Chapter 4 - The Art of Desperation
The Academy's mess hall at midnight was a graveyard of ambition. Empty tables stretched under flickering mage-lights, their surfaces scarred with years of nervous knife-carving and spilled potions. I sat alone at a corner table, surrounded by the detritus of my desperation: crumpled notes, half-eaten bread, and three cups of coffee that had gone cold hours ago.
My "Find a Team" list was pathetic:
*Marcus Holt* - ~~Surrounded by admirers~~
*Kira Volthorne* - ~~Already formed lightning trio~~
*Anyone with a pulse* - ~~Standards too high~~
I scratched out the last line and wrote: *Anyone still breathing.*
"Still breathing, huh?"
I jerked. Trip materialized beside me like he'd been conjured from thin air—which, knowing Trip, wasn't impossible. His hair was a disaster, his robes were backwards, and he clutched a sandwich that looked like it had been assembled by someone having a seizure.
"You're up late," I said.
"Sleep's for people who aren't about to die horribly." He collapsed into the chair across from me, sending my notes scattering. "Figured I'd find you here. You've got that 'overthinking everything until my brain melts' look."
"I prefer 'strategic analysis.'"
"Right." Trip took a bite of his sandwich. Something green oozed out. "Found a team yet?"
The honest answer sat in my throat like a stone. Instead, I gestured at my list. "Options."
Trip squinted at the paper. "This just says 'Anyone still breathing' in increasingly desperate handwriting."
"It's a cry for help." He pushed the sandwich aside. "Look, I know we've known each other for exactly one day, but hear me out: what if we teamed up?"
I stared at him. "You want to team with someone whose talent is 'Most Likely to Calculate Death Probabilities'?"
"And you want to team with someone whose talent is literally called 'Catastrophic Failure.'" Trip grinned. "We're a disaster waiting to happen."
Before I could answer, a shadow fell across our table. I looked up into the face of someone who clearly didn't belong in a midnight mess hall—or anywhere that tolerated failure.
She was tall, sharp-featured, with platinum hair pulled back in a braid that probably cost more than my tuition. Her Academy robes were perfectly pressed, bearing the silver threading that marked old money. But it was her eyes that made my stomach clench—pale blue, cold as winter mornings, and currently fixed on me with surgical precision.
"Evan Cross." Her voice was crisp, efficient. "I'm Sera Whitmore."
The name hit like a slap. Everyone knew the Whitmore family—legendary Hunters, guild founders, the kind of people who had wings of the Academy named after them. What I didn't know was why one of them was talking to me.
"I know who you are," I managed.
"Good. That saves time." She pulled out a chair and sat without invitation. "I have a proposition."
Trip leaned back, grinning. "Oh, this should be good."
Sera ignored him. "I need a third for tomorrow's trial. You need a team. Simple transaction."
"What's the catch?" The question slipped out before I could stop it.
Her smile was sharp as a blade's edge. "You assume there's a catch."
"There's always a catch."
"How refreshingly honest." She leaned forward. "The catch is this: I don't do failure. I don't do mediocre. And I certainly don't do dead weight."
"Then why—"
"Because you have something most people here lack." She paused, studying me like a puzzle to be solved. "You're desperate enough to be useful."
The words stung because they were true. But Trip's laugh cut through my embarrassment.
"That's the worst sales pitch I've ever heard," he said. "And I once tried to sell cursed boots."
Sera's gaze shifted to him. "Marcus Chen. The walking disaster."
"Trip," he corrected cheerfully. "And you're the ice princess everyone's afraid to breathe near."
"I prefer 'standards-oriented.'"
"Same thing."
Something flickered in Sera's expression—annoyance, maybe, or grudging respect. "Fine. Trip. Your talent involves catastrophic magical failures, correct?"
"Among other things."
"Perfect." She turned back to me. "Here's what I see: you analyze everything, he breaks everything, and I fix everything. Complementary skill sets."
I looked between them—Trip with his disaster-grin, Sera with her ice-queen perfection. "You're serious."
"I don't joke about survival."
"But why us? You could have anyone."
"Could I?" Sera's laugh was bitter. "Marcus Holt thinks I'm beneath him. Kira Volthorne considers me competition. The rest assume I'll carry them." She shrugged. "At least you're honest about being desperate."
Trip raised his hand. "I'm also honest about being terrible at everything."
"Which brings me to my terms." Sera's voice went business-cold. "I lead. You follow. No arguments, no democracy, no heroic stupidity. We get the stone, we get out, we all survive. Simple."
"And if we don't agree?" I asked.
Her smile was winter-sharp. "Then you're back to 'Anyone Still Breathing,' and I find someone else to disappoint their family legacy."
The mess hall's silence pressed down like a weight. Trip munched his questionable sandwich. Sera waited with the patience of someone who'd never been told no. And I sat there, weighing odds I couldn't calculate.
Three students from last year. Three empty seats. Three families getting visits from Academy officials.
"What's your talent?" I asked suddenly.
Sera blinked. "Excuse me?"
"Your talent. What is it?"
