“It’s beyond reckless.” I muttered into the bed. “It’s suicidal!”

“Taneri guaranteed everyone’s safety.” Breale said as she went through my armoire. “And we’ll all be there, right? They won’t even get close to Andril!”

“He did say that half the guard will be mustered in the barracks, just in case.” Auro added from the window. “And our job’s the easiest one.”

After Andril had explained the plan and answered all of our questions, Breale and Auro had decided to come with me, under the ambiguous cover of wanting to ‘hang out’. When they immediately dove into my clothing and I realised the true purpose of their trip, Gideon had already abandoned me and it was too late to kick them out.

And it was quickly becoming hell.

“What about this?” Breale mused, holding up a dress I’d never looked at before. “Blue seems to fit you.”

“It matches her eyes.” Auro added.

“There has to be a better way.” I said. “Can’t they just search everyone for weapons or something?”

“They won’t be carrying the weapons themselves.” Breale scoffed. “We’re mostly just looking for signals or early departures. Backups for if we can’t capture any of the assassins alive.” She held up another one to show Auro. “Sleeveless or…?”

“It’s probably going to be too cold, I’d think.” Auro said.

“Mother always told me that you should suffer for fashion.”

“That’d be pretty circumstantial evidence.” I tried again. “That wouldn’t be enough, would it?”

“I’m sure the senate would be pretty accepting of ‘circumstantial’ after armed brigands burst into the feasting hall in front of their eyes.” Breale said. “Would you try this on real quick?”

“By God, can you both leave already!” I glared at the two, but they were unfazed. “I can do this myself.”

The plan required all of us at the party acting as spies and lookouts, but it was only after we’d left the meeting that I realised what entirely that entailed. Namely, I’d have to actually show up and try to charm my target into slipping up. Being a noble, that, naturally, would require me to wear a dress and do all the hair and makeup bupkis. Looking ‘presentable’ is what they called it.

Of course, there were other, less stupid reasons I’d have to dread that night, like the fact that someone might recognise me as the mage in the library, but somehow the dress up part was still the more frightening. It felt wrong, horrible, demeaning even. I mean, I’d done strange things before, but a dress? That was a fair bit too much for a guy to stomach.

“I don’t trust you.” Breale ran her eyes over my current outfit, and I instinctively crossed my arms. “If it weren’t for your hair, I’d mistake you for a guy.”

Wait, what was wrong with what I was wearing? Did this world have something against pants? And I had to ransack Corto’s old stuff to find it too. This really wasn’t fair at all.

“She’s right.” Auro said. “You act like one too. Every time I’ve met you, you’re always running and sliding and doing stuff like that.”

Breale nodded enthusiastically, her braid bobbing up and down.

“Hmm hmm! It’s strange how you’re both simultaneously one of the more energetic people I know and also the only one who can look like she’s about to drop dead after walking half a mile.”

I suppose I was a bit obvious in the mis-match between my abilities and ambitions. When I wasn’t running on adrenaline, I still found the act of simply walking all day exhausting, let alone everything else I’d done. But that just came with the territory. My arms were thin and fragile, my legs were twigs, and my hair was a bit too long to be completely comfortable. Even my workouts each afternoon seemed to do little, simply acting to tire me out with no appreciable increase in my stamina.

Honestly, the difference wouldn’t be so apparent if I had been put in an average girl’s body. Breale was a bit more boyish on the spectrum, but even Auro was stronger, if definitely not taller, than me. I almost didn’t even think it was purely Saphry’s old lifestyle either, not with how marked the differences between me and the bookworm Auro. Perhaps Summarkans were just naturally weak? I’d have to look that up.

“And how do you want me to act?” I rolled my eyes. “You’re not really the pinnacle of charm yourself, so isn’t that a little hypocritical for you to say?”

“I’m hurt.” Breale chuckled. “I’m not saying you need to change, but it wouldn’t hurt if you could flip the switch, you know?”

I stared at her blankly, uncomprehending.

“What?”

“You need to be able to act ladylike when you need to. Like her.” She gestured to Auro, who momentarily looked to be the very picture of femininity.

“I mean.” I looked away. “Is that really necessary? Can you do that?”

I knew perfectly well it injured Saphry’s reputation to not go all the way, but then again, was it really necessary? Trying to fit in that much would probably carry more long term trauma than just doing the compromise I’ve been doing all this time. I would never live down ‘going native’ once we made it back, and I probably wouldn’t be occupying this body for much longer than a few weeks. Surely Saphry’s reputation could survive a stint like this, right? Tomboys were all the rage after all.

“Of course. It’s a natural part of survival. I’m not sure how you’ve gotten this far without knowing that.”

Now that I thought about it, I hadn’t really gotten that much of that kind of stuff from Saphry’s memories, had I? She didn’t go out that much before I had taken over, instead she just kind of wasted around in the manor. I still didn’t understand exactly why of course, unless she was just lazy… actually no. I was pretty sure she was just lazy.

