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Chapter 7

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“What’s your plan?”

Sylvia paused, looking back at Riley. Armed Combat had finished an hour ago, and now Sylvia had three-hundred soli rattling around in her pocket. Well, her soul, anyway. Her school robes didn’t come with pockets. A few months back, Sylvia had questioned the design. Riley’s only answer was to laugh.

“Recreation Hall,” Sylvia said simply.

Riley glanced over her shoulder. The two of them were on the path outside the Academic Building. A few scattered trees provided shade, while gardens of flowers added color. A dozen meters away, a witch in an emerald dress sat on a bench with a book in her lap. Must be a third year. Sylvia didn’t recognize her.

The blonde stepped close and nudged the silver haired girl.

“Up for something a little more adventurous?” Riley whispered.

Sylvia looked at the freckled girl, questioning. Riley grinned, her intense green eyes gleaming.

“What do you want? Because, right now, my goal is to stuff myself. There’s a slice of cake in the cafeteria that’s been calling to me for a full month.”

It was the exact same slice of cake, in fact. Food didn’t spoil in the netherworld. One of its merits.

“Not here,” Riley said.

The blonde scurried forward. Exasperated, Sylvia followed.

In the last three months, Sylvia had adapted to her situation. She no longer noticed the breeze between her legs. The sway of her braid had become so natural that the lack would be foreign instead. She had even come to terms with the bob of her boobs.

Though the last was hard to ignore right now, thanks to the scar Natalie inflicted.

But Sylvia still missed her creature comforts. Chugging down a cold soda. Munching on a bag of chips. Trolling the internet. Eating a thick, juicy burger. Grinding away for that one, perfect drop while polishing off a tub of ice cream.

Life. What Sylvia missed was life. Boring, old, ordinary life. A world where she could eat and drink. Where the sun rose and set. Where she could be herself. Her real self. Eric Swallow, the fat salary man in a dead end job.

This world. This eternal morn. Sylvia fucking hated it. Even more than the body she was stuck in, she hated being trapped here. Away from home. Without her things.

Sometimes Sylvia thought she’d gone mad.

Months of reading book after book hadn’t helped. Sylvia had already finished all her textbooks then perused the library for more. She’d tried her hand at entertainment, but the Academy’s selection was slim. What existed leaned toward classic literature, of the netherworld sense, and romance.

And for Sylvia, that kind of book was barely better than reading a reference manual. Especially when the System coughed up a quarter of the quest points per a page consumed.

In the end, she’d found history books to be the most tolerable. She would’ve read them exclusively but, well, the System’s database had to be fed. Otherwise, the topics available for her blank skill books would be quite limited.

The slog had been crushing. Sylvia had reached the point where she actually dreaded leaving charm club. Not because she wanted to be in charm club – shudder – but because leaving meant picking up whatever textbook she’d been reading and continuing from where she left off.

“I’m surprised you put those back on,” Sylvia commented.

The silver haired girl’s gaze was naturally attracted to Riley’s form fitting leggings and her sensibly heeled ankle boots. Sylvia couldn’t help it. Eric had always been a leg man and, as ‘Sylvia’, her sexuality remained unchanged.

That was one matter on which she was grateful.

Demons didn’t have hormones. However, some bloodlines had attributes that distorted the bearer’s mental character. Succubi had an enhanced libido. Many predatory species had greater aggression. The starlight witch, by comparison, was very pristine. If there were subtle impacts on her psyche, they were extraneous when set before environmental influence.

Riley looked back with a wry grin. “Those?” she laughed. “I figured, why play with fire?”

“Uh huh,” Sylvia noised, not believing. “You just hate being short.”

Riley stopped and glowered.

To the north, just past the Outer Dorms, was Vallenfelt Manor. The turrets of the rich house rose over the line of trees barely visible. They were now beyond the main grounds of the Academy. Here underbrush clawed at their robes while leaves dampened the fabric with morning dew.

Light broke through the canopy, bright and cheery. The breeze was cool, making the warm air welcoming. Phantasmal birds chirped, their sounds matched by the cry of insects. Both beings were more illusionary than real. An idea imprinted upon the plane by world logic. Supposedly there was a way to tell when these creatures had accumulated enough essence to be hunted, but Professor Wright had yet to cover that in Field Studies class.

“Did it ever occur to you that I like looking nice?”

Sylvia raised a brow.

“There’s a difference between boy and tomboy, Sylvia,” Riley said, sounding annoyed. The blonde resumed her walk, pushing through the brush. “I like sports. I was in martial arts as a kid. I don’t do the whole girly thing because it’s a waste of time, and I’d rather wear something comfortable.”

“It occurred to me, you hate being short,” Sylvia answered blandly.

Sylvia wasn’t too fond of being petite either, but she would admit it was better than being obese.

