“Lesson Day?” asked Elise, stretching. “What’s that?”

“Originally, this gathering was just so the members of Ostra could plan their next moves, but as it grew, some members started requesting resources on how to fit into humanoid society, and some other members volunteered to teach what they knew, so Lesson Day was created. The first day is just a social gathering, but the second is more structured. There will be stations set up around the ballroom with different teachers, and periods during which the lessons will take place. You can pick and choose which ones you want to take.”

While Emilia explained Lesson Day, Elise went through a quick routine of morning stretches and shook the sleep from her head. Emilia was standing behind the couch, looking like she had already been up for quite a while. Her clothes were clean and unwrinkled– not that Elise had ever seen them otherwise– and her long hair looked freshly brushed.

“Are you teaching any?” asked Elise.

“I have in the past, but not this time,” Emilia replied. “I have another appointment, so I’ll be skipping this one. I’ll take you back to the ballroom for breakfast, and then I’ll be off. I likely won’t be back until this evening.”

“Am I allowed to know where you’re going?”

“No.”

“Fair enough.”

“I’m sorry for not being around more. I meant to show you around more personally, but something’s come up.”

“It’s fine,” said Elise. “I’ll be fine on my own.”

“I’m sure you will be,” she said, nodding. “Have you finished stretching? Let’s go.”

The ballroom had been completely re-organized. Instead of an open floor, and tables around the edges like it had been the previous day, the tables were all in the middle, and the edges of the room were partitioned into twelve equal-ish segments. The food was piled high on the outermost ring of tables, and a good half of the attendees from the previous night were already seated in the middle, talking amongst themselves.

Jerry and the warg were crouched at a table on the close side of the dining area. The warg noticed Elise almost immediately, and followed her with his eyes as she flew behind Emilia toward the center. He did not make any moves to attack, but Elise could feel the hunger in his gaze, and it made her fur stand on end.

“Need me to grab you a plate?” asked Emilia.

“Huh?” Elise replied. “Oh. Yes please. Thank you.”

“No problem. What do you want?”

As they walked, two plates levitated off their stacks, and whenever Elise pointed something out that she wanted, whatever she indicated would float up and land on the plate. Meanwhile, the other plate was also slowly filling up with much more food for Emilia’s meal. They sat at a table on the opposite side from the warg and started eating in silence.

“So,” said Elise after a few minutes. “Are there any classes that you recommend that I take?”

“Hmmmm.” Emilia swallowed the bite she was chewing. “I’m not sure. There are a few that you probably don’t need. Jag is teaching a class, but it will be useless for you.”

“What’s the class?”

“‘How to Appear Harmless.’”

“Ah,” said Elise. “Yeah, I think I have that covered.”

“If you have time though, you should at least check it out. It’s pretty fun to watch. Hampton will be teaching one on etiquette, but I’m not sure you need that either. There will be a few useful tidbits, but that class is at a fairly low level, so you’ll be bored. Oh, and Damon and Valerie’s lesson won’t help you at all, since you don’t have a humanoid form. Unless, you plan on aiming for one in your future evolutions?”

Elise hesitated a moment before responding. She wasn’t too keen on letting Emilia in on her long-term plans, but this one would be made obvious sooner or later, so there was no point in hiding it.

“I am.”

“Then in that case, you might want to take their class.”

“What is their class?” Elise asked. “And who are Damon and Valerie?”

“They’re right over there.”

Elise followed the line from Emilia’s finger to where it landed on a pair of humanoid monsters. The man, Damon, had red skin, a muscular build, and black horns that stuck straight up from his head, and the woman, Valerie had blue skin and purple horns curling around the sides of her head. Damon was wearing no shirt and a worn pair of leather trousers, and Valerie was wearing what could barely even be called underwear. A use of {Inspect} on both confirmed Elise’s suspicions.

[Greater Incubus, lvl ???]

[Greater Succubus, lvl ???]

“They’ll be teaching ‘The Art of Seduction.’”

“I see…”

“Oh, Elise, Emilia!”

They turned to see Jag approaching with a plate piled high with plucked, raw, whole chickens.

“Good morning!” he said. “How are you two doing?”

“I’m doing well,” said Emilia. “I’d be doing better though if I could stay to see your lesson.”

“Oh no,” he said. “You have another-”

“Yes,” said Emilia, cutting him off.

“Oh, my bad,” he said. “What about you Elise? How are you doing?”

“I’m doing great.” She was halfway through a green, star-shaped fruit that tasted like heaven.

“Are you looking forward to Lesson Day?”

“A little,” she said. “I want to live among the humanoids, so I’m looking forward to learning about their culture.”

“Then you’ll want to take Jerry’s class,” he said, ripping half a chicken off with his teeth. “He’s the expert on that stuff.”

“Does he live with them?”

“He’s a circus animal!” said Jag. “They don’t know he can talk though. They just think he’s unusually smart.”

