Euphrosyne dreamed of a river.
The water in it was black, and the sky above was a shifting, fractured red, like light shining through a cut ruby. Under her bare and gently glowing golden feet was a shore of smooth gray river rocks, and no matter which direction she looked, it seemed to extend out forever.
The strange thing was, if she stood facing the river, she could see out of the corner of her eye the blurry hint of land behind her. But if she turned around to look at it, she’d find herself once again facing water.
There was also a faint flavor of licorice in her mouth. It was a taste she hated, and it burned and stung like she was allergic to it. She poked at her tongue like that might tell her something, but all that got her was saliva on her fingers.
Wanting to wash it away, she headed for the water. Even though it was dark it looked clear and pure, obscured only by a haze of lazily coiling mist, so she reached down to cup it in her palms.
“You again?” a voice said. Simultaneously, a small hand reached out to grab her arm and stop her. “What was it this time?”
She turned to look at the person, but they were just a dark blur, their details hard to make out. All she could tell was that they were skinny and short, with a halo of wavy hair. Their voice was high and immature, like that of a child.
“Already breathed it in, didn’t you? Idiot,” said the figure, crossing their arms over their chest. “Can’t you wait a minute before running off? Do you have any idea how long this beach is? This is why I never get to you in time!”
She wasn’t sure who this was, or why they were scolding her, but she’d herded enough little kids about to know that she didn’t have to put up with their shit. Grabbing them by their collar and lifting them off their feet, she gave them a little shake and said, “Don’t be rude.”
The hand that held the kid’s collar was glowing just like her feet, and she’d hoped the light would make the shadowy child’s face easier to make out. To her disappointment, it seemed to obscure them even more.
“Hey! Let go!” they cried out, hitting her arm with their small fists. “I’m sorry!”
Satisfied, she dropped them.
The indistinct child landed on their feet and then folded over in a pout, fixing their clothes as they whined. “I bet you wouldn’t dare do this to the other half of me… I hope he makes you stand in a corner…”
She swiped to try and grab the kid again, but he dodged out of her way.
“You’re always so mean! Why don’t you stay up there if you don’t like it!” the kid shouted. He bent down to pick up a rock and throw it at her. “Go away! I hope you never come back!”
The kid’s aim was good. He accurately predicted how she’d dodge so that the stone smacked her in the center of her forehead.
The sharp pain surprised her so much that she woke up.
The first thing she saw was an unfamiliar hand hovering above her. On instinct she sat straight up and grabbed the arm it was attached to, holding it in such a way that just a little applied pressure would cause a break.
The woman the arm belonged to stared back at her in surprise. Despite the position she was in, her light pink eyes seemed more amused than afraid.
“Is this how you normally wake up?” she asked with a smile.
This did not seem like the reaction someone with nefarious intentions would have in such a situation, so Euphy realized she was probably overreacting.
“I—um—I’m sorry,” Euphy apologized, feeling confused. “I didn’t recognize you, so I… oh!”
She belatedly released the woman’s arm.
“Ah! I’m sorry, I didn’t hurt you, did I!?”
She hadn’t used much strength, but she was much stronger than most people. She leaned forward to try and check if she’d bruised her, but the sleeves of the woman’s silver tunic covered too much for her to tell.
”Don’t worry about it—occupational hazard.”
The girl smiled and pointed at the dark skin on the back of her hand. There was a subtle iridescent sheen to it, like the surface of a soap bubble, which meant she must be wearing a mage armor spell.
Euphy relaxed a little, feeling grateful. She would have had to squeeze much harder to hurt the woman through that.
She then noticed the bronze lay-healer medallion the girl was wearing and flushed with embarrassment. The skin-to-skin contact needed for a lot of healing spells meant she’d been grappled by patients in the past, so she couldn’t help but feel extra ashamed she’d done it to another healer.
The woman said, “You can call me Thalia.”
“Um… it’s nice to meet you, Thalia, I’m Euphrosyne,” she replied, resisting the impulse to keep babbling apologies. ”Are you my roommate?”
As far as she could remember, she’d been freaking the hell out as she ran from Ianthe, and she’d only just made it to her room, at which point her memories ended. She assumed this must be the same place, noting that it was small but clean and bright, with pairs of well-made beds, desks, and armoires distributed on either side of it. The desk closest to Thalia had a plate of cookies and a tea set on it, and the soft wind blowing through the windows brought the scent to Euphy, making her stomach growl.
