“Hello, Master,” A youthful voice greeted.

“Hello, Desmond,” I returned.

“Your room is on the top floor,” Desmond said, “Your servants have cleaned the entire floor quite well. There is too much sunlight for me to join you there, however. Too many protective spells warding against everything in this building.”

“Well that’s mean of them,” I sympathized.

“Yes, so visit often,” Desmond murmured.

His tongue reached out. I grimaced as he licked the dried blood off my face. A healing circle appeared the moment I started feeling fuzzy from the scent of his saliva.

Kairos removed his glasses, cleaning them with his shirt as he waited for me.

Soon my face and collar was clean of blood, me stopping Desmond when he finished with my hands.

“If you’ll excuse me,” I said, the healing circle fading the moment I couldn’t smell his scent anymore.

“Yes, Master,” Desmond agreed, looking content.

Which was wild. I didn’t tell him to act like this. If someone made of my favorite kind of soup was walking around I wouldn’t be content licking dried soup off of them.

I guess if I was really hungry… Poor Desmond. I’d have to feed him later.

Kairos looked through his glasses for a moment before putting them back on. I walked up to him.

“New friend?” Kairos wondered, eyes focused on Desmond. They turned to me after a long moment.

“Something like that, yeah,” I agreed.

Kairos hummed, turning to continue leading me. We both wandered for a bit, finding the stairs and beginning our trek up.

Mostly a new, very polite pet. A stray I took in to prevent him from being killed by that bastard Orion. Fucking lawful-good asshole. Who cares if the people he killed range from chaotic neutral to straight evil? They’re more capable than that bastard.

Dude should have focused on killing the immortal evils that were actually dangerous, like the ones that weren’t my favorites!

Though most of them not actively from another realm were actually good… Eh, whatever. It was just semantics. What could truly be called good or evil anyway?

Getting to my room, I saw that the dark and dreary hallways had gone from shadowy depths to sunlight-infused walls, all of the windows polished with great malice.

The floors were as sparkling as the windows.

Elizabeth was in the hallway, dusting the top of a doorway. All of the doors in the top floor were open aside from two. When she saw us, she startled, “Oh! Hello, your highness! Kai.”

James peeked his head out of a doorway before fully walking out. Both bowed to me.

“We have done our best to clean the floor up!” Elizabeth explained as they both straightened, “Your room is ready.”

“It’s this one,” James gestured at the one he’d come out of, “Your schedule has arrived. Would you like me to draw you up a bath?”

“It’s f—“

“Yes,” Kairos interrupted me as he looked around, walking forward, “She is the only one on this floor, correct?”

“Yes, of course,” Elizabeth answered as James walked back into the room he came from, her gray eyes focused on Kairos as he walked up to her.

“Excellent, I expect nothing less for her. I presume those two closed doors covered in garlic and protective sigils are your chosen quarters?”

I wandered up, going into my room. I glanced around. It was nice.

“Yes,” Elizabeth agreed hesitantly.

The bed was clearly new, the pleasant scent of fresh linens reaching my nose. The bed itself had a shiny emerald comforter on it, the non-shiny underside looking soft.

Two nightstands were placed on either side of the bed, which jutted out from the center of the left wall.

There was a desk stacked with books and stationary supplies. A relatively simple dresser and wardrobe were next to each other, the rest of the room mostly empty outside of the door leading into the bathroom.

On the wooden floor there was a carpet attempting to cover the scratches where another bed had once been.

The room was much different from the one in the castle, and I stared at the stylistic choices that Elizabeth must have caught on to. Wow. I was so lucky to have such attentive people around me.

Even if I were getting paid to be a servant for someone, I doubt I would notice their personal preferences. Especially if they suddenly changed them one day like I did.

“Your highness, your bath is ready,” James said as he walked out.

I wondered what would happen to them once I left… I hope they would be okay.

“Oh, okay,” I said.

The bath was interesting. The water was dyed pink with my blood by the time I got out, stains on my skin. I told them that it was fine, just to drain the bath, and then took a shower while they stared at me.

It was a bit awkward, but it was much more awkward to be dried by Kairos after a struggle with the towel. In the few days its been since I’d been attended to, I grew used to being alone again.

Which made sense, because I could both clean and dry myself. I was dressed in something simple, and flopped on my bed the moment I was able.

It was silent for a long time as I stared up at the ceiling. Man, I wish I could rest like this for a long time.

But I couldn’t.

I sighed heavily, sitting up, “So, what’s my schedule?” I wondered as I stood up.

The books were all things I haven’t read yet. Which made sense, I’d only read about five books a day for six months, though I reread each book once. That wasn’t nearly enough time to get through everything I needed to.

