Whatthefuckwhatthefuckwhatthefuckwhathefuck uuuuuuugh sick - what the fucking wall is that wall it's just pitch black- She - nightmare...?

...Someone's shouting instructions, and people are moving outside her door.

-She can start moving while whatthefucking, fold the knife up and put it in a coat pocket and zip it up, peer out the door and - follow everyone else some of whom have weird stuff and lots of them look Asian - where what augh-

Look bored and not to be fucked with, that's usually a pretty good default, she thinks? She has no idea what is going on but it hurts too much to be a dream. She follows the crowd.

-Turns around and mutters '245B' to herself several times, and saves it in a draft text (no signal??), then follows the crowd.

Lucy lands flat on the floor of her room, heaving. There's nothing to come up, which is good. She glances around--void wall, excellent. She bolts out of her room, turns to memorize the door--635B--and then joins the throng. She glances at her wrist widget--actively fighting the flow of students would be dumb, but she can make her way through the mob of freshman as they flow towards the cafeteria towards the direction Wilbur will also be going. 

Wilbur catches up after only a few minutes, which is an enormous relief. Being alone in this place isn't safe; the crowd isn't alone, and anyway she's been assured that everything is much safer for the few weeks following graduation and induction, but it's better to have her brother by her side regardless. 

"Six-thirty-five B," she mutters to him under her breath. 

"Six-seventeen A," he replies.

Jaime allows herself a brief moment of intense nausea and discomfort, and resumes looking like she’d been sculpted by someone who’d just gotten the hang of making faces and still hadn’t quite figured out how to make them move. Her mice squeak in alarm and then settle down. 

She inspects her void ceiling, exits her room, memorizes the sequence ‘715A’, and heads down to the cafeteria.

Well this isn't the woods, she thinks, as she throws up the granola bar into the endless void below the metal grate at the bottom of the room she now finds herself in.

She doesn't know enough to panic; it's not a dream, she can tell that much by the level of clarity she feels about the fact that it is happening, but this is so outside anything she's ever encountered that the only thing she can think is -

Okay. Blackness. Void below her feet, no visible stars but certainly more like vacuum than like anything else. Some kind of - teleportation mechanism, into some kind of custom-built - is it too unkind to call it a cell - and there are other people outside, calling in human languages that she understands, saying to come out, memorize her room number, and head to the cafeteria. Wherever that is. But it's a hint, isn't it, cafeterias are found in schools and hospitals and maybe some workplaces, so - that suggests some kind of building run by some kind of organization.

Okay. Okay. Pending further evidence, her theory is going to be that she's been kidnapped by aliens. But is not the first such human to be so kidnapped. That's - absurd - but it's better to have a theory and update it than to just stare blankly into the camera while absurd things are obviously happening.

She slings her packs over her back and gets to her feet, unsteadily. Opens the door. There's a bunch of people outside - weirdly Asian for her town - okay, obviously not all pulled from her town, this isn't quite an unbiased random sampling of humanity around her - not enough black people, she thinks - but it's close enough that she thinks it supports the aliens theory. 

Memorize your room number, the voice said. She's totally not going to memorize it, not under stress like this. She fumbles through her backpack for a second to get at - okay, pen, yes, easier to use a pen to write on her arm than to get out a notebook. She writes down "198 A" on her arm. And then she follows the crowd.

- Julia has a void floor! Julia redoubles her determination to petition for the next set of Scholomance improvements to include letting students pay for room assignments, so she can room next to her friends instead of complete randos, and also not have a void floor that she's now going to need to acquire a rug for. Julia's room looks like a bleak metal box with shabby wooden furniture. Which she was warned about, and she has art supplies on hand to spruce it up, but still, eeesh. Next set of Scholomance improvements: fake illusion windows that look out on the Manhattan skyline. Once a month as an easter egg they should have Spiderman in the distance. 

She opens her door, notes her number - 56B - and hesitates for a moment because there aren't that many kids in the hallway yet - oh, there they come, they were all just busy puking. Cafeteria will be inward. Maybe Annaka'll have a rug already.

Julia sighs and marches off.

