“You don’t really mean…” Oligy trailed off.

  “A test? Yes, I mean exactly that,” Caustic said.

  As if to prove a point, a fourth person stepped out of the still-open doorway, carrying a thick stack of papers in her arms.

  “Not just any test,” Caustic said. “A written test.”

  The room practically came abuzz with a mix of confusion, annoyance, and disbelief. Det could virtually hear Calisco’s head snap in his and Sage’s direction.

  “I just said there wasn’t homework,” Sage said with a shrug and an easygoing smile that only made Calisco more irritated. She opened her mouth to retort, but before she could, Caustic spoke up again.

  “No, none of you were informed there was going to be a test. So, stop staring daggers at each other. And, you over there, stop planning to throw one.”

  Det followed where Caustic’s finger pointed and found that, yes indeed, there was a cadet with a dagger in her hand pointed at somebody two seats down from her. Fourth did not look thrilled at the idea of a test, and apparently, she was blaming that on none other than baby-face. Det couldn’t fault her for wanting to stab him. Hell, Det had beaten the tar out of him in the arena, and he’d still be the first to sign up if there was a ‘punch-Aarak-in-the-mouth’ class offered on Mount Avalon.

  Maybe he had anger issues.

  Grudgingly, after being called out, Fourth’s dagger seemed to vanish into thin air. She gave baby-face one last look, letting him know she still blamed him. Somehow.

  After that last glare, Fourth’s eyes left Aarak’s face and just happened to meet Det’s gaze as it rose. Seeing him glancing in her direction—totally just glancing—she raised an eyebrow, and her lips moved once again. Det didn’t need to hear the words to know what she said: Totally out of your league.

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Det mouthed back, making sure she saw clearly what he was saying.

  “She’s still not into you,” Calisco said quietly at the same time the classroom seemed to settle again.

  “Good. Now that we’ve worked through that,” Caustic said, “it’s time to move on to the test. I expect each of you to do your best, despite the suddenness of the task at hand. Just like out in the field, there will be times when you are thrust into the unexpected. This is no different. Lean on the resources at your disposal, and never give up. You will have one hour to complete as many of the questions as you can.”

  Unsurprisingly, a hand went up as soon as she finished speaking.

  “I’m going to have to learn your name, aren’t I?” Caustic said to Cadet Oligy.

  “Yes, ma’am, that would probably be a good idea,” he said with a straight face. Probably because he meant it.

  “And you have a question?” Caustic asked.

  “What is the topic of the test?” Oligy said, as the fourth woman quickly went up and down each row in the classroom, dropping turned-over tests on the desks in front of the cadets.

  Caustic didn’t immediately answer, instead blinking once in Oligy’s direction.

  “It’s an alchemy test,” she said.

  “Thank you, that’s very useful,” Oligy said, again, face perfectly straight, and wrote a quick couple of notes in the book in front of him.

  “Also,” Cups said. “Before you get any ideas, unlike any of those TV shows or movies you’ve watched, the goal of this test is not to see how well you can cheat and sneak it past the instructors. I assure you, cheating will not help you on this test. If you want to actually succeed and feed your drives, then I suggest you simply do the best you can.”

  “Not that it will stop Majordomo from putting up suppression barriers around each of you,” Caustic added.

  “You mean we couldn’t cheat even if we wanted to?” one of the cadets in the front row asked, sounding somehow scandalized by the thought.

  “Not without being able to overpower Majordomo,” Caustic said, “which I don’t suspect anyone in this classroom is capable of doing.”

  Det only half-listened to the continued chatter between the cadets and Caustic. His eyes instead went to the aforementioned Majordomo. Was his magic like General Van’s—some sort of barrier creation—or was it something else? Caustic had mentioned barriers, but maybe that was just the easiest way to describe it. It was always interesting to see the different magics coming into play.

  Det’s thoughts trailed off as he suppressed an inward groan. He was starting to sound just like Dr. Jeckles. No, no, no, that wasn’t it. His interest in other magics was justified by his trying to find somebody else who could get him home. Yeah, that was all it was. Just professional interest.

  Luckily for Det’s spiraling thoughts, there was now a test and pencil in front of every cadet in the room.

  There were a few more instructions given, though Det was only half listening, his eyes on the back of the test. From the looks of things, it had to be at least twenty pages thick. And somehow, Caustic expected them to complete it within an hour.

  Sure, telling them the topic of the test was alchemy was some kind of “hint”, but that certainly didn’t give him any insight into what the questions would be. Not that he had to wait long to find out, with the fourth instructor, or assistant maybe, completing delivery of the tests and returning to the front of the classroom. As soon as she joined the line beside the other three, Caustic spoke up.

