Chapter 102

• The ceremony ended and the Academy filled with the sound of forty-seven graduates finding each other and finding the five team leaders and finding the corners of the dimension where Ignis had decided to perch and was accepting admiration with the composed dignity of a phoenix that has ascended twice and earned the right to be composed about it. Darius from Alpha was already deep in conversation with three of the graduates who had listed combat specialization, demonstrating axe technique with the enthusiasm of someone who had never once in his life been required to modulate his enthusiasm and had no intention of starting. Lyra was speaking with the young woman from the Verdant Reach with the focused quality of one precision specialist recognizing another. Jace was talking to the healers, four of them, clustered in a group that had the particular intensity of people comparing notes about how to keep everyone else alive.
• In the Delta corner of the assembly, Varian was explaining dimensional engineering principles to a recruit who had arrived at the Academy with half a dozen original theoretical papers on Nexus thread structure already written, and the expression on Varian's face was the expression of someone who had found a professional peer and was trying not to appear too delighted about it. Selis and Riven were there too, Riven introducing himself to the graduates from the Ashen Corridor with the specific kind of care he had developed since the Corridor, the kind of care that acknowledges a place's history without making it the only thing the place is allowed to be.
• In the Omega section, Nyx sat alone on a low wall at the training ground's edge — not excluded, but choosing the slight remove that Omega members tended to choose, the habit of people who had been to the Void Between Worlds and come back with a preference for knowing exactly where the exits were. Three graduates approached her anyway, the ones who had listed high-risk operations and reality-breach specialization on their intake forms. She studied them for a moment. Then she made space on the wall.