Void ceiling, that's nice. Adam checks every corner of the room for mals, making a note of spots where they can hide easily. He peeks out the door and makes a mental note of his room number: 629B.

....Oh that was not a nice feeling he didn't like that at all. Morty stumbles and catches his balance without falling, holds his breath, and manages not to retch until he makes it as far as his void wall. Ugh.

There's nothing in his stomach, but he allows himself thirty seconds of dry-heaving anyway, in hopes that letting his body go through the motions of throwing up will at least relieve the nausea. He's so dizzy. That hit harder than he was expecting. 

And then he has to pull himself together and duck out to read his room number, even though his eyes are watering. 500A. If he's very lucky then he won't be too far from Destiny, but he's not putting much stock in 'luck' right now. 

He follows the flow of other students down the hall toward the cafeteria. 

Destiny lands in a crouch and flips out her stiletto in a single motion and scans the room. No sign of mals. Void wall, cool, at least it's not the floor. And that wasn't as bad as she was expecting, actually. She gags once, and swallows, and then her stomach behaves itself. 

She dumps the extra rucksack of gear - she can deliver it to Morty later, once she's not so dehydrated - and is out the door in ten seconds flat, before most of the doors on either side are open. 404A, neat, she's enough a part of the Internet generation that that's very easy to memorize. 

And then she's off! 

- Oh, phew, that could have been a lot worse. Either the rumours of how bad induction is were exaggerating, or else maybe the drop of morning-sickness potion she invented for her aunt is helping a lot. 

Shannon glances around. One of the walls is reflectionless black; that must be what the void looks like, huh. There's a bed with a blanket, and a desk with– why would you put drawers in the Scholomance, that's just stupid, giving mals a free nesting space. She'll deal with that later. 

There are already voices shouting in the hall, telling everyone to memorize their room number and head for the cafeteria for orientation. Shannon is at least oriented enough to have expected that, though she's sure that she'll spend the next week learning about all the things she didn't find out beforehand.

She hefts the backpack full of other people's gear, and sticks her head out into the hall. Room number 224A. She needs to find and memorize the school blueprints ASAP so she knows where that is relative to all the various places that she vaguely knows exist. 

- later. For now: off to the cafeteria, and hope she doesn't die on the way! 

Raleigh hasn't eaten or drunk anything since breakfast, and he took nausea meds 30 minutes before induction, which makes it EXTRA unfair that he throws up anyway. Why is he such a wimp. At least none of his family are there to witness it. 

...Void ceiling. Yet ANOTHER piece of totally unearned good luck; that's supposed to be the best kind, makes it impossible for mals to drop on your head while you sleep and makes room-poaching a lot harder. Not that he's very worried about poaching. He's a privileged rich kid, after all. Who would dare? 

He wipes his mouth on his sleeve, and manages to get himself out the door before very many of the other kids do. His room is 61A. That's only two digits to remember, which is ALSO lucky for no reason. 

Raleigh sets aside his stupid internal monologue and heads for the cafeteria, glancing around to check if anyone seems to need help. 

She lands, dry-heaves, steadies herself against the wall. Void ceiling, that's a piece of good luck. She marches into the hallway without unpacking. There's not much of a crowd here - she seems to have landed afar from the rest of the group. 

She orients, memorizes her room number, and heads inwards to the cafeteria.

Stagger, bones and body contorting a little as they half-hear it, hair retracting. There's a Void wall beside them, but that's hardly too big a problem. 

256, and the B assignment of that. 

A pretty auspicious number in computing, actually. Might be worth doing a touch of numerology there, even, just from the quality of it. Completion, procession, minimalism, truth and false, indications and paths, doublings and reflections, all represented in the idea of the place... 

They'll take what they can get, and what they can get right now is a quick procession to the cafeteria for the initiation. 

Goddess rushing this always sucks a little. 

Jada hadn't eaten or drank anything all day, in an attempt to get a little more precious space in her weight allowance for supplies of her own rather than for enclavers. She is now profoundly grateful for that fact, as if she had eaten or drank anything it would be on the floor right now. She looks around the room, making a grateful note of the void ceiling, and when she is able to walk steadily she exits to note her room number—652B—and moves quickly to unburden herself of her letters and gifts for the enclavers.

