Classically, the study of magic was restricted to dynastic houses only. Nobles saw no need for the commonbloods to learn magic, as they could scarcely even muster up the mana for anything more complicated than a basic explosion. This only changed after Exaltare Estique ordered the first wave of unified military reforms. After that, every soldier learned how to conjure and properly utilize what is now referred to as “Artillery Magic.”

  —Military Tactics and their Impact on the Evolution of Social Structures, Volume III

  There were in fact private showers inside of the changing space, though Lycoris was startled at how lacking she found them. They were good for rinsing off and nothing else; she had caught herself lamenting the lack of her usual hair care products and long post-rinse soak. There was a proper bath waiting in her room—a thought that caused her to chuckle with a slight tinge of concern for herself—but luxury could wait. She needed to find Dahlia first.

  That was what Lycoris told herself. But everywhere she looked, she couldn’t find any trace of her. Not in the Idra dorm, where Iris curtly shook her head no when asked, nor in the Drimus lodgings when she asked the twins. Though she did get quite a few looks as her hair was anything but immaculate, and the front of her clothes was dashed with water from running through the rain. Somehow, Vampire umbrellas weren’t any more magical than Dauwen’s, though they were made out of metal and plastic rather than wood and animal hide, and had a rather daunting amount of automated springs.

  None of the faculty she ran across had an answer either—not even Dahlia’s maid Yulina.

  Most of the students had retreated indoors to avoid the rain, though there were still some wandering either in the open rain or together under umbrellas—mostly older teenage couples looking for private places to enjoy the atmosphere, if Lycoris had to guess.

  Once she mentally crossed off the checklist of people she could find and ask, she went to the next most likely place Dahlia would be. It had probably been long enough that odds were decent she’d be there, if anywhere.

  The library and records room stretched even taller than some of the grand halls in the Transfixion of Heaven, was filled with the scent of musty tomes, and carried an oppressively quiet atmosphere. At the back, a massive stained glass sculpture of a silver-haired woman with open arms loomed tall over seven hooded figures, the muffled sound of rain pattering against it making the interior feel warmer than it actually was.

  Not that it was particularly cold or drafty inside, Lycoris was just still somewhat soggy.

  Rows upon rows of shelves stretched dizzyingly upward, accompanied by ladders that that Lycoris didn’t even want to look at the top of. The thought of even climbing up six rungs on one made Lycoris feel a little queasy, but equally awed at how much knowledge must have been stored here. Many books appeared quite antiquated as well, undisturbed for so long that the dust coating them caused them to blend into the shelves to form a backdrop to the room.

  As Lycoris gazed up and around at the massive library, forgetting why she was even here, a familiar sounding old man cleared his throat and grumpily voiced, “Why has Her Highness graced our library as a wet dog?”

  “Huhwha?!”

  She spun around on the spot and raised her hands defensively, an unpleasant memory creeping along her spine. Or perhaps that was the water droplets sliding down.

  Standing behind a counter situated near the front of the library was the man who’d consigned her to nightmare-filled nights without her maid present. Selin Dorn stared over the rims of his spectacles, fingers fidgeting with a lock of his dark green hair.

  “Keep your voice down, Princess. This is a place of study and quiet contemplation.” He thrust his thumb toward the sign hanging from a shelf beside the countertop, indicating no open containers, shouting, or non-silent phones were allowed.

  Briefly glancing around, Lycoris couldn’t find anyone else within her line of sight. Her eyes rolled over a clock that indicated it was already evening. She had been running around for far longer than she initially thought. The other students were all likely back in their dorms.

  …Probably Dahlia too, she realized after calming down enough to think things through.

  “Hmph. There’s only one student here, I was about to close up shop after all. If you’re going to join her, you should dry yourself off first.”

  “My… apologies, Sir?” Lycoris felt terribly confused how to handle the old man. “…I don’t see any fireplaces to dry off besides.”

  “Are you daft? This is a library. There isn’t a chance I’d let any open flames even dare cast their sight on my precious tomes! Magic, girl. You know how to do that much, correct?”

  Lycoris’s brow twitched, but rather than let him provoke her, she forced a graceful smile and shook her head, “No, I don’t know how to dry myself with magic. This school is supposed to teach such things to its students, and I have only been here one week. A fact I know you are all too familiar with, Sir.”

  “Oh for Ancestors’—” He rolled his eyes, flicking his hand forward toward her as the air crackled to the sound of him muttering, “Roil in your cradle — Castigate the solemnity of skies—” he drew a fiery orange glyph in the air in front of him as he spoke, “Despoil not the weave — Sear thy fury through these threads — Calcinate.”

