Chapter 531: Understandings

"Raven, mind giving us some privacy?" Arc asked.

Raven rolled her eyes but left the room, closing the door behind herself. Only then was Arc ready to ask Snow what she felt she should.

"What made you think it was a good idea to cheat off of me?"

"I-I panicked when I saw the question. I mean, I know water is wet but I was so confused and you were writing so confidently... I just wanted to get at least one thing right..." she groaned a little. "I didn’t realize you were really a real Gale. From the House of Stars and everything..."

Arc sighed. She could empathize with such a sentiment, having done similar things during the brief period of her life where she insisted on catching up to Cory and Sylvia. The punishments her moms collectively handed out, along with their disappointed faces, still rang painfully in her memories, forming the basis of her determination to succeed without cheating.

"So, not that I’m going to commit to helping you, but what do you want help with?"

"I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I don’t know!" Snow squeaked.

"Surely someone’s verified you know what you wrote down?"

"When the m-Mage Hunters asked me to demonstrate, all I did was freeze a ball of water one of them made."

"And how did you do that? What went through your mind?"

"Oh beans, um... H-hexagons... I remembered what you wrote about water being like rolly little open triangles, and ice being hexagons... so I just sort of imagined all the little triangles joining together inside the water, and it just froze."

"Alright, alright! Not so loud next time. So you have the right visualization down already..." Most magic involved clearly visualizing the effect one wanted to create, and the closer it was to reality, the less costly and stronger the spell could be made through the medium of mana. "You really want to learn from me, even though I can’t really do magic?"

Snow nodded rapidly, her eyes still full of tears.

"Why?"

"H-wa?"

"Why do you want to be a special curriculum student so bad?"

"Because I... want to make my family proud." Snow went on to explain how, because of her condition - albinism, along with a tendency to get sicker than everyone else in her family - she was always treated as fragile. Aside from school, she was kept at home; the only person who really let her do anything was her grandmother, Urvi, a former professor at the school who would talk to her for hours about magic. It was her grandmother who encouraged her and helped build up her confidence to take the entrance exam, and then persuaded her parents to allow it.

Just getting in was an achievement by itself, but then being picked for the special curriculum had overwhelmed her with feelings of guilt and shame at how she got it.

"Wouldn’t it just be better to forget about it and maybe drop down to a curriculum you’re more comfortable with?"

"I-I... don’t want to do that. So... please help me. I’ll do anything you want."

The way she bowed her head, the tears in her eyes and the tone of her voice told Arc without a doubt that Snow was being honest. She’d put herself in an awful position, and giving Arc this sort of power over her fate made the young metatron feel very... uncomfortable with herself.

Taking a breath, Arc made her decision.

"Alright. I’ll help you. Just give me until later to figure out what I want. Oh, and no more cheating. Real effort means real results."

Scales rattling with relief, Snow looked up shakily. "Thank you so much! I promise I’ll do my best!" She stepped forward and embraced Arc, proving much heavier than she looked.

"Okay, okay," Arc puffed, then looked up towards the back of the room. "Shit! Is that really the time? I gotta go!" Arc quickly hefted her bag after escaping Snow’s hug.

"Can I ask where you’re going?" Snow sniffed.

"Flight club. And I’m already late!" Arc dashed out the door, slamming it into the wall in her haste to get off-campus and down to the airfield.

She didn’t even notice Raven standing just outside.

*

Behind her, Raven stepped around the still-swinging door and entered the room.

"Did she say she’s going where I heard she’s going?" Raven asked Snow.

"Oh beans!" Snow jumped. "Um, what?"

"Never mind, I know what I heard. You look like you need some rest. I’ll catch up to you later tonight!" She turned around and left, punching her hand triumphantly into the air she declared, "I knew it existed!"

*

Owyn was almost back to his room from the cafeteria, where he had a bit of an early dinner, when a dark web of blood suddenly erupted into his path, surprising him to a halt.

"You! Giant boy." He turned to find Raven Black descending on him with a vicious smile on her face. "Where’s Arc going?"

"My name is Owyn, and how should I know? I left her with you all."

"Well, Owyn, I heard Arc say she’s going to a fight club, but then she ran off and I lost her. You’re always tagging along with her, so tell me where it is!"

"Why would anyone need a club for that?"

"Because there’s a club for everything at this school, duh. Only one type of club is banned, though, and that’s anything to do with actual fighting. And no, the war magic club doesn’t count. Believe me, I’m a member." The disappointment in her voice was palpable.

"She never said anything about that to me," Owyn frowned. Was Arc really the type of girl who would pick fights?

