Chapter 172: Book 3 Chapter 20: This One's About Cane (The Walking Stick, Not the Guy)

A small shower of granite dust rained down from the tablet Vell was carving a rune into. His slow, methodical carving process had him so engrossed in his work he didn’t even realize his entire study group was staring at him. He finished his work and finally looked up, and saw all eyes on him.

“What?”

Amy pointed directly downwards, and Vell looked down. The table he had been leaning on was no longer there. Something had bumped it a few inches away from where his elbows had been.

“Huh. When did that happen?”

“Five fucking minutes ago, Vell,” Amy said. “You were so into carving you didn’t notice Reg bump the table.”

“You didn’t just not notice, you didn’t even move,” Isabel added. “Are you gyroscopically stable?”

“No, only Kim is.”

“Then how the hell did you not even flinch?”

Harley thundered into the room with her usual dramatic aplomb, and the entire room shook with her entrance. Vell didn’t flinch.

“Vell!”

“Lots of practice,” Vell sighed. Harley zeroed in on him and took a spare seat.

“Hi, Vell’s friends,” she said. “Vell, are you busy?”

“A little.”

“Mmm, dang it, I need a distraction,” Harley said. “I got some parts 3D printing and the wait is killing me.”

“Well we’ve still got an hour left in the study session, officially,” Vell said. He didn’t like to flake on commitments.

“She can hang,” Amy said.

“Sure, why not?” Reg said.

“No one asked you, Reg,” Amy said.

Isabel also voted in favor of allowing Harley to stay, and so the democratic process concluded. Harley relaxed and kicked her feet up on the table as she got comfortable.

“Sick. I’ve always wanted to know more about all this rune shit.”

“First thing you should know is that you shouldn’t have your feet on the table in the classroom,” Amy warned. Vell’s study group made use of the main rune tech classroom between lessons.

“What does that have to do with runecarving?”

“Nothing really, but in this classroom, you really ought to behave,” Isabel said. “You’ve already been slamming doors and shouting. I wouldn’t push it if I were you.”

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“Ah, it’ll be fine,” Harley said. “I-”

Click.

The classroom was mostly empty, allowing the quiet click to echo like a gunshot through the silence. Vell buried his face in a textbook, as did the other members of his study group. Harley felt a chill run down her spine as another quiet click rang out, followed by another, and another, until finally the rhythmic clicking fell silent. Harley felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. A foreboding presence lingered just behind her.

“Ms. Harley.”

The voice of Professor Nguyen crept across Harley’s back like ice water, and she froze in place.

“I have been hospitable in allowing these students to make use of my classroom between lessons,” Professor Nguyen said. “That invitation was not extended to you. Do not attempt to abuse courtesy given to others.”

“Yes Professor Nguyen, sorry Professor Nguyen,” Harley said. She could feel the professor’s stern gaze burning a hole in the back of her neck, incinerating any of Harley’s usual defiance.

“Thank you. Please avoid disturbing my facilities, and my students, any more than is necessary.”

Harley nodded, and felt the shadow of Professor Nguyen pass her by, and the ominous clicking noise started to fade away along with her. As the terror faded, Harley breathed a sigh of relief and turned over her shoulder to look at Nguyen.

“Oh, are you okay?”

She had assumed the clicking sound to be some sort of specialized neck-snapping boots Nguyen wore, or perhaps the actual snapping of necks, but it turned out Professor Nguyen was simply leaning on a cane as she walked.

“I fell and injured my hip during the summer,” Nguyen said. “The cane alleviates the resulting pain and decreases the likelihood of further incidents. Your concern is appreciated but unwarranted.”

With that, Professor Nguyen clicked her way back into her office. Vell leaned sideways and caught a glimpse of her desk, and the odd pink elephant ornament that stood out like a sore thumb amid the otherwise austere office. Three years later and he still wasn’t sure why Nguyen had an elephant on her desk. She didn’t have children who’d make such a thing for her, much less grandkids.

“Man, how does that lady get injured and come out of it more terrifying,” Harley said with a shudder. The click of that cane sounded like the tapping of the reaper’s scythe.

“She’s got gravitas,” Isabel said. “I’m pretty sure she could look stern in her sleep.”

“She’s not that scary,” Vell said.

“Not to you,” Amy said. “She likes you.”

“No, she, uh, tolerates me, at best, I think,” Vell said. “Half the reason she lets us study here is because she thought a ‘focused environment would help me stop wasting my time on nonsense’.”

There had been a lot more to the lecture on how Vell needed to get his priorities in order and stop gallivanting around with nonsense, but Vell spared them the exact details.

“Yeah, case in point,” Amy said. “She has to think your time is worth something to think it can be wasted. She never talks like that to the rest of us.”

“The rest of you have never skipped class to build the world’s tallest sandwich.”

The giga sandwich had been instrumental to stopping the apocalypse that day, though Vell could not entirely remember why. He’d been looping so long some of the chaos was starting to get jumbled in his head. It either had something to do with a very long worm or a particularly hungry gnome.

“Vell, I have to call in every other week because one of my curses is acting up,” Amy said. One such curse had once ruined her date with Vell, and the remaining thirty-six curses her grave-robbing grandfather had bestowed upon their bloodline acted up on a regular basis.

“Yeah, and she hasn’t kicked you out yet, so-”

Nguyen’s office door creaked open, and conversation halted immediately.

“This space was offered to you as a study hall,” Nguyen warned. “Study.”

Every one of the gathered students put their faces in their books and did not look up for the remainder of the hour.