Location:Obsidian Academy — The Lower Hall
Date/Time:2 Ashwhisper, 9942 AZI — evening
Realm:Lower Realm
The hall smelled of lamp oil and cold stone and, faintly, of the tallow somebody had burned in it back when the Academy could not afford anything better. Nobody had used the room in years. Jayde had carried the chairs in herself that afternoon. She had told the Headmaster nine. She had spent two days trying to get the number down to nine and had arrived at ten, and had then stopped, because the tenth one was Hu Bing and she had not been able to construct the sentence that left him out.
Takara was on the table when they came in, kitten-sized, apparently asleep, positioned at the exact center of the wood with his ears doing work his eyes were not.
