206 – Expectations

The next day, Vivi woke early and got to work. The mental checklist she’d assembled was organized into three main objectives: find out how to divine the locations of important Echoes, discover what had happened to the corrupted one in Prismarche, and track down the Fell Apostate. Though, her only proper lead on that last one would require progress in the first, and with how poorly the initial research session had gone, she wasn’t holding her breath.

Further deciphering void energy technically remained the highest priority, but as a medium-term goal. The tournament would provide plenty of high-quality opportunities in that regard.

Before working on her short-term goals, she took some time immediately after rising to pull the Fell Apostate’s void-nuke ritual from spatial storage, drop the eight pillars over a bare chunk of the ocean, and study the High Arcana inscribed on them. She discovered that the magical designs were primitive mirrors of her own work, but adapted for rituals—his approach wasn’t as original as she’d hoped it might be.

Maybe that meant there was only one real way to go about alchemizing voidglass? To be fair, she couldn’t imagine an alternate route. There were usually a thousand ways to approach a given problem when it came to magic, but apparently not in this instance. Or at least, they’d both found the most obvious.

Afterward, she grabbed Ember to safeguard Prismarche, then returned to the void where she spent a few more hours bashing her head against the divination problem. It really was shaping up to be an outrageously stubborn conundrum… probably because she genuinely sucked at that field of magic. It wasn’t some new revelation, but her relative incompetence grated on her.

Vivi ate an early dinner with Saffra.

“You decide which brackets you’ll be joining?” Vivi asked the girl near the end of the meal. “They’re starting up today, I think.”

Saffra made a face, pushing around her mashed potatoes with a fork. “The thirteen-and-under one, I guess. But…” She hesitated. “Not the gold bracket.”

Vivi wouldn’t have cared if her apprentice skipped the tournament entirely, so the response wasn’t an issue; she just found it surprising. “Why? I figured you’d take all the chances you could get to broaden your horizons.”

Saffra tensed. “I’ll get a good number of fights already.”

“I suppose so,” Vivi said, confused by the girl’s reactions. “But you’d get even more if you joined both.”

In the grand scheme of things, tournaments disqualified participants fast; not everyone would be getting dozens of matches to test themselves. The other brackets weren’t like the main attraction—the open division and its qualifiers—where a person could keep persevering as long as they wanted. Vanguard and the Adventurer’s Guild had a lot of staff and resources to call on, but not an infinite amount.

Saffra studied Vivi out of the corner of her eye, then sighed at whatever she found on her face. “Because I can probably do good enough in the thirteen-and-under bracket,” she explained in a clipped tone.

Vivi’s confusion doubled at the abrupt edge in Saffra’s words. Did I say something wrong? The topic had seemed innocuous.

“I think you’ll do better than ‘good enough,’” she replied slowly, “and that includes in the gold bracket?” The latter would be tougher competition since Saffra was on the low end of the sorting bucket rather than high, like with the youth division. “But even if you don’t, it doesn’t matter. There aren’t any real stakes here.”

“Yes, there are.”

“…there are?”

“You really don’t get it, do you?”

Saffra didn’t get snippy without reason. Vivi had definitely stepped on the girl’s toes somehow, or wasn’t picking up on something obvious. She racked her brain but drew a blank.

Thankfully, Saffra elaborated before the silence stretched into discomfort. “Sorry,” she mumbled, looking away. “But do you have any idea how embarrassing it would be for the Sorceress’s apprentice to not even make it through the first round? And that might happen, Lady Vivi. If I was just me, you’re right, it wouldn’t bother me much. But I’m not just me. I’m the apprentice of the most powerful mage in the world, and people are going to make assumptions.”

The explanation blindsided Vivi. “You care about something like that?”

It was the wrong thing to say, obviously. She’d never been a master with words, and her marginally more outgoing life over the past month hadn’t changed that fundamental aspect of her personality.

Saffra’s cheeks colored. “I don’t think it’s weird to be embarrassed by not living up to what people are expecting of you,” she replied tersely, tail swishing in annoyance. “The entire city is going to be watching this tournament and talking about the results.”

