The Grand Auditorium smelled of ink and institutional anxiety.
Both times Vane had sat in it for assessments the smell had been the same — ink, stone, the faint ozone of several hundred mana-signatures in a sealed space running their ambient output. This time was different in texture. Not calmer. The students who had survived to the second semester of second year were not the same people who had arrived in September of first year, and the anxiety they brought into this room was not the anxiety of people uncertain whether they would pass. It was the anxiety of people who knew exactly what passing cost and were here to pay it.
He settled into his assigned seat.
Four sections: Strategic Arcana, Threat Classification and Analysis, Mana Systems Theory, Institutional Doctrine. Two days. He had sat these subjects or their equivalents twice before. He knew what they were asking.
He answered efficiently.