The place is just - incredibly bleak? The walls are made of metal, grey, with screws showing where it's bolted to support beams. The lighting is tepid. There's a smell of recycled air and something gooey. Julia is adding to her list of suggested improvements almost faster than she can keep track of it. 1) if walls have to be metal, they should be chrome, going for a spaceship aesthetic 2) maybe people can buy lights dedicated to their dead kids, and then there'll be some variation in the decor - which will help with tracking where you are in the hallway - and some consistently decent lighting in here and hey, also a reminder to be careful, like those memorials along the side of the highway. 3) if we're going for the spaceship aesthetic you could also have flashing lights in the floor pointing arrows towards the cafeteria, some kids look like they can barely reason through which direction 'in' is gonna be 4) WINDOWS, jesus fuck people, windowless rooms give people depression, and depression is not good for your grades. 5) honestly, some cheery elevator music wouldn't go amiss? LIke, Julia would absolutely be rolling her eyes if they were playing Mariah Carey over the speakers but it'd be a reassuring kind of rolling your eyes, like, oh, those grownups, no idea what's cool, rather than "wow uh this place is going to be traumatizing". 

There are potions for trauma, of course, and Julia has packed some. If you take them after a scary event you are very likely to remember it clearly but without any negative emotions attached. Julia plans to avoid scary events, and she's not sure the potions work on 'being locked in a dull grey box sucks'. but 6) it's probably cheaper to make the place not suck than to give all the kids therapy.

There's a girl in front of Julia crying and slowing down progression towards the cafeteria. Julia pats her. "The boxes of tissues are in the back," she says when the girl jerks around to look at her, and then passes her by.

—in the back? In the back of what? But the other kid is already too far ahead to ask. She sniffles and tries to walk faster.

With enough deep breathing and positive attitude he manages not to throw up! Huzzah! Oh, wow, void floor. They undersold how creepy it was. Well, he knows what to do now- Hoist his big old backpack onto his back, affectionately pat his lightweight violin case, note down his room (112A), and delve into the stream of humanity. Safety in numbers.

Smile and wave, boys. Smile and wave. Well, in this case it's more smile, make sure it reaches the eyes as a sort of grim resilience, nod. Hello everyone he passes, here is a cheerful and sturdy looking sort, remember this face even though he's not saying anything! He pauses to ask if someone who stumbles against the wall is alright. 

"M'fine, mind your own business."

"Glad to hear it!" He responds brightly.

"Just the nausea."

"Yeah, it's nasty. I'm lucky, stuff like that doesn't hit me that hard."

"That so?"

"Yep! Well, let's get going. We're kinda blocking the way."

The stranger snorts and starts walking again, pushing past Kevin. That's alright, he needs to cultivate the reputation of friendly guy, inasmuch as he can do it without risking his neck. People like talking to and trading with a friendly guy. Cafeteria-wards he goes.

El notes her void wall, memorizes her number (425A) and puts her bags down on her new bed for the next four years and extracts the letters packet and tromps out with the herd, taking note of who lives near her and who joins up later. She wishes, stupidly, that she'd had another hour to watch the sun rise.

Orion isn't right next to anybody he knows but he nods at everyone, winces inwardly at the obvious mundane-extracted kids - there are a weird number of them this year, he's pretty sure they usually don't get in at all, he'll have to look out for them - writes 457-B on his arm in the tiny stub of eyeliner pencil his mother gave him for the purpose, follows the herd like a sheepdog.

Rebecca is having a super weird dream!

Also she's so tired, which she doesn't think normally happens to her when she's having dreams?

Also people are shouting? To... memorize a number and go to a cafeteria?????

Well, she doesn't have a weird dream feeling that this is a TERRIBLE idea, so she'll... go out of the room and look at her number. 303B. That isn't hard to remember. She hums to herself, a little tune mentally lyricized as "303B", and goes where everyone else is going, for lack of a better idea. She is still barefoot in her music note pajamas.

There are a really weird number of people who are probably of mundane extraction here. Did something happen to a whole bunch of wizard kids at once? ...There isn't much that could be done about it at this point, even if they weren't stuck in here for the next four years hopefully. 

