After talking to Veric and learning about her troubles at the Shrine, I came to a conclusion.

I should blow up Veratrum Row.

Well, I didn’t have to blow it up. Some other means of shattering the established order would also do. But killing rich people with guards was hard, and my ultimate goal was just terrorism, not mass murder, so I felt that smashing up their mansions and scaring the residents would suffice.

I had it all figured out. First, I’d dress up as one of those bastards from the Order of the Black Sun. Second, I’d go to Veratrum Row and use the sacrificial flow frame to blow it all sky-high. And of course, I’d deliver an extra-villainous monologue to frame the Order and screw them over as hard as I could. All I had to do was manipulate Veric into showing up at the right time; with her personality, she’d definitely play the hero and confront me, and then I’d just have to pretend to be driven off by her.

If the Order was targeting the nobles’ heirs and not just the Shrine, and Veric saved their asses, then they’d have no real standing to intervene in with the Temple in the name of “safety.” Ta-da, problem solved. She’d have social leverage, I’d have paid her back for coming to rescue me, and we’d all win together.

I just needed a method to escape the chaos afterwards.

And for that, I had my eyes set on one of the make-up exam’s prizes: an “escape talisman” from the 5E frame. To guarantee it would land in my hands, I’d have to aim for number one.

There went my plans to completely slack off.

The make-up exam would take place with the help of one of Nithemoore’s magic artifacts, the Illusion Stage, which despite its name did not involve illusions or stages. It was instead a miniature pagoda that could open up a miniature alternate space within each of its floors; the space’s features, laws, and terrains could be controlled by the pagoda’s control arrays.

Apparently, for our exam, they would be using the smallest floor of the pagoda, but that would still be a space more than twice the size of Nithemoore’s campus. This space would then host a sort of simulation for us students to showcase our prowess in administration and governance.

The space inside the Illusion Stage was divided into different territories, each with its own characteristics. The professors had distributed a territory map and a list of perks available for exchange. A student’s ability to administer a territory was tied to a hub inside each territory. It didn’t take a genius to see that the territory map mirrored the geography of Iyiria and its neighboring countries.

To focus the students on developing whatever territory they started with, the professors had implemented certain troublesome rules. For example, you had to spend tokens to cross the border into someone else’s territory, and spend even more to do so without their territory hub alerting them. Certain hub actions could only be performed if a territory owner was actively overseeing the process. Although your token count could be monitored and exchanged through wristbands, other people could claim all your tokens if they took over your territory hub. We clearly were supposed to treat our territories as a permanent base.

But since it was possible to take over someone else’s territory, and the teachers were grading us on tokens accumulated rather than the state of our beginning territory, it was still an open invitation for me to do things as I willed.

Given Acacius’ horrid reputation and my lack of understanding of the world, I didn’t think I’d have much luck gaining tokens the intended way. So I’d just play to my strengths and take tokens from others by force.

I didn’t feel that I was very strong in this world. Most of my victories had been snatched from the jaws of defeat by the skin of my teeth. I couldn’t win this exam by martial force alone; I needed a strategy.

Ugh, if I had half of Luka’s firepower, I could just steamroll over my opponents without worrying about strategy at all — just about severe collateral damage.

Anyways, I didn’t want to partner with him.

Originally, I’d just been planning to slack off and let the teachers pair me with whatever unlucky bastard hadn’t found a partner yet by the deadline. But now that I actually had a goal and strategy, I had a teammate in mind: Rhoswen.

Rhoswen was my classmate in Practical Combat. From what I’d seen of her, she was an archer with a sharp eye and a talent for controlling the field. On the first day of class, she had been the only student besides Luka whose fighting skills earned Dalileh’s unequivocal praise.

I hadn’t seen her around in KP-04, so maybe she had been in Mehran’s group, or off by herself. She seemed like a bit of a loner, after all. I was hopeful that she hadn’t decided on a partner yet.

There were only two days until the exam, so I had to recruit her fast.

By the time I returned to the dorm complex from my talk with Veric, night had fully settled in. I checked the student directory listed in the mail room before heading to the dorm building adjacent to mine and going to the seventh floor.

Rhoswen’s room was at the end of the hall, right next to the emergency exit. Lucky her. I rapped on the door lightly with my knuckles.

It was late enough I’d been worried she’d already gone to sleep, but it was only seconds before Rhoswen opened the door, looking down at me from under her curly auburn bangs. Her half-lidded eyelids always made her seem slightly sleepy, but the red light reflected in her deep black eyes was enough to send a jolt down the spine of anyone who met her gaze.

“Good evening, Rhoswen,” I said. Her white pajamas were embroidered with cutesy teddy bears that were all either decapitated or dismembered. There were traces of uneven stitching where someone had carefully repaired it before. “I didn’t disturb your sleep, did I?”

