In modern science, there are three recognized states of energy. As the most dense, mana is often considered to be both matter and energy until it is utilized. It’s important to ensure any system used has an excess supply, as every incantation produces a relative amount of fotis as waste in the process.

  —Excerpt from An Introduction to Rituals, Glyphs, and Incantations.

  Lycoris splayed her arms out across the desk in front of her, leaning forward and sighing as her chin touched the slightly cold wood. She exhaled an anxious sigh, as the girl sitting off to her left cleared her throat.

  The interior of the library was warm enough that she felt like she’d drift off to sleep immediately if she were to close her eyes. Technically the entire tower was quite comfortably heated compared to the chilly evening spring air outside, but Raine requested the library be kept particularly warm. Dangerously warm, as far as Lycoris was concerned. When paired with the faint scent of musty tomes that seemed to hang off of Raine like the shawl she wore over her shoulders, it was like she was being tested twice over. At least the distant rumbling of thunder kept her marginally awake, even if that too threatened to become a part of the faint background noise serving as an unnecessary sleep aid.

  “Isn’t there a desert to our east? I know it’s called the rainy season, but how can there be so much?”

  “The precipitation here is exactly why there is no rain further east, exacerbated by the wall our Ancestors constructed.”

  “I suppose wet sand grows no crops. Would need proper soil to till. I wonder if this year’s harvest will be good…” Lycoris muttered sleepily.

  Raine set down the book in her hands and glanced over toward her. “You’re distracting from the topic at hand, Lycoris. If you aren’t going to pay attention, then perhaps you should retire to your room to rest instead.”

  “I suddenly understand what Elham meant when he said I should ‘temper my expectations’ and stick to swordplay instead…” Lycoris grumbled into her arms.

  They were in the middle of catching Lycoris up on everything that she had missed over the previous year, including the things that those had been built up on top of. Raine had been a gift from the Goddess delivered straight to Lycoris, considering she had books upon books of notes taken over the past several years of study and her brief tenure at school. Apparently she’d started at the turn of the year—admittedly a strange time, if less so than Lycoris’s chosen enrollment date—and had spent all her time catching up. Something that was far more laborious for her than Lycoris, considering her blood was too thin to possess the same eidetic memory that nobles had.

  But due to that, and the notes she had compiled as a result, Lycoris was given an avenue for catching up that allowed her to keep avoiding the Exaltare-shaped problem hovering over her like a flock of bats.

  “You have more potential than quite literally anyone else on the planet, Lycoris. Just because you don’t want to learn the relationship between different forms of energy and memorize the equations necessary for converting mana to ether and casting a spell, doesn’t mean you can’t.”

  “But I didn’t have to learn any of that when Mama was showing me how to do magic! …Though I guess she did say I had skipped quite a few steps when I was learning to store things in my bloodbag.”

  “‘Bloodbag,’” Raine repeated with a hint of incredulity.

  Lycoris slowly pulled herself up and slid her chair back a little to face towards Raine. After closing her eyes and centering herself, just as she’d done with her mother’s assistance—or the dagger’s—she calmly slid one hand into the other, grasping onto the object she was envisioning within her mind. With methodical precision, she pulled out the image of the training sword she’d pilfered from the Colosseum.

  With a light flourish, she held it up straight and smiled at the other girl. “I dunno what else to really call it, but one of the first things I learned how to do was stow things away inside of the mana in my blood.”

  Raine stared at her for a full moment, before putting her face into her hands and slouching forward so heavily that Lycoris feared she was going to tumble out of her chair.

  Lycoris scrambled to point the edge of the blade downward and out of the way of Raine’s supposed trajectory, though the girl didn’t actually flop forward into her.

  “Whoa whoa, careful! Even though it’s not actually sharp, you could still put an eye out with this thing!”

  “It looks plenty sharp to me, Princess. I’m not sure which I should be more upset about, the fact you actually robbed the school, the fact you could probably get away with it without anyone batting an eyelash, or the fact that you so casually flaunted one of the most advanced applications of conversion of energy and matter in existence. One that requires such an inordinate amount of ether to make function that I can’t even begin to comprehend… any of it, really. Any of you.”

