I liked how my schedule looked, after all planning and discussing was done. Monday and Friday were pretty loaded, Tuesday and Wednesday kept me busy, Thursday was almost an off-day and Saturday was free entirely. The only thing about this setting that I didn’t like that much was the odd break I had between my morning and evening classes on Monday, but I could work with that. At least I would have enough time to get my beauty sleep the following day.

As for the rest of this first, lessons-free week I had on Welldark, it basically flew by me. The majority of the time I spent, alone or with companions, exploring more of Welldark and familiarizing myself with my new environment.

I visited Lisa’s Bakery a couple of times, because I liked her company. She gave me advice on a few things. I hadn’t asked for any but, as older people sometimes were, she just heard me mention certain things and decided to give me a little lecture based on it. I didn’t need most of it, but I smiled and nodded. It was a sign of care, so I appreciated it.

Welldark City wasn’t a huge, sprawling metropolis but it was still too large to scout out all of it in a week. I kept most of my sightseeing confined to the business areas, where the most shops and service providers were concentrated. Knowing where I could buy what would come in handy at some point.

Many more hours were spent walking through the halls of the university. It was, in many ways, even harder to get familiar with than the city and its many side streets. The twists and turns of the corridors were separated by green areas and different design philosophies that still shared a centralized theme. I only had a very rough idea where things generally were at the end of the week. I did know exactly where my lessons would take place though, which was the most important thing.

People who recommended a fashionable lateness had never been to an overcrowded lecture and I, for one, had enough from standing on staircases from just the introduction ceremony. There was no way I would be anywhere else but in a comfortable seat. Which, from checking out several empty classrooms, I knew Welldark thankfully invested in. Proper, cushioned seats with armrests and back support. Not cheap, mass-produced wooden awfulness that forced students to try and find a comfortable way to sit rather than listen to their teachers.

Aside from the exploration, I also spent time on daily routines and simple relaxation. Workouts, gaming, reading, napping, cooking and watching, there was no shortage of things I should and could do. Importantly, Esther was around for a lot of what I did, no matter what it was.

I used that time as best I could. Once the schedules kicked in, leisurely spent time like this would become rare. We would be exhausted after a long day or timetables would just not align, the usual drawbacks of having obligations in life. As it was, we got to know each other a little better, but nothing of major importance happened. That was, until Sunday.

I had gotten her to agree to a date. I had used the actual word in the suggestion, so there was absolutely no ambivalence about what she had agreed to when I took her out. It was to be a very simple get-together: visiting a good restaurant followed by a trip to a sports centre.

Admittedly, a sports centre wasn’t a particularly romantic location, but I wanted to show her that I understood her. Something practical had to be the target, therefore. A place where we got to look at additional workout tools and just generally strain our trained physique would work. The alternative had been the waterpark, but with the pool at home, I felt like she would see it as a frivolous waste of time. For the same reason, visiting a cinema was out.

That aside, I really wanted us to get moving somewhere. Watching her hourglass figure in motion was a thing of pure beauty and attractive women getting sweaty until their curves glistened was definitely a desire of mine.

The restaurant visit before wasn’t just form or my wish to have an hour or so of calm talks. Both of those definitely were a factor. For the most part, however, I wished for her to be satiated to keep her mood stable. A hungry Esther was an easily agitated Esther. Having her sated should keep her in a good (or perhaps workable was more accurate) mood.

Which was where we were at that moment.

The restaurant, Glitters and Gold, was a middle-class restaurant inside the city. It had the kind of prices that someone in my allowance category could afford, but not regularly so. As the name suggested, the restaurant was heavy on golden and glittering decorations. As the name also suggested, being a play on the well-known saying ‘not all that glitters is gold’, all of it was fake. From the cutlery, to the decorative flower depictions on the rim of the porcelain plates, to the frames of the oil paintings and the ornaments on the walls, all of it was only painted with gold colour.

This cheapness on the material side didn’t change the fact that it was a nicely decorated restaurant. The gold, paired with the chocolate brown of the walls and dark grey of the carpet, made for a pleasant colour combination. Thick curtains kept out the daylight, leaving candles and dim lamps to do the illumination. It was quiet, out of respect for the surroundings and because of the hour. Few people frequented this establishment around noon. All around there was a relaxed and luxurious atmosphere. The best I could ask for, without going to a truly posh restaurant.

“Did your parents decide to send you to Welldark?” Esther asked, suddenly ending the topic we had previously discussed. While waiting for my answer, she cut into her meal. The fork sawed into the medium-rare steak with ease. The cooked potatoes and the little salad at the side were diminished in equal measure.

“No, they had no influence on it whatsoever,” I told her, “They couldn’t have. I’m somewhat of a Neverborne.”

In places like Welldark, even those that didn’t understand the Dimensional Truth at least knew that it existed. It was common knowledge and nobody would be surprised to hear that an acquaintance had the power to traverse between worlds. The same could not be said for the majority of all places that could be travelled to.

When a person in a place that was completely unaware of the Dimensional Truth awoke to it, something quite unfortunate happened. Once they used their newfound powers to travel to another place, everyone, without exception, every friend, family member and random passerby, forgot about them. There was no way to resist it or reverse it, it was a simple fact of the Dimensional Truth.

It was a protective action that regular people couldn’t be blamed for in any fashion. The common mind was not prepared for anything associated with the piercing of the great veil. The Dimensional Truth made someone a pariah in their old home. Astral Capacity, magic, dimensional travelling, all of these things were instinctively rejected. Ignoring the unfathomable was much easier when the person presenting it was an unknown lunatic, rather than a loved one who suddenly started to rave about unbelievable things.

Those cast out of their society of birth were commonly called Neverborne. It was a title and a simple description. To everyone they had originally known, the Neverborne was never born. Uncreative, in many ways, but to the point and effective.

Esther raised her brows in a confused manner. The motion created an oddly intriguing little wrinkle between the elegant, black curves of tiny hairs. “I’m sorry to hear that?” her tone carried both genuine sympathy and a question. I could understand where she was coming from. Saying I was ‘somewhat’ of a Neverborne had to be odd to hear. It was, traditionally, a binary affair. Either one had been forgotten about or not. “I assumed you had parents of high stature. Your manners, while blunt in terms of sexual advances, indicate a certain training of etiquette.”

“I have…” I considered my words carefully, then shook my head. “...no. I have no parents that need mention.”

We both turned back to our meals. I had ordered the same thing as Esther, although I had ordered my steak to be done however the chef preferred. It had come back well-done, which was somewhat surprising to me. Unlike what many would insist, it was not a crime against steak-kind. As someone who had eaten things that were basically coal on the outside before, I understood the hesitation. This one was really good, however.

I chewed on the orderly cut meat and watched Esther. In one continuous sawing motion, she sliced a piece of her steak and gracefully moved it to her mouth. Perfectly upright the entire time, she brought it to her red lips without a single issue. I was glued to the fullness of those lips. Meat juices made them glisten, emphasizing the colour.

At some point, I realized neither of us were chewing any more. Her lips were, in fact, moving in a way that formed words. “Pardon?” I asked, as charming as I could.

“What is your background then, good Karitas?” Esther repeated her question. It was nice to hear her interest in me. “A Neverborne seldomly has vast relations or wealth.”

“Well, I went to Hell when I was about sixteen,” I responded, chuckling a little bit. As true as it was, even I could see that it sounded like the set-up for a joke. “Went to highschool there, became friends with Willt and Arlethia. Lucky for the two of them they had the potential to learn the Dimensional Truth. Then again, it’s a pretty likely thing to be inherited.”

“You only attended highschool in Hell?” Esther asked for reassurance, the confused look on her face still present. Slowly it dawned on me that she was engaging in a line of questioning to get somewhere. I didn’t know what that destination was, yet.

“Yeah, a few carefree years, nothing major happened,” I waved off. The last thing I wanted to do during my first date was bring up how many girls I had seduced in my formative years.

Esther froze in the middle of cutting off the next slice from her steak, “How do you afford this?”

“With the allowance,” I responded and then found out, immediately, that I had given the wrong answer. A screeching sound echoed through the restaurant, as her knife violently dragged over the porcelaine. Slit pupils and sulfuring, yellow eyes stared at me. There was no other sign I needed to realize I had seriously ticked her off.

“That allowance is 750 Dark,” her tone was dangerously neutral. In the lack of emotions, all I could hear was all of the blank negativity I saw in her softly glowing eyes. “It cannot possibly, on its own, cover expenses such as this, high-quality cooking ingredients, a laptop extension for the Ashod device, and still leave you enough to eat properly the rest of the month.”

“That… is true...I guess?” my answer came hesitatingly. I hadn’t given that much thought before. “No need for you to worry about my finances. I’ll-“

“I had assumed you were of wealthy origins,” she interrupted me, her cold, soft voice burying me like steadily falling snowflakes, “Had your parents given you the money to afford such a lifestyle, there would have been no need to worry about your expenses. As you just revealed, this is not the case. You are a fool to not look after your finances properly. At the current trajectory of expenses, you will run out of money a week before month’s end - at the latest.”

I had to wonder when she checked the price of the breakfast ingredients I provided, but now was not the time. Quickly running the math myself, I came to the obvious conclusion - that she was absolutely correct. The issue had been lingering around, but I just hadn’t felt the need to acknowledge it so far. There were so many more entertaining things to care about. Frankly, I didn’t understand why she cared so much about the weight of my purse.

“Again, no need to worry,” I tried to persuade her. “I will-“

“You will cease any noise, moronic Karitas,” she interrupted me again and raised her hand. It wasn’t a signal meant for me, but for the waiter, who hurried over much quicker than I had seen him move all day. Looking around, I realized that our ruckus had captured the attention of everyone else in the restaurant. We hadn’t raised our voices, but her tone travelled far enough in the quiet room.

The sound of her chair pushing backwards made my gaze fly back to Esther. The lady of my desires was already standing up, whirled around and marched towards the exit.

“Wait, what about the rest of the date?” I asked, still confused about what was going on. To be more exact, I understood the ‘what’ the ‘why’ was more of my issue.

Her only response was a stare over her shoulder as her fair features continued their fearsome display. It was incredible how much the change of her eyes could communicate. With a determined turn of her body, she resumed her strut towards the door. Her ponytail bounced with every heavy step of her boots. She left the establishment and me the centre of awkward attention. Whispers at my expense, amused and understanding, started all around.

The waiter tried to get my thoughts elsewhere. “Would you like me to package the remains, good sir?” Perhaps his motivation was to get me out of the room, resolve the scene and restore the quiet of the restaurant. Regardless, his words made me aware that my mouth was hanging wide open.

“Uhm…” I blinked a few times, raising my eyes from the remains of Esther’s steak, “...yes,” I then answered. Now actively aware of the issues that would befall me in the later stages of the month, I needed to save what I could on food. I reached for my Ashod, ready to pay, when the waiter made a halting gesture.

“That won’t be necessary, your company has paid for everything before she left.”

The confusion I felt accompanied me on my way home and lingered just like I lingered in the living room. After reheating them, I finished up the packaged remains. Foolishly, I thought the meal might clue me in about why things had gone south at supersonic speed. When that failed, I considered just knocking on her door. On the off-chance that she had also directly returned home, I could confront her about this.

