Lilith followed Jatte, Ethen, and William to ‘flight class’. She stayed in the back in case some random guy ran out of the crowd and stabbed her with a spear, because at this point she couldn’t be too cautious.

“Sorry.” Lilith stepped on Ethen’s shoe again, trying a bit too hard to stay close.

“Y’know what? Let’s switch places.” Ethen slowed down a bit.

Lilith hesitantly walked to the center of the group.

They walked past marble buildings in areas of Solis Lilith had never been to before, but those soon turned to wooden houses, before they all stood in front of a place that looked more like a bar than anything.

“And here we are.” William pushed the door open.

A few people turned to see the students and William, some doing double takes.

“Oh hey, it’s that kid at the court case!” One guy called out, raising a beer. “Drink’s on me, er, once you're out of school.”

“Thanks!” Ethen smiled.

Lilith looked around, confused. Instead of hostility, the adventurers seemed glad Blaise was gone. So they were on their side, like she thought. She eased up a bit, but not completely. Someone crazy came from here, so it could happen again.

William walked up to the bartender. “Can you tell me where Alec is?”

The bartender pointed.

In one of the booths was a guy in all blue clothes, including a jacket and hat, who was chatting with a red and blue harpy beastgirl over a beer.

The group followed William over to him.

The beastgirl pointed, and Alec turned and got up. “William! It’s been a while! What brings you here?” He craned his neck to look at the kids by WIlliam. “Taking apprentices?”

“Actually, I’d hope you might,” William said. “A couple of them are capable of flight already.”

“A couple?” Alec looked around. “You want me to train a couple flight mages, and get another mage flight capable?”

“Is that too much?”

Alec gestured to the harpy. “I’ve already got one apprentice who I ust got flight capable a few months ago.”

The harpy waved at them.

“Training someone that’s not capable at the same time, well it’s possible, but it’d make the training a lot worse.”

Lilith slumped.

Seeing this, the harpy spoke up, “Well, what if I train them? It could help me really get the lessons down.”

“You sure?” Alec asked. “You’ll miss out.”

Lilith looked up with a guilty look.

The harpy nodded. “Yeah, I’m sure. You’re taking your time to train me, so I can take my time to train someone else.” She held out her feather covered hand to Lilith. “I’m Cyla. Uh, you’re the one I’ll be teaching, right?”

Lilith nodded. “Yeah. I— I’m Lilith.”

Cyla smiled.

“Alright.” Alec turned to the other two. “What kind of magic do you two use for flight?”

“Telekinesis.”

“Gravity.”

“Whoa! Gravity? We’re gonna have all three main flight types. That’s exciting.”

“Oh, what about your magic type?” Cyla asked Lilith.

“O-- oh, I’ve got really good heat affinity,” Lilith said, starting to open back up. “Then electricity, fire, telekinesis, and sense.”

“Ah,” Cyla said. “That’s a lot, but only one is a flying type, and it sounds like it’s not your main one. Do you have any other affinities? Like air?”

“Oh, a little bit.”

“Oh? How much?”

“Hold on.” Lilith pulled out a paper from her pocket that had all her different magic affinities on it and handed it to her.

“Huh. That’s a lot of magic,” Cyla said, looking it over. “I wonder if you could use the heat affinity like air thermals. I can sometimes glide on those even without magic if they’re strong enough. And lightning’s in the sky, so maybe electricity can be used for flight?”

“I wouldn’t recommend that,” Alec said. “It can be done, but it’s usually not very efficient. Better to just practice telekinesis affinity at her age.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

William waved. “Well, looks like you’re taking the apprentices.” He turned to leave.

“Wow, you just dump some students on me and leave?” Alec called. “Not even a beer?”

“Maybe after your class,” William called back. “It’s their class time right now. Don’t make them stay late just because you want a beer!”

“Oh you fucking asshole.” Alec chugged the last of his beer, slammed it down, then stood up. “You two, follow me.” He floated out of his seat and dropped onto the ground. There was a light breeze as he did.

Lilith froze at the thought of being left alone, which Cyla noticed.

“Hey, we don’t have to split up just because you can all fly,” she said.

