I was ravenous at dinner and I was hardly the only one.

  Elica grabbed the special serving handed off by her stoolie in the kitchen, she not only carried her own plate but stopped for extra rolls on her way over to our table. "Gods, I'm so hungry I could eat my horse," she gasped, and tucked in. She had been showered up and changed but she still had the windblown eyes and cheeks of an equestrian. Larianne did not look at all disturbed, she probably had an elective for croquet. Or black magic. Vancy looked at Elica and myself with real concern in her eyes.

  "Are you two all right?"

  "My instructor is a sadistic terror," Elica groaned.

  "I'm getting what I signed up for," I groaned. I hurt in lots of different places. Camogie practice after getting in a fight is a bad idea. I had my head on the table, cheek pressed to the cool surface, and was carefully navigating my fork to my mouth from that position, refusing even to sit fully upright.

  Vancy nodded sympathetically. "First day of a new routine is always difficult. You two should have been practicing in the weeks leading up to this."

  "I was in prison!" I protested.

  "I feel fine," Larianne said with a shrug.

  "I'm being unfairly victimized by a demonic force impersonating a riding instructor," Elica whined.

  I twisted a bit to get a look at Vancy. "What's your athletic elective?"

  "Target shooting," she said smugly.

  "Hope you didn't sprain your finger," I said grumpily.

  "Nope! I'm fine!" she chirped happily. "Thanks for asking, Natalie."

  "Ugh," I complained. "I should have used magic to help me. I wouldn't be feeling all this. Instead I've got these stupid principles about doing things the right way and not taking shortcuts."

  "Is the food good? I'm too tired to taste," Elica whined.

  I pulled my head wretchedly upright, and looked around. "Ugh. Dammit. I gotta take care of something real quick. I'll be right back, all right?" And I channeled steel's stoicism to help overcome my own protestations, and stood upright. I popped open a pocket dimension, grabbed a small tin box from inside, and tucked it under my arm.

  Trudge trudge. I slouched across the cafeteria floor, and tried not to think too much about anything. And that's why I got blindsided again.

  "Hey! Vendetta!"

  "Fuck."

  I glanced to the side, and here come the Byeview Boys. I don't bother with defenses this time. There's hundreds of people watching, and besides they hadn't done anything last time. He had only tapped the wall to make a point, and had kept himself and his friends out of things when I did get jumped. All three of them bearing down on me again, they still looked pissed.

  "I wasn't done talking to you!" he called out. Heads turned. We were becoming a center of attention.

  I no longer have the luxury of feeling like crap. I drew myself upright, squaring my shoulders. My colors are sharp, my hair is coiffed, and I stand regal and composed as these three came at me. I thought I'd made a strong enough impression last time that they wouldn't approach me anymore, but I guess you just can't tell with people really.

  "I'm quite finished speaking with you," I said. "I do not feel we have anything productive to say to one another."

  "And maybe this time you're wrong," the lead boy sneered. He was dressed down now, and not nearly as red and patchy as he had been before. Rather handsome if he grows into those shoulders. "Y'see, I been paying a lot of attention to you, and I think it's only fair to let you know that whatever you're planning, you're not going to get away with it!"

  "Of course not, my ilk never does," I sighed. "Really though, you're quite in my way."

  People were staring. Three tables over, Nathan was among them. He looked like he was going to stand up and come over to save me. And -gods!= wouldn't that fuck up just about everything. I sighed. "Sorry lads," and then I waved my hand. With it, wind moved rapidly across the aisleway. A solid wall of air raked along, and pressed those three out of my way, shoved them over against the wall.

  Not enough power to fight anyone that needs to be fought. Just enough to push children around like a bully.

  "You're not done that easy Vendetta!" the talker yelled out, but I ignored him. I finished my steps, and stopped right at the side of Belisa Roadaway, seated directly across from my brother. I don't need to know why they're here together. It's all just the same really. They were speechless at my approach, I wonder what I must have looked like. Weary, drawn, stressed? Furious and impatient, almost certainly. Elegantly dressed, barely holding my composure at all. It was not a good impression, I'm sure.