It wasn’t as if she was the only one who could get angry. Getting berated and left behind in this fashion was far from how I had wanted our first date to go. I was owed an explanation, if nothing else, and I would demand it when the time came. For now, following that urge to confront her seemed unwise. A little bit of distance was necessary for me to order my thoughts and for her to, hopefully, calm down.

I tried to solve this issue, as I did with most, through self-reflection. I had a high opinion of myself. I had worked hard on my body and mind to live healthily and honestly, and that came with a justifiable level of self-respect. Having gone through these processes had also informed me that I was not and would never be perfect. Since I was flawed, there was a chance there was something here that I had done wrong. Before I demanded Esther to explain herself, I should try to reflect on what that was.

Whatever it was, I was unable to find it.

I was able to decipher that it was about the money. That was so abundantly clear it barely was worth mentioning. Why she got so angry about MY money, however, was a mystery to me. We weren’t an item, our finances were clearly separate. However I spend my resources, be it frivolously or not, should not have bothered her this much.

‘Guess I won’t solve this by myself,’ I sighed when the realization hit me that I had arrived at an impasse. Esther would have been the best to tell me about this. Since she refused to properly communicate with me, I had to confide and seek the advice of someone else. Luckily, there was a couple up two flights of stairs that I trusted with almost all of my issues.

__________________________________________________________________________

“You’re an idiot,” Arlethia said straight to my face.

The succubus was wearing a shirt three sizes too large for her. It was black, loosely hung from her shoulders, reached so far down it almost hit the entirety of her hotpants, and yet still was stretched around her chest. The breasts responsible for that display jiggled in a clearly unconfined fashion when she shook her head in raw disbelief. Dark red hair cascaded between her horns, while she sat up properly on the bed. It was her natural domain, so I wasn’t surprised she was there.

The actual owner of that shirt, Willt, was sitting in a nearby armchair, wearing only his pants. Whether this meant Arlethia had appropriated it after a recent ‘adult tussle’ or he had decided that it was way too hot to wear, I didn’t know. Regardless, the long-haired warlock, pushed up his round glasses, before turning the page on the tome on the dark arts he was currently reading.

“You are an idiot,” Willt echoed. “I get this thing immediately, so that says a lot about you.”

“How incredibly helpful of you two,” I couldn’t help but be sarcastic. Sitting in the same armchair I had been in when we discussed our schedules, I glared at both of them. “That’s exactly what I wanted, more berating and non-helpful statements. Could you at least give me a hint as to what it is?”

Arlethia sighed and came over. “Sorry, this thing is just really simple so it's kinda frustrating,” she said. “I’ll put it as clearly as I can: she’s pissed because you spent your money without thinking about what it means for yourself.”

That sounded about where I had arrived on myself and therefore didn’t help me at all. “Okay,” I responded only to immediately add, “but WHY does that matter to her? None of my previous girlfriends ever cared about the way I spent my money or whether or not I was broke.”

Willt closed his book with enough force that the clashing pages created a loud ‘THUD’. “Real talk, Karitas,” he said and carefully placed the thick tome on the table between us “It’s because nobody you dated before cared that much about your wellbeing.”

That was yet another thing I didn’t want to hear at the moment, but I swallowed the insult I felt. “What do you mean by that?” I asked as calmly as I could. Deciphering this was more important to me than my hurt pride.

“That none of them were in it for the long term relationship,” Willt elaborated willingly, laying out all of his thoughts on the matter. “Buddy, you do realize who you are and where you were, right? You arrived one day in Hell, without friends or family. You just attended our school and you were never shy about the fact that you were going to leave one day to build an Anomalia. Everyone, including the girls you dated, knew that. You can’t blame anyone for not getting invested in a relationship they know will end the moment their partner can go to a place they can’t go to.”

All of that made sense and yet I struggled to integrate that. “I had a lot of good times with these girls and I don’t think they didn’t care about me.”

“Some of your relationships ended exactly because they started to care about you.” Arlethia groaned, then sighed when I shot her a glance that bordered on pissed. I was having a rough day and our usual banter was grinding on my nerves. “Sorry, again,” she tried to speak more softly to me. “Look, as Willt said, they knew it was all temporary, yeah? There was no need to talk about your bad spending habits, because there would never be any lasting consequences for them. You definitely had a reputation as THE guy to have a good time with among the girls, but they also all knew they couldn’t get more than that from you. The one girl who you dated who thought she could get you to stay was, I don’t think I need to remind you, absolutely bonkers.”

“Yeah...” I admitted and looked inwardly to inspect my memories with this new narrative in mind. It fit all of my relationships like a glove. Pretty happy-go-lucky and, once there was just the hint of seriousness about them, they quickly crumbled. Given that I was bent on leaving, I had never considered any of that a problem. ‘Which would have just further amplified the issue,’ I admitted to myself.

Willt spun the book on the polished surface of the table. “You were the hot guy in class that everyone knew they could get together with for a fun time,” the warlock summarized. “In a school full of succubi and other demons, no less. The goal was never a lasting relationship for anyone. That’s what I mean when I say ‘none of them really cared about you’.” He stopped and gave me a long, apologetic stare, “Sorry, if that’s too harsh.”

“No, no, I get it now,” I waved off, considerably less annoyed now. Having found out what the issue was already put me at ease. I still had a distance to travel, but at least the blindfold was off. “Thought I had experience with relationships, guess I am just good at ‘expanded’ flirting…” I mumbled to myself and rubbed the bridge of my nose. “Okay, so what does it mean that Esther is so disappointed with me spending my money frivolously? It sounds like it's a good thing, that she cares about me that much?”

Willt picked his book up again, leaving me and Arlethia to have the talk about feelings. “It certainly means that she cares,” the red-skinned succubus assured me. “It also means that you have some improving to do.”

“When is that not the case,” I managed to joke at my own expense. There was a light, if tired, smile on my face. “So, what now?”

“I dunno know, dude,” Arlethia shrugged in an exaggerated fashion and headed back to the bed. “You got to show her that you can handle your money somehow. Can only do that if you get her to talk to you again. That’s where you got to start, in any case.”

“Right…” That dampened my flourishing mood. I knew the disease, the cure had yet to be made and accepted by the patient. How could I go about showing I knew about and was working on fixing my money issues? Getting enough Dark to cover the rest of the month would be a good start. There were several ways to go about that and I only really liked one of them. Namely, I was willing to bet that I could earn more than a bit by doing well in lectures. As the introduction ceremony had outlined, teachers sometimes hand out Dark to students they were impressed with.

Call it paranoia, but I got the inkling that telling Esther that I was gambling on the graciousness of teachers was not going to make her any less annoyed with me. I needed a solution that was both sustainable and showed that I was working on myself. Once I had that, I was not only in a position to get her forgiveness, but I could also confront her on her own shortcomings. Although her body most certainly was perfect, her personality had flaws like everyone else.

“Well, I guess I will try to talk to her first.” I gave both of them a thankful nod, before standing up. “Thanks, guys, for the support and everything.”

“Whatever allows me to verbally abuse you a bit,” Arlethia stuck out her tongue in a cheeky fashion.

I made my way to Esther’s room and knocked. I got no answer, which was of little surprise. More irksome was when I decided to text her and was still met with nothing. Not to be ungrateful for the wonders of technology, but I would have been happier without the little checkmark next to my message. That she had definitely seen it made the fact that she ignored me sting that little bit more. Then again, the sting was better than the steady pull of uncertainty.

What I preferred was of little consequence to the situation. The goal was to get back into her good graces. At the very least I knew she hadn’t moved out, thanks to all of the food still in the fridge. Her shoes were missing at the entrance, however.

And they were still missing when I woke up the next morning. I had wanted to catch her before she headed out. My biological clock had disagreed. After the weeks I had spent defying it, the worry that kept me awake the previous night had finally forced me back into my usual rhythm. I had slept soundly through the alarms and only gotten up when Willt came in to check on me. For breakfast and, more importantly, because today was the proper start of the semester.

I wish I could have been excited. There was much to look forward to. Classes would create numerous opportunities to talk to potential partners, in all the attractive shapes and sizes women came in, there were things to learn and knowledge to discover. Indeed, there should have been little else in my young life that caused me such jubilation. If things had gone as I wished them to, every second on the train towards Welldark university would have been one of anticipation, of thoughts towards future conquests, filled with eager chatter, jokes and such.

Instead, I felt as gloomy as the walls and towers of the gothic architecture that loomed over me. The dark colours, stained windows, enormous clocks and ringing of bells all resonated with my mood. Willt walked next to me. “What an impressive building,” he said, still in awe at the sheer splendour of Welldark University, “The way these golden trims surround the windows is outstanding. The building looks almost happy today.”

“Guess it’s just my mood that makes the entrance look like a giant maw then,” I grumbled, glaring at the ridges around the gate. We continued to walk away from one of the many stairways that connected the university proper with the underground train station. We followed one of the walkways that would eventually deliver us to the segment of Welldark university that our first lecture was at. The barrier between segments was marked by courtyards and the style differences of the buildings.

Looking at it from a distance, Welldark could easily be misunderstood as one gargantuan building. In actuality, it was a maze of structures sprawling around a central set of structures. Additions had been made as the university grew in wealth and popularity. Despite this continuous expansion, the architects involved had never once given into the temptation into adding something that was ‘unique’. All of it maintained the coherent gothic theme and each building had been put together by skilled craftsmen of all trades.

There were thirteen sets of buildings, each dedicated to one of Welldark’s thirteen branches of education. Between them were the courtyards, adding places of rest and chatter between the places of knowledge and learning. Some of these courtyards had been transformed into their own pieces of art, be it gardens or plazas of stone and statues. Others had been left alone, separating the dark stone with green grass and even a little patch of forest here and there.

The walkways that cut through and enveloped these courtyards were themselves notable, given how much care had been put into their layout and shape. Not once while walking from one end of Welldark to the other were they ever without the protection of a roof.

In neat, three metres distances from each other stood grey pillars, carrying tiled roofs of a royal purple colour. Usually, there was nothing between the pillars, letting each student catch some fresh air or easefully step into the courtyards between lectures. It was all very orderly, but the number of walls surrounding the attendants of the university was not so large as to feel oppressive.

As always, I did appreciate Welldark’s mixture of natural growth and control. The cosmos didn’t need too much swirling chaos nor oppressive order. Balance between those forces was difficult to find. The headmaster clearly understood this and made the effort to do the best he could.

“No, that’s not just you,” Willt responded to my earlier assertion about the maw. We stopped for a moment before the staircase that led up to the gate. Set several metres into a thick stone construct, the open, dark wooden door was surrounded by several layers of ornaments. They were designed in a fashion that was just a bit too rigid, making them seem like an endless number of canines arranged in to several layers of arcs. The polished stone stairs, narrowing towards the gate, looked like a long grey tongue. It was purely a matter of proximity, but I still couldn’t unsee it. This gate was the only part of Welldark’s design I disliked so far.

“Truly, it is the maw of renewed responsibility and darkness that devours us to… ah, you know what, nevermind,” I sighed. A number of bodacious girls passed us by, walking the same path as we would, and I simply sighed a second time. My friend looked twice between me and the attractive women, who soon disappeared into the building.