“Nah, thanks to the new guild rules, I need to register as taking care of these two, and you’ll need to register as taking care of her. We gotta do it all separately.” Alec walked over to the bartender.

Ethen and Jatte followed, but Ethen looked back at Lilith one last time.

“I mean I guess,” Cyla sighed, before stepping out of the booth and throwing an arm around the clearly distressed Lilith. “Don’t worry Lilith, I heard what happened. You’re safe with me.”

---

Their ‘class’ was a few giant circles of rocks making a target right next to the forest.

Ethen and Jatte were doing various aerial acrobatics, poorly, following Alec’s lead. But Cyla was leading Lilith towards a few stacks of red rocks.

“There it is!” She grabbed Lilith’s arm. “Let’s go!”

“Huh? There what is?” Lilith asked as she was dragged along.

As they got closer, Lilith could see a rusted chunk of metal with a large gauge. “Isn’t that a… scale?”

“Yep. It’s a scale.” Cyla stopped next to the rusted machine.

“Does it still work?” Lilith asked, lightly kicking it.

“One way to find out.” Cyla picked Lilith up and put her on the scale.

“Eh?” Lilith blinked.

“Heavier than I thought,” Cyla commented. “But I don’t see much fat on you, so it must be muscle.”

“Uh, yeah. I practiced martial arts since I was really young.” Lilith stepped off the scale.

“Oh! Are you a fellow beastgirl?” Cyla smiled and reached for the hat.

Lilith dodged, then looked around, before looking at Cyla’s wings and nodding. “Yeah.”

“Where from?” Cyla asked.

“Slimefrost.”

“Ew.”

“Ew?” Lilith turned. “What do you mean ‘ew’?”

Cyla looked away sheepishly. “Uhh, well, the place just looks kinda gross from above, and there’s no flying beastfolk there. They’re those old anti-magic types.”

“I thought most beastfolk just hated magic,” Lilith said. “Wait, but you use magic, right? That blue guy, Alec, was teaching you right? Are there more beastfolk that use magic?”

“A few.” Cyla nodded. “Mostly flying ones like me. Sometimes we can’t quite get off the ground, and a bit of air magic can really go a long way.”

“Oh. Cool!” Lilith smiled.

“And now I’m gonna help you learn.” Cyla pointed to the stack of rocks. “Now, stand there.”

Lilith moved over.

“And jump!”

Cyla pulled out a pen and some paper, then marked the rock. “Fifteen inches. About average… wait, average for an adult.” She checked her paper again. “You weren’t using magic, were you?”

“Nope,” Lilith said.

“You’ve got some legs then!”

“Uh, thanks?”

“You’re welcome. Now, try it with magic this time. Imagine all the air around your skin flowing downwards towards your feet, and then try jumping a few times.”

Lilith closed her eyes and concentrated until she could feel the air on her skin. Then, she opened her eyes and jumped.

Cyla marked a new spot on the wall. “Fourteen inches. You’re moving the air down, right? Not up.”

“Yeah, I’m moving the air down.” Lilith looked with a bemused smile. Was she serious?

“Alright, back to the scale we go then.”

Lilith stepped back up on the scale.

“Now, go! Try pushing the air down again.”

Lilith tried the air method again.

“One percent, huh?” Cyla sounded pretty disappointed. “A long way from a hundred, but it’s not nothing…” She looked over to the other students for a moment. “Oh, you were better at telekinesis, weren’t you? If that’s the case, try pulling your entire body up with the telekinesis and pushing everything else down. I think that’s how it goes.”

This time, Lilith tried using both air and telekinesis. She swore she could feel herself get a bit lighter, but it wasn’t lifting her off the ground.

“Standing on your tiptoes isn’t going to make you fly, you know.” Cyla smirked. “But I’m glad to know you’re eager.” She wrote the numbers on the scale down. “Let’s see, subtract that, and… that’s four percent.” She still sounded pretty disappointed. “Well, let’s keep trying.”

Lilith strained her magic, but the scale didn’t budge much.

Cyla looked up and saw Alec facing the other direction, then leaned close to Lilith. “Hey, maybe try some of that heat or electricity magic,” she said quietly.

“I thought Alec said it didn’t fly though,” Lilith said.

“Alec’s a butt. Lemme see some of those other magics,” Cyla said.

