The Senior Apprentice Wing’s back office resembled a royal's treasury of knowledge—if said royal hoarded grimoires instead of gold. Mana lanterns hummed with captive starlight, their glow licking spines of leather-bound treatises and alchemical arrays. Every surface bore the fingerprints of meticulous madness: vials nested in velvet grooves, star charts pinned with daggers, ledgers stacked with tectonic precision.

  I ghosted through the open archway, Alice drifting behind me like sentient smoke. Vasilisa was performing her habitual panther-pacing, talons scoring grooves into the air. Hawk-kin anatomy be damned—she moved like a stormfront condensed into humanoid form. When irritated (which was always), her very feathers crackled with ozone.

  She wheeled toward us, jade eyes laser-etched with disdain. “Five minutes tardy. Again.” Her voice could flay bark from oaks.

  I offered a bow polished by practice. “The apparatus required monitoring, Master. Halting mid-calibration would’ve vaporized three months’ worth of moonroot extract. Mrs. Petrov relayed your… summons?”

  “Summons?” A derisive cluck. “Child, when a master calls, apprentices sprint. Yet here you amble, stinking of subterfuge.”

  Ah. Yep. There it was. Somewhere along the line, I’d clearly screwed up. The question was how she knew. Did Viera rat me out? Unlikely. She wasn’t exactly the type to play informant.

  I tensed, but my face remained as blank as a freshly wiped slate. “Subterfuge requires intent. I’ve merely been—”

  “—slipping through cracks like gutter mist?” she shot back, her feathers twitching ominously. Sweet Thalador, a sure sign she was gearing up for one of her verbal hurricanes. “You think I didn’t notice? The guards keep records every time someone leaves. Yesterday, you vanished with Viera. She returned; you didn’t. Care to explain?”

  … Yeah, I might’ve underestimated the whole “guards keep records” thing. My usual sneaking-out tactic involved slipping into the fourth dimension in my dragon form from the comfort of my dorm. Seamless, undetectable. Except I’d brought Viera along this time. Should’ve seen the complications coming, but my brain had been otherwise preoccupied. Rookie move.

  “Records are ink, not truth,” I parried, silk lacing my words. “Perhaps the guard dozed. I’ve been here all along.”

  Her shoes clicked against the stone floor as she advanced, each step a punctuation mark. “Hear this clearly, little viper: I smell your games. Whatever fissure you’ve slithered through, I’ll seal it with axioms sharper than your lies.”

  Well, that was ominous. As long as she didn’t alter the barrier’s attribute to Light, I’d still have an exit strategy. I kept my expression schooled, a delicate mask that nearly cracked when Alice decided to chime in.

  “Fury’s veneer… but beneath? Layers beneath layers. Silt under riverstones—she fears for you, Mistress.”

  Vasilisa’s gaze snapped toward Alice’s general direction so fast I felt my heart leap into my throat. She frowned, her sharp eyes sweeping the room as if she’d almost—almost—detected Alice’s presence.

  “Her perception is extraordinary,” Alice murmured.

  No kidding. But she hadn’t pinpointed Alice, thank Thalador. Still, her reaction gave me something to chew on. Anger and worry, huh? That wasn’t just irritation over me playing sneaky dragon. Something had rattled her.

  I straightened, letting practiced neutrality fracture into blade-sharp candor. “Master… is this concern personal, or just professional liability?”

  Vasilisa stilled—a raptor mid-strike. Her gaze twitched again toward Alice’s corner, a fractional tell I’d have missed if not for a month of decoding her avian micro-expressions. For a heartbeat, her features tightened as if tasting ozone before a lightning strike. Then she retreated behind her desk, talons drumming a staccato dirge against mahogany.

  “Worry?” She hissed, the word serrated. “You’re a ledger entry, girl. A risk-to-reward ratio. But yes—imagine my distress when your corpse complicates my quarterly reports.”

  Lies. Her pupils had dilated mid-sentence. Alice hummed, “The heart’s ledger uses different arithmetic, Mistress.”

  Yeah, something was definitely off here. Whatever this was, it wasn’t just about me being a sneaky delinquent. Time to dig deeper.

  “Something happened?” I asked, keeping my tone neutral but probing.

  She hesitated. Her feathers twitched. A telltale sign she was battling with herself. For a fleeting moment, her gaze went distant, shadowed. Then, she exhaled, and the storm in her eyes settled into a grim focus.

  “Three days ago, Alec’s bed went cold. Yesterday, Tasha’s workstation gathered dust. No notes. No traces. Just… absence.” The word hung like a hanged man. “And now my clients report intercepted shipments—phoenix ash swapped for grave dirt, sylphic tinctures diluted with gutterwater. Coincidence?” Her laugh was a whetstone dragged across bone. “Someone’s painting a target on my business. Yours too, if you keep vaulting walls like a feral cat.”

