The carriages hadn't come for them even after three hours of waiting.
Kai knew this because Henrik had sent Mira who was currently the only student with enough essence left to sustain a transmission crystal to signal the academy. Three hours was the optimistic estimate.
Reality, factoring in the remote location and the academy's bureaucratic response time to a student field exercise gone wrong, probably meant four or more.
For four hours he had been sitting against a tree with zero essence reserves and a body that had been pushed past collapse twice in one afternoon.
He could think of worse situations. He had lived through most of them.
"You're doing that thing again," Lin said from beside him.
"What thing?"
"The thing where you stare at nothing and look like you're doing math."
"I'm resting."
"You have never rested a day in your life." She handed him a strip of dried meat from her field pack. "Eat something. You burned through everything you had."
