Chapter 549: Taking The Bus

Lunch time came quickly for Arc, who very much wanted wander the city for a bit and so donned a pair of comfortable boots along with a light skirt, thigh-high socks, and a shirt and vest combo that would be slightly formal in case she wound up shopping in an upscale store. In her dimensional bag, she had all her crysta notes and the "gift card" she’d gotten from Opal.

A part of her was embarrassed to bring the latter, but remembering what she and Raven had almost done put a strange thrill into her, as had seeing Owyn and remembering the feeling of his lips against hers, even if that act had been just for resuscitation. Maybe if she wound up by herself, she’d check out her Auntie’s store...

Not that she wanted a relationship right now. Stars, she was still figuring out her magic, which was why she’d found out she could see the threads even with her eyes closed, and even sense where strings were through objects when she concentrated the right way. She’d been able to discern Owyn’s bundle of strings, and those of his roommate, through the floor before her invite, and had watched with fascination when Owyn did something that caused a long chord to extend farther than she could ’see’ with her newfound sense.

Whatever that had been, it started painfully, and held her interest for a few minutes before she remembered the Dragon Knights were out in full force today, helping to fix up the Third Ward, and she spent a few minutes watching for them at her window before extending her invite to Owyn.

After, she took a brief walk to invite Veng, but couldn’t find him. In doing so, she managed to draw the eyes of several boys who hadn’t yet learned there was a girl living on their side of the campus. She ignored their stares entirely. When finding Veng failed, she went to the girl’s side to find Raven, before remembering Raven was actually staying in the sibliary house for female special grade magelings.

She got a bit shy asking her to lunch, especially when she saw how darkly appointed Raven’s room was, along with some boxes from Stella’s Altelier that brought a bit of a flush to Arc’s cheeks, imagining what could be inside. Once Arc delivered the request, Raven drew herself upward, towering over the shorter demoness as she drifted her eyes up and down Arc’s body. "I’ll come, but we need to do some shopping. Someone’s got to make you presentable... Would you like that?" As she raised her hand to Arc’s chin, the hand was met with a slap that knocked it away.

"I know how to dress myself!" Arc snapped.

Raven pulled a step back and held her arms at her waist. "You’re making it hard for me to apologize... for how I treated you." She looked away. "I thought back at the hospital you..." Arc watched as the threads inside Raven pulled inward, realizing she suddenly couldn’t feel her emotions or intent.

When Raven’s threads went dark, Arc felt fear rise within her.

"Let’s just talk it out over lunch. Alright?" It was a delaying tactic, she knew, but she also didn’t know how to handle a Raven that wanted to apologize to her after all the strangeness between them. It was a sign of something deeper than just being bad at communication. Something that almost came out at the hospital... Not just from Raven, but from her.

Every civilized cell in her brain told her no one normal would want to walk the strange path of their rivalry... no matter what it might become... But Arc had never felt normal. She was the weakling of her family. The one who could never follow them on the path of magic... Only now, a new magic had unspooled from whatever had held it back, and over the last day, she’d realized how terrified she was to walk that path alone. To explore her own magic, lest it somehow fall away from her.

Blessedly, she felt Raven’s decision as well as the loosening of the threads inside her. Threads that felt relieved. "Lunch it is. Maybe we can go shopping some other time."

Later, they were at the bus stop when Owyn arrived.

"Why is he coming?" Raven huffed.

"I’m glad you’re okay, too, Raven," Owyn replied.

Arc answered, "I wanted to go over what happened. Owyn was there, and I couldn’t find Veng. Don’t worry, it’s my treat." Even saying she’d pay didn’t stop their threads from conveying disappointment towards her. They both returned tense smiles, trying to hide their feelings as they assured her it was all right; that they’d still go with her.

And threaded between them, in that shared intent, was curiosity... over what the other meant to Arc. Curiosity... and a flash of competitive suspicion.

