What We Do to Survive

I got to the classroom about twenty minutes before class was scheduled to start and was very glad to see that Professor Williams was just as early as usual. I would have liked to come even earlier than that, but unfortunately I was unwilling to miss class and I could only make it down from Professor Shrike’s classroom so quickly.

“Good afternoon professor,” I called out as I set my things down in my usual seat in the front row.

The professor turned away from the diagram she was drawing and smiled at me, “Oh, hello Orion. It feels like I say this every time, but you’re a little early again.”

I shrugged, “As usual, I’d rather be early than late.”

“Very true. A good habit to get into.” She turned away and continued to draw her diagram.

I gnawed silently on my lip as I tried to figure out how best to phrase my request. Over the course of the semester I was pretty sure I’d established a good rapport with the unusually approachable professor. I arrived early almost every day, though usually not quite this early, and we would often engage in conversation before other students began to show up. Hopefully that would work in my favor here.

“Ah, professor?” I asked tentatively, “I was wondering if you could possibly offer me some advice with an issue I’m having.”

She looked back at me quizzically, “If you’re asking me now, I assume it’s outside the bounds of our usual curriculum? Typically for such things you would need to seek me out in my office.”

“Well, somewhat? It does have to do directly with the class, but it's not something I’d like to talk about in front of everyone. I’ve found a potential sacrifice for my ritual but I’m not quite sure how to go about making everything fit together properly.”

She raised an eyebrow, “Oh? Well, I guess I can hear you out at least. No promises on if I’ll be willing to help or not. What creature are you thinking of?”

I paused for a moment, second guessing my decision on whether or not to talk to her about my new houseguest. On one hand, she was my professor. She was bound not to reveal her students’ secrets. On the other, well, that didn’t mean she couldn’t make use of them herself.

I took a deep breath and opened my mouth. It wasn’t really much of a decision right now, I’d already decided this was my best course of action at the moment. I didn’t really know Professor Williams that well, but she had a very good reputation as far as I knew so hopefully things would work out.

“I recently came across an outsider and managed to subdue it. I’ve identified it as having a number of potentially advantageous traits and was considering using it as my sacrifice, but my current ritual framework is not adapted properly to such a creature and I’m not sure how to make the needed adjustments.”

The professor looked rather dumbfounded for a moment, then her look of surprise morphed into a smile. “Fascinating. An outsider you say? Yes, I can see why you would be struggling. The examples we’ve discussed in class do not really stretch quite that far.”

She tilted her head to the side in thought, humming an oddly hypnotizing tune as she stared past me into the distance. “It's certainly an interesting project. Were you one of my fifth-years I would most certainly help you with it, but unfortunately I do believe this is slightly outside of what is covered in our class. For such a thing you would have to spend one, perhaps two, of your personal meetings.”

I nodded slowly, “I understand, thank you professor. Could you perhaps direct me towards some resources while I consider my options?”

Her smile widened, “Why yes, that is an excellent request. Come speak with me after class and I’ll point out a few titles.”

“That would be greatly appreciated. If I do choose to proceed with the outsider, would the usual class policies apply?”

“Absolutely. I’m always glad to see my students strive to go above and beyond with their classwork. I would be glad to conduct a pre-ritual review and it would most certainly count as your completed enhancement. Perhaps it may even earn you some extra credit!”

She laughed loudly, though I couldn’t quite tell what was so funny. Instead I simply smiled and let the professor get back to her work.

The result was about as good as I had hoped for, though I would have appreciated some more hands-on guidance without the associated cost. Spending my personal meetings on this was very much an option, but I was rather loath to do so. An hour of one-on-one time with any professor was a very valuable commodity and one I was already running quite low on. It would have been great if I could simply make Cayla and Briella give me theirs, but they were unfortunately non-transferable.

Depending on what materials she showed me, I might have to do it regardless. I’d made some preliminary alterations to the ritual based on some notes I’d found in the outsider section of the library, but the resulting ritual was horribly unbalanced and would likely kill both me and the outsider in a messy backlash as the magic within the ritual ran rampant.

