The following morning was too soon in coming. Sunlight shone on Dowyr’s face through the frosted window, and there was no curtain to shut it out. Weynon was already up and brushing his teeth. He looked over as Dowyr stirred and buried his face in his pillow.

  “What’s the matter? Aren’t you excited for another day of Emogic training?” Weynon asked.

  Dowyr grumbled and pulled his blankets over his head. There was nothing to look forward to, not with that girl waiting for him. Granted, yesterday hadn’t been that bad, but the thought of having to be around that untrustfully-pretty-faced Elethe again sent a chill down his spine. It was also Victorsday, which meant a lengthy religious class after breakfast. At least there were no classes or trainings on Sundays, so tomorrow would be a welcome break. Besides the mandatory church service.

  Weynon finished his brushing and came over to pull the blankets off of Dowyr and toss up a change of clothes.

  “Come on, you don’t want to get a late attendance, do you?”

  Dowyr sighed and started changing. It wasn’t so much that he cared about his attendance, but Weynon would’ve stayed with him until he came, and then Weynon would’ve gotten late attendance too.

  “I wonder why your teacher wanted me to join your class today,” Weynon said as he put his school slippers on.

  Dowyr fumbled his head through his shirt and gave Weynon a confused look. Elethe hadn’t told him anything about that. He grabbed his journal to ask Weynon for more details.

  “Dane told me that after class yesterday. He didn’t say why. But I’m looking forward to seeing what you can do with Boredom.”

  Dowyr hummed and finished changing. Perhaps Elethe needed another person to have him use his Emogic on to practice more complicated things. At least it’d be a chance to see if he could channel the knowledge of signs directly to Weynon.

  They left for breakfast, and Dowyr made sure to stack his plate full. The lunches at the Academy went heavy on the meat, so he had gotten into the habit of stuffing himself to last until dinner to avoid going to lunch altogether. Weynon always saved him some extra bread to help get through the day.

  Then came the dreaded religious class. It was always difficult to decide where to sit, as Dowyr wanted to be both closest to the door and furthest from the teacher, but he couldn’t have both. Today he opted for closest to the door on the corner of the front row, and Weynon sat next to him.

  The teacher arrived shortly after, a young woman with a demeanor that radiated the message everything is sunshine and divine! Which, in Dowyr’s estimation, were always the worst kind of teachers, because they would usually start with questions like—

  “What are the main things we must do to maintain our connection to Heaven?” the teacher asked.

  Dowyr nearly laughed. Questions exactly like that, which everybody knew the answer to and yet, somehow, nobody wanted to be the person to blurt out the obvious. So Dowyr gave Weynon a nudge before the silence got too awkward.

  Weynon raised his hand and answered, “Pray, read The Five Sentinels, and follow their instructions.”

  “Good answer, Weynon,” the teacher said as though he had spoken something profound. “But pray to who exactly?”

  “All of the Sentinels themselves, Heaven, Paradise, Elysium, Valhalla, and Zion.”

  The teacher took a piece of chalk and began writing the Sentinels’ names on the blackboard. “Correct. But we should remember when different prayers should be directed to different Sentinels. You wouldn’t pray for a bountiful fall harvest from Zion, would you? And you wouldn’t pray and ask Valhalla to help you to do well in a competition.”

  Dowyr rolled his eyes. That showed what she knew. Valhalla might have been primarily associated with knowledge, but he was also a hunter that competed with his brother Zion all the time.

  The lesson continued with the teacher drawing lines between the Sentinels’ names and having the class discuss what sort of things one should pray about to which Sentinel. Not that The Five Sentinels ever had anything to say about that. But in the minds of the top religious scholars, it followed that because the Sentinels were all different from each other, prayers ought to be directed at specific ones for specific things.

  An hour of torture later the lesson ended, and the dreaded next form of torture loomed around the corner as Dowyr and Weynon made it up to the third floor. The classroom was empty when they arrived, however.

  “It’s typical of her to be a bit late,” Dowyr channeled to Weynon, who gave a start at the sound.

  “It sounds weird when you talk like that,” he said. “It’s like I’m hearing you from inside my head.”

  “Sorry. Is it better if I make it so it sounds like it’s coming from where I’m standing like this?”

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  “Yeah, much better. So do we sit down? All the desks are put away.”

  Dowyr shrugged and opted to just lay down on the floor and stare at the ceiling. Weynon did the same and winced.

  “This isn’t very comfortable.”

  “Yeah. I just have a thick skull.”

  The door opened and in walked her.

  “Good morning, my little alien…” Elethe stopped and looked down at them. “What are you two doing?”

  “I call it living in the moment,” Dowyr channeled to her and Weynon.

  “Uh huh. Living in the moment looks rather unsanitary.” She came over and lowered a hand towards Weynon to help him stand up. Of course, she didn’t lower a hand for Dowyr. “And you must be Weynon, right?”

  Weynon gave her a smile. “Yes, nice to meet you, Miss... sorry, I forgot your name.”

  “You can just call me Elethe.”

  “Oh, okay. Thanks for inviting me, Elethe.”

  “Of course! I appreciate you coming.” Elethe looked down at Dowyr as if to say, look at this wonderful example of a nice boy, why can’t you be more like him?

