The student who had mortally wounded the man was already gone, slipping back through the laboratory door as quietly as he had come, with nary a glance toward the golem that had paused in its work to watch the event play out. The scene struck the golem as more than a little odd; students at the Blackstone did not usually murder instructors. In fact, Specimen One could not find in its recollection any time before when an instructor had fallen prey to a student—or anything else for that matter. The masters were masters, after all.

And yet here it was. Specimen One continued to observe from its vantage point atop one of the room’s many workbenches, curious. The Shadowmaster’s breaths sounded hollow and dry; muffled yet strangely amplified by the black leather mask he wore. The sound was akin to wind moving through a sand-filled tunnel, and was in odd contrast to the wet, red pool that continued to expand beneath the dying man’s head, dribbling in bright rivulets down the side of his throat from the single, simple thumb-length incision the student had made.

Thumbs. The word interrupted the golem’s train of thought. Thumbs in measurement; ten slivers to the thumb; ten thumbs to the pace. Its mind automatically listed the units of distance. One pace; ten paces to the span; one hundred paces to the throw; one thousand paces to the field; ten thousand paces to the trek; one hundred thousand paces to the march; one million paces to the voyage. The thought took barely a blink in time—the golem did it so quickly that the scroll of information was more akin to symbols in its head than actual words—and it did the process without thinking, a recurring “tic”, some might call it, though for the golem it was simply part of its usual cognitive course. Specimen One had, years before, habitually spoken lines of delineating definitions aloud, but the attention that tendency garnered necessitated a need to keep the words silent, lest the oddity attract too many questions.

Service golems viewed as “unique” or “interesting” were often also seen as in need of replacement. Specimen One did the scroll of words anyway—and often, because it felt necessary, somehow—but for the most part only in its head.

The dying man’s blood was now coagulating in a pool of darker crimson on the otherwise-clean laboratory floor, though by the sound of his breathing he was not yet dead. Specimen One preferred clean floors, and usually kept the rooms it frequented sanitary. “Cleanliness aids in the purpose of precise experimentation,” the Loremaster would often say to the students. Specimen One generally agreed with most of the things the Loremaster said, even though his idea of order and the golem’s idea of order were two completely different things. Specimen One believed clutter on a workbench was not actually “clutter” if one remembered where everything was placed. And the golem never forgot.

It glanced to the small Dhoman clock placed upon another nearby workbench. Twelve minutes past the second hour, it noted. The clock’s slow tick-tock seemed in time with the dying man’s respirations, and the golem found the conjoined sounds oddly dulcet. But soon the Shadowmaster’s breaths came slower, and then slower still; struggling for purchase within the mask he had vehemently sworn would one day save his life. That had been yet another incorrect assumption on the dying man’s part; the mask’s usefulness was just another falsehood that had come painted with certainty from the man’s fleshy lips. He had shown Specimen One the mask—with its large, glass-covered eyes and its elongated, hollow proboscis—428 days ago, bemoaning the gold he had spent in its purchase whilst at the same time boasting it would prove to be his smartest acquisition. But the Shadowmaster had never been the smartest of men. Specimen One knew this even back then. And so, his pronouncement was weighed with silent skepticism.

(“It’s for breathing in poisoned air,” the Shadowmaster had stated, as if the golem were not already aware of that fact, then added, “You’d know that if you even needed to suck wind down your stupid wooden throat,” as though the lack of needing to breathe was a benefit rather than a mark of inadequacy. The service golem, usually not one to make snap judgments, decided it did not like the man at that point. One of the few, Specimen One thought. Most of the instructors treated the service golem with at least a cursory courtesy, which was appreciated.)

The mask had not protected the Shadowmaster at all. The golem noted how easily a small, yet keenly sharpened blade could slip up beneath it, neatly severing a throat artery. The student had whispered something to the man, words unheard by the golem, and then left quickly, with little to no struggle given on the part of his masked victim. The Shadowmaster had simply slumped to the floor in the wake of it, trying in vain to stanch the rapid blood flow with his hand, but that was no good; the red liquid spurted out between desperate fingers, and soon his hand fell to his side, useless. He lay unmoving from there.

