60th of Season of Air, 57th year of the 32nd imperial era

Newt was at a loss, unsure what to do. Both women shut themselves in their bedrooms while some unfortunate guy's stuff clogged his. Worse, he couldn't just throw the junk out, on account of the late guy's girlfriend, who in turn didn't want to see or touch those things.

What the hell?

Fortunately, the cavalry arrived just in time.

The door opened a bit too forcefully, and a tall man with broad shoulders, short curly hair, and thick lips walked in.

"You our new roommate?" he asked Newt, who had to look up to meet the man's gaze.

Newt nodded.

"Greetings, I am Newstar." For some reason, his hello lacked the impact of Dandelion's greetings, since the newcomer ignored him and just scanned the room.

"I'm Obsidian. Come with me." Obsidian led Newt out the room, down the stairs, and out of the building.

He looked left and right, grabbing Newt's upper arm, then let go as if scalded.

"Holy shit! Snake!"

"Holy ssshit! Human," the tiny python hissed back, glaring at Newt's roommate.

Is repeating what they hear a snake thing? Do they understand humans? Newt recalled how Magmin mimicked him when they first met. Heavens, that seems like centuries ago.

"I need to go put this little fellow back in the forest," Newt explained. "But I left my robes in the window."

"Nothing will happen to them. Nobody visits our room anymore. Let's go."

With hardly a thought, Newt followed a man a good head taller than him and almost twice as wide as he was into the unknown forest, with a jittery snake wrapped around his arm.

"You promisssed, you promissed," the snake hissed, but relaxed when they reached the cover of the trees. It unwrapped itself from Newt's thin biceps when Newt stretched his arm out towards a tree and the snake slithered away.

'Freedom!'

Newt ignored the reptile and focused on Obsidian.

"I am sorry for your loss." Newt used the short stroll to think about what he should say and how to say it. No matter what he said, it would not change the fact that his roommates had lost a teammate and a friend, but there were some things he needed to say. "I don't wish to replace your friend. I understand you recently returned from a mission and that the wound is still fresh."

"We returned more than a year ago, but Jasmine and Roselilly—" Newt's skin crawled at the name. "Is everything all right?"

"Yes, sorry. Unpleasant memories associated with that name; you were saying that more than a year has passed?"

Obsidian held Newt's gaze for a moment before slowly nodding. "Yes, more than a year has passed, but they aren't moving on. They blame themselves for what had happened, but ultimately, it was Bluestream's choice, and an aberrant spiketail that proved too strong for us. They don't even want to visit the soother, and alone as they are, seeking the bottom of the bottle rather than help, they will stagnate and get demoted."

Newt's faltering ability to follow Obsidian's torrent of words finally fell apart, as more and more unknowns assailed him, scrambling his understanding. "Excuse me, I'm new. What is a soother, and why will they get demoted?"

"You get demoted to an outer student after not clearing a mission for a long time and if you don't advance your realm for a long time. The term long time is relative, so we can still hold on for a while, but our future appears bleak. I will rise back into inner membership in six moons and join a new group, but Jasmine and Roselilly will keep sinking."

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Newt nodded, a frown marring his brow. Why the hell did Lady Alabaster put me here? Does she want me to fail and go through the regular process of advancing from being an outer student who rises into the inner part of the order through his own merit, or does she want me to reform this dysfunctional team, or is it something third?

Newt's mind drifted to the most horrifying possibility. Maybe Lady Alabaster had just thrown him into a trial he had never expected to repair the team. It was possible. The more he thought about it, the likelier it seemed. Luckily, Obsidian kept talking, pulling Newt out of the whirlpool of doubt.

"Soothers are people specialized in helping awakened overcome their heart demons, fears, bottlenecks, and anything else that may hold us back from advancing. Losing your family, loved ones, and team members is often the source of heart demons and unresolvable regret."

Newt couldn't believe what he was hearing.

"There are awakened focused on helping others clear their heart demons?"