What they CAN do something about is the fact that all of these mundane-extracted girls with their long, long heads of wizard hair and their imminent need for information that won't cost them anything to provide present an opportunity for an artificer with an affinity for fiber. She puts her head together with Wilbur, murmuring about possible strategies. 

Alyona is deposited in her room and manages to swallow back the nausea. She doesn't quite trust that someone isn't going to go looting improperly secured dorm rooms while everyone else is busy, and she doesn't have the time to properly secure her room, so she keeps her pack on and heads out into the hall. She pauses outside her room, flips open her clipboard, and scribbles "516B" in the top corner of the paper.

As she follows the crowd to the cafeteria, she tries to develop her spatial sense of the place - the walk from her door to the hallway intersection is about so long, there are so many lights along the path. Not that those things are tremendously likely to stay constant, given the vast horde of freshman all moving in the same direction with the same intent. Still, if the path is shorter than usual right now, that means whatever landmarks she happens to pick out are more likely to be the ones that will still be there even if she needs to walk this path alone in the dark.

She also tries to keep an eye out for familiar faces, or even ones that -- look like they could be her kind of person. It's important to have allies.

Marcy gets a void wall, which is awesome, because it means she has a normal floor she can exercise on and also if she feels the need to parkour it's easier to do it without using one wall than without using the ceiling. Also she can dry-heave bile into the void, which you can't do with a ceiling.

She memorizes her room number--429A--spends a few minutes looking for hiding places to empty of mals and fill with valuables, then runs to the cafeteria because she only walks when she has a specific reason to. All the Boston kids have agreed that while they'll usually eat together this first trip is for seeing who else is around. They already know about Orion Lake, of course (and Marcy is extremely envious) but there are hundreds of other students and anyone could be a valuable ally or a potential threat.

Wow, okay, that was super uncomfortable but at least he can throw up the very stupid sendoff breakfast into the wall of 216A. Lysander is a little late to join the throng, staring at his room number muttering to himself for a full sixty seconds before he's sure the number isn't going to slide right out of his head the second he looks away. "Oy, Vedelev, one of those is for my bro, right," says one of the Berlin kids, jogging up to him and holding out a hand for a letter. This is quite rude, denying him the introduction that is normally part of that deal, so he smiles a glittering Customer Service Smile, hands it over, and resolves to start with someone else's maintenance shifts. There will soon be a wealth of options! 

Void wall. She was hoping for a ceiling but at least it's not the floor. Wow she feels like she rode a roller coaster and it hated her. She takes a few deep breaths, pukes into the floor drain, and jogs out of the room with her letter packet and her pen. Writes 563-A on her arm, up under her sleeve so sketchy people won't follow her home for some reason by reading it off her. Continues jogging in, tonguing acid off her teeth so they don't melt in her mouth. Maybe the cafeteria will have milk or something, she can dream. She notes the faces and general demeanor of the people on her hall and the adjacent ones. In the cafeteria she starts calling, "Suze? Suze Inoue?" in search of the New Orleans sophomore.

Zeke arrives with the exhilarated whoop of someone on anti-nausea medication who really likes rollercoasters and immediately does a handstand! The room looks kind of depressing but it’s hard for something to look depressing when it’s upside down and it’s gonna be even harder for it to look depressing when he collects his possessions and paints it all ORANGE. He kind of wants to punch a mal in the face but no mals immediately present themselves, which is, like, fine, and if it were an important mal he’d have to buzz for Orion anyway and Orion’s great but needing his help with stuff is embarrassing and thinking about that scenario is making him feel sad and small so he resumes thinking about painting everything ORANGE.

He stops doing a handstand, mimes a fist bump with his void wall, exits his room, memorizes his room number - “282B, cool!’ - and barrels down to the cafeteria to collect his stuff from the random students bribed to carry it, only occasionally distracted by the existence of pretty people.

Caio is in... 754A with a void ceiling. 7-4-5 was the combination on his lock for the pool locker before his swim bag was stolen lock and all, so that's easy enough, just reverse the last two digits. The ceiling is good. The room is dismal. He puts his stuff on the desk and pulls out the letter he's supposed to bring and walks to the cafeteria with his neighbors, making sure to lock his door on the way out.