  “Your business?” I asked, latching onto the hint of bitterness in her tone.

  “Yes, my business,” she snapped, talons gouging the desk. “Or do you think enlightenment funds itself? Every drop you distill lines pockets—royal coffers, sect vaults, mercenary guilds. Our patrons demand potency, and in return, they leash their hounds. Now someone’s cutting those leashes.”

  Her gaze bore into me. “If you’d been caught sneaking out, it would’ve been one more strike against me. Against all of us.”

  Alice tilted her head thoughtfully. “Her thorns grow from salted soil, Mistress. Protectiveness, fermented to cruelty.”

  I ignored her again, focusing on Vasilisa’s words. “Master, do you think the missing apprentices were… leveraged?”

  Her emerald eyes hardened. “I think they were taken. Maybe to send a message. Maybe for something worse. And if you have half a brain, you’ll stay in the tower, where it’s safer.”

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  I nodded, though the idea of staying cooped up here when my objectives lay outside didn’t sit well. “I understand, Master.”

  “Keep it in your head, girl,” she said. “This place is a thousand times safer than the outside. The wards, the protections—I’ll see to it that they’re fortified. But out there?” She paused, shaking her head, her voice dipping into a rare, raw vulnerability. “Out there, you’re just a loose thread waiting to be plucked. And with everything happening right now, I will not lose another apprentice. Do you hear me?”

  “I hear you, Master.” I nodded again, though my mind churned like a storm-tossed sea. Her warning was chilling. Whoever was behind this wasn’t just targeting Vasilisa—they were disrupting the tower’s entire operation. But to go after someone like her, someone with ties to the ruling families and sects of Varkaigrad? These people weren’t just bold; they were suicidal. And with apprentices literally vanishing into thin air, this wasn’t just business—it stank of politics. Gods, how I loathed civilization sometimes.

  “Well,” I said after a thoughtful beat, tilting my head, “if someone’s targeting us, shouldn’t we be doing something about it?”

  Her laugh was sharp and humorless. “Oh, we will. Trust me, girl, we will. But for now, your job is to stay alive. Every apprentice under me is my responsibility. So while I may not yet know how you’ve found some loophole to sneak out, think you can manage not to abuse it again?”

  I bowed, my tone honeyed with compliance. “Please be rest assured, Master. I’m not foolish enough to endanger my life. I’ll follow your orders and stay put.”

  Yet, as I inclined my head, I couldn’t resist a slow sweep of my tongue across my fangs, catching the faint, metallic ghost of old blood. Ah, yes. It had been far too long since I’d savored the richness of corporeal flesh. Wraiths and other incorporeal morsels were interesting, sure—like sampling air with a hint of spice—but they couldn’t hold a candle to the satisfying, primal tang of something solid. If only fate—or a particularly clueless soul—would deliver me a snack in some conveniently shadowed alleyway.

  Vasilisa gave me a sharp nod, her feathers finally settling, a clear dismissal. Cue my exit.

  The rest of the day dragged like molasses in winter. After sitting through the last of Vasilisa’s hour-long lectures, I was free at last—clock striking close to three. On the way back, I bumped into Viera, and we walked in mutual silence to my dorm. Well, silent except for Alice, who was buzzing like an overexcited gnat in my mind.

  “Anxiety curdles her aura,” Alice observed, “yet beneath? An undercurrent of… anticipation. Maybe she’s got something useful?”

  I could only hope.

  The moment the door clicked shut behind me, Viera crumpled onto my bed with all the grace of a felled tree.

  Belle was the first to break the tension, chirping an enthusiastic, “Squee!” Her tiny form practically quivered with excitement at seeing Viera again. The response? A feeble wave from the lump on my bed.

  Finally, Viera rolled her head toward me. “Vasilisa called,” she groaned. “She wanted to know where the hell we were yesterday. I lied—said we’d gone to the market. She didn’t buy it. Jade, I swear, I almost shat myself. She’s onto you.”

  “She was,” I admitted with a sigh.

  Her head snapped up. “Wait, you got caught?”

  “Sort of. Not the point. How’d your chat with your father go?”

  Her expression shifted—half annoyance, half triumph. “Exactly like mine at first. ‘Impossible,’ he said. ‘An alchemy accident, maybe. Beast illusions, possibly.’ Blah blah blah. So, I told him the truth—that I’d seen one myself. That got his attention.”

  “And?”

  A grin split her face. “I think he’s going to report it to the main sect.”