“Sorry, that’s not what I meant,” Vivi hurried to say. “You’re right, it is normal to worry about your reputation. Just…”

She scrambled to organize her thoughts. Saffra had seemed generally unconcerned with what other people thought of her. She did what she believed in, consistently. Even back in her Institute days, she hadn’t cared about social pressure; she’d gotten into constant trouble for standing up to bullies.

But this was clearly a different matter, and on a different scale. Vivi had seen Saffra stress over the open division matches too, but she had assumed those were self-imposed and internal expectations. Not stemming from being the Sorceress’s apprentice and worrying what the world would think if she failed to measure up.

How was Vivi supposed to condense those thoughts into a response? Would it even be appropriate to do so? Her limited social judgment told her probably not. People in general didn’t like others making assumptions about them; even she knew that.

“There’s nothing saying you have to go as the Sorceress’s apprentice in the first place, you know?” Vivi finally settled on.

That caught Saffra off guard. “Huh?”

“Rafael has like a million disguises. We could work something out.”

It was Saffra’s turn to play catch-up as she processed the suggestion. A series of complicated expressions flashed on her face, ears perking up and then drooping back down three times in rapid succession. It would’ve been funny if Vivi wasn’t still worried about having stuffed her foot in her mouth.

“No, I can’t,” Saffra eventually said glumly.

“Why not?”

“It’d be cowardly. Though, I guess wanting to skip the gold bracket is too.”

“Neither would be cowardly.”

“I think you believe that, Lady Vivi, because you’re above it all,” Saffra said. “It must be nice being the Sorceress. I do care, and so do most people. They’d never say it, but I bet even everyone from Vanguard would find it weird. They know I’m not the second coming of the Sorceress, at least, but they’re still expecting me to show up and do my best, like everyone else is. They’d think less of me.”

“I really doubt that,” Vivi said.

…did she, though? This world revolved around power hierarchies; they were baked into every society and interaction. Nobody would blame a thirteen-year-old girl for wanting to avoid attention, not even the bloodthirsty and honor-bound Zael, Vivi thought, but maybe they were subconsciously expecting Saffra to give it her best shot, debuting as the Sorceress’s apprentice. And maybe they would even be disappointed if she didn’t represent the guild well.

“Mm,” Saffra said, obviously disagreeing but not wanting to argue. Vivi was suddenly unsure. “I already thought it through. I’ll try my hardest in the youth bracket, and hopefully do at least decent. That way I’ll have participated, and without embarrassing us both too badly.”

“You wouldn’t embarrass us even if you failed to qualify,” Vivi said firmly, unable to stifle her gut response. “You being the most talented mage in the world isn’t the reason I’m teaching you. It’s not a factor at all. I’ve already told you that.”

Saffra seemed suddenly and immensely uncomfortable, gaze locking down onto her mashed potatoes as she pushed them around with her fork some more. They were thoroughly smeared by that point.

There was a reason Vivi didn’t try to have heart-to-hearts with Saffra. Both of them found it equally awkward, if for different reasons, and Vivi had no faith in herself to say the right things.

“But if that’s what you’ve decided, it’s fine with me,” Vivi finished, trying to swerve away from the disaster of a conversation. “It’s really up to you.”

A halfhearted grunt was all she got in response. Apparently Saffra was eager to divert the topic to new ground as well, because she asked, “How far are you planning on going, anyway? Are you going to win?”

“That’d be terrible form, so no,” Vivi replied. Honestly, her presence in general probably wasn’t the classiest thing in the world. That said, it was hardly a great shame either, should the truth come out. The tournament was open to all comers, Vanguard included, and technically the Sorceress, whether she showed up in disguise or not.

But for obvious reasons, it would still be strange if she went too high or won. Especially since it might seem like she was avoiding paying out on the prizes she’d promised.

“I’ll probably throw my matches no later than the top sixteen,” she decided, having been considering the idea for a while. “Maybe earlier. I just want a few good fights. It’s been an interesting experiment.”

Saffra smirked, some of the lighter mood from before returning. “I’m sure it’s just for the experiment, Lady Vivi.”