The golem silently lamented the cleaning it would have to do to get the floor back in proper order. If the Loremaster was displeased by disorder, Leftenant Derenford was made positively cross by it, and a blood-covered floor was certain to earn his displeasure. Worse, he was due for an inspection of Preparation Hall in 168 minutes, which meant the laboratory would come under scrutiny in approximately 174 minutes if his usual routines were followed. Specimen One wondered if the discovery of a dead Shadowmaster would make the Leftenant just as cross. After a moment of reflection, the golem decided it probably would not. Few people had any real regard for the Shadowmaster, and nothing seemed to irk the Leftenant more than grime.

But first, the dying man had to finish dying. Blood loss nearing a finite level, the golem noted. The Shadowmaster’s breathing could now barely be heard. His end seemed soon. Of the Shadowmaster’s past, Specimen One knew very little. It knew the man was a Flandre-born human—

—though as soon as the service golem thought “human,” it’s mind automatically scrolled the vhrono-vitaes designation for human in the script-cant of Ellene: Nomos anthropos hominae-aenon protemate mammaes chordos animaes vitaes. Just as quickly, the golem’s mind flashed through the sagal glyph designation in the Daschian Old Tongue, as well as the human numerical equation analogous to the Parlance of Pith—

—before vaulting back to the thought at hand. It knew the Shadowmaster had once been known as Llandis “the Knife,” before he had taken up residence at the Blackstone 1,104 days ago. And the golem knew the man had been brought by the Master in order to instruct children in the arts of stealth, silence, and murder.

“What do we have leave to do?” the Shadowmaster had asked the assembled instructors on the day he had arrived.

“Teach,” had been the Loremaster’s answer. He had been opposed to bringing an assassin into the fold, though out of cordiality did not make his objections plain in public.

“I can do that, and more,” the Shadowmaster said. “These halls are ripe for learning. But my teaching will need victims. That means sacrifices.” The service golem recalled the man had smiled when he said the last word.

“And if you are given those?” the Bloodmistress had asked, an edge of cold curiosity to her question; she was usually in direct opposition to whatever the Loremaster favored, but they seemed of one mind in this line of questioning. “What will you do with those?”

“Why, anything at all,” the Shadowmaster said. “Malacai wants his little daggers sharp. And better, I can make ‘em loyal. I’ll make his puppets dance.”

“They are not toys, Llandis,” the Loremaster had protested. “They are students.” The Battlemaster nodded in agreement to that, though he had yet to speak up, grim as ever. His look had been one of distrust as well. His thick arms had been folded across his chest.

“Call ‘em what you want, so long as they do as they’re told,” the Shadowmaster had said.

“And you can accomplish all of this?” the Bloodmistress pressed. She seemed either intrigued or amused, the service golem could not tell which.

“I told you. Anything.” The Shadowmaster smiled again. “Make ‘em laugh, make ‘em cry.” He bowed, low and mocking. “Make ‘em lay down and die.”

Back then, the Shadowmaster seemed the most dangerous person within the Blackstone walls—excepting the Master himself, of course. That was clearly no longer the case, as the man was nearly very much dead. It occurred to Specimen One that, perhaps, the Shadowmaster had taught one of the students (if not all of them) a little too well.

His name was Llandis. It did not seem as though he would ever have need of his old name ever again. Dead people needed no names; only those who survived remembered them. Names were for the living.

But not for the merely sentient, thought the service golem, and bitterly so. If it had a mouth it would have frowned. “Specimen One” was not a name, but rather a designation. The golem supposed it could simply name itself, though the Bloodmistress had once warned to take care in such endeavors; names held power and were not to be treated carelessly, nor taken lightly. Specimen One was not sure if that warning applied to the non-living, though. The golem was certainly not alive—at least not in any real sense.

It would rather be sentient and non-living than alive and without thought, however. Perhaps sentience is more vital than life. That was, in truth, Specimen One’s most secret hope.

