A chill, dry air clung to the Arcane Infirmary, tasting faintly of ancient herbs and sterile wards. Lysander moved through it, each step deliberate, a silent defiance against the churning tempest within his own mind. He knew he didn't have to do this. He could have simply offered a composed, pitying glance, perhaps murmured a polite reprimand to Cassian for his crude outburst, and retreated into his usual cloak of detached diligence. The revered scholar, Lysander, who never stooped to base emotion, who never involved himself in the petty squabbles of the Houses.
But the thought curdled in his gut. Why should *he* remain pristine when Elara had so carelessly trampled his efforts, his quiet, arduous climb? All because of some fleeting, inconsequential infatuation. That viper. That hollow, golden viper.
He stood over her cot, the crisp white linens a stark contrast to the livid bruising that marred one side of her face. Elara, scion of House Solara, lay oblivious, lost to the deep sleep induced by the healers' tinctures. No tenderness stirred within Lysander. Only a cold, crystalline anger.
From the small, concealed pouch at his wrist, he drew a minuscule vial. It held not poison, but a diluted, viscous extract of Midnight Bloom—a rare, notoriously unstable reagent used in forbidden purification rites, its true purpose long lost to the Eldorian Houses. Lysander had studied it, memorized its properties, though he would never admit to such obscure pursuits.
His fingers trembled, not from fear, but a strange, exhilarating tremor of transgression. He uncorked the vial, a faint, metallic scent rising to meet him. A single, dark droplet shimmered at its lip.
He let it fall, a tiny, inky sphere, onto the precise center of Elara’s pale forehead. It spread slowly, a splotch of midnight ink against ivory skin, mimicking a corrupted sealing glyph. A subtle, silent desecration. A private, potent act of venom.
"Oh, Lysander. You *do* surprise me."
Cassian’s voice, a low, pleased murmur, broke the stillness. Lysander flinched, snatching his hand back, fumbling to re-cork the vial. Panic, sharp and cold, seized him. He grabbed a fold of Elara’s blanket, trying to blot the offending mark. The dark ink had already begun to fade, absorbed into the skin, leaving only a faint, almost imperceptible stain.
Cassian watched, his eyes alight with a disconcerting amusement. He brought a hand to his own cheek, a slow, predatory smile spreading across his lips.
"This… this must be what true joy feels like, wouldn’t you agree?"
Lysander’s breath caught. "What are you talking about?"
He had always thought Cassian a force of calculated chaos, a viper of wit. But this… this was something else. A madness that mirrored Lysander’s own hidden current, amplified.
---
We departed the Arcane Infirmary as the Ward’s clock chimed for twilight. Cassian hummed a discordant tune under his breath, a melody with too many sharp notes. Lysander walked beside him, a statue of quiet contemplation. Abruptly, Cassian stopped humming, turning to Lysander.
"Tell me, Lysander."
Lysander met his gaze, a question in his eyes.
"Fancy a night of esoteric discourse? Just the two of us?"
The implication hung in the air, thick and cloying. So, now Cassian found him… interesting. The thought was both repulsive and strangely gratifying.
Lysander took another step forward, feigning indifference. "As you wish."
Cassian moved swiftly, stepping ahead, then turning to face Lysander. He placed a hand lightly on Lysander’s shoulder, a gesture that felt less like camaraderie and more like appraisal. As if examining a newly acquired, intriguing artifact.
"Lysander."
"What is it?"
"I find myself… mildly intrigued by you."
His tone carried a subtle condescension, an unspoken assertion of superiority. Lysander hesitated. Should he challenge it? Or swallow the slight, as he so often did, for the sake of an easier path?
These choices always arose without warning, demanding an immediate answer. What would best serve his quiet ambition, his desperate need for acceptance?
He chose the smoother road. After all, Cassian, with his unpredictable currents, would likely be gone from the Arcane Ward after their studies were complete. For the sake of a tranquil tenure...
A faint, sardonic curve touched Lysander’s lips. He shrugged, affecting an air of casual disregard. "Perhaps it's merely the rare occasion when our interests happen to align."
"Align?" Cassian repeated, a slow, chilling grin spreading under the fading light of the Arcane Ward. "Ah. So you truly despise Elara, don’t you?"
His voice dripped with mockery, yet held no true malice, only a detached curiosity. A cold, frost-kissed expression.
The darkening sky reflected in the polished obsidian window pane beside them. In its dim sheen, Lysander saw Cassian’s faint smile.
"Thank you."
The glint of his teeth, a flash of white in the encroaching gloom.
