Chương 19: Chapter 18: What is wrong with you?

Fabrisse's brain produced three escape routes, rejected them in quick succession, and ultimately chose the time-honored strategy of slowly edging away while talking. He wiggled to the left.

"I think that whatever this is, it might be more efficient if we scheduled it for a later—" Severa stepped forward and placed one hand flat against the stone beside his head. He instinctively moved back. The corridor wall was cool against his shoulder blade. She was a full head shorter than him. If anyone had sketched the scene, they' d almost certainly assume he could leave whenever he pleased. Severa said, "Do not finish that sentence." He swallowed.

"I was just going to say—" She fixed her eyes on a point somewhere near his collarbone. He had previously classified that as safely neutral. Unfortunately, it did nothing to solve the actual problem: she was close enough for him to notice details he'd have preferred to ignore. The warmth radiating from her robes. The clean scent of sigil ink. The slow, even rhythm of her breathing.

"You're not leaving," Severa said.

"The last time you tried to do this, you missed Fire Affinity. I intervened, and you arrived with forty-three seconds to spare. Have you elevated your fire attunement to a self-sustaining threshold since then? I assume not." He stayed silent. She was right. He had an 8% Affinity with Fire, and Severa Montreal was, by conservative estimate, personally responsible for six of it.

"I have a lecture," Fabrisse said at last.

"Emotional Dynamics. It starts in eight minutes. I am attending it." She huffed.

"That's your preferred tactic. You affect ignorance."

"… What?"

"The Eidralith, you geological catastrophe."

"Oh." It took him another second of staring before his throat unlocked enough to produce sound.

"… What of it?" She glared at him.

"Have you bound with it?" Oh. Oh no. He could not tell her. He absolutely could not tell her that the Eidralith had greeted him with some sort of apparition overlay, issued tutorial quests, and begun rewriting his understanding of aether in quantified increments like it had been waiting specifically for him.

"Kestovar. You are silent."

"… No." She squinted.

"So that means you were unable to bind with it, then. In which case, the artifact would clearly be better served in someone else's hands." He said nothing. Severa treated the silence like an answer itself, as she always did.

"Do you know that there is a method to unbind artifacts?"

"What?" The word came out too fast. He knew exactly what she was suggesting. He hated that he knew.

"It is quite simple," Severa said.

"If you are a dungeon delver—though I assume you are not—you know that Rare-tier artifacts and above require a binding to function. Once bound, no one else may wield them."

"I… I know that much. But the Eidralith is legendary. I've never heard of a legendary artifact changing hands."

"There is a method. I have identified a tested procedure to safely transfer a bind after artifact awakening." Her eyes locked onto his.

"And you will cooperate with me."

"I can't just do what you say…"

"Then what are you going to do with it? Sit by a pond and catalogue rocks indefinitely?"

"I— No. I do other things."

"Such as?" He searched frantically for something clever and impressive. Nothing came.

"As I suspected." Severa exhaled, already done with that avenue.

"Very well. Let us be practical. We will make a deal. Tell me what you want, and I will provide it. Is it money you need? A guaranteed passing grade? Or both?" A pause.

"I have access to High Exemplar–level tutors. I can arrange referrals." Her lip twitched.

"I would even be willing to allocate my own time to tutoring you, should it prove necessary." Fabrisse glanced around, suddenly acutely aware of the corridor.

"We can't talk about this here," he muttered.

"People will hear." Severa lifted her finger as she tapped the air. The corridor remained silent, suspiciously so.

"Please," she said.

"I activated a suppression field the moment I approached you. It is specifically calibrated for academic corridors. We have been alone since I arrived. If you were paying attention, you would have noticed." She let the silence sit.

"The fact that you did not rather illustrates the difficulty." Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings. He winced. She continued anyway, "The Eidralith deserves a wielder who can tell when someone else uses magic, Kestovar." Okay… But why you... You failed to invoke it. You couldn't even make it respond. Saying that out loud would be catastrophic. Severa Montreal did not merely react to contradiction; she detonated under it.

He had seen her dismantle an upper-year duelist for less.

"Montreal…" He glanced around.

"People are staring." She followed his gaze. A few students had indeed paused, their attention caught by proximity if not sound. Among them were a pair of emerald eyes, clear and steady in the way that meant actively processing. Below them, hair the same deep green, smooth and carefully kept, falling to her shoulders in a neat, unhurried line as if it had never known panic or haste. That was Veliane Veist. Of all the people who could have witnessed this conversation...