Obsidian shook his head. "All soothers I know are commoners."

Newt gawked.

"Awakened don't have the time to experience life the way commoners do, and we spend too much time isolated, so our understanding of loss and sorrow is much shallower than that of an old man or woman, who lived to bury their grandparents or their grandchildren. But there are young soothers as well, people with talent and those who led turbulent lives."

A sudden storm started in Newt's mind, but no matter how he looked at it, the notion made no sense.

"But they are just non-awakened. They don't understand our needs, past the second realm. We are like a different species, and the differences continue to grow the higher the realm. What can a seventy-year-old woman teach an awakened who is seven hundred years old? How could she help?"

Obsidian shrugged. "Talk to them, if you want. They helped me."

Newt was about to argue more, but then remembered Dandelion, and how Lady Frotsgrave treated him with respect and even complimented him, despite him being dozens of times younger. And did Dandelion not do the same to him, when Newt was also at least ten times younger? And what about Magmin? He was a snake, mere twelve years old when he set on his path of becoming a dragon.

"Thank you for the advice. I will talk to them." Newt nodded, his mind calming. "Sometimes ideas and inspiration come from unexpected sources."

While Newt had managed to clear his realm of heart demons, the soother could perhaps offer advice about the situation he had found himself in. Then Newt looked at his new roommate. Obsidian was more than a head taller than him, with broad shoulders. His teeth shone white against his dark-brown skin, his eyes hazel-colored, revealing sorrow and pain, mismatching his friendly smile. All in all, Obsidian seemed like a good, benevolent man, someone Newt would enjoy teaming up with.

"Do you mind telling me about your old team? I might be a poor fit for you."

Obsidian looked at Newt, thinking the young man wanted to worm his way out of the predicament. He could hardly blame him. After all, he was also trying to salvage his own future. Jasmine and Roselilly refused all his attempts to help them, and he had moved on. It was perfectly understandable for a stranger to do the same immediately upon learning of their circumstances.

"Jas and I are front-line fighters, earth mages focused on power, endurance, and close range combat. Rose is dual water and air aligned mageknight, focused on the healing aspect of water with the added mobility of air. She is a disciple of the Healer Chaplain, but the old woman seems to have given up on her. Fez was pure air, scout and support, good at moving around and distracting enemies. He was a great asset on the battlefield, and a goofy, but reliable friend."

Just by the way Obsidian said those last words, Newt could tell the big man was nowhere nearly as over the loss as he claimed, but unlike the two women, he was trying to pull together the fractured pieces of his old life and reforge them into something new.

"Thank you for sharing that. I actually think I might be a great fit for your team. I'm a fairly mobile fire-earth mageknight. Maybe we could spar some time and see where I stand. I'm the second layer of the third realm, by the way. What about you?"

"Third layer, and what do you mean you might be a great fit for our team? There is no team. It fell apart."

"We should try to fix it. Do you plan to abandon your sister and friend?"

"You don't understand, you never lost anyone. Look, the spiketail landed a nasty hit on Jas, Rose rushed to heal her, but misjudged the beast's speed and reach. The tail-spikes which wounded Jas would've smeared Rose all over the ground. Fez flew at her like an arrow, pushed her out of the way, then exploded like a sack of skin full of red paint." Obsidian shuddered.

"It was a gruesome sight for me, but it was much worse for Jas and Rose. They were shocked, sprayed in gore of their loved one, and the spiketail almost wiped us out. I don't even recall how we got away."

Newt's breathing turned shallow, and his face paled as he listened to the story.

"Wasn't there some senior watching over you?"

Obsidian shook his head. "A fourth realm mageknight was in the area, but fights are done without supervision. All successful orders and noble clans send their members on real trials, each with a chance for death. We underestimated the spiketail, and we paid the price."

Newt started sweating. He realized a fifth realm frostworm had been awfully close to turning him and his friends into a red smear on the icy wall.

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