Kimothy gave me a suspicious look. "You're stronger than yesterday."

  I tried to look innocent. "What? I haven't even done anything!"

  He shook his head. "I can feel it. You're pushing with more power now. Not a small jump."

  "Not a very big jump either," I countered. Arguing just to be contrary. I'd crossed a major threshold, I was strong enough to lift myself and fly. That's an important jump.

  "It's a pretty big jump to make in a single day," he said.

  I tried to be humble about it. Or at least discreet. "Good thing, because I think strength is what I need. All that versatility doesn't do me a lot of good if there's no muscle behind it."

  Kimothy snorted. "You know that's foolishness. You're damn well smart enough to know that the variety of essences you had bound was an impressive feat all by itself. You don't have to be stronger than other sorcerers and also more resourceful. It's all right to only be better than everyone else at one thing at a time."

  "Now that's quitter talk," I said with an overdone accusatory tone.

  "Hah! Whatever then. Listen, I can still do a little scrivening. It's pretty good at helping to measure output. Should we keep track of your gains that way?"

  A couple of the other students nearby got interested, turning the angle of their stance to open into our conversation. They nodded along, encouraging Kimothy's plan.

  "I suppose we could. I'm curious why you're invested though?" I said, glancing across the room. Magister Braux was working with a group of pupils whose gestures were sloppy enough that sometimes they did not get their conjures on the first try. She was the one I'd been expecting to get proactive with my education, but the other sorcerers seemed more engaged with my evolution than she was.

  One of them barked a laugh. "Why? Because the sooner you can understand what makes your sorcery so unique from ours, the sooner we'll understand how to absorb new essence affinities like you do. And girl, I really want to learn a couple hundred affinities like that."

  "I thought you were the one that was always researching and studying things," said another sorcery student. "It's almost weird that you don't want to study magic the way you do mechanisms and chemicals."

  I learned that other stuff from a real school and it's based on natural laws that make real sense. Everything about magic in this world is just dumb bullshit to make a story more interesting.

  "Well, maybe I'm taking Kimothy's advice about not being the big wheel in every subject at once."

  "More likely you already know and you're just waiting for a really dramatic moment to reveal all," one scoffed, but I think he was just teasing.

  Kimothy looked at me like he wasn't sure that guess was far off the mark. It'd be awesome if I could start fooling people. I've got an unspent skill point, should I invest it in Deception?

  Meanwhile he was conjuring up goose feathers and painting sigils onto them with a thin brush. Each feather he painted was tossed to the side and began orbiting lazily around him, floating on their own magical breeze. After he had finished enough to make him satisfied, he sent them over to course around me, orbiting me in the same lazy pattern.

  "Hmm," he said. "There's something there. You've got good enough strength, maybe a little less than average for this class. But the proportions are off. I'm having to recalibrate the numbers because the impressions are registering like they're only a few inches away from you and not a couple feet. It's nothing major, but it's an oddity, and every oddity is another clue. With enough, we'll be able to figure out what the one cause of all this behavior is."

  In for a penny, in for a pound, I decided with a sigh. "Hang on. What happens when I do this?"

  And I unbuckled my Essence just a little, and let it bloom out away from me, an invisible mist of self that swelled out from my shoulder.

  Kimothy blinked in surprise, staring at the feathers that swooped around me like tiny drones. "Uh, nothing that I understand," he said. "What is that?"

  Time to tell the whole truth. "Nothing that anyone understands," I said.

  We spent the next half hour with experiments and suppositions, keeping things quiet and cool because sorcery tends to blow up if you get too ambitious with it. And, uh, sorcerers as a class tend to get competitive around each other. We've got a bad habit of egging each other on and comparing abilities. It's one of many reasons that the magister college does not take sorcerers.

  A magic class should be exciting enough to write several books about all by itself, but individual classes of it really just wound up feeling a lot like we were practicing a special form of finger-waggling and controlled imagination.

  Dong. Dong.

  Even boring classes end eventually. Now, I just stepped into a portal, and out again. So easy. Now I'm outside the building, waiting on the front steps. I've bundled warm air around me, comfortable. I stood straight, relaxed, and patient. Observant.

  After making such a demonstration at lunch, I had some leftover anger to share with the person who had actually wronged me. Sure, the Byeview Boys were annoying and they pissed me off but they were still small potatoes, someone to yell at and be done with.

  The students leaving the mage studies building came out in twos or threes, mostly from the few rooms nearest to the front doors. Then there was a glut and a clot and a traffic jam formed at the doorway, people pushing out as best they could.

  And one thin girl, shorter than most, could not see past the others as she took her turn exiting. And with a squeak, she tried to backpedal and force her way back into the building. Even channeling essence of salmon she could not have made her way upstream through this crowd. The press of bodies was unforgiving and shoved her towards me. She had a bookstrap this time to carry all of her texts. So convenient. She did not need anyone to help her carry. And her coat looked very warm today.