  I stared down at her. She was the tragic damsel. I no longer felt tired. Or I felt I could not complain about it. Her eyes, they were tired in a way that I could not fathom. When I looked at them I realized that I was fine, I didn't even have any real problems, not like her. I'm nowhere near needing to commit suicide, after all. I handed her the tin box. "Here," I said. "Don't ask how I got this or what I had to do. But it's yours now."

  And I turned on my heel and walked away, back to my own table. Everything I'd taken from Kudder's office in Byeview. All the blackmail material, the entire Sword of Damocles that was hanging over her family's heads. One box, one lock, and it was in her hands. In passing I released the wall of wind that pinned those three idiots to the side. This much at least was done now. I like the feel of a goal accomplished.

  [ You have earned 10 experience points. You have 22 experience points. ]

  Oh boy, just 8 to go until my next level. My first chance to level up since I'd first gotten that damn box in Byeview. I'd barely spent five minutes in that town, why did everything keep tying back to that place? Whatever. It's done. She's got it. No more blackmail, no more scandal. No more tragic damsel in need of a rescuer. She won't need him to pursue her plot-line and she's not going to kill herself. Neither his good ending nor her bad ending. And moreover - no way to know what could have been, or how deep that rabbit hole really was. No debt of gratitude. So now if she and my brother are hanging out, they're just friends. I shortcutted her entire run and all the affection-building that went into it. Only three years in the making.

  Sometimes, being the person with the long view is just fucking tedious.

  I slept through study hall. Who the fuck could blame me? Why'd they bother putting a study hall after dinner and before our free hour? Doesn't matter. I just put my head on the desk and fell right asleep. Was it good for my image? I don't know. Was it important for my plans? Probably not. But dammit, sometimes I can let something be about me, just a little bit, just a little while. Besides, I'm down by 3HP. If I hadn't been doing physical training for years, and if I had never leveled up, this day could have killed me already.

  Dong. Dong. Dong. Ding.

  Those are the bells that woke me up. I yawned, stretched, and walked out of there. I pushed past any people who stepped into my way if they moved slow. I ignored whatever looks people gave me. I've got so little time for any of this. I marched out of the building, and barely had the patience to use my legs. I'm still torn as to whether I should just use my vanishing act as my default entrance and exit from every classroom or period.

  Technically this is our recreation hour. The one truly unstructured time we have from Oneday to Fiveday. On Sixthday we could do whatever we wanted except leave the grounds without a pass. On Sevenday any of us that were religion-observing could leave to attend the services of our choice, but we were expected to be back before lunch and the gates locked down the rest of the day. So our recreation hour was very important for anyone that didn't want to wait five days to have a chance to do something or anything just because they felt like it.

  So of course I was working hard at my real job. One of my real jobs. The "save the kingdom" job, not the "save the world" job. I've got both. They don't overlap much.

  Up to my dorm, and then up the stairs to the sixth floor. I plucked my key out of my décolletage, turned the lock, and as soon as I was alone I was out of my clothes. Only four mana left, that should probably be enough. How did I burn through so much? It didn't feel like I used that much magic in the day. I hung my dress, and most of my jewelry went into the wardrobe. When I was down to the essentials, I checked that conjuring cotton and leather were both already activated, and made myself a simple outfit for adventuring. Nothing crazy, just something I could move in, and hopefully swim in.

  Look around, forgotten anything? Hmm. Just to be on the safe side, I whipped up a couple of holdout weapons, daggers for my belt, boot, and one strapped to my arm. If I needed them, I didn't want to have to conjure them on the fly- I'm fast and I'm good but when it really matters even a half-second can make a huge difference. Leather laces to tie up my hair, I felt like I was ready to go.

  I stepped into my portal, and I came out at the edge of the city. The back edge, near the wall, high above the ground.