  “Huh…?”

  Rather than the long rant about her magic, Lycoris was more fixated on the sword itself. Surely enough, just as Raine said, rather than the dulled blade that she had taken from the facility, it was finely honed and keen-edged. Sharp enough that she was even able to draw blood from her finger when she tested it, like someone had just taken it to task against a whetstone not even an hour ago. Especially with how warm it felt.

  “Dare I even ask what part you didn’t understand?” Raine sighed.

  “Why is it sharp? When I took it from the training room, it couldn’t have cut through a mango.”

  “If I had to guess, it’s because you’re obsessed with swords and fighting.”

  Lycoris glared at her, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “…Hm, maybe that’d be a good branching off point actually…” Raine scratched her chin, before clasping her hands together and clearing her throat in a manner that made Lycoris’s hairs stand on end, “When you think of a sword, you think of a sharp-edged blade for cutting, right?”

  “Y…Yes. That’s what a sword is.”

  “Then this is evidence that this ‘Bloodbag’ magic of yours isn’t as perfected as you might assume.”

  “Well, I don’t really think it’s all that perfect at all. Especially compared to—”

  Raine cut off Lycoris’s mumbling as she continued to rattle on, “What you’re doing is taking advantage of your own incredibly dense mana supply and memory to create a perfect replica of what you ‘stowed away.’ Remember the first principle of magic?”

  “‘Magic is the imposition of one’s will onto reality, using ether as a medium,’” replied Lycoris as though quoting a textbook.

  “Exactly. What you’re doing is not putting something into an actual bag, but converting it into energy—mana. You’re functionally convincing the world, and possibly yourself, that you are ‘stowing’ the item, and thus can take it out again later. Meaning that, in practice, you’re functionally creating something from nothing but mana and ether, which is a nigh-impossible task. Converting pure energy into physical matter is already rather ridiculous on its own, that inordinate amount of excess mana required to actually produce such a phenomenon is why the tetrad theory of elemental magic fell apart. It made no sense why Earth Magic was so much less efficient than more ephemeral effects, outside of sculpting. Though that gets into the interesting detail that ‘nonmagical matter’ is extremely difficult to find, as once its suffused with or converted to mana, it’s extremely difficult—if not outright impossible—to remove mana from a system. Taking an ‘at rest’ form of energy like mana and stripping the it down to ‘pure’ physical matter would still require ether to be applied to the system, which would inevitably suffuse the result with more mana anyways. In that sense it’s far easier to infuse something that has as little mana as possible with ether, making it the ‘softest’ material to manipulate, and easiest to completely alter. At the same time, the more richly dense a material is with mana, the more difficult it is to work with. This is why most manufacturers use mythril, as it splits the difference between being richly abundant and highly malleable at the same time. It has a good balance of magic conductivity and ‘lightness’ to it, outshining even gold. Conversely something like Orichalcum is much less conductive, as it requires far more ether to be put in to properly energize the entire system while at rest, due to its extreme density. Which of course produces an extreme amount of fotis outside of highly specialized systems designed to minimize the runoff as much as possible to avoid melting the surrounding equipment. All of this is to say… I’m assuming you felt your hand burn when you did it?”

  Lycoris blinked at her overwhelmingly rapid barrage of words, suddenly remembering having the exact same sensation when she’d asked Galahad about Vampires’ natural weakness to sunlight. Perhaps it ran in the family…

  After a moment, she realized Raine was waiting on her to reply. She nodded, “A little, though it’s not as bad as when I was first practicing.”

  “Naturally. It’s a far simpler object and also you’re likely more efficient with the process, so there’s no thermal runoff—fotis, if you remember—being created.”

  “But, what’s that have to do with the sword suddenly being sharp?”

  “Because the entire process is reliant on your mental depiction of the item. You aren’t stowing an actual object, just its equivalent amount of energy. I’m sure that in your mind, a sword is supposed to be sharp, right? That little bias crawled out and impacted your interpretation of the item you ‘stowed.’ So when you recreated the sword…”

  “…I slightly altered its properties, and created a sharper version of it.”

