"Well, not if I don't tell them, you can't secretly be appropriating someone's culture."

"I mean, if the rug's already Buddhist then trying to keep it happy by naming it right seems fine? I feel like 'cultural appropriation' is just way less of a real problem than 'now you've got an evil rug after you'." 

...Is that offensive? Morty isn't sure, but he is, again, frustrated by the extent to which Destiny doesn't ever even bother with tact. 

"She's not evil! If she were after me it'd be because she was justifiably annoyed about ill-treatment! But yeah, I'm not going to, like, stop doing Buddhism, I just might stop telling actual Buddhist kids about it if they're going to be mad about it."

"- No, of course she's not evil now, that's not what I meant to say! But, you know, if you want her to keep liking you..." Whatever, nevermind. "I think it's fine to try to get a spellbook that has Buddhist references." 

Change. The. Subject. 

"Anyway," Morty says brightly, "how was everyone's first morning of classes? I had intro to lab, and no one got jumped so I guess that's off to a good start." 

"I had geometry and Ovid. I need a Latin dictionary, the school thinks I should know Latin, but Zeke taught me a song for the declensions. The weird mal-spotter kid is in my geometry and also a giant girl who reminded me how to do long division."

"I have a Latin dictionary you can borrow, Rebecca. I had Greek poetry, and I thought it'd be, like, the Odyssey, which I've read, but today it was all stuff I haven't read and not as good as the Odyssey?"

"It was the Iliad," says Silas.

"The mal-spotter kid - wait, is that the creepy maleficer guy who smells like garbage and went around at breakfast with a drawerful of baby mals for no reason?" 

"Oh, that guy!!!! Frank told him to stay away from New York, he followed us down the stairs on our supply run for some reason and then just lurked outside Frank's door."

"I didn't see the part with the drawer of baby mals, ew, but he did smell kind of bad."

"He said his affinity was sensing mals but Frank says he thinks it might be - controlling them somehow, a bunch of them burst through the ceiling at Frank the instant he stepped outside to deal with the kid and the kid didn't even look surprised. And where would he get a drawer full of baby mals this early in the year? Also he's a maleficer, which is a bigger problem than being weird and creepy, really."

"The maleficing is probably the reason he's weird and creepy," says Silas.

"He organized another supply run later, I think?" Destiny offers. "He went with Raleigh - he's Sacramento, dunno if you met yet, Morty and I trained with their enclave sometimes since they're close to us - plus Shannon, the little girl with the healing affinity who was a mule for Sacramento. And this girl who was in my homeroom," and has NO SENSE OF HUMOUR, "from...ugh, I don't remember, somewhere in the US, maybe the South? And also that enormous beast girl," (Destiny says this with fondness and admiration), "you know, the one who came in naked? If it hadn't been for her I'd've assumed he meant to murder the mundie kid but no way he could take Miss Beast in a fight. So I have no idea what he was up to." 

Destiny feels vaguely like she saw someone else with that party but cannot remember any identifying features whatsoever. Eh, must have been an exceptionally uninteresting person. 

"...Anyway, they did all come back." 

"What... is maleficing exactly."

" - so you know how you need mana to do stuff? You can make the mana yourself, or you can just kind of - shake down the air around you for it, which pulls it from nearby germs and mold and bugs and stuff, which is called 'cheating', and it's not a great habit but in the scholomance whatever, we're all just trying to get out of here and go home, you can learn good habits later. Or you can try to pull mana from another living thing with enough of a mind to oppose you. Mice, usually. And you get a lot of mana from that, it's much easier than making it yourself, but it's bad for you. It fucks with your soul, makes it harder to do magic normally, and it's addictive, like heroin or whatever. And eventually you run outta mice, and what else is around that you can get life force from? Pretty much just the students. So New York doesn't abide maleficing."

"Yikes! Okay. How do you tell he's doing that?"

"There's, like, a vibe? And I wasn't sure if I was picking up on that or just on him smelling like garbage but Frank was pretty sure that yeah, he's maleficing. Probably hasn't actually killed someone for mana yet, or he'd have more of a vibe, but if someone's an addict and the only fix around is kids, they can get pretty bad pretty fast - and if a kid already has any vibe at age 14 they're not in control, even if they think they are."

"Just stay away from him, don't accept anything from him and don't offer him anything, and if he seems to be trying to get you alone let us know," Silas says.

Shiver. "Yeah. You've got to be careful." 

"Okay. He tried to explain me division but it didn't make sense anyway."

"A maleficer needs consent to get anything off a wizard, usually. But it doesn't have to be- like, if he does you a favor and then says 'pay me back in mana' and you try to give him a little, that's enough..."

"Oh, you know what, he was in my homeroom too, and then he told me something about the shop class Monday? After Silas already told me, but both of them told me it wasn't a good idea since I'm not artificing."

" - that's weird," says Silas. "He should've swapped out of Monday shop - unless he was looking for a situation where his classmates' deaths wouldn't even be surprising, I guess -"