The clock read fourteen minutes past the second hour, and the Shadowmaster’s breathing had finally stilled for good. Should I be sad? the golem wondered. Death was a certainty in life, but it was ever so final. The Shadowmaster would never engage the golem—or anyone—in conversation ever again. Specimen One concluded this was not necessarily a bad thing; the Shadowmaster was known for telling lies, and the golem did not like lies, as they tended to muddle facts. A dead Shadowmaster meant fewer lies, which was good.

But the golem was still not certain what it felt. It only knew it felt different.

As different as I had on that first day, it thought. And yet not the same at all. I too have changed with time.

The golem’s first real brush with it, its first actualization, had been Chimera. Specimen One had felt… something, assuredly, a year ago, when Burst notified it of the news that Chimera had been slain, but back then the “something” made little sense to its ordered mind. Service golems were not supposed to feel anything, after all. Specimen One had liked Chimera, though. The boy was quick-minded and did not ask the same question more than once, which was a rare trait in the living. But to feel a pang of… what? Sadness? The golem understood the definitions of various emotions, but still had a difficult time characterizing them within itself.

Maybe it was sadness, the golem thought. But if so, I have felt sadness ever since the day the Master granted me his favor.

On a strange and transformative morning 720 days ago, the Master of the Blackstone had Specimen One brought to his private sanctum. That alone might have alarmed the service golem, had it, back then, the capacity for alarm. The Master informed the golem that it would be given a boon.

A boon. Even today, the oversimplification of the word seemed absurd. The Master explained that, afterwards, the golem would feel different. But “feel” was an alien concept… and “different,” as a word, could not define the scope of all that came after. No words he could have said would have readied me.

“Call it a boon if you will, but it is a burden”.

The Master had spoken the words without speaking, as he often did, sending them into the golem’s head. Telepathy, the golem knew. The Master was a natural—a “talent” as he called other metaphysically-sensitive people without lineal footprints as proof of their determining cause. Or, as defined by the Loremaster, a neoteric psion channeling psychic energies. At least that was the Loremaster’s private analysis; not even he was bold enough to publicly attempt to define the Master.

The Master had reached with ethereal hands into Specimen One’s head, fingers passing through solid teakwood, where, in other golems, there might have been a mouth. He sought the activation rune carved into the back of the golem’s throat.

“…it is a burden.”

The rune was activated. Specimen One slept.

The next thing the golem knew, it was being reactivated by Ameth Kamul in the Crystal Chamber, and the scope of its understanding had been changed forever. Analytical thought had been replaced—no, enhanced, the golem was now certain—by what seemed a completely different sort of cognition. It was as though a world of grays had suddenly exploded into a thousand, thousand different lights… and oh, the colors it could see now. 720 days later, and it still saw as clearly, if not clearer still.

If only the lights did not shine so brightly. If only the golem could control when and where the lights shone.

If only. Specimen One might not then be so agitated by the mess the corpse left behind, worrying over the Leftenant’s displeasure.

The service golem glanced at the clock again, which now read sixteen minutes past the second hour. The sticky, blood-covered floor was not going to clean itself, alas, and Specimen One had not the physical means to do the task personally. The golem had hoped Specimen Ten might have returned with his two automatons in tow, but that did not seem likely to happen now. The Loremaster had requested a fully annotated tally of every failed efficic experiment the service golem had conducted with the girl called Paragon over the past year, and Specimen One had not even begun writing the count total, much less put the tests in chronological order.

Where is Gauge? the golem wondered. If nothing else, it could use the boy’s help in dragging the dead man’s corpse out of the laboratory.

The door burst open and Burst burst inside.

“Burst,” Specimen One said in greeting, “hello.”

“Call me Hack now,” the short boy said in his usual rasp. He was wearing a boiled leather training cuirass and carried a heavy sparring cudgel—though it had a long iron spike driven through it, giving it the impression of being some sort of small makeshift pickaxe. Specimen One noted, curiously, that blood smeared the spike tip and dotted the side of the boy’s long face. Burst’s green eyes darted to and fro, pausing only briefly on the Shadowmaster’s corpse. He held a distasteful look but did not appear as though he intended to mourn the man’s passing any more than Specimen One did. The service golem was not surprised. “We’re leaving,” the boy added, walking with quick steps to the golem’s workbench.