  When his incantation finished, Lycoris felt a prickling heat cover her entire body. Her hairs tingled and curled as they were seared from the sudden wave of warmth that washed over her body. Within an instant, her body was suddenly warm and dry, her clothes feeling a little fuzzy like Athena had just freshly laundered them.

  “Oh. Thank you.” Lycoris offered a small nod of appreciation.

  “Hmm,” Selin grumbled and smiled to himself, seeming satisfied about something.

  “Right, I suppose I should ask, have you seen Dahlia at all today? Lavender hair, red—”

  “There is nary a soul who hasn’t seen the young Lady Idra before, Your Highness. But I have yet to be graced with her presence today.”

  “…Could she have slipped by when you weren’t—”

  “No.”

  “Alright! Jeez.” Lycoris rubbed her shoulder and turned away with a sigh. She didn’t feel like leaving just yet.

  Looking up at the shelves of books had reminded her that, before she was derailed by the unexpected friendship that bloomed between her and Dahlia, she wanted to investigate the history of Vampire society to find something to use as ammunition against Lilianna. Something she could use to disprove her mother’s notion that Vampires needed to completely crush humanity beneath their thumb.

  Or, failing that, something that could help her at least understand why. As much as the smouldering embers of unrest heated her breast, Lycoris was calm and rational enough to understand that her mother was not someone to act on impulse. Not when it came to matters related to the Empire.

  Maybe when it came to matters involving Lycoris, but the Geolle were about as divorced from her as could be—possible uprising instigation aside.

  “Do you have any history books here?” Lycoris scanned the shelves as she directed her question towards Selin.

  “I fear for the future of the Empire if you are asking if the most voluminous library on the entire continent has history books. Yes, of course we do. But as I said, I’m closing and locking the doors soon. Just take one of the reading tablets back to your dorm.”

  He reached for the stack of plastic devices neatly piled on the counter, until Lycoris raised a hand to stop him.

  “No I… I meant books. I would prefer that to a digital screen. …And did you not say there was still a student in here? Don’t tell me you were going to lock her in.”

  “…” He stared at her as though she’d suddenly sprouted horns and a tail, his glasses slipping down the bridge of his nose. An awkward pause later, he shook his head with a sad frown, “She is a… she’s an overnight scholarly sort. Might I ask why you wish to look through the old tomes?” …He couldn’t mask the subtle hints of tremulous excitement in his tone nearly well enough. It was like the students who flocked to Lycoris to take in the Exaltare’s child with wide eyes of awe.

  A small piece of Lycoris’s brain couldn’t help but latch onto that as a possible angle to worm her way into his heart and win him over, but the idea of playing the same sort of game the rest of the Vampires did left a sour taste in her mouth. She could have spun a yarn about the lack of tactile feel of the expected modern solution or romanticized the act of cracking open a book and taking in the musty scent of pages. Instead, she gave a much more honest and practical answer.

  “Because I am more accustomed to books than screens. I find technology to be dubious at times, and I suppose there is a certain comfort to knowing a written tome is much harder to edit or amend. There is an honesty to that, which I fear might be lost in digital media.” She paused, blinked, and added, “Though, I won’t deny its convenience.”

  It was an answer to a question that came up while she spoke with her mother on the topic. And surprisingly, it had been Lilianna who mentioned offhand that the Humans weren’t entirely mistaken for being technologically averse. Obviously they were needlessly obtuse, something Lycoris had taken umbrage with even while living in Dauwen and struggling internally with the Goddess’s teachings versus the reality of how much good could be accomplished. But Lilianna mentioning the impermanence of digital media had stuck with Lycoris, even if she didn’t fully grasp what it all meant.

  That all said, there was obviously some degree of romanticism to keeping books around, as the Aphtangloa had zero problems with simply memorizing the contents of whatever they looked at to peruse later. Editing the contents would mean nothing to someone like Lilianna. Lycoris had tested that out with the books Lilianna had gifted her for self-study in her room, and even the pages she couldn’t understand she could still perfectly recall. It just didn’t help her know what the words meant, sort of like tracing a photo onto paper without knowing any drawing techniques.

  The old man opened and closed his mouth several times, looking legitimately stupefied by such a genuine answer. Perhaps he’d actually been expecting her to be disingenuous, given the nature of Alephertz. Instead he heaved a great sigh, like exhuming a long-forgotten crypt of horrors and wonders, and turned around to his seat behind the desk. “Fine, I’ll give you thirty minutes. No more, no less. The history section starts at shelf fourteen.”

