"And now, for Ortahn and the particularly dense, I'll explain what we're doing here. You are here to learn not to get in the way. Your magic is a halting in the finely tuned workings of the Great Matrix. Female spells are complex, elegant, and multifunctional. They create and destroy, heal and curse, and are so redundant that they can afford to look beautiful. Male magic, on the other hand (that is, yours)..." she gestured with her unpaired hand, outlining the entire room, "is a tool for doing what is necessary: lift, break, patch. Strengthen muscles, seal cracks in the city's legs, process materials for war. That's it. A little simpler than doing it by hand."

  "Yeah, I can punch through a wall with my fist!" Yaron (who was also sitting at the front, but several desks away from Ortahn) interjected, slamming his hand on the table and nearly breaking it.

  "A pity I don't possess magic capable of breaking through the thickness of your skull," Tulila said, seemingly with genuine regret. "Alright, alright, I'll try to explain it even more simply, so be it. Female spells are symphonies. Male spells are a set of bangs on pots and pans."

  "Who needs those symphonies anyway? At least pans are useful, you can make soup," one of the students cheerfully retorted.

  "I'm glad you're accepting your fate with (I hope) a healthy dose of irony, Gron. Yes, fists and pans are your lot in life, girls..." she once again fixed her gaze on Ortahn, her artificial eye focusing precisely on him. "Everything else is an anomaly. And my job is to figure out whether it's worth studying, or if it's simpler to just burn it out."

  An oppressive silence hung in the hall, broken only by the quiet rustle of her hands against the air.

  "Well now," Tulila clapped her hands, and her magical hands mimicked the gesture, creating an echo, "we've finished this pathetic chancellery ritual. Let's begin the no less meaningless history lesson."

  The lesson was dedicated to the "Great Purge"—how the last global male rebellion was quelled. Tulila spoke of the "natural order of things," "male aggression tamed by female wisdom," "the danger of male emotions as a catalyst for wild magic," and "the wise Matriarchs who stood against masculine chaos." Her floating hands thinned into fine lines of light and began to weave three-dimensional images in the air: ancient crystal metropolises, the majestic faces of historical women, the vile snarls of enraged men, and ancient artifacts. The men stared at the projection with their usual stupor.

  "An ashfield. Not a Purge. Hiding the essence behind another's word. Why?" his aunt's voice suddenly arose in Ortahn's detached mind. "Why was it necessary to resort to such extreme measures if women are so superior to men?"

  "...and special mention must be made of the Great Matriarch Isila," Tulila continued. "Her wisdom saved what were then only earthen metropolises from their final fall into the abyss."

  "A tyrant, under whom books and vessels of knowledge burned brighter than the rebels. Most of the voids in history now contain only her name. The codices of the free clans, the genealogies of queens, information about the city-state of Solistopia, collections of ancient myths—all burned in the fire of ignorance. And what survived was twisted. Remember the tales of the Creators, that the world was wrought by two hands? Now only one remains. Why was Isila so afraid of human memory?"

  "...The wise..."

  "...The destructive..."

  "...but history..."

  "...is like a river. It always finds the cracks."

  "...the time of wild..."

  "...imbalance. A rupture cannot happen where there is internal balance. It only occurs when the parts of a whole begin to pull in different directions."

  "...and that is precisely why male energy, and especially magic, being primitive and unstable, requires strict control..."

  "We know almost nothing about male magic because no one wants to study it. So many rules and prohibitions! A single extraneous movement of thought, and Law will be invoked. Why study what cannot be applied instead of what can? That's how they reason, but knowledge is an anchor. Without it, any ship simply drifts at the will of the waves."

  "It's so we don't rebel again, like in the Scission period!" Yaron suddenly blurted out, looking around proudly at his classmates.

  Tulila slowly turned her head toward him. Her lips stretched into a smile that was almost motherly, but of a dangerous, predatory mother. She walked over to the man and began to stroke his head affectionately with her cosmic palm.

  "Oh, you good lass..."

  Yaron glanced triumphantly at Ortahn, but her fingers suddenly tightened, digging into his small crown. The young man's face contorted in pain.

  "But next time, my girl, keep quiet if you're not sure of the correct answer. Stupidity, spoken aloud, is forever imprinted on the fabric of reality. Understand?" her voice remained sweet as nectar. "You meant the Taming period. The Scission period was when the First Land split into clans and worldwide expansion began. In general, think less. We wouldn't want your tiny brain to overheat from the effort, would we?"

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  Yaron could only whimper a series of "Ow"s, and Tulila released him.

  "I sense you've grown bored of our history, thanks to which we are where we are," the teacher concluded irritably, her gaze sweeping over the rows. "Which means it's time for some fun. A practical test."

  A chorus of students expressed all their disappointment and horror in a single, prolonged groan.

  "Is this because of Yaron?" someone cried desperately from the back rows.

  "No, it's because of you, Vitl. So blame everything on Vitl, girls," Tulila parried mercilessly, then turned toward the door. "Where are those blockheads idling? Homunculi! Bring the tests in here before my students die of boredom completely!"

  Immediately, there was a dull knock at the door, and Tulila flung it open with a wave of her hand. An unblessed scurried into the room, sparking a barrage of male joy. There were whistles, shouts, and dirty jokes. They had been bottling up their tension for a long time, and now a safe female target for its release had finally appeared.

