“Seriously Raylin, how long are you planning on wearing that wig? It’s weird.” Syron said monotone as he stared at the blonde haired yet still eyebrow-less woman making him some sort of intricate pasta dish.

“What are you talking about Young Master? This is my normal look?” Raylin responded with a laugh, earning a few smiles from some of the maids in the kitchen. Syron just chuckled and made her hair vanish like it wasn’t there. She took on a confused look and felt the wig that was clearly still attached to her but couldn’t be seen.

“That’s… strange…” Raylin said with wonder as she twiddled her hair with one hand, forcing the illusion to break.

“So… back to what we were talking about before…” Syron said, fully acknowledging to himself that he was the one that had gotten them off track to begin with. Raylin shook her head as the wig reappeared and focused back on finishing up Syron’s lunch.

“Well, Young Master, I do understand where you are coming from of course, but I think that at the end of the day, you should just do what you want. Pats will be fine so long as you are still alive and willing to speak to her. I think that it is a good opportunity to get out of the Keep for once in your life and maybe see a bit of the world from somewhere other than in a book in that library of yours.” Raylin said as she shaved some cheese on top of the pasta with a grater. She gave the dish another look over and cleaned the edges with a cloth.

“Looks and smells good! Maybe I’ll make some for myself too!” She said as she dropped another batch of the large ridged cylindrical noodles in some boiling water and started chopping up tomatoes and slicing up some raw chicken into little chunks. Syron just laughed and received a fork from a nearby Marigold.

“I don’t want to offend your genius, so I’ll go ahead and eat instead of waiting for you to join me.” Syron said as he stabbed some pasta and started joyfully munching on it.

“I know that it isn’t necessarily her fault. She’s… well, she’s understandably unstable. Perhaps if I remembered my father and sister, and had fought tooth and nail to keep me alive for a year straight, I’d be in the exact same situation. I’d probably be worse, come to think of it, given that she was constantly subjecting herself to an extremely high concentration of her own positive magics. But even saying that… I’m a bit salty she ruined my game by going berserk on those idiot nobles. Lots of people got hurt, and I can only imagine how much they are suffering from remembering her magic in their nightmares. She’s terrifying, Rayray, and she unleashed all kinds of crazy on a crowd of innocents. No one is ever going to want to engage with me and my game again so long as she is involved.”

“Well, Young Master, if you are serious about playing your game with people other than your servants, your course is already set. Nevermind the fact that you should have started last year anyhow, you’re only not attending currently due to ‘convalescence’, as if anyone who has heard of the most powerful healer in the world would believe that nonsense. If you are asking my opinion, I think you’re healthy enough to go, and your mother is a big girl. Her problems are her own.”

“But… I don’t remember anything about history or geography or… running an estate. Can I really represent the Forresters with such a shabby foundation? Won’t that embarrass the House or something?”

At this, Raylin snorted into her pot of boiling water and she frowned over at Syron like it was his fault she might have spit in her own lunch.

“Mari, help me out here!” Raylin called to Marigold. Marigold turned her eyes to Raylin and shook her head slightly.

“It is not my place to have an opinion on the subject. If the Young Master intends to attend the Royal Academy, that is purely his decision.” Marigold said, though Syron expected as much from her.

“Ah, I knew you wouldn’t help! Fine, Young Master, you’re going to do fine in school even if you don’t know anything about history or whatever… because it doesn’t matter. Everyone knows you’ve been in a coma for a year and have lost your memories from before. If anything, they’ll be amazed by how good you are at mathematics, or terrified you’ll steal their family fortunes with trickery and magic. You might not know anything… but you certainly aren’t stupid. It’s right strange you go to sleep for a year and your brain seems to have aged about ten. And the personality change! Oh, Young Master, if you only knew the you from before… I knew your parents were married and still thought you were a bastard.”

Syron grimaced because whenever people talked about how ‘great’ he became after recovering, it felt like they were disparaging a dead person instead of complimenting the him of today. Syron sighed heavily and turned to Marigold.

“Ah, fine, you’ve convinced me… Mari, would you be willing to inform the Duchess that I will be attending the Academy when the semester starts back up? I’ll need to figure out who I’m bringing with me… assuming I even get a staff. I can cook for myself, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t take a knight or two to fend off all the assassins… and mayors.” Syron finished off his plate and set it aside where a scullery maid took it to immediately begin washing. Marigold vanished from the room right after he made his request of her, so Syron headed to the door that led towards the library. Changing his mind as he was leaving, he turned back to Raylin and gave her a hug. She stiffened up like a rabbit being petted.