Sera went perfectly still. For a heartbeat, something flickered behind those ice-blue eyes—uncertainty, maybe, or something deeper. She looked away, then back, as if weighing how much truth to risk.
"Ice manipulation," she said finally. Her fingers drummed once against the table—a tiny crack in her perfect composure. "Structural reinforcement. Environmental control."
"That's three talents."
"It's one talent with multiple applications." Her voice carried a warning.
"Show me."
"I beg your pardon?"
I gestured at Trip's abandoned sandwich. "Show me."
Sera's eyes narrowed. Then she extended her hand. The air shimmered. Frost crept across the table's surface—not wild, not random, but precise. Controlled. The ice formed geometric patterns, fractals that hurt to look at directly. Beautiful and terrifying.
Trip whistled low. "Okay, that's actually impressive."
The ice vanished. Sera's expression was carefully neutral. "Satisfied?"
"Your turn," she said to me.
My stomach dropped. "My turn for what?"
"Your talent. Show me."
The clone. I'd barely figured out how it worked, let alone how to explain it. "It's... complicated."
"Everything worthwhile is complicated."
I looked around the empty mess hall. No witnesses except Trip and Sera. The clone had appeared in the trial when I needed it most—maybe desperation was the trigger.
*Come on,* I thought. *I need you.*
Nothing.
Trip leaned forward. "Is something supposed to be happening?"
Heat flooded my cheeks. "It's not... I can't just..."
"Performance anxiety?" Sera's voice was knife-edged. "How reassuring."
The embarrassment hit like a physical blow. Here was Sera Whitmore—legacy royalty, ice queen, someone who probably had guild recruiters camping outside her dorm—and I couldn't even make my talent work on command.
*Please,* I thought desperately. *Don't make me look like a fraud.*
The silence stretched. Sera's expression shifted from curiosity to cool assessment—the look of someone reconsidering a bad investment. Trip cleared his throat awkwardly.
"How reassuring," Sera said, already starting to rise from her chair.
"Your clone," said a familiar voice beside me.
I jerked. There he was—same face, same clothes, same everything. But where I was tense with humiliation, he looked calm. Clinical. He studied Sera with the detached interest of someone examining a particularly interesting specimen.
"Fascinating," Sera breathed.
Trip nearly fell out of his chair. "Holy shit, there's two of you."
"Language," the clone said mildly.
"Are you kidding me right now?" Trip stared between us. "This is the coolest thing I've ever seen, and that includes the time I accidentally turned my roommate's socks into butterflies."
Sera leaned forward, her ice-queen mask cracking with genuine curiosity. "How does it work?"
"Still figuring that out," I admitted.
"Efficiency through duplication," the clone added. "One mind, two bodies. Shared consciousness, distributed processing."
"Like having a conversation with yourself?" Sera asked.
"More like being two places at once," I said.
The clone nodded. "Useful for complex problem-solving. Less useful for social situations."
"I can see why," Sera said dryly. Then she straightened. "This could work."
"Really?" I couldn't hide my relief.
"A strategist who can literally be in two places at once, a chaos agent who turns disasters into opportunities, and..." She paused. "Well, me."
Trip grinned. "Wow, way to sell yourself."
"I don't need to sell myself." Sera stood. "I need to keep you two alive long enough to retrieve that stone."
The clone faded—apparently he'd decided the demonstration was over. Something snapped inside my chest, like a taut wire suddenly cut. I felt strangely hollow without him, half my thoughts suddenly missing, the world somehow dimmer.
"So we're agreed?" Sera asked.
Trip and I exchanged glances. He shrugged. "Beats dying alone."
"The confidence is overwhelming," Sera said. But she was almost smiling. "Dawn is six hours away. I suggest you get some sleep."
"What about you?" I asked.
"I'll be preparing." She headed for the door, then paused. "One more thing. The Maze feeds on fear, doubt, hesitation. It will show you your worst failures, your deepest inadequacies, everything you've tried to forget."
"Encouraging," Trip muttered.
"It's not meant to encourage. It's meant to kill you." Sera's gaze found mine. "But fear is just information. Use it."
Then she was gone, leaving the scent of winter and the echo of certainty in her wake.
Trip and I sat in the sudden quiet of the mess hall.
"Well," he said finally. "She's terrifying."
"Yeah."
"I like her."
"Yeah."
He gathered up his questionable sandwich. "Think we can actually do this?"
I looked at my crumpled notes, at the desperate scrawls of someone running out of options. Three students from last year. Three empty seats.
But also: one clone who appeared when I needed him most, one disaster-magnet who laughed at his own failures, and one ice queen who'd chosen desperation over perfection.
Maybe desperate was exactly what we needed to be.
"Ask me tomorrow," I said.
Trip grinned. "If we survive."
"If we survive."
The mess hall lights dimmed as we left, but I could swear I heard something in the darkness—not laughter this time, but a sound like stone grinding against stone. Like walls shifting. Like something ancient stirring to life.
The upperclassmen's whispers echoed in my memory: *The Maze remembers every failure. Every scream.*
Dawn was coming, and with it, the Thornwick Maze.