Reaching out, I picked the top one up. Whatever. There were five books here, and I could read five books a day. I’d just reread them tomorrow.

“Those are for your theoretical and magical classes—“

“What the fuck?” I asked incredulously, staring at the math book I’d picked up, flipping through several pages of bullshit, “Oh my god. How is anyone a mage if this is supposed to be college-level math? This is-this is literally elementary level stuff.”

Kairos sighed, “Yes, after being taught what you consider basic math, I can see why you would consider such things as long multiplication and division as simple.”

“Dude I am not even lying this is, this is, whatever eight plus five is. That’s how old I was when I learned this. Twelve.”

“… Thirteen,” Kairos corrected.

I sighed, “This is calculator math,” I muttered pathetically, “I was always bad at that since it’s rote memorization, for the most part. It wasn’t like I needed it, almost everyone on the planet had calculators. Some five to six billion people. This world probably doesn’t even have billion as a number concept yet with how big of a number that is.”

“You had personal servants whose sole goal was calculating?”

“No,” I corrected, “We had machines that did our math for us. Devices that could do anything from simple calculator math to complex geometry and calculus. I used an online one to cheat on my college exams, since they used like… graphs. And confusing stuff like circle math and triangle math.”

Kairos hummed, “Then the review will do you good, if your only knowledge of complex mathematics is cheating at it.”

I sighed, flopping on my bed, book above my face as I read. Why did magic have to be made of math? Damn. I should have paid more attention during college instead of cheating on every exam I took.

Still got the same job as those that didn’t cheat, though. A win for me.

“Your magical classes are in line with those your sister Aphrodite has, so you have Theoretical Amateur Soulmancy, Arithmetic, Beginner’s Alchemy, Botany, Defensive Magics, Basic Combat, Tactics, Ethics, Hunting, and Horse riding. Due to dual-classing, you have five classes at night and five during the day. Each are two hours.”

I did the math, staring at the book trying to teach me long addition and subtraction, “Man, that’s like twenty hours. What the hell?”

“Ah, my apologies. This semester you have Soulmancy, Arithmetic, Ethics, Horse riding, and Basic Combat classes. The Soulmancy and Ethics courses are at night. Next semester you have Beginner’s Alchemy, Botany, Defensive Magics, Hunting, and Tactics. The Defensive Magics, Tactics, and Hunting are night courses.”

“Oooh, that makes sense,” I agreed as I stared up at my—plap!

Pain radiated from my face. My arms, hands empty of a book, fell to the side, eyes teary at the pain. Ow. My nose.

I heard Kairos cough in his attempt to stifle his laughter. I sighed, sitting up and rubbing at my face.

“Ow,” I repeated aloud. That really hurt, “I hate math.”

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

“Quite—“ Kairos coughed again, “Quite surprising, coming from someone who claims that your world is better than this one.”

“I didn’t say better,” I lied, rambling on uselessly as I waited for the pain to disappear, “My world is just more advanced. In math. Which I hate. But magic requires math. So they’re both equal in how much they suck. Well except that magic exists here. And gods actually hang out and talk to people. I think that’s pretty cool. But my world isn’t a decade away from ending. So…” I thought, groaning in complaint as I flopped back down, “So like yeah. My world probably should be the one ending in a decade. Christ.”

Kairos shifted. He sat next to me, looking down at me casually as he rested next to me, “You haven’t mentioned much of your world. What is it like, being in a world without magic?”

I thought, “It sucks, dude. Like… sure, we recreated most everything magic can do and more, but also everyone is empty. I led a revolution once, and I planted some trees in a city of metal and glass that reached the sky.”

My hand reached up as I finished speaking, palm facing the ceiling. It dropped back down. I looked over at Kairos, just happy to be able to see him again. His honey-brown eyes were focused on mine, cyan hair growing long again.

“Planted trees?” Kairos wondered.

“Mhm! My world only has humans and animals with minimal if any Fae presence, so all the forests were consumed to make cities. We carved out the world, creating giant buildings of glass and metal to replace the wood once we started running short. It’s hard to find greenery in a city that wasn’t planted only a few years before. Impossible, maybe. Even towns are replaced by stone. Everything is gray. The forests we’ve replanted are beautiful to go through, but… Humans have completely tamed the world. There is nowhere you could go on that planet where you would not find at the very least a ghost of a person in the form of litter or human skeletal remains or other such stuff.”

“Sounds horrible,” Kairos muttered, “You call a world like that beautiful?”

“Yeah. There are nature preservations, where humans have collectively decided not to touch nature in those areas. Parks where grass and trees are planted. There are also places humans can’t really live in for too long, so there’s not many people that go there. Those places are beautiful. The world should be burnt and renewed, though. Humans have overpopulated with nowhere else to go except off the planet and to the moon,” I said, further explaining both the beauty and the ugly of my world.