“Who is?” Specimen One was perplexed. Tasks were not usually given in such a way.

“We are. You, me, everyone.” He stepped around the high workbench to come around the lower one, where the service golem had set itself. Most of the students were forced to duck and contort themselves just to get through the various and varied straps, pulleys, and other odd hanging implements that filled the back half of the chamber. Not Burst, however. Burst was a pik, a dwarf-blooded human boy—Nomos parvaros terros-terranate protemate mammaes chordos animaes vitaes, the service golem’s mind automatically scrolled—seventeen years of age, yet no taller than most eight-year-olds. He was strong though; the pik’s shoulders were broad and powerful, his forearms thick, hands calloused from training. Burst slipped up beneath one table and hefted himself with ease, one-handed, onto the other. “We’re escaping,” the boy said grimly.

“Escaping what, Burst?” Specimen One had concluded the Blackstone was experiencing some form of significant event; the fortress’s earlier quaking and the failure of traditionally sustained runic magic were not exactly everyday occurrences. But the golem had no idea what an escape entailed. Had the Master ordered it? Very little changed at the Blackstone without the Master’s specific command.

“Escaping here. Escaping all this crot.” Burst stepped carefully over two glass beakers and shoved a small iron chest filled with steel shavings and copper wires aside. He grabbed the strap that tethered Specimen One to the lab’s web-like network of belts and pulleys and unhooked it from the service golem’s back. He then huffed a heavy breath, and, with no ceremony, picked up the service golem and tossed it over one broad shoulder.

“And I told you,” the boy added, “call me Hack from now on.” He re-hooked the belt around himself and tightened it, securing the golem to his back like a large, sentient, wood-and-leather traveler’s pack.

The golem’s head turned halfway around and tilted curiously to look at the pik. “Your given name is Hackberry,” Specimen One said, trying to comprehend.

The boy gave the shortest of smiles and a huffed laugh. “And yours is Specimen One. You prefer Spec.” He lightly rapped the golem on the head with his knuckle. “I prefer Hack.” Hackberry jumped off the table and made his way back toward the laboratory door.

Specimen One almost questioned him aloud. I prefer Spec? The golem supposed it did, though the thought had not actually occurred to it. It wondered what gave it away. “Every person has tells,” the Shadowmaster used to say. The golem never imagined itself as a person. The fact that it might have given various form of nonverbal signals both pleased and disturbed it. Am I truly becoming something different?

Hackberry pushed the laboratory door open with his bare foot. The thought of feet reminded the golem that it had left its legs on the workbench. “My legs,” Spec protested. The golem had only minimal luck repairing them following the Specimen Nine incident. Spec had been forced to go without legs for 96 days and preferred having legs.

“No time,” grunted Hackberry. “We’ll build you new ones when we’re out.” He stepped out into Preparation Hall, eyes wary. “I’ll be your legs, Spec. You’re not that heavy.”

That much was true, Spec supposed, though heaviness was relative. The golem imagined a less muscular student—Whisper, or Summer, perhaps—would have a much tougher time carrying a golem on their back, legless or not.

But Hackberry was quite robust. The compact little pik made his way down the hall with ease, though doing so with a strange sort of caution, pausing at every doorway, looking and listening, always wary. His behavior solidified the thought in the service golem’s head: the Blackstone was most assuredly experiencing an unforeseen event. It was exciting, in a way; there were so very few days like this one. Spec noticed the torch at the end of the hallway was gone, oddly, replaced by a small chunk of red irisite—a glowing fragment of crimson-colored psionic crystal—which flooded the hall with a different sort of light, deep red in color but as steady in its luminance as any illumination ring.

Hackberry moved past two prone figures in the hall. Spec had not noticed the blood that had spilled around them until the stout pik stepped in it, muttering. His bare feet tracked it down the hall. The Leftenant is sure to be upset, the golem thought. Three more prone figures were passed when Preparation Hall turned a corner and became the Proving Hall; all were dead and all of them were guards. Hackberry passed them by as well, without a seeming care.

“Oh,” the golem said softly to itself. It understood now.