I was very glad she’d agreed to the other stuff. Everyone in the class was given a free meeting with her to discuss and make final tweeks to their completed ritual setups which would hopefully let me catch any mistakes that cropped up in my work.

Similarly, it would have been very awkward if I’d gone through with the ritual, only for her not to count it for my class requirement. Doing multiple such rituals in the short few weeks remaining in the semester would likely be very bad for my health, but not passing the class would be equally catastrophic.

I still wasn’t completely sold on using the outsider in such a way, but it was a very tempting proposition. There wasn’t much time left in the semester, and I still didn’t have any other good options for a sacrifice to use. Quite a few of my classmates had solved that problem during the recent siren slave-market some of the upperclassmen had put on, but I hadn’t bought one and didn’t really know where I would get something else to use.

It had fallen into my lap at a very convenient time. Almost too convenient. Maybe I was being too paranoid, but I had realized over the past few days just how absurdly unlikely my ‘lucky break’ had been. There was definitely something fishy going on, particularly concerning whatever magic had allowed the outsider to blend in with the ambient mana around it.

I just hoped it wasn’t something directed at me. Running into someone else’s scheme was one thing. That was dangerous, but something that Avalon could likely help shield me from, at least somewhat. A scheme directed towards me was something else, and I certainly didn’t want to mess with someone who could potentially throw away such a valuable resource for a nebulous goal I couldn’t quite think of.

Daphne shivered, pulling her cloak tighter against the biting winds blowing off the nearby ocean. Winter was falling over the islands. The weather mages had predicted a massive storm surge soon, and with it a return of the heavy snow and bitter cold she hated.

She sorely regretted not wearing something warmer, but the sunny morning had tricked her into wearing one of her favorite dresses. With her heavy cloak it had been fine during the day, but now night was rapidly approaching and the bright half-moon shining in the sky did nothing to ward off the chill.

It wasn’t like she’d been planning to stay out this late. She’d just… gotten caught up in some things. Father was going to be furious, he was back from the capital and had planned to have dinner with her.

They rarely got to eat together like that, her father was an important man with obligations that kept him eternally occupied. For him to make an effort to spend more time with his remaining daughter and for her to not be there was an insult he would not forget.

Still, Daphne was almost glad she was missing it. She was in no mood to speak with him. Her father had been strangely distant recently and even before that the constant weight of obligation that he’d piled on her shoulders had cut a deep groove between them.

Their dinner would have been a silent, somber thing. Father would ask about her studies and her progress going through the family ledgers. Mother would fish for gossip and ask about her many non-existent friends. Then they would just sit and eat in silence until either father excused himself or a servant came to fetch him.

Her heart ached as she remembered back to how things had once been before. They’d been a real family, not this cold mockery. Adara had always been the glue that held them all together. Her smile could pull their father out from his deepest funk, make their mother’s laughter turn from placidly polite to genuinely joyful.

She wished she could go back in time, to beg her not to go. Adara’s ambitions had always been too large for their island. She’d wanted to change the world, to expand beyond the petty concerns of their insignificant corner of the world and transform Xethis back into the global powerhouse it had once been.

She’d worked so hard to be accepted into that fabled school she’d found in her books. Father never spoke of it, but she’d seen the ledgers. It had cost them a truly exorbitant sum to send Adara there, but her sister must have convinced their parents it would be worth it. From everything she’d heard, maybe it could have been. Avalon apparently routinely produced the kind of mages that she’d once thought only existed in song and legend.

Instead, the school had taken her family’s money… and then her sister as well. One day she had left with a smile on her face and a promise to visit on her lips. Daphne had watched her sail away into the distance until the boat they’d chartered vanished beyond the horizon.

She should have never let her go. The school didn’t even bother to notify them she was gone. When she was absent at the solstice, her father had simply said she must not have had time to get away. Perhaps he’d already feared the worst.