  “As I said, you will have one hour to complete as much of this test as you can. Pass-fail results will be available immediately. Majordomo, if you would?”

  At the instruction, the butler-clad man beside Caustic lifted a white-gloved hand and snapped his fingers.

  No sooner had he done that than thick rainbows seemed to appear all around Det, like four walls and a ceiling. Sound from the rest of the room completely vanished, and he could only see the vague outlines of Sage on his left, Eriba on his right, and the other students in the row ahead of him. Beyond that, everything was consumed by rainbow light.

  The more he looked at it, the more he felt like it wasn’t actually a plane or a wall. It looked like an endless tunnel of rainbow light that acted as a screen. Det’s hand even lifted with the intent to touch the barrier before he pulled it back down to the desk.

  He could experiment with somebody else’s magic later. For the moment, he had a test to do. And oddly enough, he could feel his drive pushing him to do well. Succeeding on this test could be the first step toward getting into one of the more advanced classes, where he could try to create a potion of teleportation.

  So, one hand picking up the pencil, he flipped the test with the other and saw something written on the first page, almost like it had been typed out by an old printer:

  Alchemy Test – First Year

  Great descriptor. Really told him everything he needed.

  He flipped the first page open to see what kind of questions they’d ask.

  Reading the text there, all he could do was blink. Then blink again.

  What the hell was that?

  What was the question was even asking? Sure, he knew what the individual words said, but combined? Technically those were sentences, possibly. There was punctuation, and general form. They weren’t nonsensical, just so far beyond him, they might as well have taken a dictionary, shaken it up, and dumped all of the most complicated words onto a single page.

  I have no idea… maybe question two?

  He skipped to the next page. Same problem. The words individually made sense, the sentences were even grammatically correct, but together… what the hell?

  One page after another, Det flipped through the entire document. He’d been wrong originally; it wasn’t twenty pages. It was thirty, with each page having between one to four questions. None of them were multiple choice. He couldn’t even guess “C” on everything and hope for the best.

  Okay, okay, okay… Det told himself, pushing down the rising panic he hadn’t felt since his university days. Like that one calculus exam after far too much drinking the night before and a nap in the backseat of his friend’s taxicab. A small taxicab. With an armrest in the back. Hell, that was a bad day, and a worse test.

  Yet somehow this took it to a whole new level.

  Maybe I’m just dreaming… no, I’m still wearing pants. This isn’t a dream. Okay, Det, focus. You can figure this out.

  There must be something here he could answer.

  You put yourself through university, got an engineering degree—heck, half of another one—how bad can this be? Read the questions again. Calm down. Figure it out.

  Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  Taking a deep breath, Det went back to page one, scanning through it again. Maybe he was looking at this the wrong way. Individually, the questions didn’t make a lot of sense, but there had to be a common theme or clue as to what they were asking about.

  None of this was questioning what happened if he mixed red food coloring with cake mix.

  Okay, bad example. This wasn’t a cooking class; it was an alchemy class. There has to be something here.

  Giving his head a shake, he went through the questions over and over. Thanks to the power of his ReSouled body, reading each question became progressively easier until he’d practically memorized what each page said.

  From a rough estimation, it had taken him about ten minutes to do that. Ten minutes where he wasn’t answering questions. Still, he’d started to see a pattern.

  The first few questions reminded him of his thermodynamics class. They seemed to be talking about how heat or other energy—maybe magical energy—was created during the brewing process.

  Do alchemists brew? he wondered. Concocting process? Det put the terminology problems aside for later. If the questions were looking at how heat was generated, maybe he could figure that out, assuming he could remember his thermodynamics equations.

  As soon as he thought that, surprisingly—almost like a slap to the face—Det remembered.

  It wasn’t just muscle memory that his ReSouled body provided, but also academic memory.

  Armed with that, he tackled the first question, then the second, the third, the fourth, and the fifth. He couldn’t quite decipher the next two, though, and by the time he reached the eighth, he’d answered a little more than half of the first section of questions, but he was out of thermodynamics material.

  The next section wasn’t about heat. No, it seemed to be more about matter.

  If the first few pages were about energy, then the next ones were about form. What shape or substance the potions or creations would take. Would they maintain plant-like textures? Become polymers? Metals? By the way the questions were worded, all of those seemed possible.

  It was a little strange to imagine dropping a piece of ice into a glass of water and getting feathers as a result, but that was what the test suggested.

  Conveniently, Det had done okay in his advanced chemistry electives when he’d considered going deeper into materials. Until he realized he hated bond pairs. Absolutely despised them.

