When master Hodson pulled back the cover surrounding the cage, the room was filled with gasps.

Vance wasn't particularly surprised. He'd been observing the creature through the use of his mana sense this entire time. The shape of its membrane was similar to a cat, but the similarities ended there.

Vance's attention was immediately drawn to the levifore's legs. There were six of them, each thin and spindly. Strangely, they didn't seem to be part of the creature's membrane. Instead of flesh and bone, they seemed to be created from something that felt like metallic mana. It curled these legs inwards, bending them beneath its body as if ready to spring upwards at any moment.

Beyond its legs, Vance found its face quite fascinating. It was an absolute mess of recesses and bumps. Vance reasoned out that it had at least one central eye at the top of its head, but other than that, the rest of its face seemed like a nightmarish mess of features that he had no real hope of deciphering through his mana sense alone. He now more strongly suspected the creature's appearance was really quite terrible, a theory confirmed by his classmate's reactions.

After a few moments, the levifore seemed to realise that it had been spotted. Seemingly at random, it began thrashing itself against the cage. Each time it made contact with the bars, it shrieked loudly. The sound was like the hissing of a snake but much, much louder. With each impact, the Levifore would push some of its legs out of the cage, reaching out towards the people in the room. Fortunately for them, Hodson had kept the cage at a good distance.

After a few moments of random thrashing, the Levifore settled on trying to reach through the bars to attack Master Hodson, who was closest. He stood just a little out of its reach, at a distance the Levifore must've found frustrating.

"Fortunately for us, alongside the terrible violence and incredible dexterity, these creatures have a fundamental flaw," Hodson spoke up over the shrieking levifore.

Master Hodson casually threw the cover back over the cage, obscuring the levifore once again. Vance could still sense it perfectly and watched as the Levifore immediately entered a state of absolute calm. The sounds of the creature slamming against the cage stopped in the same instant.

"A Levifore subjected to total darkness temporarily loses its object permanence. Basically, if you manage to lure one into a pitch-dark room, it will simply forget what it was chasing in the first place. Alternatively, blinding it works just as well."

Vance heard scribbling in all directions as his classmates took notes. His attention was still focused on the odd creature. It had begun to curl inwards, seemingly tending to some of the portions of its legs that it had damaged during its assault on the cage. It seemed to be secreting that strange variance of metallic mana to reconstitute the areas in which it had harmed itself.

"Why doesn't your voice alert it to your presence?" James asked loudly.

"Levifores have a very specific set of defences. They only care about being seen, which they have something of a special sense for. As soon as you see a Levifore, it knows that it's been spotted. Other than that, it doesn't really care. The research into exactly how a Levifore knows it's been spotted has thus far been inconclusive. It's questions like this that I hope you all will be able to answer one day in the future, should we fail."

The rest of the lesson consisted of Master Hodson going into more detail on the history of the study of Levifores. He ascribed their discovery to an unfortunate man named Marthane L'affont, who was the first Arcanist to properly document an encounter with a Levifore and later, was the first to capture one. The records continued to describe how at different points in his life, he lost two fingers, his left leg and eventually his life to his encounters with Levifores.

When class was over, Vance and the group headed back outside. It was early afternoon and Vance stopped to stretch and yawn dramatically.

"Tired?" Mariah said, nudging him mid-yawn. Vance tried to get it under control to reply, but James spoke for him.

"He's had a rough few nights."

"Keeping him busy, James? Watch out for this one, Mariah." Thomas spoke through a chuckle, giving James a light shove on the shoulder from behind.

After a small scrap between Thomas and James had broken out, Vance had finally recovered from his seemingly neverending yawning fit.

"Guys, what did that levifore thing look like? I couldn't make out the details of its face." Vance asked, still stuck on the previous subject.

"Mouths. Quite a few of them. One big eye at the top of its head and lots of suction-spike-mouth things." Mariah replied.

"...like a lamprey?" Thomas asked from somewhere low to the ground.

"Yeah! That's the one." Mariah replied excitedly like that word had been stuck on the tip of her tongue for hours.

With his questions answered, Vance pulled his curiosity from the subject of the Levifore and settled it onto other matters. Namely, Mariah.

"Hey, Mariah..." Vance leaned in close to speak with her on this particular subject. "This might sound a little odd, but you're feeling a little...different to my mana sense today. Is everything alright? I Can't quite put my finger on it, but it's like you're...vibrating? No that's not quite right..."

"Yeah, everything is fine, but I think I know what you're picking upon." Mariah sounded pleased. She pretty much always sounded excited, but this was an especially high level of giddiness. She grabbed Vance's hand and sent a tiny pulse of mana towards him as if to probe him. It was so incredibly weak that his natural defences dispersed it in an instant, but he was aware that she'd tried. Then, she tugged that hand a little bit towards her and he caught on. He sent back a pulse of his own which passed into her without any resistance he could notice. Then, he instantly knew what the difference was.

"Congratulations." He whispered, doing his best to keep this whole thing conspiratorial.

"Thanks, I'm waiting for a good moment to show off to the others. I had a feeling you'd figure it out, though. Keep it a secret for now?"

"Sure."

"Hey, Lovebirds! We're going to see if we can get Brad, meet us at the spot?" Thomas shouted from in front.

"Sure!" Vance yelled back.

After a little walking, Vance and Mariah were sitting out in the woods at their groups favourite camping spot. Vance hadn't been back here since the enlightenment incident, but he noticed that he felt a strange sense of homeliness here. Vance was laid back on a log, feeling a pleasant but far too consistent breeze flowing through his hair.

