That night Amelia didn’t sleep again. Her hangover was long gone, but she’d have happily traded this for that.

Around her in what could have been a witch’s Totemic circle were two semi-completed Abyssal current charts, four textbook chapters on the history of Aureole battle, the legacies of some noteworthy military figures, the general design and operation of nexel small arms, and the “Basic Totemic Structure of Common Anamorphic Species”, , as well as nine pages of notes relating to the chemical and trajectorial properties of different munition types.

Behind her in a stack beneath her hammock she was trying with minimal success not to think about were an additional twelve diagrams detailing the standard ship systems and their related functions and six scrolls written on actual papyrus relating to alchemy, astronomy, medicine and basic weapon maintenance.

This was all a single day’s worth of class assignments. All were due on the morrow or there would be “consequences”.

The deliberately calculated vagueness of this threat had had the intended effect on Amelia, who had fretted and frayed over the ordeal all the way through dinner. Completely failing to notice when Bon Bon swiped her apple tart right off of her plate.

“It’s a test,” Drake had explained, promptly stealing back the dessert and scolding the Fox with an indelicate swat across the back of the neck which sent her off sulking, muttering something about how she and Tom always shared desert.

“To see who’s really committed to the craft,” Ellie had added when Amelia’s skin had gone several shades lighter. Which should have been physiologically impossible for an amphibian. “It’s more about your approach than how much you accomplish.”

‘Which just means what I do gets graded all the harder,’ Amelia interpreted.

She hadn’t come all this way just to be given an average C. Her honor, her quest, to be the greatest dragon the Nine Depths had seen since Drachyn would NOT be relegated to a middling midship post.

And so she had set to work on her lessons at once. Leaving her uneaten desert for the Dogs.

But she hadn’t gotten far up the proverbial mountain before coming to the conclusion she was the folkloric tadpole getting suckered into playing Kobayashi checkers with the Mountain Goat.

But stubborn pride and a fool’s excuse for honor, both backed by an adolescent delusion of invulnerability, still demanded she finish what she’d began.

And so she’d pursued her folly relentlessly until long after her far wiser elders were fast asleep.

Like minerals crushing bones into fossils the seconds built into minutes which compounded to form hour layers beneath whose successive weight Amelia’s tectonic will soldiered on. Refusing, if only via sheer mechanical impulse, to give in to the dragging anchors of sleep.

When the Academy clock struck two she had tried coping by curling up in a ball and crying into her hands.

When, an indeterminate while after this, she had failed to so much as dent the mountain she resorted to lightly banging her head against the wall.

It was at this point that Ellie had elected to end her suffering. If only to put a stop to the racket.

“You did all you could,” she said. “You’ve passed.”

Amelia slouched back, head hung, staring at her knees. “But they said there would be consequences …”

“Only if you gave up,” Ellie said with genuine maternal sympathy. “Every beast has their limits. The fact that you got even a quarter of that load done will impress even Old Iron Hide.”

Amelia stood up, walked over to her own bunk and flopped down. Then she started to undress and put on her night clothes as Ellie said, “There’ll be more work where that came from in the morning. It won’t help if you fall asleep in the middle of class.”

Amelia leaned her head back on the headboard. She knew Ellie was right. She’d never get all this done and still have time to get any sleep before the first class tomorrow.

Drake had said as much.

“The only thing more useless than a Pyrate who can’t follow instructions is one who quits before they’ve even started.”

Dejectedly, Amelia slowly spun round and began collecting all the finished papers and setting them on her night table.

Then she noticed that Bon Bon’s bunk was conspicuously lacking an occupant. She was only surprised that she hadn’t noticed it sooner.

“Where’s Bon Bon?” she asked. Although if a meter existed to measure how much she actually cared she would have had to pry its needle out of the floor.

Ellie didn’t know why she bothered looking at the empty bunk, knowing full well that it contained no beast. She then turned back to Amelia and said with a faintly audible sigh, “who knows?”

Amelia’s eyes asked what she couldn’t quite find words for.

“She’s a nomad among nomads,” Ellie answered with an indignant shrug, as if Bon Bon's own personal lack of propriety were somehow a directed slight against her.