Rhoswen shook her head, watching me with silent pressure.

She hadn’t told me to go away yet, though, so I pushed on. “Have you decided on a partner for the make-up exam yet?”

“No.”

“Then I have a proposal for you. Why don’t we team up for the make-up special assignment?”

Although Rhoswen didn’t hate Acacius that I knew of, her indifference towards others had me prepared to spend some time convincing her of the merits of my plan.

But to my surprise, Rhoswen’s lips curled up in a cool but satisfied smile.

“Yes. Let’s do that.”

Uh.

It wasn’t supposed to be this easy.

“Are you certain you don’t need more time to consider?”

“No. It’s fine.”

I thought I’d be the one tricking some innocent classmate into my devious clutches. This was throwing me off balance.

“Since you came to me, you must intend to obtain tokens by force,” Rhoswen said. “What plan do you have in mind?”

Her easy acceptance was still throwing me off, but I answered anyways.

“I want to snipe and steal from others’ territories instead of administering to our own base. I have high mobility and can locate others reliably, and you have a long shooting range. In theory, we’d synergize well as a hit-and-run team, but the execution of this strategy would depend on our skills.”

Rhoswen smiled.

“If you can find it, then I can shoot it.”

“How far can you shoot accurately?”

“Up to one hundred fifty meters, if the target is in my sight and the conditions are favorable. But of course, we do not have to be limited by my sight.” She crossed her arms. “If you have a way to accurately sense the location of a target, then I can shoot with your senses as reference as well. But such a linkage would require the use of the Unseelie Court’s spells. Are you willing?”

Was there a reason why people usually wouldn’t? “Are there any adverse affects?”

“For the duration of the exam? Nothing severe or permanent.” That wasn’t the most reassuring answer. “This linkage would simply allow me to share your intuition. However, not many are fond of the symbols used to invoke our spells. And, as the Unseelie Court deals with the subconscious and unconscious, you may find yourself acting more… impulsively.”

I frowned. “Does this spell affect both parties simultaneously? If it causes both of us to act recklessly, it’ll be a problem.”

“I have spent a long time in the shadows; I will remain perfectly myself. You, however, have many hidden sides. When your hidden side surfaces, you may not be as in control of yourself as you’d normally like.”

If I thought about it optimistically, maybe it was like being kind of drunk.

“Of course,” Rhoswen added softly, “if you trust me to look after you in that state, I will ensure no harm befalls you. It is, after all, what should be done.”

I hesitated.

On one hand, it was an unknown power offered by someone I didn’t know well.

On the other hand, I really wanted to win this exam, and every card up my sleeve would give me a better chance competing against my classmates.

“If you have time in the evening tomorrow, why don’t we practice first before making a final decision on the spell?” I suggested.

She nodded. “I am free. But since we are both here, why not try it now?”

I shook my head. “I have a few other things to take care of.”

“More important than this exam?”

“Important because of the exam,” I corrected.

She nodded. “What will you be doing?”

I thought about it a little bit.

“Tonight, I plan to set up my new ph… Seam. And tomorrow, I need to get new clothes.”

---

To my convenience and slight disappointment, Rhoswen didn’t react strongly to my joke. Instead, she glanced at my shoulders and advised me to find Tarascus from the Artisan track, saying, “He can enchant preexisting garments to suit a requester’s needs.”

My transformation in KP-04 hadn’t exactly been subtle, so I guess she’d cottoned onto why I needed alterations.

After finalizing my plans with her, I headed back to the dorms to deal with the seam.

I really didn’t get why Acacius was so scared of phones. There were other things in his life that seemed way scarier to deal with.

The seam Zaire’d given me was resting on the windowsill, as it tended to do even at night when there was no sunlight to recharge it. When I approached it, my heart rate increased, and by the time I reached out to touch it, my hands were clammy with sweat.

Until this point, I’d been content to listen to Acacius’ instincts not to use it, but he’d been wrong about things before, and now I had a reason to be contacting others. Besides, people used seams reliably and with no harm; plus, if Acacius was so good at predicting danger, he wouldn’t have been killed by me. At this point, I thought it was worth the risk.

I ignored all my body’s warning signals and picked up the seam.

Nothing happened.

I stroked the wings that acted as the seam’s cover; they unfolded like a beetle’s elytra, revealing the screen underneath. Following what I’d seen Zaire do, I unlocked the device and fumbled through its basic functions.

I was starting to feel nauseous, and my head hurt.

The settings had my “seam number” and technical specifications. Zaire had already saved himself and his teacher, “M,” under my contacts. I opened the messaging function to compose a message to Zaire.

I was getting so dizzy it was hard to see.