All things considered, there were worse places to wake up after… fainting, apparently? She checked her body and found that someone must have used a cleaning cantrip on her, because she was no longer as dusty as she’d been when she arrived. Although…
She poked her fingers into her hair, surprised. Usually spells like that were awful for hair, but hers didn’t seem to be affected?
Also, she was still dressed, thank the gods. In books people who passed out either woke up naked or in different clothing, and if someone had stripped her of her gloves or socks she would have had some awkward explaining to do.
“Not quite? I already have a roommate, so I assumed you came here to ask me out,” the girl replied, her eyes curving as her mischievous smile widened.
Euphy didn’t have the mental fortitude to withstand that kind of smile so she blushed again and looked down, trying to hide her face beneath her bangs. It didn’t help that the woman across from her was so beautiful, tall and statuesque with a soft face, smooth dark brown skin, and a cloud of tightly curling cyan hair. On one hand, she could now cross getting rescued by an attractive woman off of her bucket list, but on the other she was so embarrassed she was tempted to see if she could faint again to escape the situation.
”Most of my suitors aren’t direct enough to break in, so this is new for me too,” Thalia added.
Wait… had she said…?
”Break in!?” Euphy squeaked, and finally noticed that there was something wrong with the door. The lock panel had been wrenched askew from its setting, revealing a charred hole through which the hall could be seen. On the floor, leaned against the wall like whoever had put it there wasn’t sure what else to do with it, was a bronze door knob that had been crushed to ruin.
“This is my dorm room. I think maybe you got the building wrong?” Thalia continued.
“Oh Goddess, I’m so sorry,” Euphy whispered, stunned as one of the nightmares she’d been having about coming here abruptly came true. She covered her burning face with her hands, shoulders hunching over as she mumbled, “Should I just die? Do you want to kill me?”
Rescued!? She hadn’t been brought here, she’d busted in like a fucking raider and thrown herself on a stranger’s floor! And judging by how nice the room was, and by the red mana stone in the school pin attached to the girl’s tunic, Thalia was right: she hadn’t even managed to break into the right building, she’d broken into a noble’s dorm of all places!
“It’s alright, we’ve all been there. Well, actually I’ve never done that, but someone else must have, somewhere,” Thalia reassured her. “You even managed to break through a mana lock! That’s impressive, most people would have given up once it began shocking them, but you weren’t even burned.”
Euphy looked down at her gloved hands, feeling betrayed. It was nice they’d saved her from being electrocuted half to death, but it would have been nicer if they could have felt pain instead, because then she might have fucking noticed and stopped! Instead she’d been so out of it she’d just assumed the stupid door was loud!
“I’ll pay for the door, I swear. No, I’ll pay you anything you want, I’ll give you my whole scholarship if you just forget this ever happened.”
“Um… I mean, I’m happy to forget about it, but my roommate has probably already told some people.”
To her endless shame, Euphy began tearing up.
Hadn’t today been terrible enough yet? She wanted to go home. She wasn’t sure where that was anymore but she was pretty sure it wasn’t here.
Alarmed by Euphy’s watery eyes, Thalia looked for a distraction and found one. Grabbing the plate of cookies off of her desk, she offered it to Euphrosyne and said, “You should try a cookie!”
“Oh… okay…”
Finding a plate of cookies suddenly shoved in her face seemed to surprise the tears right back into her, and Euphy took one automatically. She felt too upset to eat, but she knew it would be rude to refuse, so she just held it and stared at it. A moment later, a cup of tea was pressed into her free hand.
She’d just done something spectacularly stupid, something that had directly inconvenienced the hell out of Thalia, and yet here she was being so nice to her. Back in Kos someone would have yelled at her by now, but she was used to that, so the tea and sympathy actually made her feel more uncomfortable.
Was this woman an angel? Not the creepy beast kind Cydonians believed in, but the kid-friendly fluffy version from Euphy’s old world, the ones with pretty wings and halos? Taking a look at Thalia’s beneficent face, Euphy felt like if anyone qualified it’d be her.
“So… is fainting normal for you, or do you want to see another healer?”
Euphy snapped back to attention and quickly shook her head, her straight pink hair swaying wildly with the motion.
Most healers preferred to heal themselves, but it wasn’t always possible. Lay-healers, as the lowest rank, tended to have the least knowledge and experience, and sometimes needed the help of med- or arch-ranked healers to fully take care of themselves.
Except when it came to getting her amygdala to calm the hell down, Euphy’s skills were more than enough to cover her own needs. Plus, considering the fact that she had a divine blessing, even if she really had needed help, there was no way she would let a healer she didn’t know well take a look at her.
