Malena was wide eyed and about to panic when the enemy commander yelled, but she bit that down and made her counter. “Spearmen and bowmen!” she cried out, “Concentrate into our left and right flanks!”

Lilith ran up with the group attacking the right corner, grinning madly. She was glad she put the strap on her hat so it wouldn’t fall off, and that she had continued her sense practice so she could see so much more. While Wispy hadn’t trained her to fight recently, she still dreamed of her martial arts classes and of better ways to deal with those bandits. She was now free to move as she pleased and to see how much she improved. And this wasn’t even a real battle, so she didn’t have to worry about getting hurt at all!

While Lilith’s side was a disorganized group that wielded a random array of weapons, Malena’s side was highly organized. Spearmen were in front guarding the bowmen and healers, and the healers were spaced so they could be as effective as possible. But despite that level of organization, while the spearmen should’ve been able to take out most of the fighters quickly, a few flinched back at how excited the other side was. Still, the bowmen firing rapidly made up for it, and Malena’s side was losing fewer people.

Already surrounded by enemies and grinning madly, Lilith made full use of her magic sense, dodging an incoming spear right after another spearman took out her ally. She pushed the spear away with her knife, turning the guy around too with the force, then jumped right up to him, tapped his neck with the knife, and then jumped upwards.

A few spears were thrust at where she was standing, but she twisted in midair above them. Man they were slow! She grabbed one of the spears and held it as she fell behind the guy, using the momentum to lift him instead. Unfortunately the spear broke and the guy fell back.

As she got up and scanned her sense magic around as much area as possible, she felt another spear aimed at her torso, and another sweeping towards her feet. But that was more than enough room to dodge. She flipped back onto her hands, catching the upper spear between her legs and grabbing the lower one. She twisted, breaking one spear and smacking two guys into each other.

There were more people rushing at her as she spun around, so she stayed on her hands to react in time. She used the spear that was on the ground to smack some legs and had her legs dodge using her sense until there was enough time to flip back over. She was now as grateful that she had her shirt tucked in and was wearing pants as she was for everyone’s hesitation in this battle.

Malena’s mouth hung open as she watched one of her spearman groups get taken out almost entirely by Lilith. “Are you freaking kidding me?” She grit her teeth. “Everyone! Go after Lilith! Go after the girl with the hat!” She watched as her side tried to close around Lilith, only for her to dodge attacks as if she had eyes in the back of her head. “Wait, no! Don’t get so close! Grr! Only the best spearman goes in! Leave room for the bowmen!”

Lilith heard the orders and saw the biggest kid come out after her while the others all backed off. That guy looked like could've been a problem. However, there was still an opening behind her where she could sneak into the crowd.

She ran backwards, dodged another spearman’s attack using her magic sense, and then hid behind an ally spearman before the enemy bowmen could fire at her. Then, she blew a raspberry at the enemies.

However, Malena’s encirclement strategy had worked, and most of Lilith’s side was taken out already. They’d yelled and tried to charge forward at whatever weakpoint they could, but Malena’s side would just pull back, keeping the weak point away and exposing more of Lilith’s group.

Lilith saw the loss as she looked around, then ran through the crowd to her side’s leader.

“Oh, hat-girl? What’s up?” he asked.

“Can I deal with the weak point while you guys deal with the main group?” She pointed to the current thinnest area in Malena’s forces.

He shrugged. “Sure! Sounds like a good idea. We’ll provide some cover.” Then he yelled, “Guys in the back, push hard on the main force now! It’s all or nothing! Guys attacking, try to defend yourself more as you keep pushing!”

Lilith ran through the lines of people to get to the thinned out group in Malena’s encirclement, using her sense and telekinesis to push herself even a tiny bit faster, then jumped past the few spearmen guarding and landed amongst the bow group on Malena’s side.

She yanked the bows from a few of their hands before they got a chance to fire and used her heat and electricity magic to burn part of the wood before slamming them against the ground, snapping many of them in half. She couldn't help but grin again. Each of those bows was one more opponent she defeated.

Many of the other bowmen ran back and struggled to shoot some arrows off at her. However, she grabbed some of the slower bowmen and pulled them so they were covering her. After they were pelted by arrows from friendly fire though, Lilith no longer had anyone standing to hide behind.

But there were 'dead bodies' lying on the ground. So Lilith ducked down and rolled out of the way, then used the bodies of the fallen that hadn’t been pulled away yet as cover.

