Chapter 72 — Xander’s Luck

For all the drama of the last few days, Ria’s remaining Windday class also passed without incident, and when she met up with Iori at Whitestone Hall’s public-facing entrance, a Novidus-flagged carriage was already waiting for her outside.

Ria was still worried about Orlisi. The elf girl didn’t show up at lunch to borrow the locator scroll as they had originally agreed. The worry bothered her enough that she had mindlessly assisted Jax with his dissections and material extractions rather than enjoy teasing him.

Extracting materials from the insects was considerably more complex than the processes used for the simpler magic beasts from their first week, involving more than just cutting and separating. For many types, the shells needed to be cleanly removed and crushed into powder, and for specific ones, some of the internal organs needed to be milked just right to only get the important liquids, whereas others like the cerulean caterpillars and the Valgorian swamp leeches could readily be squeezed and mushed into energy-containing goo and collected in jars or vials once the toxic parts were removed.

It was messy, disgusting work, but the ingredients were valuable, and even with her thoughts elsewhere, she wasn’t going to miss out on extracting the maximum value she could! With the way she was going through coin, every opportunity to add more would be needed.

Thankfully, Iselyn, who spent most of the practicum wearing a creepy smile as she played with her bug guts, seeming to savor every sickening crunch and squelch to an extent that had even Malleron giving odd looks as he bantered with his amused contractor, noticed Ria’s odd mood and, after a interrogatory back and forth, volunteered to check on Orlisi after class and report back.

Her friend’s thoughtfulness was a huge relief since Ria didn’t dare make Lady Asara—or the escort she had sent—wait. Though, now that she was actively waiting for Iselyn to contact her, each measure of sand passing made her worry that the longer Iselyn took, the worse Orlisi’s injuries were.

“Everything is all set for tomorrow. Mother can be tough to please when she gets serious, but if you show your best effort, I’m sure you’ll do fine,” Iori advised while dipping down to ruffle Ranger’s ears.

When Iori stood back up, Ria gave the older snowflake-mantled girl a warm smile. “Thanks, Iori. Your assistance has really saved me.”

Iori returned the smile with a dazzling grin. “Sure, sure. It’s fun being relied on like an older sister—Faris doesn’t count since he’s a boy, of course!” The girl laughed then lightly pushed Ria in the direction of the carriage. “You should get going. We can chat more tomorrow.”

Ria nodded. “I’ll be going then.”

A young servant boy helped Ria onto the carriage before taking up his position at the back. Once she was seated with Ranger beside her, the carriage and guards on horseback began their procession, joining the flow of other carriages taking noble students back to their estates.

Ria gazed absently at the slowly passing shopfronts and city scenery. Maybe the afternoon with Lady Asara would go well. Even with the piling up of unwelcome revelations and worries of late, a surprisingly favorable resolution of one of the worries hanging over her head gave hope that her luck was turning for the better—Xander willing.

Lestina had shown up outside her afternoon Anatomy practical and called Ria aside, handing over a communication stone and informing Ria that Soulkeeper Renard had assigned her to be Ria’s new spirit magic tutor.

It was a huge relief. If Soulkeeper Renard had chosen an older boy to help her with something as personal as soul-strengthening… Ria scrunched up her face at the thought.

The third-year Soulkeeper girl was eager to get started after the day’s classes finished and wasn’t deterred by Ria already having an afternoon appointment, determined that even meeting after dinner was fine. Lestina was also excited about being invited to Ria’s debut, and the girl earnestly thanked her for the beautiful invitation and the opportunity to attend the party celebrating the Spring Moon Festival, saying that it was a great honor to be invited to Administrator Asara’s most prestigious yearly event.

Lestina’s seriousness made Ria wonder if maybe she had been too free with her invitations. Administrator Rente hadn’t seemed to think so, though…

Ria sat up straight when a pulse from Iselyn’s communication stone cut through her thoughts. Summoning the stone to her hand, she pushed some energy into it to complete the connection.

“Iselyn, how is she?” Ria immediately asked.

“She seems totally fine to me… other than being in agony and barely able to move,” Iselyn’s inflectionless voice dryly reported through the stone.

“Ah! Don’t tell her that!” Orlisi’s voice complained in the background.

A smile touched Ria’s lips as she visualized the scene.

“Yeah, so not trusting our upperclassmen at all, I contacted Alenna to get the straight scoop,” Iselyn continued. “Our mutual friend here is going to be missing classes and extracurricular activities for the next several days if she wants to be recovered in time for the debut event this weekend. Malleron agrees with that assessment.”

“I’ll be back to full strength tomorrow, you’ll see!” Orlisi's declaration sounded a bit strained there at the end and was followed by a voiced ‘ach-cha-chaa’ of pain.