  “Oh, thank you sir!” She hadn’t been intending to peruse the shelves right at this moment, but she wasn’t going to turn down a generous offer from someone who seemed less than endeared to her.

  After browsing the bottom shelf of the section that he pointed her toward—she didn’t want to navigate reaching the higher shelves and risk souring Selin—Lycoris picked out a book with an appealing title: “Military Tactics and their Impact on the Evolution of Social Structures, Volume I.” Tucking it under her arm, she walked toward the closest table, only to find a familiar face poring over a book with a small tower of tomes piled up beside her.

  Raine didn’t even look up as Lycoris approached, too absorbed in her reading to care about visitors. The thought of startling another student with the sudden presence of the Heir-Significate the moment they came out of their focus state was an amusing one, but Lycoris wasn’t the sort to play pranks like that. That had been more of Elham’s wheelhouse.

  “Ahem, Raine?” Lycoris made sure to call out in a quiet enough tone to not disturb the old man at the front.

  The girl responded without even missing a beat, still staring down at the pages, “Good evening, Your Highness.”

  “Oh,” Lycoris blinked, “you don’t seem surprised at all.”

  “I heard you asking about Dahlia,” Raine nonchalantly replied, turning the page.

  “Oh.”

  “I haven’t seen her either, thankfully. A small miracle that I do not have the same days for P.E. that she does.”

  “But I didn’t see you at the ranch… or, whatever you’d call the myrh field, either.”

  “Were you looking for me there?”

  “Ah, well not really…”

  “That would be why, then.”

  Raine was an incredibly difficult person to speak with, quite the opposite of Dahlia. To Lycoris, it felt like she didn’t even want to speak in the first place, like the act of opening her mouth and taking in and exhuming air was a frustrating waste of time. If that was the case, then there wasn’t anything for it.

  Lycoris sat down besides Raine and cracked open the tome. And a moment later as she glanced down at the page, her gut plummeted.

  She couldn’t follow the text at all.

  It wasn’t that she couldn’t understand what the words were saying—mostly, at least. …Maybe just a few of them. The real issue was that it was all so densely packed and filled with references to other works and structured like a treatise on military tactics that, even though she was extremely familiar with the topic, Lycoris could barely tell what they were trying to say about it. The opening paragraph felt like one of those pretentious noblemen from Dauwen had somehow fused with the pages to eternally espouse his nonsense.

  Feeling her brow furrow as she began to sweat, Lycoris flipped a couple of pages ahead, hoping to find something that she could ground herself on. Unfortunately, there was nary a diagram nor spreadsheet. Just tiny printed text that threatened to overwhelm her poor brain.

  Like a rusty gear, her neck creaked as she slid her gaze to peer toward Raine’s own tome to compare, only to see the girl staring directly at her, eyes half-lidded in disbelief. A brief spike of terror struck her.

  “Did Your Highness hope to find something to dry herself off with in perhaps the most dull thesis possible? …I’m a little impressed you can read that.”

  “Ah. Um… watch… your tone?” Lycoris grimaced.

  And in a rare turn, the corner of Raine’s lip quirked. “Ah, you can’t, can you?” Then, her expression flattened into dull boredom once more. “If you’re simply trying to impress me—”

  “No! …ah, sorry. *ahem* No, I was hoping to find something on the history of conflict between…” Lycoris trailed off, her body threatening to convulse as she thought about the exact reason why she wanted to look up anything she could on why Vampires seemed to treat Humans like an existential threat, despite their relationship being so lopsided in the other way.

  As much as she thought Raine was harmless, having to get into the reeds on that particular topic threatened to expose what her origins were. Lycoris couldn’t count on everyone—or really anyone—being as willfully dense as Athena.

  “I see.”

  “You do?!”

  “The professor played quite a mean trick on you, leading you toward the advanced reading material. That stuff,” she prodded the book in front of Lycoris, “is typically reserved for academics. Or students in their final decade of study. Admittedly the number of academics that choose to pursue a career in the acquisition of knowledge for its own sake are remarkably low, given the alternative.”

  “Which is…?”

  Raine stared at Lycoris as though she’d just sprouted her wings in the middle of the room, though her tone remained completely dry, “Their political careers. Running the Empire. The thing you were presumably born for.”

  “Oh.”

  “‘Oh,’” Raine repeated, shaking her head before looking back to her own book.