David is in 228B. Void wall, thank God. He sets the vodka and mix powder on his dresser, locks his door, heads to the cafeteria. He's got letters and bad news to deliver.

He notices all of the kids who look confused. Yeah, he fucking bets.

Edmund's room has a void floor. He'd be irritated about that, he hates the idea of walking on cage bars, but he's too busy retching into it. Fuck teleportation. Fuck magic in general. Who thought this was a good idea?

656B. Soon as he has some mana he'll burn it into his brain. He brings his backpack with him to the cafeteria, joining the people who are shouting "open your door, memorize your door number, head to the cafeteria!" That's a good idea. He's glad somebody thought of it.

Gladiola keeps her food down and pauses for a moment to look out her void wall, then gathers her reserves and her belongings, notes that 145B makes a square on a phone keypad, and starts towards the cafeteria with the rest of the students.

Anti-nausea tablets are weight. Dasha dry-heaves once and grabs the side of her bed for balance before she remembers she should check it first. Looks under the bed, does a pass with the enchanted multitool she had tucked into a pocket, picks up the blanket and shakes it out, and then she lets herself sit just for a moment. The noise from the hallway is an indistinct roar in her ears but after a moment she gets up, drops her pack on the bed and heads out.

The noise is louder when she opens the door and she nearly retches again before catching herself. She's in 263A at the Scholomance and if she cannot handle memorizing a three-digit number over some shouting she is going to die, so she fixes the image in her mind and turns towards the cafeteria with the crowd.

Eliza's first thought, when she lands, is to avoid throwing up. It's a struggle, but she manages it.

Her second thought is, I have to find Justinian. 

Her third thought is, something bad happened. 

She glances at the wall made of void, hugs her bag tighter, and goes out into the hall. 

680A. She presses the number into her arm with her shortened nails to remember it better and goes off. 

She's held up on the way out of her room by needing to clean and sheathe her weapon, but makes it out into the hall before the last confused stragglers pass her door.

The first thing she notices is the hair, specifically how much more of it she has than everyone else. It'll be the weight limitations, of course. She had no chance for a final weigh-in with her stolen bags, so she just made sure to drop enough stuff to cover a decent margin of error between a reasonably well-fed Canadian child and herself plus knife. Letters, mostly; there was an obvious packet of them, and while they represented a source of goodwill to the Canadian child, in her hands they're mostly just a source of awkward questions she would rather not have to answer.

529A, and she scratches a quick rune into the door so it will remember her, then joins the flow toward the cafeteria.

She opens her eyes and realizes that she must have passed out in transit. The ceiling above her isn't. She can hear footsteps and voices outside so probably she was only out for a moment? Better hurry then. She pulls herself to her feet and - immediately sags against the wall. She's exhausted and her head is spinning and she wants to throw up - judging by the bile in her mouth her body has already tried its best while she was out - she has to go, if she can't even make it out of her room that would be the stupidest way to die, and Alexios and the twins wouldn't get the supplies she has for them and then maybe they would die too, and then Nadira would be alone and Ekene and - maybe none of them would make it, ever, and it would be all her fault -

She notices that she is sobbing. Her face is dry, though? That must be from the dehydration. She feels a moment of pride that she endured so little water that she can't cry anymore. That was important, because it meant that she could... do... something important? Something that she needed to be good at being dehydrated for. She's doing really well, all things considered, she's a little shaky but she could probably walk if there was anywhere worth walking to. Somewhere with water maybe. The sea, or a pool where she could float and sip iced pomegranate juice... or... or a CAFETERIA where her siblings were WAITING FOR HER and would have all the water and food she needed, Sabah promised...

She opens the door and stumbles down the hallway in the same direction as the other stragglers. "Thank you, God," she rasps, but this hurts her throat so she continues in her head alone, for guiding me out of my despair.

Briar hasn't eaten all day, which makes it especially confusing that she was a few grams over the limit when she weighed in, but at least it's convenient now. Her room has a void wall. She dumps her bag of yarn on the bed, but keeps her backpack; she has some things she's supposed to exchange with Jeremy, and some letters, and she's supposed to leave for the cafeteria right away, not sit around sorting her stuff.