  Weynon turned to Dowyr and helped him up, and Dowyr made sure to give Elethe a look that tried to say, why can’t you be nice like him and help me up too? Though he had never really been successful with facial communication, for some reason. He had his guesses.

  “So why did you want Weynon to join us today?” Dowyr channeled.

  “To try something I thought of last night that wouldn’t work with just me, considering... what I did yesterday. Anyway, I want to see how well you can use telepathy to channel knowledge directly to someone else. In small portions to start.”

  What had she done yesterday that would make her idea not work? There was no way she had copied his entire brain into her own in that one short go yesterday. Was there? She was still tolerating his existence, and Snakes, even his presence. Sort of. How much did she actually know about him?

  “I can try channeling how to say a sentence with signs,” Dowyr channeled.

  “You can do that?” Weynon asked.

  “No idea, but I’ll give it a try.”

  Dowyr shifted his Emogic to telepathy and thought of how to say ‘my name is Weynon’ with signs, sending the knowledge through the telepathy link in such a way that it seemed firmly planted in Weynon’s mind, and... well, that was it.

  Weynon’s reaction was immediate. He blinked a few times and looked at his hands, then signed, my name is Weynon. “Whoa.”

  “How was it?” Elethe asked. “Do you feel okay?”

  Weynon nodded slowly. “Only a tiny bit dizzy.”

  “Interesting. Well, that’s useful to know. I’m curious, before coming to the Academy, did you figure out how to use your Emogic to talk to plants or animals at all?”

  “Sort of. Why?”

  “Well, I read that—or, I know that it’s sort of like telepathy. And I thought, humans are animals too. So shouldn’t you be able to communicate with them in a telepathic way like Dowyr can?”

  Weynon shook his head. “No, I’ve tried, and it’s like talking to a wall. I think it’s because what I do isn’t actually telepathy, I don’t really get into the mind of whatever I’m channeling to. It just lets us talk. Since I can already do that with other humans, it has no effect.”

  Dowyr hummed. “I can’t talk. What happens if you try it on me?”

  Weynon made a thoughtful look. “Good question.” He turned and focused on Dowyr.

  Nothing changed about how Dowyr felt, but then maybe Weynon was only trying to listen. I am thinking about birds, Dowyr thought, then channeled, “Hear anything?”

  Weynon shook his head. “I don’t think it’s working.”

  As he spoke, the images of a few hand-signs flashed through Dowyr’s mind, making him blink. They meant, more or less, exactly what Weynon had spoken.

  “I think it is,” Dowyr channeled, then signed, but differently than expected.

  Weynon gaped. “I just heard… do that again!”

  Once more images of signs flashed through Dowyr’s mind. It struck him as odd, especially since he could hear and understand normal language just fine. He signed some more.

  Talking with my hands, talking with my hands, and you can hear my hands in your head, can’t you?

  Weynon nodded. “Yeah, that’s so weird. I wonder if it won’t work when you teach me more signs.”

  Dowyr winced at the barrage of signs flashing through his mind. “Okay, stop talking, it’s making me see hands in my head and I don’t like it.”

  “Oh, sorry. I stopped channeling.”

  Elethe looked between the two of them with an odd smirk. “That’s a rather interesting discovery. I’ll have to let the Headmaster know what we figured out.”

  “Does this mean my name will go down in history for helping discover that Druids can talk to mutes?” Dowyr asked.

  “Do you think they’d let a kid with a name like Dowyr Mawkin go down in history?”

  Dowyr shrugged. “No, but one can hope.”

  “I think he should,” Weynon said. “We wouldn’t have figured it out without him. But I’d like to learn more signs so we don’t have to use our Emogic or paper to communicate.”

  “You two can stick around and work on that then,” Elethe said, walking to the door. “I’m gonna go nap until lunch.”

  Weynon stared after her. “Aren’t you supposed to stay and… teach?”

  “Nah, you guys can have fun messing around for a bit. Just don’t break anything.” She left the room, then her head popped in through the doorway. “Seriously, don’t.”

  And then she was gone.

  What an odd creature. Dowyr made his way over to the teacher’s desk and climbed on top to lay down and hang his head over the side.

  “I guess we can see how much I can teach you by lunch,” he channeled.

  Weynon nodded, still staring at the door. “I wonder how other animals communicate when I use Peace. It felt different channeling at you compared to birds.”

  “That’s not surprising, most birds are pretty stupid. And plants don’t even have brains, but you can still talk to them. What’s that like?” The books Dowyr had read about Druids were plentifully detailed of the sort of things plants and animals would communicate, but there was nothing about what communicating with them actually felt like.

  “It’s hard to explain. I haven’t channeled to that many plants, so maybe it’s different depending on what I channel to, but it was a bit like... music. Like a million voices singing the same thing. Except for potted plants, those were just single voices, and sounded more like untuned instruments, confused about themselves. I think. There’s not much they say that I know words for.”

  Dowyr supposed that made sense. Most Druids became involved with farming or livestock in some way as they were able to understand problems the food or animals were having and what needed to be done to solve them. And with the help of Immortals—Love Emogicians, who were able to make plants grow like it was nothing, among other things—there had almost never been a bad harvest season in the history of Elyssanar.

  “Well, that’s all fascinating, but let’s get you talking using your hands. What do you want to learn first?”