I arrived in time and before the professor. Everyone else, Banshees and Krakens, were all staring at me. I kept my eyes down and tried to find an empty lab station in the back. Each station was a black stone countertop clearly designed for two people to act as partners. Going by the disdain in the eyes of a few of the other students, finding a partner was going to be unpleasant.

  “Oh no you don’t,” A familiar voice snapped me out of the doom and gloom of my thoughts. “You are sitting with me.”

  I snapped my head up to see Celica, without a partner and gesturing me over.

  I switched direction and walked over to her, trying and failing to ignore the judgmental gazes of her fellow Krakens.

  “Are you sure about this?” I asked her as I sat down.

  She rolled her eyes. “If I have to sit down with one more of my Towermates attempting to quote the rulebook and why ghosts are impossible here, I will do something with the alchemy equipment that will get me expelled. So you have to sit next to me. For the safety of the others.”

  I shrugged. “Not like I had options anyway.”

  She grinned, “Frigid bunch, aren’t they? I have been stuck with them all day.”

  I repressed a shiver.

  “The Banshees are just as bad,” she smirked. “All they do in class is quote books.”

  I let out a snorting laugh. “Is that why they’re looking at me like that?”

  “You’re a Pixie. In the hardest class offered to our year. Notice that you’re the only one.”

  “Well if whoever is in charge of schedules didn’t think I could handle it, I wouldn’t be here.”

  “You weren’t even at the exams to qualify for an advanced course. Let alone this one.” From someone else that might have sounded angry, but she just sounded impressed.

  “I was sleeping off a deadly spider bite. I have an excuse. Plus they based it off of my entrance exam scores. I assume they know what they’re doing. But then again based of the Tower choices they made for us…” I drifted off.

  She nodded. “Well it won’t matter. Professor Gorgon is almost as bad as his Tower. We’ll see how he responds to today. If he lets you stay. they’ll have to keep their mouths shut.”

  I fought back the urge to cry. This was supposed to be my favorite class…the one I looked forward to every day! I was so excited to be here! I took a prolonged and deep inhale. No. I fought deadly spiders to be here. I will not be defeated by a bunch of judgmental pricks. So what if I was a Pixie? So what if they thought I was crazy or a liar?

  I would just have to be at the top of this class.

  I looked up to see a pale man with long black hair tied up behind his head. “Hello students.” His voice was cold, icy and brimming with contempt. His very pale blue eye and they were narrowed right at me. “Pixie, are you sure you’re in the right class?”

  “Yes sir,” I responded confidently. “Third period, Advanced Alchemy in A2 with Professor Gorgon.”

  His narrowed eyes became a glare. I continued to sit up straight, unwavering under the gaze. Other students nearby flinched. Celica looked proud.

  “Hmm. No matter. We’ll see. Today you will do a lab. If your end result is subpar, I will kick you out of this class. That goes for all of you. If a Pixie manages to keep pace with you then clearly I’ve made the syllabus too easy.”

  I felt a rush of excitement. Finally.

  Professor Gorgon snapped his fingers. Deep purple smoke made a pile of equipment and a single piece of paper appear on our counter.

  I read the sheet excitedly, I could feel the massive grin on my face.

  “Mercury Crystals,” I read out loud from the page. “While in its normal form, mercury is a liquid. In this lab you will turn mercury into a solid.” So cool!

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  I glanced up at Celica, who was giving me a weird look.

  “What?” I asked. “I have been looking forward to doing alchemy labs for months. I don’t care that the teacher dislikes me or that the students have all written me off.”

  Celica blinked three times slowly. “Okay, whatever. Let’s do this.”

  I looked at the equipment on the table. There were five plates of different metals with identical runes. I glanced at the paper again. “We need a blue-green flame for this to work.” At the bottom of the stack of plates was a copper one. “So, this one.” I didn’t light it, but I did set it aside, and moved the other plates to the other side of the counter.

  “Such confidence. Clearly I have made the correct choice.” Celica sounded very amused for some reason.

  “Now we need the vial of mercury.” I looked at the set of vials on the table. Five near-identical vials of liquid metallic substances with very similar colors. “So only one of these is real, I would imagine.”

  I heard cursing from a few stations away.

  Celica nodded and held up two vials to compare them. “I can’t tell which. They look the same to me, but admittedly I don’t have a lot of experience with mercury.”

  I closed my eyes and thought back to my childhood. To Dad in the chemistry lab we had in the house. I could see it in my mind. I opened my eyes again Celica had placed the vials back in the holder.

  I pointed to each one and muttered to myself, “Too thin, too dark, too pale, this one.”

  Celica grabbed the paper. “Now we heat the mercury with the flame plate for five minutes.”

  “All right, how do we use these things?”

  Celica gave me a flat look. “You’re able to identify mercury, but you don’t know how to use a runic fire plate? You are very lucky I am your partner and not someone who might judge you for that.”

  It sounded like she was judging me a little. “I’ve seen mercury before. I just haven’t seen one of these before.” I was looking at the plate on the counter. I poked at the engraved runes.

  Celica sighed heavily and tapped the runes twice.

  Blue-green flames ignited on the plate. A blue shimmer made a metal stand of the same color appear, perfect for holding a vial over the heat.