The bus arrived as Arc was trying to come up with a response, letting off students coming back from the city. Many of them were covered in dust on their faces, while their uniforms were pristine, and she sensed from their tiredness that they’d been helping in the Third Ward. Boarding, she paid their fare with a trio of small notes before climbing to the rooftop seats and sitting at the back.

Feeling the tension between Owyn and Raven kept Arc quiet, and they seemed disinclined to speak to each other. Both had some lingering anger, and Arc sensed it was more about each other than her...

She couldn’t help but wonder if she was going to start seeing people’s feelings all the time, and how she’d survive. She’d heard about truth-sensing mavens from her mothers, Lapins and Sin, who hosted the city news together on their illucaster channel, and the picture they’d painted was that such people suffered from knowing when they were being lied to.

The only reason the constellation of her parents worked was that they were willing to be so totally, radically honest with each other that they practically lived in each other’s heads...

And Arc didn’t know what it would take her to reach that point... Or what she would have to do to deserve it.

These insecurities twisted in her guts as the bus rolled along, until a gasp from both Owyn and Raven snapped her head up and she saw...

Past the separating wall, the Third Ward was a wreck spreading out in both directions. Nearly every building along the wall was destroyed, and the corpses of monsters, dozens of them like the one she’d barely been able to kill with everyone’s help, piled in mounds. Monsters of types she hadn’t seen lay in their own piles, the bottommost corpses facing towards the school as if they’d all been headed in that direction...

"They must have gone towards the school because of all the mana concentrated around it," Raven assessed.

Passing the hellish destruction, the rest of the Third Ward got steadily better until Arc spotted the training grounds where they’d fought. It was the most wrecked building of all the ones around it.

"If they wanted the strongest source of mana, why did they attack the training grounds?"

Raven brought her thumbnail to her lips and bit it, her eyes glowing a bit from the use of manasight. But she didn’t look at the school; she looked right at Arc.

"I think I know... but I’m not sure you’d like what I’m thinking," Raven said. Arc felt threads of guilty anticipation. She didn’t want Arc to ask, but it took just a moment longer for Arc to realize the answer.

"They attacked... because of me..."

It made sense. Arc’s freakish inability to use her mana had been matched to a natural capacity most mages would kill for... and not being able to use her magic had kept that capacity full for as long as she could remember... and now she knew it made her dangerous to be around during monster attacks...

No wonder my family lives outside the city... It wasn’t just for security. It was because her entire family was one big beacon for monsters and kaiju. And they knew it! Anger welled inside her. Indignity. She and her siblings may have been protected, but they’d still been used as bait. All because her family felt obligated to protect a city that loved them barely more than they were hated... All because they’d failed to stop the apocalypse that happened before she was even born.

But the entrance to the dungeon tower had been a blind spot in their defense of the city...

And in the Fourth Ward, she saw the fruit of both failings. The balance had shifted against them... against her entire family.

"So that’s why the Knights were gone," Owyn muttered.

At the entrance to the Fourth Ward, the citizens of Norneau were gathered and angry, protesting towards the Dungeon and the seat of government that had been constructed halfway to its peak at the Veil. The Knights held the line from atop the separating wall, holding up a communal barrier to block the angry spells cast their way, though it didn’t stop rocks and debris. Arc saw a purple flash disarm an elf aiming a rifle before resolving into the figure of Amarena, who disappeared with the gunelf, probably to drop him off in a cell.

Seeing one of her mothers, Arc ducked her head. But that didn’t stop her from hearing the terrible things being shouted.

The mob, calling for blood and casting their hatred at the Chancellor, the Government, and the House of Stars.

It’s not fair... Arc had finally shown some progress with her magic, some growth as a maven, and now she didn’t know if the city would stay safe for her, much less the Academy.

After the bus passed the Fourth Ward’s gate, she asked, "Hey, uh, would you both mind doing some shopping after lunch?"

The pity she felt from them both nearly made her recant her request, but she didn’t, because she knew this might be the last time she got to leave the Academy in a long, long while.