“She sleeps wherever and whenever the mood strikes. But mostly she wanders around at night with her nose stuck in some black book muttering and swooning over Tom.”

Amelia’s third ear detected the hint of longing in Ellie's voice. It didn’t take much thought to guess that when she was saying “Tom” she was thinking ‘Drake’.

Then a dagger, pattern forged of billet envy, melancholy and wanton longing, carved an abyssal gash through her heart. She would never have admitted it, even under torture, but there existed in her dreams a green, luscious farm field in whose verdant glades nested a mated pair with their six children and a swaddled seventh at its mother’s bosom.

Her truest Eden. Her favorite little slice of heaven to visit when the world outside showed her its frigid shoulder. The archetypal fairytale homestead. Cliché though it was, her child’s soul refused to abandon its hopeless search for true love.

The part of her waking brain that was still salient balked reflexively at the mere memory. ‘True love? Really? You see, this is what happens when you don’t get enough sleep.’

She started unpacking her night clothes. For want of a more enlightened topic to ease her mind into nocturn mode with, she sought the target nearest her nose and loosed a blind arrow.

“Who’s Tom?”

“Don’t know,” Ellie replied. “Far as I can tell he’s a Fox. But every time she’s pressed for details she either changes the subject or just walks off.”

Amelia suddenly forgot all about school and sleep. A subject Bon Bon didn’t want to gossip about? If that didn’t just scream MYSTERIOUS BAGGAGE she wasn’t a bloody Frog.

Also, what was that Ellie had said earlier about a book?

Curiosity worked its incorrigible magick. “She doesn’t seem the secretive type,” Amelia observed.

“Indeed,” Ellie concurred flatly. “But I suppose if I could see into another beast’s head I could’ve finished school years ago.”

They both shared a stilted laugh.

Just then, a high girlish squeal followed by a clamoring of rapid footfalls and slamming doors had Ellie on her feet and into the common room before she’d remembered she was wearing only her silken intimates.

“Saarding panty-raiders!” she roared. Returning just long enough to throw on her shirt, trousers and tool belts before storming out again, cursing and shouting something to the effect of, “I’ll empty out your saarding skulls and make them into saarding goblets!”

Amelia was of two minds. Three if one counted the portion that wondered how Hemlock managed to sleep through all this. Which nobody did, including Hemlock.

On the one hand she was staring down the bore of a marathon gauntlet of a schedule run on at best half a fuel tank if she somehow lapsed into a perfect rem coma right there on the spot.

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On the other, a triage of mysteries weren’t going to solve themselves. Or if they were Amelia wasn’t about to miss it.

She sighed, shucked her fractional night dress, reequipped her assortment of day gear, included a small dagger, trusty pocket-knife, a handful of pocket-torches and several other useful items, and took her audacious leave.

It had occurred to her to stick tight to the walls to minimize the likelihood of being given away by any creaky floorboards, she instantly realized this would be unnecessary for one intuitive, albeit not entirely simple, reason.

Nearly every other body in the tower was wide awake. Evidenced by their presently all being out in the common room in various stages of undress.

It is common knowledge that animals who possess only a single brain are only able to focus on one thing at any one time.

As is it so held that the more unusual, and thereby interesting, a thing is the more likely every beast is to want to look at it.

Only slightly less well known it’s that the typical female response to stress, regardless of age or species, is to huddle into tiny bunches and anxiously twitter at each other until their lips fall off.

Tonight was not the exception. Consequently, Amelia was able to casually stroll out the door without a soul being any the wiser. Not that any of these were particularly wise under ideal circumstances.

Be that as it may, from the bottom of the stairs onward she clung to the wall like it was their wedding night.

Not that it mattered. Stone floors were as much less prone to creaking as they were more to resoundingly advertise the presence of hard boot soles.

Nonetheless, Amelia maintained her Feline mission with zealous inflexibility. Taking short, toe-to-heel steps. Breathing slowly and deeply through her mouth. Never straying from the deepest, darkest shadows.

It made for slow, arduous going. But when her quarry could hear a pin drop from across the island, the line between paranoia and wisdom made the divide between a cloudy horizon and the pearly Abyssal penumbra look practically signate.