For what? For his hidden animosity towards Elara? Or for retrieving some obscure, metaphorical fragment of his own broken pride?
Cassian never clarified, leaving Lysander to guess at the precise nature of his gratitude.
"Let’s go."
"...Yes."
Still, from that moment on—
Lysander realized he harbored a complicated fascination for Cassian. When had it begun? He couldn't pinpoint it. But if he had to acknowledge the moment he finally admitted it to himself, it was now.
---
He had been observing Cassian more closely lately. It was peculiar; Cassian often appeared exactly where Lysander’s gaze settled. Not that Lysander was the oddity. If anything, Cassian was.
Cassian was petty, his mind a labyrinth of sharp edges. Despite his outwardly ascetic demeanor, his interest in the cruder manifestations of magic was insatiable.
"Those raw mana surges are utterly barbaric. My instructor, Master Valerius, demonstrates pure elemental channeling every cycle. You neophytes wouldn't comprehend. He once mentioned a curious fact: uncontrolled mana discharge can actually… invigorate certain fungal growths."
"No wonder the apprentices last time were instructed to simply direct it towards the nutrient vats."
"That’s a problem of your own making."
"No, that’s clearly your concern."
"Honestly, the lesser House acolytes perform it with far more… enthusiasm. They possess an abundance of brute force, if little finesse."
"Acolytes are for raw talent. Refined mages possess inherent grace."
"More like inherent entitlement."
"You insufferable brat, I'll flatten your aura."
Many students of the more affluent Eldorian Houses engaged in whispered competitions over who could exhibit the most impressive, unrefined mana burst, while others, less gifted but more ambitious, would pool their resources for fleeting apprenticeships under minor elementalists. Lysander found it all rather crass.
That was why the boisterous tales of Elara’s effortless, powerful cantrips were fantasy to those who struggled with the intricate theories. They clung to her stories like lesser familiars to their master's shadow.
To these students, the sheer volume of their mana discharge was akin to the number of scrolls in an ancient library—regardless of their content. Whether it was elegant channeling or a chaotic outburst, the magic itself became a mere badge, a superficial display.
Even the most profound, intimate moments of communion with arcane energies were reduced to the crude, low-resolution grimoire sketches one might find in forbidden, forgotten texts. And they spoke of it with a misplaced pride.
Blithering, witless dilettantes.
By their standards, Cassian was just another scholar, lacking in overt magical displays. But the difference was, he saw *them* as the fools.
"By the Void, what drivel. Are all of you truly so… unrefined?"
Hearing this, Lysander began to understand Cassian’s disdain for Elara. Perhaps, in Cassian’s mind, he couldn't abide the proliferation of such base, unsophisticated magic. Whether it was the raw, unchanneled bursts of the lesser Houses or the casual flirtation with forgotten rituals, it was all the same to him.
"Cease radiating your crude energies and depart."
Cassian’s tone, though often playful, was always meticulously crafted to mock and diminish. Because of it, students who technically occupied similar social strata found him infuriating.
Another hierarchy, more subtle, revealed itself. The truly lower-ranked students merely laughed it off, but those on Cassian’s own level retorted with the same half-joking, half-serious venom. Often, it was Torvin, a blustering student from a minor noble House, who led the charge. His primary weapon was Cassian’s perceived lack of raw, innate magical talent.
"What gives a mere theorist the right to speak here? Begone, grimoire worm."
Cassian merely smirked, a serpentine twist of his lips. "I intervene only because your discussions border on the utterly imbecilic."
"Oh, really? And what insight do you possess, scholar boy?"
"Observe, then. Since you all seem incapable of discussing anything beyond your elementary mana surges, permit me to enlighten you, you benighted apprentices."
Grinning, Cassian opened his mouth. With a slender finger, he pressed down upon the center of his tongue.
"This," he declared, his voice a low hum, "is a rudimentary mana draw."
Then, he opened his mouth wider, shoving his finger deeper until it neared his throat, before withdrawing it with a theatrical flourish.
"That," he announced, "was a profound soul-tethering. If you cannot reach this deep, your connection to the Aether is merely superficial. But I comprehend. Your innate channels are as narrow as a spider’s silk, so you know nothing beyond a simple mana draw. Truly, witnessing your repetitive obsessions pains me. Is your arcane channel so constricted it barely reaches your tongue? If your connection is as stunted as it was when your nurses changed your swaddling, how do you expect to manipulate the higher principles? By the Void, if your progenitors saw you now, they’d likely grow nostalgic and try to swaddle your auras once more."
"By the Houses! Where did you learn all this? Don’t tell me you’ve been delving into forbidden texts?"