  Finally, something promising. I exhaled a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. “About time. People need to know we’re not dealing with some rogue experiment or shoddy spellwork. These things are real shifters—unnatural ones.” I paused, my voice lowering. “Then again, who’s to say it isn’t the result of some experiment gone horribly wrong?”

  The memory of the stench came unbidden—the cloying, rotting essence of that thing. Whatever it was, it reeked of something far worse than a simple mistake. This was deeper, darker—a monstrous iceberg with only its jagged tip in view.

  Whatever. I’d make sure to keep myself out of the crossfire—no heroic martyrdom here. Just gather the intel I needed and leave the rest to Gwen. Sounded like a foolproof plan, or at least one I could live with.

  Belle interrupted my musings with a tray of tea, her usual air of self-importance intact. “Squee!” Biscuits! She reminded me sternly. “Squee!” Replenish them. Again. Priorities, clearly. But I could hardly argue with her logic. A dry tea session was unacceptable.

  After a polite farewell to Viera, I dove into my studies. My focus was a breakthrough—finding a way to shift parts of my Drakkari body into my dragon form at will. The goal was combat efficiency, and it wasn’t going to happen without putting in the hours.

  By the time I finished scribbling theories and crunching numbers, the sun had already vanished, leaving me with a stack of notes and the tantalizing sense that I was close—so close. Everything worked in theory. The next step would be testing. I could hardly wait.

  But tonight wasn’t about breakthroughs or experiments. It was time to sneak out again. Opportunities didn’t come knocking, and certainly not while I sat idle in my dorm. If my visions from divination were any clue, my golden thread of fortune wasn’t meant for “Jade.” It was for someone else. Someone called Miss Venom. I grinned.

  “I’d like to accompany you, Mistress,” Alice piped up.

  I opened my mouth to tell her no—I couldn’t sneak her out without drawing attention—when a thought struck me. My frown deepened. The 4th dimension posed a unique dilemma: I couldn’t carry items into it, but if something was inside me—say, in my mouth, and my maw remained firmly shut—it could cross over intact.

  I’d tested the theory before. On a bird. A dead one, granted, but it did confirm the principle. The question was whether Alice counted as “alive.”

  “You sure about this?” I asked, narrowing my eyes at her.

  “Absolutely, Mistress. If you’re referring to the shadow dimension, I should be fine. Just carry me as you would any other unliving object.”

  Her confidence gave me pause. What was Alice, anyway? If she ended up broken in the process, could I hand her over to Lotte for a quick patch job? Not exactly comforting, but better than nothing. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to double-check.

  “Oh, wait!” A grin spread across my face. “We’ll let the fates decide—divination!”

  “If it puts your mind at ease, Mistress,” Alice said with an approving nod. This time, she reached for a mana stone and tied it to a thread, letting it dangle over a blank sheet of paper.

  “This method is straightforward,” she explained. “If it spins counterclockwise, the answer’s no. Clockwise means yes. Now, think of your question.”

  “Will Alice be harmed if I phase with her in my maw?” A solid, no-nonsense query. Alice nodded in agreement. “That’ll work.”

  Her blindfold’s runes flared gold, melting into the fabric like sunlight sinking into ink, and the paper turned into a makeshift altar. When her eyes reappeared, twin voids spiraled where her beady eyes should’ve been. With solemn clarity, she intoned the question. Thrice.

  The pendulum twitched, wobbled, then committed to a steady counterclockwise spin. No, Alice would not be harmed.

  I exhaled, tension draining like water from a cracked jar. Divination—useful and spooky, in equal measure.

  I moved quickly. Off came the robe, took out a dark blue tunic, dark cloak, ornate mask and leather pants from my closet. My bracer clicked loose, and with a pulse of will, my half-dragon form rippled and snapped into place. Then, summoning mana from deep within, I shifted fully into my dragon form. Process took almost 150 mana points, but my regeneration was fast enough that I wasn’t worried.

  Alright, showtime.

  Tentacles unfurled from my back like lazy serpents, each moving with practiced ease. One grabbed an anti-divination charm from the table, another snatched a handful of potions I’d brewed for emergencies. A third swept up my clothes, and the last coiled around Alice, who promptly averted her gaze, a flustered gesture.

  Weird.

  One by one, I deposited everything into my maw. Perks of being massive—they all fit like luggage in a suitcase. Alice nestled in last, still radiating that strange embarrassment.

  Belle chirped from her perch, adjusting her little bow tie with a dignified “Squee!” Be safe!

  Oh, safe I’d be. With a pulse of mana, the dimensional lamina rippled within me. The world flickered, and I slipped seamlessly into the 4th dimension.

  +16 Adv. Chapters on Patreon!!

  Camille Vacio, Andrew