When the letters had stopped coming, Daphne had finally let fear enter her heart. It was only months later that another returning student of Avalon from a neighboring kingdom finally gave them the somber news. They didn’t have a body to bury, not a speck of ash to sprinkle within the family crypt. In the end, they’d burnt a few locks of hair taken from a well-used brush. It was all they could do for her. She just wished the news had come a few weeks earlier. Early enough to save the last good thing left in her life before it too was gone.

She hated that place. Hated what it had done to her family. Everything had only gone down hill once her sister found mentions of that accursed place in their family records. She knew exactly what book it had been too. She’d watched father lock it away in the vault, never to be shown to another young, impressionable heiress again.

Most of all, she hated how it called to her. How it tempted her. Magic was a beautiful, wondrous thing, and she knew that as she was now, she would never get to experience it in all its splendor. She was being limited, she could almost taste it. Hints of what could be in between the endless spoonfed lessons of Lightcastle.

They called her a prodigy, a young talent unseen in decades, and yet she could hear the hypocrisy in their words. She’d heard the same words told to heiress after heiress, to young lords and noble scions alike. They were just words, empty, useless words.

How was she supposed to learn, to improve, to grow when every lesson was perfectly curated, every moment of training watched with hawklike precision for any hint of deviation. They taught her spells and she cast them as well as could be expected, but she didn’t know how any of it worked. What did the words mean, the symbols she painted in the air with her mana, what were they?

She’d seen a number of terms thrown around, but her questions were always met with simple platitudes and assurances that she simply wasn’t ready yet. Father was somehow even worse than her professors in that regard. He was a powerful mage, one of the strongest in the islands from what she’d heard, but she’d rarely ever seen him so much as draw on his mana. He absolutely refused to show her anything, to help her practice or answer even the simplest questions. It was absolutely infuriating. She clearly remembered him doing exactly that for her sister, but as with everything, Adara’s disappearance had ruined everything good in Daphne’s life.

She wished there was someone out there who was willing to help her. Someone in her corner willing and able to push her in the right direction. She just needed a push, a tiny nudge and she knew she could be great. She just needed––

“Daph?” a very familiar voice asked from behind her.

Daphne jumped in surprise, not having heard anyone approach along the near-deserted street. She whirled around, her cloak billowing in the wind as her grip on its hem loosened for a moment. There, standing just a few paces away was a young woman in a simple black coat, a warm hat pulled down until it almost covered her eyes.

“Daph!” the woman repeated, more confidently this time. “Oh my, it's been forever! How have you been?” In one smooth motion she pulled her hat off, shaking out her long hair from where it was bunched up to keep it out of the way.

Daphne’s knees suddenly felt far too weak to hold her up. “C-Cay?” she asked softly, not quite able to believe what she was seeing.

“In the flesh!”

“B-but… but I thought… I thought you were gone. Dead. Like… like…”

Her childhood best friend at least had the decency to look away. “I’m sorry, I should have written to you directly, but it's really expensive to send letters out of Avalon if you don’t have your own couriers. I definitely told my parents to share the news with yours, but they told me you guys stopped taking our calls. What was up with that anyway, mum’s really upset about it!”

“I… we… you…” Daphne stumbled over her words, unable to formulate a coherent sentence as her mind scrambled to accept what her eyes were telling it. Eventually, she couldn’t take it anymore. “We thought you were dead! Gone! Forever!” she burst out, tears beginning to pour down her cheeks. Then she threw herself desperately at the other girl, arms wrapping around her waist like a vice and squeezing until they couldn’t squeeze any harder.

“I’m so sorry Daph,” Cayla whispered, “I didn’t know. Don’t worry though, I’m here now. Let it all out.”

Daphne did exactly that, emotions bottled up over two long years of pain pouring out of her like a tidal wave. Outwardly, Cayla stood with a somber, shameful expression on her face as she simply held Daphne, whispering quiet words of encouragement to her oldest friend between sobs.

Inside though, a broad grin stretched out across her face. This was something she could use. Something neither the beautiful Miranda nor the talented Briella had. She might not be as good at magic as them, but she could not bear to be useless to their Master. Perhaps this could be her contribution. She was certain Master Orion might find some use in the last remaining daughter of Xethis’s greatest military house.