  “Exactly! I’m guessing your mother told you to avoid trying that trick on your phone.”

  “She said it worked best for simple objects, and complicated technologies couldn’t be stored.”

  “Mhm mhm, because you would need to know exactly how every single subparticle is positioned for something like a memory stick to retain all the information that was put onto it.”

  Lycoris blinked as her brain slowly processed the implication of what Raine was saying. She didn’t quite get exactly what she meant, but that was partially what her point probably was to begin with. She stared down at the sword with a newfound sense of awe at what exactly she’d done.

  “What you described sounds like an awfully godlike power…”

  “Well… yes and no. As I said, it’s something that requires an extremely massive reservoir of mana to convert into ether to produce the effect of recreating an object from your memories. Something no doubt unique to the Aphtangloa lineage. But also it would require an understanding of how to construct an object and the balancing of energy in its forms to properly formulate actual matter. The fact you seemingly have been doing so on pure instinct is almost an insult to mages all over Earth.”

  “I… apologize?”

  “As you well should!” Raine huffed with her head upturned, before slouching her shoulders and sighing, “But, I suppose that means you’re a prodigy of sorts, and quite literally proves my point about your potential.”

  “Right…”

  It was quite apparent where Raine’s special interests lay, considering how much more animated she got the moment they swapped subjects from history to magic theory. It was unfortunate that Lycoris had such a hard time processing the minutiae that the field was replete with.

  Especially since, according to Raine, she apparently was quite good at it. Though from her explanation, Lycoris got the impression that she was simply compensating for quality with quantity.

  “If you’d like, I could write out the proper magic formula for a hypothetical equivalent of what you’re doing to demonstrate.”

  “Would it actually help with what we’re supposed to know before the test?”

  “…Perhaps later then.” Raine shook her head defeatedly. “While we’re on the subject however, I’m a little surprised that your mother never tried to deepen your understanding herself. With your talents, you could’ve been a phenomenon the moment you stepped into the Academy.”

  “Well, I was pretty squeamish about blood, so her lessons were often cut short as a result of… all of that.”

  “I see, she taught the function rather than the theory first. That makes sense for introducing a child to the metaphysics aspect of it. I wonder if that’s how all nobles handle childhood education for magic, or if it’s something she specifically picked up as Exaltare.”

  “Dunno,” Lycoris sighed, suddenly quite glum now that the topic had drifted to her mother. She’d been trying to avoid thinking about Lilianna, that was partially the reason she didn’t want to stop studying even when her brain felt full to bursting.

  It was probably a bad idea to push herself though, since she’d be filling her head with memories of being exhausted rather than staring at and processing the material she was supposed to be learning.

  “I take it that you do not wish to speak of her.”

  “Not really. I still haven’t forgiven what she’s done.”

  “I see.”

  Rather than trying to be polite, Raine was the sort who was genuinely disinterested in problems that didn’t explicitly impact herself—probably even those that did, to an extent. She wouldn’t have even brought it up if it wasn’t out of something resembling consideration for Lycoris.

  But the thought of it had already lodged itself into Lycoris’s head and she needed to vent. And who better than a neutral party that wouldn’t care? Raine was a good listener.

  “…She buried an entire city of people! How am I supposed to accept something like that?!”

  Raine remained quiet for a while, before realizing that it was her turn to humor her conversation partner. “Why is that a problem for you?”

  “She killed tens of thousands of people!”

  “I’m not sure I follow.”

  “Do you not care about the lives of the innocent?!” Lycoris cried in exasperation.

  “Do you?”

  “I helped you out before we even became properly acquainted!”

  “And you also killed Iris’s mother,” Raine replied with the same dismissive tone she always spoke in.

  Lycoris felt a shiver along her arms, her expression darkening as she thought of the Vanas and that Witch. “She wasn’t innocent.”

  “Her daughter was, and you undoubtedly wounded her far more than you have helped me. Moreover, while I lack the exact census data, ‘tens of thousands’ is a far smaller quantity than what your disbanding of the Vanas family affected.”

  Lycoris was gripped by a sudden cold chill. “Wh…at?”