Of course it would only be after she’d reached the courtyard door that she would finally consider what exactly her mission was and where it should begin.

Ellie wasn’t actually the murderous type. But she’d taken her weapons. What did that mean?

Balance of probability said not a bloody thing. Just old habit.

But then where had she run off to? She wasn’t still in the dorm tower.

Had she followed the boys into the Walk? That would mean chasing them back to their own dorm …

Amelia smacked her forehead. Then she whirled as if intent to catch the echo like a runaway butterfly.

‘You know what they say about love’ the lagging portion of her brain said. ‘And curiosity.’

But upon further investigation there was nothing outside except for the crowd of shadows shivering among speckled stars and moonlight strokes.

Amelia was on her heel to head back inside, when an unexpected sound caught her ear and brought her instinctively to a crouch as though being fired upon.

But she wasn’t.

Lacking a Canine’s ears it took more than a few moments of intense concentration for her to categorize the sound as light melodious humming. Or was it whistling?

Either way, it was coming from over by the clock tower.

It wasn’t until she was a bit closer that the ambiguous drones started to sound like the rudimentary patterns of words. At first, she couldn’t make out much beyond the odd consonant, but as she drew nearer, Amelia recognize that voice!

She cocked her head twice. First in confusion. Then again in utter astoundment as her jaw nearly fell off its hinges.

Just inside the tower’s pale-shaded shadow stood a lean figure, whose violet mane danced like cold fire in the breeze against her swaying umbral cloak.

That in itself would have spurred Amelia’s intellect. By her understanding Foxes lacked the chemical structures for bioluminescence.

But that thought never manifested.

For what chilled her bones was the source of that unnatural highlight.

Perhaps a hand’s length above the grass hovered the mangy, skeletal, lantern form of what once might have once been a young and possibly rather handsome Vulpes.

But what was left was a pale lantern shade.

His face wore the taught, tortured expression of the recently deceased. Though the rest of him suggested a more extent mortem date.

Once vibrant autumnal fur now waved and shimmered as though reflected in a stagnant pool.

Limbs once strung with limber muscle now hung like spindly chains from their sockets.

The remains of a formal naval jacket that still bore the Silmarillion crest of Iralith hung in loose tatters about his auroral back, neck and shoulders.

Like most Canids, the hair around and between his ears was worn long and would have mopped his shoulders had it not been lassoed back in the distinctive Royal Officer head tail.

His hollow eye sockets were filled only with cold blue fire, and his head swayed gently back and forth like a flag in the breeze. Only there was no breeze!

Despite her noxious terror, Amelia couldn’t help but be impressed. This inarticulate Vixen had somehow achieved through the simple yet masterful application of her natural transitive grace what many of the most accomplished Arcanists and Alchemists this side of Crowley had spent their supposedly unnaturally extended lifetimes trying and failing to do through rigorous intellectual efforts.

Like the grandest proportion of beasts, her knowledge and understanding of the paranormal was limited to and by the eldritch lore of old campfire stories.

Actual information pertaining to the ethereal, arcane, supernatural, spiritual, metaphysical, transcendental, or any other apolitical spaces was either too heavily soaked in superstition and conjecture or had been so ruthlessly parred down, edited, abridged, revised, translated, lost, rediscovered, reinterpreted or otherwise tampered with by those with decidedly non-academic agendas in mind that they all amounted to as much barroom banter.

The one point of consensus among those learned was that forcibly binding a spirit of any corporeal disposition to one’s will was relatively straightforward. However, recalling it from whence it had no physical form required its own niche strata of expertise.

It didn’t require Amelia’s level of imagination to grasp the allure of having an immortal, indestructible servant bound forever to guard and service one’s every whim without question. In fact the concept’s deductive barriers were so low and few in count that it had an official legal title. Necromancy.

It was for this reason, whatever the moralizing propagandists touted, such practices were considered capital offenses and were usually punishable by death on just about every continent with a functional central government.

But in accordance with the natural Law of Antipolar Resonance, like any prohibition this one only stopped those sorcerers who’d never learned the true meaning of the word occult.

Luckily for the Corpus Animus, though most unfortunately for rural society, a whole host of renegade Arcanists, legions of rogue Mages, and an army of remote Shamans who knew and thoroughly embraced the Secret Laws had lain low in the fringiest shadows of civilization since time immemorial.

