Velvet woke up, the feeling of dread not stopping pressuring her chest. Rolling out of bed, she went to the bathroom to clean her face.

She didn’t feel like falling asleep again.

Walking down the hallways, she searched for a balcony to go and get fresh air. It was past midnight, around two o’clock, and all the lights were out, the only illumination being the fake stars on the villa’s pocket dimension.

Even if they were fake, they were an exact copy of the ones outside, proof of the amazing craftsmanship used in the formation.

Finally seeing a balcony, Velvet noticed a gas lamp was lit, and someone was also awake.

Irsen Kartal was sitting on a foldable chair outside. A table was set next to him, with a half filled glass and a bottle of whisky. He moved his head slightly when Velvet got closer to the balcony, but turned it back once she dragged another folding chair and sat on the opposite side of the table.

They stared at the night sky in silence, with only the chirping of the still awake birds as background noise. Until Velvet rummaged through the table’s drawer, pulling out an empty glass, setting it on the table and grabbing the bottle.

“Fill no more than a finger. It’s hard liquor.” Kartal told her.

Velvet did as told, taking a sip. A burning, itching sensation overwhelmed her throat, as she grimaced, resisting the need to cough, before raising the glass and downing the vase’s contents whole.

She didn’t refill it.

Kartal waited until Velvet finally coughed, and let out a short laugh, drinking from his vase. “Aren’t most Charlampians sailors?”

“Yes, but I’m a mage, not a sailor.” She defended herself. Thinking about Gertine’s habits, though, it was a weak defense.

“A mage that should be sleeping.”

“This mage is having sleeping problems.”

Kartal folded his hands over his legs. Velvet had crossed paths with a sloth mage, Agorn. Even if she had won, nothing implied he didn’t manage to do anything. “As in?”

“Lucid dreaming. Of ancient events.”

She didn’t need to keep that a secret. The actual dream contents, yes, but the fact that she could lucid dream, no. It was hardly a unique skill. All sloth and sloth-adjacent mages could do it, and anyone could develop the skill with time. Even normal humans.

Kartal relaxed. It wasn’t a curse.

Velvet choosed to change the conversation, testing if she could confirm her deductions. “Are those drawings from the Delusion Paradigm? Or the Remembrance?”

The drawing's main attribute was the perfect imitation of powers and personality of the originals. Velvet wouldn’t have been able to ambush Agorn with such perfection without having dealt with the copies previously.

That made her previous guess of Delusion Paradigm tremble.

Slowly, Kartal took a sip of liquor. “Both. You guessed right.”

“How did you get two different Escas?” Something like that shouldn’t be possible. Escas filled the whole soul. Once a mage picked a Paradigm, that was it.

“A mage’s experiment. Luckily for me, I survived. Unluckily for him, I survived.” Kartal didn’t give more details.

He had no reason to keep that a secret for Velvet. That girl was like a curious mouse. Even if he didn’t answer her, she would eventually come across some mage grimoire or experimental logs, arriving at the truth on her own. The Mergifari was filled with those things to the brim.

But, by being the one telling her, he had some bait to keep her entertained, and, most importantly, it reinforced her trust in him.

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And, if she once wanted to experiment, her trust in him would make her pick mages dangerous for humans as test subjects.

Seeing Velvet pondering over his words, Kartal sighed. “Go back to bed. If you have strange dreams after this, I’ll give you some pills.”

I don’t think pills are going to help me… Even then, Velvet obeyed, dragging the chair back to where it was, before going back to her room.

Falling asleep once again, this time to the now relaxing all-surrounding darkness, without any visions.

…

Today was the day of the Arena. All of them were up already, readying their stuff. The table was filled with materials, half done charms, potions, seeds…

Several corpses were standing in line, controlled by Skugol, while Velvet was tinkering with them, putting charms inside.

“This one carries fastening and sleep charms.” Sewing the holes she made to stuff the charms with the black thread Skugol gave her, she gave this corpse for finished. “Three dream corpses done. Now I’ll make some lust ones.”

“Using corpse and lust in the same sentence feels atrocious…” Skogul said from behind an alchemy set, busy grinding several ingredients into powder, before slowly mixing them inside a boiling liquid. “But make those five, they are the slowest.” Five corpses took a step forward, while the already finished took a step back, making a group on the other side.

Skugol possessed a total of twenty corpses, and Velvet had enhanced twelve already. She had also given Drifa a variety of charms, same with Syon, and had obtained potions, several containers filled with blocks of ice, a sand golem, a pair of earrings and an umbrella from Syon.

The earrings had two effects, one for each piece. The left one made her body light as a feather, while the right one heavy as a statue. They didn’t make her body more resistant, so dive bombing at people and crushing them still wasn’t an option.

The umbrella resisted projectile type spells.

Using Sinoe’s Baslard to make deep but small cuts on the corpses, putting seeds and lust charms inside them and sewing, Velvet finished that set of corpses. “Three remaining. What do we lack?” She asked, partly to herself, partly to the others.

“Reconnaissance spells. But corpses don’t have smell nor sight, so we will have to do without those.”

“Mhm.” Velvet nodded, inspecting the remaining corpses, trying to see something they didn’t do already.

“Lesse… I made potions for cold resist, heat resist, mind control resist, poison cleaning aaand…” Skugol finished filling twelve long, thin glass vials. “Underwater breathing. Four for each, don’t fight over them.” He got close to Velvet, handling her the corresponding number of vials. “What if we made them look like Syon?”

She giggled. “Oh, that sounds hilarious. Syon, Syon, come here, we’re gonna impersonate you.”

Syon grimaced. It was clear he didn’t like the corpse's smell, and didn’t want to get next to them, but he didn’t really have a choice.

Velvet and Skugol started working, their attention going from the corpse to Syon.

“The chin is wrong… and the eyes…”

“Skugol, put the nose back in place!”

“Don’t blame me, Syon, stop covering your nose! These corpses were frozen until minutes ago, they still don’t smell!”

“Pfft! Look, Syon, I’ve got your eye.”

“Haha… no, stop, put it back inside.”

“I can’t, it keeps falling, hehe. Drifa, throw me some eye sized seed.”

“Look, Syon, salute your twin cousin, Noys!”

“Twins cannot be… Why is he lacking an ear?”

“Why is he lacking an ear… oh shit. Skugol!”

“Ah, it must’ve fallen on the container… here it is.”

The noise of Kartal clearing his throat stopped their artistic endeavors. “The Arena starts in ten minutes.”

“Will they notice the half-assed Syons?”

“Just put a cloak over them and they’ll be ready for storing… Why do they look like they are suffering?” Skugol muttered, and started putting back the corpses in containers, while Velvet went to pick some materials that could be used but weren’t needed for now.

Drifa and Syon were already ready to leave, and soon, Skugol and Velvet joined them.

…

They arrived at the Selection Room together. Now, it’s function wasn’t the Selection, but the Opening.

In the middle of the space where the novice mages had previously showcased their abilities and picked a Selector, now there was a formation.

Five metronomes were positioned in a circle, ticking in succession. With each tick, the swirling combination of dust and light reflected different places. The ticks were fast, which made staring at the constantly changing portals a headache.

Behind each metronome, a mage was standing. Velvet recognized the Director, Hasdrubal and the Queen of Arhontissa.

She looked to the side, where Ceres was sitting. Their gazes met, and he smiled at her, laying back on his seat.

Ceres really intends to give me free reign. Good.

Taking a deep breath, Velvet fixed her hat, as the novice mages entered the portal one by one.

And soon, it was her turn.