  “You disrupted functionally a seventh of the Empire,” Raine lightly tapped the bolo tie still hanging from her neck, “arguably moreso, considering the Vanas were in charge of manufacturing and distribution of blood. Some will starve, others will spiral due to loss of job security, and the family members will never recover financially or possibly emotionally from the duress they’ve been put under. If we want to be generous, ‘tens of thousands’ is a pittance for how many lives you ended, much less impacted negatively. If you need an immediate, firsthand example: my own situation was perilous until you appeared personally.”

  “I didn’t… A-All I did was…”

  “I suppose I’m fortunate that you decided to be merciful to me in particular, but I am one single person. I’m sure you would think it absurd to say that compensates for the countless still suffering.”

  Lycoris felt a prickling sensation on the back of her neck, her vision blurring as she found herself unable to focus on anything in the room. She was already plenty aware of what her actions had caused. While neither she nor her mother had done anything personally… “I didn’t mean to! I don’t want to hurt people.”

  But wasn’t that the entire reason you came to this land? a small voice whispered into the back of her mind. Killing the Exaltare would have caused far more death. Far, far more chaos. And the end result would have probably been far worse for humanity too, given what you now know. You would have to kill and kill and kill hundreds of millions of Vampires. But that’s what you wanted. To free humankind from their yoke. To wipe them all out.

  “Shut up!” Lycoris covered her ears and shut her eyes. “Why are you saying this…?”

  “Because hating your own mother for it is hypocritical. And sad.”

  Raine stared at Lycoris with an eerie amount of composure, so much so that the Princess briefly wondered if she’d gone up and stolen that dagger. More likely, she simply knew how to induce the same sort of dissociative state it applied. Or even more likely, she was just naturally like that.

  The girl closed her eyes after a moment, and then stood up from her seat.

  Lycoris followed her movements, having fallen to her knees with tears blurring her vision. “Where are you going?”

  “To fetch Athena for you,” Raine answered as she began to walk to the exit, though she paused at the door, “You should talk to your mother. I’m sure she didn’t want to take action that would lead to so much death either. …I don’t envy your position.”

  This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

  Raine walked out the door, her indifference almost more cutting than if she had gotten angry with Lycoris. She was someone directly impacted, Lycoris even admitted to herself that part of what she’d done for Raine was out of guilt for nearly upending her life in the first place.

  Doing something to feel good about herself, to ignore the fact that she was just as guilty of sin—and in only a few months—as her mother. And even that good deed was called out by the person she’d helped, one of the people who was a victim of her actions. Someone who calmly explained to her face that she was being a hypocrite, and said to talk to her mother.

  Lycoris curled up on the floor and hugged her knees, resting her chin upon them as she felt the barbs she’d hurled at her own mother dig into her mind.

  ＊　＊　＊

  “Are you sure you don’t want to be present for this?”

  “I cannot think of a world where it would make sense for anyone to intrude on this conversation, much less one where they would survive. I have no such deathwish.”

  For the next hour or so after Raine had brought back Athena, the maid offered comfort to Lycoris within her own room, in the form of hollow platitudes and assuagement that nothing she’d done had been out of line at any point. She’d also chastised the other girl for daring to talk back to Lycoris when she saw the state the Princess was in. Which Lycoris promptly shut down, considering there was nobody more in their right to judge Lycoris for her actions than Raine. And rather than anger or forgiveness, she had picked a third option.

  Lycoris returned to the library after with her phone in hand, which felt like a lead weight pulling on her arm, and Raine was debating whether to collect her books and leave, or shooing out Lycoris and making her have her conversation elsewhere. Admittedly, it probably was something that should be resolved in private. But there was also the matter of Raine’s family recommendation, which Lycoris wanted her to be present to handle. She didn’t need to be there, but it would help build a better case in the event that her mother was disagreeable—something Lycoris had no barometer for, given how they had left things…

  That was the excuse she told herself at least, while the truth was she had been psyching herself out of this conversation for far longer than the past hour and didn’t want to be alone with Lilianna while talking to her.

  “That’s… fair enough. I’ll just return to my room, then.”

