I sat, well, sank into my throne-like chair sitting in the control room beneath the Aetherium, but only because it was the only chair large enough to stop me from sliding off onto the floor. The control room around me glowed softly, filled with dozens of floating smoke-mana screens that displayed the students scattered across the testing grounds, as well as more professors and staff members jotting down notes on their laptops and notebooks.
Technically, I was supposed to be monitoring them.
Realistically…I was trying not to fall off my own chair.
The nearest screen flickered, and I squinted at it.
"Oh," I murmured. "That's… a student fighting a deer. Or, wait. Is that a tree? No, no, it moved. Unless the tree moved. Do trees move? I feel like trees shouldn't move."
Beside me stood Alectra Nekros Sebastian's older sister, top student, the student council president, and someone who had suffered in silence every time I opened my mouth since the day she joined the academy.
