Eleanor didn’t snap awake from bleary unconsciousness, so much as she passively recognized her own growing sphere of perception.

Sight, sound, and an indecipherable sixth sense slowly expanding out and away from her a few paces at a time. A diffuse light, with no identifiable source, steadily beating back the tide of darkness that surrounded her on all sides.

The first things she noticed were her bare feet.

Then the floor, and after that the arcane scribbles carved into its surface as far as her sphere allowed her to see. Made of a mat black rock, similar in texture to basalt, it held myriad indecipherable lines of archaic text. All of which seemed to be bending subtly away from her, immediately clueing her in on the fact that the seemingly unending rows of script, likely continued on to form a grand circle of truly impossible scale.

Already having found herself on top of the expansive circle, Eleanor saw no harm in moving further in.

Stepping forward she was gratified to see that her sphere of perception came with her. She didn’t know how long she walked in that barren expanse, the only sounds the pad of her bare feet on the oddly warm rock, but whether it was a minute, or a year, her sphere of perception eventually picked up on something at the very center of the formation.

Voices.

Or one voice, to be more exact. Though they appeared to be speaking as if compensating for two.

“Yes… yes but-! I really don’t see the need to keep rehashing this old argument over and over again. It’s becoming rote at this point… Of course…. No…! But that’s just it! My point is that it should no longer apply! …well how is any of that my fault! You’re the one that went and died before indoor plumbing was invented. Yes but-! Well, I don’t care if it wasn’t common practice at the time, if your excuse for expressly refusing to bathe was that evil spirits couldn’t seem to keep their ephemeral paws out of perfectly harmless water, then I’d say you pretty much got what you deserved!”

Fascinated by this brand-new form of stimuli, Eleanor made her way ever closer towards the sound, until the owner of the exasperated voice came fully into focus.

At which point Eleanor stopped dead in her tracks. At the center of the massive formation, stood a man. Wrapped up in impractically large lengths of chain—restraints which ran taught from around his body, to the sixteen equidistant nodes placed about the script circle—it wasn’t his flawless, almost ethereal beauty, nor the floor-length curtain of black hair that gave her pause.

No, it was the dozen or so swords running him all the way through, which made her instinctually take several steps back. Well, the presence of the blades in conjunction with the fact that he didn’t appear fazed by them in the least.

And she’d been wrong about one thing.

Because, only upon second glance did she realize that the man wasn’t standing at all, but was instead being propped up by the massive blades which impaled him to the point of embedding themselves in the stone.

And suddenly the presence and sheer quantity of such detailed and extensive formations made her attempts to reach this being at its center seem very foolish indeed. She realized this far too late to do anything about it, however, as already the stream of complaints had tapered off, and the tortured entity before her had turned its eyes in her direction.

“You…! You… You…? I’m sorry, but do I know you?”

Eleanor tried to speak, only to find her lungs were missing.

“No… no this isn’t right. You’re not supposed to be here yet. In fact, you’re not supposed to be here at all! Wouldn’t do for you to go spoiling things ahead of time, now would it?”

The figure chuckled, and as he did so a riotous flurry of emotions, expressed on many hundreds of disparate faces, rippled just beneath the surface. Then, with words so heavily drenched in authority that their mere utterance was enough to bring her to her knees, the being at the center of the formation spoke.

“Well, off with you then. Also, try not to make a habit of riffling around in other people’s souls. You may not always like what you find.”

***

Eleanor’s eyes flew open, only to be greeted in kind by two massive lemon-yellow pools.

“Ah! She’s awake!”

Swiftly, those yellow pools receded to reveal the brightly beaming face of someone—something?—she didn’t immediately recognize.

It only took a moment before the events of the previous day came flooding back to her. And once they had, Eleanor was merely left wondering at her newfound surroundings. She was in a bedroom. At least, she thought that’s where she was. Four walls, assorted furniture, and beneath her, an uncomfortably spongy material.

A bed. Most likely.

It certainly met all the known criteria for any bedroom she’d ever heard of. Now, the only question was, why in the queendom was she here?

“Ah, you’re awake. I’d almost begun to worry.”

From the rooms only exit emerged none other than Mary, holding a steaming wooden tray in front of her as she casually shouldered aside the door. The smells that wafted from that tray set Eleanor’s stomach to rumbling almost immediately.

Not wanting to come off as rude, Eleanor scrambled to a sitting position, and was contemplating getting out of the bed entirely, when the woman’s next words shocked Eleanor into stillness.

“Hungry? I’ll bet. Well, eat up then. We’ve got a lot to talk about once you’ve finished.”

And so saying, Mary set the entire tray right down in front of her. Eleanor could only stare at the heaping spread, with its intoxicating aromas, in blank disbelief. It was more food than she’d ever seen in one place.

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“Okay…? I’m unsure how you’d normally go about things, but, traditionally, we like to eat the food set out in front of us before it goes cold. Especially when you’re the closest thing to starving.”

“I… umm…” Eleanor gulped, her stomach rumbling even louder than before. “May I?”

“I insist,” Mary chuckled.