Her room is 520B. She chants that in her head as she walks to the cafeteria. 520B. 520B. 520B.

His room is 782A, with a void floor. He hesitates, for a moment, considering whether to just leave his mice in his room, but he packed them in the bottom of the bag so Briar wouldn't notice them, and probably she won't. She will notice if he takes fifteen minutes to get to the cafeteria because he was repacking his backpack, and he can't even explain it away with the school's geometry, not when the entire freshman class is also walking to the cafeteria.

She doesn't seem to be literally in his hallway, at least, which is probably good. The less likely it is that she visits him, the less likely it is that she finds out about the mice.

Ribo takes stock of her room, it definitely needs more color. The yawning void in the wall is new and interesting though and there's people outside... people Mother isn't going to kill so she can maybe make friends with them. She exits her room, leaving a bit of wire to reinforce the lock and memorizes her room number of 525B before skipping off to the cafeteria. Smiling at everyone she passes.

The most wonderful thing about being part of an enclave is that while this moment is disorienting, his body is probably near the best it's ever been. No need to starve yourself when you've stayed lean for months. He has enough muscle to get by for a few weeks while he builds it back up. He does need some time to steady himself, but the nausea passes without any embarrassing work to clean up later. He ignores the incessant noise outside his room. Void wall. Not bad.

Ghassan glances around the room briefly, absorbing the conditions. He'll have to get used to living like this fast. With a slight sigh (he's allowed one) and a glance to commit his room number to memory (615A), he heads off with the rest of the new students toward the cafeteria. Hopefully he can run into some kids from other enclaves before he's lumped in with the Dubai crowd.

Masozi lands on hands and knees. He dry-heaves, but he hasn't eaten in a day - hardly inconvenient, getting food at all is the inconvenient part lately - or drunk any water since midday yesterday, and there's nothing to throw up. 

It's probably not even the worst he's felt in the past three months. He gets up, only swaying slightly, and then murders one of his precious dung beetles for enough mana that he can manage to check the room for mals.

There's some sort of - what even is that??? - under the bed. It's not hard to coax out; its mind is remarkably placid and not even very hostile. Ooh, and it's got some kind of outer carapace that sticks objects to itself! Neat. He could use that pen. Most of his personal supplies come from the two days he spent on the outskirts of the city, digging through the dump. (Which apparently has its own entire local set of gangs guarding their turf. He had to do a LOT of nudging and pushing to get them to leave him alone and let him steal their precious garbage.) 

There's also a nest of something nastier in the cupboard - why would you even have a cupboard, he's long since learned to be wary of anything that offers enclosed space, he actually prefers just sleeping out in the street for exactly that reason. Humans are much cheaper to discourage from bothering him. 

...No time to deal with either of those now, though, because there's already someone shouting out in the hallway. Masozi has only the sketchiest idea of what's supposed to happen next; the wizard enclave children don't like him much and Masozi has a feeling it's not even because of the thing where his clothes still (accurately) smell a bit like they were recently retrieved from a garbage dump. The adults only grudgingly gave him the basic minimal advice about memorizing his room number and joining the others in the cafeteria for some sort of orientation? At which hopefully more things will be explained? 

They did NOT warn him that the ceiling would be very much not a normal ceiling. He squints at it, trying to figure out if it's dangerous, but it doesn't feel like anything much to him. 

Shrug. He's not going to leave any of his possessions behind in here anyway, not before he's figured out a way to secure the door. He technically knows one shielding incantation and will probably use it tonight to go to sleep, but he'll need to sacrifice another dung beetle for that cause and he would prefer to preserve their numbers until he's actually eaten enough food to produce some food for them. 

He forges out into the hallway, stares hard at the number 132B for five seconds while grinding it into his memory, and then follows the mass of other children in the direction they seem to be going. 

Naima is very momentarily annoyed that there's no accessible void in her room that she can throw up into. She doesn't throw up much, though, and people say that void ceilings are the best, so the annoyance only lasts a second.