Connie lands and spends a bewildered moment looking for the void wall to throw up into, then spots the drain in the floor just in time.  Hardly anything comes up, she didn't need to worry.

...void ceiling, right, okay.  Useful for stuff not falling on your head in the night, not useful for returning books, she can't imagine spellbooks like to be chucked.  Better than the floor, though.

She wipes her mouth and does situps to build up the mana for her grabber glove, stands up, sits back down again faster because wow that was too many situps to do on a day of no water and two days of not much food.  New plan, it's the first day of school anyway, nothing really nasty should be around yet.  She shrugs out of her backpack and leaves it in the middle of the floor, scoots over to the desk, and yanks the bottom drawer out with her knife in her free hand.  Empty.  She sets it in the middle of the bed, nestles her precious mice in it (all still breathing, thank goodness) with a pair of socks for bedding, and puts the best ward she can around it.

That done, she tries standing again, more slowly this time, and is rewarded by not falling over.  Checks her door- 542A.  Twice a prime but there are a lot of primes, two less than a sum of squares, ugh, three more than a sum of cubes- oh, it's the singleton (well, pair) across from the bathrooms.  That works too.

Miguel lands, takes deep breaths so as to not gag.

His wall stretches out behind him, black and empty.

He feels - sort of deflated, sort of hopeless - oh, no, that'll just be the induction gobbling up every scrap of mana in you. Not hopelessness. No sir. 

He notes his room number and leaves his backpack behind (it does not exactly communicate a lot of preparedness, a girl's backpack too small for him) and marches off to the cafeteria. 

Vi lands in her room. She makes herself check the backpack (it's fine) and then gets up and glances around the room. Void wall isn't that bad. Otherwise, typical Scholomance room-- she reminds herself that everyone gets basically the same.

Okay, right, memorize the room number-- two fifty seven A-- and go to the cafeteria. 

Yolanda lands and catches herself before she can fall over. She swallows a few times, concentrating to keep herself from heaving; there probably isn't anything left in her stomach to throw up, but if there is, she doesn't want to damage her teeth with the acid. 

She steadies herself, looks around--void wall, convenient, a void floor would have been something she could deal with but she wouldn't prefer it. 

She glances at the number on her door as she leaves. 30B. That's easy to remember, at least. 

She heads to the cafeteria. She has to give her brother his letter before she does anything else. 

It takes her a while to make it out of her room. That's partly the nausea and partly the fact that she decided to unpack some first - a lot of her figurines are delicate, and she needs to respect them if she wants them to respect her, so she sets her sacred items out on the bookshelf before doing anything else. There's a little Buddha and Ganesh, a little Thor and Freya and Frigg, a little Mercury and Hephaestus and Athena, a little Virgin Mary and crucifix and St Michael, a little Confucius and the three pure ones of Taoism (who might be more powerful here, with all of the Chinese students), and a little Atabey and Yucahu that her grandmother carved for her herself. Interspersed between them, as equals, are modern figures who may have more power here, where people may believe in them without knowing that they believe: a little Superman and Wonder Woman, a little Iron Man and Spiderman, a little Pikachu and Optimus Prime. And, for good measure, there are a few animals - a bear, a lion, an owl, a scarab, a wolf, a turtle, a cat.

Towering above them all is Goku, who, of course, once channeled the prayers of the entire world through himself and turned them into a beam attack. He holds mana quite well, and if she had to bet money, she would bet that the sum total of the student body's belief in Goku is greater than their belief in God. So, being absolutely, entirely serious, she asks the spirit of Goku for protection on her first day, and bows to the little shrine she's created.

The crowd in the hall is thinning out by the time she exits, but she isn't alone. She memorizes her room number. She also memorizes every room number between herself and the cafeteria, in case she ever needs to remember exactly where any of them are.

Virgil lands, ass-over-teakettle. He lacks coordination when things are going well, and this is not going well. He throws up and curls up in a ball for a while. He needs to clean that up before it makes the whole room worse. He finally focuses enough to realize that he'll be able to stare up into the void when he goes to sleep. That's almost nice.

He takes the time to dismantle his furniture (using an old Latin rhyme that works just as well for putting screws in as it does for taking them out), which means he's one of the last people in his section to head down to the cafeteria. One glance at his room number is all it takes- Virgil has always been blessed with a nearly perfect memory. 345B- and it's an easy number, too. He keeps his hands in his pockets and his head down.