"Having fun?" Vance asked through a smile. "I Should've known you'd be trouble the moment you got your wind core."

The wind came to a sudden stop.

"What, don't you like it?" Mariah asked, feigning indignation.

"I didn't say that. Actually, it's quite nice. When did this happen, anyway?"

"Yesterday. That's probably why you could tell so easily. I think my internal mana is still a bit shaky. What happened with you last night?"

"I was sick in the night, but afterwards, I felt alright. It's not a big deal, I think it'd been brewing for a few days. I think I probably ate something bad." He replied nonchalantly, having handled subject whiplash quite well for once.

"Well as long as you're alright..." Mariah sounded a little sceptical but had nothing else to go on.

The two pottered on, talking mostly about Mariah's success in forming her first mana core. She seemed to be enjoying Vance's enthusiasm in complimenting her success. Vance stopped the conversation suddenly by putting a finger to his lips when he picked up on the others approaching.

"Seems like they didn't find Brad," Vance said.

"Shame," Mariah said quietly.

"No luck, guys, " James' shouted through the trees.

"We know! Did you find out where he is?" Mariah asked.

"Nah, nobody is at his house. They're probably out of the city." James shrugged and made his way over to the communal sitting log, closely followed by Thomas. James arranged himself so that he was close to Vance. When he saw a chance, he reminded Vance that they should probably be home in a few hours so that they could be there for when Nicholas arrived.

Thereafter, the group proceeded to waste away the afternoon with jokes, simple magic tricks and pleasant conversation. For Vance, it became more apparent as time went on that James wasn't in a particularly good mood, but he was putting up an excellent facade. In an attempt to be a good friend, Vance paved the way for them to return home.

"I think it's about time to head out, James." Vance stood and announced their departure.

"Yeah, you're probably right." James assented and began gathering his things, which he'd managed to sprawl everywhere in the last few hours.

"So soon?" Mariah began to protest.

"Yeah, I need to clean up after last night. I want to handle that myself before Malcolm finds his way to my room."

"That's not very noble behaviour..."

"You've seen me, right? I'm the furthest thing from a noble. I'm more of a lifelong field worker, as emphasized by my flawless jawline and muscular figure." Vance replied, putting his chest as far forward as possible, which wasn't very far.

"Uh-huh. Get going then, we'll see you soon," Mariah bid them farewell and helped James gather his things.

Thomas was scratching something into the ground with a stick and gave a halfhearted wave and a muttered goodbye.

Vance and James made their way back home. It took a little longer than they expected due to busy streets, but there were no extra carriages pulled up by the house when they arrived.

"Looks like we're on time." James breathed a sigh of either relief or resignation.

"Are you alright?" Vance asked.

"Yeah, I'm just worried about seeing uncle Nick. I don't really know what I'm supposed to say to him. All I've figured out so far is that 'Hi, your son is missing but it's probably fine. What's that? Nah, I haven't bothered to look.' seems like the wrong thing."

Vance heard that rare sincerity that came out of James when a situation turned serious. It was like a switch had flicked and suddenly all humour had left him.

"It's not like you purposely avoided helping. You were forbidden from it, remember? Not much to be done about that. I suppose it's just best to be supportive..."

"Yeah, you're probably right. I think I'll just try and avoid putting my foot in my mouth."

"Smart. That's usually my plan."

The two went inside and went about their separate ways to get ready. James said that he wanted to change into something other than the robes he tended to wear to school, Niall would often wear similar things and he was trying to avoid every little faux pas he could. Meanwhile, Vance made his way up to his room, where he made his bed, gathered up the glass and other cutlery he'd used last night and brought it downstairs, then returned once more to collect his wastebin, which would likely need a good clean. He picked it up and noted that it smelled absolutely awful. As an experiment, he focused his mana sense on the bucket, thinking to try and see if there was any way he could work out what exactly he'd thrown up.

As soon as he concentrated his mana sense on the substance inside, his head was sent reeling. He was instantly assaulted by dozens of distinct emotion-like sensations. He felt fear, hatred, anger, love, obsession, apathy and longing all at once and immediately closed off his mana sense. He managed to retain his grip on the bucket and miraculously kept it upright but lost his balance for a few seconds. All this time, his mana sense had been active but he'd never sensed anything strange, not until he focused. Vance felt his breathing accelerate and realised that whatever this was, it was similar to the behaviour of natural mana. Without focus, it would often simply blend into the environment and evade detection through its diminutive nature.

After he recovered from this emotional onslaught, his mind was still a little scrambled. Even so, it only took him a moment to put two and two together based on the bits Nathaniel had told him about his investigations so far. Fortunately, Vance loosely remembered hearing Nathaniel's voice downstairs a moment ago. In something of a panic, he firmed his grip on the bucket and rushed downstairs, his mana sense still largely retracted. He stumbled a little on the stairs but even without his mana sense, he knew this place well enough now.

"Nathaniel, I need you to look at this. I think there's dark mana in the..."

Vance was halfway through his sentence when he gently spread out his mana sense again and counted the people in the room that he'd just burst into. There were five of them. That'd be James, Nathaniel, Maddison, Malcolm and...

Vance was standing, foot firmly in mouth, holding a bucket of what was likely dark mana infused vomit, newly aware of the important guest who had probably made his way through the door moments ago.

"Oh."