“Okay.” Lilith held her hand out and tried just… heating up the air. After a second, the air seemed to bend as it radiated heat, but not much else happened. She tried moving it, but she realized she was just moving the heat with her telekinesis, and if she pulled it close enough that she could throw it down, she’d burn herself. “Aw…”

“Does it not work?” Cyla asked.

“No. Lemme try electricity.” A few sparks crackled over her hand and she tried pulling them down. Unfortunately, they disappeared before she could grab them in her telekinesis. However, there was still some airflow in seemingly random directions. But then she remembered electricity worked with magnetism too.

“Oh, what if I use magnetism and pull on some metal from above?” Lilith asked.

“You’re outside.” Cyla raised an eyebrow. “There’s nothing above you.”

“That’s true…” Lilith looked at Cyla’s wings. “Oh! Then, what if I made metal shaped like your wings, and used magnets to pull them together.”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

Cyla blinked. “How would that work?”

“Like, woosh!” Lilith made a flapping motion with her arms.

Cyla burst out laughing, nearly falling over. “Pfft ha haa! Oh, I’m sorry, that looked really silly.”

Lilith’s face flushed red.

“No, it’s a good idea, I think? Oh, that was good though.” She calmed herself down. “Anyway, I didn’t see the scale shift when you were using your other magics, so I guess practicing telekinesis is the way to go. Well, unless you come back with some metal wings.”

“So…” Cyla looked around, picked up a rock, and handed it to Lilith. “Try lifting that with just your telekinesis now.”

Lilith focused as hard as she could, and was barely able to get the rock to float above her hand.

“Looks like we’ve got some work to do.”

---

Once Lilith got back to her dorm, she waved at Malena, then flopped on her bed.

“Your new adventure class has you that tired?” Malena asked, looking up from some homework papers. “Or is it the brain damage?”

Lilith lifted her head and frowned. “Mana exhaustion. My brain’s healed, mostly.” She pushed herself up so she was sitting. “And I think it’s Flight Mage class now, not Adventure. Honestly I’m so done with adventure now. The guys at the adventure guild were… kinda nice actually, but I keep seeing Blaise’s hand coming out whenever I’m there.”

“Well, apparently he was just a crazy person,” Malena sighed. “Though it was the adventure guild’s fault for letting just anyone join.” She frowned. “Honestly I wish they went further than letting them off with some fines. If it was me, I’d find the people to blame for that whole situation and send them all to jail! I don’t care if Blaise died mysteriously there. That’s a risk they deserve!”

“Uh, wow.” Lilith blinked.

“Hmm.” Malena let out a breath. ”Maybe that’s a bit harsh. I don’t ever want to see you like that again though,” Malena said.

“I… yeah.” Lilith laid her head back down. “Well, I don’t want to have to spell everything out again either.”

“That was a clever idea by the way,” Malena said. “How’d you think of it so quickly?”

“Uh, I don’t know.” Lilith collapsed on her bed. “Maybe all this school. Oh yeah, what’s your homework like?”

“Well, I’m reading old stories about heroism for this assignment. In this one passage, this hunchback steps up to the king during a war meeting and criticizes him for profiting from the war, so the strong knight Joel grabs the king’s scepter and beats the hunchback.” She looked over her paper. “The question asks to point out the heroic qualities of Joel.”

“Uh, none?” Lilith answered immediately, sitting up. “He sounds like a jerk.”

“What?” Malena turned. “No, he definitely has heroic qualities.”

“No he doesn’t?” Lilith tilted her head. ”The king is evil for profiting from war, Joel is a jerk, and the hunchback is the hero.”

Malena squinted as if Lilith grew a second head. “The king appointed by Haven can’t be evil Lilith. He’s the king.”

Lilith squinted back, as if Malena had grown a second head. “Anyone can be evil. It’s just math. It’s core math actually, and the equation’s pretty simple too.”

Malena squinted harder. “Not everything’s math Lilith. And I never heard about this core math.”

Lilith paused, realizing she only heard about it from Wispy, but continued anyway and repeated what she heard from her stories growing up, “Evil is anything that reduces the set of future actions any individual can take, especially actions they’re interested in. It’s the reduction of free will, and It can even be written as a function: E, representing any specific action that, applied to an individual with a certain amount of ability, results in less ability. E of i equals j where j is less than i.”