“You’re shorter than me,” came Riley’s clipped response. “And stop perving.”

Now it was Sylvia’s turn to sputter defensively. “I’m not – ”

“Oh please,” Riley rolled her eyes. “I’ve seen you staring at Ingrid and Professor Myers. It’s obvious you have a foot fetish.”

Sylvia scowled.

“I do not have a foot fetish. I have a leg fetish,” she explained slowly. “And I don’t perve. I admire. Ad-mi-re.”

Sylvia wasn’t one of those degenerates who wanted to be trampled by a woman in high heels. She wasn’t interested in a lady’s ankles and toes. It was all calves and thighs for her. And butts. And breasts, of course. The important part about high heels was how they shaped a woman’s legs.

“Uh huh,” Riley returned, not believing.

“Tch. Your legs aren’t long enough perve on anyway,” Sylvia snorted.

Riley playfully thwacked the silver haired girl on the head.

The two of them came to a stop at the edge of a cliff. To Sylvia’s left, she could make out a distant stone dais. One end to the long strand of cultivation platforms that overlooked the starry void. Below was a fifty-meter plunge into a forest of trees.

Further to the east lay the Fortress of Dawn. One of several military facilities that supported Hell’s dominion of the Timeless Beryl Wilderness. The fortress’s two tall towers rose above the woods, each supporting a long needle-like silhouette. Lightning cannons, Sylvia guessed from her historical readings.

To the south was the town of Vallen, completely hidden by the trees and cliff.

“So, what are you plotting?” Sylvia asked.

“This.”

Riley pulled a sapphire blue dress from out of her space bag.

Sylvia frowned. “You’re thinking of sneaking out.”

It wasn’t a question.

The Academy was small. Lady Vallenfelt recruited a new batch of starlight witches every other year. With a class size of thirty and an education program that ran for ten-years, it was easy to guess the number of witches.

One-hundred fifty.

In fact, the true number was two-hundred. Eighty outsiders like Ingrid and Kyna. One-hundred-twenty starlight witches like herself. As for the lower than expected number of seniors, this could be chalked up to early graduations. Not everyone stayed for the full ten years.

The Academy split its students between juniors, seniors, and external. Starlight witches in their first four years were juniors and wore green dresses. Seniors sported blue dresses. External students, who willingly enrolled, wore a red dress.

Juniors weren’t allowed off campus. Sylvia had seen enough external students to know that a starlight witch would never blend in. The only reason for Riley to snag a sapphire dress was to sneak out.

But there was a serious problem with that plan. The Academy was too small. There were only sixty seniors in the whole school. The Academy guards almost certainly knew them all by sight.

“We’ll never make it through the front entrance,” Sylvia concluded, shaking her head.

“No shit,” Riley said. “That’s why we’re here.”

Sylvia looked over the edge. “You’re crazy. Even if we get down, we’ll never get back up.”

“Don’t say never,” Riley said, slapping the silver haired girl on the shoulder. “Besides, if the worst happens, we’ll just come back in through the front gates.”

Which meant they’d be caught.

“You must’ve been a real troublemaker when you were young,” Sylvia muttered. “You know what will happen if we get caught, right?”

“Worst thing that happens is we get flogged in front of the school,” Riley answered.

Surprise, surprise, Hell permitted corporal punishment. Ordinary misbehavior was settled through fines and chores. Sylvia being assigned to charm club fell into that category, though Sylvia suspected her punishment was better described as an excuse. More serious offenses were settled through imprisonment, enslavement, and physical punishments. As demons were resistant to pain, that meant the psychic lash.

Which, Sylvia assumed, was as horrible as it sounded.

Still...

“No. The worst thing that can happen is we get expelled,” Sylvia corrected.

That wasn’t a joke. Putting aside memes involving a twelve-year-old witch, expulsion was the absolute worst punishment Sylvia and Riley could face. Death was a mere inconvenience. Whipping was but momentary pain. Being thrown out of the Academy, without a means to pay their debt, was ‘Bad End’ category horror.

Debt slavery was the most common form of slavery in Hell. The term of service was never more than a hundred years but during that time a slave could be assigned to any form of labor approved of by the courts. And for debt slaves, that meant the labor which generated the most money.

If Sylvia had a hedge witch certificate – obtainable with three years of class credit – her skill in magic would provide the highest value. So, even in the worst case, her owner could only set her to work on magical tasks. Two first years only three months in? They’d end up working a job that involved laying on their backs.

Sylvia would rather spend the next ten years as Emily’s dress up doll than that.

Riley shook her head. “They don’t expel students for breaking the rules. Expulsions are only for excess debt, serious lawbreaking, or repeated incorrigible behavior.”

“You mean, like you?” Sylvia deadpanned.

