Fortunately, Vivi didn’t have to exaggerate to reassure Petra that the restaurant’s dishes had more than met her expectations. Funnily enough, the woman didn’t even seem pleased to receive that praise, merely relieved, as if ‘it was the best meal I’ve ever had’ had been the lowest bar worth clearing and anything less would have shamed her.

  Petra extracted similar opinions from the rest of the table, seeming as intensely interested in their responses as she had been in Vivi’s, then, after receiving those answers, thanked them one more time and left them alone to finish their meal, saying she would return at the end.

  When the final course—dessert—arrived, Vivi felt the time had come to address the reason she’d brought Aeris along.

  “So, Isabella,” Vivi started. “I should apologize: I think I might have caused you some unnecessary trouble.”

  Isabella froze with her fork half raised to her mouth. She delicately set the bite back down and put on a quizzical look. “Trouble, Lady Vivisari?”

  “I was heavy-handed yesterday. Not just with my requests to the crown that your father’s actions don’t fall onto you, but also with how I implied that you were under my protection. So in the future, it’s likely that people will see you as—” She wondered how to phrase it. “A way to get to me. Hopefully that just means they’ll try to earn your favor to earn mine, but…”

  Isabella hardly needed Vivi to spell it out. ‘A way to get to Vivi’ didn’t just include the carrot end of the carrot-and-stick metaphor. More aggressive strategies might be employed too. In the worst case, someone could try to kidnap Isabella and hold her for ransom to force the Sorceress into complying with their nefarious ploys.

  Strangely, though, the girl didn’t seem the slightest bit fazed. She ruminated over what Vivi had said for a couple of seconds, then shrugged. “I see. Thank you for telling me. I’m already Duke Caldimore’s only daughter, so people seeing me as a stepping stone to get to someone important is hardly new.” She shook her head. “Also, please, Lady Vivisari, you shouldn’t be apologizing to me for anything. Not more than a few days ago, you literally saved my life.” She looked down at her plate. “More than that, really.”

  Vivi didn’t respond for a few moments. “I’ve still painted a target on your back.”

  “My father painted a much larger one.”

  That might be debatable, but Vivi didn’t push. “Well, regardless, since I assume you want to continue your magical education at the Institute, I wanted to leave you in good hands. And hopefully leverage a good reputation to shield you until things calm down.”

  Confusion scrunched Isabella’s face. Vivi would have thought that the girl had put two and two together by now—if not the moment she’d seen Aeris. Isabella had always come off as an intelligent young woman, and Vivi inviting the archmage along to dinner surely hinted at a greater motive.

  “…leave me in good hands?” Isabella questioned.

  “You can stay at the manor as long as you want, that goes without saying. But when you do return to the Institute, yes. Archmage Aeris agreed to teach you—an official apprenticeship.”

  Isabella sat back in her chair, looking nothing short of dumbfounded by the announcement. Her open astonishment turned to Aeris, and the old man smiled.

  “Assuming you yourself find the arrangement amenable, of course,” he said.

  Isabella looked lost for several long moments. Eventually, she struggled out, “But… why?”

  “You’ll need to be more specific with that question, dear.”

  “Why… is everyone helping me so much?”

  Vivi almost physically winced at the words. Aeris sighed. Saffra glared at Isabella and poked her in the side.

  “Why wouldn’t people help you?” the redhead challenged hotly.

  “Indeed,” Aeris said. “There should be no need for reasons for one person to render aid to another. If one can, one should. And that goes triply from an adult to a child, an instructor to a student.” Another sigh. “It pains me that you even voiced such a question.” He waved his hand as if to dismiss the heavy topic. “Normally I pick apprentices from the upper years, ones that I’ve gotten to know through classes I’ve taught, so I don’t have much of an idea what your goals are, what specialty you’re pursuing—if you’ve even decided on one yet. But given the circumstances, I still think this makes sense for you.”

  Isabella again visibly didn’t know how to respond. She latched onto one of the less important things Aeris had said. “I don’t have a specialty, or one in mind yet, no. But I’m… not very good in the combat evaluations.”