  The darkness here was utter: the geode crystals above were focused downward and inward, I was out of their angle. The city lights below were pointed at the city, few of them shined upwards. Back here, I did not think that channeling the essence of the owl would help, too dark even for those eyes. Instead: the bat. And now small sounds resolved in me, and my ears could see all around me.

  The walkway here was suspended by beautifully engineered struts and pillars and hanging supports. And a fast-moving torrent of water was roaring along only a foot away from my toes. The aqueduct here poured out of a steel pipe set into the cave wall, and rushed along the stone concourse to flow above the city, all the way to the far end. Branching sluices would split away every so often, taking a measured amount of water away with them to feed and wash and water the neighborhoods below. Suspended in the air like this it looked weightless but I knew it was hardly that.

  What engineering did it take to build a river hundreds of feet in the air inside a cave? We would never know who to ask. The buildings below me here looked very different than near the front of the cave. This was an older district, and poorer. More warehouses and workhouses, but the homes here were airy and spacious. Near the mouth of the cave, poor housing was cramped and stuffy. But on this end? Even the larger homes were cheap, because for all that space and comfort nobody wanted to live here. You could just tell by walking in. This wasn't ours.

  "Okay," I huffed to myself, cracking my knuckles. "Let's fuck up a lot of people's evenings." I waved my hands through the spell to curve water.

  Making ice was getting me nowhere, the pressure of the water would push it away in a second, and then there's just a big block of ice flowing down the concourse. So instead I started by chilling the steel of the pipe, working its temperature down. It was already bitterly cold, funneling this water through this stone in the back of a cave in midwinter. It took very little encouragement for it to sink below freezing temperatures, as cold as I could safely get it without my spells taking me with it.

  Every tiny crack and screw in the pipe started accumulating ice, anywhere the flow was less intense began to take hold. And I held that action, letting the frost slowly grow over the interior, while I braced myself, and breathed deeply, eyes closed.

  I did it to center myself. The magic does not wear me out in a conventional sense. I don't build up lactic acid by casting spells, or deplete my oxygen. But closing your eyes and breathing hard is one of the best ways to get yourself centered into your own body, and feel yourself from the inside. I held my consciousness there- every toe, every hair. The way my bones fit together, the way my blood vessels swooped back and forth between the muscles. The gurgle in my stomach, the tickle in my throat, the color of my eyes. I forced myself to acknowledge it all, aware of it all.

  And then the mind within. Who I am, and how I feel about it. All the broken edges and hanging ends, all the ways my old personality is grafted to these new memories. The person I made myself become when I was reborn into a world that needed saving. I found that core of purpose, and how that piston shoved my emotions into place. My curiosity, my regrets, my anger, my silence. The flinching instinct to secrecy, the cold core that decided what feelings I'm allowed to have at any time. The purpose I drilled into myself was the motor of my life. It drove me to vengeance and vendetta, it drove me to honor and patience. When I needed to kill I killed. When I needed to wait, I waited.

  That purpose sent me into fires to save people, and into prison to shame them. It was the reason my hair was bleached white, and the reason I stood in the cold next to a steel pipe. I felt my hair, my toes, my breath, my purpose, my secrets, my blood, my family. I centered myself into myself and I touched water.

  Water, I am as you. Affinity. Connection.

  Connection. Affinity. Acknowledgement.

  Serve me.

  And the water froze. Tons of it in an instant, locking in cold and hard and crystalline edges, binding new ice to old, the frost of the chilled pipes was the foothold that this new ice needed to ground itself and hold. Enough ice, backed up dozens of feet, to stop the water now. The river ran out, and this part of the tunnel was silent. The first time in hundreds of years. Maybe the first time ever.

  The water and I had an affinity. I understood it. I reached out essence and touched it, and it touched me back. It learned me, understood me. And with my will it changed itself, shedding heat and fluidity to become the ice I needed.

