So that class was fun. For all of Sinbad’s (yes, that Sinbad) crazy played-up sense of drama, he was also a really good teacher. He explained things well, his style made everyone want to pay attention even if he was a bit cheesy at times (and I had absolutely no room to talk on that front), and he made everything exciting. Not that he needed that much help to make sailing a boat on a gigantic lake while talking about treasure hunting and sea monsters exciting, but still. It was interesting, even though all we did was basic introductions and a few back-and-forth questions. He promised that we would be learning basic water survival and training-type scenarios here on the station in a controlled environment where they knew exactly what and who were in the water, before going to various oceans to experience real-world adventures. That’s exactly what he called them, adventures. Like his own.
Whatever else happened, I had a feeling that class was going to be one of my favorites.
After that one was History of Africa, with two teachers. One was a Natural Kongamato Heretic. The Kongamato, apparently, were basically pterosaurs with long beaks and a seven foot wingspan. In the case of Mr. Obi, he had those large wings growing out of his back. Apparently he could retract them, but rarely did because he didn’t feel like hiding who and what he was.
His partner in teaching the class was an Alter known as a Rompo. And he was… well, definitely one of the odder looking Alters I’d encountered. Basically, he had the legs and rump of a large bear. The middle part of his body was literally an exposed skeleton with bones and everything (though no visible organs). His arms were like badger legs and paws (though with opposable thumbs), and he had a head like that of a rabbit. With human ears. Yup. The head of a rabbit but human ears, it was just… a complete mishmash of features including the skeleton thing.
In any case, he called himself Boris, and he had made it incredibly clear (in a similar way to how Professor Carfried had repeatedly informed us that magic was not fast the year before) that if we saw anyone who looked like him, any of his people, we were to attack or run away. Preferably the latter. He said that while the school was right to teach that not all Alters were evil, he had never met another of his own kind who weren’t amoral monsters, and that he himself had been somehow magically altered to be the way he was now. Which was absolutely a story I wanted to hear more about at some point, and I was pretty sure I wasn’t the only one.
We had that class, which again, mostly amounted to introductions. After that hour, it was time for lunch. I was walking along the station corridor with Tristan, Vanessa, and Avalon to meet up with the others. Tristan was regaling us with how amazing he thought Sinbad was. But while he was in mid-sentence, I was distracted by a shout from down the hall, followed by a loud snarl.
We didn’t even look at each other, we just started running that way. Coming around the corner, the four of us found two figures apparently facing off, with several more around them. One of the figures was a guy from Crossroads, a dark-haired boy from a year ahead of us wearing a muscle shirt and ripped jeans. The other was… well, a cat-girl. Yeah, I’d referred to Triss as a cat-girl, but she was more of an anthropomorphic cat. This girl, on the other hand, looked human with pale white skin and short white-blonde hair that fell just below her second set of ears.
Yeah, second set. Because she had two pairs, the regular human ones in the usual place which was what her hair fell just under, and a pair of white cat ears atop her head. She also had a matching white cat tail. Oh, and claws that came out of her human fingers. Those claws were out now, as she literally hissed at the boy in front of her. “Shove me again,” the girl snarled, “and we’ll see which of us has more lives to give up.”
“Stop it!” The voice came from one of the onlookers, a human (or human-looking that didn’t set off my Heretic-sense at least) girl with long black hair that had a few blue highlights. She put herself between the two. “Yonic, knock it off! Felix, it’s okay. It’s over now. It’s over.”
Avalon gave me a brief look before stepping that way. “What happened over here?”
“What happened,” the boy muttered without taking his eyes off the cat-girl, “is I don’t like some half-breed chick hitting on my girlfriend. How does that sound for ‘what happened?’”
In response, the cat-girl flashed a wide smile that showed off an impressive array of teeth. “Hey, if I’m competing across an entire gender and half a species and winning, maybe you’re the problem.”
“Damn it, Felix,” the girl between them snapped at her, “you’re not helping.” To the boy, she added, “She’s just pushing your buttons because you’re being a jerk, Yonic. Go take a walk, then we can sit down and have lunch, okay? Walk it off, before something bad happens.”
Seeming to only really understand then that there was an audience, Yonic paused before exhaling. “Fine, yeah. Sorry. I just… new school, new everything, it’s…” He made a vague hand waving gesture before turning to walk away. His movement took him past us, and I heard him mutter under his breath about needing to punch something that he wouldn’t get in trouble for.
Before the rest of us could say anything, Triss appeared. She came from the other side, stopping short before squinting at the… other… slightly less cat-like girl. “Felix, what happened?”
“It’s okay,” the girl who had been between the two insisted. “There was just a little disagreement. Some tempers. It happens, especially here and now. No one got hurt, aside from ruffled feathers. Um, metaphorically speaking.”
“Yeah,” Felix agreed, folding her arms with a shrug. “No one’s hurt, no one has to go see the nurse. Unless you’re into that.” The last was added with a tilted head, as her cat-ears perked up.