“Thanks for the help… and for talking to me like I’m a person instead of either a psycho that will murder your family or a different kind of psycho that will steal your family.” Syron let go, then took a roll from a nearby pan as he left.

Once Syron was long gone from the kitchen, the staff was able to move again. “Head Chef… did… did the Young Master just hug you?! What was up with that!?” One of the scullery maids yelled out, a twinge of jealousy in her voice.

Raylin just smiled to herself and shook her head while she put the finishing touches on her plate.

“Poor thing. Why would someone of his standing ask a group of kitchen staff how to lead his life?” The Head Chef pulled off her wig and started eating her pasta, struggling to hold back her tears for a lonely child.

* * * *

“No!” Patricia Forrester bellowed childishly at her son.

“If that is your order, Duchess.” Syron struck back equally childish.

“Why!? Why won’t you call me Mother anymore!? Sweetie, I just don’t want to lose you too! There are bad people in the Capital, and I have to stay here. I won’t be able to protect you from them!”

“Duchess, if you have any intention of allowing me to inherit the House, I have to be allowed to attend school. It is important not only for bureaucratic education, but also for networking with other noble children my age. I’m not powerful like you, nor will I ever be. I need to make connections now while I can, or just give up inheriting. The only thing awaiting me once all my protectors are gone is a knife in my back. Or front. Or side. The back is most likely. Besides… I want to go. Maybe there are people in the Capital that haven’t heard about how my game will get them killed, and they might be interested in starting an actual campaign with me.”

Patricia Forrester was just silent while she moped. Syron sat in silence for a few more minutes, waiting for her to speak again.

“Please…? Mother?” He tried his final gambit. He had been calling her Duchess for a week since the disaster of a first event, and she was nearly brought to tears each time. He felt bad… but he also hadn’t quite forgiven her. If it were just a matter of her protecting him from harm, it would be one thing… but she reached critical mass and made forty-three people unlucky enough to not make it out of the arena crap their pants in existential terror and pass out in their own filth. Also, Syron felt pretty confident he could have stopped what’s-his-nuts sword guy with a flash bang. It seems to have worked on everyone else so far… so why not trust it?

“Mouuu…” Patricia pouted as she rifled through her desk and brought out a pair of identical red gemstones the size of chicken eggs.

“Fine! But you and I are talking every night! I do not care how tired the magic withdrawal makes you!”

“I don’t mind talking to you Mother, but I’m not sure what magic withdrawal has to do with anything.”

“These devices right here! You pump magic into them and the other side recognizes your magical signature. Once they are connected, the device uses illusion magic enchanted onto it to carry voices from gem to gem. The greater the distance, the more magic required to use it… so we will not be able to speak for long before you are rendered unconscious. However, it is a term I am unwilling to bend on.”

Patricia picked up one of them, then focused on it briefly before both started glowing. Then she said into one “See what I mean?” before her voice was echoed on top of her own from the second gem.

“Now you try it. Go back to your room. I want to make sure you can do this much with how jumbled up your magic channels are.” She held on to one of the gemstones and shooed Syron from the room while smirking knowingly. He walked back to his room smiling broadly at his knight posted at his door as he passed. She smiled warmly back.

Syron focused down at the gemstone and started trying to figure out how to get magic into it, but his normal process wasn’t working. Normally, he just starts moving his magic soul around his channels and then he imagines magic happening. This time, all he managed to do was get an illusionary glow to leave his hands and ‘imbue’ into the gem. Of course, nothing actually happened as that was only his imagination on how it should work.

“Well, son? Are you going to send me a message?”

“Yes I am!” Syron yelled into the stone, but he didn’t get it to glow first and knew it didn’t send. From behind him, Marigold spoke up.

“Though I am uncertain how the Lady manages to get those devices to work on her own, it should be quite impossible for you, Young Master. Transferring magic and function to a device like that requires an enchanter’s magic.”

Marigold picked up the red gem and it immediately started glowing. She held it in front of Syron’s mouth and he said “Ohhh… so this is what I have to do to get it to work on my own. Strange…”

When Marigold pulled the gem away, it stopped glowing and she set it down.

“As you may recall, as you once asked me when you first recovered, my aptitudes are for Enchanting. I can imbue your magical signature directly into the stone to activate the illusion within, passing your voice through to the other gem. It is a fairly common aptitude, though it does not get much use unless one is employed to either create or utilize devices such as this.”

“Marigold! I know you are over there! Betrayer!” Syron’s mother’s voice cried out over the glowing red gemstone. Not a trace of her normal graceful self could be heard.