“Wow you're brutal,” one of them said as she burrowed beneath them. Then he got hit with several blunted arrows. “Ow.”

Hopping up over the crowd a few times to see this, Malena called out more orders. “Knife-men! Get around to where she buried herself! She can’t move if you grab her arms and legs! Spearmen, ready to poke her when she resists!”

“I’d like to see you try!” Lilith called out from under the pile.

Once the group closed in, Lilith jumped out and ran away, but a couple of the spearmen were ready and attacked. Still, she somehow managed to dodge another attack without looking.

“B— bullshit!” The guy yelled out.

Lilith grinned as she whipped around, grabbed the guy’s spear, and pulled it away. She twisted, dropped the spear, and landed a palm on his chest that knocked him back a few feet.

Then, she vaguely felt someone else’s mana and tried to twist away from it, but it flew around rapidly and grabbed onto her arm.

“Gah! What?” She turned around.

“Gotcha!” The guy yanked her back with his telekinesis.

She smacked into the ground. “Oof!” She rolled over and tried to squirm out of his magic.

“I got her!” He yelled. “Throw them!”

A few spears shot out and Lilith barely managed to twist around and dodge some of them, but one still managed to hit her leg. “Ow.”

Then the guy that was holding her just moved his magic to her torso and then poked her with his spear. “Ow!”

“How about that? Two can play at that game!”

“Grr…” Lilith struggled and glared at him as she pulled the spear away from herself.

“That means you’re dead by the way. I stabbed your heart.” He poked a few more times with the spear, pushing his weight against her grip.

“AAH! That hurts!” She tore the spear away with all her strength. Sparks shot out and red embers tore into the spear until it fell into pieces. He’d been poking around her previous rib injury.

The guy backed off, wide eyed.

“Whew… haa…” Lilith sat up and panted as she checked her ribs with her hands and sense magic. “Oh, good, it’s fine.”

One of the ‘dead’ enemy healers rushed in. “Are you okay? Lemme help out.” They grabbed her and pulled her away from the battle.

“Oh, thanks.” She said, still panting.

She now watched from the side as the groups fought, still panting for a while, until she heard the strategist guy start yelling again.

“And the winner is group one!”

Everyone stopped.

“It was due to Malena’s better strategy. That said, Mark did an excellent job when it came to inspiring troops and dealing with surprises like ‘hat-girl’, otherwise known as ‘Lilith’. Speaking of which, her choice in retreating when surrounded by bowmen to attack later was also good strategy.”

“If anyone else thinks they can make decisions on the fly like that, and your rank in strategy measures in A class or S class by the old calculation, then the strategy course would love to have you! I will be teaching it. You may choose to replace your primary or secondary course with strategy to attend. Otherwise, you can go home.”

Now that the battle was over, all the students walked around slowly, and several walked over to form a line. Malena looked around for Lilith as she lined up, then noticed the strategy guy was pointing at her and she was walking away, so she ran over.

“What? You’re not going?” Malena asked.

“Sorry, I already really like researcher and adventurer, and I plan on taking some mage electives. There’s no room left for strategy. Oh, but maybe you can use me as part of your strategies?” She smiled apologetically.

Malena paused and thought about it. “I guess. Actually, yeah, I feel like if I ever use this strategy stuff in the future, that’s bound to happen.” She grinned sheepishly. “You’re a scary kitty, you know that?”

“I’m a— I’m not a cat.” Lilith glanced around to see if anyone overheard.

“Oh, right, sorry,” Malena replied in a hushed tone. “You know, I think you should stay after though, even if you’re not becoming a strategist.”

“Huh? Why?” Lilith tilted her head.

“You were one of the three that he called out as examples of good strategy, and he was pointing at you, so I think he wants to talk to you.”

---

According to the card they all got, ‘William’ was the name of the new strategist teacher. At William’s suggestion, both Malena and Lilith stayed behind after everyone else got their cards. In return, they got to eat some nice food he brought as they waited, so it wasn’t so bad. The food was better than both the school’s and the church’s food.

“Hey, he has the same name as my dad!” Lilith said with her mouth full.

“Oh really? You never told me much about your family.” Malena leaned in.

“Oh, I guess I haven’t. Well, he was the main blacksmith in the house, and he let me play around with the metal some. Usually scraps.”

“Oh, a blacksmith. That makes some sense.” Malena nodded.

“It does?” Lilith tilted her head.

“Yeah.”

…

Eventually, all the other students left, and William walked over.