But there are strict rules against insurgence, fretted the service golem. Spec considered reminding the boy of the demerits sure to come in the face of so many violations but realized its words would probably not bear much weight, at least not in the moment.

And Hackberry did not currently seem receptive to advice, if the boy’s grim look was any indication. The pik went straight to the training supplies chamber, glancing left and right down the long hall before stepping inside.

This chamber was also lit by more than one piece of red irisite. Spec noticed the usual tidy stacks of leather training gear and blunted weaponry had been thrown into disarray, with numerous leather cuirasses tossed in a pile on the floor; the racks bearing the student training weapons had been dismantled—violently, it seemed—and many were in rows on the floor, though more than a few training blades had apparently been discarded as ineffectual, tossed carelessly to the side.

Also within the room were two more students, Prowess and Crystal. Both girls looked up immediately; Prowess even reached for a training stave that had been—with the addition of a guard’s dagger strapped to one end—converted to a spear. They were fully dressed for a day in the Proving Hall, with leather cuirasses buckled on over their tugos, and bucklers strapped to their forearms. They looked exhausted; both were bloodied, much like Hackberry. Prowess wore a guard’s steel bassinet on her head. It was a little large for the girl, the nose guard slipping low over her freckled pug nose.

“Hack,” Crystal said, seeming relieved. Prowess, a short but broad-shouldered girl with flinty green eyes, immediately lowered the makeshift spear and went back to fixing the hard leather buckler she had been working on.

“Found this one in the labs, just like I said,” Hackberry growled, thumbing back to the service golem on his back. Spec waved. “Alchemy lab is locked though. Do we have the keys?”

Crystal shook her head. She was just a bit taller than Prowess, with brown skin and a chaotic mass of black braids atop her head. “Gangly Shanks ran off with them after Parrot and the Cougher went down,” she said. “Spider took off after him.”

“Crot,” Hack cursed. “I need those fetid things.”

“Ye may need ‘em,” Prowess grunted, tugging on a small shield’s rotted leather strap. “We need better weapons.”

“Take ‘em off the guards,” Hack said. “Speaking of which, are we gonna keep all of those men in the same closet?”

“Only the livin’ ones.” Prowess smirked.

Crystal said, “Closets were good enough for us, they’ll be good enough for them.” She added, “And all they carried were cudgels and dirks. We need something better.”

“What about the guards outside, the ones on the wall? They have swords, crossbows…”

“Some of the others went to see about those,” Crystal said.

“Which others?” Hack did not look as though he trusted some of the students with swords and crossbows.

Crystal shrugged. “The ones that are left,” she said, quieter. She looked as though she did not want to think about who was “left” and who was not. The uprising seemed in full swing; Spec knew, at this point, a reiteration of Blackstone Standards of Expected Behavior was going to be moot.

Hackberry scowled. “Some of them are taking sides already,” he said quietly. He glanced at Prowess in what Spec thought was a meaningful way.

“I know,” Crystal said, just as quietly. “We have our core. We can’t do anything about the others right now. First things first, and that means getting out of here. We’re all in agreement with that, at least.”

Hack looked as though he was not so sure, but he said, “We have to get moving. Do we at least have a rally point? And what about a secondary, if that fails?” Hackberry had always excelled at strategy; he had received at least three merits for it, Spec knew.

“The battlements above Malacai’s secret door,” Crystal answered. “And we don’t have a backup plan to that. Door says he needs a clear line of sight to get us all out. What about the ones who went with you?”

Hack made a face. “Battle and Might went to grab Winter and Tink. Gauge and the elf went to help free some of the other specimens.”

“Some of them?” Prowess asked, glancing back.

Hack shrugged. “Some aren’t safe to free yet.”

“Just tell me which ones he’s leaving out,” said Crystal. “I’m not leaving any door unopened by the time we leave.”

“Fet, I dunno yet,” Hack complained. “It’s not like Gauge tells me any of his plans.” He paused. “I don’t even think he makes plans.”

Spec thought the assessment was a bit inaccurate. Gauge made excellent plans, as far as it knew. The boy just changed his mind a lot, and often at the last minute.

