that you are on your own and that that's maybe not such a good idea, considering somebody died last night and that whatever killed him might still be lurking around. You look around the hall and find that nobody else is around you. The shadows of the halls seem darker and more imposing than they usually do and you can't help but feel a small shiver run up your spine at the idea of what might be lurking behind every corner.

And then you push all of those useless thoughts away and continue forward. You'll be just as alone and vulnerable heading to Thomas Wilson's room as you would be backtracking to your room, so the only thing to do is press onward and make the best of things.

It could be your imagination, but you could swear the shadows lighten as you move down the hall, reading the room numbers as you go. 'D4904, D4906, D4908, D4910,' until you finally stand outside of room D4912.

You take a deep breath and knock on the door three times before you can talk yourself out of doing this. The only time that you've ever made an actual deal before was with Jingfei, and you were, if not friends, at least friendly. The boy on the other side of this door is a complete stranger and you're about to try and extort him for the return of his own property.

You try to tell yourself that what you're doing isn't as bad as that sounds, and even most succeed in doing so. It's what anybody else would do in your position and, if your read on the culture here is correct, quite a few people wouldn't even go that far. The coin you'll be trading seems pretty useful, even if you're not entirely certain what it actually did, and it's probably worth more than whatever you can convince the boy to give you in exchange for its return. You still feel a little bad about the whole situation.

You wait in front of the door, fretting about how you're going to handle this meeting, and take the coin out of your pocket, looking it over as if you're worried that it might have somehow broken or changed overnight. It looks exactly the same as it always has and you know that it still works because you can feel the faint tug of it trying to pull at your mana, though you don't allow it to take any.

As you're examining it, the door suddenly swings open and you have to stop yourself from jumping. You clench your fist around the coin and look at the doorway, where a dark-haired boy with a pained expression on his face stares at you.

You can't help but find your eyes drifting to his leg, where the bleeder dug into him yesterday, and cringe. The wound is wrapped up in what looks like a torn-off strip of a shirt, but you can see that the white fabric has soaked in enough blood to turn a deep, almost sickening black. You feel like the boy should probably swap it for something fresher, but you don't know enough about medicine to know if that's actually a good idea, or if the boy even has enough clothes to make it a plausible idea.

"What is it?" Thomas asks, his bad mood readily apparent and completely reasonable considering how much pain his leg must be in. Leah said that his injury shouldn't be life-threatening, but it certainly looks unpleasant.

You clear your throat and open your clenched palm, revealing the coin. "I believe I have something that belongs to you."

The boy's eyes widen and he tries to snatch the coin from your hand, but you close your fist and manage to pull it away before he can reach it.

Thomas stares at you with wide, desperate eyes and says, "Please. It's the only thing I have that's worth anything!"

You flinch at the sheer desperation in his voice, but you do your best to push any feelings of guilt away and clear your throat again. "I'm willing to trade for its return."

Thomas' expression turns guarded, but hopeful desperation still shines through. You can tell that he was never expecting to get the coin back and that, even if your price is high, it's still a better deal than he had ever hoped to get. You also suspect that he's desperate enough to get it back that you're a little bit hesitant to name a price that's too high.

With his injury, you can almost certainly outrun him if it comes down to it, but you're still not sure you want to take that chance.

"What do you want?" Thomas asks, a resigned tone to his voice.

You blink and wish that that was a question you'd come up with an answer for before you came here. But Leah at least gave you an idea of what you can expect, so you opt to fall back on that.

What do you ask for?: (Select 2, the same option can be selected more than once. Please vote in plan format.)

[] A simple favor: At your request, Thomas will accompany you to any location, stand guard while you're doing something that leaves you vulnerable (such as showering, searching the supply room, or scavenging for supplies in the shop or lab), do your assigned chores for you, or perform any other simple task that is not unduly dangerous.

[] A power sink: True to Leah's guess, Thomas Wilson does have a few power sinks with him. They're cheap, even compared to the makeshift one that you've been working on in shop class, and were brought with him by virtue of being light rather than being effective, but they're portable and can carry up to two mana, which might make the difference in an emergency.

[] Straight mana: You're not quite certain how much mana the coin translates to in terms of pure value, but Thomas clearly thinks that it's quite a bit and is willing to pay enough to refresh yourself to your maximum mana capacity, as well as fill up any mana sinks obtained as part of this deal.

[] A blueprint: Thomas knows how to make another copy of the coin that you're offering to return, and is willing to share how in exchange for it. He is, however, only willing to do this because the actual process of creating the coin is too complicated, skill-intensive, and expensive for him to actually perform, and that means that you certainly can't do it either. But you still might be able to one day and, in the meantime, you could probably trade this knowledge to someone more capable than you for something nice.

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