  “She says that, but she still had the best overall ratings,” Saffra told Aeris. “That’s how far ahead she was.”

  Isabella not-so-discreetly glared at her friend and elbowed her—then immediately seemed embarrassed, probably because the behavior wasn’t ‘appropriate considering their company’ or something of that sort. Vivi had noticed that Saffra was uniquely skilled at making the normally refined girl break her composure.

  “You’re a warmage,” Isabella said in as polite a tone of voice as she could. “It just seems like not the best fit, is what I was getting at.”

  Aeris stroked his beard with a serious expression, then nodded. “Should you find a more appropriate mentor in the future, I will have no qualms about you pursuing tutelage elsewhere.”

  Isabella’s expression turned outright aghast. “That isn’t what I meant. I meant… me. I wouldn’t be a proper apprentice to you, Archmage Aeris.”

  He chuckled. “Yes, I know. I simply tease.” He hummed. “Though I assure you that while I am, and will always be, a warmage at heart, six hundred years has given me plenty of breadth of experience. No matter what path you decide to walk, I will be able to provide at least an adequate starting education."

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  Isabella continued to look horrified. “Please, sir. I’m not questioning your ability. Only my own. I just… I don’t think…” Her hands moved in meaningless gestures. In the end, she failed to finish the statement.

  Saffra spoke instead. “Stop trying to talk your way out of an apprenticeship with an archmage. Just say thank you, you dork.”

  Tatiana barked a laugh, then froze when the noise drew the table’s attention. “Er, sorry,” the older girl said. “But… she isn’t wrong?”

  Isabella mustered up her composure. “Let me try that again, then. I’m more grateful than you can imagine.” She dipped her head. “I humbly accept, Master Aeris.”

  Aeris beamed at her. “Excellent. I’ll need to speak with your instructors to find out what you’ve missed while you’ve been gone—as Vivisari said, feel free to continue recovering, but we should minimize how far behind you fall. Even a week or two of missed coursework can pile up to become rather overwhelming, or so I’ve heard.”

  Isabella made a face. “Yes, sir. I should probably return sooner rather than later. There’s little point hiding away at Lady Vivisari’s manor. It’s hardly classes that I need to worry about, and that… other stuff isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.”

  Vivi could only assume Isabella was alluding to the many enemies her father had made. Nobody should be foolish enough to attack the daughter who had suffered under the same man they hated, but people rarely acted logically in situations like these. She mentally shifted making a defensive artifact for the girl higher up the priority list.

  “You won’t need to worry about anything,” Vivi assured her. “I have scrolls and potions you can borrow in the short term, and I’ll work on a more permanent solution soon.”

  “Trouble shouldn’t find you in the halls of the Institute to begin with,” Aeris said, a deep frown pulling on his mustache and beard. “Though I suppose it already has, and more than once.” He shook his head. “Perhaps I need to speak with Lysander about increasing security, if so much slipped underneath our noses.”

  Dessert continued from there and concluded before long. Afterward, Petra stopped by and grilled them for their thoughts on the individual courses and how they worked together as a whole. Vivi didn’t have the vocabulary to explain her thoughts like most of Petra’s clients probably did, but it almost seemed like the cook found the simplicity of the compliments refreshing. Satisfied with their answers, Petra thanked them once more, apologized on behalf of the manager a second time, and gave Vivi directions to The White Nightingale so she could recruit Vanguard’s new cook.

  Even though Vivi had picked up a new embarrassing memory that would keep her awake at night, she didn’t regret the day’s events. Once the initial debacle had been resolved, she’d greatly enjoyed both the meal and chatting about magic and the Institute.

  After teleporting everyone back to Meridian, then to either the manor or Aeris’s office, Vivi returned to Sundermere and tracked down the tavern Shel Donovan, Petra’s most talented apprentice, worked at.