The girl she clearly had been flirting with flushed a bit, head shaking. “I uhh, I better go make sure Yonic’s okay.” She hesitated, looking to the other girl with what looked like tempted curiosity, before shaking her head as she hurried after her boyfriend.
“One day, Felix,” Triss was muttering softly, head shaking. “Can we go through one day without you getting into a fight by stealing people’s significant others?”
Giving a languid shrug, the other girl drawled, “Last time I checked, ‘stealing’ means taking by force or deceit. If I throw the bait out there and they jump on it, is it really stealing? They can make their own decisions.”
Tristan stepped over that way, followed closely by Vanessa as he spoke up. “So you’re Felix?”
“Yeah, what–” the girl started dismissively before giving a brief double-take as she looked over the twins. “Yes, yes I am. And I am so into whatever this is.” Her hand gestured toward them.
In a flat, dull voice, Vanessa spoke while walking away from her brother and around the group toward the cafeteria. “I’m going to go eat something, so I can throw it up.”
Sighing, Triss looked to the rest of us, then gestured vaguely. “This is Felix, my little half-sister.”
“Six months younger,” the other girl cut in, cat-ears twitching a bit at the reminder. “Not even a full year. Dad got pretty busy that year.” Belatedly, she added, “And yeah, the name is really Felix. What can I say? Mommy really expected a boy and when I popped out, she panicked. Felix the cat. She thought it was going to be funny. Personally, I think it would’ve been a worse name if I actually was a boy.”
Snorting despite myself, I stepped over by Avalon. “Well hey, Felix, I’m Flick. This is Avalon. We’re sort of roommates with your sister. Or housemates, at least.”
Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
“And I’m Tristan, the cute neighbor,” the blond boy put in while extending a hand to her. “You saw my sister Vanessa run off a minute ago. You wanna go get lunch with us?”
“And bug my big sister some more? I’m into it.” Felix all-but purred while her tail moved up around the other girl’s wrist affectionately, before Triss’s own tail pushed it aside. Their tails then intertwined a bit. It was pretty cute.
So, we went off to have lunch with the others. Our classes, at least for those of us who were considered adults by the school, were over for the day. Next would come physical training. So having food first was probably a pretty good idea.
Because I had a feeling that Avalon was really going to put me through my paces today.
*******
Hours later, after dinner, Sarah and I had gone to meet Brom Bones in one of the magical study rooms. The room was set up as a large oval, all the walls curved and covered it with various protection runes to stop stray magic from getting out. Both the walls and the floor were heavily reinforced metal, while the ceiling was made from some kind of red gem substance that was supposed to gradually absorb any leftover spell work that wasn’t fully cleaned up properly.
At the moment, the two of us were facing our necromancy instructor. Or, more to the point, we were facing his head, which was sitting on his metal stand while his body did some work on the floor behind us. Brom was talking. “So, you haven’t had any luck in pulling your little visitor in after that first time, huh? That’s not that surprising, given how far away her remains must be and how long ago she died. Honestly, the fact she was able to get to you at all is really impressive. I wonder how long she was trying to reach you…” His eyes glanced off into the distance as he got lost in thought before shaking himself. That was, the head literally shook itself, which was still a really odd sight. He couldn’t exactly shrug, but I got that impression from just looking at him. Actually, for all I knew, his body was shrugging behind us. I was restraining the urge to turn and check when I saw Sarah glance that way out of the corner of my eye. Our gazes met, and she gave a subtle nod.
With a small smile at that, I pointed out, “We don’t exactly have a lot of time left before…” I trailed off for a few seconds, then swallowed hard and pushed on. Not saying it out loud wouldn’t make it any less true. “We don’t exactly have a lot of time left before Fossor’s going to make his play. I’ve been practicing and training for months, and I still don’t know what’s going to happen. I need some kind of help, some kind of advantage that he’s not expecting. His sister could be that advantage, but we have to get her back. Whatever it takes, I don’t have a choice. We have to.”
Sarah put a hand on my arm, her voice quiet as she reminded me, “You won’t be alone.”
With a little nod, I caught her hand and squeezed it gratefully. “I know that… I know all you guys are going to help as much as you can. I know. And I’m definitely not gonna do something stupid like try to face him alone. Trust me, I’m totally aware of how idiotic that would be. But… but I’m also not going to plan everything around assuming I’ll be in a nice safe bubble surrounded by friends the whole time. If there’s a way to separate me from all of you, Fossor will do it, and I’m going to plan on being able to handle it if that happens. I have to cover all the bases.
“Besides,” I added pointedly, “no matter how many people are with me, having Fossor’s sister around would be helpful if she really wants to take him down. No one’s managed to do it so far. All they’ve done is make him walk on the ashes of his own people while he’s here on Earth. Which, while a super-fitting aesthetic for a necromancer, doesn’t actually help all that much when he’s willing to kill millions just to have that ash to step on. We have to have something else, something better.” I exhaled then, squeezing my friend’s hand one more time before releasing it. “Rahanvael is our best, maybe only shot at something he won’t see coming.”