“What…?” Malena closed her book and sat back. “No. You can’t just mathematically define evil to be whatever you want.”

“Alright, how do you define evil then?” Lilith asked.

“It’s the opposite of being heroic,” Malena said. “So, ugly, mean, weak, stupid, doesn’t listen to orders, flies off the handle… Things like that.”

“Most of those just sound like ‘unattractive’,” Lilith said. “Not evil.” She paused to think. “I mean, you said ‘doesn’t listen to orders’, but what if someone from your story was ordered to attack you, and they disobeyed that order. Would that be evil?”

Malena pointed her finger and opened her mouth to protest, then frowned. “Hmm. I think whoever gave the order would be evil.”

“But giving an order to hurt you wasn’t against any of the evil things you mentioned, was it?”

“No, I think it’d be mean.” Malena frowned. “Hurting someone that doesn’t deserve it is mean, so it’s evil.”

“Did that hunchback deserve it then?” Lilith asked.

“Yes, he did,” Malena said. “He accused the king of being evil for no reason and spoke out of turn to do it.”

“But the king was harming people, so he was evil,” Lilith said.

“How?”

“If the king profits from war, then because he wants to profit more, he’ll want more war, I think. So the war would continue and more people would get killed.”

“You think?” Malena raised an eyebrow.

“It’s probably harmful.” Lilith shrugged.

“That doesn’t sound very convincing,” Malena said. “Besides, he’s the king, so there are probably good reasons for it that the hunchback doesn’t know about.”

“Okay… A lack of muscles being evil sounds kind of dumb though,” Lilith said.

“No.” Malena shook her head. “Being strong is good. It’s good in every story in the bible and in every story I’ve read.”

“Being strong is useful, I guess,” Lilith said. “It’d be good to be able to carry more books. But not being able to isn’t evil.”

"It's weird that you say that. I can still remember you handling a crowd of enemies by yourself in that strategy entrance test. I thought you were just good at math then." She paused.“Wait a minute, isn’t being weak actually evil by your weird math?” Malena tilted her head, then smirked. “Yeah, letting yourself get weak would be an ‘evil action’, because it would reduce the potential actions you, an individual, could take in the future.”

Lilith paused. “Okay, maybe that works, I think.”

“See? I’m good at math too.” Malena smirked.

“But wait, what if the lack of strength isn’t your fault?” Lilith asked. “What if the guy with a hunchback was born that way?”

“Are people born that way?” Malena raised an eyebrow.

“I don’t know… but what if he was?”

Malena stopped to think for a while. “I guess it wouldn’t be his evil, but an act of evil by his mother? No, she didn’t do anything to make that happen.” She frowned. “I guess it’d be random evil visited upon him?”

Lilith thought about it, then nodded. “That… does all work, doesn’t it?” She laid back in bed. “Huh.”

“That’s an interesting equation actually,” Malena said, making a note of it. “How does that apply to this story…?”

Lilith stared up at the ceiling. “...huh.”

Malena started flipping pages more and wrote faster, more absorbed into her work.

Lilith felt her eyes closing. “Well, I’m gonna sleep.”

“Just one caveat: the king can’t be evil…” Malena muttered. “Oh, goodnight!” She looked up for a moment.

“Goodnight.” Lilith smiled, then closed her eyes. But she was still confused. “It’s evil… to not be strong? To not choose the best for yourself? …but it’s also evil to stop someone who doesn’t?” She tried to think about it. “Ugh, makes my head hurt.” She turned to get comfier.

---

Lilith didn’t manage to fly in real life, but she did have a flying dream where she was soaring over the field of rocks from earlier. She flew back over Solis, and people cheered, calling her a hero. But Blaise stood on one of the rooftops, back from the dead and spear at the ready.

Lilith descended on him with a drop kick from the sky, and nailed him right in the face with a satisfying crunch! She landed and turned, knowing that wouldn’t be enough, and barely managed to dodge a thrown spear!

She launched a lightning bolt back at him, and he exploded!

The crowd cheered!

All her teachers and friends she met at school cheered!