Regardless of the reason, I had almost nothing to fall back on. Which meant that I probably didn’t have time to learn it all in a week anyway. So go away!

“The instructors will eat you alive.” Auro noted. “They’re very old-fashioned.”

“That bad?” I said. “You didn’t mention that when I asked you about the academy a few days ago.”

“It’s to be expected, no? Minua is a very prestigious city.” Auro beamed, obviously proud of her home. “If you can’t dance or Velsil you won’t have a great time.”

“I don’t even know what that second one means.”

“It seems.” Breale laid the dress onto the bed. “That we have way more to do than just pick an outfit.”

God, why do you hate me?

“Eh, what else do you know about Minua?” I scooted away from the end of the bed, my brain firing into overdrive as I thought of distractions. “How big’s the city? How far away is it?”

Could you two drive it through your thick skulls already? It wasn’t worth trying! Could you just let me prepare myself in peace? It was already going to take some meditation to wear the dress, I didn’t need whatever else you were prescribing.

“Hmm.” Auro kicked her feet into the air as she thought. “It’s on a mountain by the same name by the northwestern Arguin. The second biggest city in Verol, I think. And it should be… maybe two weeks by the fastest to get there?”

Arguin? It really didn’t take long for unfamiliar words to pop up here, did it? I was still awaiting that magical geography lesson that Gideon had gotten. And maybe it wouldn’t hurt to actually look at a map after all.

Two weeks didn’t sound that bad though. Marcolo had already planned for me to leave the day after the gala, and two weeks of looking at mountains sounded like an alright amount of time to practise my casting and forget about whatever trauma I was about to go through. I might even be able to get myself to the level of a baseline mage from this world if I tried hard enough.

“There’s a chapter of the Everstar on the adjacent mountain as well.” Auro continued. “Dedicated to Celrion, the second star. They’ve even enchanted the lanterns around the city to gleam white, which looks fantastic during the festivals…”

I actually recognised the name of ‘Celrion’, mostly because it was a part of one of the more famous constellations: The Pale Phoenix. It was the brightest star in the sky at night, even clearly visible in the glyph glow of the capital. The constellations were one of the few things Saphry had left to me.

Which I was thankful of, of course. I’d always liked star-watching back on Earth, so having the names given to me was convenient. But I would’ve appreciated it more if she had been a student of history and politics.

“Festivals which you won’t enjoy if you can’t dance.” Breale jumped off the bed and hauled me to my feet as if I were a feather, my resistance meaning little. “Might as well start now!”

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

“But I don’t…” I tried to struggle free, only to find that Fredrick’s sister was quite a bit stronger than she originally appeared. “Alright, I’m done. Can you just screw off? I don’t need help!”

“The first lesson in etiquette: no cursing.” Breale admonished as she pulled me to the dresser by my arm. “Auro, can you get the brush?”

It didn’t take much longer before Fredrick had overtaken his sister for my ‘favourite Maverick twin’.

…

“Come down here.” My knuckles turned white as I held onto the knife at my side. “I just want to talk.”

We can talk perfectly fine from where we are. Gideon looked down on me from atop the armoire, just out of reach.

The last week had been incredibly frustrating, with barely any time to build up my casting resistance or to study transmutation. With the exception of two horrific days for an unrelated reason, Breale and Auro had come over early in the morning to ‘help’ me, and we would practice dancing, and hairstyling, and etiquette, and dwaran making, and other inane, stupid, and useless moronities until I fell over exhausted. Which only took a couple hours, but that didn’t make me feel any better. My only consolation was that I’d be able to rest when we left for the academy tomorrow morning after the gala.

Gideon had helped exactly zero percent as well, abandoning me every day and only returning while I napped. It was for a good reason, or at least he purported that it was, but it meant I had nobody male to talk to all day, nobody to stop my sanity from sliding ever further into the red. And even when he did return, my worst fears were all realised from the very first time he saw me wearing a frilly dress.

“Please.” I smiled at him. Politely. A smile filled with ‘charm’ and ‘etiquette’. “Why, perchance, won’t you fly closer?”

All I said is that it was adorable! Was that the wrong thing to say, Saphry?

I ‘dropped’ the knife to his left, and it almost ‘accidentally’ impaled him, only missing by a half dozen inches.

“Oops!” I tilted my head in a perfectly sane smile. “I think I missed. My sheath, that is.”

Christ, you could’ve killed me!

“Oh no!” I covered my mouth. “What would I have done without my good friend Silst…”

My God. Gideon furrowed his brow before snickering in some horribly draconic way. I’m so sorry! I didn’t realise that time of month could happen again so quickly! I could’ve sworn there was some more time between each one.

Neither of us said anything for a few seconds as I processed what he had just said to me.

Is this what how a murderer feels before they did it? Could any emotion really compare to the pure rage I felt coursing through my veins?