She's not gonna leave any of her stuff unguarded; she keeps it with her, and opens the door without wasting any more time. She's pretty sure she's going to be bottlenecked on time a lot, here, so she'd better make the most of what she has.

36A. That's easy to remember, anyway. She thinks it to herself several times anyway, making as much progress as she can through the crowd while the hallway is still empty enough for her to easily pass people.

Vernon is irritated to note that there is bile to vomit up, and probably he should have thought of inducing vomiting half an hour ago just for some extra fudge room for the weight allowance. Stupid. Too late to do anything about it, but stupid.

First, before anything else, he nervously checks his backpack. Nothing missing, nothing cut in half or mysteriously absent or anything? No? Okay, good, he hasn't screwed himself on his literal first day. Yet. That'll have to do. Now that this is sorted, he gives a glance over his room's interior. The grated floor over the void is convenient for ridding his room of the aforementioned bile, and extra healthy incentive to keep his only pair of (too big, in the hopes that they'll fit the entire time) shoes, which he didn't really need more of, but sure. His room will not be particularly tempting to poach, which for the record is extremely unlikely, and taboo besides, but still nonetheless a dumb fear stuck in his head anyway, for a technical independent like him. And the gore from the mals he'll be killing will be easy to clean, which is also nice, he guesses.

He locks his door before he goes, and stops outside of his room long enough to memorize his room number. 640A. Sure. Okay. Easy enough. Even numbers, skipping the 2. He is immensely grateful that his room number is so straightforward, because he didn't bring a pen or any paper to write on.

"Keep up the good work," he says to the door, tapping on it with a knuckle in a friendly sort of way. It pays to have a good relationship with the door to your room at Scholomance even if it might make you look a little dense. "Hopefully we'll be seeing each other for a while yet, eh?"

And then he turns and follows the crowd to the cafeteria.

Lissa goes tumbling and lands hard on her bag, hissing slightly when she realizes that she put all her clothes on the bottom and is now getting poked. She slowly sits up, looking up at...the ceiling? Is that a ceiling? She hears yelling, and calls to assemble at a cafeteria?

...a thrill runs through her. She dreamed, deep down inside of her, that there was magic out there, magic like in the stories she'd read and watched. And a magic school? Is this what it is? Standing up, she decides to keep her bag with her for now before stepping out of her door, glancing at the number. She takes some time to ruffle around in her bag for her notebook, quickly writing down "392A" before joining the crowd with a skip in her step.

...wow, why are so many people bald?

Murray lands in his room and focuses on breathing and clenching his teeth and does not throw up, and once he thinks he has it under control he relaxes slightly and does.  Void ceiling, too, but at least he successfully aims for the floor drain.  He will clean that up if it still needs it later, after he's come back from the cafeteria, so he just - no, he does not unclip the hydroponics-setup-containing portion of his backpack he decided to keep that with him for this part weeks ago.  He chastises himself for forgetting that but mentally undoes the come on, get it together as he heads for the door; things are going to be bad enough in here, and he should note where he can do better but it won't help anything to get caught up over the most minor of mistakes, the ones that cost him at most a handful of seconds when he's not even in active danger.  He's less effective when he feels yelled at, and that doesn't change when he's the one doing the yelling.  So three cheers for self-charity.

Out in the hall, he murmurs his room number to himself on repeat and watches out for mals rather than evaluating his fellow students, and writes 597b in the crook of his elbow only once he's reached the relative safety of the cafeteria.

Teresa stumbles as she lands in her room, and feels a little nauseous, but handles it relatively well, she thinks. She pulls the drugged rat off the top of her bag as she recovers, dumps the bulky parts onto her bed (lightly warded, they'll keep), and gets a pen. Void wall, at least it's not the floor. She goes to the hall, looks back at her room and scribbles the number (83 A) on her bag, and rips the malia straight out of the rat, in plain view of the hallway. It steadies her, and she's off to the cafeteria.

Theun does not handle the nausea well. Void floor makes this less of a problem than it might have been. On the other hand, it means he has a fucking void floor, worst option by far.