She cheered! “YEEAAA--”

And then she found herself standing by a familiar lake, arms up and cheering like an idiot. “--AAAaaah…”

She frowned, then jumped a few times, trying to fly again and maybe go back to that dream, but it didn’t work. “Dang it. Hi Wispy.”

“Hi!” He waved several of his tendrils. “Something got you down?”

Lilith rolled her eyes. “Yes, my lack of magic apparently.”

“I think it’s your application that needs more work, not your magic power,” Wispy said. “You had some interesting ideas with metal and magnetism, but unfortunately there was no metal in that field. However, I’d like to present you something called ‘electrostatic levitation’.” A tendril unfurled to show a screen of a triangle of wire held with some wood above a triangle of foil. The foil and wire were connected to different parts of a machine with a giant coil. Then, someone flipped a switch, and the triangle lifted into the air.

“Try imagining that. Imagine the wire above your hand and the foil below it. The wire sends out sparks like you do with your magic, and the foil gathers those sparks, drawing them downwards.”

Lilith did so, or at least tried. Creating the sparks above was easy, but ‘gathering those sparks’ took some effort. Eventually, she got it when she imagined a loop: hand pushes out sparks from the ring above, hand pulls sparks from ring below, sparks flow from ring above to ring below. Once she did that, she managed to generate a decent airflow. In fact, it was a lot stronger than what she could do with her wind magic.

“I did it!” Lilith smiled.

“Good! Now, try a few of those rings on the crown of your head, around your neck, shoulders, chest, upper arms, stomach, and legs. Make as many as you can manage.”

She did, making the rings almost as soon as he mentioned where to put them, but it was hard to concentrate on so many, and so once she looked away, a few lost control and zapped her. “Ow.”

“Ah. If you can’t control that many, then don’t make that many. You can work your way up.”

Lilith nodded, then tried again. This time, she could feel the air flowing quickly along her body, but it still wasn’t enough to lift her. She frowned.

“Try jumping,” Wispy said.

Lilith did, then smiled. “I mean, I feel like I jumped higher, but I can’t tell.”

“Good point. In that case, try picking up that book next to you. The big one.”

“Wait, there’s a book here?” Lilith turned and picked up a large book, dusting off some dirt before inspecting it. “Haven bible?” She read.

“Yeah. I think Haven was telling us you could sacrifice things for favors, in some roundabout goddess-y way,” Wispy said, twirling a tendril.

“Oh, that’s kinda cool, I guess.” Lilith turned the ornately decorated book over and inspected it more. “Is this gold? Can I sell this?”

“No. There’s no one to sell it to here,” Wispy said. ”Now, rather than levitating yourself, try anchoring your magic to originate from that book and levitate it with the same ring method you’ve been using.”

A few rings of sparks appeared around the book, and she felt its weight go down to nothing.

“Let’s see if you can still hold it with just your magic.”

Once she let go, the book sat in midair.

“Wonderful! I’m sure that’s better than four percent. Now, try piling some rocks on it and see how many you can hold up!”

She picked up a decent sized rock and sat it on the book. It floated down a bit, but with more effort, she could keep it up.

She concentrated as she picked up another rock and put it on. That was about her limit. If she wanted to get stronger, she’d need to be able to lift more than that.

Get stronger? That reminded her: getting stronger was apparently good, according to Malena’s argument just before bed. And now that she remembered it, she had some questions for Wispy.

“Oh yeah, is it evil to stop someone from doing something evil to themselves?”

Wispy paused to consider the question. “It could be a necessary evil. But while you may see an action someone else takes as harming themselves, they might see things differently. They might have different views on what strength means, for example. If becoming physically strong means someone is more likely to be chosen for a spot in the military and lose the chance to study what they wanted to, the lack of exercise that would’ve harmed them now gives them more options.

“And studying could make them more mentally strong. They could be more capable of handling events because they’ve seen them in stories. They could be more capable of dealing with people because they’ve read etiquette or written essays. Or they could even be more capable of fighting because they read on different ways of utilizing magic or different martial arts techniques.”