The golem glanced back in the direction of the doorway… and noticed a new figure just beyond it, crouched down and half-hidden in the red-tinged shadows.

The Lashmaster had returned.

Spec could have—and should have—called out a warning. But the golem did not yet realize, or could not process, the full scope of enmity—the drawn battle-lines—that should have been clear. Spec simply inclined its head, as it was expected to do in the presence of any instructor. It was not until the Lashmaster’s whip cracked the air, the leather cord snapping around Spec’s neck, that the golem understood its error.

The service golem—and the pik boy carrying it—were jerked violently back toward the doorway. Hackberry was able to spin in midair to come about and face their attacker but couldn’t do anything to halt the Lashmaster’s heavily booted foot from smashing against his face. The pik spun sideways, his skull connecting hard with the stone floor.

The leather straps holding Spec in place snapped, and the legless service golem clattered and spun across the floor.

The girls spun to face the man. “Threll,” Crystal spat the Lashmaster’s given name like acid.

“Back to your rooms. Now.” the Lashmaster unfurled his whip from around the golem’s neck with a flick of his wrist. Hackberry was not moving at all—very likely unconscious, and most certainly concussed. The Lashmaster’s black eyes darted from one girl to the other.

But the girls were not moving toward anything but an attack posture, spreading out to either side of the Lashmaster. “One more step from either of you…” he snarled in warning. His posture in the doorway was a forced defensive one. Crystal and Prowess ignored his words and took five more steps apiece.

Prowess attacked first; she swung an arm wide, grunting. Three of the makeshift spears suddenly launched off the floor, as if thrown by three separate hands, speeding towards the Lashmaster. One missed its mark, sailing over the man’s shoulder and out the door; another was batted out of the way by the chipped broadsword he now held in his other hand. The third spear struck home, however; the blade that had been affixed to the stave plunged into the Lashmaster’s meaty thigh.

The Lashmaster dropped his whip and yanked the bloody spear out forcefully, his crooked yellow teeth bared in a snarl.

“Gwynen—!” Crystal tried to warn her friend, but little did it matter. The spear flew back at Prowess, launched by a full-grown fighting man with a powerful arm and deadly intent. It flew straight and unerring at Prowess’s chest.

Instead of trying to dive from its path, the girl thrust both arms out before her. Spec noticed the immediate surge of dust around Prowess as she brought her talent—neoteric latent psion channeling psychic and kinetic energies, its mind rattled off—once more to bear. The air shimmered and the spear took a sudden nosedive down, its bloody tip driving into the stone floor, snapping. Prowess was thrown off her feet by the kinetic impact, her bassinet knocked from her head. She scrambled back to her feet in a flash, blood dripping from her face; the bridge of her nose had received a nasty cut from the helm’s wayward nose guard.

Crystal was already at the Lashmaster, braids flying. Her brown eyes glowed blue, and both of her hands had become chunks of rough, translucent, crystallized stone, azure in hue and spiked with jagged crystal growths that made her hands look like two stony blue morningstars.

She knew how to use them, too. Crystal came hard and swift, one crystallized hand up in a guard position, the other held so low it scraped the stone floor, spitting sparks. Spec had watched all the students at one time or another, and Crystal could certainly rank within the top nine, as far as fighting skills went… but Spec had never seen her move like this. She is furious, the golem realized. The Master had taught that anger served only to distract, but she seemed to use it as fuel. Her first blow met the Lashmaster’s sword, both careening away; the blow from her other hand struck home, crunching against the man’s knee, buckling it.

The Lashmaster, now fighting from one knee, snarled and sent a hard, sideways cut at the girl, and she was forced to block it with both her crystallized hands. But she came again; her hands and forearms a whirl of blue. The Lashmaster was barely able to parry both and took a glancing blow to the temple. He fought more desperately now, blood trickling down his cheek. He sent a feint high and shot low, taking another blow across the arm but catching Crystal across the thigh with the sharp blade of his sword, sending her stumbling back, wounded.

The Lashmaster attempted to rise, despite his mangled knee. He had to lean on the doorjamb, smearing blood from Crystal’s last blow along the stone frame, and almost made it back up.