Ah-! Orlisi was supposed to do their hair and act as a chaperone! That would’ve been terrible if she couldn’t go—and it still might be!

“Thanks, Iselyn,” Ria gratefully told her friend. “Tell Orlisi ‘thank you’ for me and that I’ll be counting on her for my debut.”

“Right. Make sure you pay attention to everything Lady Asara tells you. There’s not much time left to prepare, and from what I’ve heard, a lot of important people will be at this event. It’s almost comparable to the event the Vesali hold to celebrate the Grand Games champions.”

Ugh. Just what she needed, more pressure! “I’ll do my best.”

“…Tomorrow’s familiar class will be at the training arena again,” Iselyn informed her.

Gah, when did they decide that?

Ria could almost picture her friend’s sighing eyeroll as the girl told her, “I’ll see you then.”

“Ah, right, see you then. Thanks.”

Iselyn ended the connection, and the sense of relief Ria felt as she returned Iselyn’s communication stone back to Jeni’s pouch was physically palpable.

And knowing that Orlisi would be fine, Ria might’ve even been a little glad that some temporary suffering had come the elf girl’s way, particularly after the sudden and excessive way proving the seed had been handled.

Tensions in Ria’s energy flow and aura that she hadn’t even been aware of eased, and letting out a long sigh, she reached over to run her hands through Ranger’s fur and played with his ears for a bit. Ranger didn’t seem to mind and repositioned to place his head on her lap to give her easier reach.

That was three strokes of good fortune over the last two days—the exceptional raw jade Ana found at the auction, getting Lestina for a tutor, and Orlisi’s injuries only being temporary. Maybe Xander really was beginning to favor her? She was careful not to get too optimistic, though. If any god was more fickle than the goddess of storms, it was Xander, the god of luck and adventure.

Her gaze caught sight of the towers of Vesali City’s castle as the carriage turned onto a cobbled road that ran past many of the city’s larger estates, and Ria’s thoughts drifted to the foreign princess. While Ria had only been mildly interested about the princess when Orlisi first decided to investigate, with the discovery of her own royal background, she was now keenly interested in getting to know the girl. Thoughts of future connections and alliances did figure in her consideration, but mostly, Ria wanted to learn more about what being a real royal was like—and maybe Xander would smile on her again.

As for her lunchtime efforts to learn more about Revant’s royal family, for their initial Revant research, she and Atresia had focused on the current knowledge available in geographic and political primers—things such as the publicly declared members of the royal family and official royal heraldry.

For a start, she had royal cousins. Crown Prince Vitruo officially married a duke’s daughter in a public ceremony that couldn’t have been much after Ria’s mother was born. Ria’s grandfather also had two officially recognized siblings, each with their own children and grandchildren.

It was a complication to her plans for revenge. Would she need to kill them all? Or was it fine to only kill the ones involved in the foul ‘conscription’ plan? And if her power came from the bloodline she shared with them, there was also the risk that they would all be opponents as strong as she was… or stronger. Having to resort to underhanded means would be far less satisfying than crushing them beneath her power, but expecting such to be within her ability was likely naive.

One of the primers included an inked portrait of her grandfather as a young man, and Ria wasn’t sure how to feel about how her brothers resembled the man. If she was honest about it, there was a resemblance to herself and her mom as well.

Learning of her cousins and more distant royal relatives wasn’t the only worry to come out of the research. The kingdom’s flag was a black shield emblazoned with a gold dragon centered on a field of blue sky and golden wheat. Black, gold, blue—the colors planned for her battle regalia. Was it a coincidence? Or had Lady Asara known? Had Lady Vienne?

Ria frowned. She couldn’t help wondering if the noblewoman’s kindness was all part of a hidden plan to put Ria on the Revant throne and use her to bring the kingdom’s resources under the control of House Novidus.

But if that were the case, would Lady Asara so readily let Ria and her bloodline fall into the hands of the Vesali? From the way the interaction with Lady Janacythe had gone, it seemed unlikely that the Vesali and Novidus were already allied toward such a goal… unless the coordination was being arranged in secret by the House elders or the heads themselves.

Was she overthinking things?

In the primers, there was no mention of a connection between Revant and orichalcum or any mentions of the royal bloodline’s affinity. Atresia pointed out that most royal families kept the specifics of their bloodlines as important national secrets and that the lack of information on such things was expected. So, there was a fair chance that her connection to Revant’s king wouldn’t be obvious just because of her affinity.

Though, that didn’t mean the Greater Houses didn’t have their own sources of information on the important families of other countries. Ria already knew that House Novidus had connections to the Inquisitors and suspected that House Vorshan did as well. Realistically, she guessed most of the Greater Houses had family members inside the Inquisitors as a matter of self-preservation.