Wait, didn’t she…? She frowned a little and glanced at Thalia. Presumably this woman had given her some sort of examination, right? There was no way she couldn’t notice, so why hadn’t she said anything?
”No, no, I think it was just stress,” Euphy muttered. “I’ve only ever lived in monasteries before, and this place is…”
Full of people who want to stab me to death on an altar, she finished in her head.
“Oh, homesick, huh? Where are you from?”
“Kos.”
“Wait, seriously? Kos actually exists?”
“Yes, it’s just sort of hidden, and a pain to get to.”
“Are you a monk?”
“No, I’m too young to take those vows,” Euphy said, painfully aware that Thalia was shouldering the burden of keeping the conversation going on her own.
She should ask something too, right? What did people talk about again, and why couldn’t she seem to remember!?
“I’m from Lycoscura. I get homesick sometimes too, you know… mostly I just miss my dogs.” Thalia sighed, then pointed at the cookie Euphy was holding. “You should try that. They’re good, I swear.”
Euphy examined the cookie and saw that it was a beautiful golden disc of buttery shortbread, studded with fragrant lavender buds and smelling of lemon and… something else familiar? She wore a ring that could detect faint traces of malicious intent, and since it was still sitting cool and inert on her finger, she took an experimental bite.
"Holy shit.”
She took a second, bigger bite.
”This is a really good cookie, wow. Wait, is that… Is there vanilla in this!?”
”I know, right?” Thalia agreed, taking a bite of her own cookie. “I can’t believe Arete used her vanilla just to make you cookies. Three years we’ve lived together, and she’s never done that for me.”
From Thalia’s perspective, she was likely thinking of vanilla as something rare and expensive due to the political tensions between Cydonia and the Southern Alliance. Euphy, on the other hand, hadn’t tasted it since her last life, and was briefly stunned by the nostalgia that hit her.
Back then it’d been such a common ingredient that she’d taken for granted that it was put into everything, but in this world, even when war wasn’t on the horizon, it was so rare and expensive she’d never even had the chance to sniff it.
The taste reminded her of the weekends in her old life she’d spent baking experiments and forcing her dad and auntie to eat them, and how as she got better over time the tradition went from something they endured out of love to something they genuinely looked forward to. She remembered how excited she was when she got vanilla bean pods for one of her birthdays, and how intense their scent had been as she scraped out those tiny seeds so she could make her own extract. Hell, she even remembered the weird fakey vanilla of the soft serve ice cream she’d eaten with Joseph at the Dairy Queen across the road from their high school, and how he’d shamelessly teased her by insisting they used real vanilla and that she was just tasting it wrong.
The cookie was amazing, but it only seemed to make her homesickness worse. She ignored that tight feeling in her chest and kept eating it anyway.
”Wait…” Pulling her attention away from the cookie, Thalia’s earlier words caught up with her brain. “You don’t mean that she made them for me?”
“Yeah, I do mean that.”
“But, why?”
“She thinks if she bribes you with baked goods now you’ll be friends with her once you become a famous divine mage.”
Euphy choked in surprise, breathing in a few crumbs, then broke out into a furious round of red-faced coughing.
”She—huh—cough—agh—what!?” she tried to say, pressing her hand to her chest and using magic to forcibly calm her spasming throat and lungs.
“That’s her bed you’re on, actually. She must really be excited, Arete isn’t usually the generous sort. Ahh, she’ll be so pissed you woke up right after she left.”
“Did you—did you tell her!? Who else have you told!?”
Thalia really had noticed her blessing when she’d examined her, she just hadn’t admitted it till now!? No, more importantly, she’d immediately started spreading it around?
”First of all, don’t break in and nap on stranger’s floors if you’re trying to hide weird secrets,” Thalia held up a finger to cut her off, unimpressed by Euphy’s offended expression. “Second of all, I didn’t say shit to anyone. Arete figured it out because there’s a rumor going around about you.”
“But why… why would there be a rumor already?” Euphy hunched over and pulled at her hair, burning up with frustration.
Did the Temple keep their intelligence in a fucking sieve? What was the point of keeping all this crazy mission-from-the-Goddess shit to herself if all of it just leaked immediately anyway?
That said, it wasn’t like she had to keep her divine blessing a secret. After all, even if people knew she’d been chosen by the Lady, they wouldn’t suspect her of being a Saint since Saint Calliope was still alive.