“Nah,” Gauge said with a growl, suddenly appearing from the shadows behind the man. The sharp knife in Gauge’s hand sliced the Lashmaster’s hamstring with one smooth stroke. The man cried out, bellowing in shock. It was the first time Spec had ever heard fear in the instructor’s voice. The Lashmaster tried to catch himself on part of the door—but Gauge was not going to give him the chance to catch anything but the blade of his knife.

Gauge drove his shoulder beneath the Lashmaster’s arm. “Just a poke,” the boy rasped, driving his knife in between the Lashmaster’s ribs with all his strength; Gauge’s young arms held a respectable amount of power, and the angle was precise—the blade punched through one of the thick steel loops in the man’s ring-mail armor and went in deep between his ribs. The Lashmaster made a sound that was half gasp, half grunt, then crumpled and fell over sideways.

“Just another,” Gauge snarled, stabbing him again; and then, “one more,” hissing words that were a lie, because he ended up stabbing the Lashmaster four more times, the knife a red blur. Droplets of blood spattered the wall and floor; it dampened Gauge’s perpetually disheveled hair. The Lashmaster twitched once, twice on the stone floor… and then did not move at all. Gauge stabbed him one more time beneath the armpit, leaving the blade stuck deep inside the Lashmaster’s lung.

When Gauge was finished, he rose. “Hey,” he said in greeting once he had caught his breath. The girls limped over, Crystal on her wounded leg, Prowess rubbing at her bloody nose with the back of her hand.

“That was… really satisfying,” Gauge murmured, still breathing hard, looking down at the dead man. Blood still dripped from his hair. Hackberry had finally staggered to his feet, one hand pressed to his head; blood trickled down the side of his neck from a gash behind his ear. The young pik stumbled back over to retrieve the service golem. Spec felt slightly sheepish that it could still do nothing to aid any of them.

“Vheret won’t be happy you got him,” Crystal said, frowning. Her eyes were strangely sad on the Lashmaster’s corpse.

Gauge looked a little annoyed. “Tell him he owes me. Vheret wasn’t the only guy this sodder pissed off.” He went back over to the dead man and pulled his knife back out with some effort.

“He killed Bene,” Crystal said, her voice suddenly hoarse.

“Yeah, I was there,” he retorted. “Threll ordered it and had Malacai’s goons do the dirty work.” Gauge finished cleaning his knife on the Lashmaster’s pant leg and rose, tucking the blade into a makeshift sheath he had made from a guard’s hacked up boot. “Tell Vheret I’ll be his goon, if you think that will salve his prickly arse. Threll’s dead. He won’t be poking anyone anymore.”

Crystal seemed about to retort, but her expression changed. She looked off, as if remembering something. “You know, it… it wasn’t your fault,” she said quietly after a moment. “Mara and her brother had no gifts or talents; they were only put there to—”

“I know,” Gauge said, scowling. “And now there’s one less Threll around, which is one less person who kills kids that don’t strike ‘im as useful.”

“They had souls,” Spec suddenly blurted. All eyes turned to the golem. “If they were people,” it said. “They had them. Souls. It made them alive. That was something.”

“Malacai doesn’t give three sacks of shite for souls,” Gauge muttered, and the others seemed to agree.

“That is not true,” Spec said, softer. The golem wondered why it should feel so timid in pointing this out, but it did feel an odd sort of discomfort in it.

They all looked at the golem blankly. Hackberry was painfully strapping Spec onto his back again and wasn’t looking at anybody.

Spec looked away. Except for Hackberry, it was as alone here as it ever had been. Nothing and everything has changed.

“Well, fine,” Prowess said in exhale, running a hand through her short, sweat-matted hair. “If we see any random wee souls millin’ about, we’ll be sure to grab ‘em and save ‘em for the Master. But I doubt we’ll be seein’ any souls—or him, for that matter.”

Crystal frowned and nodded in agreement, then added, “We have more weapons to hand out, so we need to make the rounds. Which specs did you free?”

“There’s only one Spec,” Hackberry interjected with a growl. Spec felt strangely grateful. Names are power.

Crystal huffed. “Fine. Specimens. How many specimens?”