Lilith paused to process it, then wobbled and dropped the book. “Okay, I kinda get it… I think. Wait, it’s a mathematical rule, so I should think of it in math, not people, right? If it’s math, and it’s related to information theory, then maybe… my probability of doing evil is greater because I have less information, right?”

“It could be,” Wispy said. “It’s not exact, nor is it clear. There are generally accepted limits, such as when someone is no longer mentally culpable. If you truly lost your ability to speak, would you rather try to do everything on your own, or would you prefer Malena help you sometimes without asking?”

“I wouldn’t want to burden her that much…” Lilith said.

“True. By our equation, that would be evil. But it would lessen the burden of evil put upon you and spread it to her. There are cases where you may not recover without help, and spreading the burden can allow you to do good later. In your case, you mildly inconvenienced the multiple doctors that saved you. Those doctors gave much of their lives up to save everyone, because they were good.”

“Wait, I thought you didn’t like doctors?” Lilith tried levitating the book again.

“One saved your life already, and another healed your injury. By experience, they’ve been far more good to you than evil. However, joining their course would’ve limited your options.”

“Huh.” Lilith levitated the book over her head, then lowered it and tried to balance it on her head. “Wait, why doesn’t Malena or anyone else know our equation?”

“Because it was an equation you made in your past life.”

“Oh.” Lilith jumped, flinging the book off her head, and caught it in her magic. “Oh yeah.”

---

Lilith woke up, and then, with a wide smile, levitated a few objects around the room, before waiting for Malena to wake up. The alarm crystal would ring soon.

“Bbbrrring!” It rang out.

Malena turned to tap it.

Lilith levitated it up with her electricity and grinned.

Malena tapped the table a few times, then got up and stared at the floating alarm clock. Then, she narrowed her eyes and turned to her mage roommate. “Liliiith…” she glared.

“S-- sorry.” Lilith smiled apologetically and put the alarm back down.

Malena poked the alarm, turning it off. “I’m glad you're feeling playful at least.” She looked around the clock. “Wait, what were those rings from?”

“My new magic!” Lilith smiled, then levitated one of her pillows using the rings.

“Oh. Cool!”

---

For her first class of the day, Lilith tried levitating her pen with her new magic as Rosina tapped her broom against the board. The class was actually pretty interesting. Rosina brought in a projector system with a crystal that was producing light at the bottom and in some cube held up by metal above. Once she put some transparent papers on its surface, they were projected onto a white piece of wood she put in front of the chalk boards.

The content was pretty interesting too.

“Today, we’re learning about the different travel affinities of your magics. Telekinesis, air, and gravity magic are the obvious ones when it comes to flying, but those aren’t the only ones that can.” She turned the page, showing a drawing of some old guy smiling. “For example, Dr. Varma discovered flying by fire around two hundred and fifty years ago.” She moved to another page with a few bullet points. “It’s also not always about flying. Magic can enhance swimming, running, digging, and even traveling in carts or boats.” She tapped the board.

Lilith delicately levitated her pen onto her paper and took a few notes, ignoring the buzzing noise it made. The handwriting was poor, but she could read it.

“Lilith. what is that noise?” Rosina looked up.

Lilith looked up and almost dropped her pen, then looked around. Several students around her, including Silene, were all staring. “Uh. sorry.” She slowly lowered the pen.

Rosina hopped up on her broom and flew over. “No, no, that’s quite interesting.” She looked at the pen. “That’s not telekinesis?”

“That’s not for show?” Lilith stared at the broom.

“It isn’t,” Rosina said, settling in between a few of the desks. “But how are you doing that?”

“Uh, I’m pushing electricity out in a ring around the air above the thing, and pulling it towards a ring below it, and also linking that to the pen.”

“So it’s like aerokinesis.” Rosina stared, then nodded. “Well, do let me know how that goes. If it turns out that’s good enough for flight magic, I might have to add you to the short list of electric flight mages.”

“There are electric flight mages?” Lilith perked up.

“There are!” Rosina flew back down and swapped out another paper. “Dr. Volta, for example, made himself a pair of wings modeled after flying beastfolk. He used his magic to move wires to control them.” In this picture, there was another old guy with goggles and a pair of cloth and metal wings many times bigger than him.

“Great minds think alike,” Lilith said under her breath, smirking. “Shows what you know, Wispy.”