  “You should activate the noise proofing ward as well. Your voice carries down the stairs when you raise it.”

  “Dare I even ask how you know that?” Lycoris felt a fresh sense of dread well up inside of her.

  Raine blinked, tilting her head as she debated whether that was permission to answer or not. Of course, that much on its own already told Lycoris everything she didn’t want to know.

  “You’ve heard me at night.”

  Raine nodded wordlessly.

  “Great.”

  “I’ll be here when you finish speaking to her,” Raine nonchalantly spoke, completely ignoring the mood hanging in the air. It was almost refreshing how unflappable she was. Like a lightning rod that’d always ground her wherever Lycoris’s head flew off to.

  “Right.”

  Lycoris marched out and down the hall and up the staircase, frowning once she was in her own room as she looked around for anything that looked like a magic rune that’d activate a privacy ward. Almost a month in this tower and she’d never once noticed something like that…

  Of course, the answer was in the palm of her hand, as she realized she could just call her own mother up and ask. The woman had been the one to give specifications on how it should be built, of course she’d know where everything was.

  Flopping her butt onto her bed and sighing down at her reflection in the phone, Lycoris clicked the button on the side and saw the picture of her and her mother in each other’s that Athena had surreptitiously taken. With a resigned grumble, she unlocked it and quickly dialed her mother.

  While the call was connecting, Lycoris was stricken with the realization that she hadn’t even considered if her mother was still busy or not. It wasn’t when Athena would normally get in contact with her for daily updates, and the girl had no clue just what the woman’s schedule was like when she wasn’t around. It had to be busy, no doubt, especially with everything going on. Maybe she had worked herself up for nothing.

  *click* “…Hello?”

  But her worry was unfounded as the call connected, and the nervous voice of her mother came through the speaker. Naturally, she knew exactly who was calling her already.

  “Hi Mom. I wanted to… Are you busy, right now?”

  Somehow, this was harder than when she had to fight the woman in a duel to the death. Not that it had resulted in death…

  “No, no we were just settling in for the evening. Is something the matter, Dear? Why are you calling?”

  “Well… there’s a few reasons, honestly.”

  “Is that so? …Has school been going well?”

  “I’m not sure. It’s a lot.”

  “That it is. We’ve heard from Athena that you’re adjusting as well as can be expected. Perhaps better, even. You’ve already made friends, apparently?”

  “Something like that…”

  “Is this call about them?”

  “No nonono. Well, I suppose in a roundabout sort of way that’s part of it, but it isn’t why I called… But, um, there is some important stuff to ask about them too, I guess…”

  “Dear, remember what we said about filler words?”

  “M-My apologies, Mama.”

  “So long as our little flower understands and remains mindful of her words, there is no need to apologize. Now then, can you share with us what you wanted to speak to us about?”

  “I’m trying to work myself up to it! I just… Mm. I wanted to apologize, to you. And don’t you give me the same ‘for what, little flower?’ that I got from Dahlia the other day.”

  “…As in Dahlia Idra? What on Earth happened that she is calling our darling by that nickname as well…”

  “I’m not being litera— was that a joke?”

  Lycoris couldn’t recall ever hearing her mother crack a joke like that… ever. Judging by the demure laughter coming from the other end of the device, it seemed that was indeed the case.

  “We seem to be in rare spirits indeed. Perhaps it is the joy that comes with speaking to our daughter again. We’d prepared ourselves for at least a year of terse silence.”

  “A year huh…”

  They hadn’t even been together for a whole year in the first place. Not until Muscend—er, Solus I guess. Or would it have been Oroidas… Why do Vampires have an entirely different calendar anyway?

  “Lycoris?”

  “What month even was it when we first met…”

  “It was the week before the Solstice Festival last year, the second Tuesday of Solus. Meaning the tenth of the month.”

  “Huh, I don’t remember there being any sort of parties or anything…”

  “‘Tis more of a work holiday. One spent at home out of the ‘heat of the sun,’ as it were, as opposed to Moonsend.”

  “There were some kids talking about a dance tho—wait wait, that isn’t what I wanted to talk about! …I keep letting myself get sidetracked.”