The problem was that very few Cydonians really understood divine blessings, and since people here believed that holiness was intrinsically linked with luck and nobility, they could get uncomfortably fanatical about it.
Thalia’s roommate, for example, who’d made a complete stranger a plate of cookies that probably cost over a hundred drachmas in ingredients.
"Sorry, I apologize, I shouldn't have assumed that you…” Euphy took a deep breath, calming herself down. “I was just hoping I'd have a little time before people found out.”
"Chill, I understand. It’s hard to be popular,” Thalia replied solemnly, like she knew from personal experience the weight of such a burden.
That did it. Euphy needed to get in contact with her Temple guardian and she needed to do it now.
Standing, she threw back the tea and set the cup down on the desk. Then she gave Thalia a formal bow, bending at the waist so hard and fast that Thalia had to dodge to avoid being smacked by Euphy’s hair.
”Thank you so much for everything you’ve done for me! I owe you and your roommate huge favors. Please let me know if you ever need my help with anything!”
“And my junior cousin.”
"What?” Euphy asked, straightening back up.
“I’ve just been keeping an eye on you. My cousin Psyche is the one who found you and treated you.”
”Psyche…?” Euphy asked, paling in alarm. “You two… wouldn’t happen to be from House Lycoscura, would you?”
Thalia went from cheerful to guarded in a heartbeat.
“Yeah, what of it?”
Euphy squeezed her eyes shut.
Incredible. In one morning, not only had she been found out by the villainess, she’d also managed to fuck up meeting the first of the four Heroes. It wasn’t as though she expected things to play out exactly as they had in the game, but as someone with a great deal of social anxiety, she’d really been banking on knowing what to expect, and now…
Now, instead of making a good impression, she’d broken into the hero’s cousin’s room, fainted like an idiot, and generally made a huge nuisance of herself.
She was beginning to think she should have just stayed unconscious.
“You guys breed some really good dogs,” Euphy whispered, giving up. Things were never going to work out the way she wanted, so she might as well focus on trying to forget everything that had happened today. “We have two of your fire wolves guarding the flocks at the monastery.”
”What?! You should have said so earlier!”
Thalia’s face brightened and she stood up in excitement. She’d been nice to Euphy earlier, but it turned out that had just been her being polite. This even friendlier version of Thalia was blindingly chummy as she slapped Euphy on the back and asked, “What are their names!?”
If Euphy hadn’t been so strong, that slap probably would have knocked her across the room. As it was, she just stumbled forward a few steps and had to catch herself on the bedpost.
So Thalia was a lunar mage too, huh? Also, ow.
“Well, we… we let the orphans vote on it so… they’re called Cheese and Biscuit.”
Leave it to a group of ages three through twelve year olds to look at two gigantic, constantly burning wolves and immediately think ‘breakfast.’ She’d often been in charge of keeping the kids away from them, since the children had collectively decided it was reasonable to use the heat of their coats to warm their food, which unsurprisingly resulted in meals that were half wolf fur.
“Eh? That’s so cute! How old are they? Do you remember who sired them? How are they doing up there? Do they get a lot of exercise?”
Euphy realized that she’d inadvertently discovered Thalia’s hobby. This was good, because she’d have a subject to talk about with her in the future, and she thought Thalia was cool and hoped they could become friends.
However, it was also bad, because it looked like Thalia was only just getting started and Euphrosyne had never figured out how to naturally exit conversations.
Euphy was just resigning herself to talking about dogs for the next hour even though she really ought to be reporting on her sacred mission when a quick knock on the door interrupted them.
Thalia held a hand up to Euphy, then went over to open the door. Behind it stood a tall, deeply tan man with dark blue hair and a dazzling white smile.
“Professor!” Thalia said, sparkling right back at him. “What brings you here?”
Euphrosyne couldn’t help but narrow her eyes a little. Two people with this level of aggressive friendliness in such a small space felt like standing in front of high beams.
“I came to visit my favorite student, who… seems to have absconded with my new ward?” Professor Iphis leaned into the room and waved at Euphrosyne. “Hello, Euphrosyne. You missed our check-in.”
Euphy tensed up, a wave of anxious terror washing through her. “Wait—what time is it!?”
“Just past one,” Thalia replied.
“Oh no—ah, Professor, I’m really sorry, I lost track of time,” Euphy began.
“No she didn’t, she got stressed and fainted, so don’t be too hard on her,” Thalia interjected. “I’d have sent you a message if I’d known you were looking for her.”
No! Don’t tell him that! Euphy cried internally, her hand outstretched to stop Thalia, but it was too late.