Well. Letters and food and water. And his room number. 790B goes in the riffle notebook and his memory. And he's off to the stairs, a little unsteadily. Dammit, he's on the lower level, too, that's going to suck in a year or two.

Della... falls to the ground with a slightly alarming thud, and vomits!

Her trick with her rollerskates doesn’t take much ongoing mana, but it does take a small trickle, and the induction process schlorped all of hers; no mana, no usable legs.

It takes her a minute to finish throwing up, and a long while after that to stand back up again; she observes that she has a void ceiling, which is convenient in general and inconvenient for the vomit. And now she’s - still in her dormitory, after everyone is supposed to be in the cafeteria, which is not a safe situation at all, so she should probably rectify it promptly.

She glides outside of her room, memorizes her room number - 312B - and heads towards the cafeteria!

... and then heads away from the cafeteria at high speed, with a large shadowy fuzzy thing in pursuit, which is not a situation that she approves of at all! And then she’s all turned around and unclear on where exactly the cafeteria is and the shadowy thing is very nearly as fast as her, even with her wheels and her tricks and her boundless optimism, so she can’t catch her bearings, and she spends a long while being chased in circles before she finally bursts into the cafeteria with the mal still on her trail and someone kills it.

He took meds half an hour ago, and he does not throw up. He's still kind of dizzy, but mostly this manifests as, like, half-falling towards his door, although by the time he actually opens it a second later, he looks like he totally meant to do that. He dimly notes that he has a void floor, but decides not to waste time caring about that; it would probably be pretty inconvenient to shove him out the trap door, so maybe it's better than a wall even if it's also more annoying. Anyway, nobody thinks this is the kind of thing that determines whether you graduate, so he's going to avoid worrying about that in particular. He has so many other things to worry about.

He memorizes his room number. 159B. He chants it to himself a couple times, already moving, knowing that he's not going to forget something important like that. He knows which way the cafeteria is - he's been pouring over the plans for this place for months - and the halls are mostly empty so far, because it's been literally five seconds and most of the kids will be busy throwing up, so he jogs until they fill up. Not having any mana is extremely uncomfortable, and he wants to fix the problem as soon as he possibly can. He's good enough at running that this doesn't help that much, but it helps a little.

He is eyeing EVERY grate and EVERY vent and EVERY crack in the wall and EVERY OBJECT that looks like it might have anything suspicious about it. None of them happen to be moving right now, though.

...well, his void is in the ceiling, meaning the rest of his room is something like a vaguely normal room, and that nobody can push him out unless they're very determined and probably have allies. So that's something.

He spends a few minutes unpacking the beetles. This is going to make him on the late side to the cafeteria, but you don't want to be carrying a sign around that says "obvious maleficer", and he hasn't actually done that much maleficing yet, so without them it shouldn't be at all obvious. Apart from the smell. Which is in this case completely natural and just because he's been carrying a container of dung beetles around. But he hasn't been carrying them that long, so hopefully it'll waft away by the time he gets to the cafeteria.

He memorizes his room number (462B, should be easy enough), and heads out with the stragglers. 

Wow ouch yikes bad no thank you.

Right, okay, what's his room number? 281B, easy, one digit off from a bad joke, he'll tell Sherry and they'll laugh about it. He heads for the cafeteria without pausing to look around for his brother, under the assumption that Sherry will have an easier time finding him there than he will have finding Sherry anywhere ever.

You have got to be fucking kidding him.

He lands, badly, and then spends a few minutes dry-heaving into the floor drain.

Awesome.

He checks his room number — 50A — and clicks his one precious Sharpie to ink the number on the back of his wrist, before gathering himself and heading for the cafeteria, letters in hand.

Sophie doesn't have anything in her stomach, and she's actually feeling much less nauseous than people said she would. "I really am harder than they think," she mutters, and stands. Void wall. She pats it gently, and it ripples. "You'll be good, won't you? I'm counting on you."

She's in room 196A. She locks the door and starts down the hall towards the cafeteria. Her task is to find people who can keep her alive until her sisters get here, and that starts by talking to people. Which she can do. Really.