  Lycoris took a deep breath. This shouldn’t have been so hard, but even after having Raine lay into her, she was still reticent to condone what her mother had done. But, Lilianna could have just as easily said the same things Raine did, and instead had chosen not to. Then again, with how that argument ended… it probably wouldn’t have gone any better. Maybe even worse. Lycoris could see herself digging her heels in further, if pushed. Maybe Lilianna was counting on Lycoris realizing—or just admitting—the truth on her own. After she’d calmed down over the course of “a year of terse silence.”

  “Um, well… I was talking to a friend and… she is someone who was… affected.”

  “Affected, dear?”

  “By… what happened after Kranes…” Lycoris mumbled in a tiny voice.

  Lilianna waited in patient silence on the other end of the line. Lycoris could imagine the woman so easily, with her sitting on the edge of her bed, back straight and knees perfectly pressed together, hands on her lap as she gave her daughter her perpetual penetrating stare—though softened as much as she could.

  “She’s someone who might get removed from the academy, since she’s lost her sponsorship.”

  “A vassal of that lot, then.”

  “M-Mm, yes. But rather than get angry at me, f-for um… that whole business in Court, she called me a hypocrite.”

  After a long silence, Lilianna filled in the blanks for her, “…You talked to her about our argument.”

  Lycoris replied hoarsely, “I did.”

  “How much have you told her, Lycoris?” Her mother’s tone, laced with a sigh, was cautious but lacking hostility. If anything, she sounded more weary than wary, though only just slightly.

  “N-Nothing! I mean, only that I was upset at you because of recent events with the Geolle. It’s not like I go around telling everyone about my hero and past.”

  “…”

  “I’m not stupid! And I promised you,” Lycoris grumbled with a pout on her lips, “I wasn’t going to be reckless anymore. I’ve even been doing my best to avoid absentmindedly inserting myself into the fire. I didn’t even jump in the way when there was a fight going on at school!” Of course, she didn’t feel good about that, even though things had ultimately worked out favorably. Maybe there was a lesson in that…

  “We are glad to hear that you’re taking more cautious measures. Being a ruler means having to make difficult choices. Life won’t give you the chance to earn a perfect score. It’s about balancing the needs of the many, and minimizing loss and sacrifice. Sometimes—most times—that means having to set aside personal feelings. We are your mother, yes, but we are also Exaltare of an empire nearly six hundred million strong—including the Republic and Oligarchy.”

  “And even then, you tried to handle things in a way that wouldn’t disappoint me.”

  “While the end result didn’t change, our feelings for you were what led us to a less blackiron solution. It only made assuaging the rulers of the Republic easier, but that alone feels as though we did not err in our judgment.”

  “Right.” It felt as though the wind had been knocked out of Lycoris. She laid down, limp on her bed, staring sideways at the phone next to her face. “It doesn’t feel good, though.”

  “It never will, sweet little flower. But it gets easier as you grow older.”

  “That’s the part that scares me…” she whispered quietly to herself. “A-Anyways. You probably already guessed but um, I wanted to call and say sorry. I don’t… actually hate you, Mama.”

  There was a long, slow exhale from the other end of the line, and for some strange reason, Lycoris found her lips curling just a bit. Maybe it was because she only just recently experienced firsthand how stressful that exact worry was. Though Lilianna’s was probably magnified a hundredfold.

  “Thank you, dear. It warms my heart to hear that.”

  “Mmm. Are you… doing okay, Mama?”

  “Well, things have been busy, as you can no doubt imagine. But rather than bore you with the matters of ruling an empire, why don’t you tell us how you’ve been adjusting to school. We’d dearly like to hear about the friends you’ve made.”

  “O-Oh, right,” Lycoris suddenly sat up, propping herself up on her bed with her arms. “I also need to get your permission to um, sponsor Raine at some point. Anyways, where to begin…”

  Rather than studying, Lycoris spent the rest of her evening animatedly talking with her mother about all the things she’d encountered and learned in school thus far, having somehow found her second wind.

  Just below the stairwell, standing next to a set of small glowing orange buttons with a steaming mug on a tray, Athena smiled to herself as she waited patiently.