“I can always teach remotely,” Declan said, shifting his arms in their slings. True to Doctor Singh’s prediction, he was healing at a ridiculous rate, but the rapidly knitting bone and flesh itched.

“Like a damned online course? No thanks. This stuff is hard enough,” Tami said. She was writing out elven runes, referring to a diagram on a clipboard.

“Please. As if,” Declan said. “With Omega’s tech, I can be holographically present and watch you all practice from every angle.”

“Hmm, that’s true,” Tami allowed, eyes locked onto the current rune she was trying to write. Elven runes were harder to draw than any of the human runic alphabets. The characters themselves were kind of hard on human eyes in a way that made no real logical sense.

“But having you here to help redraw these damned things might be hard to duplicate. Hey, can Omega draw them?”

“Oddly, I can record them and print them, but all of my attempts at scribing them around a circle have failed. My laser reconstruction is exactly perfect, yet they fail to open a portal when Father powers them.”

“Tell me about it,” Erika said, standing just to Declan’s side and watching the work while looking over her own copy of the portal diagram.

“The Watchers of the Veil say that it isn’t enough to simply recreate them. The drawer must be pulling on their personal source of magic while drawing. And they have to keep pulling on that power, Tami. Which is why that last one you drew won’t work. You dropped your concentration.”

“No shit, what with all this talking,” she said, brushing out the offending character. “Maybe we can finish this little chat and then I can try to get this right.” She sat back and looked at the rest of the class.

“I think we all would really miss you, Declan, if you’re off somewhere else,” Britta said.

“Even if I’m here in glowing green holographic form, hounding you all to get your portals right?” he asked with a smile.

“My holographs are not green or glowing. They’re almost optically perfect representations.”

“Sorry, Omega. I was just going for a mental picture,” Declan said. Carefully he kneeled down and focused on the character Tami had just erased. A spare piece of chalk lifted off the ground and moved over to touch down on the spot and exactingly drew out the weird rune.

“Damn it. Gotta show off, don’t you?” Tami said, glaring at him.

Unintimidated, he turned an easy gaze on the annoyed witch. “Actually, I was trying out a theory. Try doing what I just did. Sit on your hands if you have to, but use telekinesis to draw the rune. It forces you to keep pulling power.”