“I haven’t done that much yet,” Riley laughed. “You in or out?”

Sylvia looked over the edge of the cliff.

The silver haired girl had been dreaming of sneaking out of the Academy for months now. Not to run away. Rather, to hunt phantasmal beasts for their tasty, tasty experience points. If Sylvia could hunt and kill like an RPG protagonist ought, she could easily quadruple her daily take.

More experience meant more levels. More levels meant higher wit and spirit. Higher attributes lead to faster reading and thus to more blank skill books. A beautiful, virtuous cycle of power. If Sylvia could reach the first consolidation – class advancement as the System called it – she’d have the wherewithal to survive outside the Academy’s wing.

Freedom.

But Sylvia also knew this plan was still a long way off. Wind blade was a decent spell, but it wasn’t enough for Sylvia to go tromping through the woods all on her own. She needed mobility, detection, and defense before trying that.

Still, it wouldn’t hurt to take a look and get a feel for the environment first.

“I know a spell that can get us down,” Sylvia admitted. “But promise me you won’t keep doing shit like this until you have a graduation certificate.”

“Do I look stupid to you?”

Sylvia just stared.

No. Riley wasn’t stupid. Riley was passionate. Passion led Riley into conflict with Natalie’s crew. Passion drove Riley’s frustration with the Academy’s kidnapping. Passion put Riley here, with a wild plan to explore the town. Passion could easily make a smart woman do stupid things.

Sylvia was a bit jealous of Riley’s passion. Sylvia had always been the type who goes with the flow. Even with the System, Sylvia intended to stick with the Academy until she was massively over leveled.

Because it was easier.

Riley, if put in Sylvia’s shoes, probably would’ve vanished after the first month of class.

“Yes, mother,” Riley said sarcastically.

Sylvia scowled. “That’s low.”

“You had it coming,” Riley retorted. “I’m twenty-two years old. I can make my own decisions.”

“Don’t come crying to me if you get sold to a fat old slob,” Sylvia sneered. “Now give me a dress.”

Riley threw the sapphire dress at Sylvia face.

Sylvia snatched it out of the air.

Riley stripped down in front of her. Sylvia gave the blonde a side-on-look. Wasn’t the blonde whining about Sylvia perving a few minutes ago? Sometimes she suspected that Riley didn’t really believe Sylvia had ever been a man. Whatever. The two of them had been living in the same dorm for months. It wasn’t unusual to see each other partially or mostly naked.

It was just a little irksome to be forgotten. Sylvia leered to the side as a reminder.

“Nice, right?” Riley sassed with a grin. “But yours are bigger.”

Forget it. Riley wasn’t her type. Sylvia preferred sexy girls like Ingrid and Professor Myers. Not tomboys in tight leggings and high heels. Nope. Emily was way cuter than Riley.

….

Suddenly, Sylvia felt like a predator. Aborting the thought, the silver haired witch pulled her dark blue robes over her new dress.

“Ready?”

“Give me a second,” Sylvia said, raising a forestalling hand. “I have to remember the incantation.”

Spells were akin to poetry.

Creating a spell, much like creating a poem, was a challenge. Just as poets agonized over every word, striving to convey deep meaning with great brevity, mages worked meticulously on every rune for maximum efficiency. Both works were filled with the passion of the creator, yet it was the caster or reader whose understanding held the most impact.

Like a poem, not all the words had to be remembered. If mage understood the sentiment and recalled a portion of the runes, it was possible to guess what was missing.

This was more true the deeper a witch’s understanding of magic.

Sylvia’s comprehension was far beyond that of the typical first year. She probably rivaled a third year. Sylvia knew the Lesser Codex forward and back. Her grasp of arithmancy, the mathematical ‘grammar’ of magic, on the other hand remained poor. Thankfully, feather light was a tremendously simple spell, so Sylvia wasn’t likely to run into trouble.

Float upon the wind, untouched by the laws of earth.

That was a rough translation. Four of the six runes came to mind. Sylvia frowned, trying to fit the missing two.

“Fa-Ti-Lo-Ma-Si-Nu,” she guessed. The spell fizzled. Wait. That’s right. Now she remembered. This time, Sylvia chanted with confidence. “Fa-Ti-Mo-Ma-Si-Nu.”

A light breeze kissed Sylvia’s robes. The hem and coat-tails floated up as though she’d been immersed in water. Her body felt light, as though she could easily float away. As a test, Sylvia jumped. Her body rose. The height was no greater than an ordinary leap, but the length she lingered in the air was at least thrice that of normal.

“Got it,” Sylvia announced. “The spell doesn’t last long, so you’ll have to jump the moment I cast it.”

“A leap of faith, huh,” Riley said. She stared down off the cliff. “How do you do that anyway?”