Explaining all the wars. Explaining the suppressed revolutions, the governments that were suffocating their people’s. The age of information. The age of the dying that I was born in.

The weaponry was something I explained in great detail, mostly because Kairos asked after it. I explained everything I knew of guns, grenades, anti-artillery, and everything else used both in old wars and recent wars.

Then I went into the modes of transport we had. From cars to planes to spaceships to regular ships and everything in between.

I finished with the luxuries almost everyone in the world got. From free food to how much waste everyone threw out to basic things like showers and supermarkets that contained everything one could need.

“Do you miss it?” Kairos asked at the end of my stories.

I thought about it, humming as I stared up at the sky, “I can’t really say. It was a world I never really belonged in. I hid from the world and its people, doing what I could to make enough cash to get by. Honestly me arriving here and being in this situation for all those months is the most I’ve spoken to anyone in my life. I was very used to leaving things behind, in that world,” I mused aloud, going back to staring at Kairos as I answered his question, “So I don’t think it’s really possible for me to miss anywhere. I didn’t even think it was possible for me to miss people until earlier today.”

Kairos relaxed at my words, “So you would never wish to return?”

I scoffed, shrugging, “I don’t think about things like that. I have no plans to return,” I sighed, “but life is weird, and things happen.”

We continued talking for a few more minutes before I got back to reading, Kairos leaving to do whatever he did whenever he wasn’t around me. I used a few of the bound pages for me to take notes in to write down what I knew so I could correlate it to what was in the books.

The math book wasn’t wrong, it didn’t have any discrepancies that I could find. It was just complex addition and subtraction. It touched on basic multiplication at the very end of the book, not mentioning division at all.

The next books matched the classes Kairos said I would have. As expected, the ethics of this world were skewed as all hell. The Basic Combat textbook seemed to be mostly images and reference pages as well as various basic stratagem. Horse Riding was a weird thing to read about, mainly talking about how to care for a horse.

A scoff echoed out. Glancing up, I saw Valentine in the doorway. He was looking at the Soulmancy book in my hands.

“Do you never take breaks?” He asked. His straight hair was loose around his waist, a ribbon looped around his wrist.

“I’m not really here to relax,” I answered dryly, setting the book aside.

Glancing outside, I saw it was already dark out. Huh. Didn’t the sun just rise a few hours ago?

“No, you’re here to prevent a war that, so far as I am aware, has no indications of happening,” Valentine agreed coolly. I looked back to him, “Are you ready? I do not have all night.”

I stood up. Valentine turned, walking away. I had to half-jog to keep up with his grueling pace. His expression was distant and cold, his eyes not straying to me at all.

“You doing okay?” I asked as we reached the ground floor.

A door to the basement was opened. Oh. Huh. Did all dorms have in-building access to the basement?

I guess it made sense for the nocturnal individuals, both professor and student alike.

Valentine’s gaze flicked to me before he looked straight ahead, voice colder, “I am fine.”

The stone stairs to the basement were narrow and uneven, the walls tight.

Val’s magelight cast great shadows down into the depths. Glowing red eyes greeted me from the shadows.

“I would like to take your offer,” A guy said, voice quiet.

I hesitated, slowing down, “One thousand years of being mine for a taste of my blood?”

My hand reached out, and Valentine was stopped before he could get too far away. He tore his sleeve from my grip, but didn’t continue.

“And a guarantee you will not intentionally bring harm to me,” The vampire agreed.

“Then s—agh.”

An arm wrapped around my throat.

“She refuses,” Desmond said from right behind me.

His arm tightened around my neck the moment I went to speak. My back was pressed to his chest, hands grasping at his arm.

“She will be in the soulmancy room, professor.”

Before I could refuse his offer, I found myself in the darkness. I closed my eyes, clinging to Desmond. The gusts of air indicating movement stopped after a few seconds, the roar of wind gone.

Soon I found myself on the ground, legs giving out under me.

“D-don’t do that,” I said.

My breathing was coming in gasps, heart hammering. My eyes were wide. The only thing I could see were Desmond’s eyes, glowing red in the dark.

I was sitting down, back pressed to a wall.

“Apologies,” Desmond said, voice silken, “I had not known of your fear of being carried.”

The image of a windswept kitten crying appeared in my mind’s eye. My eyes were watery, and I felt like the kitten for a moment.

Closing my eyes, I leaned my head back against the wall. One of my hands came up, pressing at my chest. My heart didn’t stop hammering, though, breathing remaining shaky.

Jesus Christ.

I made a noise of surprise when a tongue glided along the skin of my neck, entire body reacting. My hands reached up, hesitating when teeth tore into my neck.