  I opened my eyes, and I was covered in sweat. No, it was sweet, no salt to it. A thin layer of new water was clinging to my skin. The connection to water took its toll, the thinnest finest outer layer of my skin had turned to water, dewing all over me. I pushed too hard, but I was able to hold enough of myself. I was still Natalie, only slightly lost to the water. It took my will for its own, but some of my dermis was lost to its form.

  Note to self: don't forget the dead layers of epidermis next time I'm centering myself for a big curve. My whole body itched slightly, those outer layers are important after all. I felt a little tender all over, like I had peeled a bad sunburn. The surface of my skin had turned to water because I had not quite been paying enough attention when I worked my sorcery.

  I looked about, and to either side of me in the distance, more aqueducts, more pipes, more rivers. But this one was silent right now. I turned back to it, and released the first several tons of ice. The water splashed down, and ran down the angled concourse. I stepped closer, and froze more water further up the pipe. I huffed, concentrated. I released more water, and it reverted. A splash as ice became chilled water instantly and flowed away, freed from my will.

  I stepped into the tunnel. A wall of ice ahead of me, stretching further up the pipe way. My hands braced for balance on the chilled steel walls, I crafted myself leather gloves to protect from the cold. My legs forked out, bracing one out to either side to hold me in place. A round steel pipe angled downwards is not easy to stand in, and I was not channeling anything to help with my balance. I reached the water further up, and froze it behind the wall of ice in front of me. And then I released the ice nearest me. It dropped, and run down the pipe, coursing underneath me and away.

  Leapfrog. The ice froze above and melted below, giving me a tunnel that I was expanding upwards, defying the flow. And then I hit the grate. Steel bars, crossbars, a grid of hard metal that was magically welded to the sides of the tunnel. Shiny, more zinc, it was not the same construction. This had been added after the fact. Not long ago, centuries perhaps, inside this millennia-old pipe. I let the water flow through it, and built the ice further up. I could not afford mana to curve steel and ask it to get out of my way, and I did not want to destroy it. I secured the water, frozen solid, and the chilled pipe. And with a moment, I opened a portal.

  I stepped out three feet away, the other side of the bars, and caught the essence of the water before it could finish melting.

  Serve me. We are together. Affinity.

  Together. Affinity. Begrudging.

  I was asking water not to flow. It would never agree happily. I pushed higher, past another grate. I repeated the process, carefully. Attention to detail, teamwork is key. Above and ahead, I could feel the end of the steel and the stone. Ahead, only water. A vast space of it, I could barely feel the edges bounded by stone. I could feel movement in the water, something I had no affinity to. It was like dark spaces in my senses. Here I can feel the water, and over there I can feel something has parted the water and swam through, creating thin eddies and ripples. There were a lot of them.

  At the end of the pipe, I built out the ice. Layers and layers, blooming outwards, swelling into a large knot. And I hollowed out that knot, that bulge. I stepped out of the pipe, and onto the ice. It crackled underfoot, tiny crystals breaking under my weight. I pulled some water around, and covered the pipe's entrance. I was in a small frozen room, my own sorcerous submarine. Air within, ice for walls, joined to the world outside by a steel umbilicus that I was closing off now, forming a rough bubble for myself.

  The ice closed behind me. For seconds, I was in a sealed space, created from the water around me, ice sealed in every direction. It reminded me of the void, where I had met the goddess. The blackness here was as absolute as the brightness there, a sense of disorientation and isolation. A world apart from the world, tenuously held by magic and will.

  I separated the ice floe from the steel pipe, and floated upwards. It bobbed up to the top, and the ice crackled all over. My ears rang, and when I opened my mouth both my ears popped loudly. I lost my balance for a second, had to catch myself on the cracking ice wall.

  Oh right. What I don't know about dive technique would fill a few different books. I know that the bends are a thing, I've never felt them before this. It is to be avoided- all my joints hurt, and my skin prickled. I had taken two more HP of damage just from floating up. That's a bad sign.

