If I thought that the testing day on the academy campus was busy, the first day of open classes quickly disabuses me of that notion. Everywhere I try to walk, there is a sea of short, blue faces wading around me like water around a rock in the river. The students moving through the halls, walking along the paths outside, or loitering in hallways don't give a single notion to the concept of personal space. While dwarves might be a short people, that doesn't mean they are weak or light. Five times in the first day, I am nearly knocked over as someone absent-mindedly backs into me, their hundred and fifty-pound bulk hitting me right in the knees.

My first solve is quite simple, pushing out my aura to give myself some space, as every person that steps inside its influence is pushed to the floor. I am reprimanded for that fairly swiftly. Most of these people can't see presences, so it doesn't act like the deterrent I thought it might, and just ends up with a swathe of panting people lying on the ground as I cut a path through the crowd. With the forbiddance of flying, I don't have a solution.

The first class of the day is a remedial course on chemistry, one that Dovik and I share as it turns out. By the end of the two-hour lecture, with the only thing done having been the professor going over the syllabus and supplying a list of books that we will need to purchase for the class, I am deeply disappointed. As it turns out, every class that I attend on my first day is the same.

Dovik and I end up sharing two classes: Remedial Chemistry and Remedial Academic Algebra. He doesn't have to take a remedial physics course. Apparently, physics isn't something useful to alchemists. Halfway through the day, we take time for lunch, eating at one of the many cafes that surround the academy grounds. Gaz and Jasper join us. Jasper convinces me to order food off a secret menu at the cafe while Gaz complains about her classes; her sentiments match my own.

After lunch, I have to set out on my own, attending different lecture halls where a sheet of paper containing a course syllabus and a paper containing a book list are handed out and gone over. I have one class in the afternoon with Gaz due to her demonstrating an advanced understanding of the underlying science of enchantment during her entrance exams. Despite that, I get one over on her when we separate so I can attend one of the few second-year lectures that I was allowed to take. She is a good sport about it, making me like the girl even more.

I catch sight of Dovik as the sun begins to set on the wall. Most of the students have long cleared off the campus, leaving just after lunch for home. We take another meal, relaxing and enjoying the long plunge into night. We are not like those other students. It was advised to both of us that we would need to take an exceptionally heavy course load to make up for our lacking foundations. So, as the night begins, we part once more to begin attending our night classes. I only leave the campus a few hours before midnight, long after Dovik has gone home. Over the course of the first day, I attended nine different classes.

All I can feel as I begin the trip home is a strange dissatisfaction. There was something of an expectation that I would feel tired after my first day of non-stop lectures, that I would be lamenting at having stacked six of the eight days in the Faethian week with such a harsh schedule. Instead, I feel let down. I shake my head as I march toward the terminal on the corner of the nearby street. Tomorrow will likely be the same, and the day after that, but at the start of the next week, the true academic challenge will begin.

"Stop it. Stop it where you're goin'," a faethian man says as he stumbles out of the shadow of an alley. The reek of alcohol wafting off of him affirms my conviction in keeping my perception attribute low.

"Excuse me," I say, walking around him as he stares at me with bleary, crossed eyes. For a moment, I reach out to push him away, but the general filth covering him makes me think otherwise. It takes me walking past him five steps to even realize he had been pointing a knife at me, with how caught up I am in thinking about the day. I pause for a moment, turning back to face him.

He still stands there, looking at me now, the knife in his hand as he struggles to stay on his feet. Seeing me see him, resolve seems to flow into him, and he straightens himself up just the barest bit. "Said stop it, didn't I?" he half-asks, moving the blade in his hand around in a way that makes it flicker in the streetlight.

"You did," I confirm to him.

"Thought so. Come now, lady, give it over." He gestures with his free hand at me as if he is beckoning me to walk over to him. "I want all of it."

"Am, am I being robbed? Mugged, I think you call it."

"That's right," he says, finding his confidence. "That's right. You are a fancy one, yeah? One of them alabaster stonestalkers. Give it, your money, and those pretty rings on your fingers. Better do it too, wouldn't want me to get nasty. Not the first woman I've had to stick with something pointy."

His words send a shiver of revulsion through me. For a moment, I just stand there, looking down at the drunken man with the knife, not knowing what to do. There is a bit of fear, or rather, the knowing that I should have some kind of instinct to be afraid. He doesn't look like a weak man. Hells, if Galea wasn't actively telling me that he wasn't a magician, I might have a bit of trepidation. The thing is, with only a four-inch-long blade, I don't think there is anywhere he could even stick it that would do me lasting harm. It wouldn't be able to go through my breastbone and make it to my heart without bending, and this drunk would have to be very strong to manage that. Maybe he could stab me in the eye and really hurt me that way; I don't know if I can regrow an eye. I probably can.

In the silence lapsing between us, he squirms as I stare down at him. There is a tremor in his knife-holding hand. More than likely, the shaking is from the bottle than from any rational sense of fear at approaching me with a weapon. His eyes unfocus as he matches my stare to the point that I might think he has forgotten that he is threatening me.