Brom’s body moved past me, picking up his head as the man spoke. “You’re right, she is probably the best chance at taking that necromantic piece of shit down. So yeah, I’ll help you figure out how to pull her in again. But I’ll need a little time to look into some rare boosting rituals that might work with your particular brand of necromancy, okay?”
I knew what he was saying. My necromancy, inherited from Manakel, wasn’t exactly like his. It did a lot of the same stuff, just without most of the effort that others had to put into it. The way the headless–errr head-adjacent man had explained it, there were two general kinds of necromancers. First there were the ones who didn’t have an innate power for it, they just used magic to build up the power in themselves, essentially transforming their own magic temporarily into necromancy magic. Then there were the ones like Fossor or Manakel (and now me) who always had necromancy magic inside them and just had to learn to direct it properly. We just sort of skipped step one. For the bigger things, even we needed ingredients and spellwork and such, but even that would always be easier and quicker for us. Especially for someone like Fossor, who had been doing this stuff for millennia.
“I’ve got some leads already,” Brom assured me, tucking his head up under his arm. “There are some pretty rare books out there that might have what you need. But if we do figure out where they are, it won’t be easy to get to them. Especially if you don’t want Fossor to have any idea what you’re doing.”
Sarah spoke up then, pointing out, “He knows she got some necromancy power. Would he really be surprised that she was looking into more books to learn about it?”
Blinking, I nodded. “She’s got a point. He knows I’ve got the power and that I want to fight him. Me looking for more necromancy secrets wouldn’t be that much of a surprise. And it’d be a pretty big leap to go from there to me having access to the sister he killed millennia ago.”
“Right, fair,” Brom conceded with a wave of his free hand. “Okay, then I won’t worry too much about keeping it completely secret. Still, we should keep it as quiet as possible. And when we do find out where these books might be?”
“Then we’ll go after them,” I confirmed, glancing to Sarah to see the other girl nodding firmly. “You find out where those special books are and we’ll go get them. But like I said, please try to make it as soon as possible. Because my birthday is coming up really fast.
“And I might just be one of the only people in history not looking forward to turning eighteen.”
******
“Then Mr. Toppers said we get to learn about the Belv period on Korgo,” Tabbris was excitedly telling me that night while we were in our room. We were both sitting up in our beds, and I was watching as my little sister regaled me with how her day at school had gone. “That’s the planet the Relukun come from. It’s like, all trees. Super big trees that are alive and the Relukun are like their seeds or saplings or something that gain sapience. Like, there’s two different kinds of saplings that come off the world trees on Korgo, the ones that grow into the big trees and the ones that get smart and become the Relukun. But the Relukun still procreate, sort of… they can take pieces of themselves off that can become new younger Relukun. And the Belv period is basically like their version of medieval Earth, where this guy called Pala like, took over three-quarters of their world and made everyone worship this god called Moz.”
She went on like that for a bit, while I just smiled and watched. She loved her classes, and her classmates, and her teachers. There were a few that she didn’t get along with, of course. And I could tell there was stuff that she wasn’t telling me about how her day went. But overall, it seemed to have been pretty good. Which was great. I wanted my little sister, my partner, to have her own life. Even if I missed being able to talk to her in my head sometimes while I was in my own classes. This was for the best. It was the right thing.
“Oh, um…” Pausing in mid-sentence, the other girl looked to me. “I know it’s been a couple days for all this stuff, but are you gonna see her again tonight?”
I nodded. “Yeah, I’ll see her again.”
“Tell her I said hi.” With that, she launched right back into the same story she’d been talking about before. But eventually, even Tabbris wound down. She mumbled something about how it was okay if I left the light on, gradually passing out with her head under the blanket. Watching her for a few long seconds, I smiled to myself before exhaling. Then I shifted, lying down on my own bed as I stared up at the ceiling.
Okay, I thought silently, I’m ready.
My eyes closed for a moment, before opening once more. Only they didn’t really. I wasn’t opening my physical eyes. I was opening my eyes inside my own mind, in a mental construct of a pine forest. There were birds chirping in the distance, and the sound of a rushing stream somewhere nearby.
It was all in my head, completely made up. It wasn’t real, even if it felt, tasted, sounded, and looked completely real. It was in my head. But I hadn’t made it. At least, not by myself. I had help.
“You’re ready?” the source of that help spoke up from behind me, and I turned that way.
“Yes,” I replied, “I know I took a couple days off to get settled into the new school, but I’m good now. Ready to go.”
“Good,” the virtual replica of Chayyiel that the Seosten herself had left in my head back when she possessed me in the Crossroads prison announced.
“Because I’ve got a lot more training to put you through.”