“So.” William sat down next to the two girls. “Where in the world did you learn to do all that?” He asked Lilith.

“Practice,” Lilith said after swallowing her last bits of food. “Lots and lots of practice.”

“Really? Who trained you?” William asked curiously.

“Uh, I had a live-in tutor,” Lilith said.

“Oh? What’s their name?” William asked. “I know some of the mage tutors around here, but they’re usually lacking in martial arts. I’d love to know one that kept up on it.”

“Uhh…” Lilith paled and looked around for something to save her, but Malena seemed just as curious. “It’s a secret?”

“A secret? That’s strange.” William frowned. “If they’re an ally of Solis, they should be fairly well known already. I don’t think someone of that caliber could stay secret even if they wanted to, but if they did, it’s worrying.”

Lilith stared back blankly.

“Worrying?” Malena asked. “Why would it be worrying?”

“A powerful mage can take out a platoon on their own,” William said. “If there’s someone like that going around and keeping themselves a secret from the crown, they could be seriously dangerous.”

“A secret from the crown?” Malena asked. “Do you work for the crown?”

“I did,” William said. “I retired a while back. My mind’s not as fast as it used to be, so I can’t make snap decisions like I had to as a general anymore.”

“You were a general?” Lilith shook herself from her stupor and looked up at him with starry eyes.

“Yep.” He smiled. “Led a few mages like yourself a while back.” Then he frowned. “So, I’m sorry to say, but your tutor represents a potential danger to Solis. I know for a fact there aren’t any hidden mages right now. They’re really impossible to hide after all. So, you should be fine telling me their name.”

“Uhh.” Lilith blinked and glanced at different objects as she tried to come up with a name, then paused. “Wait, uh, why are you saying it was a mage tutor? I wasn’t shooting flames or lightning or anything.”

“You were at the end.” William raised an eyebrow. “And you were dodging attacks from directly behind yourself without looking the whole time. Also, the bows you broke had burn marks on them.”

“Ah…” Lilith paled. She thought she was being clever.

“So, what was your tutor’s name again?” William repeated.

Malena was tilting her head too. “You know, you never did tell me your tutor’s name.”

“Uh, actually it’s not a tutor. I saw it all in my dreams,” Lilith said, nodding.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

“In your dreams, huh?” William raised an eyebrow again. “Never heard that one before.”

Lilith paled as she looked to her friend, then the strategist, then back. “It’s... it’s true though.”

“Really?” Malena asked.

“Well, you don’t appear to be lying,” William said. “Really, in your dreams, huh?”

“Y— yes?” Lilith shrank back.

“Huh.” He frowned, then his eyes widened. ”Well, as it turns out, I remember someone on the frontier of dream magic. If you’d allow him to enter one of your dreams, that’d help ease my fears, and could give the crown some new research to work with.”

“Uhh…” Lilith froze. If she did that, would it be betraying Wispy? Wispy warned her against telling others about him sometimes, but not like Haven did, if that vision was even real. He warned that she might turn herself into an outcast if she clung to an ‘imaginary friend’ so tightly, or talked about magic to people that hated it, but that was for her sake, not his. Now she was in the reverse situation: if she didn’t talk, she could get in more trouble.

“O— …okay.” Lilith said after a long hesitation, wide eyed with fear and shoulders slumping in defeat.

“Wow, you look like some of the mage recruits I caught red handed.”

“...Lilith?” Malena questioned.

“You probably don’t have to worry that much,” William said. “I mean, you didn’t do anything you shouldn’t have, right?”

Lilith looked off to the left. “Uh, no? I don’t think so?”

“Well, there you go! You should be fine then.” William stood back up. “Follow me back to school. There are some graduate researchers that’ll help set things up, and it’s not like I need to schedule something like this.” He turned to Lilith, who was now cautiously excited for some reason. “Just to be sure, you’re not lying about the dream thing right? We’re gonna have some pretty annoyed researchers if you are.”

Lilith shook her head. “No. It’s true!”

“Alright then. Tell me a bit more about these dreams while we head over.” William started walking back.

Lilith and Malena both got up and followed.

“Well, his name is W…” Lilith choked.

“...Can you not say his name?” William asked.

“No, I can. His name is… Wispy.” Lilith cringed and blushed.

William looked down. “Anything else?”

