I could stand here gushing over my growth, but admiring past victories without looking forward was one way to slowly lose sight of the future; that was what my father always said, and I believed him.

It did not take me long to clean up. I had bathed and cleansed myself before I slept, and it was just for me to do a bit of personal grooming, and then I was ready.

I wore my gray Acolyte robe that had the sigil of the Academy on the back, which resembled a blue lidless eye.

The last thing I picked was my Acolyte Staff. Made from the Elemental Fuschia Tree, this Staff was my most precious treasure, as it was with Acolytes and Mages.

Four feet long with a smooth shaft, it was a brown rod with a twisted claw at the top, gripping a blue crystal. There were three small silver charms I tied around the top of my Staff; they came from my sister, mother, and father.

Most Acolytes would never place such personal items with their Staff to distance themselves from mere mortals, but I always thought that this was foolish.

Brushing invisible creases from my robe, I pushed open the flap of my tent and walked out to a world that still had not decided what it wanted to be.

There was no sun in the sky or the moon, so the surroundings were stuck in that particular grey of early morning that sits between night and actual daylight that was not dark enough for stars, yet not bright enough for color.

Everything in camp existed in shades of ash and pale gold where the cook fires caught it, and above all of it, enormous and absolute and indifferent to the hour, the pyramid.

I stopped walking the moment I cleared my tent as I stood in awe at the sight of it.

How could I not? Anything that had been clearly designed by an intelligent hand should not be so massive.

I had seen the pyramid yesterday on arrival, and the day before that, when it first appeared on the horizon as a dark shape, I had mistaken it for a mountain. I had watched it grow across four hours of approach, from an oddity on the skyline into something that reorganized my understanding of scale entirely. I thought by the time we made camp, I had processed it... But I had not processed it.

The pyramid filled the southern sky the way a cliff face fills your vision when you stand at its base, simply there, occupying the portion of reality that sky was supposed to occupy.

Black, perfectly smooth, angled with a precision that made the surrounding landscape look like an afterthought.

It was upside down, so its massive base faced the sky, and its tip was buried an unknown distance into the earth.

There were no seams on this pyramid, and even though it had been here for ten thousand years, it had suffered no weathering, and there was no moss or lichen even after ten thousand years of rain.

I thought that the pyramid was responsible for the dull morning because its black surface seemed to be drinking the pale morning light and giving nothing back.

I stood with my tent at my back and looked at it until my neck ached.

"Impressive, isn’t it?"

I turned and saw that Dara Osch was sitting on an overturned supply crate three meters to my left, both hands wrapped around a tin cup, watching me with the mild amusement of someone who had already done their staring and moved on.

She was the first of the four chosen Acolytes I had met, two weeks before the expedition departed, at the Academy’s equipment distribution.

I had arrived early to collect my field kit and found her already there, systematically checking every item against a handwritten list and returning two that did not meet her standards.

She had not introduced herself and had handed me a copy of the list without looking up and said you’ll want to check yours too, the third-years who packed these are notoriously careless."

I had checked. She had been right about everything.

Dara was ranked 47 in our cohort, nine ranks above me, and she carried herself in the particular way of someone who had earned their position through sustained effort rather than natural gift.

She was not brilliant the way some mages were brilliant, the kind that made it look effortless. She was better than that. What was the word I could use to describe her? Hmm, Dara was thorough.

Her Threadwork was two points below mine but her Concentration was a full ten ranks higher, which meant her casts held longer under pressure.

I respected that more than raw talent. Talent was something you were handed. Concentration was something you built.

"How long have you been up?" I asked.

"Long enough." She nodded toward the cook fire at the centre of camp.

"There’s porridge. It’s bad, but it’s hot."

I looked at the cook fire and made a decision I would not fully understand until later. I went to it not because I was hungry but because doing something with my hands felt necessary.

The cook, a heavyset man named Aldis who had been hired locally and had apparently never cooked for mages before, had abandoned the pot sometime in the last few minutes.

I picked up the ladle, tasted it, the porridge was indeed bad, and so I added salt from the tin beside the fire, then pepper, then found a strip of dried herb in the supply crate nearest the fire that had no label and smelled like it might be thyme, and added that too.

"What are you doing?" Dara asked, appearing at my elbow, and I tried not to be distracted by her scent.

"Fixing it." I replied.

"You cook?"

"My mother taught me." I stirred. "She said a person who can’t feed themselves is a person who depends on the kindness of strangers, and strangers are not reliably kind."

Dara considered this. "That’s bleak."

"She’s a practical woman."

The porridge improved. Not dramatically, but enough.

Cooking 12 — 13 (Initiate)

I smiled at that growth in this Auxiliary Skill. I have not had much time to cook since I joined the Academy, and had to watch this skill languish at 12 for two years, but this growth was the perfect morning gift.