Sometimes, it's easy to forget that I’m living surrounded by monsters. Things will be quiet for a few days, I’ll spend some time with a few of my saner classmates, and I can almost imagine that every person I’m talking to isn’t fully willing and capable of tearing out my throat and using my corpse for spell practice. I do my best to avoid falling into that trap, to stay vigilant no matter how peaceful things seem, but staying on guard at every hour of every day wears on you. Some days, I find myself wondering if I’m being too cautious, too paranoid.

Days like today remind me that paranoia is perfectly reasonable when you’re living in a place like Avalon. Power was the only thing that mattered here. Sure there were rules and regulations, but those only counted so long as those with true strength cared to enforce them. I had no doubt that without the indomitable strength of the Myrddin and his enforcers, Avalon would have collapsed to infighting centuries ago.

After all, I doubted you found find something like an impromptu slave-market in a place that cared for morals and ethics. In the space of just a few hours, the wide open lawn behind Avalon’s main building had been transformed under the power of several upperclassmen. A wide wooden stage had been erected near the center of the field, flanked on either side by large pens. Off to one side stood a long table, behind which sat Kess and Kyrak, a pair of seventh years I was passingly familiar with.

“Sirens for sale!” Shakhan’s magically-enhanced voice called cheerfully from his place floating above the hastily thrown together stage, “Come one, come all! Get them before they’re gone! Fresh-caught sirens for sale!”

The tattooed sixth-year’s bright smile was in stark contrast with the row of bound, kneeling figures lined up beneath him. Nine young, terrified sirens knelt on the bare wood, arms bound behind their backs with lengths of spectral-blue chain and mouths covered by shimmering red silk enchanted to ensure they couldn’t use their racial gifts to escape.

In the pens on either side of the stage, dozens more awaited their own turns on the stage. They ranged in age from early teens to even old matrons, all bound and gagged with the same magical bindings. There would be no escape for them here, not that they would have gone far even if they did miraculously escape their current restraints.

The trio must have gone and captured an entire flock, I concluded after some time. Judging from how human they looked, with only the occasional feather and backward joint to indicate their monstrous heritage, these must be members of the local colony. Wild sirens were much more avian than this. It was no wonder they’d managed to reach some sort of understanding with the local government. Without the help of my mana sense, I doubted I would have realized they were anything but ordinary humans if I’d just seen them walking down a busy street.

I’d heard that several students had already come back carrying their own prizes, but apparently picking off individual sirens was too amateurish for this trio. Instead, they’d gone in big and had decided to sell off whatever extras they hadn’t needed to other students. Judging from the brisk business they were doing, it seemed that not everyone who wanted a live siren had the time or inclination to go get one for themselves.

At some unseen signal, Shakhan gestured and the chains binding the kneeling sirens to the stage shifted, flowing like water and pulling their limbs along until each was bound with their hands behind them and a length of chain connecting their legs together. Then, they were half-pulled off the stage, hobbling along as quickly as they could to avoid falling. One of the smaller girls couldn’t quite keep up, and her legs bounced against the wooden planks as she was dragged along by the chains.

I spun around when I heard someone loudly clear their throat behind me, hands coming up defensively and tendrils of mana wrapping into a shield before I realized who it was. Liam smiled, seemingly amused by my reaction, “Good reflexis, but your sensory skills could still use some work. I was hiding my presence, but not my footsteps. It's a mistake a lot of inexperienced mages tend to make.”

I nodded slowly, committing the advice to memory. Something else to work on in my nonexistent free time. “Thank you,” I said shortly.

His smile widened, “Happy to help.” He turned and gestured through the open window down at the bustling field below. “What do you think?”

I waited for a moment, wondering if he was going to elaborate. I wasn’t really sure what he was asking. When he didn’t, I eventually decided on the simplest answer. “Dangerous. So many students packed together outside of a safe room? It's more a matter of how many, not if.”

Liam tilted his head to the side thoughtfully, then nodded. “True. You can see it's mostly upper years down there. Kess and Shakhan said they would retaliate against anyone that starts something so it's mostly safe for them, but events like these tend to kill off a few of the less cautious third and fourth years. Watch yourself.” After a moment, he chuckled, “But I don’t think I need to remind you of that.”

“I try my best,” I admitted after a moment. “In any case, I have no intention of going down there. I just heard there was something going on at lunch and wanted to take a look.”