  I crooked a finger. "We should talk."

  "I didn't mean to!" she blurted, already near tears.

  That was really fast. I didn't even really say anything yet. She's freaking out like I'm gonna crush her right here in front of everyone!

  "Lots of things happen, even when people don't mean for them to happen," I said, cool, calm, confident. I waved her forward, and she stepped towards me, still looking so reluctant that anyone would think I was using sorcery to shove her around.

  Sometimes it's just a good thing that I'm already cast as being kind of a bad guy. The way people act would shove me into that role anyway.

  "I'm from a Kadot family! We get told to stay out of the way! I didn't know you were a Harigold! I didn't know you were the Harigold!" she was near tears already.

  "The?" I had to laugh. It wasn't a good laugh, it was a cynical, world-weary laugh. "The definite article? Flattering."

  "You- you killed all those people..." she said, following me as I led us away from mage studies.

  Damn, if she knew the truth- "You're a mage?"

  "Uh huh." I was trying to walk and talk here, but she was hanging back as if she was scared to be alone with me. And I get it! I currently had a shell of hardened air wrapped around me in case she swung more books at me. Her reluctance to keep pace meant that she was falling behind me, and I was not willing to let her at my back again.

  "Keep up," I snapped, and she gulped and slunk forward, keeping pace but looking miserable. "Now, you're a mage, with no training in combat, yes? And when you found out that you were stuck in proximity to a mass murderer, a lethal sorceress, a faction enemy of your family... you sucker-punched me with a copy of Mavsim's Solve."

  "Uh, it was Horticulture Nomenclature," she said, interrupting me.

  "We'll pretend I asked or cared," I said easily. "Now, if you'd just shut up and stayed still, I'd have finished with those twits yesterday and we'd have finished our walk and I would never have thought about you again. But here's the thing, little Kadot. You didn't just cold-cock me with a book. You kicked me when I was down."

  "I'm sorry!" she moaned, her voice climbing towards a wail.

  "Ya got grit, girl. Anyone ever tell you that?"

  "What?"

  "Guts. Grit. Spunk. Chutzpah. You've got some really dumb instincts, to be sure. Everything you did yesterday was all wrong. But most of the ways someone can be wrong aren't all that impressive. You threw yourself at me, and followed up. Warriors go through decades of training to learn those instincts."

  "What?"

  "I respect you." I clearly needed to speak much more plainly to her. She was having trouble here.

  "But but but-"

  "You're having an episode," I pointed out. "Could you postpone it for a few minutes? I'd like to finish."

  She shut her mouth up and stared at me.

  "Good now. From the weight of the books you're carrying, you're gonna be a hell of a scrivener. And you're brave when it counts. It's okay to snivel after the fact as long as you're a lion when the moment matters. I'm going to need help from time to time. Scrivening help, for certain. I've got long-term projects, Kadot, and they're something I have to keep unofficial."

  "Like... I would help you?!"

  "That's part of what I'm driving at, yes," I said, nodding along.

  "But but but-"

  "Postpone it, yes?"

  "But you hate me!"

  "I hate most of the people I respect," I said with a sad sort of smile. "There's exceptions. You're not there yet. Look, if it helps you, think that I probably want to keep you where I can keep an eye on you. It's not all that true but maybe it makes sense to how you view me."

  "All right," she said, looking even more skeptical than I expected. I'm still not sure she understood what I was doing here. "And ... I'm part of your crew? Your friend? Employee? Lackey? My preference is employee."

  "We moved from 'please don't murder me' to 'where's my money' really fast."

  "You said you respect grit."

  "Didn't I though," I said, chuckling. "All right. Let's say employee. With an option to move up to lackey in the future. Do you know what the yearly retaining fee of a scrivener is?"

  "Uh, no?"

  "I didn't think you would. I do. If I make you an offer right now you're not going to know if I'm ripping you off. So go look it up. Tomorrow we talk business, crowns on the barrelhead."

  "Crowns?"

  "You're really going to like finding out what the annual retaining fee of a scrivener is. By the way, I'm gonna need your name."

  "I'm Gala Kralcit."

  Well, that's it for my suspension of disbelief. This world is now officially fucking with me.

  I was still buzzing in my brain when I walked into my Literature class. Fucking Kralcit has a daughter here in this school! How did I not know about this? How did that not come up in any of the playthroughs I had? Is she part of some hidden plotline, some story I never looked into? Or was this something that Nathan has no way to ever find out about? Of all things! Kralcit the pirate had a daughter that's right here in arm's reach! And she's already tried to kill me! and similar thoughts were reverberating when I came through the doors and went to sit at the back.

  Someone was walking straight towards me. What is with today, today? I looked up, and locked eyes on the girl that was walking towards me.

  Look, my eyes are strange. One a deep striking blue. The other a bright glimmering gold. But they're not slit-pupiled, bright pink and faintly glowing. Hers were set just a little too far apart over cheekbones that were very sharply pronounced. She did not have a heart-shaped face, her face was actually triangular. Her hair was mandarin-orange and she was improbably tall, but probably no heavier than I was.