“Really? I’m sorry to hear that, I didn’t realize you were having such a hard time,” Iphis said, his expression concerned. “Are you sure it was just stress? I could take you to the—”
No! If one more person offered to help her over this fainting thing, she was going to flee the campus and go live out the rest of her days in the forest with only monsters around to witness the endless parade of humiliating decisions that was! Her! Life!
“No! I’m fine—ha, stress!? I wasn’t even that stressed, I just missed breakfast, it was probably low blood sugar so let’s go right now and never talk about this ever again,” Euphy crouched to reach for her bag. It had split open at some point, and she hurriedly stuffed her things back in.
“If you’re fine, what’s the rush?” Iphis asked, leaning against the door frame as he smiled at Thalia. “I’m glad you two met. Thalia actually would have been your…”
He paused, his expression becoming strained for a moment. Clearing his throat, he continued, “I mean Thalia would make a good sparring partner for you. Thalia, have you introduced her to Big Stick?”
“No, I didn’t realize she’d enrolled in combat classes!”
Grinning ear to ear, Thalia picked up a baton sitting on a nightstand next to her bed.
The stick in question looked so boring that Euphy hadn’t noticed it before. It was just a dark wooden baton, with no markings whatsoever, that was about a foot and a half long. If someone had told her it was just a dowel rod she would have believed them.
Smiling, Thalia held it out to Euphy and said, “Here! This is my bonded weapon, would you like to hold it?”
Euphy paused, surprised. People with bonded weapons didn’t usually let others touch them, which was a shame since they were so interesting. Not one to pass up on an opportunity to play with something magical and deadly, Euphy reached for it, only to suddenly have her hand pushed away by Iphis, who’d rushed into the room.
“Euphy, don’t,” he said, then turned a stern frown on Thalia. “And you, don’t do that again.”
Thalia, without a trace of guilt on her face, said, “I wasn’t going to let it hurt her, Professor. You used to be more fun than this.”
“You can torment any of my other students, but not this one,” Iphis replied.
Thalia seemed a little surprised by that, and glanced again at Euphy, quietly re-appraising her.
Euphy, for her part, missed every ounce of subtlety in Thalia and Iphis’ interaction. She was too busy looking at the baton with regret. Iphis refusing to let her touch it made her want to touch it even more.
“What would it have done?” she asked, straightening up and slinging her bag over her shoulder.
Iphis and Thalia exchanged a brief conversation entirely in meaningful facial expressions Euphy didn’t understand in the slightest, and the end result was that Iphis sighed and said, “I won’t ruin the surprise. You’ll find out once you spar with her. Now come along, we have a lot to discuss.”
Just like that, Euphy bid goodbye to Thalia, who insisted on sending them both off with bags full of expensive cookies, and was towed off by her new guardian.
”It’s nice to see you again,” he said as he led her out of the building she was in and, to her chagrin, across the road and into the building she should have gone into.
“Have we met in person before?” Euphy asked. She’d exchanged a few messages with him over the years, and more since she’d started traveling south two weeks ago, but she couldn’t recall meeting him in person.
”Aww, you don’t remember? My feelings are hurt.” He opened the building’s door for her and ushered her inside. “Then again, you were much younger then. Oh, and your hair was shorter—you looked like a furious little mimosa flower.”
Euphy’s hair was the sort that, if it wasn’t long enough for gravity to tame it, would grow straight out in random directions in the most embarrassing ways possible. It’d gotten slightly better as she aged, but the issue had been far, far worse when she was a child.
Hearing this, she scowled at him, only for him to go, “Yes! Just like that, but fluffier.”
He led her to the correct dorm room, which opened easily with a small brush of her mana. She thought of the mangled doorknob she’d left in Thalia’s room, blushed, and covered her face with her hand.
If only she hadn’t been dumb enough to ask Thalia if they were roommates, some of her dignity might still be intact. She’d noticed that the room Thalia was in was for two people when she’d woken up, but she’d only just now recalled the warning she’d been given when she’d applied for housing: that construction on campus had created a shortage, and all commoners were now being crammed four to a room.
Only, when she opened the door and stepped into this room, she was once again confronted with a double.
With a suspicious ‘fool me once’ look on her face, she asked Iphis, “You’re certain this is mine?”
”Yes! I pulled some strings—one of the Heroes has been having trouble living with others, and since you needed a room as well…” Iphis gestured at a pile of artificing scraps sitting on a battered old desk. “It was easier than vetting three strangers. Are you alright with that?”