“Fair. No use for a siren? Perhaps something pale to complement a lovely purple?”

“Not at those prices.”

He chuckled again and I frowned internally. He wasn’t usually quite this… cheerful? Sure he wasn’t the most serious person I knew, but he seemed to be in an unusually good mood. Or maybe he was pretending to be in a good mood? I didn’t know what that would mean either way.

“Don’t worry Orion, give it a few more years and it won’t matter that you came to Avalon with nothing. In Avalon, a fifth circle mage is commonplace. Outside it? Depending on where the portal is, you could easily make a fortune over the summer with a few hours of work each day. It’s what I’ve been doing these last few years, definitely makes research much more manageable.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Good to hear! Well, I’ve got some birdies to pick up. Hopefully at least one of them will have a strong enough water affinity to make it worth the hassle. I’ll see you in class Friday.”

“Have a nice–”

Before I could finish the sentence, the space around Liam shifted and he disappeared from my senses. My eyes widened and I looked around frantically for a moment before I noticed Liam calmly striding across the lawn some fifty feet below. I sighed quietly. It looked like he’d finally found a teleportation variant that worked inside Avalon. He’d been complaining about not knowing one for as long as I’d known him, especially since two of the other seventh years were known to be capable of the feat. I had a feeling he would be showing off the ability at every opportunity going forward.

I really wished I could teleport, but even the simplest versions of the spell were sixth-circle. There were a few spells that could pass for a true teleport, but even those were at the high end of fifth-circle and usually had all sorts of costs and weaknesses associated with them. Space-warping magic in general was hard, but I had a feeling I would eventually dedicate a lot of time to its study. Until then, I would simply have to walk.

I looked back down at Liam, who was speaking with a widely grinning Shakhan, then thought of the four flights of stairs and half-mile of hallways between me and the library. Must be nice.

Between the detour to see what was going on and the talk with Liam, Brenda was already there waiting for me when I finally reached our usual table in the Academy library. Gritting my teeth internally, I fixed a smile on my face and stepped into the study room. “Hey Brenda, sorry I’m a little late. I hope you weren’t waiting for me too long.”

She all but spun around, nearly falling out of the heavily cushioned armchair she was sitting in. It looked somewhat comical really, particularly since the chair was clearly made for someone about a foot and a half taller than the slightly built girl.

“Orion!” she exclaimed, her face lighting up, “I was starting to get worried! Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, I’m okay dear. Just… had to take a small detour after lunch. Nothing to worry about.”

“Oh. That’s good.” She turned away, rubbing her thumb against the smooth surface of the small silver locket she always wore. After a moment she tucked it away, hiding the necklace under the too-many ruffled layers of her modest blouse.

I set my things down and dug out several books and a stack of papers. ‘Studying’ with Brenda was not exactly the most effective way of getting my work done, her questions and constant touching were rather distracting and annoying, but as long as I wasn’t working on anything that required my full attention I considered it a net gain in productivity. Spending time with the annoying brat of a girl was painful at the best of times, but at least this way I had something to distract myself with. I really wasn’t looking forward to the start of next semester, that was when my current timetable had me start taking her out on ‘dates’. Ugh.

Somehow, the first half hour managed to pass even slower than it usually did. I took my usual seat on the couch-like bench on one side of the table and Brenda ‘sneakily’ joined me after a few minutes. Denying her that little bit of intimacy had proven to be more of a pain than it was worth and I wouldn’t put it past her to climb into my lap one of these days if I didn’t let her do it in private. It sometimes felt like only her noble upbringing and feeble sense of propriety kept her from doing it in class and she was getting more and more bold with every passing week.

Today however, in addition to dealing with that and nodding along politely as she blathered about something or another, I was also considering how to broach the topic I was actually interested in discussing. Maybe it was an unnecessary complication, but I wanted to do this properly. I didn’t want the request to come out of nowhere and ideally Brenda would offer her help without me having to directly ask. That sounded like a great way to get roped into spending a few hours walking with her in the Avalon greenhouses or some such other rubbish. If I had to do it, I would do it. Anything for my Lea. If I could avoid it though? Even better.

Eventually, Brenda did give me the opening I was looking for. I’d managed to steer our conversation in the direction of sensory enhancement spells, something Brenda apparently knew a lot more about than I’d thought she would. At the end of a boring, lengthy anecdote about some misadventures her grandmother had gotten into in her childhood (and I had no idea how Brenda could manage to make the exploits of one of the world’s greatest living archmages sound stupid), I innocently spoke up.