“That bad?” Willt then asked, elaborating when I raised an eyebrow his direction. “You stopped midway in your philosophising and you didn’t even try to awkwardly flirt with those girls. That’s two red flags. You doing alright?”

“Yeah, well,…” I sighed and let my shoulders hang until our eyes were at the same level. “I feel like most energy has been sucked out of my soul and the rest is slowly evaporating. All the while, I can’t do anything about it.”

“Welcome to the world of having fights with people you well and truly care about,” Willt gave me a pat on the shoulder. “It never stops being annoying. I don’t look forwards to the next time Arlethia and I get into a fight.”

“You guys have those?” I wondered. Their relationship had always appeared harmonious to me, the snarky banter being just that and nothing more. I wasn’t naïve enough to believe they never had disagreements or anything, but I connected at least a moderate of shouting with the word ‘fight’ in a relationship.

“Everyone has fights, if you do it right, you just manage to resolve them quickly and have fewer of them,” Willt shrugged, making a gesture for us to keep moving. Soon enough, we were past that devouring gate.

I could basically hear Arlethia commenting on our current talk, ‘This just shows you are doing it all wrong, Karitas!’ or something minorly mean to that degree. Sadly, she was in another class and had left the mansion before us. It was a truly saddening circumstance. From the outside, our word fights may have looked moderately vicious, but it was all in good fun. At this moment, I could really use a playfight to distract me from my loathing.

“The only way to get over this feeling is to actually resolve the situation, isn’t it?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

“You could also break up with her,” Willt jokingly suggested.

I sighed again, heavier this time. The option was on the table. I didn’t want to do it, but saying I would never do it was the same as giving Esther carte-blanche to abuse me however she liked. Being a lovestruck fool was understandable, normal even to a degree, but I wouldn’t be enslaved by love.

We took a corner and soon found ourselves in the alchemy class. Analysing the room let me escape my dreary thoughts.

The lecture hall was designed with the specific needs of the lecture in mind. While the general layout remained the same, the teacher having their podium, chalkboards and large table, and the students' seats stacked up in rising rows that allowed everyone an easy view of that podium, there were adjustments made to both teacher’s and students’ places to make it safe for the practice of alchemy.

There were glass cubicles around every table, preventing potentially explosive results from blasting unobstructed through the room. The table itself was covered with chemical utensils and reminded me of a workbench. A small workbench, by the standards of a proper craftsman, but a workbench nonetheless. The ceiling above held additional sprinklers and the ventilation system was visibly more pronounced. There were other, more arcane security measures whose exact function I couldn’t decipher.

If there was one thing to complain about, it was the lack of proper chairs. While adjustable in height, the workbenches were clearly meant to be used standing up. All we got was a wooden stool. I understood that keeping any kind of potentially reactive or dust-spreading materials around was a security concern, but my butt wasn’t happy with the difference. Once the lecture began, I tried and failed to listen to the teacher.

I couldn’t miss the fact that something was being said. No matter the barriers of glass, speakers in all corners of the room made sure the soundwaves were distributed equally. I also followed the teacher’s movements. From the outside, I doubtlessly looked as if I was paying attention. None of what was said really registered though. My thoughts kept circling around Esther.

I went through all the ways I could show my repentance. Then my thoughts travelled over the different levels of anger I could justifiable muster towards the way she left me behind. Finally, the realization resurfaced that I had fallen in love with a rather difficult person. From what I understood about her, Esther was fixated on resolving the issue through her own work, rather than communicating what it was in the first place. That was in some ways admirable, but it also made it difficult to stomach her as a friend or potential partner.

‘She is probably thinking about my flaws in a similar way right now… I hope.’ It was an odd hope, to want someone to be frustrated with me. More than that, an equally sadistic and selfish part of me hoped she was agonizing over all of this as much as I was.

I really should have listened to the teacher, especially given the laboratory setting of the class. As was tradition with the first lectures, there was very little in terms of actual lecturing. Instead, we discussed what was planned during the semester and what we could expect to learn. There was also the standard organizational stuff.

One thing I did catch was a joke about how he expected attendance to half by the end of the first month. While that was true, such was the nature of voluntary attendance, it was the security protocols that I really should have listened to. Even with an Astral Body, there were things that could cause permanent harm. A wound that stayed open until one’s mana was depleted became a permanent part of the body. Embedding a glass shard into the back of my eye socket was a pretty good way to go about that.

I heard what certain signs meant, where the fire alarm was and all of that stuff. The noises entered my left ear, swirled around in my skull for long enough to let me know that something was going, then exited through the right ear without having actually let me save any of the provided information. Then, suddenly, the class was over. It caught me off guard, not because time felt as if it had passed particularly quickly but because I was somewhere else with my thoughts.

When I realized that the teacher let us go twenty minutes early, I felt a little more justified in my surprise. That was yet another thing that reminded me of typical school experiences, both those that I had experienced myself and the university life I had read about. On the first day of every class, the teachers ended things early because they just had to blow through a bunch of organizational things.

As we headed out, Willt assured me that he would let me look over his notes late. Even on days on which I was concentrated, I only took minimal notes. My memory was splendid and had always been enough to get me through, provided that I listened to enough of the lectures. In my current mindset, my friend was a lifesaver and I thanked him honestly.

We had to separate afterwards, having taken different classes for the next time slot. Willt went to a class on herbalism, while I headed to my music lecture. When I was alone, I simultaneously appreciated and loathed it. On one hand, it gave me a bit more silence to order myself in, on the other, that wasn’t something I really wanted to do at the moment.

I distracted myself by closely analysing the classroom of my next lecture. It deviated from the standard design in a different, and in many ways more concrete, ways than the alchemy lab. Rather than a room with declining rows of seats, it was a simple flat room of rectangular shape. A large number of instruments were orderly distributed along the walls, with small chairs and stools available for those who wanted to take them. Attached to this room were several smaller side rooms, I guessed for practice, and an actual recording studio. It was impressively equipped and it still failed to properly distract me from my current situation.

When the teacher came in, she managed to catch my attention for a little while. She was a human, an Asian at that, with almond shaped eyes. Going by her appearance, she should have been in her early thirties, but with magic involved such things were hard to say with certainty. While she was doubtlessly attractive, it was her clothes that made my gaze stuck to her for a little bit.

The tightly sitting vest she wore over a plain white shirt, combined with the short pencil skirt, gave her the kind of sexy secretary vibe strippers were aiming for. Her dark hair was tied up into a bun and a pair of black glasses finished the outfit. Personally, I fully supported teachers wearing things that made them look good. Tight shirts and short skirts were the norm on Welldark anyhow, especially on hot summer days like this.

She introduced herself as Maria Trostwald, which was a rather Germanic name for someone of her ethnicity. Not that it mattered to me. I tried my best to keep listening to her, as she walked up and down in front of the gathered students. The steady staccato of her high heels gave a rhythm to her words that made it a bit easier to concentrate. Her speech was brief, clarifying that this was a class about learning music together, not putting together some great musical or orchestra. That was exactly what I had signed up for, so it was reassuring to hear. After she had made that point abundantly clear, she told all of us to just fiddle around with the instruments.

Everyone eagerly sought out something they were either interested in or they already knew to varying degrees. I let myself be taken by the stream of people that were drawn to the most stereotypical instrument: the guitar. There were more than enough for all of us, so I just grabbed one and retreated to one of the stools. Then I sluggishly pulled at some cords, trying but not really trying to produce a pleasant note.

The more ‘intimate’ layout of the class allowed the teacher of this one to catch my evident distractedness. I noticed that she was strutting over to me quickly and invited the opportunity to stop mindlessly looking at my hands. “You must be Karitas?” she asked, a playfully stern expression on her face.

“Yes,” I answered, nodding in a respectful manner. Usually, I would be more wordy when responding to a good-looking woman. However, my mood aside, I had a valid reason to keep my flirting to a minimum, namely the black mark that circled around her left ring finger, like an actual ring tattooed into her skin. It was the clearest and simplest sign that she was the member of an Anomalia.

“I didn’t take you to be a loner, after your performance at the introduction ceremony,” she said, not minding the scarcity of my words. “This class is about performing in the art of sound. You can do it alone, but I judged you to be more of the group activity type.”

“Oh, I don’t usually produce pleasurable sounds on my lonesome,” I couldn’t resist that little innuendo. Her friendly approach succeeded in pulling me out of my bubble of relative misery. “There is simply a lot on my mind, as of now, Miss Trostwald.”

“Maria is all fine,” she assured me and dragged a chair over to sit down. “You don’t seem like you want to talk about it.”

I shook my head, confirming her suspicion, “I already know what the problem is and I have to solve it myself.” As friendly as she may have been, I didn’t want to just pour my heart out on a stranger. Even less did I want her pity. Taking gift horses was one thing, begging for scraps wholly different. “I’ll have it resolved next week,” I promised, hoping she would stop worrying.

The playfulness of her gaze drained away, leaving only the stern muster. “Not good enough,” she told me, crossing her smooth legs. “Music should be the outlet for your troubles. Art is where tragedy and passion meets to create something transient. I do think your voice has the potential for a wonderful baritone, but if you mope around the first day of class, only molesting that poor guitar, then I have little interest in showing you the way of music.”

I wrinkled my forehead, confused by this confrontation. She was more eccentric than I had first thought and I wasn’t quite sure what she was trying to say. What she did have a point about was that the guitar in my hands may as well have been a piece of driftwood. “So, are you pushing me out of the class?”

“No,” Maria made clear immediately, “I’m telling you to put that guitar down, stop sitting like it will solve your problems, go into one of the practice rooms with…” she reached out to an assortment of music books along the wall and seemingly picked one out at random. “…this and to not stop practicing until you actually feel like you have accomplished something. THEN you can tell me whether you actually want to keep attending my class.”

I took the well-used book and flipped through the first few pages. It was clearly for beginners, easy song with easy to hit notes, detailed descriptions of how one should best breathe for which depth of voice and all that sort of stuff newcomers could need. ‘Might as well,’ I thought and nodded. We both got up and she opened the door for me. “Thanks.”

“Don’t thank me, I just want more beauty in this world,” Maria responded and pulled the door close behind me.

Just like that, I was completely alone. The practice room’s isolation was complete in almost every sense. The carpet was thick and the walls covered in echo-eating, red foam. It was large enough to leave room for five people plus their instruments. At the moment it was just me, the book, and a notestand. I opened the book and placed it on top of that notestand.

“Okay then, here goes nothing,” I mumbled to myself and drew a deep breath.

What I sang for the next hour was a load of awful nonsense. The notes weren’t clear, I messed up my breathing and inhaled in the middle of words on several occasions. It did help, though. By messing with the lyrics and just doing some goofy things in the privacy of the isolated room, I managed to cheer myself up. It didn’t let me recover, but I was better off afterwards than I was before. Whenever I started to drift back into bad thoughts, I started the next lesson in the book.

A book that I had thoroughly underestimated. It started nice and friendly, but soon laid out challenges that I could not keep up with. Every now and again, I tried, but in general I stuck to repeating the things I could do and reading the explanations about tone ranges. As Maria had guessed, I found myself most comfortable using the baritone. Both physically, my throat didn’t feel violated when I moved in that range, and mentally.