Lilith calmed down a bit now that she wasn’t facing any of the dismissive reactions or rejections she would’ve got back home. “Well, he’s not human. He’s this… thing of light?” She shrugged, cringing a little every time she described anything about him. “He teaches me all kinds of magic, but also math, reading, writing, science… really anything intellectual or magical.”

“What about your fighting?” William asked.

Lilith froze.

“Really, I think that’s one of your smaller secrets now.” Malena smirked.

“Heh, it is, isn’t it?” Lilith smiled wryly. “Well it’s not like I’ll be taking strategy class anyway.” She looked around, then lifted her hat up a bit for William to see.

“Oh! Beastfolk huh? Weird!” He stroked his chin.

“Weird?” Lilith asked.

“Yeah, most of you guys are out in the middle of nowhere. If someone cast a spell on you, they’d have to go out of their way to do it. It’d be much easier to find some random human in a farming village if they wanted to stay away from Solis, and they’d face less trouble learning magic and less of a chance of getting killed hunting.”

Lilith frowned at the ‘getting killed hunting’ part.

“Oh, those researcher guys are gonna love this.”

---

Lilith was a mix of curious and terrified. She was in a nurse's office at school sitting on one of the beds, and there were several adults talking about stuff she couldn’t quite hear. She listened in, in case they said anything that sounded like the judgment she would’ve got back home. There were a few of the ‘what if she’s just making it up?’ comments she expected, but there were also ‘but what if she isn’t?’ comments in equal amounts.

Several mages filed in and stood among the researchers. Unlike Dr. Pana from before, they were easy to spot because they had various magical gems and crystals all over them.

“Alright, everything’s in order,” William said, “now we just need to wait for her to go to sleep.”

One of the mages turned to him. “I don’t think that’s going to happen any time soon. Have you ever tried sleeping with this many people watching?”

“Yeah, it’s a bit weird. Should we leave?”

“No, then we couldn’t take measurements. Don’t worry though, I got something.” One of the mages walked up to her. “Hey, you want to go to sleep and get this done with, right?” he asked.

Lilith nodded hesitantly.

“Alright.” He pulled out a strange glass pen filled with a glowing fluid, then wrote some script on a piece of paper in a language she’d never seen. “Hold onto this, and you should fall asleep right away.”

Lilith hesitantly took the paper and looked at the weird script from different angles as she held it. It didn’t match any characters she’d seen before, but it at least seemed to have spaces between the words.

Then, just like the guy said, she felt increasingly tired.

“Huh!?” She involuntarily panicked a bit, half remembering some old warning from Wispy. Her adrenaline surged to fight the foreign influence and her eyes shot open.

“Hey, calm down.” The guy said, holding his palms up. “Your friend is here, and everyone else is going to look over you when you’re asleep. You’re perfectly safe. So don’t work yourself up fighting against the sleep spell.”

Lilith nodded, and then eyelids drooped and she started wobbling until she fell back onto the pillow. She felt another small panic attack, but she looked at Malena and calmed down.

They started setting up various spells and instruments. One mage laid some glyph papers over Lilith’s heart, another over her head, one on the back of her head, and so on. If anything magical happened, at least one of the glyphs would go off.

---

Wispy looked around at scenes of all the mages surrounding Lilith through his tendrils while floating above his lake. They included her last waking memories. One was flashing with whatever Lilith even partially dreamed, each with one of the mages in places where he shouldn’t have been.

“How should I handle this…” He held out three tendrils in front of himself. “I could simply not show up.” The first tendril opened, showing Lilith coming back again later. “But if they’re smart, they’ll just keep her under watch to stop a potential enemy mage. And even if they don’t, she could lose trust with Solis. Either situation could stunt Lilith’s growth.”

“On the other hand—” Another of the tendrils opened up. “—if I reveal myself to them and try to act as a non-threat, it would be prudent of them to make absolutely sure that I’m not part of an enemy group.” The scene here also showed Lilith coming back for a checkup, but now she was cringing as she tried, and failed, to keep up a lie. “And then there’s that.”

“On the third hand—” The last tendril opened up. “—what if I just revealed the truth? With just a little embellishment.” The scene showed a mage standing by the lake, his mouth agape with a mix of awe and horror. Wispy’s tendrils curled to look like different grins as he watched a scene.

---

Deep in the dead of night, most of the mages were asleep and only one was up for night watch. He turned when he heard the ringing sound as some spells finally went off, and was about to shake one of the other mages awake when he froze.

A spirit glowing with magic had partially unwrapped hundreds of tendrils from Lilith as it grinned at him.