“Wow, that’s pretty amazing. Your grandmother sounds like an incredible mage!”

“Yeah, she’s great! Don’t worry, I think she’s really going to like you Orion! Maybe next summer, during the break, I can take you to meet her and the others. Oh, and I can finally show you around Ezumrud city! It's so beautiful there during the summer. When the sun shines through the city barrier just right, it's like you’re living inside a giant jemstone!”

A faint stab of fear shot through my chest as Brenda continued to describe her homeland. Intellectually I knew I would have to meet Brenda’s terrifying family at some point, but I’d done my best to avoid thinking about it too much. After all, it was either that or face the wrath of her equally terrifying aunt. That ritual better be just as subtle and hard to detect as the book claimed, because otherwise I was a dead man. I made a mental note to figure out how to avoid that particular trip this summer. I definitely wanted to see the city one day, the city’s barrier was one of the greatest feats of warding magic in history and many of the world’s oldest buildings and records resided within the bounds of its nigh-indestructible defenses, but perhaps when I had a bit more power at my back.

“Maybe,” I said eventually, “I think it's a little too early to be making plans for the summer already. We’re not even a third of the way through the year yet.”

“I guess,” she reluctantly agreed, her face twisting into a pout that would have looked charming on a five year old but just made her look even stupider than she already did.

“Still,” I continued, “it's amazing that she was able to find the nikkos so quickly. Aren’t creatures like that really hard to target with divination magic?”

“Well yeah, but there’s always ways to get around that sort of thing. Just like Professor Shrike told us, no shield spell is a perfect defense. If you know what’s coming, you can always counter it or use a spell that will ignore it entirely. It's the same way with divination, right? With the right tools and spells, you can get around all sorts of protective enchantments, even the really good ones!” She paused for a moment, her fingers tapping out a rhythm against my thigh as she leaned her head back against my shoulder. “Well, mostly.”

“Mostly?” I echoed, knowing it was what she wanted. She always got like this when I asked her about something, “What do you mean, oh wise and beautiful Brenda?”

She giggled, covering her mouth with her palm, then continued. “Sometimes it's really hard to do that, right? Like, look at the Myrddin. I’m sure whatever secret shield spells he uses are as close to perfect as possible. Even if you knew exactly how it worked, you could spend years trying to figure out a way around it and still fail. Just look at Ezumrud city, grammy’s been trying to figure out how to pierce through the shield’s interference for decades and she still can’t make it work.”

“Fascinating,” I said out loud, wrapping an arm loosely around Brenda’s shoulders, “that's amazing Brenda.” Another interesting tidbit, even if it wasn’t what I was looking for right now. Even the legendary Archmage Goodwitch couldn’t get divination spells to work within the bounds of the Ezumrud dome.

“So, what about like, hmm, something like the untraceable molting ritual? I know there's some really high circle spells that can get around it, but you’d think there would be an easier way to get around first circle magic like that. That would be like blasting a firsty with a sphere of annihilation.”

“Oh that one’s easy!” Brenda exclaimed, and my heart nearly skipped a beat. “That one’s a bit tricky, grammy always complains that there’s no way it should really be a first-circle ritual, but you just need to think about it backwards. Instead of scrying for a sympathetic connection to your target like you normally would, you just have to treat it like an ordinary object and work backwards! Even if it's not identifiable as theirs, a bit of hair or whatever else still spent a lot of time right next to your target. It's not foolproof, but it's much easier than trying to brute force things.”

It took me a moment to realize that Brenda was done, and that she was waiting for me to tell her how smart she was. I mechanically went through the motions, patting her head and praising her as my mind spun with possibilities. What Brenda was saying made perfect sense and I might even be able to cast the spells myself with just a bit of study. As she’d said, I just needed to reframe my parameters. The attackers had… produced my sample through a deliberate action. Thus, instead of finding its owner, I needed to find its creator. I’d definitely seen a book reference identifying a blacksmith from a hammer he’d made, so now it was only a matter of finding the specific type of spell I needed.

The fake smile on my face slowly morphed into a real grin. That was exactly what I’d been looking for. I looked down at Brenda who was nearly preening from all of the attention I was giving her. Perhaps she was good for something after all.