Enclave kids are prepared, so Hira manages not to throw up. The nausea and the hunger are disorienting, though, and the thirst...she needs to get to the cafeteria, stat. Thank fuck that's what everyone else is doing, so she doesn't look like she can't handle herself. Hira takes the time to thank all of the earrings for what they're going to do for their new owners, and to put her clothes away. Hand on her axe and her brain working overtime on a mnemonic for 776A, Hira walks through the crowd with her head held as high as she can in her sorry state.

Angie lands on her feet, like a cat. 

It's the last graceful thing she does for a little bit - she immediately loses those feet to go down on her knees, gagging lightly, but at least not throwing up. That was somewhere between extremely uncomfortable and thrilling, and the whole experience made better by the anti-nausea medicine, though it clearly wasn't perfect. She'll have to tell Sara to let Uncle Ned know when she gets out. 

Her eyes are closed; she doesn't open them. She wonders for a silly moment of it's possible to go through school with her eyes closed, but quickly pushes that thought away - it isn't, and it won't matter, anyway, she doesn't need her eyes to feel the size of the room. It actually makes it a little worse, she thinks, with the anticipation. 

She opens her eyes and looks around for a sober moment. It's- maybe not that bad, she thinks? Void ceiling, four walls, floor, bed, desk (with drawers, who thought that was a good idea), bookshelves, chair. It's big enough that she can stand in the middle of the room, stretch her arms out wide, and not touch any walls. That's good. That's a little better than she was expecting. Maybe they'd forgotten how small she is, when they were telling her about this place. 

The void ceiling is - good, probably. Alex will be happy - harder to hurt her with it, and honestly not that much worse for her. The furniture looks sturdy enough to hold her weight - she wonders if that's standard or maybe some combination of being very light and expecting the furniture in her room to hold her? - and she can climb up to the ceiling to retrieve and return her books. And the void is nicer to look up at than a ceiling would be. That's a bit of a surprise, actually, she'd thought it would be just as bad as an actual cube with one, unsafe exit but the fact she could theoretically go out that way - it'd be hard, but she could do it - helps, a little. 

Space examined, Angie sets her bags down on her bed, with a sigh of relief. Then, she pulls out two of her knives and pokes around the room a bit, just to be safe. She doesn't find anything, no surprise when the room was just created, and so she returns to her bed and starts pulling out some of her things, the ones packed on top, and settling them on the shelves. Not everything - the items she'll want to carry around anyway are packed under Alex's stuff - but enough that her bag is only unbearable to carry down to the cafeteria, instead of literally impossible. She'll get mana that way, which is important when the only other Montréal enclaver here is Sara. They have their power-sharers, but at this point they're almost more for the benefit of the kids to come than themselves.  

Her mice in their little box, she places in one of the drawers she'd removed during her check for mals. She pulls a little - just a little - of mana from her power-sharer, conscientious that she's taking from a store that'll keep her alive the next few weeks, and casts a little ward over the drawer, to keep them safe while she's gone. She leaves it on her bed, the light on the wall above it shining down brightly into it, and then reshoulders her emptier bags and heads for the door. 

438B. She memorizes it with a glance, and then takes another look just to be sure - it doesn't hurt her to double-check - and then she's diving into the slightly dwindling crowd and following it down to the cafeteria. She needs to give Alex his supplies. 

The anti-nausea tabs help, but Alex still takes a moment on his knees against his void wall, settling himself. That was not the most enjoyable experience of his life. Sets a tone. 

Once his gut settles down, he leans away from the wall and scans the room. Usual array of furniture, including a desk with drawers he's gonna have to dismantle. He pokes around with his knives for a bit, but discovers nothing interesting. Not shocking. 

The drawers come out of their desk and get dropped on top, and then he has nothing in particular else to do inside, so he heads out the door - 654B, that's downright easy to remember, even for him - and makes his way through the crowd towards the cafeteria. 