She frowned down at the desk, put two and two together, and asked, “Endymion and Echo? Uh…”
Okay, so it was technically three to the room, not two, but still less crowded since the other guys shared a body.
That said, if they were anything like they were in the game, Endy was probably even more shy and awkward than she was. This meant that she didn’t have to worry about weirding them out since they’d probably be too busy worrying they were weirding her out to get offended, which sounded great to her.
”No, it’s fine,” she agreed.
Anything that got her closer to the heroes was a good idea, and also Iphis was right: this way she didn’t have to worry that someone living with her was secretly a sleeper agent for the Order.
”Good!” Iphis gave her an encouraging pat on the shoulder and said, “Try to convince them to stop sleeping in the woods when you get the chance, will you?”
“I’ll… do my best?”
“Alright, leave your things. Let’s go to my office.”
From the dorm building he led her on a winding path through the campus, giving her a little tour as they went. As they walked, she couldn’t help but look at him and think, Shouldn't you be mad at me?
She’d missed the time to check in with him, which was rude when you were a normal teenager but was extra problematic when you were a teenager on a sacred mission to save the world. Yet other than mentioning it initially, he seemed to have forgotten it altogether, and was busy pointing out fun facts about the campus instead.
”That building over there was named after one of the pioneers of blood magic. Very popular fellow, it’s a shame he went mad and tried to eat his apprentice.”
Every time she made a mistake back in Kos she’d be called irresponsible, or selfish, or stupid, and she hated hearing those things. Yet, no matter how hard she’d try afterwards to do things perfectly, something would always slip through the cracks, and she’d never notice it was happening until it was too late.
“See that plaque? Last year we had no on-campus deaths! First time in fifty-three years! We even threw a party to celebrate. Probably won’t hit that goal this year, what a bummer."
She kept glancing at him just in case he was angry or disappointed and just hiding it, but he was too busy smiling and greeting random people to let her get a good look at his face. He seemed to be very popular here, which was both intimidating and impressive. How did he remember so many different people’s names? Why was he comfortable calling out to them when they saw one another, didn’t he worry that they didn’t want to be bothered?
”This flooring is new! Last year someone snuck a kelpie in as a prank and it flooded the place. I thought it looked cute, what with all the little fish swimming around, but admin was afraid we’d get a lawsuit if someone slipped.”
This last comment was directed at the dining hall, though he didn’t take her into the dining area proper, just to a little side cantina that was stocked with more portable food. Without asking for her preferences he began to grab sandwiches and shove them into her arms. Looking down at them, she noticed that he’d somehow managed to only choose things she liked.
“Let’s get some food into you—did you really faint from low blood sugar?” He paused, holding a bottle of juice in each hand as his yellow eyes gave her a quick head to toe inspection. “You don’t look like you’re eating enough, regardless.”
Before she could reply, he piled her with more juice and snacks and went to pay.
”Wait, I have my scholarship!” She tried to stop him, but he waved her off. Then, pulling a woven beaded bracelet from his pocket, he activated it with a little flash of pink mana and began shoving the things he’d bought her into an invisible storage space.
”Don’t worry about it, consider it an early investment on my end. I give you sandwiches, you keep me out of prison later, everyone wins. Shall we?”
With one sandwich still left in her hands, he handed the storage bracelet over to her and she took it without thinking. Looking down at it, she had to resist the urge to give it right back to him. Did he know how much these sorts of things cost!? Why had he handed it to her!?
”Don’t look so worried. I made it, it’s a gift! Come on, let’s get going, eat your sandwich,” he said, and gave her another pat, this time on the head, as he breezed past her and out of the cantina.
For a man in his thirties, she couldn’t help but feel like he was giving off some surprisingly strong ‘mom’ vibes.
He’d been like that in the game, but it felt different being on the receiving end of it in person. Now that she thought of it, wasn’t that one of the big reasons his ship with Moros had been so popular…?
…
Oh no.
She’d forgotten, but now she remembered.
In her past life, when she’d been playing the game, she’d been a fourteen-year-old girl with a deep appreciation for handsome men, and while she’d liked all the protagonists, she and many other fans couldn’t help but feel like it was a shame all these attractive older side characters didn’t have more screen time in the story, so she’d gone on Ao3 and…
Oh no, I read fanfiction about you, she thought, staring at Iphis in horror as he paused to greet an older woman who was walking by them.
Just reading fic about a fake person who turned out to be real would have been bad enough, but…
I read adult fanfiction about you and now that I remember it I can’t stop thinking about it!