Bass, for me, felt unfitting because deeper sounds had a tendency to dominate the background and I was definitely not one to move behind the curtains. It felt like something best used to support a group and that was just not who I was. Proactivity was something I took pride in and I cared about my individuality more than anything else.

At the same time, tenor felt too light. My reasons for not wanting to be of a higher note were less well formulated. I just preferred higher pitches to be left to women and felt the vibrations deeper in my throat to be more pleasant. While I was unapologetically individualistic, I also didn’t want to rise from the crowd so much that it made me a loner.

‘I’m reading too much into this,’ I told myself and concentrated on just doing the best I could in the lesson. The long and short of it was that bass and tenor singers had their roles, but I felt comfortable in the middle.

I didn’t feel quite so comfortable in self-study. The problem with doing something purely by a book was that, the easily spotted mistakes aside, it was easy to get into ‘I am definitely doing this right!’ mindset about a number of things. Those things could be missteps and those missteps could turn into habits. Since Maria had shoved me in here to have some fun, I pushed those doubts aside and just tried to keep an open mind about being wrong about everything I was doing at the moment.

Sometimes, when I really got into it, I managed to forget entirely about my situation for a minute or two. When I remembered, it stung a little bit, but it always felt better than before. After some time, I decided I had enough and headed outside the practice room.

I found the classroom empty. At first I guessed that everybody occupied the other practice rooms, but my bag was the only one still lying about. It seemed that my fellow students and even Maria had already left. Quickly, I checked my Ashod for the time. It was ten minutes before the lecture was meant to end. Maria had likely called the class early, but I was more impressed by the fact that I actually managed to forget the time.

‘Maybe I have a calling,’ I thought and put the book back into its place on the wall. ‘I can’t exactly tell Maria that I want to stay after she left though. I’ll have to send her a mail or something.’ “Oh, Miss Trostwald, what a gift you have given me today, you muse of art and melancholy,” I hummed sophistry to myself and picked up my back. My voice was hoarse, to no surprise, and I decided to seek out the cafeteria. I had two free blocks now and two more lessons in the evening, so this was my prime opportunity to get lunch.

I bought myself a nice warm meal and a cup of tea with added honey. Only halfway through the meal did I realize the cost of both. If there was any more evidence needed that I sucked at handling money, that was it.

Now that I was aware of my personality flaw, my thoughtless actions bothered me fiercely. ‘I didn’t even think about it until now,’ I scolded myself, while I chowed down the meal. I had already paid for it, losing my appetite now would do me no good. ‘I hope Esther is beating herself up like this for exploding at me…’ I let out a long sigh. ‘I’m deflecting again. Focus on your own issues, Karitas.’

The more I thought about it, the more I realized this wouldn’t be easy. My spending habits weren’t awful because I was addicted to buying things or anything overt like that. I just didn’t stop to think and plan ahead. My life had always been a bit tumultuous, so plans for more than a few days or weeks were usually just thrown into the trash by the time they should have been enacted anyway. Getting an allowance from Beelzebub for all these years also had lessened my respect for finances. Something given has no value, and all that.

‘That’s all the whys but what do I do about it?’ I still wondered several hours later, sitting in the Gravity Magic class. I had already sat through the entire Aesthetic Arts class as well. Both then and now, I had listened a little bit, but zoomed out easily whenever things started to get repetitive or boring. Or even when they were interesting. Or at random points. To end the reiterations, I was feeling better, not restored.

The ultimate conclusion was that I wasn’t sure what I would do. Seeing Esther again was the only thing I knew I had to get over with. Perhaps I could ask her to slap my wrist whenever I spend unwisely. That wasn’t the self-sufficient solution, but it was something in the right direction.

Eventually, that last class, too, ended and I went home. It was little over an hour before midnight, but I still decided to walk home. The hot summer day had cooled into a pleasant night and the clearness of the air got some of the clutter out of my mind. When I arrived at the mansion, the first thing I noticed were Esther’s shoes, sitting orderly at the side. That she was still around was all I really wanted to know, as I walked towards the bathroom.

It would have been easy to walk past it and knock at her door, but I resisted that urge and simply took a shower. As much as I wanted to resolve things, I decided that there was no need to force things now when I would see her tomorrow. My pride also insisted that I shouldn’t keep crawling up to her door. I was a man, not a dog.

I dried myself off and left the shower with the towel wrapped around my waist. Willt and I were good enough friends that we didn’t mind seeing each other naked. Due to swimming classes, it had happened in the past. We wouldn’t seek it out, neither of us was swinging in the bisexual direction. It just didn’t matter. Arlethia had made her stance clear recently and Esther had already seen me in swimming trunks. It would have taken a very specific angle to make a difference to that article of clothing.

Once in my room, I hung the towel over the heater. The metal thing was off, but it still made for a good drying stand. I dumped my clothes in one of the wooden boxes along the side of the room-sized bed. That one had become my designated laundry basket. Then I simply let myself keel over.

I bounced off the mattress once, then laid on my stomach with my arms sprawled out. The mental stress of the day slowly subsided. It had only been a week, but my subconscious already recognized this bed, this room, as mine. After half a minute of remaining still, I rolled over on my back and stared at the ceiling. One more time, I went through all of the things I wanted to say tomorrow, then I closed my eyes.

Given the amount of things on my mind, I thought it would be difficult for me to fall asleep. No such thing. Perhaps my spirit was simply exhausted or maybe I had underestimated my carefree attitude. Whatever it was, on the repeat of my lines for my reunion with the raven-haired lady, my consciousness faded away.

_______________________________________________________________________

I awoke naturally. This should have been cause for jubilation. Being greeted by the sound of silence in the morning was a luxury rich and poor around the worlds all clamoured for. The cursed sound of alarms caressed many an ear first thing in the morning and I hated it more than even the average person.

‘Wait… did I even set the alarm?’ I thought and shot up. The blanket, which I must have grabbed some time through the night, flew across the room. Frantically, I searched for my Ashod. It wasn’t in its socket by the laptop. ‘The laundry,’ I realized and crawled over to the wooden box. I hadn’t taken the Ashod off yesterday, so it was still stuck on yesterday’s pants. I grabbed them, pulled the belt off and then separated the Ashod from the clasp holding it.

I pulled the metal halves apart, my Astral Capacity fed into the device and created the screen during the motion. Greeting me on the display was the time: 7:53. I had slept about eight hours, as was normal. Relaxed, I dropped back into a lying position. I probably had missed my opportunity to offer Esther breakfast, but that was fine. Until we had talked about our differences, I didn’t want to give her things I had paid for.

“At least it’s Tuesday now,” I mumbled to myself and heard the hoarseness of my voice. It had only gotten worse overnight. My usually smooth voice was raspy right now and my vocal cords felt scratchy. ‘I hate that the Astral Body doesn’t fix things like that.’

I inserted the Ashod into the laptop extension. Since my morning was free, I could go after my morning routine without any hurry. I had my first class at eleven, and that would be when I saw Esther again. There was no way she would skip out on a class for the sake of avoiding me. She wasn’t that type of person. Before or after that class, I could talk to her again.

Unless Willt and Arlethia were so absolutely wrong and Esther had, in reality, gotten so annoyed with me that she switched her schedule altogether to not meet me. ‘Her shoes were there, so that can’t be it,’ I reminded myself. ‘Nobody that goes that far would stay under the same roof.’ I clicked on my uppermost bookmark.

My favourite yoga instructor smiled at the camera - smiled at me, the viewer. Today, that failed to make me feel good about the day. Only the smile of a certain, amber-eyed woman could have done so.

___________________________________________________________________

I used some of the high-quality food I had bought for Esther and I for breakfast. It was much better than the cup noodles I would have had otherwise, especially in the protein department. Afterwards, I had a basic but brilliant idea and downloaded a simple planning app for the Ashod. I punched in how much (or little) money I still had and vowed to myself to keep that number updated. Hopefully, seeing my funds dwindle would activate self-preservation. The automatic ‘you have this much money for every day of the remaining month’ function certainly did.

There was more to the app, like the ability to separate my remaining funds into categories. Food, gifts, favings, and other such things were in the suggested list of subdivisions. All of it just demonstrated further that I had a lot to learn there.

‘Really, in hindsight, this HAD to happen,’ I scolded myself and sighed, sliding my Ashod back into the corresponding holster on my belt. ‘Just didn’t think Esther would be bothered by it…’ I shook my head and straightened my back as I walked down the road. ‘No being down, you have your opportunity to fix it today, Karitas. Positive energy! If I don’t fuck this up she might call me ‘good Karitas’ again.’

Admittedly, that did make me sound like a dog looking for a compliment. Her voice was just that wonderful. Hearing it was like getting my ears wrapped in silk and then softly caressed by the sleepy sighs of a woman in one’s arms. There was nothing sweeter and I wasn’t just saying that because I was infatuated with her. Her voice was simply like the first kiss of the summer sun breaking through a cloudy sky.

I left the house early. My usual morning occupations post-workout lazing around and watching stupid things, I couldn’t really appreciate at the moment. In order to give my mind the time to sort things out, I decided to take the scenic route to Welldark. Once I was past the train station, I realized that my thoughts kept steering away from the things I wanted to say to Esther and from my own inadequacies.

This was, in my opinion, a good sign. My philosophy about thoughts was that those that kept rising to the surface again and again were deemed by the subconscious to not be fully unravelled yet. A metaphor I liked was to imagine the brain to be a bureaucratic complex. The conscious mind was the managerial elite and the subconscious the vast workforce. The workforce was quite able and did most things without warranting constant checks, but it simply had no authority to make all decisions. Whenever there was something it didn’t know how to handle, it would be sent back to management for an evaluation. If management sent that back down in an incomplete or otherwise insufficient state, it would be sent back up.

Much like bosses sometimes had to deal with very annoying underlings, some thoughts re-surfaced many more times than the active mind appreciated. Not a pleasant experience. Of course, in the opposite way, there were times the workforce may want to keep certain things from the management to avoid the fallout. Trauma could be understood that way.

The point of the metaphor here was that I took the fact that I could no longer really stay on topic of Esther’s anger with me to mean that I had sufficiently mulled over it. Further information down the line may change that, but for now I had peace of mind. Excluding the urge to fix the situation.

‘Maybe I should take the train after all?’ I considered, no longer needing the long walk to sort my thoughts. I stopped where I was and looked at the gothic building in the distance. Then I looked at the road ahead. It was made from black, grey and silver stones that had been put into an artistic array that reminded distantly of the night sky. Distantly was the key word. Its main purpose was still being a road, one sometimes used by heavy automobiles carrying the luggage of hundreds of students. It was pixel art made with square stones. Quite impressive, despite the low resolution. ‘I’ll be early anyway,’ I thought and set out.

I kept to the right side of the road, where tall trees provided a bit of shade and cool air. In that, I was not completely alone. 1000 people were housed in the first-year apartments, but almost everyone took the train and the hours at which they headed out was dependent on their schedules. As such, meeting someone on the road was a rarity. Having the pleasure of walking behind a woman with such a massive bubble butt was a sign that lady luck was smiling on me.