If not for her stoicism, Vivi might’ve blushed.

A few moments of silence passed, and Saffra asked somewhat out of the blue, “When is everyone else arriving in Meridian? The other races, I mean. You’re picking them up, right?”

Vivi nodded. “Mass warp. Scheduled for five days from now, I think?” The same day the final open division qualifier, the orichalcum-tier one, would be wrapping up.

“So fast.”

“It’s rushed, but there’s not much time to waste, given everything going on.”

They finished their plates, and the meal ended there. Vivi retired to her room to continue her research, though her thoughts lingered on the implications of Saffra’s last question—what meeting the other races would be like. It should be a quick affair, but she would be encountering a lot of Titled in a very short time frame. It wasn’t like she would chat with each of them, but somehow she suspected things would go off the rails.

And that was saying nothing of the subsequent phase, the proper tournament, when an appreciable portion of all of mortalkind’s power would be concentrated within the walls of a single city.

Vivi settled into a routine, mostly studying and supervising hunting expeditions with Saffra. Her level ticked up on day two, which was always nice to see, but it didn’t come with a new skill.

She considered going to Suyin for some short sword training sessions, but while Vivi hadn’t gotten trapped in the void like she feared might happen, she was still busy; the divination project and corrupted Concept occupied her attention. She decided to meet up with the disciple later.

During that interval, Saffra steamrolled through her initial thirteen-and-under qualifying bouts. Just how far she climbed up the actual tournament remained to be seen, but that she would qualify seemed like a guarantee.

When the orichalcum-rank open division matches finally kicked off, Vivi had made next to no progress on divining echoes. As a consolation prize, she’d had far more luck with the corrupted Concept. She was leery of digging too deep, but extensive analysis had confirmed the Fell Apostate had tried to bind the thing’s pseudo-spirit and make it his puppet. He had failed and left scars behind: the red marks crisscrossing the entity’s faded body.

She even thought she had a general idea of what he’d tried, perhaps to the extent she could replicate it, though she felt like vomiting just contemplating the notion. Did the Fell Apostate get those same feelings, yet push through anyway?

As for why the echo had decided to start attacking her… well, that part remained opaque. She didn’t think it was an intended side effect. Perhaps just a damaged pseudo-soul lashing out. If she knew how to heal it, she would, but she hadn’t made progress that significant.

She wondered if the Fell Apostate had suffered a burnt hand for the mangled attempt. Messing up novel magic usually came with more than a slap on the wrist. Unfortunately, the Selrath-Kyn seemed like people who were experts at wiggling out of consequences.

The elusive divination problem had started frustrating her enough that when the time came to reconnect with Suyin, it felt like a breath of fresh air. Vivi loved magic, but she had her limits for how long she was willing to stare at a complex equation, not making heads or tails of it, before she wanted to claw her eyes out.

A less complicated outing sounded wonderful. She’d fleshed out her arsenal of void-type spells and was excited to test them on her poor and unsuspecting—

Er, her worthy opponents.

Who, now that they were orichalcum at a minimum, were going to have much more interesting and advanced skillsets.

She found Suyin at the same tavern as before. The dark-haired woman greeted Vivi with her usual set of overly polite formalities, which she continued to find endearing.

“Your apprentice won’t be joining us?” the disciple asked afterward.

“She’s gotten her fill of watching the other people fight, I think. She has her own training to work on—she’s practicing with a friend.” Vivi had dropped her off at Isabella’s room.

“Fair enough. Did everything work out with you?”

“There were complications,” Vivi said with a mental nose-wrinkle. “But I handled what I needed to.”

“That’s a success in its own right.”

“I agree, though it doesn’t feel like it.”

Suyin looked curious at that response, but she didn’t ask Vivi for clarification.

Vivi briefly considered trying to explain further, but she couldn’t imagine a way to do so without mentioning suspicious details, and vagueness would likely annoy Suyin. No point in making the effort. She laid a hand out and said, “Let’s skip the walk? I can take us straight to the arena.”

Suyin’s lips twisted in wry amusement. “Still jealous of that,” she commented, touching her skin to Vivi’s. “Yes, please.”