Veliane Veist stood half a corridor away, watching them. She made no effort to hide it. No whispered comment to the student beside her. Not even the pretense of reading the notice board. She simply watched. Heat climbed his neck. This was rapidly becoming the worst corridor in the Synod. Severa huffed, released her pin on him, and stepped back.

"Very well. This conversation is not concluded. We will revisit it," Almost as an afterthought, she added, "Soon." Then she turned, heels clicking against the stone as she stepped past him. He suddenly remembered the quest. I need a second caster for the spell Pyric Formulation!

"Oh—wait." He blurted it before she'd taken another step. Severa stopped and turned.

"So you have reconsidered."

"No, but…" His brain arrived several seconds after his mouth had committed to the idea.

"I need you to cast a spell."

"… Excuse me?" Severa said.

"A specific one. Rare Pyric Formulation, with emotional modulation. Calm, preferably, but rage is fine. Either works. I just—" He swallowed.

"Professor Ake cast the spell earlier, and I need to observe variance based on emotional understanding." She stepped toward him again.

"You have just refused my offer, and now you dare ask me to assist you with a demonstration. For what, precisely? Some little scheme your new artifact whispered to you?"

"I… technically haven't refused you." Severa stood unbelievably still for a second. Then she laughed. Then she snarled, enough to bare her teeth.

"You can shove your technicality up your face because the only reason you are still breathing is that you are either catastrophically stupid or uniquely irritating. What is wrong with you? You say you don't want attention, and then you pull this kind of academic nonsense in public and expect me to just go along with it. So when are you going to actually give me an answer, Kestovar?

Are you going to ever answer a question cleanly once in your life, or have you lost the ability to answer a question unless it comes with instructions and a margin for error?" He tried his hardest to categorize her emotional state, and concluded: she was definitely angry. Understanding of Rage: 33. 88 → 33. 90 He resisted the urge to sigh. It was easier just to get on with the quest and not try to intentionally provoke Severa for greater emotional understanding.

"... So can you cast Pyric Formulation?" He asked.

"Ugh, you—" She clenched her fist into a ball. The air around her hand shimmered with the faintest ghost of crimson ignition. She closed her eyes, then took a deep breath. Her hand unclenched. When she finally exhaled, her voice was once again smooth and regal.

"What Rank did Ake cast?"

"Rank IV…" Severa turned away from him, enough that her face fell into profile. Her mnemonic was barely a whisper. Most students had to chant theirs aloud. She raised one hand, and fire bloomed. This fire wanted to move. It wanted to consume. It burned brighter than Ake's ever had, less stable and infinitely more aggressive. [Spell Cast: Pyric Formulation, Rare, Rank IV]"There," she said.

"You observed." [Rage Modulation Detected (67% Understanding)] Peak Output Modifier: +30% Ignition Speed: +25% Structural Stability: −27% Aetheric Bleed: +26% She could only achieve a 67% in Rage? I guess you can't simply get unfathomably angry, you also have to fathom the unfathomable. Fabrisse doubted Severa understood why she was fuming most of the time. Severa walked off. She angled her path just enough to carry her directly through the cluster of onlookers.

She did not acknowledge the students who parted instinctively to let her through. Only after she'd gone did Fabrisse realize he'd been holding his breath. Sound returned all at once.

"… What was that?"

"I've never seen Montreal lose her temper before."

"That was a duel spell, no?"

"No, that was Pyric Formulation. Did you see the output?" The words refused to stay together. Every sentence seemed determined to collide with another halfway through. He did manage to register one detail, however. Lose her temper. Really? She seemed to be actively restraining an explosion every time she was within conversational distance of him. That had been restraint.

[Tutorial Quest Completed: Emotional Modulation: A Comparative Study] Objective: Observe the same spell cast using the same emotion, performed by two different spellcasters with different levels of Emotional Understanding. Reward: +216 EXP (Educational Enhancement Modifier) [Learning Completed: +44 EXP] EXP: 2030/2400 The Eidralith was still showing lines and lines of text, but Fabrisse's mind was no longer in it.

From the corner of his eyes, he realized Veliane Veist was still watching him like someone who had just witnessed a duel without blades. And he had absolutely no idea what she thought of it.