Even from a distance, I could make out the salivating shape. Every time she took a long stride, her skirt would jump just enough that I could see the crease between her thighs and that round ass. Her skin was pale, immensely so. Milky, despite the intense sun. It only intensified the lustrousness of the shadows her bottom-heavy curves cast. A spanking would make a wonderful red rise from that paleness, I reckoned.

Similarly, I appreciated the visible jiggling of her thighs. They were nice and thick, fitting for that ass and far from the long straws many ‘supermodels’ had. Whoever had decided that thin legs had to decorate the front of beauty magazines needed to squeeze some meaty thighs. Such a sickness could only be cured through thickness.

Her hair waved in the soft wind. Long, white and straight strands, combed carefully backwards and staying in that orderly arrangement. Ears pointier than that of a human, but not any longer, betrayed her half-elven origin. With diligence, she carried herself, looking straight ahead. I realized I knew this woman.

‘Knowing’ was a strong word. I had seen and minorly interacted with her before. It was Aclysia, the daughter of the headmaster and the woman who Esther had defeated before I challenged her in turn. She was, as I verified with my own eyes, adequately talented, tremendously sexy, had an ass countries would go to war over, and, right now, alone.

I weighed my options.

There was no way my current infatuation with Esther was over because I looked at a butt that rivalled hers. No, my feelings remained the same as before. However, my mission statement on Welldark, and the only thing about my future I knew with certainty, was that I was here to build a harem. Laying the groundwork for my relationships beyond my hopeful future Queen was a good idea in almost any case.

‘Remember, say nothing that’s too cheeky,’ I warned myself. Derilea had not been appreciative of jokes that had been overly buddy-buddy and judging the daughter by the mother was generally reliable, especially if the two had a close relationship. Given that they looked very similar, both in appearance in body language, that seemed to be a good base to operate from. I could always swerve if I was proven incorrect.

I accelerated my steps, deliberately hitting the pavement a little louder than I had to. Just like I wanted, she noticed me before I was next to her. Her ears twitched in a cute way and she turned around.

Clear eyes of an emerald green, the essence of spring caught in a person, greeted me. Her face had a nice heart-shape to it, the top of it softly outlined by the roots of her white hair. She was absolutely gorgeous. A pale half-elf with light-pink, full lips, standing straight, her petite breasts pronounced as well as her pear-shaped figure allowed. I only now noticed that she was holding a salver in front of her stomach. It was the item state of her Artefact, as the introduction ceremony had shown, capable of turning into a spear at her wish. Although Aclysia was in her school uniform, that salver was a natural part of her maidenly disposition.

Our eyes met, as I had hoped. The three stages of approaching someone unknown were resolve, attention and conversation. I found the best way to grab attention to be a few seconds of uninterrupted eye contact. Enough to make clear it wasn’t a fluke, not too much to make it creepy and with a confident smile to slide right into the first words. “Hello,” I said and realized again that my voice was quite hoarse. The word I wanted to sound like honey on warm bread was more like roasted toast. Not unpleasant either, but bland and crispy on the surface.

Aclysia’s expression was unmoving, just as her mouth remained close. Her feet soon followed suit and she stopped in her tracks. Something about that amused me. Maybe because she was the second disciplined woman I’d gotten interested in lately, I knew that her silence wasn’t a sign of disinterest. Although her quiet diligence was different from Esther’s demanding sternness, I recognized that she was choosing her response carefully. After about three seconds, she gently bowed her head, “Good morning, Karitas.”

I was about to respond with something approximating ‘It barely still qualifies as morning,’ but managed to bite my tongue. After ten didn’t strike me as morning, but I had just told myself to not be as cheeky as usual. Instead, I went with, “I’m honoured you remember me, Aclysia.”

“I am, likewise, honoured,” she straightened back up and looked at me, chin slightly raised. She was noticeably smaller than me, about a hand’s width, but that was enough to please me. Not to bash large women, they had their own appeal, but in general I preferred my partners shorter than me. How much size difference there was didn’t matter much. From the supermodel to the shortstack, I appreciated a vast array of shapes and sizes. As long as the sexy woman looked up to me with their adorable eyes, I was satisfied. It was one of those things that let me get up in the morning. A basic, protective instinct, sure, but potent as well.

After a few seconds, I noticed the expecting look in her eyes. She wanted me to continue the conversation. That was yet another difference to Esther’s attitude. The raven-haired lady cared only for words as a way to communicate and was happy to remain together in silence. How Aclysia looked at me carried the wish to hear me. The half elf’s diligent attitude appeared to have created a more subservient conversationalist. That was to say, she was a listener, not a talker.

That was my theory, at least, and one I got swiftly to testing. “I thought you might appreciate some company,” I said, ignoring the light sting of pain in my throat that came along every word. I took a small step and made an inviting gesture. She took the pointer and both of us resumed our walk, now next to each other. “Your fight during the introduction ceremony was graceful. A very impressive display.”

She stiffened up. I had hit a nerve. I knew what I had done. It was a controlled explosion. Unpleasant topics could be a good way to start conversations. “I lost,” was her simple retort, giving me a side glance. She was re-evaluating if I was worth her time. A thought-process I had to quickly stir in my direction.

“Yes, you lost, but you still fought well,” I clarified my position, keeping the warm smile on my lips. “I realize that it wasn’t that pleasant an experience, but you’re still one of the most powerful amongst us newcomers. If you keep training, you will be one hell of a powerful woman. With your strength and beauty, it is doubtless that many shall desire you. Indeed, it may as well be written into the stars themselves.” It was most certainly written in my eyes.

Aclysia’s shoulders dropped, as the tension in them dispersed. My strategy seemed to have worked splendidly, as she gave me a slow and thankful nod. The most important thing was that she knew I wasn’t making fun of her. ‘Maybe I should offer to train with her?’ I considered. It was certainly an easy excuse to spend time with her. It also seemed a bit early for such an offer. I discarded the idea.

“I thank you for the kind words,” Aclysia replied and then looked at me with new silence. I had the suspicion that it would be on me again to keep the conversation going. However, Aclysia proved that she may have been more prone to listen, but she was not a quiet onlooker. “Esther’s appearance was unforeseen… Still, it shames me that I lost…”

I was reminded of the talk between Aclysia and her mother that I caught the tail-end off. They had said something about Esther’s true identity. Given her status as the headmaster’s daughter, Aclysia likely knew things that weren’t in the public profiles. My curiosity was immense, but my self-control was out. She was neither the person to ask, nor did I deserve an answer through this method. “That bad?” I asked instead. “Did your family demand that you win?”

“My family expected me to succeed, but they didn’t demand it. The disappointment I feel is a burden of my own making,” she softly shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. My failures are mine to learn from.”

“A wise policy,” I agreed and backed off the subject. A casual one immediately came to mind. “Did you already have any classes today?”

“No, I would have stayed on campus if that were the case,” I half-hoped she would gift me with a little smile, but her face stayed the same. Diligent, inviting to have a conversation, but not overtly friendly. Initial success at approaching her wasn’t the same as immediately having a strong bond.

“You’re not heading towards the next Astral Cultivation class, by chance?” I asked, somewhat hopeful. Greedy as I was, I wanted her to become interested in me as quickly as possible. Esther was my number one priority, but I knew that a gorgeous and high-profile woman like her would be swarmed by suitors. It was best to get my foot in the door early and for that I needed to expose her to my charms.

There would doubtlessly be complications, stemming from both Esther and her being in the room at the same time. Perhaps arrogantly, I thought I could handle it. When it came to romance, I was more than willing to jump additional hurdles to get what I wanted. Only things that made me feel like I was wasting my time or disrespecting myself would stop me.

Aclysia shook her head, ending that line of thinking. “Servant class,” she told me where she was going instead.

My interest in her increased by about three margins. One because I liked diligent girls. Two because I liked maid outfits. Three because I liked housekeepers. “Is that a class about how to handle servants?” I asked, half-joking, just to be sure.

“No, it’s about learning how to optimally work as a servant,” she wasn’t the slightest bit embarrassed by this. On the contrary, she clutched her salver pridefully and faced me. “You must understand that my mother is of the opinion that women should know how to keep a home, something that I agree with.”

It was a pretty conservative worldview, one seldomly found on a campus with people with supernatural powers. Some people would call it antiquated. Personally, I thought that there was some fundamental truth to it, so I was pleased to hear her being in tune with it. Not that any general leanings should have forced any individual into a certain lifestyle.

‘If she is willing to take care of it, I’m more than willing to create a home,’ the thought came naturally to me - and I meant it. Every hardship and obligation that came with that prospect would be worth it, if that beauty greeted me at the door and that ass in the bedroom. “You seem quite eager about that,” I observed, digging deeper into the subject. She seemed passionate about it and passion was an easy way to keep a conversation going. “What would your servant duty entail?”

She quite happily began to list the various chores, some of which I hadn’t even considered existing. Making sure the place was clean and laundry ironed were obvious ones, but that a servant should have known every dimension of the room so they could advise during furniture shopping seemed a bit much. Sometimes, she took a pause and then said something in a peculiar tone of voice that I quickly realized was here insinuating something more. Something unsavoury and very pleasing. Each time after she said something in that manner, she cast down her gaze in a submissive fashion.

I noted this behaviour with great interest. Derilea hadn’t struck me as the submissive sort, despite her maid appearance and demeanor, and so I had categorized her daughter similarly. If it turned out that Aclysia was a servant inside bedroom as well, if she was a submissive and perhaps even a bit of a masochist, then she was absolutely someone I needed in my life.

When I spoke up, I did my best to keep my lecherous comments to teasing. As interested as I was in her sexual preferences, I remained on careful footing. Our conversation continued smoothly. The little gaps between our turns talking diminished and ultimately disappeared. I allowed myself to let my less immediately charming qualities of overly wordy philosophizing and cheeky banter to come out in small doses. One time, I even managed to make her laugh. It was just a small giggle behind a raised hand, but it was the sound that hearths deserved.

I would have accompanied her all the way to her class on other days, but the closer we got to the building, the more I was reminded of my situation. Between spending more time with her or resume contact with Esther, I had to choose the latter. My lovestruck heart left me little choice in the matter.

As such, we separated at the outskirts of the university grounds. Just before we did, I asked for contact information and she gave it to me swiftly, it was clear she had just waited for my question. With this, I would be able to text or call her and she anticipated when that would happen.

A good amount of progress for a mere thirty minute talk.

_________________________________________________________________

With strident anticipation, I flew down the paths and hallways. I stopped in front of a door, clearly different than any others around. Rather than a wooden, expertly carved, generally simple rectangle, I was looking at a golden frame that held in it a beautiful arrangement of stained glass. It was another depiction of the night sky, albeit far more detailed than the street had been.

I opened it without hesitating and stepped into the small foyer behind it. A sign on the wall informed me that I was to leave all I had with me there, including my shoes. I recognized Esther’s blue shoulder bag among the items others had left, a thing of moderate quality and practicality. It didn’t suit her and I had let her know as much when I had accompanied her buying it. It had, however, also been cheap. I hung my own bag next to it, a black backpack that was worn from years of use.