She stared at the ground, afraid to look at him. Why did I do that!? I swear I didn’t know you were real at the time—or that you’d be my guardian, or my teacher, fucking hell.
Should she apologize? Should she tell him that some of the stories were actually really good? No, both of those ideas were stupid, why would she even consider doing that!?
She stuffed the sandwich in her mouth just so she wouldn’t say something accidentally.
In a way, wasn’t it incredible? Every time she thought she’d reached the pinnacle of shame, she’d look up to see a brand new peak of cringe to climb. Was this sort of suffering just her destiny, or was this divine punishment for figuring out how to get around those child-safe restrictions her dad put on their internet?
She was going to take this knowledge to the grave. She was going to do that in honor of all the innocent authors in her old world who had no idea this other world existed, for those generous comrades who only wanted to add a little extra spice to a story they liked, gods bless them.
Despite her resolve, by the time they made it to his office, she still said, “Uh, Professor—I’m really sorry about…”
Earlier. Also, my entire existence.
Iphis, catching sight of her guilty expression as he opened the door for her, misinterpreted the source of her anguish and said, “You don’t need to look so down. I came to find you because I was worried, not to scold you.”
The office he’d led her to was on the second floor of Aegis’ impressively Colosseum-like gymnasium. Euphy supposed this made sense, since he was part of the College of Battle Magic, but…
Just like in the game, his room didn’t seem like a combat professor’s room. It looked more like a craft store that’d exploded. There were bits of materials and half-finished projects everywhere, yarn and leather and wood and fabric and countless little tools whose purpose she could only guess at.
He picked up the bundle of stuff occupying a chair and set it aside. Then he casually wiped off his entire desk, ignoring the crashing sounds that resulted, and took a seat on the other side of it.
Euphy remembered that a few of the fics she’d read had started that way, and began seriously considering whether or not it’d be worth it to try magically lobotomizing herself.
He watched her as she sat down, his golden eyes patient as he waited for her to get her bearings. Light poured in through the window behind him, bringing out bright highlights on his dark, wavy blue hair. Unlike almost everyone else she ran into, he wore his relatively short, just long enough so that its waves framed his face.
She wondered if he styled it like that because he preferred it that way, or if it meant something else. Most Cydonians only cut their hair short for upsetting emotional reasons, usually mourning, but recently some people had begun doing it as a fashion statement.
“Oh… still, I promise it won’t happen again…”
”Euphy, there’s no need to lie. Of course it will.”
Her heart stopped, shocked to be called out so accurately so quickly.
He flipped his black-gloved hand dismissively and continued, “At some point something will come up and you’ll get distracted or forget, and that’s alright. I don’t want you to check in with me so I can control you, I want you to do it so I can help you if you need anything.”
"…Oh.”
She knew he wasn’t Alke, so she shouldn’t expect him to act like her, but it was still a little weird to hear her guardian say something like that. She’d been waiting for him to yell at her ever since he’d shown up, and it was only now that she began to relax somewhat.
“Now, would you mind telling me what upset you so much this morning?”
She briefly explained what had happened: running into Ianthe, being called by an old deadname from her previous life, her worries that information about her or the game had been leaked. He listened without saying much, just making some affirmative noises here and there to show he was paying attention, and when she finished he leaned back in his seat, steepled his fingers and said:
”Well. That is a pickle.”
…
A pickle?
Euphy felt dazed.
“What? No… isn’t this a, a watermelon at least?”
“I’m not sure I’d go that far.” He propped his chin up on one hand and gestured lazily with the other. “Your past, the game… they’re not our only advantages. Anyway, we’ve already noticed something is up with Ianthe. Moros and I are taking turns watching her, so just leave it to us.”
Euphy flinched at the mention of Moros, gave herself a quick pinch to try and force herself to keep it together, and then replied, “But—she’s my, uh… my nemesis, or whatever. Shouldn’t I do something?”
Now he finally responded with some emotion, straightening up in alarm as he said, “What? No! What were you thinking you had to do?”
“Uh, confront her or investigate her or something? Isn’t that what I’ve been training for?”
“On your own!?”
“Well, I haven’t befriended the other Heroes yet…”
“No! No, absolutely not! Lord below, what has Alke been teaching you?”
He pressed his fingers against his temples, then pushed his hands back through his hair like she’d just given him a headache. “Euphy, promise me you’ll never go after a mage like Ianthe unless you absolutely have to. Especially since she’s older than you, you ought to know how dangerous that is.”