Elise glanced over at the elephant, who was shoveling whole melons into his mouth with his trunk.

“I guess I can see it,” she said. “What does he do when he’s not performing though?”

“He might not look like it, but Jerry is a master of stealth,” explained Emilia. “And he can make temporary clones of himself, so his handlers never know that he’s gone.”

Elise looked back at Jerry, who was now guffawing at something the warg had said. She couldn’t picture that. Circus animals were usually caged, right? How did he get out of his cage? Could he teleport? Could he phase through walls? And how would anyone not see him? He must have had some way of turning invisible. He was just out of range, so she couldn’t {Inspect} him, and she was kicking herself for not having done it earlier.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

“You’ll want to check out Hampton’s lesson too,” said Jag. “He masquerades as a human, and runs a general store in some remote town somewhere. He knows his stuff.”

“I was just telling her about that, actually,” said Emilia. “But I think Hampton’s lesson might be too far below her level. She already has a good handle on etiquette. As long as she learns the language, she’ll be fine as she is.”

“That’s true,” agreed Jag. “It might still be worth checking out at least once though. You can always skip it next time if you don’t find it useful.”

“That’s true,” said Emilia.

Elise almost told them that there wouldn’t be a next time, but held her tongue. It looked like neither of them were aware of the content of her discussion with Freddy, and telling them would only turn the conversation into them trying to convince her to stay, and that would be annoying. She already made up her mind, and had all night to confirm with herself. Ostra didn’t seem bad, but no matter how harmless the contract’s contents might have seemed, she wasn’t going to potentially sign her life away while knowing so little about what their main goals were.

“I guess,” she said.

They talked a bit more about the lessons before the topic turned to small talk as Jag and Emilia discussed their own personal lives, and what had been happening. Apparently, when not teaching classes on how to appear harmless, Jag was a wanderer, traveling the world and trying to further Ostra’s goals in his own way. He would approach travelers and small villages, trying to appeal to reason, and prove that he was harmless. Most of the time he failed miserably, but recently, a small tribe of gnomes had started to treat him as a sort of guardian deity.

“It’s not what I was going for, but it’s a good start,” he said. “I think I’ll settle there for a little while and try to help them out and get closer to them.”

After that, they were joined by a pair of deer with crystalline antlers, and then a few more as the other tables grew too full for them to remain alone. A quarter hour later, the entire room was buzzing with activity. Jag and the other members who were teaching lessons excused themselves to finish setting up their stations, and shortly after, a voice rang out, silencing the rest.

“Attention!” It was Freddy, and he was floating near the roof above the dining area so the whole room could see him. “Lesson Day will begin in ten minutes. If you’re new today, or it’s been a while, and you need a refresher, allow me to explain:

“Lesson Day is a long-standing Ostra tradition. We have ten volunteers who will be teaching classes on how best to both be safe from humanoids, and increase their opinions of us. There will be eight periods where you can choose a station, and spend time there learning from the teacher. Unfortunately, we have more volunteers than periods this time, so you won’t be able to attend them all, but I encourage you to make the most out of your time today. Allow me to now introduce our twelve teachers!

“In the northeast corner, we have our wonderful Jag! He’s been traveling the world, making contact with various humanoid groups, and he wants to share his knowledge and experience on how to appear harmless and friendly!”

Freddy gestured toward where Jag was standing, and there was a smattering of applause and stomping and clicking.

“To his left, we have Pyotr, who will be giving a lesson on the humanoid races and how to identify them. Pyotr is currently collaborating with Jelor University’s chief anthropologist on a research paper that goes into great detail on this topic.”

The tiny bear bowed from his position on top of a very tall chair, but Elise wasn’t paying attention. Something that Freddy had said caught her attention, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it.

“Next to him are Valerie and Damon, who will be giving a lesson on seduction! They run a brothel in Albionia’s capital, so they know their stuff.”

The succubus and incubus blew kisses to the audience.

“In the southeast corner, Jerry will be giving a lesson on humanoid culture, and more specifically, Jelorian culture! Jerry has lived among humanoids of all statuses for nearly a century now and knows human customs like the back of his trunk.”

There was a much louder response from the audience this time. The stomping shook the floor, and a few people started chanting Jerry’s name like a mantra. Elise flinched, partly because of the sudden loud noise assaulting her sensitive ears, but mostly because she finally realized what had caught her attention. It was the word “Jelor”. It sounded like it was just the name of a country, but the reason why she honed in on it in particular was that it was a word she had heard before. In fact, she had heard the words “Jelor University” specifically as well, back when Nick and Bianca visited the night before the warg attacked.

Was she in Jelor right now? If so, were the Grays there too? They could be right above her right at that moment. Would she be able to go visit them? She wouldn’t be able to leave on her own, but maybe Emilia could take her. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to actually meet them, but if she knew where they were, she could at least check in on them from afar.