My anticipation peaked. For all the things that could go wrong, seeing her again was my foremost desire. A second door separated me from the proper classroom. This one depicted the sun and a green field, the former being the dominant force in the image. Through the stained glass, I could see the movement of people as blurred shapes.

It occurred to me that the main reason for the foyer was the increase the isolation to the world outside. Astral Cultivation was a process of deep concentration. Noises being allowed to disturb our meditation would be detrimental to the effort.

I hung my bag next to Esther’s, left my shoes next to hers, and turned to the door. My strides remained firm. Doubt did exist in my mind, but want and confidence were stronger. I wouldn’t have given all I was to date Esther, such would have been the start of a very unhealthy relationship, but I was prepared to give it my all. Almost the same words, yet worlds apart in their meaning.

The room I entered was circular, with a dome acting as the ceiling. Equally spaced out windows interrupted the dark walls and dulled the daylight with their stained glass. Each window depicted a different celestial body or formation. The moon of Titan on the opposite side of the room caught my eyes for the longest. Most of the others, I didn’t know. The golden, slanted windowsills had the names of the depicted stars and planets engrained on them, but I had no interest in reading them at the moment. Instead, I looked at the people, scanning for her.

There were about 30 students in the room, 28 of them women and only 1 other guy besides myself. That number populated that room quite well, making it feel filled but not cramped. Some were standing, others sat comfortable on one of the mats that had been arranged in a circle that ran parallel to the walls of the room. While the mats were of a midnight blue, the ground was of polished black marble. White veins ran through it, spreading outwards from the centre of the room like a mixture of lightning, nervous system and an eye. That central point was depressed, like a bowl, and also black. At first I thought not much of it, but then I noticed that this was the scorched colour of ash, not the glistening smooth of marble.

I had never heard of anything being burned during Astral Capacity training. Neither did the white, plastered ceiling show any signs of soot. The silver-spotted twilight of the room was transcendently clean except for that empty central point. ‘I do still have things to learn, otherwise I wouldn’t be here,’ I reminded myself and looked back down. Then I spotted Esther.

I hadn’t seen her immediately, courtesy of the other man in the class standing in front of her sitting form. He was taller than me, broader than me and generally fell in the category of ‘mountain of muscle’. There were quite a few of those types around Welldark. If the women were at their peak physique, it followed that the men were as well. He didn’t look half bad either, his buzz cut harmonized well with his square jaw.

I wasn’t remotely interested in men, but I could at least acknowledge it when they made the effort to look good. Respect didn’t change that he was currently talking to my Esther. A possessive thought that rose on its own and that I let remain in my mind. Not everything that had to do with love was undiluted sunshine and I didn’t want it to be either. It was the motivation to be competitive.

As my enthusiastic steps carried me over, I realized the almost total lack of sound they made. Everything was quiet, like the nightly tundra. No sounds from the outside reached in, despite this room being directly adjacent to some sort of courtyard. Not even the conversations of my fellow students properly reached my ears. They were dulled to whispers, just like the light was dulled to dusk. The quiet was almost oppressive, now that I had noticed it.

I extended my hand and put it on the taller fellow’s shoulder. “Excuse me?” I asked, my cordial tone temporarily shattering the quiet. The man turned his head and glared at me with his dark eyes, as if challenging me to keep speaking. Without hesitation, I faced that threat. “I would like to talk to the lady in private. Would you mind leaving us?”

The challenge ebbed away in the seconds it took the tall man to answer. Doubtlessly he recognized who I was and, and as a fellow freshman, he likely realized that a confrontation with me would have been unwise. Twice, he glanced back and forth between me and Esther. Then he nodded, “Sure,” he said, in an almost friendly tone. If he was bothered that I was ‘robbing’ him of an opportunity to flirt with Esther, he didn’t let it show. People of his stature were easily stereotyped as aggressive bulls, but I didn’t get the feeling that he was anything but a normal human. That was, in the common sense way. The crocodile tail growing from his lower back changed things on the species layer.

He stepped away, doubtlessly going to talk to any of the 27 other, less attractive women in the room. My interest in that was fleeting at best. Instead, I took the last two steps I needed, before sitting down next to Esther.

The raven-haired lady of my desires sat with her legs crossed, her shapely butt partially resting on her heels. My eyes instinctively glided over her hourglass figure, the red shirt and the dark pants hiding so little and yet so much. I swiftly moved up, my ogling reserved for a less tense time in our relationship. Her eyes were closed, showing that she had fully ignored the crocodile-man the entire time. Only when I was comfortable, did they open a gap-wide. Then she fully turned her gaze to me. Like a pair of small suns, the amber of her eyes seemed to glow in the room’s twilight.

“Hello,” I said, quietly. The unnatural silence had the advantage that my words didn’t carry far. Distantly, I heard laughter that I knew should have been loud, coming from the group of women the crocodile-man was now speaking to. Their interference was limited and my own voice wouldn’t reach anybody, as long as I kept it down. I was thankful for that relative privacy.

The amber of her eyes grew brighter, reaching the colour of sulfur. The very sound of my voice seemed to annoy her. I was prepared for anything she could have thrown at me. Any scolding or viscous insult, I had steeled myself for. Only a wish to never see me again, I didn’t know how I would handle. Otherwise, I was prepared for the worst.

Esther closed her eyes again and took a slow and controlled breath. “Ka-ri-tas…” she responded, and I could hear how she was measuring every syllable. She spoke my name with annoyance and appreciation, equally. When she revealed her eyes to me again, they had returned to their amber colour. The controlled breathing continued. She was obviously trying to stay calm.

There was an urge to just tell her to spit out what she was actually feeling. After spending so much time preparing for another explosion, her calm demeanour was almost offensive. Rather than demand that she got unreasonably mad, I said what I knew I had to say. “Look, I realize that I’m terrible at handling my money. I’m sorry that angered you. I wanted to spend time with you and prioritized what worked. I… yeah... “ I sighed, feeling like I should have said so much more, but I didn’t have all of the words. “You got angry because I wasn’t looking out for myself… I’m sorry that I created that situation. I’m sorry… I…” I stopped there and waited for a reaction.

I waited for a whole minute. Although I had largely gotten used to Esther’s habit of only speaking after she had formulated her thoughts, in this particular instance the topic and the sheer length of the delay had me try my best not to tense up. That she kept staring at me the entire time didn’t help. Still, I kept my composure. We were like two predators measuring each other. I refused to be the mouse before the snake. We were equals.

“I will compensate you,” was all she said before turning her head and closing her eyes again. The shoulder that pointed to me felt as if it was made from ice.

All is fair in love and war and every war had battles there were best delayed to an opportune time. That those were all the words she had for me after careful deliberation meant I couldn’t coerce more from her if I tried. However, with the avenue of talking temporarily closed, I turned to another one that regularly brought me success with her.

Two days without her had left me thirsting for the sight of her. The cute swing of her nose, the perfection of her round ears, and the enticing mixture of order and chaos in her bound hair, each silky strand seeming to have a will of its own, they all served to recharge my batteries. The scent of citrus and cherry. The curve of her profile. The large breasts that rose and fell with every breath. Shamelessly, I partook in it all.

Her eyes were open a bit again, barely but clearly observing me. She said nothing, showed no disapproval of my clear display of attraction. Testing the waters, I inched a little closer to her. Then a little bit more still. Centimetre by centimetre, I bridged the distance, until our shoulder touched. It was most definitely not made from ice. Her smell was more fulfilling, now that I was so close to her.

She shifted besides me, pulled a knee in so it didn’t poke into my leg. Ever so slightly, she leaned towards me. A tiny smile played around her lips and was gone as quickly as it came. I let out a very long breath as stress was expunged from every fibre of my being.

No permanent damage to our relationship had been caused. She was still clearly willing to be around me, to let me be by her side and to push her here and there. From that base, I could mend the cracks that had formed. Like a broken bone, I would make sure it would come back together stronger than before.

I was too happy with what I had to push it any further. Just feeling her warmth was enough for me at the moment. Letting her acclimate to my presence, hopefully reminding her of all my good qualities, was a good first step. The silence seemed inviting now. Inviting to close my eyes and direct some attention inwards. I failed to remain there for more than two minutes at a time. I had to gorge myself more on Esther’s sight. That appetite just couldn’t be satiated. Every so often, I caught the lady of my desires looking at me. She was going through the same circles of introspection and observance.

Punctual to the second, the teacher for this class entered. I had felt that Esther’s eyes were little suns earlier. Although I found hers much prettier, I had to admit that his deserved that metaphor more. Their colour was a genuine gold and the magic his entire body radiated created genuine light in his irises. He was a bit taller than me, but a bit shorter than the crocodile fellow. His build was moderate - well-maintained but not bulky. Although there was a chance he was slimmer than he appeared to be, under his clothes.

He wore an odd mixture between oriental robe and suit. A dark grey overcoat with loose sleeves hung over a purple top that was closed like a robe by a thick belt. A fair bit of muscle and collarbone was visible in the gap above. It ended below the waist. A pair of dark suit pants and darker shoes covered his legs and feet.

Everywhere on his clothes hung little decorations and items. Charms, ornaments, pins and medals were scattered all over his chest and hung from his belt. A golden necklace and earrings were particularly noticeable. His brown hair was lazily combed back, giving it enough structure to look styled, but not more than that.

The man exuded magic like normal people did moisture.

“’Sup,” he casually greeted all of us with a raised hand. His every step and motion caused a series of sounds from the dangling charms clacking together. The supernatural voice suppression didn’t affect him in the slightest. “I am Omnius Magnari, Branchmaster of the 11th discipline of Welldark: Magic.”

I blinked a few times. ‘Was the Master of Magic supposed to teach this class?’ I asked myself. Next to me, Esther wrinkled her forehead. Similar reactions were seen all over the room. I wasn’t alone in my confusion, at least.

Omnius swiftly ignored all of that and continued on, “In this class you might find things that will leave you perplexed, but you will have to live with it.” He arrived in the middle of the room and ran small circles around the ashen centre, looking at everyone as he spoke. “The alternatives aren’t exactly pleasant. Neophytes like you tend to think that the Dimensional Truth is only a blessing. The Neverborne among you may have a better idea about the complexities, but even you will fail to grasp the entire reality of what we are in contact with. That is, for the time being, at least. NOW!” His voice was like a whiplash that caused all hands that had been slowly raised to ask a question to be lowered again. “Situate yourself to be as comfortable as you can be. Sit relaxed, maybe slump your back a little, make it a posture you can keep for at least twenty minutes without moving.”

He looked around as people shoved aside their confusion to hastily obey. I didn’t move. A more comfortable place couldn’t exist in the universe, at least not when it came to sitting. For a moment, it seemed Esther disagreed. Then I realized that she was just shifting from cross-legged, to kneeling. The consequence was that we were a little closer and her thigh brushed against mine. I caught a pleased look on her face afterwards.

Omnius looked around. Everyone else had distanced themselves from one another, seeking a form of isolation. His gaze stopped at us for a moment. Then he smiled ever so slightly and pulled a tiny bell out of his left sleeve. Shaking it, he created a ring. Not the soft, high sound one would expect of such a small thing, but the deep, full bellowing of a church bell. I could feel the noise reverberate in my lungs and my teeth, before it was devoured by the walls. It vanished as if a string had been cut.