  If there was one thing he could magic away, it would be bond pairs and anything to do with organic chemistry. That class had been a cruel joke on university students. Luckily for him now, though, he remembered some of those horrific, nightmare-inducing equations.

  In fact, they crept into his mind like specters from the past, eager to let him relive the horrors of his youth.

  “Not this time,” he told the equations quietly. “This time, I use your power for good.”

  With that cheesy line escaping his lips, Det tackled the next six pages of questions. Again, he got what he thought was a little more than half of them. It was interesting how Earth’s academic equations worked on Elestar’s magical topics.

  What was it they said about sufficiently advanced science? Something about it basically being magic? Was that what was happening here? Was ReSouled alchemy actually just chemistry?

  It was kind of a horrifying thought, and one that Det struggled not to physically shudder at as it passed through his mind. If it was any kind of chemistry, it would be organic chemistry, and frankly, he wanted no part of that. A corner of Det’s brain told him to throw the rest of the exam, scribble nonsense on it, and fail spectacularly. But the part of him where his drive lay wouldn’t let him give up so easily.

  Alchemy could be a path to power. He needed power. His drive craved it. It wouldn’t let him just give up on the test.

  As Det looked at the next page in the exam, it might not have mattered what his drive wanted. What the hell was he looking at? This wasn’t the movement of energy through potions. It wasn’t the ingredients used to create the potions. It was something else entirely.

  “Oh,” Det realized, leaning back in his chair to physically get distance from the exam. The act helped his brain do the same thing. He was looking at it too closely, and not just literally. He was thinking about alchemy and everything that happened in the brewing, concocting, or mixing—or whatever the hell it was called—process.

  These next questions weren’t about the ingredients or what they did. They were about what the ingredients went into. This section was either about bottles, like the one he’d seen General Vans use to pour the healing potion into Kels’ mouth—or maybe something like cauldrons or alchemists’ kettles. Maybe not. But something about this question definitely made him think “giant iron pot.”

  Okay, if this was talking about how the equipment affected or impacted the alchemical process, then maybe he could work with that. It was just about using the right tools for the job. There had to be interactions between materials. So, if he thought about the equations from thermodynamics—and how some potions seemed to generate an insane amount of heat—then they’d need materials that could resist it.

  He didn’t want something like plastic in a microwave, where small molecules were traveling from the container into what would hopefully become the finished product. Yeah, he could work with this.

  The more he looked at the questions—a solid ten pages of them—the more he recognized portions from the first two sections. That right there, the second question, it referenced one of the potions that didn’t produce heat but almost seemed to absorb it. So maybe it needed a heat source. Either a fire or magic. Did people use stoves for alchemy? Considering some of the magic Eriba had worked with that strawberry shortcake, it was possible.

  Det shook his head, forcing away the images of cloudy whipped cream, perfectly balanced scones, and sweet strawberry goodness, to focus again on the exam. It wasn’t easy, but his drive helped him. Strawberry shortcake wasn’t going to get him back to Earth. Probably.

  Zoned back in, Det flipped through the ten pages of questions quickly, his ReSouled mind presenting him with an almost photographic memory of the words on the pages. Still, the second read-through, with a different understanding, seemed to pull important words off the page, almost like his mind was highlighting what he needed to know.

  It was useful, to say the least. It let him look at the questions in a different light, to filter out the noise and zoom in on what really mattered. As he did this, it became clear that at least half the words in each question were meant as distractions. They didn’t seem to have any bearing on the outcome. They were just confusing. Obfuscation.

  Det flipped back to the first question of this equipment section, his finger tapping on the desk beside him as he looked at it one last time. He wasn’t sure about it, but this one definitely seemed to be about containers. And while he didn’t know enough about materials on Ellastar—other than that white, Wordless sort of ceramic that would probably be good for anything and likely wasn’t the answer—he’d have to guess.

  Luckily, thanks to his materials class in engineering, he knew enough about what equipment could be made from. He started jotting down suggestions and reasoning. It didn’t help that every question ended with, “What is the answer?”. There was no “What do you do?” or “What’s the resulting potion?” or “Are you going to explode here?”. Just “What is the answer?”

  So Det wrote what he thought the answer was, flipped the page, and immediately started on question two.

  Yeah, this one was definitely about adding heat to the equation or the brewing process—no doubt about it. He scribbled out an answer, his hand, practiced from his ink wash paintings, moving faster and faster across the page. It wasn’t often he had to write, especially not with a pencil. But like everything else, his ReSouled body was getting better with every passing minute.

  What would’ve taken him five to ten minutes to answer back on Earth, even in his prime academic days, barely took forty seconds now. Just like that, he was on to the third question. The fourth… he didn’t even bother with. He had no idea what it was asking. There was no answer he could give on a whim. Out of mild annoyance, he drew a sad face and moved on to question five. That one got an annoyed face, while question six got a straight-up crying face.