395A, void wall. The commonest configuration. She wobbles a bit on her way out of the room, but gets herself straightened out before she's more than ten steps down the hall. Even as the crowd flows around her, she's keeping an eye out for mals. You never know.

The trip is overstimulating but not unbearable, and his void ceiling will improve his odds of making his Papa proud. So far, so good.

Jean fixes his hair in the mirror of his pocket compact, touches the rouge to his cheeks for charm and to hide any lingering nausea-green, and leaves 203B for the cafeteria.

Camillo has been on a roller coaster, once, for what were in retrospect practical reasons of preparation, and he didn't enjoy it.

He doesn't enjoy induction, either.

The Scholomance is terrifyingly unfriendly and is probably going to kill him. (He knows that's not true, really, he has good odds, but ... it feels true.) Everything here wants to hurt him. The walls want to hurt him, and the floor wants to hurt him, and the ceiling wants to hurt him slightly less actively but will still absolutely drive him stark raving insane if given half a chance. There is literally no safe place to stand or safe direction to look or safe thing to do.

This sucks.

His room number is 589B. He uses the tip of his pocketknife to score it very lightly into his upper thigh -- not deep enough to break skin and risk infection, just enough to raise welts that will last for the rest of the day at least. He's going to get it tattooed, even though his parents said that was a terrible idea, because Camillo knows himself and he knows he will forget his room number and that's just a stupid way to die and waste all of the work and time and expense his parents invested in him.

That accomplished, and his excess luggage dumped, Camillo follows the instructions currently being shouted up and down the halls and heads for the cafeteria.

Wil dry-heaves a couple times and then steadies himself. Void wall, 773B. He's got a good memory. 773B.

And okay now it is time for the cafeteria. He's fine. He's got this. He has to lean against the wall for most of the way so that he doesn't fall, but that's fine. The first day is the safest day of the year, all he has to do is not die before dinner.

Michel looks around. Startled by the normalcy. Then he looks down and retchs. Beneath his grated floor there is nothing, and it goes on forever.

He looks up and for a door and stumbles out of his room. He catches his room number and then heads down to the cafeteria.

Bobbie lands in a crouch. She manages to keep down her lunch (hah, like she's eaten.) and scans the room for danger. There isn't any, because it's the first day and this room was just created from scratch, she'd be really impressed with the mal that managed to sneak in already.

She does need to take a minute to psych herself up before she opens her door (312A) and marches down to the cafeteria, but when she does she's got her game face on. If people are staring at her as she moves through the halls, she is determined not to notice.

Ayla lands in 175B, which might be the most claustrophobic room she's ever been in, a state not actually helped by the empty coruscating hole that spans the ceiling. She signs the numbers and letter in her palm as she quickly unpacks - not everything, but her pack was optimized for coherent layout and not for being comfortable to carry, some pieces stick out and go from her head to her knees.

There's a roar outside and she's distantly afraid to leave. There can't be big mals this soon, but she can't guess what else would make that terrible noise. Bad plumbing or ventilation, maybe? Just her luck, nabbing a room this close to faulty pipes. She screws up her composure to open the door. When she does, the roar hits her like a wave and she sees - people, too many crammed into narrow halls - they're making the noise -

They're talking. They're all talking. Hands still and expressionless, or moving in nonsense patterns, and each voice carrying a different conversation --

It takes Ayla longer than she'd planned to get to the cafeteria.

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.

The room was as her mother had described it. She had fasted since breakfast yesterday, aside from one apple and a little cheese, both of which she lost into the void wall; her mother had been right about that too.

Once that was over she went to the door, remembered her mother’s parting advice — with a mana stock inadequate to bar the door against an unfriendly ant or burn a hostile bumblebee she had best follow it. She used the tip of the dagger her father had given  her to open drawers — nothing in them. Nothing under the bed.

Next the cafeteria, letters to deliver and a friend to meet. Best to keep her pack on her until she could secure her room. Out the door. Her room number was 512, easy to remember but her mother had told her to write it down, so she did.

The hall was full of people all moving the same way; she joined them. More than she had ever seen in one room — the record for that was seven, when she visited Mari in her enclave. Probably more than she had seen in her whole life before. One thing that would be different.