  She stood in front of me, assessing. "You've killed. Recently. Creatures."

  "Good afternoon," I said, stiffly. Normally this would shame someone into observing normal social graces. She blew it off immediately.

  "I've never killed this thing," she said, accusingly. "Nor have I known anyone that has. A new type of creature."

  "Nice weather huh?" I retorted.

  "Are there more of them?" she demanded.

  "And how about that local sports team, huh?" I followed up. I did not hold back on the sarcasm.

  "I will watch your back. I can pay a finder's fee."

  I had to stop at this point. "Why? Why are you interested?"

  She grinned widely, her lips went all the way to her overly-wide cheekbones. "In my community, there is great bragging rights for killing exotic monsters. I have quite a collection, and I am familiar with many more. But I do not find many textures that are truly new to me. This is a valuable commodity. Especially if the creature is strong enough for me to benefit from, as you have."

  This woman was taller than Lady Hanje, and between the two of them, and Thumper, and even Elica is a few inches taller than me... well, I'm gonna get a complex about this. I'm not short! I'm taller than average! But I'm gonna keep Gala Kralcit around just because I've got at least four inches height on her.

  "You can just... tell that I've killed monsters recently, and what kind?"

  "Not innately," she admitted. "I have a bit of magic in my earring that feeds me that sort of information."

  "Well, I've recently learned a harsh lesson about not asking people's names until the end of a conversation," I said, to segue off of Gala. "May I ask yours?"

  "The name I tell people to call me by is Tiviti of the Wirrel clan, knight-errant of the Elyrga House, vassals of Nhullit, spearhead of the Dimnitas Marchlands, veteran of the Duende Wars." She paused, and cracked an easier, more personable sort of smile. "Tiviti. I'm not used to the big city."

  "Lady Natalie Harigold," I said, nodding to her. I gestured her to sit in the seat next to me. "The duende, hm? I heard that was pretty serious work."

  "Yeah," she said, smiling faintly and staring off in the middle distance. Fond memories. "It was so gruesome," she said, wistfully. "Stacks of bodies. Trees soaked in blood to a height of twenty feet." She sat down next to me, folding herself easily enough. Her left leg went over the top of the desk and her right was bent double underneath her, the back of the chair only hit her at the lower back and her arms just lolled around wherever. She was unbelievably tall, but she was so narrow that she did not take up much space despite this.

  "So," I said carefully, "this might be a big-city affectation, but around here we mostly try not to sound so giddy and nostalgic about massacres and twenty-foot-tall displays of carnage."

  She shrugged. "I was warned that nobody here knows how to have any fun. Do not worry, I shall tone it down. Now then, I'm eager to try my blade against monsters that I've never seen or heard of. I have hunted many kinds, and always I crave new experiences."

  "Speaking of new experiences, you're a whole lot of them all by yourself," I said. "You've got a very distinct and singular appearance."

  She shrugged. "The borders where humanity presses against the world are difficult places. Fraught with magic. To brush against it is to be changed by it."

  "Ah," I said. "I find enough savagery in civilized lands to keep me busy."

  She held out for a fist-bump, and I gave it to her. "When do we ride?" she asked.

  "After the sixteenth bell, in front of the girl's dorms," I said. "Dress warm. It's dark, and damp."

  The teacher began the lecture, and I tuned it out. I could not fail these classes, and I was just here to get access to the plot and story. I did not need to worry about the new unit we were discussing and the need for narrative foils. It just sounded like this lecture was orbiting around the idea that everyone needs someone they can talk to in an open and honest way, even unreliable narrators. Whatever.

  I have mysteries to solve. Like why it is that in almost every one of my class periods there is one person and one person only that appears to be determined to get my attention for one pretext or another. I opened up my status-menu overlay and glanced over at Tiviti, and saw a response.

  [ Tiviti Wirrel ][ Love Interest ][ Antagonist ][ The Huntress ]

  Oh shit. That looked a lot like the overlay for Nathan's har ,,, collection of potential love interests. But it included the [ Antagonist ] flag as well, which indicated that she was not working for Nathan but against him. All allegiance tags were in relation to Nathan, the Protagonist. I'm listed as a Rival, which is antagonist-aligned. But instead of the Love Interest / Ally combination, we've got... this. And if I'm reading those tags right, she's a love interest as an antagonist, so that, uh-

  That means she's a love interest to someone working against the protagonist.

  That means me.

  That can't be right. I'm not the lead character. I don't have love interests. I don't get romance subplots. I don't have allies, and I don't have storylines of my own.

  Except-

  I'm a rival. Not a villain, really. An opposite number. A counterpart, contending but congruent. After all, I'm not here to defeat Nathan, I'm here to challenge him on his own level and make him stronger for it.

  The revelation hit me: this is a two-player game with friendly fire enabled.