“Wh— h— h— holy shit!” The guy backpedaled, crashing into one of the other beds and waking several mages.

“What is it? What did you see?” One of the other mages asked.

“Th— there!” He pointed. “Ghost!” But there was nothing there.

“I don’t see anything...” The other mage squinted.

“Where’d it go?” The guy on watch asked, slowly walking over. “There were two spells going off. Now there’s just one.”

“The dream tamper detection spell is going off. Guess we’ll have to rely on Dr. Crowe.”

“Guess so.”

Meanwhile, by a certain lake, Lilith walked up to Wispy bent forward and holding one arm with another, clearly worried. “Uhh, I might’ve told some guys about you.”

“Yes I saw. You even brought a guest!” He pointed one of his tendrils.

Lilith turned to look.

The dream mage froze, then looked around at the trees like they should’ve been more interesting than him. Somehow, he was hard to look at. When Lilith tried to focus, she found her vision sliding off to one side of him.

“Aw, don’t be shy.” Wispy drifted forward and reached out a long tendril into the forest and around the mage’s back, pulling him forward. “Come on and join us.”

As the mage was pulled, some sparks flew off of him and he became a bit easier to look at. “Oh, now we can see you better.”

“That does make my eyes feel better,” Lilith said.

“Indeed.” Wispy nodded before turning back to the dream mage. “Now, since you’re here, what would you like to know?”

“What? Uh, who are you?” The mage stammered.

Wispy seemed to frown and shrug. “Unfortunately I can’t answer that one. I don’t know either.”

“Huh? How can you not know who you are?” the mage asked.

“Aren’t you Wispy?” Lilith asked.

“Yes.” Wispy nodded. “I imagined this mage wanted something more, but ‘Wispy’ is indeed all I know.”

“If you can’t tell us who you are, then how can we trust you?” The mage asked.

“Who were you before you were you? And how can we trust you if you don’t know?” Wispy asked back. “And how can you trust anyone?” He lowered his body to the mage. “How can you be sure a knife won’t come from any random person in the crowd and stab you in the back? How can you be sure your friends aren’t conspiring against you? You can’t.” He raised his body back to its normal spot. “You can never be completely sure, but such a mindset is unhealthy. It’s paranoia.”

The mage grimaced. “What are you talking about? You’re suspicious as hell and you haven’t cleared any of my doubts. What even are you, a spell?”

“Like I said, I don’t know who or what I am.” Wispy seemed to shrug.

“So, what do you know then?” The mage asked. “You know enough to be a tutor.”

“That’s a good question.” Wispy grinned. “I at least know more than enough to be a threat.”

Wispy extended his tendrils out, each uncurling to show different scenes.

One showed a cement building from a bird’s eye view before it zoomed out to show the earth’s curvature, but with different continents. And then it went further, showing the moon, sun, the rest of the planets, and then even further, showing a swirling spiral of tiny dots which the sun was just one of.

Another switched from an image of a rapidly spinning machine with some dirt in it, to an orange cube with wires and a coil of copper connected by different metal into a square, and then placed next to the dirt from before. They were all wrapped together and put in some metal tube, then dropped from the sky. Once the thing landed, a pin at the front pressed a part of the mechanism from before and some of the wires exploded, hitting the material in the center from all sides at once. The screen went white, then faded to a mushroom shaped cloud with a destroyed city beneath it.

Another image showed machines twisting strings around some clear red gel, next to rapidly moving rectangular metal machines, building up what were clearly meant to be human bones and muscles. Some of the bones were taken out, put in buckets, and molten metal was poured over them. Then, the muscles and other materials were wrapped around the metal bones. The scene zoomed out to show an army of humanoid creatures made from these.

In the next image, an old man was dying with a large cancerous cyst on his skin. The screen zoomed into the cyst, then zoomed out to show a machine holding thousands of those cysts, each with metal arms pouring different colored chemicals on them. The screen zoomed into one cyst that cleared away, zoomed out from the guy, and then showed him growing younger and younger until his last wrinkle disappeared.

The last image showed a human brain, then a cube with three wires coming out of it. It zoomed in to one of the cells in the brain that had a lot of tendrils coming out, until the cube was tiny compared to that cell, then made different and more complex mechanisms with the cube and wires, using duplicates of the smaller mechanisms on top of each other, until they were larger than the brain cell, then a region of the brain, and then the brain itself.

“Ooooh, what’s all this?” Lilith stared at the images.