The sound of the vampire thickly swallowing made me grimace. It sounded really gross.

My hands dropped to the side. I only realized I should heal myself when my mind was beyond hazy.

A green circle appeared at my fingertips, nothing happening as it flickered out.

3.14 times 2 was…

…

Was…

Desmond’s eyes swam into view. His voice was insidious, deep tones flowing into my ears like a melody, “Apologies, I truly could not resist. Your fear is so very enticing.”

I hummed quietly as a response.

Well, as long as he stayed alive, I was happy. How could I stay mad at him? He was quite an impressive person, outside of his constant thirst.

Man. I was so glad he was alive. I’m so glad that Orion bastard can’t force him to kill himself, now. That would suck.

Desmond had been in a tie with the Fae King for my favorite character for a very long time. It was before a lot of characters had been introduced.

The Fae King got my admiration for hardly flicking his fingers to massacre half of the people at the garden party when someone spilled wine on his shirt. One of the people that died was Mercury, I think, which made the Silver Kingdom break off their connection with the Fae.

Desmond got my admiration for how truly devious he was, tricking and entrapping the main character for about a hundred thousand words. It also helped that the only reason he fucked Aph was because of the bond between vampire and slave.

He could physically feel how horny she was every time he drank her blood. For the most part people didn’t like him because he always complained about it, but honestly that only made me like him more.

“You truly cannot help but feel this way, can you?” Ruby eyes glared down at Aphrodite as she panted. Her face was hot, entire body feeling hazy as heat traveled throughout her form.

While I had originally clicked on the story for its erotica tag, it did get kind of tiring how often Aph got horny. Like, sure, she was around that age, I guess, but damn. She really needed to slow down and cool off for a bit.

In the story it felt forced, but now that I knew she was a real person I kind of felt bad for her and everyone around her. Half the time a single look could get her wanting. Several times she hadn’t even properly met the person she fantasized about.

My focus faded back into reality as Desmond’s gray hair shone in the magelight. His expression was odd. It looked like he was deep in thought, confusion and agony twisting his eyebrows together as he stared at me with a small frown.

I hummed, trying to gather my wits about me to speak, “You…” What was I trying to ask again?

Desmond’s eyes sharpened, dilated pupils contracting as his expression smoothed out. He stood up, “I shall take my leave now, Master.”

“… Oh,” I said to the empty air.

I was dragged to my feet. Looking to the side, I stared at the wall. Huh? Oh. Other side. Looking to the other side, I saw Valentine. He looked apathetic with his hand tight on my arm, opening the door to the soulmancy room.

Valentine dragged me inside, tossing me to the center of the magical circle and binding me with magic before I could fall.

It felt like he teleported, suddenly in front of me.

“Your eyes are very blue,” I noted, staring into them.

“Yes,” Valentine agreed.

He looked really refined, his hair flowing down his shoulders and back. His expression was cold, but that only increased his beauty.

Even his fingers were nice to look at, I mused as he reached toward me.

“You’re really beautiful, you know that?” I wondered.

My existence was a hazy mess. I felt fabulous as I looked into Valentine’s eyes. He stared at me for a long time.

Sighing, he spoke, fingers brushing along my jaw, “Look at me.”

“Huh? I am…” I replied, confused.

“In the eyes,” Valentine specified.

His thumb was tracing my neck in a very distracting way. It took me a long time to realize what he said, so focused was I on the feeling of his fingers caressing my skin.

“Oh. Right,” I agreed, meeting his eyes.

Soulmancy was so much worse when you couldn’t feel your body and your mind didn’t work. All I could focus on was the pain, unable to even think to start counting. Unable to distract myself at all.

“Fuck, that’s so much worse,” I managed from where I was on the ground.

I didn’t even bother trying to push myself up. My mind still felt hazy, hardly having the capability to come up with that sentence at all.

Before I could complain more, I found magic preventing me from speaking. It was using a different method than last time, magic simply restricting my tongue and forcing my mouth closed. I was tied and gagged on the floor by that magic, struggling against Valentine’s hold.

My arms were bound together above my head, legs bound together as well. The thin light blue dress I wore wrinkled oddly, showing the places his magic bound me.

“Apologies, Fiona, I must focus on my findings. I cannot have you making noise.”

Valentine did not look over at me from where he was writing his findings. The corner had a stone desk with a chair I hadn’t noticed before, magelight next to Valentine. Noises of his quill scratching at the paper continued even as he spoke.

I moaned out of spite after he finished speaking, the only noise I was really able to make in my situation.

The sound of the quill stopped. Valentine reached up, rubbing at his face with one hand as he stared at the paper.

After a moment he continued writing.