Putting my hand out to catch myself on the windowsill, I squeezed my eyes shut.

That was when the vision came over me.

I was in a city destroyed. A jasper-green sea flooded the streets, rising to the roofs.

There were survivors climbing the highest buildings or paddling frantically through the flood. There were even more survivors silently and calmly blocking their way, catching them, dismembering them, and tossing them into the water. When they finished, they would cut their wrists and necks before falling into the water themselves. The blood disappeared into the water without so much as a stain.

There were no bodies floating in the water. They had all been swallowed into the depths.

Circling around every group of survivors were mechanical winged devices, looking all too similar to the seam I was holding now.

Hovering above the city was a person of indeterminate gender, dressed in black and white. A swarm of insectoid devices escorted them, with individuals parting and returning like the worker bees of a hive. Their wings buzzed, rising in a horrifying crescendo, rasping out broken words.

[EVERYTHING]

[SHOULD]

[BE]

[DESTROYED]

“That’s right,” said a husky voice. “The world must be cleansed and returned to its rightful state.”

Wait.

That voice sounded familiar.

The swarm briefly parted, and behind the hovering figure, I saw…

Luka… crossdressing?

His eyes were glowing ocean green, and his hair had grown out down to his feet, washing out in color until it was ice-white at the roots. He was wearing a dress that shimmered and moved like ocean waves, foam-white at the collarbone and such a deep green at the flaring base it was nearly blue.

He looked… really good.

Luka, or whatever was possessing him, placed his hands on the hovering figure’s shoulders. The dress sleeves slipped down his shoulder, teasing at the bare curve of his pectoral muscles. My higher brain functions stuttered. He smiled, bright and unnerving, as he leaned in and whispered in the hovering figure’s ear.

“Trust me, M, you’re doing the right thing. As I believe, so it must be so.”

The vision broke. My nausea and dizziness faded away.

I took a deep breath and looked down at the seam, heart racing.

Okay.

That was a lot to take in.

I went to the kitchen sink and splashed my face with cold water so I would stop thinking about Luka as a girl. Then, with as much calm as I could muster, I put the seam back in its gift box, tucked it under my arm, and left for Zaire’s dorm.

For whatever reason, Zaire had gotten the bright idea to give me the key to his room, so I was able to let myself in when I got there. The dorm was empty. My Record of Authority’s door to KP-04 was still situated on his wall where I’d last placed it.

I stepped through the door, and after a few minutes of walking, found Zaire in the Cagzol Caverns, arranging things inside the netted butterfly habitat he’d set up.

“Zaire.”

“Oh, hey, Acacius, you came at a great time. Come look at the caterpillars eating!”

I stood next to him and peered in. They sure seemed fat and happy.

“How many do you think will survive to pupation?”

“Most of them should.” Zaire patted the frame of the butterfly house with confidence. “This will protect them from predators, and I’ve figured out what kind of environment they prefer, so really what’s left to worry about is illness and parasites. Still, I think they’ll be okay.”

“Thank you for taking care of everything.”

“It’s nothing. Besides, my teacher’s the one who took care of all the real headaches.”

After my initial discussion with Zaire, his teacher had sent over a contract thoroughly outlining the terms of our agreement, along wih a legal document that would designate them as my representatives in managing KP-04. M had also proposed that I allow them to freely manage KP-04’s research and business agreements, under the condition that research results not be shared or sold without our joint agreement, and that the Kalos butterflies come to no harm.

I would also receive half the profits from such ventures. Since I needed a source of funding independent of the Duvals, and I didn’t want to manage anything beyond my skills, I agreed.

Within two days after I signed and returned the papers, I’d received a series of letters from Iyiria’s government that basically amounted to, “Everything is taken care of now.” Apparently, M had even paid the taxes for the year. I had no clue how they’d gotten the Land Authority to assess KP-04 so fast.

“Pass my thanks on to your teacher for me,” I said. “Speaking of M, I have a question.”

“Yes?”

This was a hard topic to ask about subtly. Zaire already knew so much about Acacius, maybe it was okay to be more direct?

“Theoretically speaking… how vulnerable are they to mind control?”

Zaire squinted at me.

“You do remember that M is both an apostle and apostate of the Signifier, right? Even if you could find someone more skilled than them in the Signifier’s domain, that person would also have to be more powerful than them. The odds of that happening are very low.”

I took out the box with the seam in it, sliding the lid open to show him what was inside. “But if it did happen, how dangerous would it be to have this, really?”

Zaire fell silent. His mouth tugged down at the corners. When he spoke again, his voice was subdued.

“M designed the current network and protocol that supports emergency alerts in Iyiria, and they can affect anyone who has seen one of their ‘signs.’ So if you’ve ever read a message from them, you already aren’t safe.”