“Wh— what am I looking at?” The mage looked around, but settled on the image with the destroyed city.

“Each of these are ideas that could destroy worlds or save those destined to die.”

“Are you giving this to us!?” The mage asked, barely managing to glance away from the image. ”Is there some catch?”

“You can do whatever you want with these designs, as long as it doesn’t harm Lilith,” Wispy said. “The catch is that you hold up the lie for us. You have more experience with the mages around here as well as Solis itself. So, what do you think the best cover story would be?”

“Cover story!? You can destroy Solis with some rocks and metal and you want me to cover for you!?” The mage asked.

“Yes.” Wispy moved the image of the mushroom cloud towards him. “I teach Lilith what’s helpful to her. If Solis becomes a threat to her, we can dig the materials required for this bomb out from any cave. I assume you came here so you could protect Solis.”

“Tch.” The mage grit his teeth and forced himself to look away from the image. “Is this stuff even real?” He looked down. “Top test scores though.” He looked back up. “But how would lying about you even help protect Solis or Lilith.”

“Simple,” Wispy said. “Lilith and I haven’t been a threat to anyone except for a few bandits so far. You wouldn’t want to do anything that could change that. So the best option for you would be to continue as if everything was normal. And depriving me of the time I have to teach her would take away the only chance I have to build up her defenses. That would be the opposite of protecting her.”

“So you say. I’m not sure that’s actually my best option, but fine.” The mage grit his teeth, then sighed. “I’ll play along, you… whatever you are.” He massaged his temple, then took a calming breath. “Okay, since Lilith’s a beastgirl, I remember there have been a few folktales about old spirits coming back and helping their ancestors. That would both help explain you and paint you as an ally. I could also say that the spells and the dream magic irritate you, if you want.”

“I would prefer that. Thank you.”

“Oh, wait, what spells did you set off exactly?” the mage asked with a wary gaze.

“These ones.” Wispy shot two tendrils forward, which spiraled open and revealed images of the glowing, activated spells.

“Spirit and dream,” the mage read.

“I suppose that means I’m a spirit,” Wispy said. ”Fascinating…”

“I’ll confirm that outside, but if that’s true then you really are a spirit,” the mage said. “At least that completely rules out the enemy mage option. No nation would kill their own mages, let alone before their missions.”

“It does seem like a silly thing to do,” Wispy agreed.

The mage shuddered. “Alright. Fine.” He took another calming breath. “You’re an ancestor spirit, so you’re not tied to any current nation. As far as I can tell that could even be true, if the spells back you up.”

“It’s certainly possible.” Wispy shrugged. “I have no idea. But I’ll trust you with the details.”

The mage nodded, then pulled out a paper from his shirt and tore it in half before fading away.

Once he was gone, Lilith turned back to Wispy with a similar mix of fear and awe as the researcher. “Can you really do all that!?” She asked.

“Nope!” Wispy laughed. “Most of those were just ideas. You’d need teams of people working for decades at least just to test them. And then they'd probably all fail.”

“Oh.” Lilith frowned, disappointed, but also a little relieved.

---

Back in the real world, the mage woke up with a gasp, sat up, and immediately started writing in his notebook.

“Dr. Crowe! Are you alright?” Another mage asked.

He held his hand up as he wrote. “Gotta record everything before I forget. Oh, but what spells went off?”

...

It took a long, long time for Dr. Crowe to finish writing everything down. He filled up several pages with both words and pictures as the minutes passed. Even after Lilith woke up, he was still writing.

Finally, he slammed his pen down and closed his book. “There.”

“So,” William spoke up. “Before anything else, is she a threat?”

“No.” Dr. Crowe shook his head. “The spirit and dream spells were the only ones that went off. Turns out it’s an ancestor that came back to bring back lost knowledge.”

“Really?” William asked.

“Yeah. She’s pretty lucky.”

“Hmm.” William frowned. “I’d still like some followup studies just to make sure.”

“Um, sure, but—” Dr. Crowe held up his book. “—I’m going to have to take a while to analyze this before I can come back.”

William glanced from the book to Lilith, then back to Dr. Crowe. “Alright. This is your field after all.”

“So, is everything okay?” Malena asked.

“Yep,” Dr. Crowe answered. “She’s got a spirit, but that’s it.”

Malena walked over and hugged Lilith. “I thought you were gonna get dissected or something with all these researchers around.”

Lilith frowned. “Researchers don’t…” She paused. “You know what, actually, I could see that,” she laughed.