“Do what?”

“Cast without chanting the full spell,” Riley explained.

“You mean the short chant?” Sylvia questioned. “Introduction to Magic covers it in the last chapter. Instead of chanting a rune’s full name or the spell’s meaning, you just speak the first syllable of each rune in the spell. Anyone can do it. It just takes practice.”

Unlike fast casting, which took serious effort, short chants could be learned by witches in their first year. As in, short chants were literally first year material. Albeit, last quarter of first year material.

Long form incantations, on the other hands, were a bit like doing math with a number line. A good place to start for an aspiring mage, but a complete embarrassment when used in real life. By the time students finished their first four years, they’d be expected to short chant everything.

As for fast incantations. Fast chants were mostly used for long spells and battle magic. It took a lot of practice with a lot of spells to freely fast chant newly learned magics. For ordinary mages, short chants were much more common, especially when casting out of a grimoire.

“Ugh,” Riley groaned. “Runes. Spells. Long incantations. Short incantations. I’m starting to think I’m not cut out to be a witch.”

Sylvia felt for her. If she hadn’t cheated her way to mastery, she’d also be struggling with the basics. There was a lot to learn about magic. Sylvia hadn’t even touched arithmancy, dual elemental magics, aspect energies, enchantment, or nether codes yet. And she had access to blank skill books.

A starlight witch certificate required nine years of class credit to achieve. Sylvia figured she needed at least ten skill books, maybe twenty, before she was truly competent. If she wanted to challenge Baroness Vallenfelt’s mastery, she might need as many as one hundred.

That was humbling.

“Ready?”

“I was waiting on you,” Sylvia replied. “Fa-Ti-Mo-Ma-Si-Nu.”

Faint mist flowed out before sinking into Riley’s flesh. The blonde witch jumped off the cliff. Sylvia watched, half fearful as Riley floated down. Internal magic came with a time limit. The runic structure would be eroded by Riley’s internal energies. In theory, feather light should last fifteen seconds when cast on others and half again longer when cast on one’s self.

The silver haired girl only relaxed when Riley safely passed the treeline.

“■■■■, ■■■■. ■■■■!”

This time, not fearing false starts, Sylvia challenged her skill by trying to fast chant the spell. She started humble, aiming to reduce six runes to four syllables. The first attempt fractured when she pulled the train of runes too hard. The second fumbled when she forged a mental rune too slow. The third caught. Feather light sank into her body.

The silver haired girl gave herself two seconds to be sure. Then she threw herself over the edge.

And instantly regretted it.

There was a brief sense of void, followed by mortal terror. The ground yawned below, a horror promising death. The stillness of her drift did nothing to salve Sylvia’s panic. Instead, it dragged it out longer.

Trees stretched up, with hard, hungry branches. Too far. Way too far. No wait! Too close! It was too close. Clammy panic squeezed Sylvia’s chest. The surface approached faster and faster.

Wasn’t she supposed to be slow?

Then the leaves hit. Whipping across her legs and face. She tumbled off balance. “Waaaa!” Thump!

Sylvia blinked twice. The trees whirled above her for a few seconds. A few meters away, Riley was snickering.

“Fuck you.” Sylvia flipped her the bird in emphasis.

“Sorry, but you’ve got the wrong body shape,” Riley snarked back, making an hourglass gesture with her hands.

Sylvia glowered then picked herself up. She brushed herself off. Pointless, because the few twigs that broke were already dissolving into the ether.

“So,” Riley began, looking up at the cliff. “Do you think we can climb it?”

From below, the cliff looked different. The craggy rock face hemmed in, narrower at the bottom than at the top. A gap opened at the base, a crack that led to the abyss. Sylvia gazed into the ravine, finding it filled with void and starlight.

The crevice went clear through the plane. Or, rather, part of the plane had been uplifted, creating the floating island on which the Academy sat.

“A negative slope? No way. I’m not sure we can jump the ravine either.”

Eric never had the fitness to do rock climbing. Sylvia’s athleticism was in every way superior to her old self, but she didn’t trust herself climbing while hanging from a rock wall. That was ninja warrior level bullshit.

“We might find a flatter bluff,” Riley considered. Then she looked down. “And a smaller gap. That’s what, three meters?”

“Probably closer to four,” Sylvia corrected pessimistically. Then she considered for a bit longer. “A long as there are enough handholds. With feather light we should be able to climb like a spider.”

Riley gave a confused look. “I thought that spell was only for getting down.”

“It’s feather light not feather fall.”

Feather light cut apparent mass by a factor of four. That was enough to give Sylvia one hell of a strength to weight ratio. She wasn’t confidently pulling off anything technically difficult. But if the climb was mostly straight forward, magic would render the physical component trivial.

