Nicholas is rifling through Luca's stuff while he's off sending letters to people -Luca is always doing that these days even though he mutters often about people being difficult- because Nicholas is bored. Luca’s three dorm mates are still out and about since dinner finished a short time ago.

They all get assigned random beds every year so Stavros had to go haul some people around so three of them could get a room to themselves. Nicholas wanted to bring Luca along too despite the year gap but Stavros got shifty-eyed and rejected it outright.

Right now, Rafael and Stavros have detention, but no one really knows what for anymore, they've stacked up so many. Nicholas is technically supposed to be there too.

It's basically detentions for the next five years even though they only have two left in school, because on top of all the things they get up to, they also then skip detentions or the teachers don't care enough to watch them for the evening and it gets pushed back.

Points don't mean shit to people like them and their parents wave off letters home, plus expulsion is a joke when you're talking to an Ayad and a Lambros. Detentions won't work either when you're still with friends (and if you're not put together then why bother going).

Punishing them with no Loops is the only real threat (though Rafael half-heartedly pretends to care) but that means they get even worse until the teachers give in and just let them do whatever they want. Nicholas has sabotaged five games over his long school career because if he doesn't get to play, neither does anyone else.

(Rafael got a prefect badge in year eight, probably because he's literally the only one who can rein in Stavros and Nicholas. The teachers know if they guilt Rafael with responsibility enough he'll actually step in and hold the other two down. Adam also used to be the calming voice of the group.)

So Nicholas skipped out today but the other two went because the teacher supervising is Mrs Saad and they need to steal some potion ingredients anyway while they clean cauldrons. Sometimes they trap certain ingredients like turning butterfly legs into frog warts so it'll explode some shit but that takes planning and she’s getting a little too good at spotting fakes.

They'll all duck out halfway through regardless because it's a full moon tonight.

Nicholas messes up Luca's bed while he waits impatiently, transfigures a pillow into a particularly floppy Rito, and then finds the grimoire in Luca's book bag. Nicholas pulls it out, flipping through it but all the pages are blank.

"What does a high mage write about in his grimoire?" Nicholas jokes, poking the pages as sits up on Luca's bed. "Dear grimoire, I am High Mage Xia - heart, heart, heart."

Nicholas grabs the grimoire and rolls into his back to get more comfortable, only for a torrential rain of ink to pour from the pages. Nicholas flings it away, lurching up and spluttering, wiping his face off with his sleeve. "What the fuck!"

"Nicholas?!" Luca cries, having just entered the room to see ink flooding off his bed. "Are you okay?"

Nicholas -entirely soaked in ink- has slapped the book open against the wall above the headboard, scraping it up and down against the rough stone.

"You like that, bitch?" Nicholas mocks.

"Nicholas, stop!" Luca snaps and snatches the grimoire away. "Do not -do not- fuck with the grimoire, it will kill you. I told you before!"

"What, death by a thousand paper cuts?" Nicholas scoffs.

"No, death by Haochen Xia because this is a piece of his magical core!" Luca snaps.

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Nicholas pauses. "Oh." Then he just shrugs. "Whatever, the grimoire fucking knows snitches get stitches."

"Nicholas."

"Alright, I'm sorry! I'll stop!"

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Nicholas doesn't stay out of trouble long because the very next day, Luca jogs down the stairs and ducks into the dorm with the three year-elevens only to find Nicholas sitting at the foot of his bed, head in hands and rumpled after staying up the whole night.

Luca has come to the unfortunate realisation that Nicholas is the leader – as in he leads them into the stupidest things.

"What have you done this time?" Luca asks. He knows they weren't in the beacon tower because they haven't mapped and refurbished the whole thing and letting Thoth run around when he can potentially rip through the brickwork and into a cockatrice is not the best idea.

Stavros, splayed out on his bed opposite Nicholas with hands behind his head, laughs but sounds exhausted. Rafael’s bed curtains are drawn.

Nicholas looks up. "So, you said kind of a throw-away comment about spiders in the forest, and I wondered if Thoth would win a fight against a joro…and we got curious."

Luca sighs.

The forest has a nest of joro in it – no relation to Jorogumo the woman-spider, just lesser spider demons that can’t shapeshift. He was allied with them for a while during the war, before they tried to eat him to gain shapeshifting powers. It was a whole thing.

"Now, okay," Nicholas begins. "In my head, I didn't realise you mean plural joro spiders."

"-therfuckers!" Rafael rips open his bed curtains and falls out, leaving behind the giant body of a half-eaten spider with its legs all curled up in death, taking over most of the mattress but still looks like its twitching because Rafael’s frantic flailing kicked it.

Luca just instinctively throws up a shield spell in front of Nicholas but him and Stavros are howling with laughter.

"Why the fuck is it in my bed?!" Rafael yells at them and then groans when his sore muscles pull painfully.

"Thoth wouldn't let it go," Stavros tries to explain. "I thought you wanted it as a trophy or something."

Rafael grips the edge of Nicholas' mattress and pulls himself up into a sitting position with a muttered curse. "I'm in pain but I have enough of Thoth left to still throw you out of the fucking window."

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Fifteen minutes later, the spider has been shrunken and put into a small vial because yes actually Rafael does want to keep the trophy, and the four of them have commandeered the prefect's bathroom because they once stole and copied the key Flick has.

It’s a large open air onsen on the seventh floor and has individual baths down one side or a huge pool sculpted in rock with cool waterfalls, both falling down and falling up.

Nicholas is sitting up on the edge of the rock with his legs spread enough for Rafael to sit back against his stomach, arms hooked over Nicholas' thighs and relaxing into a head massage. Both of them are sitting at a bit of an angle so Rafael can kick his legs up onto Stavros' lap for a foot massage as well.

Luca is sitting off to the side, making no comment about how the three are naked and maybe a bit too close and he really wants to ask but is too shy to say anything.

"-so we get to the nest," Nicholas is explaining for Rafael (who remembers nothing about his nights) and Luca. "And it was a trap because we hadn't seen a single spider until they all swarmed around us. Like the trees were covered in them and there was a giant one – and I was really not expecting it to talk."

"She's Iktomi," Luca chimes in. “Not actually Lakota mythology, just named like that.”

"Who the fuck named it like some pet?" Stavros cries.

"Never mind the name, she can speak?" Rafael asks. "What did she say?"

Stavros scoffs. "Well before it could say anything, Nicky started trying to seduce it-"

"No I fucking didn't!" Nicholas yells over Rafael and Luca bursting into laughter.

"Rito transformed back!" Stavros shouts above Nicholas. "And then he's all like; wow, it's incredible how the light of the beautiful full moon glimmers off your luscious body hair."

Luca is wheezing, hand over his eyes. Rafael twitches pathetically and groans in pain because the laughing hurts.

"I said it in a 'please don't kill us' tone not a 'let me smash' way," Nicholas insists.

"You still said it!" Stavros cackles. "The spider fucking stuttered at you in shock – I swear, Nicky has mastered the art of chaotic bullshitting, it's practically a hex."

"At least I didn't headbutt Thoth in the dick," Nicholas snaps.

"You swore you wouldn't tell!" Stavros cries.

Rafael splutters. "What – wait, what? What happened?"

Nicholas wheezes. "Hearth tried to duck under your legs to escape a spider but he tripped and then-"

Stavros drags Nicholas into the water by the ankle and proceeds to try and drown him. Poor Rafael gets thrown into the water too because he was lying on Nicholas and weakly struggles back out to safety.

Luca is flopped over the edge of the bath, body convulsing in silent laughter because he's run out of air.