  Yeah, it wasn’t going so well in this section. He thought he knew what they were asking about, but he just didn’t know enough alchemical theory. The tools they were probably using here weren’t the same ones he was used to. A wrench wasn’t going to solve an alchemical problem.

  He flipped to page seven and nearly groaned out loud. Somehow, looking at the question, the answer to this one was definitely a wrench. From the way it read, the equipment wasn’t fit together properly and needed to be adjusted. Didn’t sound like a hammer job, so it was a wrench. Det wrote down his answer and moved on.

  Like that, he worked through the entire section on tools and equipment, finishing at page twenty-four with fifteen minutes left to go. Not bad. Somehow, he was working his way through this. Sure, there were a lot of questions he wasn’t answering—or was decorating with emojis out of frustration—but he’d probably still answered at least sixty percent of them.

  Then again, there was no guarantee he’d gotten any right. Whatever. He told himself to focus on the last section. There was only one more. This one wasn’t about the ingredients, or the process, or the equipment, so it had to be about something else. Just what was it?

  Det flipped through the pages again, letting his ReSouled mind pick out key words, looking for patterns. For connections. There had to be something here. Wait, this section now seemed to be about a forest, or a jungle, or something. It was talking about humidity and plant life.

  Amid all the nonsense, it didn’t make sense to have an alchemy lab in the middle of a jungle. So, this section was probably about gathering ingredients.

  With that idea in mind, Det quickly flipped through the other questions in the section. Okay, by the way they read, it wasn’t just about going around picking herbs or digging up roots. This definitely involved hunting. The mention of a birokk tooth probably wasn’t accidental; it was an ingredient in an alchemical formula.

  The flash of insight had even more words popping off the page in Det’s mind. If gathering ingredients was more than just mushroom picking—if it involved hunting for animals, and apparently treasure—the way this read, that might also explain how Majordomo had found so many potion recipes.

  If he’d gone exploring old ruins for ingredients, it would make sense he’d find recipes there. Det paused. He had no idea if that actually made sense, but that’s what he was going with for now.

  Eyeing the clock—the one thing still visible through the rainbow tunnel of power from Majordomo—he realized he didn’t have time to second-guess himself. He’d go with the idea that the last few pages were about ingredient gathering.

  Det immediately hunched forward and got to work. Sections that involved hunting seemed to revolve around preparation. Knowing the prey. Planning for the environment. His answers weren’t great, and while he attempted all the questions, he didn’t feel confident in any more than half. Maybe sixty percent at best. But, by old university grading rules, that’d be enough to pass.

  Still, looking up at the clock, there were two minutes left. He flipped back through the pages, scanning for any words his mind might have missed before. There were a few. He managed to change one answer quickly, back in the first section.

  Then a loud ding rang through the room, and the rainbow tunnels fell from Det’s sides once again, revealing the other cadets around him.

  “Pencils down, please,” Caustic said, her voice carrying.

  There were a few grumbles, and one or two people scratched out a final answer. But at a glare from the woman in the leather apron—and a cough from Majordomo—those last pencils hit the desk.

  “Now,” Caustic said, “for the results.”

  Oligy’s hand immediately shot into the air, and Caustic visibly suppressed a sigh.

  “Yes, cadet?” the instructor asked.

  “How did you already mark the exams?” Oligy asked.

  “Oh, I haven’t marked the exams,” Caustic said. “But I will tell you how to mark your own. It’s very simple. If you were able to answer or attempt more than twenty percent of the questions on the exam…”

  Caustic trailed off.

  Det perked up.

  Was this just about what his mind had done? Was this a test—or training—to get his brain to pick out key words? If that was it, not only was it fantastically helpful, but he’d aced the exam. Attempted twenty percent? Hah! He’d attempted almost eighty! Okay, maybe seventy to seventy-five if he was being honest, but still, that was way more than twenty. He’d killed it.

  Letting a bit of pride flare in his chest, he focused on Instructor Caustic, who’d paused dramatically, with the room’s attention fixed on her, and a few cadets already crumpled in their seats. Obviously, they hadn’t attempted even twenty percent. From the looks of things, that was probably half the class—maybe more. A few looked particularly dejected, one even throwing their arms up in defeat.

  Well, Det couldn’t really blame them. The exam was tough, and if they didn’t have the same academic background he did, he could understand why they’d struggled with it.

  “If you attempted more than twenty percent of the questions,” Caustic repeated, pausing again before finishing…

  “…you failed the exam.”