He raised his eyes to mine.

“If that was your concern, you shouldn’t have taken the seam. You shouldn’t have looked at their letters, either… No, actually, you shouldn’t have sent me to M in the first place.”

Acacius had sent Zaire to M? Wait, that wasn’t the most important thing. Had I just ruined Acacius’ lifelong effort to avoid having any kind of contact with M at all?

“Why are you asking about all this, anyways?” Zaire said, breaking into my thoughts.

After studying his expression for a moment, I replied, “You sound unhappy. Do you feel like I was endangering you on purpose?”

Zaire sighed and looked away. “I know you’re afraid of many things, but even I’ll get sad if you keep letting me take risks that you’re not willing to face.”

It was pretty reassuring that Zaire was openly complaining to me. Unaddressed resentment could be a scary thing.

I faced him with all the seriousness I could muster.

“I don’t intend to use you as a scapegoat or a shield, Zaire. I’ve already taken the seam, haven’t I? If I wanted to keep my distance, there’d be no reason to entrust you and M with so much, either.”

Zaire’s expression lightened a bit, but a small furrow remained etched between his brows. “So then…”

“I’m asking these things because I received new information, and I want to make plans in advance. However, I don’t abandon my friends. And if there’s someone important to my friend, I won’t just walk away, either.”

Zaire looked like he wanted to say something more, but this time I barreled over him.

“So, that’s why I have to ask. If M fell under someone’s influence and became a danger to others, could you protect yourself long enough to get away? And what would you do?”

He looked at me uncertainly for a while, absently stroking the frame of the butterfly house, before dropping his gaze to the caterpillars within.

“Acacius, you have your secrets, and I don’t pry,” he said. “You’re my friend. And I want to believe in you. But I need you to answer one question for me.”

“What is it?”

“Do you think the future can be changed?”

The answer was so stupidly obvious that I didn’t know what to make of his question. “Of course it can.”

He let out a startled laugh. “No hesitation at all? Do you really think that?”

Did he believe in fate or something? … No, this was that stupid Kosmonymian thing about prophecy again, wasn’t it?

“You know, recently, people keep accusing me of being a prophet.”

Zaire jerked his head up to meet my gaze, eyes wide.

I said, “It’s ridiculous, of course. But even if it was true, I don’t think finding a prophet would do those people much good, anyways. Think about it. To reach the future you desire, you have to decide the outcome you want, then take action to bring it to fruition. If you instead change what you want based on the future you see, you’ll be shaped by your circumstances instead of shaping them. At that point, you might as well find a swindler to tell you how to live your life.”

“Then what is the future you want to see?”

The future I once dreamed of was already impossible to achieve.

But he didn’t need to know that.

“One where everyone close to me can live happily.”

Zaire’s mouth turned up at the edges in an involuntary smile as he shook his head helplessly. “Then you might have your work cut out for you. If something happened to M, I’d be the first to try and stop it. So… if they really went out of control, I’d probably be one of the first victims, too.”

If something like that had happened to my teacher, I would’ve done the same.

“But what could happen to M?” Zaire asked. “They’re a member of the Council of Myths, after all. So if anyone could affect them like that, then… it’d have to be another member of the Council, wouldn’t it?”

I hesitated, then shook my head. “I don’t think so. And I could be wrong, anyways.”

It wouldn’t do too much good to treat Acacius’ prophecies as unfailingly accurate. Surely things had changed somewhat now that I’d taken his place.

“But you must have some idea,” Zaire pressed. “What’s going to happen? How can we stop it?”

If I told him that Luka was the likely vessel through which the disaster would occur, would Zaire be more on board with Acacius’ original plans to somehow kill Luka? Had Acacius even told Zaire? And if he hadn’t, then… Why not?

The more I delved into Acacius’ life, the less I felt like I understood him.

“I need to investigate some more. I think I could take some preventative measures.” Like convincing Luka not to randomly summon dangerous things. He’d only done it a few times that I knew of, but it still felt like a few times too many. “In the meanwhile, you should also hone your skills. Think of a way to protect yourself. If something does happen to M, you need to be alive to do anything about it.”

Zaire nodded solemnly.

“Then I’ll be counting on you. And… you be careful too, okay? I don’t want to hear about you going to the healer’s ward again this year.”

I couldn’t make any promises about that.

Anyways, since it was already too late for me to avoid sign-transmitted danger from M, when I returned to my dorm, I forced myself to familiarize myself with my seam’s functions despite my sweaty hands. Fighting against Acacius’ instincts was exhausting. Couldn’t that bastard have left me with a more useful inheritance?

Once that was done, I cleaned myself up, collapsed into bed, and drifted easily into sleep.

Of course, that was when Luka summoned me again.

Chapter 46 Back to Index