After contacting Wenzel and getting the keys, Azarus and I got to work moving everyone in. This was a more complicated endeavor than we were anticipating, but still doable.

  Once inside, we discovered both buildings were a bit neglected, despite the condition of the exterior. That didn’t take long to fix, and thankfully, it was an easy one between our Professions. Sometimes I forgot that Construction Engineering was one of Azarus’s two base Professions. With his expertise, and my cheating with Melds, it wasn’t hard to do. Thankfully, it was still fully furnished as well, though we had to buy some new bedding for the bedrooms.

  Then, it was onto the more interesting discoveries.

  While Azarus was building himself a new forge here on the bluff, I got to work finding the source of the wards I’d felt on the approach. My search led me to the very top of the lighthouse, past the three separate floors it had been renovated to have, and up through the trap door that led to the old light room. There I found a sight that was simultaneously very familiar to me…

  While also being completely new.

  Whatever light source had been used while the lighthouse had been in operation had been replaced by a Ward Stone. However…this was a very different Ward Stone than anything I’d ever seen before. Normally, a proper Ward Stone setup involved both the stone and the plinth over which it floated. The stone was the source of the wards and was typically shaped into the form of a heptahedron out of clear blue crystal. The plinth, meanwhile, was the secondary part of the array and meant to propagate the wards into a wider diameter. Both of them were usually so absolutely covered in runic inscriptions that they were nearly invisible from a distance.

  This was different.

  Firstly, the stone itself wasn’t even the typical warding crystal I’d come across before. This seemed to be something different. At first glance, I had thought it might be a chunk of solid diamond. But no. This was, instead, what seemed to be a giant chunk of plain quartz. That was both relieving and deeply confusing at the same time. Relieving, because I didn’t have a chunk of extremely precious mineral just lying around unguarded in my new home to tempt any would-be thieves. And confusing, because to the best of my knowledge, quartz wasn’t Aetherially reactive enough to hold an enchantment as complicated as a ward schemata.

  But that wasn’t even the really confusing part.

  There wasn’t even a plinth.

  Instead, the strange Ward Stone was floating, seemingly unassisted, over what looked like a pristine, unenchanted brazier.

  And yet, I could tell that the ward field was active, extending well down the slope of the bluff. Like I’d felt earlier, they were very, very oddly identical in feeling to the wards of Blutstein it…self…

  Wait.

  That was the key word, wasn’t it? Although they were less powerful, these were the wards of Blutstein, somehow being extended beyond the breadth of the walls.

  The wards crafted by a long-dead god.

  The wards so incomprehensively complex that they had never been replicated.

  The wards nobody was supposed to know how they worked.

  The wards that had a very defined limit of the immense walls of the Gem City.

  I circled the odd ward stone there in the light room for a few minutes, stumped by the implications of this stone’s existence. Somehow, whoever and whatever this Sir Graham had been, he’d done the impossible.

  Either he had managed to outright copy the ward scheme of Kyron, and replicate it here in this little lighthouse…

  Or he’d figured out a way to create a ward relay. Something that could extend the effects of a ward field beyond a central stone’s boundary.

  I almost immediately dismissed the first possibility. Although it was tempting to give this long-dead Knight probably more credit than was due, because fuck Lucretia and her co-conspirators, that just didn’t strike me as likely. Kyron had still been an immensely talented Magi, and the problem was, the feeling of these wards were literally identical to those in Blutstein. I hadn’t been exaggerating about that earlier.

  Which left a relay.

  The problem was that was impossible to my understanding of Abjuration. I had a fairly good grounding in the subject, considering all that Grey had pounded into my head in our old lessons. Wards just didn’t work that way. In Abjuration, there was something known as the Principle of Exclusivity. It stated that no two ward schemata could ever be precisely the same as a result of the combination of the material stones were created from and the creation process itself. No two crystals were exactly the same as another due to flaws in the stone, either major or minor, and the uniqueness of each stone’s runic script. Each Ward Stone, to a one, was a bespoke, unique existence, tailored to a specific location and need. And therefore, the field that they created was unique as well, which was why I could recognize Blutstein’s. So, even if a secondary Ward Stone was painstakingly crafted to be as perfect a copy as possible, the original field simply wouldn’t be able to interact with the new stone. It would try and create another, infinitesimally different field, and therefore clash with the original if they were placed next to each other. As a result, they would both destabilize.