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  The two of them fell back into silence for several minutes, with only the rain pattering against the vaulted stained glass window filling the vast space around them, occasionally joined by the flipping of a page. With the residual warmth from Selin’s magic wearing off, Lycoris found herself starting to grow chilly. To keep her mind off the cooling temperature, she glanced at Raine’s book. It was a completely inscrutable tome filled with strange sigils and scrawled text, immediately reminding her of Tatyana’s journal. Though this was obviously something else, the memory still brought a frown to her lips.

  “Can you actually read that?”

  “Of course.”

  “What about my book?”

  “It’s a little dense, and I haven’t read much doctoral writing. But if I took my time I could understand what points they’re trying to make.”

  Lycoris blinked, suddenly quite amazed.

  “Then, what’s this part say,” she asked while pointing to a passage that, as far as she could tell, was about logistics of a troop supply chain. Though there was a whole lot there she couldn’t figure out, like the reason they were even bringing it up or what the author was trying to say.

  Raine raised her head again, exasperation on her brow. “How old are you supposed to be?”

  “How old are you?” Lycoris shot back, frowning deeply.

  “Fifty-three in June,” answered Raine without missing a beat. She kept staring, gradually tilting her head to one side as she stared unflinchingly into Lycoris’s eyes.

  Realizing once more that all her years as a Human were anything but directly equatable, Lycoris deflated slightly as she mumbled, “…Forty-six.”

  “… … …”

  Another long silence filled the air, the slightly ponderous nature of this other girl truly tested Lycoris’s patience.

  Eventually, Raine leaned forward and blinked slowly before squinting down at the book, “‘The author would posit that the optimal troop deployment size in accordance to imperial standard originally factored the works of Port’s diaries, as cited in Thaliel Sefer, five hundred sixty-third year of Quelann, was based off the notion that opposing armies could no more march or act under the sun than their own. This is an obviously erroneous claim, as Miles Idra, two hundred eighteen P.E., already outlined how moving troops covertly under cover of shade—or indeed, even combating the nascent threats of Amanalia—could easily lead to disruption via ambush tactics. Thus, the numbers were adjusted in accordance with Malphas’s Equation, at which point revision of combat ranks and echelon formation began to reveal the necessity in—”

  “Okay, okay. You don’t have to keep going. My head already hurts. Thank you, Raine. You’re really smart! I mean, ‘only’ six years older than me and you can already make sense of a um, dock-tore-ole thesis.”

  “…mm.” Raine turned her head away, a soft blush forming on her cheeks as she shrunk inward ever so slightly. Without another sound, she returned to her own reading, though Lycoris noticed that she was spending far longer on a single page now than she had before.

  “And then there’s your magic too. I didn’t even know unwinding time like that was even possible!”

  “It’s not,” mumbled the other girl, in a barely audible whisper.

  “Huh? But…”

  “Reversing entropy is an entirely different concept. Time is an artificial construct not observed by the ungovernable world, thus there can be no such thing as ‘Time Magic.’”

  “O-Oh. Well still, it’s really impressive! I’m not even sure the greatest—much as I hate to give her any credit—sorceress I know would be able to replicate that feat.”

  “I’ve no doubt Her Majesty your mother could do so effortlessly.”

  “…Oh right. I uh, meant besides her. Haha…”

  Considering how she’d gone hand-to-hand with dueling her mother, Lycoris couldn’t think of her as anything other than a true and pure swordsman. The fact she was also incredibly magically gifted—even to the point of helping Lycoris develop her own apparently nascent talent—and thus would be considered the de-facto greatest sorceress, had slipped under Lycoris’s nose. It was hard to imagine her out-casting Tatyana, but at the same time… how could a Human witch even compare to four thousand years of education and study and self-mastery?

  Thinking about it like that, we were foolish to even try fighting her, weren’t we? Lycoris thought to herself as she placed a hand over her locket. Would we have even been a match if all four of us came after her? …Is that why Tatyana betrayed us? Because she knew that it was a foolish errand, and she just… wanted to play the Vampires’ game of politics.

  Lycoris couldn’t tell whether that lessened or spurred on her anger for the Witch.

  “You really are a strange one, Princess.”

  “I hear that a lot. Though usually people filter that more between the lines, rather than stating it directly to my face.”

  “No doubt.” Raine’s bluntness was, well, blunt. But it was also something of a relief after talking to Dahlia and the other mythril-spoon children for an entire week.

  After another lull in the conversation, Lycoris inhaled deeply and sat up properly, folding her hands over her lap as she turned to face Raine. “I’m sorry, Raine.”

  “For what?”