“We’ll keep an eye out for something easier,” Riley decided. The blonde immediately headed south, the cliff on her right. “Come on.”

“Just so you know, I’m not sure I can time your buffs.”

Fifteen seconds was tight under the wrong circumstances. It’d be easy if Sylvia could just cast the spell from up top or from the ground. Unfortunately, the spell’s reach was a little over fifteen meters, and it was a good thirty to fifty up. Which meant Sylvia would have to cast on the climb while continuously recasting the spell on herself.

“I’ve done harder back on Earth. Not without equipment, but this body is better than my old one,” Riley dismissed. She rolled up a sleeve, advertising her strength.

“Still shorter,” Sylvia snipped snidely.

“At least I wasn’t a neckbeard.”

“I told you before, I was always clean-shaven.”

Riley led the way.

This was the Daylight Forest. The edge of it anyway. The Daylight Forest was one of four wilderness regions dividing the Timeless Beryl Wilderness. The other three being the Twilight Forest, the Midnight Forest, and the Frozen Wastes. These uninspired names reflected the time of day for each respective territory. As it turned out, the easternmost edge of the Timeless Beryl Wilderness corresponded to high noon, while the western coincided with midnight.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

The Frozen Wastes were the sole exception. This region, deep to the south, was named for the rigid flows of time found within. In the Frozen Wastes one could find themselves truly frozen, caught in a timeless moment forever. A terrifying prospect for an immortal people.

Of the four regions, the Daylight Forest was the least dangerous. But this didn’t mean it was benign. Packs of beryl blood wolves roamed the woods while lightning hawks patrolled the skies. Among the trees, the beryl bright wood lurked, its branches filled with exploding fruit.

Then there was the apex predator of the plane, the golden arkos. A yellow coated bear which would make quick work of any demon below the second consolidation.

Not that any of these beasts were likely to be seen near Vallen.

The Daylight Forest was not one great monolith. The wilderness could itself be divided into many smaller regions. And those regions further subdivided. The Timeless Beryl Wilderness ranged for half of Europe. Many countries and counties could be fit within its confines.

Here, near the boundary of the plane, phantasms were rarer. Decades of hunting made them rarer still. Phantasmal beasts weren’t born in the traditional sense. They were spawned without parents or childhood in accordance with world logic. However, world logic itself was not fixed. By slaughtering the surrounding beasts, the hunters had changed the region’s nature.

Now, in this place, phantasms were rare.

But not unheard of.

And a pack of beryl blood wolves would be happy to munch on a pair of foolish first years.

As they traveled south along the cliff, the turrets of the Fortress of Dawn became visible through the thinning trees. Huts could be spotted here and there, hidden by the brush. The first of these buildings were ramshackle. Then, as Vallen drew closer, nicer housing started to appear.

There was no sharp line. Nor a city wall. As the density of the community increased, Sylvia and Riley found themselves walking on dirt then cobble.

Which marked the start of Vallen proper.

Vallen was a small town built at the foot of the Academy. The town and the land surrounding fell under Baroness Vallenfelt’s dominion. It was her fief, the source of her power, wealth, and authority.

In terms of population, Vallen was tiny, consisting of ten thousand persons. On foot, Vallen felt a lot bigger. As housing gave way to shops, carts, and street stands, Sylvia found herself surrounded by people of all shapes and size.

Pig-men, with stocky bodies, tusks, and thick hands. Beast-kin were abound, whether cat, wolf or lizard. Seated in a side street, Sylvia spotted a man with triangular ears and a fox tail. The foxman moved a piece on a board. The woman across, with fin-like ears and skin marked by iridescent scales, pondered his move for a long moment before making her reply.

Weapons were everywhere.

Spears and polearms were strapped to backs. Swords and axes hung from belts. Armor was an elective hodgepodge of metal plates and leather, often leaving great expanses exposed. Sylvia felt like she owed Kyna an apology. The faerie had insisted that armor in the netherworld was all about fashion. Sylvia had rolled her eyes and dismissed her out of hand.

Now, walking through the streets, it was clear Sylvia had been wrong.

…

On second thought, Sylvia wasn’t offering shit. If she admitted her mistake who knew what kind of ‘armor’ charm club would put her in. Sylvia would be lucky if it was something as tame as a chain mail bikini.

“I don’t get it. Why brooms?” Riley said, groaning. “There has to be a better shape for flying.”

Riley was gazing through a glass window. Inside the shop was displayed a collection of brooms. Sylvia looked past them to spot an array of staves in the case on the other side of the door. Some were craggy and crooked. Others were straight and refined. All sported colored crystals up top.

The prices made Sylvia’s her heart ache: 5,999, 7,999, 10,999.

“Technically, they’re flying staves,” Sylvia answered, eyes shifting to the blonde. “The fibers are there to help vector the thrust.”