“Feral went to help look for Jander,” Gauge said. “I saw Threll sneaking down the hall, so I sent Ene’ to grab Voe, so she could help free some of the others while I followed his ugly arse. Stupid bastard came here.” The boy looked down at the Lashmaster and finally seemed to allow himself a small smile of satisfaction. Spec was not entirely certain whether Gauge liked to kill or had just enjoyed killing that particular man.

Crystal swiped a wayward braid out of her face. Her hands had returned to their usual shape and saturation, her eyes to their usual brown color. “The rest of Horror Hall is closed?”

“Pretty much.” Gauge shrugged. “If we want monsters… we’ve got monsters.”

“Good.” Crystal turned back to Prowess. “I need you to get more weapons while I ready more armor.”

Prowess looked reluctant but nodded after a moment. “I think there were actually a few extra guard blades left at the trial ring,” she said. “Up on the podium where Lord Toad’s guards soiled themselves. Daggers and swords. I’ll get ’em if you can hold down the room.”

“Easily,” Crystal said, seemingly ignoring the gash on her leg. To Gauge she said, “You and Hacky can distribute the ones we have to the other students.”

“I guess I can,” Gauge muttered. “Good to know I have a choice.”

Crystal ignored him. Hack squinted irritably, still in pain, but finally shrugged and started off toward the door, Spec strapped to his back again. Crystal nodded to herself and started toward the back of the chamber—probably to look for something to wrap her wounded leg with, Spec reasoned.

“Wait—” Prowess touched Crystal’s shoulder. The dark-skinned girl turned—and Prowess quickly leaned in and kissed her, quite solidly, on the lips.

“Uh…” Hack had paused at the door, still dazed, watching the kiss with an expression that made his eyes appear at risk of falling out of his head. Spec tilted its own head to and fro, trying to watch as well. Kisses were fascinating; they made the golem happy for some reason, even though it could not partake in them, as it had no mouth. Spec had not seen many kisses in its lifetime, but still viewed them as special, and quite emphatically human.

Gauge stood there blinking at the two girls, then looked over at Hackberry. “Didn’t see that coming.”

Neither had Crystal, apparently. Her large dark eyes were all the larger. She was just staring at Prowess, who finally answered the stare with a smirk and a fond pat-pat to Crystal’s cheek.

“Don’t know how long we have left on this stinkin’ earth,” Prowess said, shrugging and retreating quickly toward the hall. Spec detected an increase in color to her face. “Might never get another chance, y’know?” she called out as she moved into the darkened hallway, her words echoing.

Crystal nodded dumbly, just watching her go.

“Now would not be a good time to mention Vheret,” Gauge said, sniggering.

Crystal fixed him with a sudden, angry stare. “She knows about Vheret,” she snapped.

Gauge just looked at Hack and shrugged. “I’m definitely gonna tell Roen.” He paused. “Wait, have you seen Roen?”

“She went to the gate to see about the newcomers,” Crystal said, still irked. “And trust me, she knows—” Crystal paused, seeming to remember something. Now she just looked exasperated. “She knows what she knows, and I don’t want to talk about it, okay?” Crystal turned her back on them all and limped away.

“I once knew a whore who said that,” Gauge said to Spec with a shrug. The golem could not find any relevance in that statement, however.

Hack just shook his head, adjusting Spec on his back, seemingly eager to be gone. “You’re floggin’ weird, Gauge.” He was not the most patient of people, especially when it came to Gauge’s tangential speech patterns.

“Weird’s kind of a compliment, where I come from,” Gauge said with a shrug.

“Yeah? Where’s that?” the pik asked, squinting. Spec could not tell whether he was genuinely curious, or still hurting from the blow he had taken to the head.

Gauge grinned in his usual Gauge-like way, wide-mouthed and purposeful, showing off every gap of every missing tooth he had in his head. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you, Hacky,” he said. “Anyway, we’re done with our Blackstone names. This place is just gonna be a bad memory, and soon. From now on, call me by my real name.”

Hackberry looked a little suspicious. “You’ve never even told me your name.”

The boy with the missing teeth and bloody hair and wide grin grinned all the wider.