While aging eventually made mages weaker physically, it tended to make them more powerful magically. Mana capacity and magical strength naturally increased over time, which meant an older mage could usually cast more and stronger spells than a younger one. Not to mention that, the longer a mage lived, the more spells they had the opportunity to master.
While it wasn’t impossible for someone like Euphy to beat an opponent around Ianthe’s age, she knew she’d still be facing a serious disadvantage, but… hadn’t that been the expectation all along?
“I don’t really have the energy to unpack Alke stuff right now,” Euphy mumbled, looking out the window. Plus, if she did try to explain, and he dismissed or didn’t believe her, she didn’t think she’d be able to respond calmly.
Overall, she felt deeply confused. For years now she’d been taught she needed to do everything on her own, so why was Professor Iphis suddenly offering to do it for her? Was he being sincere, or was this some kind of test he was giving her? If it was, then what kind of bullshit was that?
That thought made her feel very, very tired. For years she’d been manipulated this way and that, supposedly for her own good, but the end result was that she was having a hard time remembering why she ought to care at all. So what if it was a test? If it was, she hoped she failed just to spite him.
Catching on to her mood, Iphis reached over his desk and gave her a tap on the back of her hand.
“Euphrosyne,” he said, once he’d drawn her attention. “Young Saint, exactly what do you think I’m your guardian for?”
“To… to make sure I don’t mess up the fight against the Order?”
“That…” Iphis let out a long sigh, and seemed to age ten years in a few seconds. “No. Euphrosyne, I’m here to make sure that the stuff with the Order doesn’t interfere too much with you and your life.”
“What?”
Was she hearing things? Why wasn’t anything he was saying making any sense?
“While I cannot overstate what a gift the knowledge from your last life is to the Temple, or how important it will be to developments going forward, we’ve been solving these Calamities for nearly two thousand years, and we have plenty of resources ready for this one,” he sat back in his chair, folded his arms across his chest. “I have no doubt you’ll make contributions, and I understand there will be things you need to handle directly, but it’s my hope that you’ll focus on your own life first and leave as much of the rest to us as possible.”
Was he being serious?
Didn’t this sound too good to be true!?
“You… you keep saying ‘us,’ who is ‘us’?”
“Your team here, of course,” Iphis said, and now it was his turn to look embarrassed. “I apologize, I won’t be able to introduce them to you immediately, though I will give you their contact cards, and I encourage you to message any of us regardless of whether or not you’ve met. We all have day jobs in addition to our roles for the Temple, and the hullabaloo with Hyperborea keeps pulling people away, so some of us are busier than others, but I assure you our goal is to help you and the Heroes with anything you need, whenever you need it.”
“I… have a team!?”
“Of course,” Iphis replied like that was obvious. “Oh, I meant to ask, did you leave your escort in Kastri?”
“My escort?”
“The… the people who brought you here? Ah, I don’t remember all their names, but Senior Monk Rhea of Arcadia should have been leading them?”
Euphy knew who Rhea was, but she’d said goodbye to her two weeks ago and hadn’t seen her since.
“No? I came here alone.”
“You… did…?” He replied, his smile stiffening. “You… never mentioned that in any of your messages, though?”
Well, that was because she’d been worried he might be like Alke, so she’d only ever said the minimum that was required.
“I assumed you knew…”
She bit her lip, cutting herself off. By the expression on his face she’d finally managed to upset him. She looked down, crossed her arms over her chest, and pushed her feet into the floor, unconsciously bracing herself.
Across from her, Iphis closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and pressed his face into his hands. After taking a few seconds to collect himself, he lowered his hands and said, “It sounds like there may be more for us to discuss. However, unless you feel it’s pressing, why don’t we wait for a better time?”
She looked up, surprised.
“My guess is you’ve already had a long journey, and could use today to settle in, right? And for now, just forget about Ianthe, I’ll—”
He was interrupted by the soft chime of a message. Pulling out his receiver, he looked down at it and said, “Would you look at that, it’s already my turn to watch her again. Are you comfortable heading back on your own, or would you like me to take you?”
“I’m fine, thank you!”
“Alright—oh! That reminds me! There’s a freshman mixer tonight. You ought to go if you feel up to it.”
”A mixer?”
”Yes, for new students and anyone who wants to meet them. There’s free food, and maybe you can make some friends who aren’t one of the Heroes.”
She could not describe just how deeply the idea of going to a room full of strange people she didn’t know distressed her. However…
“There’s free food?”