  The unblessed had a large, aquiline nose, like the beak of a sky-queen, large almond-shaped eyes, a straight brow line, and a coppery skin tone. All these features marked her as a native of Zazara, a southern country with its own Overlordess and Nephilim. Her black hair lay flat against her head and rose up at the crown in sharp tufts (like onion shoots, if her head were an onion bulb). Either she styled it that way on purpose, or it was very unruly and headstrong. The young woman wore a black government-issue maid's uniform, but even in it she was beautiful, albeit of an unconventional appearance. At the shouts, she smiled nervously, as if in polite gratitude, approached the teacher, and handed her a stack of papers and a bundle of styluses. Next to the tall, gaunt, and stern Tulila, she looked particularly exotic.

  "Where are the blockheads, Faya?" Tulila asked, taking the papers.

  "Oh, their legs got stuck," she replied quickly, with a soft Zazaran accent.

  "All of them?" Tulila asked incredulously, her eye flashing.

  "Half of them. The other half is fixing that half," the southerner sighed insincerely and started to sit down at the desk with Ortahn.

  But Tulila's hands immediately scooped her up under the armpits, turned her around, and gently but inexorably carried her out the door, which promptly slammed shut.

  "Get to work, Faya," the teacher tossed at the already closed door as her magical limbs began to distribute the papers and styluses. When everyone had received a sheet, Tulila warned, "No cheating. Firstly, it's useless, since your neighbor would have to be smarter than you, which sounds overly optimistic, you'll agree. And secondly, I have enough hands for all of you."

  Behind her back, the transparent hands clenched into fists in unison, like a swarm of warnings.

  Ortahn melancholically read the questions and answered them in his head before he even saw the options. Some questions were tricky, others were phrased incorrectly, had no correct answer, or had several.

  One by one, the men stood up and handed in their papers. Yaron, passing by, deliberately shoved Ortahn's desk, then complained about his "fatness" taking up half the room. When Ortahn was left alone with Tulila, she walked over, took his sheet, and meticulously inspected it from all sides. Her artificial eye briefly changed its hue to blood-red.

  "You're a real pain, Ortahn. The others at least try to scribble their nonsense, but you decided to piss me off directly. Or can you not write? Or are you a philosopher, and this is your philosophy of the blank page?" She leaned closer, narrowing her eyes. "Or did you like the slap so much you want a bunch more? I can arrange that, but you'll quickly grow tired of it, especially having to stand while others sit." When she got no reaction, she sighed and said wearily, "Come on, I'll take you to your cell, since the blockheads are having a sabotage epidemic."

  They walked through dark corridors, lit only by the dim light lines. The chain-spells shifted ominously in the semi-darkness. Strange iron holders hung on the walls, and Ortahn realized that the school had once been lit by torches—primitive devices in the form of a burning stick. Perhaps even up until the recent spread of the light-weave.

  They encountered a woman leading a boy of about seven by the hand. Upon seeing Tulila and Ortahn, her eyes widened in terror, and she pressed herself against the wall, shielding the boy with her body. It seemed to Ortahn that she was primarily afraid of Tulila, not him. It made sense: his group was the oldest (he had even seen one gray-haired man). Adult male mages. Even to him, that sounded terrifying. Only a desperate daredeviloid like Tulila could agree to rein in this barely controllable, dangerous force.

  "Your mind isn't empty, Ortahn," Tulila interrupted his thoughts, paying no attention to the frightened woman. "On the contrary, it's overflowing. That interferes with control."

  Ortahn remained silent.

  "You're silent. But silence is also an answer."

  Ortahn remained silent.

  "What do you need to start cooperating?"

  Ortahn remained silent.

  "A woman with many hands asked you what you need, and you didn't answer. You're either a mute man, or... Ah, never mind..." Tulila finally gave up.

  Ortahn still remained silent.

  They reached a wooden door, and the teacher simply pushed it open. It was a simple, flat plank attached to a frame with iron hinges. A completely mechanical door, no magic. Ortahn had never seen such pre-Scission doors in the city.

  The room inside shocked him. With its wretchedness. There were no closets this cramped in his aunt's house. Even the storage for homunculi was more spacious. Like the rest of the school, there were no windows; light emanated from a single dim line crawling across the ceiling. A bed, a chair, a table, and a broken chest were all the furnishings. Tulila nudged the chest with her boot, assessing its complete uselessness.

  "Tell the blockheads to replace this junk. Although, you don't have any things, as I understand it?"

  Ortahn silently sat on the bed. The cot groaned pitifully. At least the seating items greeted him with a familiar sound.

  "The latch is broken here, too," Tulila noted, inspecting the door. "If I were you, that's what I'd fix for sure." Tulila looked around but found no more topics for conversation. "Settle in, Ortahn. I'm leaving. Food should be summoned onto the table, so don't put anything there before then, unless, of course, you want to make it part of the meal. It certainly won't ruin the taste of the school food. That's all. I've done my good deed for the month thanks to you. Now I'm off to commit misdeeds."

  "Mistress..." Ortahn forced out. From the long silence, the "mistress" came out hoarse and dry.

  "Let's throw out the 'mistress'," Tulila replied and actually tossed nothing over her shoulder. Her levitating hands caught the "nothing" and began to toss it back and forth between them. "Just Tulila. Tula is fine, if circumstances require a rapid exchange of information. Life and death circumstances."

  "Tulila, when will the emotion-suppressing spells be dispelled from me?" Ortahn asked, his voice devoid of emotion.

  "There are no spells," she threw back curtly and left, slamming the door behind her.

  Ortahn sat for a long time, stunned, staring at the gap between the door and the frame.