  “That’s awesome,” I breathed and, then snapped out of my awed daze. “Okay, so, mercury vial goes here.” I placed it at the top.

  Celia was setting, a white egg timer like one Dad had in his lab.

  “While we wait, what’s next?” I asked her, since she still had the paper.

  “Once it’s done, turn off the heat and add one part basilisk venom to three parts mercury,” Celica read.

  I looked at the mercury vial. There was no indication how much was in there, but it didn’t look like much. “Where’s the basilisk venom?” I asked, checking what we still had on the table.

  I guess Professor Gorgon had some mercy in him as there was only one helpfully labeled bottle on the table.

  I picked up the bottle and examined it; dark glass that held a light colored liquid with a dropper. “I’m thinking two drops. What do you think?”

  She eyed the bottle in my hand, and then the vial over the fire. “Probably.”

  Since we had nothing better to do while we waited, I glanced up from our station and around the room. Some students were testing the plates one by one to see which colors they produced. Others were blindly picking a vial and hoping it was the right one.

  “Well, I feel good about our odds,” Celica murmured. “At the very least, we won’t be at the bottom.”

  “Me too,” I agreed.

  The timer eventually clicked and Celica tapped the side of the plate once. The fire turned off but the stand remained.

  I popped the cork off the vial and watched Celica drip two drops into the bottle. I put the cork back and watched the mercury eagerly.

  “It’s doing something,” I announced quietly, full of excitement.

  And it was. Slowly but surely it was shifting from a liquid to a sharp jagged crystalline structure.

  Celica was smiling too. “It actually worked. And everyone else thought you didn’t belong here. No way he can kick you out now.” We high-fived.

  “Well, well, looks like a pair of you have finished. Let’s see how you two did.” Professor Gorgon was standing next to our station, looming over my shoulder. Celica jumped a little.

  I sat up straight and kept a smile on my face while he picked up the vial of fully crystallized mercury. He turned and inspected it.

  “Impressive.” He said, though his tone of voice didn’t match it. He almost sounded sarcastic. Rude.

  I kept quiet while he took the vial and set it in a case for display at his table in the front of the classroom, for everyone to see. He then sat down in his chair and started reading from a book I couldn’t identify.

  “How does he not scare you?” Celica demanded under her breath.

  I turned to her. “I fought death spiders last week. A strict teacher won’t faze me. Besides, we did what we were supposed to and finished the lab. What can he do at this point?”

  Celica shook her head slowly. “Should you really be making jokes about that?”

  I shrugged. “It’s fine. As long as people who weren’t there keep their opinions to themselves I’m fine. Though I will admit I’ll probably be an arachnophobe for the rest of my life.”

  I heard grumbling from a few stations and noticed that a few of them clearly guessed wrong on their vials.

  “It was terrifying, you know. From our side. One moment you were there, the next you were violently pulled away. Like you had gotten caught in a drain. We couldn’t even do anything to stop it. We didn’t even see what it was. The door locked again. None of us could get it open, in our panic we had forgotten your password. Dellik wasn’t much help. All of us yelling got the attention of the Pegasus group and they helped us get Professor Hearth. She helped us calm down enough for Russel to remember what password you used. When the door opened you were covered in ash and cobwebs. You looked so pale and there was a lot of blood.”

  “I’m sorry?” I offered.

  She scoffed. “You’re lucky to be sitting here. They wouldn’t let us see you. Which was not helpful. I had nightmares about empty desks where you were supposed to sit.”

  “Well I’m here now.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Yes you are. And you’re not allowed to pull stunts like that anymore.”

  “I didn’t pull a stunt. I genuinely believed it wasn’t going to work.”

  She rubbed her face, “You opened a magically locked door by accident. This better not become a thing with you.”

  “Don’t worry, next time we find a mysteriously locked door I’ll stay as far from it as I can.”

  “Good. This class would probably bore me to death without you.”

  We looked around. Another vial was added to the display up front, but the crystal inside was a strange orange color.

  “That would just be cruel of me to leave you to these guys.”

  (*********)

  “I’m mortified that so many of the best and brightest of your year were out-performed by a Pixie. Either she is in the wrong Tower or all of you need to spend less time gossiping and more time in the library. Today was a test to see if you could correctly and efficiently identify the materials and equipment you will be working with this class. Judging by what most of you turned in, I would say only a handful of you can.”

  Out of a total of twenty-one vials, five looked like ours, six were the wrong colors, four were still liquid, two were filled a strange black gas, and two were a green liquid.

  “Lucky for you, I can’t kick all of you out. As much as I would love to only have the twelve of you that actually managed to correctly complete the lab. So for those of you who failed the lab you’ll get a second chance. I want an essay by Friday on where exactly you went wrong. There are shelves of alchemy books in the library. I suggest you read them.”

  Celica looked relieved next to me.

  “Those of you who did manage to succeed, let this be a warning on complacency. This is an advanced course. For the exceptional students. Failing to prepare beforehand will make nothing but more work for you and waste my time. My time is precious. Waste too much of it and I will remove you.”

  Keep up or get left behind. Okay. I could live with that.

  “I will see all of you tomorrow.”