  Speaking of bad signs! The gaps in the water were circling around, the lean narrow shapes that I could not feel except from how they displaced water. They were exploring, wondering what I was. I did not have time to sit and nurse wounds. I lifted the top off this cracked ice chamber, and the stink was ungodly. The air in here was beyond stale, and reeked of a a million years of mildew. It was like stacked trash, an old garbage can that has gone wet at the bottom.

  I curved air to screen the smell out and refresh a bubble of oxygen around me. I increased the pressure to suppress the nitrogen narcosis, and instantly felt better. What other sorcerer could ever have done this? What mage, what warrior?! I was the fucking best. I was high on nitrogen bubbles.

  The ice chamber grated as it moved, shifted shape, turned into a floating raft that bobbed on the pitch-black water. I could hear the water, feel it... my bat senses were aware of it but the dark here was so perfect that it felt more comforting to have my eyes shut, like that darkness was less than the outside darkness. The bat's pings could feel the sloped ceiling above, the closeness of it, the arched shape. There was nowhere to stand, no ledge, no edge. Water all the way to the walls, vaulting closed overhead, a narrow gap to one side that led out to the far vaster cavern beyond. This cave I stood in was a small niche, a harbor, a nook on the side of a far larger gallery. That cave, dripping and water-filled, was at least as large as Hearstcliff itself.

  Things swam beneath me. They were getting bolder, closer.

  But you know what? Fuck those guys. I pointed into the darkness, found the right spot. Out away from my ice raft, the other side of this cavern. Two or three feet below the surface. And that is where I conjured void.

  I could feel the pull in the water right away, and I had to curve its course to keep my raft from being tugged. The things in the water grew frantic, swimming all around, some circling the void, others backing far away. The black hole I created drained water away at a prodigious rate, dozens of gallons per second, created a current that pulled towards it from all directions. In a minute or two, it would visibly lower the water level in this cavern.

  But before that happened, I released it. What happened underwater was almost apocalyptic. Water is not like air, it is incompressible. Only the absolute gravity of my black holes could force it down to a smaller and collapsed form. When it released, the shockwave was far more intense, and carried harder. The water it traveled in was also incompressible. Some people call this "dynamite fishing".

  The shapes in the water were pulverized. Everything living in that water within a dozen yards was destroyed utterly. Small chunks floated to the surface, and thank gods I was already screening the smells out. The less-lethal shockwaves propagated outwards, a ripple of noise and violence that carried all throughout the massive gallery.

  When I do this in the air, it's dangerous to anyone nearby. The effects are exponentially more dangerous underwater.

  I was surprised by how good that felt. I came here to get some XP and to reduce a threat from the future, but this was really satisfying.

  I had made my entrance. A million splashes returned my attention, and things began swimming my way. Time to go.

  With a thought, I opened the portal. Blazing, painful light burst into this place for the first time ever, illuminating walls that had never seen any light at all, water that was born underground and never knew what the sun was. The light was utterly blinding to me, my eyes were adjusted uselessly to a darkness too deep for them. But nothing else noticed. Nothing else down here would ever know about that portal. Nobody had eyes down here, except me. I leaped up into the portal, the light, the doorway. Gravity left me behind, and I floated in this primordial abyss. I shut the door behind me.

  I tumbled out the other side, onto the walkway, the concourse. Gods I hurt. I'd taken even more damage; this was a dangerous trip. I knelt on stone, happy to have something to rest on that I had not conjured for myself. The water was pounding out through the pipe beside me, all the ice was cleared away. The people of the city would wonder why their water had stopped for a half-hour and then came back, but it would always be a mystery.

  They would not notice a flavor of blood or violence. The aqueducts were populated with far too many sigils to allow that. Screens and filters and transformations, all nested together. So that the people here would never suspect that the lifeblood of the city, flowing out of that wall, was someone else's city, someone else's world. Monsters. Murderers. Something ancient and revolting and evil. Something that craved a world of easy satiation and growing things.

  The Blind.