  The second stone wouldn’t create an exact replica of the first’s field.

  Like was happening here.

  How had he done this?

  I was tempted to immediately contact Grey so we could pour over and solve this mystery together, but something stopped me.

  I don’t know if it was pride or if it was just my own personal form of intellectual curiosity. But I wanted to solve this myself. This wasn’t world-changing, like the Netherim data repository was. It likely didn’t have world-changing possibilities, like the creation of my Bond Breakers. It was a curiosity. A possible minor breakthrough in the field of Abjuration, discovered in an abandoned lighthouse. I could pursue this myself in my free time, whenever I had it.

  Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

  Not everything deserved my full attention. For now, all that mattered was that it did function, and I didn’t have to worry about the protection of my new home, when it came with a weaker copy of the intricate wards of the city we lived just outside of.

  Mind made up, I cast one last glance at the intriguing Ward Stone and headed back down the ladder.

  We still had work to do on the house.

  ……………………………..

  “I’m comin’ with,” Rachel said to me bluntly, her arms crossed over her chest. The woman was speaking in a tone which brooked no argument, standing off to the side of the dining table I sat at in Grey’s house.

  At the attention of the woman, I stopped in mid-motion, a spoonful of soup halfway to my mouth. Everyone else at the table stopped as well, though there was a light attendance tonight. It was just Grey, Azarus, Aveline, and me sitting around the table, with the ever-present form of Venix looming in the background. Sylvia was out doing something with Honoka, while me and mine had only initially stopped by to pick up a few things from Draymoor when Grey invited us for dinner. However, once Rachel had actually served us the dinner she’d made, she had stayed in the room and approached me.

  Leading to this awkward moment.

  I set down my spoon and blinked up at Rachel in confusion. “What?”

  That just caused my fellow Addersfield survivor to frown harder. “I said, I’m comin’ with you,” She said stolidly. “I’ve been thinkin’, and I’m goin’ to move up into that lighthouse too. Aveline deserves more than just a pair of single men lookin’ after her. Especially because both of you are gonna be goin’ to the Academy half the time anyway.”

  I looked around helplessly for a moment, lost at the ultimatum. I found no help from my friends and companions. In fact, it looked like Grey was barely holding back a smile of amusement, by the way he was hiding his mouth behind a glass. “Don’t I…get a say in this?”

  Rachel loomed closer over me, while I leaned away. “No. Now, I’ll still pull my weight. I’ve got me own money saved up, and the Headmaster already agreed to keep payin’ me if I come down once a week and clean. You’ll get rent for a room,” She said, bowling over any objections I might have had. “And I’ll cook and clean for you two as well, while I look after Aveline. We’ll have a grand ol’ time, won’t we Lina?”

  Aveline blinked at the smile Rachel was directing her way now, completely at odds with the dictatorial attitude she’d given me. “Um. Okay. Thank you, Miss Rachel.”

  “Uh…” I said, raising a hand like I was a grade-school student. I nearly flinched from the way Rachel’s attention snapped back onto me. “If this is about leaving Aveline alone while we’re in class, that’s…already something I thought of.” I stood up from my chair and concentrated for a moment, reaching for a Skill that hadn’t seen much use in recent days.

  Umbra Gemina Exactoris.

  The familiar form of my Sprite popped into being, and my Core Ring jumped into it, just as eager to prove our point. In seconds, a perfect clone of myself stood standing to my right, feeling just as put-upon as I did.

  “As you can see…” I started, under the surprised gazes of everyone gathered. After all, I hadn’t exactly shown this ability off to anyone else before now. Not even Azarus had seen this, and he was so startled now that he had started choking on his own mouthful of soup, banging his chest as he did.

  “…I’ve already thought of that problem.” My clone finished, crossing its arms. I copied it, mirroring the posture.

  “Cool…” Aveline breathed in delight, staring at the two of us. I puffed in pride at the gaze, and I noticed my clone do the same.