“Good, close your eyes,” he said and we all did. “Just relax. Think about the happenings of the day and let go of them. Be at ease.” Music started to play, a relaxing tune without much intricacies to it. “Today, just meditate. Next week, everything will start in earnest and then you won’t have this hour to resolve the things you must.”

It did feel like he was talking directly to me.

___________________________________________________________________________

The class came to an end way too quickly. I was relaxing, relishing in my drifting thoughts and the limited contact I had with my desired lady, when the music the Master of Magic supplied suddenly stopped. Somewhat unwillingly, I rose from my trance. The process was familiar to me, similar to how I roused from sleep every morning, albeit without the pull of tiredness. Meditation, like lucid dreaming, had always come easily to me.

I opened one eye halfway, not wanting to awaken too much and become unable to slide back into the trance. When I realized Omnius was simply gone, I blinked my way to full consciousness.

‘Some teachers here have odd habits,’ I thought and looked around. Nobody else had surfaced from their meditation yet. Not even Esther. Especially not Esther, as I found out over the next ten minutes. While more and more people rose from their trance, she just continued to sit there. She was deeply relaxed and showed no signs of waking soon. People started leaving, since there was no teacher around to tell them otherwise. Eventually, only the two of us were left behind.

Of course, I did consider shaking her or employing other hands-on means of rousing her. However, I was much too happy to keep enjoying our current closeness. The look on her face was so tranquil, freed from her usual discipline, that I pushed off ending her meditation for as long as possible. Not like we had to be in any hurry. After this class was our lunch break.

‘Maybe I should try to implant some hypnotic suggestions, mhm?’ my perverted self hummed into my thoughts. ‘Not that that would do any good,’ the reasonable part of me added, ‘hypnotism can’t make people do anything they wouldn’t normally.’ My monologue continued on with, ‘There are some things that she let me do in the past that I wouldn’t mind repeating…’

The want to implant a hypnotic suggestion that went along the lines off ‘you want me to touch your boobs’ was as basic as it was potent. Regardless of what my dick thought was the best course of action, I remained sitting still. If she had trances this deep through simple meditation then I might get what I wanted without any underhanded attempts. All I needed was to stay in her good graces and start the relationship properly.

Movement behind her closed lids clued me in that she was finally starting to stir. “Esther?” I carefully whispered into her ear. “My lady?” Almost, I could have nibbled on her earlobe. Her dark, finely swung eyebrows quivered a bit. Then she opened her eyes. She looked at me so quickly, I could still catch the narrowing of her slit pupils in response to the light.

“Good Karitas…” her sleepy voice sent delighted shivers up and down my spine. “What is it?”

“The class is over,” I told her and then, redundantly, added, “We’re alone.”

“I see,” Esther was now fully awake again. WIth a couple more blinks, her eyes and expression hardened to her usual stern demeanour. “I was aware of the passage of time…,” she denied me the second half of that statement. Instead, she grabbed her tricorne hat that sat next to her on the mat. The white feather bounced slightly when she placed it on her head.

“But?” I tried to tickle that unsaid stuff out of her. I had the inclination that it followed my train of reasoning and I could always use a compliment.

The raven-haired beauty wordlessly rose to her feet. She offered me a hand, which I gladly took. Once I stood, Esther forthright turned on her heels and marched out. I followed, with the obvious excuse that we shared the remaining classes of the day allowing me to keep her company for as long as I deemed appropriate.

“And?” I tried again to prod her in the foyer, to no avail. Esther was now fully committed to the silent treatment. Not the cold shoulder though, as she made sure that we kept close to each other. She wanted to be around me, but not to talk. A somewhat childish response to pressure, but I could work with it.

We made our way to the cafeteria. It was, perhaps, the part of Welldark that could most closely be compared to a normal university. The walls maintained the gothic aesthetic, but inside the large hall were queues of students that held plastic tablets, ordering pre-cooked meals that they then carried to long, white tables lined with cheap, easy to clean chairs.

Welldark’s menu was organized in 3 times 3 choices. The remains from yesterday at the cheapest, today's menu at the average and meals the cook felt like preparing individually on the high-cost range. Each of those had two regular and one vegetarian option. Both Esther and I had the steak with mashed potatoes and peas from the middle segment. Esther didn’t comment on my choice, not even with a disapproving glance. I opted to wait until after the meal for any new conversation attempts. That had been proven to be the winning experience.

I was almost too distracted by watching her devour her meal to eat myself. She had the voraciousness of a lioness but the grace of a noble. By the time she was done with the main meal and moved onto the free treat that came with it, usually a small bowl of pudding or something else sweet, I had barely moved through half my meal. Once she had gone through that as well, her eyes wandered over the table.

She was staring sideways at my tablet or, more specific, my own treat. A bowl of cold rice pudding topped with cinnamon and sugar. Silently, I picked it up and put it on her tablet. She hesitated even after I pulled my hand back, so I gave the bowl a little prod from the side, causing it to slide in front of her. “That’s free, so I can do what I want with it. You won’t owe me anything because of it and it’s not a sacrifice I can’t afford.” I stated all of that and then dedicated myself to my steak again.

“You have my gratitude,” Esther replied and we finished the rest of our meals at about the same time. It had been tasty, not as good as the steak at the restaurant, but certainly good for cafeteria food.

“Are you still angry, Esther?” I asked right out of the gate.

“No,” she answered with an uncharacteristic quickness. I heard no lie in that single word, not even a white one. With that, the rest of my tenseness fully melted away. Some of Esther’s rigidness also vanished. I hadn’t even noticed it before, but now that it was gone, the difference was palpable.

“Thank you Holy Father,” I mumbled under my breath, then tried to dig a little deeper. “Anyway, what do you mean you will pay me back?”

“I will act exactly as stated, you shall be compensated for everything you spent on me,” Esther explained swiftly and to the point. “Every last Dark, you will receive back.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but I quickly worked out that she would not be dissuaded no matter what I said. She was beautiful, noble, stern and proud – and women of that mixture were maybe the most difficult people to be moved from their chosen course. “You don’t have to,” I nevertheless assured her, just to put it on record. “The last thing I want is you putting yourself in a bad situation because of me.”

“Nothing negative will happen,” she said like she was recounting a simple fact. Her hands moved to scrape the last remains of pudding out of her bowl.

“…What, did you contact your family to get you money?” I asked and earned a terrible noise as my answer as Esther’s spoon scratched over the inside of the porcelain bow. I had a terrible flashback, the sound mimicking that preceding her anger at the restaurant.

“No,” the single word was like a crack in a thin sheet of ice that separated me from a vast, black ocean. I added ‘family troubles’ to the list of topics I would revisit only after we had gotten more intimate.

“Well, if you insist and won’t do anything that harms you in the process, I’ll take your money, I guess,” I said, caving to her will in this affair. “How was yesterday?”

“An utter waste of time,” she reported, moving the spoon to her mouth and sucking the little remains of pudding off. It was shining clean when she finally put it down. “A combination of the dullness of the courses and my stressed state of mind. I assume your own Monday hasn’t been pleasant?”

“You could say so,” I began to extrapolate. “I was shaken by how you left me, my lady, and it hurt me quite deeply. Most of the day, I was caught in worry that you may wish to rid yourself of my person. That you are willing to sit now next to me alleviates my pains greatly.” I dared to put a hand on her back and, when she didn’t object, moved it a bit further until I held her by the waist.

“Did you cry?” she asked all of a sudden, her eyes downcast.

That did strike me as an odd question, but she appeared to feel actual guilt. An easily exploitable emotion, if one knew not to demand too much at a time. I left it to sociopaths to figure that line out. A proper relationship built on the truth was more to my liking. “No,” I therefore responded, “where does that question come from?”

“Your voice is hoarse,” she stated, quizzingly tilting her head. A silent request for me to disclose the real reason of that circumstance.

“No, I… well, I sung,” I didn’t know how to package the truth in a more flattering or interesting way.

“You… sung?” her words carried surprise and amusement, as if the image of me singing was hilariously misplaced. “What did you sing then, Karitas? An ode to loathing?”

“Kind of, I screamed at the wall for an hour, is how I would describe it,” I said. That wasn’t as much a lie as it was a healthy over-exaggeration of what had truly happened. Something I was motivated to keep at, by a minor, throaty giggle. “You see, I had been moping during Music class when the teacher, one Maria Trostwald, took interest in my suffering. She told me that I should have been making art rather than be lost in melancholy, for that is just unproductive and my tormented state then was the baseline of great creations. Given that I then continued to horribly abuse the musical range, once she had banished me to a practice room, I have to declare that her view on this has been thoroughly debunked.”

With every sentence, the corners of Esther’s lips had to concede more ground to the slowly forming grin and I felt the vibrations of withheld laughter in her torso. When I then made a number of sounds that resembled not even a parody of death metal growling, she actually laughed out loud. It didn’t last long, but it did make my mood exceedingly bright.

Still smiling, Esther spoke up, “Perhaps, I, too, should pick up singing. It appears to have aided you greatly.”

“It will have done so when I sing to you and you don’t want me to stop,” I put on my best flirting voice. Which, just with Aclysia earlier, was a bit compromised but the intent still got across. “And if you wish to sing a duet with me, there are two places that seem appropriate.” I leaned in closer, until her hair tickled the tip of my nose. “One is a much more private affair than the other.”

Esther put a hand against my chest and softly pushed me back. “We shall see if you get there, good Karitas,” she hummed, putting a hand on my thigh. If she slid just a bit further up, it would have been a truly heavenly touch. Instead, she stood up, leaving me teased and forcing me to take my hand off her waist. “Let us walk - somewhere else.”

Where we went and what we said wasn’t really that important. Everything we discussed could be summarized as little, unimportant things people talked about when they were starting to get close. Whether or not she liked olives, for example. She did, for the record, and so did I. We talked about this movie or that workout routine. Oftenly, we drifted into the topic of our philosophical values. Stances on things like freedom versus security, rights, and duties. It was interesting to have these talks with her. On a certain level, it was downright necessary.

They say differences attract and on a surface level that might be true. For anything that was meant to last, the underlying structure of values had to be similar, at least in my experience. Two people that didn’t believe in the same fundamental values would eventually come to clash over them. Large ethical differences would show in small and petty things, until the disaster was unavoidable. That wasn’t to say people couldn’t be happy with a partner that had vastly different opinions, only that those opinions had to come from a point both sides could see and agree on. Marrying a sinful succubus to a chaste angel was, nine out of ten times, a recipe for misery.

A noteworthy discovery I made during the talks was that even skirting around the money issue would not make me a happy man. Whenever I tried to tickle out of her what she was going to do to repay me, she pressed her lips together and dismissed the topic. Her solution was shrouded in mystery and I did not like that at all.

I had apologized, I even voiced a few ideas I had for being more careful in the future, but Esther didn’t say any more than the ‘I will pay you back’ she had earlier. I could be patient, yes, but I also thought that whatever she was doing couldn’t be that bad that she had to keep it quiet from me. If it was that bad, I needed to know about it. I swallowed all of that for the moment. I didn’t want to start a new fight on the day we saw each other again. Light pressure would suffice for the moment.

