She walked back to her lectern. The shift was jarring. The cold-eyed veteran disappeared, replaced by the animated professor persona as if someone had flipped a switch.
"Now! Where was I?" Her voice had all its warmth back, the musical lilt fully restored. "Ah yes, Nested Gates! These nasty little puzzles are why you should always bring a hunter with spatial awareness abilities. Or at least someone who can map coherently. I once spent four hours going in circles because our navigator insisted he could 'feel' the exit. Spoiler: he could not."
She gestured to the projection behind her, which shifted to show a diagram of gates within gates, layers of dimensional fractures stacked like Russian dolls.
Belle's whisper was barely audible. "Holy shit, I thought she was going to murder that kid."
"She still might," Jordan murmured back, not looking up from his notes. "After class. When there are fewer witnesses."
