Diast brought up some graphics of i transp themselves into the void.

  “Because of our bioelectric signals and DNA makeup, we have the unique ability to visit the void dimension, which is warbly. I probably have a better term that’s sce-y but warbly is good. It’s not a real stable dimension, and it get pretty freaky and dreamlike in there. The void’s tethered to our dimension, but nature works a bit differently than it does here.”

  The dispy ged to show the water cycle, like water on ground, water go up, rain e down, that loopy thing. Then it switched to the void, and that same cycle was there but like an abstract art version.

  “In the simplest terms, thoughts and feelings in this world blow up there. Sometimes they bee cool little things, like your imaginary friend kinda shows up for a sed or something in the right her times them bad thoughts turn into bad monsters. The void needs a lot of ing up to make sure them bad monsters don’t slip intood, stable home dimension.”

  A graphic of a blotchy monster looking thing flopping out of a portal came up . The little fanged graphic characters all used their powers to smash it, then were shown cheering together.

  “So naturally, since we’re the only ohat aid this process…we gotta do void fighting, lest it bleed over into our stable world. Basically, we’re the force that turns the void monster rain cloud into a void monster ke. Oh, and vocab term, put this in your notes, every void monster and the like there are made of a substance called Elka. It’s malleable and turn-into-monster-able.”

  Diast so far expihe void a lot better thahor of So It’s Beeablished That You Are a i and NOT a Vampire or Werewolf, Now it’s Time to Learn about the Void: The Interdimensional Travels all i Must Face (Also Features i Puberty: From Body Hair to ges Down There).

  “There are two basids of pces in the void,” Diast said. “Nodes, and like nothing. Void, it’s in the name, right? When we go to a p the void, we’re going to a node. We’ll get into the types ter, because there are lots. There are so many nodes in the void that we don’t even have a rough estimate of how ma. Some are affected real bad by our dimension’s mental state, like full on you imagine a pizza and a pizza appears before you, and some less so, just having void monsters caused by us. Our ode has already been decided for us, at least, and it’s where we’ll be doing our expl and void monster fighting.”

  The dispy of the nodes of the void looked like a bunch of eggs floating around a sparkly background.

  Diast shifted to going over the sylbus and told us she’d have to have one on oings with those of us in her group about advising which she didn’t sound happy about. She ed up css shortly after, giving us like a half hour to hang out between csses.

  I just went with Oka and Kalei to wait for our css, which was literature with Mr. Soleri, a mid-thirties looking teacher with kinda curly hair that went down to his shoulders and that “I haven’t shaved in five days because I don’t have time I’m a professor” style. He was also a "sit cross-legged on desk while teag" kind of teacher.

  “I’m sure many of you haven’t been exposed to the great pieces of i literature,” Mr. Soleri said. “As this is a css about books, and the way our world was shaped by them, you really have to feel the books before you even think to uand them. Look at the binding. Touch it. Give the book a massage, it deserves it for all the unwele hands that have roamed amongst the pages.”

  We thought he was joking, but theually instructed us to give our textbooks massages.

  “This is creepy,” Kalei whispered.

  I had to force back a sn ugh. A quice at Oka firmed she had to do the same.

  “Hey, are we going to do any actual i stuff?” Ovie asked. “Because I thought this css was good for our powers too.”

  Mr. Soleri scowled, then took off his gsses and closed his eyes. I felt something rumble at my feet, and I looked up to see all the books begin to float around us. Soleri walked through them, stopping whe to Ovie’s seat.

  “To use yifts, you must strengthen your mind first.” Mr. Soleri said. “You may find yift is of the mind, of the school of Calestia, but a weak mind will find nothing.”

  The books slowly fell back down. A bookmark with one of those little string tail things remained floating, aly smacked Ovie.

  Our third teacher was more Soleri weird than Diast weird. Mr. Atrax, the portly social studies teacher, lost trol of the css almost immediately when he dropped all his papers and swore loudly. He eventually gave up trying to get people to stop ughing and dismissed us early, telling us “THIS IS REAL LIFE!!!” over and over while tossing handfuls of sylbi at us.

  Just in the first few mini csses, I already had some impressions on my mix of new and old cssmates. Kalei spent most of css doodling not to sleep. Oka was a diligent aker right out of the gate. Laenie mainly looked terrified. Lillia ce had an answer for every question. Aira Orbis mao tell every teacher she used to eat glue.

  “The way she kept saying it made me think she totally still ate glue.” Kalei said to me between csses.

  “Definitely.” I said. “I mean, she licked the orb thing for the void test. Like, she’s entirely uable. I fear her.”

  I didn’t get to sit by Oka and Kalei for math since Mrs. Poppi, a stantly giggling teacher, said she had developed the perfeu for seating which I immediately disagreed with. Kalei hated Poppi almost immediately, and ched her fists when Poppi loudly giggled every few seds.

  After a brief gym css with Mr. Krangel, who spent most of css expining how much pain we were gonna put on the void monsters, said he was gonna put us through some hurt to teach us prhtihods, which was great for my lingering worries.