Which was why staves and brooms were sold in the same store.

“If it looks like a broom, it’s a broom,” Riley retorted.

Sylvia shrugged. “That is what everyone calls them.”

Right then a tantalizing scent teased her nose. Pausing, the silver haired witch sniffed the air. Spice and meat. Sizzling fat. An allure more powerful than a beautiful woman tugged Sylvia down the path.

It only took a minute to find the source.

Oils crackled and popped. A golden haired bear of a man held a pan over open flame. A slab of meat sizzled within, fried in its own juices along with scattered vegetables. Sylvia gulped. Her stomach twisted with desire.

She watched with fascination.

Cooking, in the netherworld, required skill.

Not the skill of a chef. Rather, a mastery of ki and inner flow. Food in the netherworld was as phantasmal as everything else. When burned and boiled, the etheric crust would be stripped from the ingredients. With the essence exposed, the natural inclination was to dissolve into nothingness.

To cook required maintaining that essence. A chef had to attend to the mystical as well as the physical. They had to massage the essences. Combine them. All while keeping the core in place. This was not an art completed with a mere recipe. Cooking required mastery.

Correspondingly, food was a luxury.

“Hello ladies,” the bear-like chef greeted. “If you give me a minute, I’ll cook you two a delicious wolf steak.”

Sylvia’s eyes floated up to the metal shackle around the man’s neck.

He was a slave.

Due to the Law of Acquisition, slaves were the majority population of the colonial planes, like the Timeless Beryl Wilderness. When souls were captured, they would most often be sold. Slaves drove the expansion of the planes. But slaves didn’t remain slaves forever. Decades from now, this chef would be a citizen.

Sylvia felt this was an unstable way to build a civilization, but it’d been Hell’s approach for one-thousand-five hundred years.

“How much?”

“Seventeen a drom,” the cook answered, flipping the meat with a flick of his hand.

“We’ll take two!” Sylvia said eagerly. She slapped a palm down on the table, shifting ten silver coins with a value of thirty-four soli from her soul.

“Ha! Two steaks for two beautiful girls,” the golden haired chef laughed. “Coming right up.”

Sylvia took a seat at the bar, watching the food sizzle. If she could, Sylvia would’ve been salivating now. Eating was true bliss.

“Two?” Riley asked, taking a stool beside her. “You know I have money too.”

Sylvia’s eyes narrowed. The silver haired girl held out a greedy palm. “Then give it back.”

Riley snorted. She did not, Sylvia noticed, give the money back. Sylvia lowered her hand. Instead, she eagerly watched as the cook dumped a slab onto a plate and handed it to a customer. Sylvia licked her lips. She swore her stomach was growling.

“You’re obsessed,” Riley commented. “You know that, right?”

“Food is life,” Sylvia countered. The horror of no food was, in the silver haired girl’s opinion, worse than being turned into a girl. It even challenged charm club for top tier suffering. “Don’t tell me you aren’t eating.”

“Oh, I’m eating,” Riley replied. “It just feels weird to after three months.”

Sylvia gave the freckled blonde a suspicious stare. Weird? Not wanting to eat was weird. Not being hungry was weird. Riley was the one who was weird.

“So,” Riley noised, rolling her eyes at her friend’s antics. “What do you think?”

Sylvia pursed her lips. “Feels real.”

“Yeah. I know what you mean.”

Walking through the Academy was like walking in an illusion. The teachers told them about world. They showed them spells and magic. They made them fight. But there was a wall between them and the truth. The Academy was a doll house, and they were pretty little school girls living inside of it.

It didn’t help that Sylvia’s classmates came from Earth.

And most of their seniors too.

Being here, in Vallen, made things real. Real demons, roaming real streets, working real jobs.

Clunk. A stone dish was placed before Sylvia. Steam wafted off the succulent meat. Two halves of a blue root vegetable stood beside the steak, soaked in the juices.

“For the silver haired enchantress,” the chef said with a suave bow.

Sylvia gulped. She lifted her two tined fork and dinner knife hesitantly. Then she pressed her implement in, letting her ki flow into the food to stop the rupture. She cut. A thin slice separated. Eager, longing, Sylvia stuffed it into her mouth.

Heaven.

The silver haired witch chewed. The spice blended perfectly with the meat, filling her mouth with a blissful flavor. Every portly man struggled with their weight for different reasons. Gluttony had always been Eric’s sin. He had never pretended otherwise.

Now, here in the netherworld, Sylvia could eat without guilt. There were no Calories in the netherworld. If she ate sweets all day, she’d never gain a single ounce. The only constraint on her feasting was the size of Sylvia’s wallet.

A pity she only had three-hundred soli.

Driven by desire, Sylvia sliced off another piece.