In darkness ever learning, ever stalking, ever prowling, ever lurking, ever hungering. Under the many pale eyes of the nocturnal heavens evil yearned for more souls to consume to expand and feed its terrible, unenviable power.

All the while ingeniously shielding its wicked schemes by ensuring that regular beasts always had ample reason to fear the night.

And tonight its sights were set on the Flint Pyrate Academy.

For a long second, Amelia considered the wisdom of standing in the open as opposed to sprinting back to her bunk as fast as biology and physics enabled and hunkering there for the cleansing light of the morning.

She decided on the former, largely because her legs were unwilling to comply with the latter.

She momentarily considered that it didn’t much matter where she stood. But then she considered what might happen should Prokvert be out on a midnight stroll and decided to err on the side of not preeminently joining the cajoled specter.

When Bon Bon's high and swift lyre tune dropped abruptly to a slow and somber shamanic chant, neither she nor her captive were of a mind to care whether they were being watched or not.

As Amelia watched the proceedings unfold, she saw Bon Bon slowly remove a small silver vial from her inside cloak pocket. She separated the lid and extended the body as though beckoning the specter to come have a look.

Just as she was about to reach her incantation’s crescendo, the first and fullest moon Erandis ducked behind a cloud as though in panicked flight from the dark magick ceremony, and the ghostly visage vanished in a blanket of pale mist.

Bon Bon’s chant died in her throat. She sank to her knees, her whole body trembled. Whether it was from rage or grief was unclear. But either way, the show was clearly over.

So, in the absence of any new source of adventure, Amelia decided it was best to leave her wayward bunkmate to sort her personal issues out by herself.

By the faint glow of the waxing younger Savion moon she felt her way back down the corridor. A desperate yawn forced itself from her lungs as she compiled her alibi. Omitting the part about Bon Bon’s ghost boyfriend until she could be more sure she hadn’t dreamed it.

“I should probably tell Avlon about …”

She never got a chance to finish that thought before her mind was suddenly assailed by a new haunting refrain.

“Amelia. Ammmeeellliiiaaa,” it droned. Its quicksilver tones inflecting perfectly about the rim of an ethereal glass. “Come back to me Daisha. My sweet child. I miss you.”

This was not Bon Bon’s doing.

It wasn’t even a voice so much as a silk ribbon of thought.

Amelia’s higher reason told her to cover her ears despite knowing it would do no good.

But in any case her arms would not obey her. Her last sane thought was to scream, but a chill grip seized her throat.

Compelled, or rather coerced, she let the voice lead her like a mouse following the scent of baited cheese. Drawn as though by an invisible magnet, she slowly became aware that she was at the southwestern docks, the place where she had first arrived at the Academy only two sunsets ago.

There was a ship moored off the longest pier. This was the least unusual thing Amelia had seen all night.

If her head had been clearer, however, she would have clearly noticed all the reasons why, by all conventional manner of reason and logic, this particular vehicle should have been at the bottom of the Abyss.

The first and most obvious being her sails.

Modern ships used advanced Arachnid micro-weave polymers to capture stray ions and harness solar energy. They typically emitted an amber glow when in use and a dull red when on standby.

This vessel wore just three sheets of regular fabric bolted to what looked to be plain tree trunks with nothing but the branches and stray patches of the bark removed.

As she drew closer she would have also seen that it had only the bare rusted skeletal frameworks of engines.

Even in her mesmeric state it couldn’t fail to register that all parts were so profusely, in some cases comically, perforated that it appeared to be half made of resurgent moonbeams.

Had her ears been at their proper acuity, as she’d walked through a gap in the hull that should have seen the vessel torn clean in two she would have heard that another voice, a real voice, was calling her name from back behind the pier.

But she heard nothing. She saw nothing. She felt nothing.

Her mind was shrouded in a dismal haze, and her senses could only poke pinholes through it, where she caught glimpses of the nightmare she was stepping into.

There was only the enveloping mist, and the mournful, ominous cries of the damned.

She might as well have been dead. And soon, very soon, she would sincerely wish she was.