Seeing Alira’s hair and fur that had become coarse from the aftermath of the underwater fire performance, Maria had insisted on adding another step to their already tediously long bedtime routine. Alira tried to tell her that she could go bald and still get crowned as the prom queen. Despite her effort, Maria’s letter to the duchy, ordering a barrel of coconut oil, still went through.
Maria’s hands paused at her question, hovering just above Alira’s head. Alira leaned into them—small hands, roughened by years of laundry work, but warm from her recent effort.
The warmth almost made her rethink the tales she was about to spin to ensure Maria wouldn’t get in the way of her weekend plan. Something about her non-existent ‘mother’ character to earn some sympathy. Almost. She’d put too much time and effort into preparing a script to back out so easily.
“Miss, have I told you about how my eyes keep twitching the entire day?” Maria replied with another question.
Alira hummed a question mark. She fetched the slumbering hamster of a Spirit Familiar on her lap and moved it to her pillow instead. Turning around. Alira cradled Maria’s face in her palms, bare in the few moments she wasn’t wearing gloves.
She was first introduced to Maria when the girl became her personal maid the day after she arrived at Staywes. So, they had known each other for about twenty-one days if she didn’t count wrong. She could barely believe that it had been less than a month.
Maria looked different. Her face, despite having minimal changes, seemed to have matured a whole year.
“Sorry,” Alira said the moment she had that thought. Somehow, she felt she should apologize. So she did.
“You have nothing to be sorry for, miss,” Maria said. “I just suddenly realized that my eyes were all twitchy the day before you encounter the cultist. Or the day you sneaked out of the Academy while I was asleep. Also, right before our first test.”
Oh. Alira swallowed.
“Anyways, what were you saying again, miss?” Maria asked with a smile. Her smiles had always come forth easily and frequently. Yet Alira had never seen this specific grin on her, the eye crinkling into a crescent kind.
“I’m sorry,” Alira repeated. She pulled her hands back and lowered her gaze. “For tricking you.” It was too bad she got caught before she could even try anything.
“Why?”
That was all Maria said, but Alira knew that she wasn’t asking why she had been tricked. The clarity of her eyes, along with the calm stretch of her voice, spoke louder than the single word. Alira exhaled, finding the right words to say and the correct order to go about it.
“Because you just really want to die?” Maria asked again.
“Because I really, really don’t want to die,” Alira said in a breath. “Either way, I won’t die, Maria. You should have figured that out by now. You’re a smart girl, after all. So you can slack off a bit.”
Maria shook her head. “His Grace asked me to take care of you, miss. Have I told you that I was always praised for how every single piece of clothing given to me is washed flawlessly clean? The older laundry maids always say my hands can scrub the dirtiest clothes new.”
Alira resigned herself to a helpless chuckle. What a stubborn girl. The duke sure knew how to pick.
“Oh!” Maria gasped. “I didn’t mean to compare you to dirty clothes or anything. I could have worded that better...”
Alira ruffled Maria’s soft hair with a laugh. “Not the worst I’ve been called.”
“Miss...” Maria whined.
“So,” Alira said, drawing out the ‘o’. “We’re good, now. Right? Because I have a kinda-a-date to go with Raine after tomorrow’s class. We’re planning to look for ‘something’ we’ve lost in Astrail during our last visit.”
“I was given a task, and I’ll try everything not fail his Grace,” Maria insisted. “If I tell you not go because it’s dangerous, will you listen? You don’t have to go search ‘it’ yourself. As far as I know, there are already so many people in search of ‘it’.”
“You mean the same bunch who didn’t notice the spell set up by cultists before a certain student did,” Alira shot back. “Who was that student again?”
Maria’s face scrunched up at that. “Do you really have to?”
Alira gave a firm nod.
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“Fine. Let me go with you then—”
“NOPE.” Alira placed a finger over her lips. “The last person who insisted on coming along was Lillian, and look at where we are. Raine and I will be fine. I promise. Plus, it’s not just us.”
{ Ah, and here I thought I was forgotten yet again. }
At Xia’s voice and Maria’s confusion, Alira could only yield a smile.
“You have seen it before. The fire from that day.”
+++
“The cursed flame hurt my Telos. The greedy fire devoured my Telos...”
A squeaky voice echoed through the slumbering woods, disturbing the fragile peace of the blue hour before dawn. Variations of the same sentence rippled through the mist-drowned air, each word riding a cool breeze that stirred the lazy leaves and branches awake.
Alira winced as cold air slammed into her face. Her ears twitched, fur bristling, while the voice repeated itself over and over like a broken record.
“Yes, yes. Bad—” Alira’s words were interrupted as a yawn tore through her. She wiped the tears stinging at the corner of her eyes. Rubbing her jaw that was aching from the constant yawning, she continued, “—fire. Stupid fire.”
