This was really fun i loved every moment of this chapter!. These two pieces and ceria omg they have made it to my favourite due spot. I really appreciate your hard work and beautiful writing please continue. I wouldn’t mind it if we had gotten the whole first year in details i can never get sick of this!

I know vaguely what the next phase is going to bring for them and I’m dreading the falling out, expulsion and general decline, although I have been wanting to know the mystery behind it all for a long time so part of me is anxious to find out..

Seeing them like this does bring a lot more perspective to all the interactions we’ve seen between them in present day before now and the fact that they’re now adventuring together gives me hope that there’s potential for repair both for their bond and for their hearts and spirits.
Maybe they will regain their youthful enthusiasm and excitement and come to trust and rely on each other again :)

And also how Pisces went from this magically gifted and chivalrous fast stepped fencer to filthy cave dwelling corpse nerd.

How was ceria judgemental and petty!

I think it was mentioned a girl died, not directly because of him but because of something he did, also if we add the hints together it seems like he might have been taught by the necromancer if the apprentice he mentioned wasn’t the goblin lord

“I’m a half-Elf. He’s a Human noble. At one time my people ruled over most of Terandria and enslaved Humans.  It’s a longstanding grudge and it’s not as if Humans and half-Elves have gotten along splendidly since then.”

Extra space between words.

Considering how much of Wistram is magical in general (I.e. being larger inside than the outer walls) I would imagine most of the walls were created via magical means. Most of them are probably stronger than the Ice Wall.

Plus, I would think Cognita and the other golems would not be pleased by students trying to break down walls. Getting smushed by an irate golems is probably a bit worse than not learning combat magic for a few months.

Not just the factions, but the whole setup of Wistram is quite anti-educational, to a large extent.

There is certainly some merit to wanting students to be able to think critically and solve problems themselves. But there is literally zero critical thinking involved in finding a damn classroom. This was also one of my pet peeves with the Hogwarts, in the Harry Potter books. This is ostensibly supposed to be a place of learning, but they make it 50x harder than it needs to be just to get around, for no real purpose. The administration should be removing a lot of the miscellaneous magical bullshit that serves no purpose other than to annoy people and make the place significantly less efficient.

They also have the age-old problem of awful teachers. I totally get that not everyone wants to teach, but attempting to force someone that doesn’t want to is just going to result in poor education across the board. It serves no purpose besides making things worse.

If the factions don’t want teaching spots to be held all by the one faction that actually wants to teach, then they should be finding people from their own other factions that do want to teach. Not picking someone random.

They should also absolutely be proctoring the tests differently. It doesn’t matter how many prospective students there are in a given year, dropping the quality of the exam – by making them take tests as larger groups, allowing BS like Charles’ “accident”, etc. – is just stupid in the long run. They should also absolutely be shutting down any faction bullshit for the evaluations, as well: anyone blatantly trying to push forward a student like Rievan does should be thrown out of any decision making for something like this.

She used one cold stone wall for support as she wandering aimlessly.

wandering –> wandered

Ceria pointed triumphantly to the nearly empty bag of salt, a huge sack she’d practically depleted after she’d taking it from Wistram’s kitchens.

taking –> taken

You are mistaken, it was stated and how would she have ran out of money? She passed the exam