"No, imbecile. I read. Try it sometime. *Read*. You dolt."
He punctuated each syllable by lightly tapping Torvin’s face with a slim, leather-bound volume. "By-the-Void—!"
The hoarse, post-pubescent laughter of the students filled the common room.
At the time, Lysander had been near the front, discussing a complex ritual theory with Alistair. Alistair, despite his slightly higher ranking academically, always seemed wary of Lysander’s performance. He often sought Lysander out after difficult examinations, his mood souring whenever his own grades dipped. More often than not, he blamed the boisterous noise emanating from the back of the room.
"Ugh, they are insufferably loud…" he muttered under his breath, seemingly unaware Lysander could hear him. Then, catching Lysander’s gaze, he shot a nervous glance.
Because Alistair knew Lysander occasionally tolerated the presence of that rowdy group, especially Cassian.
"It’s quite alright. Their volume is… considerable."
"Ah, no, it's nothing… Oh, by the way. How did you interpret the twenty-fifth axiom?"
Alistair craned his neck, trying to glimpse Lysander’s annotated scroll.
Lysander reached out to indicate the specific axiom, then bit his lip, responding in an intentionally generous tone. "I confess, that one eluded me. It was rather intricate."
"Indeed? Oh, I believe I grasped it, though I’m not entirely certain."
So what? You witless fraud.
"Then perhaps it would be prudent to consult with Master Thorne? I am hardly confident in my own understanding."
"I merely wished to confirm my own reasoning before approaching him. You possess a remarkable aptitude for theoretical constructs, Lysander."
Alistair offered a cautious smile.
Was it the kind of smile that arose naturally from sincere discourse? Or was he smiling because he relished this particular moment of perceived academic advantage?
Lysander had no way of knowing. But Alistair was shrewd. If Lysander allowed any hint of envy to surface, he would feel like a lesser House mage who had failed to impress.
So he pretended to absorb Alistair’s undoubtedly brilliant explanation, though he cared not a whit.
In essence, they were both utterly false.
"Player number one, Kaelen of House Dorn! With an aura as round and vibrant as a perfectly ripened Eldorian fruit!"
The topic at the back had shifted once more.
"Alright, Kaelen, are you prepared?"
"Yes!"
Their snickers escalated into full-blown cackles.
"By the Void, this fool has lost his mind! Cassian! Witness this! This man is unhinged!"
"This is truly hilarious. Cassian, observe this madman swiftly!"
At the rising clamor, Lysander placed a hand on one of Alistair’s practice scrolls and turned around. He could hear Alistair shifting, his gaze following Lysander’s.
"Uugh, ugh—!"
Kaelen, eyes wide with a manic gleam, was shoving the mouth of a common goblet, filled with mundane spring water, into his mouth. His lips sealed around the rim, one hand gripping the glass, he moved it in and out in slow, deliberate strokes. Mimicking a forbidden communion, but with crude, mundane tools.
Lysander frowned. "What precisely are they attempting?"
"I haven’t the faintest idea."
Alistair shook his head, his face a mask of polite bafflement. But it wasn’t that they didn’t understand what was happening. They were simply too stunned by its vulgarity to process it.
"Seriously, what in the name of the Void… ?"
The clear glass goblet slid in and out of Kaelen’s mouth at an increasingly rapid pace. It went deeper and deeper, the wet slosh of water against his tongue growing more pronounced. The surrounding students erupted in louder cheers.
"Kaelen, you madman!"
"That fool possesses a natural talent!"
The goblet tilted and curved, sometimes pulling completely away before being shoved back in. His tongue completely sealed the opening, making his technique perfectly visible. The pace quickened.
Kaelen spread his legs apart in the chair, bending at the waist to look down at the floor. Pale, shimmering motes of uncontrolled aether streamed from his lips. The water within the goblet rippled, a faint, sickly glow, rolling down his chin, dripping onto the polished wooden floorboards beneath him.
"Oh! Oh! Oh!"
The gasping chants grew in rhythm, echoing through the common room. Bent in half, Kaelen suddenly straightened up. At the same time, he yanked the goblet from his mouth. As soon as the glass parted from his tongue, the trapped, glowing aether burst out, spilling freely down his chin.
"He’s surging, he’s surging!"
Kaelen lowered his arm, positioning the goblet near his crotch, and shook it vigorously. The boys around him recoiled, throwing up their arms in defense, but it was useless. Their pristine uniform sleeves still ended up splattered with shimmering, sticky water.
"Ah, by the Void! That’s repulsive!"
"Hahhahah"