“Looky here. I haven’t seen you two flowers before,” a slimy voice said. A large man, covered in blueish gray fur sat down on the stool next to the silver haired girl. “What brings you beauties into town?”

Sylvia set down her knife in annoyance.

A wolfman.

That was the most accurate description Sylvia could come up with. A canine snout. Five fingered hands sporting sharp claws. These beastly features were paired with a humanoid frame. Metal pauldrons covered the wolfman’s shoulders, while his legs were shielded by flauds and leather pants.

His chest was exposed. Sylvia could make out the hint of a six-pack underneath the fur.

Seeing Sylvia’s gaze, the wolfman grinned. The expression was terrifyingly human.

“Hey. Go sit somewhere else,” Riley spoke up.

“Is that how a lady should speak?” the wolfman replied snidely. “All the chairs here are free. Besides, this doll isn’t complaining.”

Then, just like that, the wolfman draped his arm over Sylvia’s shoulders. Sylvia froze. Stunned. A sick feeling crawled up her spine as her mind tried to make sense of what was happening.

“Take your arm the fuck off her,” Riley snapped. The blonde’s stool squealed as she stood. Knife in hand, Riley’s green eyes burned with fury.

The wolfman sneered. “I don’t see – ”

Thunk.

That was the meaty sound of a knife hitting bone. It wasn’t Riley who moved. It was the bear-like chef. The golden haired man loomed over the counter, his butcher’s knife buried deep into the wolfman’s arm.

“The misses told you to fuck off, werewolf,” the golden haired cook growled.

The werewolf leapt from his seat.

“You dare raise a hand against me, slave?”

Blood glistened on the werewolf’s blue-gray fur. The wound closed quickly, sealing itself as though it never occurred. Enraged, the demon glared at the chef, gray eyes filled with fury.

The golden haired man drew himself to his full height. The chef’s size was intimidating. Not just in height, but the breadth of his arms and shoulders.

“Did you forget whose domain this is, demon? Get out before I call the guard.”

The werewolf scoffed, clawed hand reaching for the hooked blade at his hip. Sylvia hopped off her stool, wind whipping around her as the ether condensed. Behind, the chef’s knife filled with ki until it shed a faint hue.

The stall went still.

Then the werewolf removed his hand from the pommel of his weapon.

“I’ll make sure your owner knows how you treated me, slave,” the werewolf said before leaving.

It took a minute for Sylvia’s nerves to settle.

“Thanks,” Sylvia murmured, turning back toward the bar.

Sylvia felt shaky. Her body was ready for fight and flight. Her soul fixated on the werewolf’s arms around her shoulders. Her mind tumbled through simulations, trying to find the right course of action. She should’ve objected. She should’ve shrugged the arm off. She should’ve taken a page from the chef’s book and used wind blade to claim her pound of flesh.

Or maybe, cut the whole arm off.

“It is my job to serve my customers,” the chef said jovially. “Besides, you never know what may come when you help a lady.”

The golden haired man gave her a wink. Sylvia smile was stiff. The casual flirting was all the more apparent after the harassment. Sylvia felt sick. Then guilty, because it was terrible to feel disgust for the man who had helped her.

Was this what life as a girl would be like?

Sylvia shuddered. For once, she had sympathy for Lady Vallenfelt’s insistence that the Starlight Nether Witch Academy was for women alone.

“You’re not going to get into trouble, are you?” Riley asked.

“If that werewolf dares complain to my master, he’ll be the one facing trouble,” the chef said. “The baroness does not take kindly to those who harass the ladies, much less those that touch her witches.”

Riley nodded. Her green eyes were fixed on the cook’s collar. The band of black iron wrapped his neck. More a symbol than anything else. Riley seemed to have seen it for the first time.

“You’re a slave,” Riley said.

Sylvia frowned, giving the blonde a look.

The chef, however, wasn’t bothered.

“Ha! Yes, I am,” he confirmed, tending to his pan. “My soul was acquired in the Daylight Forest, near the Frozen Wastes. A golden arkos had me in its gullet. The hunters bravely faced the beast, then cut him open.”

The chef slashed through the air with his knife, enjoying his tale.

“There they found me. A great treasure from a grand adventure. My master named me Ashqar in honor of my origin. Not that I remember anything. Only flashes from the beast’s memories as my soul was dormant at the time. My first recollection was of the slavers who awakened me.” The bear-man’s eyes narrowed, good humor absent. “Scum. Two years of training, then I was sold to my master.”

Phantasmal beasts loved to feast on mortal souls. They couldn’t digest them, but having a soul helped a beast in condensing their nether soul. It was a kind of instinct that helped drive the transformation into an immortal being.