Alexius lands, staggers, rights himself. Looks around to get his bearings. Void floor, eh, not ideal but he'll manage. He's got a game plan and he's going to stick to it; he does a quick check of his room, personal shield spell at the ready, but finds nothing immediately threatening. The fucking drawers can go out in the open on top of the desk, before anything can crawl into them, and the air vent can get quickly sealed with a durable enchanted rectangle he brought for this exact purpose. It'll be easy to remove when he gets back, and if something else gets past it then he bets it won't be smart enough to put the seal back. He's going to have to sleep carefully regardless but he'll be damned if he makes it any easier for the mals than it has to be. Enchanted seals will save him mana on wards, in the long run, and his plan for graduation depends on as much mana as he can save. 

A few more checks and seals and he's ready to go. He brings his pack (unpacking would take too long and he wants it with him where nothing can crawl inside). He opens his door, sticks an enchanted rubber seal to the bottom of that, writes his room number (191A) on a tiny pocket notepad, and then sets off for the cafeteria. 

Zed is awoken by the asshole book smacking itself against their face repeatedly. Which is... they should have seen that coming, actually. Of course you can't get rid of a cursed book that has decided you are it's bitch by leaving it behind and trying to ignore it.

They sigh and clean themselves up by singing a spell-song Catherine taught all the kids and takes a look around their new home. The ceiling is interesting. And completely terrifying. They endeavour to ignore it very much until such a time where they can have Alex and Angie around so they can freak out about it with them watching out for them.

...speaking of. Their chest tingles a little where their pendant rests against their skin and they know that Angie is close by. Did she find her way towards them already, or is her room nearby?

Well. There's no use unpacking now anyway, since they have to give Alex a whole bunch of things, so they head on out and towards where they can feel she is. It's easy enough, especially with a few words in their mother's first language and they know exactly where she is and what direction she's heading in.

Sean does throw up, into his drain rather than his wall, whoops, and keeps retching all the way to the cafeteria from 180B, and is very grateful for water. He doesn't have the mana for the spell to make it cold because the school stole it all but it's still very good.

Ennis has a void floor. That's annoying, if she drops things ever, and she might drop things ever. Maybe she should nail some wood to the edges of her desk so nothing rolls off. It does mean pacing will irritate her feet non-injuriously, so that's good for mana. She writes down 292A on her LED tablet that she has for short-term notetaking any time paper is hard to come by, puts it back in her bag, and follows the crowd, taking some comfort in all the short-haired girls.

Nia is very concerned about the rest of her family but there's nothing she can do for them here. She takes a while to throw up and catch her breath and make sure she isn't going to cry before she checks her room number (315A) and memorizes that and heads in.

Riley staggers as he lands in the cramped room. He's never been somewhere this quiet before. The void wall is- familiar, at least. Dr. Walsh had the walls, floor, and ceiling of his room painted to mimic the feeling of looking into the void. He lets himself feel it for a moment- grief over his parents, long dead, and sadness at leaving Dr. Walsh- and then it's time to stop feeling sorry for himself.

209A. He doesn't think he'll remember that all day. Riley writes it down on the small slip of paper he's carrying, using the shorthand she taught him. There are upperclassmen telling people where to go- he takes his marching orders.

Wow, was that unpleasant. She pukes into the void wall.

She's got a pretty tough stomach, though, so it doesn't take long. She nips the mana crystal out of the bag and onto her desk (note: need to do some disassembly later) and then she's off to the cafeteria, doesn't want to lose that bet.

The room was as described, five by ten. Desk, drawers, bed. One wall black, so she wouldn’t have the void under her feet. Not likely a mal in a drawer of a room that had just been created and if there was she had no mana to deal with it, emptier than she had been for the past year. Notebook, tablets, healing potion, pen and stylus in the wallet at her side. Her eversharp dagger, a gift from János, in its leather scabbard at her hip, but …

The corridor outside was loud with voices, feet. Out the door. Room 180. She wrote it in the notebook with the pen, opened the tablets, inscribed 180 with her stylus on the wax. The letters vanished, replaced by 352. 549. 577. She wrote all three numbers down in her notebook, folded the tablet, dropped notebook, tablets, pen and stylus back into the wallet, joined the stream of students. Her first task was to link up with her agemates and whichever of the older kids were still alive. With luck all of them. And Ellen.

None of the faces were familiar — not surprising — from all over the world, and Buda didn’t interact much even with the other Euro enclaves. Four years to learn who was competent at what, who could be trusted. For now they were all her equals. The most unlikely Indie might end up, like János, as one of the treasures of Buda.