  “How very interesting,” Grey said mildly, stroking his bare chin and inspecting my clone. “I don’t often see clone Skills. What are the limitations of it, Nathan?”

  I deflated, switching my gaze over to Grey for a moment, and then meeting the eyes of my clone. “Um. I…don’t know, actually. I haven’t had time to really do testing on it, since I…acquired the Skill. I’ve used it before, but it should suffice for keeping an eye on Aveline. The range it can maintain itself should be enough, and I know it can last long enough for a school day.”

  “Hmm…” Grey said doubtfully, standing up and approaching my clone. It just met his eyes curiously under the assessing gaze of my mentor. “I’m not so sure of that. I can feel that both of you are weaker than the whole self, and if you think the rigors of the Academy are so light that you can attend at less than one hundred percent, you are mistaken.” He shook his head. “At the very least, I do not recommend you use such an ability on days in which you are attending a Major course. The effort of concurrent Spell casting will quickly exhaust you in such a situation. Perhaps it will suffice on days when you attend Minor courses, however.”

  Oh. I hadn’t thought of that. With the way my Virtues were split halfway between myself and my clone with this Skill, I was roughly as powerful as someone who was level ninety right now. That really wasn’t strong enough to cast even the most basic of basic Spells. I’d probably pass out from even trying to cast a Light Spell right now.

  That really was an oversight.

  I turned back to Rachel and nodded sheepishly. “Yeah, alright. You’ve got the job.”

  In response, she just rolled her eyes. “I know.”

  Hey now.

  No need for sarcasm. It set a bad example for Aveline.

  Which…neatly side-stepped how said little girl was now giggling at me.

  I get no respect.

  ………………………………….

  The day finally arrived. Tarus crested the horizon on the first day of the semester, and the world flashed green.

  Azarus and I were there to meet it, dressed in our uniforms. My dwarven friend looked visibly uncomfortable in his own uniform, fidgeting with the color of his short grey cloak. “Damn thing itches,” He muttered to himself.

  I suppressed a smirk at the complaint and said nothing. A sensation at the back of my mind alerted me to the fact that Fade had woken up, nearly at the same time the green period had begun.

  “Good luck…” The young Spirit Wolf whispered to me briefly, before promptly conking back out before I could even thank him.

  That was fine, though. Classes started early at the Academy, according to Azarus’s and my schedules. First class of the day was going to be my Alchemy course, while I think Azarus was jumping straight into things with a Sealing derivative course.

  We needed to get a move on. Problem was, though…the lighthouse was kind of a fair distance from the Academy. I had my own plans for getting to their swiftly each day, but I didn’t know what Azarus intended.

  “So…,” I said slowly, drawing the dwarf’s attention from his fidgeting. “Do you need help getting there?”

  Azarus blinked at me. “The hell I do,” He said, almost sounding offended, before he smirked at me. “I’m gonna get there faster than you. Been workin’ on something new with Sena, and now ya can see it.”

  I tilted my head at him in question, only to blink as Azarus raised two thick, sausage-like fingers to his forehead and concentrated. I almost laughed at the near constipated look of concentration on his broad features, but choked on it before I could.

  Because in the next moment, Azarus vanished from where he was standing in a shower of sunbeams. The air visibly sparkled in the space he had occupied only moments before.

  “Son of a bitch,” I said in astonishment, shaking my head and laughing for a different reason. “He can teleport now!”

  Still laughing, I reached for Vis Maledicta Exactoris and transformed to my full scaled self. I unfurled my wings and stretched them for a moment before flapping them down hard.

  I shot into the sky, in moments sailing high into the air above the lighthouse I’d taken for my home. For a moment, I simply hung there, taking in the sight of the sea and the city sparkling in the morning light. Kyronkar in particular looked particularly striking, casting a long shadow over the circular city of Blutstein. It almost read like the point of a…sundial…

  Huh.

  You know what, maybe Kyron had the right idea when he designed this city. Maybe it was my imagination…

  But it almost looked like the shadow was resting on the Academy, right about now.

  With that idea circling in my mind, I ceased my wingbeats and angled the scaled limbs downward.

  Straight into a dive, aimed…

  At the Academy.