  The White Nightingale’s aesthetic was what Vivi had initially expected of Petra’s restaurant—marble replaced by wood and silk table covers replaced by cloth. An establishment that served adventurers first and foremost. Perhaps not as plain as a commoner’s inn, but far from the polished refinement of the Alabaster Rose. She didn’t spot a single stiff-backed, well-dressed nobleman when she walked in, and rather than quiet conversations and the tinkling of glass or porcelain filling the air, adventurers were speaking loudly, some nearly shouting as they vied to be heard over the din.

  Truthfully, this wasn’t ‘her environment’ any more than the previous—her environment would be alone in her bedroom, or barring that, a quiet place like a library—but she found it several times more comfortable than the various places teeming with nobility she’d dealt with the past two days. She also stood out less, her black robes presenting her clearly as a mage. Nobody paid her more than a glance as she walked through to speak with the barkeeper.

  As she passed, she winced at the realization that she would probably be breaking up this lively atmosphere, perhaps for good. This tavern was no doubt famous within the city for the quality of its food and the impressive effects a Master-rank Cook could enrich the kitchen’s meals with. Mithril and orichalcum adventurers wouldn’t flock in such numbers once Shel left. The tavern might find a replacement, but since this was a man who Petra had supported as her number-one choice for Vanguard’s cooking position, he was probably good, even for a Master Cook—and Master-rank craftsmen were already rare from what she’d heard, crafting equivalents to something between an orichalcum and a Titled. Shel himself likely drove a majority of the traffic to this establishment, and when he left, many patrons would too.

  Vivi introduced herself to the barkeeper, who looked at her suspiciously when she asked for Shel, but he relayed the message without fuss. Five minutes later, the cook came out to meet her. Shel was a human man of average height and thin build, with blond hair and a goatee. His blue eyes were, as Petra had suggested, firm and stoic, and not even seeing a white-haired demon and surely making the connection of who she was drew a shocked expression from him—it only introduced a falter in his stride that corrected after a single step.

  Vivi threw up a silencing barrier so they could speak privately and informed the man she’d done so. The conversation that ensued was… professional, for lack of a better term. Shel seemed like a very no-nonsense kind of person, which she appreciated. There was no history between them to complicate the discussion, nor did she even see any hero worship in his eyes, which she appreciated even more. Only the smallest hint of nervousness broke through the man’s cool demeanor—because even a naturally stoic person couldn’t be totally unaffected by meeting ‘the Sorceress,’ someone he’d probably been told stories about throughout his childhood.

  Petra had floated the idea to Shel several days in advance, which meant he had already begun making arrangements in case the opportunity manifested. That said, it was still short notice to dig up his old life and plant it elsewhere, and he requested a day to get his affairs in order—Vivi insisted that he could take longer if he needed. So long as she wasn’t waiting on him to fill the final role in the Quest, she had no issues with a delay.

  With that bit of recruitment handled, Vivi teleported back to Meridian, lay down on her bed for five minutes to mentally recuperate from all of the exhausting events she’d been through, then sighed and sat back up.

  There was one more thing she needed to take care of before she could relax. In all honesty, she should have dealt with it sooner.

  She warped to the Northern Kingdom’s coast, wrapped herself in speed, flight, and invisibility spells, then launched into the sky. Several hundred miles later, when she was alone high above the clouds in the middle of the ocean, she came to a stop and pulled out her grimoire. Using [Telekinesis] to stabilize the book and flip it open to a particular set of pages, she gazed at the complex spell circle that would be her focus for the next few hours.

  The diagram was so packed with runes and swirling designs that it struggled to fit even sprawled out on two enormous pages, and the lines were so thin in places that if not for her supernaturally enhanced vision, she wouldn’t have been able to make out the details. It was one of several spells Vivi had earned for clearing the Shattered Oracle’s raid on increasingly higher difficulties. In this reality, Vivisari had likely plucked them from the Oracle himself, while she’d been fighting him.

  Time to rip open space and try to stitch it back together, over and over again, Vivi thought. What could possibly go wrong?

  And afterward would be an event she was much less excited for.

  Finding out what had happened to the Red Tithe.