Chapter 528: Room With A View

Arc felt indignant enough to refuse to go up the ladder, but all that meant was that Anko grabbed her at the hip and jumped, fending off her flailing arms with one hand until they landed.

She opened the door, and Arc was floored... as Anko pushed her into the room and she almost landed on her face.

"What the actual f-"

"Listen here you little shit!" Anko interrupted angrily. "I spent my weekend getting this place livable before having to tow your furniture in and set it all up. Now, you can thank me as your Father’s maid, or I can beat the ever-loving gratitude out of ya!" She leveled her upper right hand’s forefinger while her lower arms patted a fist into her palm. The look of pure aggression, coupled with the overall darkness of the room, made her look every bit the street thug Arc’s siblings accused her of being.

As Arc hesitated, Anko’s intent seemed to sharpen to murderous levels, and the next moment the girl found herself kowtowing as she did her utmost best to express gratitude to the hardworking pillar of her home.

"Damn right, brat!" Anko spat, before offering a hand to help Arc up, "Now take a look around and tell me if anything needs fixing."

"I-it’s perfect." Arc didn’t really look.

"Damn right!" Anko turned on her heel, "Enjoy the view. Your father picked this spot just for you." She slammed the door behind her, hard enough to jostle Titan, who was resting atop a pillow on Arc’s bed.

Now that she was alone, Arc picked up her uniform off the cleaned and polished floor before making her way to the very familiar bed in one corner and sitting. Once she reached over and turned on the lighting formation, she found the room was actually rather spacious for a single space, being mostly empty.

It was certainly longer than most rooms had a right to be, and she realized it was because the attic extended over the entirety of the boy’s dorm, and only a freshly installed wall, with a door, hid the rest of it. The walls were a bit short, but not so much that she couldn’t maneuver, before slanting sharply to form the ceiling. Some very visible sigil formations provided insulation in the absence of material, and Arc recognized some of Anko’s sloppier work next to her father’s neat, precise scripts.

A wide, square slab of stone had been placed near the center of the room, with a simple heating formation, and one side of the ceiling had a large, oval ring added to it. Curious, but recognizing a window formation, Arc stood and touched it, and the ceiling behind was replaced with a large view of the space outside her roof.

A view of the old glideway tower, looming above the heights of the middle and upper wards of the city. As she watched, a trio of dragon riders, perhaps knights, split up and circled around to different landings where two of the dragons alighted heavily.

One rider had to abort her landing as a larger dragon, likely a female, poked her head out, clearly roaring despite the silence of distance, and the rider’s dragon playfully dodged a small burst of flame as she re-orbited the tower, looking for another way in. Arc studied the frame a little more intently and found a script for controlling the magnification, but by the time she was zoomed in on the tower, the rider had already landed, seeing as she didn’t re-emerge into Arc’s point of view.

Sighing, Arc turned the window off and looked around the room. There was a desk opposite her bed and a few drawers for clothes. The view was really nice, but unlike back home, most of the appliances were basic stone or metal plates with sigil formations for everything from cooking to laundry. And all of them had mana-gathering scripts built in to replace her relative inability to otherwise use them.

She’d need her own cleaning supplies and a trash bin, but overall, the room had most of the basics. Once she checked behind the only door leading deeper inside, finding the bathroom, which used spell formations to replace plumbing, she knew she had everything she needed.

In a vague sense, Arc remembered getting her own room for the first time. The joy of having a space that was hers... until she found out her room had been Atikka’s before the incident.

But this room, this attic, for all it was not the space she thought she’d get, it was hers in a way that her room back home wasn’t. She wouldn’t have to worry about Anko dropping by for the laundry, or Cassiel popping in to deliver some food she didn’t ask for. And she certainly wouldn’t have to worry about Father just appearing at the door to ask how her day was.

She was on her own, in the private, as she’d never truly been. Tomorrow she’d choose her courses, and then her life could truly begin!

An excited feeling bubbled out of her chest, and she plucked Titan off her pillow as she started to spin in a little circle. She let out the sort of joyous cries that would have thoroughly embarrassed her in front of anyone else as she tossed and caught Titan with every twirl, her skirt rising with every spin.

"Hey Arc!"

"Ah!" Arc let out a quick cry and turned to the door, which was still shut, before realizing Owyn’s voice had come from below her.

And of course, Owyn was peeking his head up from under the stone slab, one hand raised to hold the hidden trap door up, his eyes naturally following the lines of her legs up to her-

Before her skirt could even start to settle, she slapped him so hard he wound up on his ass in his own living room.

"Knock first you fucking pervert!" Arc shouted as she dropped to her knees to loom over the square hole connecting her "dorm room" to his.

"I did knock..." he groaned. "We need your help..."

We? Arc peeked deeper into his room and saw a pair of feet at the base of his couch. "I’m coming down... Look away!" She hopped down lightly, avoiding the manifested ladder ans landing dangerously between Owyn’s splayed out legs, causing him to flinch even as he cast his eyes away as fast as he could. "Oh hey, you’re..."

"Rikael," the angel boy from testing day reintroduced himself. He was sopping wet, and his shoes were missing. "And I don’t need your help," he glared into her eyes, his courtesy clearly missing as well. His wings were clearly weighing him down, having absorbed the majority of the water on his person.

"Okay... can someone tell me what’s going on first?" The trapdoor shut, having slowly descended the moment Arc let go, and the ladder disappeared.

Owyn sat up. "He came in like this after Miss Anko told me about you... and the trapdoor, said someone threw his shoes on the roof. I figured, since you live up there, you might be able to, you know... climb around or something."

"Can’t you fly?" Arc asked the angel in the room.

"No. I just got these," he opened his wings a little. "I’ll try when I dry off or something..."

Arc might have zero successful experience flying on her own, but she knew better than to let him risk himself over something so trivial. Plus, she was technically the responsible one in the room.

"What are you even doing here?" Rikael asked.

"Uh... they ran out of space in the girls’ dorm," Owyn said quickly.

"Hold that thought," Arc said, turning until she found Owyn’s door and exiting the room. A few steps outside, she had enough of an angle to look along the roof, and sure enough, there was a pair of shoes dangling from a weathervane above the dorm. One augmented hop was all it took to get her up there, and she took care to walk on the outer edge of the dorm to avoid any boys who might look up.

Barely three minutes later, she dropped Rikael’s shoes in front of him.

"You’re welcome," she said with a note of challenge. "Mind telling me who did this to you?"

"Thanks..." he muttered, looking away, "I don’t know." He got up and headed towards what looked like a bathroom, leaving his shoes in front of the couch.

Owyn, now leaning against the archway to the study area, frowned a bit as Arc let out a sigh.

"I didn’t think this place would have people like back home... bullies, I mean. Thought maybe all the magic would make that sort of thing harder," Owyn scratched the back of his neck as one hand went into his pocket.

"Depends on who’s doing the bullying. And who’s getting bullied," Arc replied. "My parents told me about this sort of thing. Some people think anyone born with angel blood deserves worse."

"Why?" Owyn asked.

"Because an angel destroyed the world."

"Oh." Owyn scratched a bit harder. "I thought that happened so long ago, no one outside really remembers." Arc had taught him about the apocalypse, generally, but he seemed to have forgotten one key point.

"Outside, yeah. But remember, for people here, it wasn’t even twenty years ago. I might not have been born before then, but even I grew up understanding that the angels did a lot of bad things when they were in charge. That’s not a lot of time to change people’s point of view."

"Yeah..." Owyn sighed, before Arc leveled a finger up at his face.

"On to more important things: No more using that trapdoor!"