Even so… whether the possibility of Lady Asara or House Novidus secretly knowing of her true origins and already planning the overthrow of the current King of Revant was worrying or an unexpected opportunity to be ridden to her final goals, Ria couldn’t know, and there wasn’t much to be done about it at this point. Other than putting faith in Xander’s Whims to lead events to outcomes she desired, the only plausible way she could shape the outcomes herself was to find ways to work the events behind the scenes so they turned in directions favorable to her goals.

A groan escaped at the thought. Xander’s priests were known to say that Xander tended to smile on those that made their own luck—that he would be more likely to favor those who helped themselves, who took risks in pursuit of success. So, being proactive and taking some risks was likely for the best, particularly if she had already gained the god’s attention.

The question was: who could she trust to help her with such a task? Though she had entrusted her secret to Atresia, Ria doubted the third year girl had the connections and skills to help her behind the scenes. She would need to take a larger risk.

Ria liked Lady Asara, and Lady Asara was clearly well-connected and influential, but with the changing scale of things, passively leaving her entire fate in the city administrator’s hands just felt unwise.

As to who else she could possibly turn to… though she was loath to admit it, Administrator Rente likely had the necessary connections and the skill to discreetly leverage them. Whether she could trust him to work on her behalf… would require her goals to be mutually beneficial to him and his plans. Though there was currently an imbalance in their relationship, she couldn’t ignore the possibility that Xander brought her ill-fortune specifically to give her an opportunity to form a relationship with the self-serving man.

She would need to explore that further. Hopefully, her gift to Leriah would be well received, but if in the end her situation required the creation of further opportunities, the day’s efforts had provided an alternate means to encourage such developments. When the time for lunch was drawing short, Ria had asked Atresia about fate magic, and found out that, amusingly enough, the most commonly used fate magic was a luck spell called Xander’s Luck.

Whether the spell was a restricted magic or not… was complicated. And bending fate in one’s direction could just as easily become a curse rather than a blessing. Atresia suggested that with Ria’s high divine affinity, the resulting weight of her luck might lead to causal convergences. Ria didn’t know what a ‘causal convergence’ was, but if it meant that she’d get drawn into more events than even what had already happened in her first week… surely it was a terrible idea!

If anything, Ria needed a spell that lessened the tendency for trouble to find her.

Reminded of something, she materialized her manual of spirit magic mediation techniques, flipping to a technique detailed near the back of the manual: A Mountain That Stands Unperturbed, An Anchor Within The Storm. Ria had hoped it was another calming technique that better matched her affinities and wouldn’t have the downsides of Lu Xi’s Tranquil Pool of Gently Rippling Calm, but even a casual reading had shown it to be something different.

At the time, she had wondered what use there would be for a technique that made one ‘anchored against the pull of fate’. She had thought that such a direct resistance of the gods’ influence on one’s life would surely invite trouble. But, if mages could use magic to influence fate, then that would certainly have an impact on others, and having a way to protect against such meddling could become very important.

Ria musingly rubbed her chin like a wizened old man. Possibly more importantly for her in the short-term, the technique could give her a way to use Xander’s Luck while being able to moderate the magic’s effects should they get out of hand.

With such in mind, Ria studied the advanced earth and spirit magic technique until the carriage arrived at Lord Jevaran’s estate and stopped beside the fountain in front of the main manor. A carriage with heraldry that seemed vaguely familiar occupied the space closest the manor’s front entrance.

The boy who helped her onto the carriage, helped her down and, after stopping a passing maidservant to inquire about Lady Asara’s current location, prompted Ria to follow him.

Unlike her prior visits, he led her around the outside of the garden. At first she thought the reason was because of the busy servants and craftsmen rushing to and fro preparing the outdoor space for the coming event, but they soon arrived at a large patio for entertaining that functioned as a side entrance to a stunningly large and beautifully constructed dance hall with tall, glass-windowed views onto the garden.

The garden apparently wasn’t the only location the servants were preparing as an equal or larger number of servants were using carts and ladders to get decorations into place within the ballroom as well.

Lady Asara looked up from where she was engaged in conversation with a finely-dressed older man and called Ria over, “Come, Ria. Stand before me. There is much we need to get done.”

Ria snuck a glance at the man beside Lady Asara and was curious whether his write-board was like the one she had purchased from Tallien. She didn’t let her gaze linger long, not wanting to disrespect Lady Asara as she approached and presented herself.

“Thank you, Loscio. You can return to your duties,” Lady Asara told the boy, and turned her full attention on Ria as the boy silently bowed and left. “Though I hear Iori has found you an etiquette tutor, teaching you a lifetime’s worth of refinement in the few days we have left is an impossible undertaking. Instead, we will be doing something else this afternoon.”