“Bad human burns my Telos!” squealed a long white beast as it slithered into view over the charred forest floor.
Alira managed a sluggish chuckle. She doubted even one in a thousand students knew that the Keeper of Vesper Reign, the pride and largest domain of the Academy, was a cute little weasel. Fifty percent white, forty percent long, six percent beady black eyes, and the remaining four percent a pink, soft snout.
It sucked that she didn’t get enough of her beauty sleep, but being in the presence of such an adorable little thing named Albite, as Alira had found out from Professor Sigor, wasn’t so bad. Alira couldn’t help reaching her hand out for the hundredth attempt to feel its soft fur. So when a blunt pain shot through her finger as the Keeper chomped on it, she only had herself to blame.
Alira didn’t mind too much. It was just another small bite mark from Albite themself on her glove.
“Human heals! Human leaves!” Albite yelped, and the next moment it was gone with the wind, like the Wind Spirit Familiar it was.
Albite was different from most Spirit Familiars, like the Loch that was loafing beside her. It was an Anchored Spirit with Vesper Reign forest as its Telos. Anchored Spirit, for one, had basic fluency in the Common Tongue and generally higher intelligence. For those reasons, scholars speculated that Anchored Spirits were superior to normal wandering Spirits. Further speculation was that it was because their souls had gone through less Corruption.
Spirits didn’t have any memories of the time before they died, so no one really knew for sure.
Alira nudged at Loch, the Loch. “Wakey-wakey. You heard them. We got some healing to do.”
Loch grumbled. It was quiet as a dead mouse when Albite was around, but now that the more powerful Spirit was gone, it didn’t hesitate to become itself again.
“Be good. I didn’t forget about the matter of your Telos either. I’m not one to dine and dish,” Alira said, trying to coax it. Though she imagined it’d be a while before she could find any Archivist to actually communicate with Loch. That was one of the reasons stronger Spirits refused to contract with random children set loose in the wood.
The Lock got up with a grumpy ‘Bha.’
Alira put her head on its small head, and there was a small burst of silver light. Chill seeped into her, and she knew that the Loch had given her its Blessing.
[This Mage of Staywes asks for Judgement,] she called.
※
Character Name [Alira Ravon]
Mana Affinity [Lower Silver]
Elements
Gold [Half Circle]
※
Alira was Upper Silver with the Loch’s Blessing, and that allowed her to manifest her Element far more easily. With the Loch itself having Middle Gold mana affinity, the Blessing could last her five to six hours.
She glanced away to make sure the Keeper had actually left them alone before she clenched her fist. With a thought, Alira channeled the mana around her into a thick, viscous heat within her gloved palm.
[Solidify!] She evoked the spell from memory in Ancient Tongue. It took a few tries to nail the pronunciation, but it was only a matter of practice.
When she opened her fist, the heat from molten Gold had solidified into a small lump of Gold that maintained its warmth. She could see her distorted reflection on its uneven surface. With Lower Bronze mana affinity, it took all her concentration to see the presence of mana, but now shaping that mana was almost as easy as breathing.
Alira tossed the Gold chump to Loch. It caught it in its mouth, followed by a crunch. Some Spirits might eat the living’s food for enjoyment, but their main source of nutrition was mana. Elements were condensed mana, and their meal.
While immune to some destructive elements like fire, which they could simply consume, eating too much was still deadly. No one knew where Spirits would go after death, for the second time, and most Spirits would rather not find out either.
Loch shoved its snout into Alira’s side.
“Work first,” Alira said. “If we slack off too much, Albite might come bite our ass.”
That was enough to have Loch leave her alone. The original plan was for Alira to patch up the ground she’d burnt with fresh grass from other parts of the forest in an attempt to help it heal. She wasn’t into gardening that involved dirtying her hands, and fortunately, she had a handy Imperial Mage in her pocket.
In the novel, Raine guessed that said Imperial Mage had around forty Circles, and with that many, at least one of them should be a Healing Element. And would you look at this.
Alira raised the artifact Bridge, and with a [Heal!] in Ancient Tongue, the ground beneath her feet bloomed into a lively green. Two small mana crystals in the bracelet she was wearing broke with a crack, turning to dust, at the same time.
Considering the price of mana crystals, this method was far more expensive than manual gardening. The last thing Alira had to worry about was money. She couldn’t bankrupt the duchy if she tried, but she sure would try anyway. She had a handbag full of mana crystal bracelets and a forest to nurse back to health.
Right after this, she had two consecutive alchemy classes—Practical Alchemy and Alchemy in Combat—and the Academy’s walls to jump over. Raine had advised her to have a good night’s sleep, saying he would leave her behind if she couldn’t keep up with him. Alira had four hours of sleep and sheer spite.
It was going to be a long day.