Just like the girth of our conversation was largely unimportant, so too did the remaining classes of the day fly by without much worthy of mentioning. Yesterday’s problem of internal loathing had fully inverted, now that Esther was next to me during all the lessons. Touching her in all the little ways I could get away with was intoxicating. I pushed it too far a few times, Esther slapping my hand on such occasions, but generally she did more than tolerate what I was doing. It was keeping me from paying too much attention.

Tuesday rolled into Wednesday and finally I managed to actually concentrate on the classes. Not that there was a lot to pay attention to. Engineering, like Alchemy, was all about common sense safety precautions. Somewhat alarmingly, Cooking was as well. I couldn’t help but giggle at the prospect of what ingredients we would use for us to need warnings about explosion cases.

It wasn’t until the last class of Wednesday, Unarmed Combat (Advanced), that something interesting and unexpected happened.

The teacher was an almost dwarfishly small guy called Stiltzkin. He was a hideous person with warts all over his face and on his massive nose. His hair was a dark blue and mimicked a troll doll in texture and style. This mid-forty man did not seem to care, in the slightest, for any kind of boring initiation business.

“You’re here to bash each other’s faces in,” he growled in an unpleasant, deep tone that firmly cemented in my mind that he was a crossbreed between a dwarf and a troll. “No need to wait until next week for that. Partner up with someone and start sparring! I want to see what you maggots can do!”

I scanned the room for a partner. Because violence, particularly the close quarters kind, was more popular among the men of most species, I wasn’t surprised that the gender ratio in this class tilted more towards men. As the starting difference was 1 to 10, even a noticeable tilt only ended with us being 1 man for 5 women. It therefore wasn’t as if I was lacking in attractive, potential partners. The bigger difficulty was that most people in the room already knew each other.

This was the advanced version of the class, most of the students in attendance were my seniors by one or two semesters. Among the freshmen I was one of the (if not the) strongest member. What talent I had was counteracted by the combat education everyone around had already received. I doubted all of them were stronger than me, but a fair number of them would be. Welldark wasn’t the kind of place I could dominate just because I was more apt at wielding Astral Capacity and had a better Artefact ability than most.

As a man with, for this room, average power, I wasn’t paid too much attention too. This situation wouldn’t have been any different if I had been a woman though. There was a law in Welldark that upperclassmen were not allowed to approach freshmen with the intent of getting them into their Anomalia. It existed for a very simple reason: talent poaching. Particularly powerful members of the Silver and Gold ranks would pick off the promising freshmen (freshwomen, for the most part) and leave the actual freshmen with a much diminished pool of potential partners and, likely, quite resentful. In the interest of letting people acclimate to the surroundings and prevent rampant opportunism, there was a half-year protection in place. In the rare happenstance that a freshman approached an upperclassman, this law didn’t apply.

With the ability to recruit any of the first semester students barred, there was little reason for the seniors to bother with us. Every law had its drawbacks and reduced interaction was the one of this regulation. In this particular situation, it worked heavily to my advantage. As it turned out, there was only one other freshman in this class.

While I searched for whoever was left over by the pairing together of established friends and acquaintances, I prayed to myself. I wanted someone who was at least halfway attractive, preferably with big boobs. Combat training that the jiggle of such would be fantastic, even if sport bras would try their best to suppress my enjoyment. Not that I wouldn’t have taken a pear-shaped partner instead. It was just difficult to catch a glimpse of ass while sparring with someone.

My prayers were heard.

Ignored by the rest for her freshman status, just like me, was a woman of greyish-white complexion. She wore a two piece sport outfit, yoga pants and a cropped top, both of a dark grey colour, that clung snugly to her curves. Her body was a lot like Esther’s (albeit this new girl was a bit taller than the lady of my desires). That was to say: her curves were jaw-droppingly gorgeous to behold. An hourglass shape with large breasts and a fine, round ass, which I only got to glimpse at for a moment before she turned to me. A long, thin tail, like a black whip, curved curiously behind her shapely butt, the spade-shaped tip swaying as I looked up to meet her gaze.

Her lips, her hair and her eyes were all of a dark red, the black of her sclera a hard barrier between her light skin tone and those devilish irises with the slit pupils. She wore her hair as a wild, flowing mane. It cascaded down and past her shoulders and invoked in me the impression of hellfire. Like an incomplete halo, a pair of horns grew from her hairline and curved to the back of her head, taking sharp corners at the tips and continuing on backwards in parallel for the last few centimetres.

She was a succubus, that much was obvious. Much like there were different variations of humans, there were different kinds of succubi. Arlethia, with her red complexion, was generally regarded as a ‘common’ succubus. The greyish-white colour and the relative thinness of horns and tail led me to believe that this one was a Thornborne succubus, albeit I couldn’t confirm that until she actually showed her name-giving spikes.

Succubi were a species I had quite a bit of knowledge on, having spent some years in Hell and all that. Plus, my honest perversion made me naturally interested in the species that famously had nymphomaniac tendencies. Semen demons were on the top of that list, so I had made my research.

She smirked when she saw me, revealing just a little bit of her especially pointy canines. It gave her otherwise sexy and cute face a dangerous undertone. Then I smiled back and she started to approach me. Her stride was hypnotic. She was one of those girls that had figured out how to make the swing of her hips turn the heads of everyone around. Her figure only enabled that further.

I kept my eyes focused on her face, in an effort to not go further than semi-erect. Taking this sparring session seriously would be difficult with a third leg to stumble over. “You must be… Karitas,” the succubus spoke, her voice threatening my self control. It was just dripping in sex appeal. Not necessarily soft, but sultry and a little bit raspy, as if she was about to end every word with a long moan.

“I see my reputation precedes me,” I responded, not having to guess from where she knew me. “I didn’t expect a fellow freshman in this advanced class.”

“Neither did I, and not you of all people. Must be my lucky day,” she answered, raising a hand and biting onto the long, pointy fingernail of her index finger. They were almost like proper claws. Personally, I was more distracted by her full lips, though. She pulled the lower one down just as much as was sexy, then let go to keep talking. The entire time, her whip-like tail slithered in the air behind her. “But where are my manners? I am Karonikiana Lershaehtmera,” she took a moment of pause, “but, if you prefer, call me Karona.”

As was typical for demonic name convention, her proper name sounded a lot like senseless babbling to the human ear. Karona was much better, I had to agree. “I’ll be honoured to train with you,” I managed to reply, before Mister Stiltzkin clapped his hands.

“Alright, guys stop flirting with the girls, girls, for all I care keep flirting with the girls. Just don’t forget to punch each other in the face in the meantime.” He had a very odd fascination with the punching line, I found. Watching him instead of the beauty next to me was almost offending.

The rooms for the combat classes all followed the same general design. Quite large, with a ground that was covered in a layer of replaceable mats that would keep falls from being too painful. There was a square arena in the middle, a lot like a boxing ring, and the wooden walls were covered in all sorts of tools, weights and weapon-props. The ceiling was constantly buzzing from the ventilation that pumped fresh air into the room. Taps were readily available through a nearby door.

“Alright, all of you maggots grab one of these!” the teacher barked, taking a flat piece of foam off the wall. It came with a sleeve for the hand and closely resembled what coaches used during boxing practice. “I want you to put it on your dominant hand and then you and your partner go block-attack-block-attack and so on. Let me see your form!”

Karona made a slightly disgruntled face, as if this wasn’t to her liking. Once we each had our equipment, I realized why that was. “This exercise isn’t all that great for you,” I commented, taking her strike. Her open palm collided with the cushioning pad.

When I moved in to attack myself, she answered. “Oh? What makes you say that?” she sounded teasing and curious. Of course, she knew the reason, but hearing me say it would likely be interesting to hear. The clenched fist of my left arm collided with the foam. Her body turned somewhat in response. I had noticeably more physical power than she did.

“With those nails you can’t make a fist,” I analysed her behaviour, just as she started her second strike. “And the way you hold your hands when you stand idle isn’t that of someone that usually uses palm strikes.” Proving me right, her fingers curled the moment she retracted her hand. It could be mistaken for her simply relaxing her hand. However, I recognized the difference between that and someone prepared to claw someone’s face off. “I guess your nails aren’t just for show.”

“They can do quite wonderful things,” she purred, but kept doing palm strikes. A more sadistically minded person would have ripped apart the blocker, just for a demonstration. “Especially all the ways they could mark your back….” Instead, she just threatened me with a good time, which I could more than appreciate.

“Mhm, I might come back to that someday,” I said, leaving things vague. I was tempted to try and escalate things beyond flirting. Given her status as a semen demon, the chances of getting her into the bedroom were A LOT higher than the average woman. However, bringing home a girl to blatantly nail into the mattress was bad strategy and bad manners. Even if Esther never learned of it, somehow, I wouldn’t be particularly proud of what I did.

Harem building was a delicate task, but the recommended strategy was to start with one girl and expand carefully from there. Sleeping around wildly would quickly create a high number of shallow relationships when I was looking for a moderate number of long term, deep ones. So, as much as my dick urged me to push it, I had my priorities and principles. A Queen first and a harem built with her knowledge and support.

Karona noticed my refusal to go further and likely drew her own conclusions. The right ones as well, as her next words lay testament to. “You know, Karitas, I always try to be well connected,” she hummed, her words underlined by the steady beat of our back and forth. “And I hear that you and Esther have been getting along quite well.”

“The flame that burns in my chest for her is as bright and easy to feed as it is difficult to keep in control,” I answered cryptically, although the sentence made perfect sense to me at that moment. “Some difficulties here and there.”

“One of those difficulties wouldn’t happen to be related to money, would it?” I almost stopped in my punch, but I was a bit harder to be overtaken by surprise than that. A little hesitation is all she got out of me there. “Would you be interested in a trade of information, perhaps?”

“Setting yourself up as some sort of information broker?” I wondered, before accepting any deals I wanted to understand her a little better. Making deals with demons was always something best enjoyed carefully. They took promises very seriously.

Karona laughed, it was slightly sinister by the way she did it, not by the tone. More of a natural disposition of her rhythm than actual ill intent, as far as I could detect it. “Oh no, I just think this’ll be entertaining. I like watching people. Maybe ‘gossip trader’ is more accurate?”

“And what would that deal be?” I asked, taking her strike..

“I tell you what I know and you give me two things. Your number, an exchange we surely both want...” She paused, took my retaliating strike and grinned widely. I returned the smile, she had said something definitely true. “...and you will introduce me to Esther - as soon as appropriate.” In a quiet, more intimate tone, she added, “I like to know a lot of people and you two seem like I could gain a lot from that relationship. Be it just entertainment or, perhaps… more.” That last word she actually moaned, just as I struck her blocking pad. “Do we have a deal?”

It didn’t take too much debating. By themselves, her conditions were absolutely harmless. The real question here was a moral one. Was I to trust Esther to reveal to me the answer herself or was I to take the information from someone else now and make my own plans from there? Scooping around in a partner’s affairs was generally regarded as bad taste. It wasn’t a wrong stance. In most circumstances, I fully agreed.

However, if Esther wasn’t willing to give me these basic answers, then I was willing to be pushy.