Eleanor needed no more encouragement than that. In what felt like no time at all, every plate had been cleared and glass had been emptied. Feeling fuller than she had in recent memory, she found herself having a devilishly hard time keeping her eyes open.

Her thoughts feeling fuzzy, and the soft blankets surprisingly warm, really, the only thing stopping her from just slumping over into unconsciousness, was the constant chatter of their resident rift spawn.

“Surely now’s a good time! She’s even licked the plates clean and everything!” Eleanor blushed—had she not been meant to do that? “News of such momentous importance cannot be held under such tight lock and key! I simply find it criminal that you refuse to inform her that all of her wildest dreams are soon to come true!”

Wait what…? All of her wildest… hold on a minute, what-?!

“What?” Eleanor exclaimed rather eloquently, her heart beginning to race.

Mary, for her part, simply sighed. Fingers gently massaging at her temples.

“Well, I had been intending to ease her into it but…? There’s really no hope of that now, I suppose.”

“Damned straight!”

Mary glared at the rift spawn.

“I’m sorry?” Eleanor’s voice wavered. “But I don’t understand.”

“You’re going to be enrolled in the Queens Knightly Academy!”

Eleanor choked.

“You-! I’m…! What?!”

“Not necessarily. You’ll have to take the exams first, just like everyone else, although I do intend to sponsor you. That should help get you in the door at least. And in that regard, you’re actually in luck. The school season is set to begin in another week or so, and you still have until then to take the exams.”

“And, once she passes them with flying colors, then she’ll be enrolled with full honors!”

“Full honors? That doesn’t even make any-!” the woman actually growled. “You say that, rift spawn, as if you grasp even an iota of what it takes to join the knightly cohort.”

“I’m sure it can’t be that hard!”

“Oh?” an edge of danger had entered her tone. “And what, if you don’t mind my asking, makes you so damned confident?”

“Why, because she’ll have me of course, silly. With our powers combined, I’m certain nothing in this world can stand in our way!”

“Insufferable little…”

“I don’t understand. Why should I take you with me, rift spawn? I get that we might have rendered you aid but-”

“You can’t feel it?” Mary asked, perplexed. “Your familiar bond.”

“My familiar…?” and then she felt it—a dense knot of… something at the back of her mind. “I… I have a familiar! Wait? I have a familiar? How do I have a familiar? I’d thought for something like that you needed-?”

“One of these?”

Mary reached over and plucked a pendant from the nightstand. The very same she could remember reaching for last night before completely losing consciousness. Now looking at it in proper daylight, it appeared even more opulent and expensive than she remembered.

“That…”

“Is yours kid, for all intents and purposes.”

“But I couldn’t…!”

Even the thought of carrying around something so clearly valuable made her skin crawl. If she’d been robbed at knife point for all of thirteen copper pennies, she didn’t even want to think what might happen to her, carrying something like that around. Despite her very obvious aversion to the idea, however, Mary deliberately reached forward and looped the blue pendant around Eleanor’s neck.

“No holder of a familiar bond is ever far from their binding stone. It’s tantamount to sacrilege within those circles. I won’t hear of you parting from it, understand?” she waited for Eleanor to nod her acquiescence. “Good. Although, that said, I’d still keep it hidden if I were you, just in case this ‘mysterious owner’ comes looking for it.”

She aimed another pointed look at the rift spawn. No, not just any rift spawn. Her familiar!

“I do not remember!”

“A likely story,” Mary snorted. “In any case, now that you're all caught up, it’s best we get a move on. There still plenty to do and not nearly enough time in which to do it. We’ll have to move fast if we-”

“I’m sorry, Mary. Truly. But I don’t have the money to take the exams right now, so I’m afraid I’ll have to decline. Maybe in the coming week I can make up the five silvers I need but-!”

Mary burst out laughing. She was actually… laughing!

“I’m sorry if something I said was funny,” Eleanor pronounced rather stiffly.

“No…!” the woman wheezed. “No, it’s my fault for not explaining things properly. When I said I intended to sponsor you, that included handling any expenses leading up to the exam, and some amount of weekly allowance if you are indeed accepted. To be determined at that time.”

“Oh. I…” Eleanor didn’t know what to say. “But, won’t that be expensive? A full gold mark-”

“Oh, it’ll be a good deal pricier than that. That only covers the entry fee. We’ll have to make you look presentable first. Purchase some of the written material. You do know how to read and write don’t you?”

“I do.”

Public primary had been good for that much at least.

“Fantastic. Now-”

“But why?!” Eleanor didn’t understand it. “Why would you do so much for me?”

The woman simply stared at Eleanor for a time, a strange expression on her face. And for the first time, Eleanor took a proper look at her in turn. She looked different in a clean tunic, face washed, and hair brushed, but by far the most striking difference between the Mary before her now, and the bruised mess she’d first met in that alley, was the stark intensity burning in her eyes.

“You’ve likely done me a greater turn than you’ll ever know. So, trust me when I say that I’m still a long way’s away from repaying the debt I still owe you.”

And, following that solemn pronouncement, spoken with such sincerity, Eleanor could only nod at her brand-new sponsor.

“And don’t let us forget! No expense is too great when it’s shared among friends! Group hug anyone?”