Memories of his week at her mansion reminded him of how she treated Amarena and talked about her Father, whom Owyn didn’t even get to meet. However, he had met her Dad, Ferro, and she seemed to care what Mr. Rainier thought... Or wait, they were both her dads.

Once more, trying to wrap his head around her family "constellation" left him with a bit of a headache, but there were more important things to worry about.

"We have to find her," he said. "At least to make sure she stays out of trouble."

"My thoughts exactly! I don’t want her losing to some random nobody before we get a chance to fight!"

Owyn tried to ignore her loose interpretation of the word "exactly." Raven seemed a little... obsessed. Perhaps crazy. So it was probably better that he keep an eye on her so he could stop her from doing something if they actually found Arc. "We should probably check her room first, though. See if she’s there..."

"Oh? You know where her room is? She’s refused to tell me."

"In that case, never mind. You said you followed her for a bit?" He wasn’t about to go revealing something Arc didn’t want to reveal to her... friend? Acquaintance.

"All I know is she’s headed off-campus, towards the west side, I think. Does that give you any ideas?"

Owyn tried to think of what was on that side of the city, but came up blank except for maybe the hospital in the 6th Ward, where he... Suddenly, it made sense why there would be a "fight club" somewhere in that direction.

"We should probably just get going and see if we can find-"

"Excuse me, are you Owyn?" They were interrupted by a newcomer, and he looked to find a skinny demonkin with only one horn staring up at him with disturbingly intense, gold-white eyes.

"Yes, I’m him. I mean me. Sorry, my friend Arc might be in trouble. Can it wait?"

"If by friend you mean the succubus who’s always at your elbow, it’s probably best to leave her to whatever wicked vices the clan of demons do behind their walls. I came to warn you about her-"

"Hey!" Raven snapped, "That ’succubus’ is my rival. Get your own, Dromi." She started pulling Owyn away, and he took the excuse to follow her, having already decided he didn’t like what the other boy had to say. Soon they were out of sight and walking fast towards the city.

"You’ll regret ignoring me!" he shouted after them. "One day you’ll understand! One day, everyone will understand!"

As soon as they were some distance away, Owyn asked, "You know that guy?"

"From secondary school, yeah. Some religious creeper who was always trying to tell people about what mana wanted or something. Bit of a self-hater or something, and I think his parents killed each other or were cheating or something. Either way, I saw his mom once, and she was even worse about their cult than he is. I’m talking down to her clothes."

"Oh." Owyn didn’t really get it. The clan believed there were spirits in everything alive, which used time and mana to grow. Even unalive things could do the same, like the elementals they sometimes fought.

Something about what Dromi had said, though, stuck with him. Partly it was from the intensity of it, but mostly it was from a naggingly familiar sense of something almost slotting into place. Like whenever Arc tried teaching him about a concept he barely knew existed...

Suddenly, Owyn snapped his fingers.

"Now I get it!" He laughed. "Arc’s family is like a clan!"

"You know Arc’s family?" Raven’s head swivelled to lock eyes with him.

Shit. "Yes...?"

"Good, then I guess I can talk about them with you. Stupid contract... How did you meet them?"

"I stayed at their, uh, house for a bit..."

"WHAT?!" she suddenly shrieked, stopping her steps, which meant he had to stop. They were barely out of the gate, and with the weekend starting, there were plenty of students about to witness it.

"Not so loud!" Owyn whispered.

Lowering her voice, Raven pointed at him as if to poke him, but couldn’t, given her lack of reach. "No one ever gets into the House of Stars unless you’re one of the most important people in the city. That’s not a rule, it’s a damn fact. So who the Hell are you, Owyn?"

"I, uh, it’s complicated... Can we just get moving? Arc can tell you when we find her." It made him feel a bit guilty, trying to pass the hot coal that was his origin onto her, but he was starting to get a sense of who Raven was and-

She seemed happy for the excuse to fight Arc. "Fine. If she won’t tell me, I’ll just have to fight her for it."

Unfortunately, he felt he understood her all too well.

*

Behind them, in the sanctity of his own room and laying atop his bed, Dromi clutched his chest through his uniform as he held a forearm atop his godflesh eyes.

Find her. Kill her. Find her... Bring her...

Images of the girl, whom he could now name as Arc, kept flooding his mind from the archangel within him, with an intensity of hatred that tensed his whole body with its authority. But that authority was directed outwards.

Sometimes it felt like that. Like the archangel was talking to someone else, in some other part of the city. What surprised Dromi was when something else came back. A woman’s voice, soft and soothing, and he knew her then as a fellow Apostle. A fellow soul who had proved worthy of more than mere redemption...

I will do this.