“[You scalie bastard!]”

And you're 'adorable'.

“[Why you fucking...]” I grabbed a broom out of the corner of the room and started thrusting it towards the drake, trying to bash in his small skull.

“Saphry, I was going over the travel plans tomorrow…”

Gideon and I froze as Marcolo appeared in the doorway, my broom lodged between the drake’s jaws.

“I see you’re busy. I’ll come back in a few minutes.” He gracefully slipped out of the door and shut it behind him.

We stayed locked together for a few more seconds before I dropped the broom and sat down on the window sill, my rage suddenly dissipating.

I… I’m sorry.

“Don’t worry about it.” I sighed. “This whole week just sucked. Hard. I shouldn’t have gotten so angry.”

He flew down to the open space next to me, and dropped the knife into my lap.

Is it true, by the way? He asked. About the…

“They weren’t kidding.” I nodded, suppressing another flash of rage. “That is unbelievably triggering. Don’t say anything like that ever again.”

Noted.

“What of the gold hunt?” I asked, switching the subject. “Did you find out anything more? Maybe where we could get some, in fact?”

Unfortunately, no. He thought. As we feared, it seems that most of the Veroline aren’t even aware of the stuff. I could only find two mentions of it in fact. One was in the Lmenli folktales, and the other was as a deeply held treasure of the great dwarven king Morn.

And that was probably the worst case scenario I could’ve heard. One of those sounded plausible if out of reach, that being the dwarven treasure, but the other sounded like nonsense. It seemed that we’d have to keep messing around with the regular transmutation method.

“That’s the second time I’ve heard someone mention ‘Lmenli’, though.” I said. “What kind of folktale is it? Is it important?”

From what I could tell. Gideon confirmed. Though they are just an object in one of the first few chapters of the Rizif Karif.

“The… Ritz if Careef?” I tilted my head in thought. “Was the book Fredrick mentioned when we banished that demon?”

No he was talking about the Kara Karif, or ‘The Chaos of Order. The Rizif Karif, or ‘The Hopeful Order’, is the holy text of the Everstar church. He looked at me strangely. Did Saphry really give you nothing? This is utterly basic stuff.

“I’m just glad I didn’t ask about the Lmenli during the meeting…”

Well, that probably would’ve been fine. The Lmenli aren’t the main focus of the book after all. And they’re only mentioned in the first few chapters.

“And the holy book is in dwarven?” I asked. “Is this a latin bible thing or…?”

Exactly that. The actual text mostly isn’t in dwarven though.

It seemed to me that a lot of this country had a particular fascination with Dwarven, or rather ‘Paiz Dwarven’ if we were to be specific, with so many words having some root in it. It even felt like I’d heard more of Dwarven than I had Lmeri, despite Lmeri supposedly being the father tongue of Veroline in ages past.

“So Lmenli.”

Do you want the long or short version?

I glanced towards the door, remembering my caretaker’s entrance.

“Short, Marcolo will be back soon.”

And truly, I did not care that much.

Short version: At the end of the Long Night, the Gryphon Cealus emerged from the earth, drawn forth by the mountains the dwarves raised. Quickly discovering a hatred for the sun and light in general, he plotted to deceive the races into reaching it so that he could destroy it. To do this he-

“Woah, woah, woah!” I waved in front of me, overwhelmed. “A gryphon that hates sunlight? The ‘mountains the dwarves raised’? What’s the metaphor here? And what’s with your definition of short?”

Metaphor…? Gideon shook his head.This is their history. It was written by a first hand account.

I laughed, amused by the insinuation. This world seemed a little more grounded than what he described, and legends like these were almost assuredly exaggerated through repeated retelling.

“Yeah, I’m sure.”

I’m not kidding. It was written by the great king Morn, who’s still alive today.

“You really think he exi…” I stared at the drake. “Still alive today? Like… his spirit?”

No. He still rules the Ost Durinit Dwarves. Do you remember how I told you I relived Silst meeting a great dwarven king? That was King Morn. Dwarves are immortal.

Immortal? I… I couldn’t imagine an existence like that. Living forever, never dying, never falling ill. And all dwarves went through that? That opened up so many questions about this world.

Why was the world not just filled with dwarves? Were they getting killed faster than they were born? If so, what was killing them? Why hadn’t I seen any of them? Were they friendly with humanity?

“I’ll have to get back to that one.” I said, reframing my perspective on Verol. “What’s the rest of that Lmenli story?”

Before he could start again, there was knocking on the door, and seconds later Marcolo walked in again.

“As I was saying, after the gala, make sure you’re ready to-”

As Marcolo launched into his spiel, I looked apologetically at the drake. It was obvious I’d be with Marcolo for a while here.

I’ll have to finish this story another time. Gideon thought. There’s no reason to distract you now, not when we’re so close to finishing this up. I’ll finish it once we’re done with this party business.