  “Not stepping in before, on your behalf. I was worried it might make her treatment of you even worse, when I wasn’t around to police her behavior.”

  “That’s reasonable.”

  “And for crushing your arm.”

  “Why apologize for doling out punishment after the fact?”

  “And for… well, everything about the—HUH?! …oops.” Lycoris covered her mouth, wincing back after accidentally raising her voice.

  “Did you not crush my arm to teach me a lesson for talking back to you?”

  “N-No! Not at all! It was an accident. A complete mistake. I was worked up, and I… honestly it has me a little scared, thinking about it.”

  Lycoris trembled as she looked down at her palms. She had managed to maintain her composure when dealing with Dahlia, but what if she hadn’t? What if she’d accidentally crippled the first friend she’d made at the Academy just because she lost her temper? Something like that was undoubtedly “monstrous” or “evil,” even if it wasn’t her intention to do so. Dahlia would probably have been able to physically heal from an injury like that, considering she was of remarkably “pure” blood for one not an Aphtangloa. Maybe she would even respect Lycoris for being more tyrannical like her mother—or maybe she would just call her a brute.

  But it would have made things far worse between them, as far as Lycoris was concerned. Even just thinking about it caused the knot of anxiety she had buried to twist once more.

  “…I see.” Raine fell silent once more, though rather than looking at her book again, she was observing Lycoris’s trembling hands. “I did wonder why you didn’t do so again.”

  “Huh?”

  “Would you not agree that my manner of speech has been disrespectful toward you, Your Highness?”

  “Oh,” Lycoris chuckled nervously, waving the remark off with, “Well, we’re not in a particularly formal setting, so I can let it slide.”

  “Truly bizarre,” Raine nodded in affirmation with her past self.

  I’d say that you’re the one being bizarre here, Raine! Who even goes out of their way to try and get themselves punished like that?! Are you a masochist maybe? And in the first place, isn’t this is normally when you’re supposed to say ‘I forgive you’ or something like that! Lycoris thought to herself, working herself up until she realized she was being a little ridiculous and immature, But, an apology just for the sake of being forgiven is no apology at all. If she doesn’t forgive me, then oh well. I’ll just have to make it up to her another way.

  “Raine, would you like to um… I’m not sure of the formal term but… would you join my family?”

  “… … … …What.”

  “Oh, I mean like Cecily and Vanessa. My mother had both of them enrolled under her name, so technically they’re here as part of the Aphtangloa. I wanted to extend that same courtesy to you, because… well…” Lycoris gestured to the golden bolo still wrapped around Raine’s neck, “it’s my fault that you lost your previous endorser, right? So allow me to make amends by solidifying your place at the Academy. You certainly deserve it, considering how smart you are!”

  The other girl stared at her with furrowed brows; not out of boredom or irritation, but genuine bewilderment. Like she couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

  “And besides, it’s just me in that ridiculously huge tower so—oh, I suppose Cecily and Vanessa will be staying there now too, thinking about it. Either way, it’s still way too big for three people, much less only one! …Selin mentioned that you stay in the library overnight usually. Is that because…”

  Lycoris had pushed the thought out of her mind until then, but it certainly sounded like Raine wasn’t being treated any better in her dorm than she was elsewhere on campus. The idea that the girl had no proper safe haven was a soul-crushing thought to Lycoris.

  With a small shake of her head, the other girl replied, “I find books more comforting than people. That’s all. I do not mind how they treat me, I cannot hold the nature of our society against them as individuals. And even before I enrolled, I realized what my position at Alephertz would be like.”

  “So then why even come here?! You already seem smarter than basically anyone else I talked to! At least when it comes to uh, studying.”

  “…I have my reasons,” was the only thing Raine offered in reply. She reached over and gripped her own wrist tightly, breaking off eye contact to look back at the pile of tomes.

  Lycoris didn’t push the issue. Instead she closed the book she had failed to read and stood up, tucking it under her arm with a resolute expression.

  “I’m going to speak to the Dean, then. Remind me to ask you what Amalina even is later, by the way.”

  “Amanalia. It’s the name of the continent,” Raine blinked down at her. “How do you not even know that?”

  “We can talk about that later. I need to get to the Dean’s office before she leaves for the night. Farewell for now, Raine.”

  “Uh… Mm.”

  With a confused, awkward nod, Raine turned back around and Lycoris put the book back where it belonged on the shelf, and marched past the front desk out of the library.

  Focused as she was, she missed the subtle smile still on Professor Dorn’s lips as she boldly pushed the doors aside and hurried out.