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It is so strange to be in this position, looking down at someone so much weaker who is promising that they will cut you or worse unless you do what they ask. Shouldn't he know not to approach me? Shouldn't he have some kind of sense to pick a better target? Of course not; no one in this city really knows me, knows what I am capable of. Would I really even want him to pick a different woman to rob in the middle of the night anyway?

I shake my head, barely managing to suppress a giggle into a scoff. "Go home," I tell him, turning and walking back the way I was planning.

"Bitch," I hear him swear at my back as I walk away, unsurprisingly.

What is surprising is the feeling of something metallic thudding against my shoulder blade, something far heavier than a knife. Turning, I find a wooden-handled hatchet lying on the sidewalk at my feet. The drunken man still standing on the sidewalk just ten feet away still has his arm out in the final motions of the throw, staring at me, dumbfounded. I don't know why he is so surprised; his throw was so pisspoor that he hit me with the handle.

"Is this yours?" I ask. At a gesture, the hatchet rises from the ground to settle into my hand. I've learned that if I disperse the black dust enough, most people can't see it. Soaking it into objects without people noticing has become somewhat of a side project for me, and judging by the drunken man's face, it has the intended effect.

He bolts, turning on his heel and stumbling on the first step. The man comes down hard on his lead foot, his ankle turning sideways beneath the full weight of his body and crunching. The scream he lets out does little to stop his hobbling process down the street. Even without the self-inflicted injury, there is no chance he can escape me.

I let him stumble for fifteen feet before I dash around him. He gurgles as I grab him by the throat and lift him off the ground. For a second, I find myself falling forward, the sudden weight of the dense dwarf throwing off my balance.

"You tried to attack me," I tell him. My voice is so calm that I scare myself a little bit. The feel of his skin against my squeezing fingers is almost spongy, and I idly wonder if this is how all faethians feel when you squeeze them a bit. These are bad thoughts to have.

"Gra…Urgh," is his reply. His fingers scratch at my naked arm, doing little more than leaving red lines across my skin that disappear quickly.

In one swift movement, I bring my right knee up, catching him right in the crotch. The struggling drunk stills for a second, his eyes widening, before he gurgles out a cry of pain. Tears start to fall from his eyes, which is oddly the most revolting thing he has done so far.

"I don't want to see you again, ever," I tell him.

"You popped 'em," he cries, hands reaching down toward his crotch. He looks like he is going to start sobbing at any moment. I really don't want to be touching him anymore.

Turning, I hurl the injured dwarf at a fire escape. A muscle in my shoulder strains and tears as I put all my strength into the throw. The man rises, but just barely fails to clear the railing around the second-story landing of the fire escape. The entirety of the tall, steel construction reverberates as he bounces off the side and falls on top of a dumpster to the side of the fire escape. In the stillness of the night, the rattling of the dumpster sounds far louder than it is.

My first instinct is to run away, but sense stops me before I even begin. What would that look like, a human woman running down the road in the dead of night? Instead, I make the hatchet float back to me before storing it in my vault and walking away. The terminal is almost vacant when I find it, and thankfully, no one else tries to rob me as I make the long trip back home.

I arrive back at the penthouse just before midnight and take a moment for myself to lean back against the new heavy and reinforced door. The whole way back, I couldn't stop myself from looking over my shoulder, something I know only made me look more suspicious.

He isn't dead, Galea would have told me if I killed him. At least, I think she would have. I realize that my heart is beating hard enough that I can hear it, can feel the blood pulsing and racing through my hands.

I'm not cut out for this fighting business, not with hands anyway. Not that I could really call what happened a fight. He was just so…pathetic. That was probably the wrong way to handle things, but the feeling of anger, that he had the audacity to attack me when I had my back turned, just took over.

Before my thoughts can spiral further, I push them away, forcing myself to calm down. What is done is done. There isn't anything I can do to change it.

At a gesture, the hatchet the man threw at me falls into my waiting hand. Just as I had thought, it is exactly the same make as the ones the thieves who broke into our penthouse had been using. Were these people related to one another?

I toss the weapon down onto the table in the living room as I make my way to my room. The bed is passed by for the table standing next to it, and I grab one of the heavy, leather-bound books I was advised to purchase a week ago. It is one of the texts that my non-remedial chemistry class requires for the course. I snag a glass of wine on my way to the living room before settling into a plush chair next to the huge window that makes up one of the walls. I spend the rest of my night sipping the incredibly expensive wine–anything that has even the slightest effect on me costs an arm and a leg–and reading the seriously dense explanations of tiny elementary particles inside the book. I doubt I understand even half of it on the first read-through, but that is fine; I have Galea to recite it all back to me until I have it down.

Just before dawn, I take the time to eat and shower, relaxing in the hot water for a long time before I push myself back into motion. Dovik is already in the kitchen waiting for me. His eyes are red; he didn't get enough sleep, it seems.

"Ready?" he asks before slipping the last crumbs of his breakfast into his mouth.

"Ready," I confirm.

Then, we do it all over again. By the third day, we have a rhythm going. By the end of the sixth, Dovik looks absolutely exhausted and spends the first day of his break sleeping in his room. I am starting to feel it too by then, and my body demands a few hours of sleep. It isn't restful, not in the least, but at least my body stops nagging me. The two days we have to ourselves seem to fly past without notice, and finally, at the start of the second week, the real difficult work begins.

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