Is it really safe to let Emilia see them though? She thought.

At that point, she realized the answer was “no”. Emilia was still too suspicious. If she was truly the kind of villain Elise was worried she was, showing her some people that Elise cared about would be a bad idea. It would be like handing over her weakness on a silver platter.

Even so, if there was some way she could at the very least confirm they were doing well, that would be enough. Maybe if she joined Ostra like Freddy offered, she would be able to get that information without going through Emilia. Then again, Emilia was in a position of power here, and could probably see her information request if she chose to. And if she was in a position of power, and was evil, did she really want to join Ostra.

As much as she wanted to see them, she decided it was better not to bring them up. She could just gather information on Jelor here, and come back later independently, after the dwarf-drow issues were resolved. She tuned back in to Freddy’s speech in time to hear the tail-end of his explanation of the next lesson’s content.

“-etiquette. I personally recommend that you take Jerry and Hampton’s lessons back to back. If you do, you will have a much deeper understanding of humanoid culture, and how to behave in it.”

It took her a few seconds to find who the next speaker was. He was right next to Jerry, but it was Hampton the invisible gorilla, so she didn’t notice him at first. She couldn’t tell if he was waving, or laughing or something else, but his bowtie was moving back and forth slightly, so he wasn’t sitting still. The applause for him was almost as loud as it was for Jerry.

“Next to Hampton, Barbara will-”

“It’s Bobbi!”

A ripple of laughter passed through the dining area, as the pitch black cat on top of a wooden pillar interrupted Freddy.

“Yes, Bobbi will be teaching a lesson on Geography,” continued Freddy with a good-natured smirk. “Bobbi has traveled the world more times than even I have, so even if you think you know your maps, I assure you that Bobbi has seen more places than you knew existed.

“I will be set up in the Southwest corner, and I will be teaching about humanoid law. I hope I’ll have more students than last time.”

There was another ripple of laughter, after which Freddy continued to introduce the other subjects. Frank the frog was teaching about human literature, and Pierre the pegasus was going to be teaching about fashion. Unlike most of the Ostra members, Pierre was actually quite well-liked by humans, and enjoyed spending his time showing off for high society. In the last corner, a bespectacled otterpede– an otter with an elongated body and a few dozen legs– would be teaching human mathematics. Elise knew from the moment she heard about the subject that she would not be attending that one.

The last two lectures were joint lectures on human weaponry, and human technology. They were taught by a tiny fey woman named Ariane, and a four-armed ogre with tusks jutting from his lower jaw almost all the way up to his eyes. According to Freddy, the two had prepared the lectures together, and they were designed to be taught in tandem over two periods, with the two teachers trading off speaking roles as they described the technology and weaponry throughout history.

When he finished speaking, Freddy flew over to his corner, and the creatures in the dining area started to stand up and make their way toward their preferred stations.

“Well, it’s about time for me to leave,” said Emilia. “Do you need anything from me before I take off?”

“Nope,” said Elise.

“Well then, I hope you have a good time and learn a lot. Again, I’m really sorry I can’t be here for the rest. I will hopefully be back in time for dinner though.”

“It’s fine,” said Elise. “I know you’re busy.”

“Thank you,” said Emilia. “Well, good luck.”

She rose up over the crowd and flew toward the door from which they had entered, leaving Elise alone in a sea of strangers. Elise watched Emilia until she was out the door, then turned her attention to her options. She wanted to take Jag and Elise’s advice and attend Jerry’s lecture first, but apparently the rest of Ostra had also heard that advice, and almost half of the hundreds of members were heading that direction. Elise decided she would save their lessons until later when they were less crowded, and looked around at her other options.

Jag looked like he was having a good time talking to his own students, but Elise wanted to save his lesson for if she had time at the end. Like they said, she didn’t really need it. It would be harder for her to make herself appear harmful than it would be for Jag to appear harmless. The seduction lesson sounded interesting, but Elise wasn’t sure she was mentally prepared for such a class so early in the morning, so she decided to hold off on that one until a later time.

The warg was attending the weapons class, and she didn’t want to be anywhere near him, so that limited her options to the other half of the room. As she scanned the stations, she found that her eyes caught on Freddy’s. He was sitting all alone on a wooden chair, looking completely unbothered. His smile was just as wide as ever, but Elise couldn’t help but feel a little bad that no one wanted to listen to him. Even the otterpede had a small audience.

His lectures can’t be that bad, can they? she thought.

As soon as she started heading his direction, he singled her out of the crowd, and his smile widened to welcome her approach.

“Elise!” he said. “I’m glad you decided to join me. I was worried I would have to twiddle my thumbs for an hour.”

“Do you normally have no students?” she asked.

“I normally have one or two,” he said. “But you got lucky enough this time to have me all to yourself.”

“Hooray…” said Elise with as much enthusiasm as she could muster.

“So, are you ready to learn about law?”