While being eaten didn’t hurt, it wasn’t without consequence. If a mortal soul was held in a beast, it would inevitably absorb a portion of that phantasm’s nether code. Souls so tainted were called chimeric, whereas untouched souls were pure. Many bloodlines required pure souls to reproduce.

Beast-kin were a common product of chimeric souls.

“Doesn’t it bother you to be a slave?” Riley asked.

The chef shrugged. Tilting his pan, he slid a seared steak onto a stone plate. Riley picked up her utensils. Sylvia was almost through hers. Thanks to that damn werewolf, half of it had disintegrated.

“I don’t know anything else,” he said, voice low but even. “Fifty seven years from now, I’ll be a freeman. Or so they say. Isn’t it the same for everyone? Knowing nothing. Laboring at the feet of our lords. Though, I hear you witches still recall your mortal lives.”

“We do,” Sylvia confirmed.

When a person died, their mortal soul was drawn into Unus Mundus – the one world. There, one of two things would happen. First, if the ego was weak, the soul would melt into Unus Mundus becoming one with the universe. Second, if the ego was strong, the soul would pass through Unus Mundus and enter the netherworld.

While crossing Unus Mundus, the soul was cleansed. Dreams, regrets, and memories would be washed away, leaving behind the core of self. This soul would float naked, waiting until the right code gave it a new, phantasmal shape.

Starlight witches did not go through this process. Instead, Baroness Vallenfelt collected their souls directly. Having never passed through Unus Mundus, they retained their mortal memories. And likewise, their attachments to life.

“Is that a blessing or curse?” the chef questioned solemnly.

“A little of both, I suspect,” Sylvia said simply.

To be born into the nether properly meant accepting the world as it was. Retaining memories meant being tied to a past that would never return. But it wasn’t without merits. To remember was to know oneself. If Sylvia couldn’t remember, who would she be?

At the very least, she wouldn’t be Eric.

Who could say if that was better or worse.

“Ha! What matters is that I am here, cooking food for beauties and fending off dastardly punks.” With good cheer, the golden haired chef waved around his butcher knife in excitement.

Sylvia couldn’t help but grin. Slapping down a palm, she left a score of soli behind.

“A tip, for your service.”

-oOo-

Runes

A rune is a stable three-dimensional shape that, when drawn, affects the local ether. Runes can be found everywhere in the netherworld. All objects, all forces, and all living things are the product of runes.

While the use of runes is commonly associated with magic, they appear outside of magic. Physical action is generated through runes. Ki is filled with runes. Ki based arts are born from rune transformations. The study of runes and their mathematical relation is therefore the closest thing to science and universal law the netherworld has.

All pure runes consist of one continuous loop. The simplest is a circle, but there are many possible loops, such as the left-handed and right-handed trefoil knots, both of which represent different runes. Drawing the rune correctly is, therefore, important even when that rune is formed in the mind.

Runes cannot be directly drawn in the air, due to crossing structures. Thus, mana manipulation, internal conception, or a rune stencil is required.

Sylvia’s Notes: In my later studies I became aware that runes may be related to a niche area of mathematics known as knot theory, but my head swims just thinking about it.

Pure Runes

A pure rune is any rune constructed from a single string. Pure runes are considered fundamental magical structures. Etheric energies that have associated pure runes are called elements. There are 1332 pure runes recorded for the 24 elements. Which makes for, roughly, 55 runes each.

The Collegium Magicae has declared the list of pure runes complete. It is highly unlikely that even a single undiscovered pure rune exists in nature.

Compound Runes

A compound rune is created by combining runes, which themselves may be pure or compound. All compound runes can be drawn directly as a composite. Generally, a compound rune is only considered discovered when a method to disassemble and reassemble it from its pure rune components is known.

Because compound runes can be directly imagined, they can be conveniently used in magic even without understanding their substructure. The simplest compound runes derive from two pure runes. The most complicated compound rune publicly known is made from sixteen.

It is judged that there are hundreds, if not thousands of compound runes yet to be discovered.

Complex Runes

Any rune that cannot be directly drawn, even in the mind of a skilled mage, is called complex. Complex runes are unsuitable for common magic as it takes special tools, traits, or talent to use them in spell casting. However, complex runes still find use in alchemy, enchanting, and other environments where a mage is not rushed.

To use a complex rune, it must first be assembled. This means drawing the non-complex subcomponents, then merging them using the correct process. This action can be completely trivial or as difficult as solving multiple connected tavern puzzles.

It is not known how many complex runes remain undiscovered, but some scholars speculate the number is infinite.

Abstract Runes

Runes that only exist, or have different meaning, when paired with radicals. Radicals consist of closed loops that are not, themselves, runes and open strands of any sort that are made stable when tied into an existing rune. It is impossible to say how many abstract runes exist, as current magical theories are unable to guess their existence.