“What do you mean we can’t leave the city?!” Lyric demanded. She had her hands on her hips, glaring at the Astral Knight. She and her roommate, Elsie, had come all the way to the gate of the fourth wall of the academy, planning on heading for the divination meadow.
“Our orders are to keep all students inside the walls today,” the woman in the shining metal armor replied simply.
“But why?” Lyric said.
“If you have a complaint about this requirement you can take it up with the academy’s security office.”
“Let’s go Lyric,” Elsie said. “I don’t want to make trouble.”
“How am I supposed to do divinations properly without the meadow?! It’s literally part of the name,” Lyric grumbled. She still let Elsie lead her away by the arm regardless. They started walking back towards the academy, a walk that would take around twenty minutes.
“Do you really have to be there to make your predictions?” Elsie asked.
“Well no,” Lyric admitted. “But it makes them stronger. On my own I’ll only be able to see a day or two into the future. With the meadow I can go a full four months before getting overwhelmed.”
“That’s a huge difference! What’s so special about it?”
“The meadow has been cultivated for hundreds of years,” Lyric said. “It was likely a natural formation of divination magic centuries ago, and over time has been artificially made stronger by caretakers’ hands.”
“It certainly sounds beautiful,” Elsie said.
“It’s more than just beauty, it’s sort of a raw, natural magic itself,” Lyric said. “I think divination spells could happen there even without having a Diviner class. There would be a whole lot of luck involved, but not impossible.”
“What makes a Diviner able to do it without needing all that luck then?”
“That’s the nature of my class’s astra. I think different classes have different flavors of astra. At least… that’s what I’ve recently come to realize anyway.” She went silent for a moment.
“Something on your mind?” Elsie asked her.
“Oh, nothing,” Lyric said. “Actually, I was just thinking I might go talk to Professor Celestia to see if she could write me a pass or something to get access to the meadow.”
“Who?” Elsie asked.
“The divination professor, and probably my best friend at the academy until you start filling that role. That is, assuming my predictions are still accurate. Your brother seems bent on proving them wrong now,” Lyric said, though the last sentence was only mumbled. She started walking back towards the academy’s keep. “Come on, I’ll get you back close enough to the castle that you can find your way to our dorm room first.”
“Why don’t I just go with you to meet the professor?”
“Oh! Do you really want to?”
“I mean, what else am I going to do? You’re one of the only people I know in this world. I figured since you’re not just going to mope in front of your mirror after all I might as well hang out with you,” Elsie said.
“Certainly not the way I foresaw that you’d declare you wanted to be my best friend, but I’ll accept it nonetheless,” Lyric said nonchalantly.
Elsie just looked at her and blinked. She saw that Lyric’s hopeful smile hadn’t reached her purple eyes. Only a saddened need could be seen in them, searching Elsie’s eyes for something in return. She decided to play along with her roommate.
“Alright then bestie,” Elsie said, walking next to her roommate and linking an arm with hers side-by-side. “Show me this amazing Divination Professor of yours.”
This time Lyric’s smile did reach her eyes.
---
“What do you mean you can’t write a note saying I’m allowed to leave the city?!” Lyric demanded. Elsie felt a wave of déjà vu.
They were back at the academy itself in the office of Professor Celestia. Various astrology charts were posted around the room, though they didn’t match anything Elsie recognized from Earth. She did find the poster about the dual moons particularly interesting while listening to Lyric talk to her teacher.
Professor Celestia looked like she was even younger than Lyric. She was short and slender with frizzy light brown hair. Elsie half expected to see a big pair of glasses on her face, but there was nothing covering her unrealistically bright blue eyes. When she spoke her voice sounded much more youthful than either of the two roommates in her office.
“I’m sorry, Lyric, but we just received an urgent message this morning. No one is to leave the city walls until further notice. There’s going to be an announcement about it at the assembly tomorrow. That’s where you’ll be introduced isn’t it, dear?” She said to Elsie.
Dear? She looks younger than us for sure.
I bet she’s a summon. If that’s the case she’s probably ageless like us, which means we have no way of knowing how old she really is.
“I believe that’s what the headmaster told me, yes,” Elsie replied.
Ask her how old she is!
Aeric. You can’t just go around asking women how old they are.
“Well it was lovely to meet you ahead of time then. And very fitting for a Diviner like myself, I must say: getting to learn more about someone before everyone else does.”
“Hey, I met her first,” Lyric said.
“Of course you did, dear. I knew that you would.”
“Speaking of foreknowledge, have your predictions suddenly started going wrong?” Lyric asked.
“They have. I didn’t know this city gate closure was coming at all. But of course you know that’s not entirely unusual: and it’s not necessarily cause for alarm either. I was planning on re-syncing as soon as my schedule would let me,” the professor said.
“I’m glad it’s not just me,” Lyric said. “So you agree that the guards need to let us out of the city then, right?”
“I understand your concern, and I agree that it would be nice if they would make an exception for us to use the meadow. It is disappointing, but I’m sure this restriction won’t last forever. We’ll just have to make do with shorter term divinations until we can go back to it.”
“That’s so painful though. You know how much it wrecks my channels to make divinations directly on my own.”
“I know, dear. It’s not pleasant for me either, even with all these years of practice,” the professor said. “But if you don’t mind my saying, I’m getting the sense from your aura signature that you might have found a little… astral restoration assistance for yourself.” She gave Lyric a knowing grin.
Lyric looked away. “Not exactly. I mean you’re kind of right. But I don’t see it happening again any time soon.”
“Do you mind if I ask who it was? I’m not trying to pry or anything, I just want to make sure you’re not being put under pressure to do something you weren’t comfortable doing.”
Lyric glanced towards Elsie, then back at Professor Celestia. “I don’t mind telling you, but it really was more of an accident than anything else. It was with her brother, actually.” She nodded towards Elsie.
The short professor examined Elsie contemplatively. She felt like she was being looked at under a microscope.
This is awkward. Why did I agree to come see her professor?
Hey, you’re the one on a best friend date, not me.
“This is unexpected,” Professor Celestia said. “Come to think of it though, I did see that you’d be spending a lot of time with him in the coming weeks.” She put one hand on her hip and tapped her finger to her chin with her other hand. “I trust that you weren’t using your class skills to take advantage of that boy? This is extremely fast for a relationship to have gone this direction.”
“Of course not! I promise what happened with him was an accident,” Lyric said. She seemed on the verge of tears.
“Oh sweetie, I’m sorry for bringing it up. Please be careful with that kind of practice though. You know it can be more addictive than Sylvan magic. Which I can also tell you’ve been dabbling in a bit too hard. You’ve got way too much of it in your aura.”
What is this aura thing they keep talking about?
Something only Diviners can see, maybe? Kind of like how Oracles can see system information about a person. They are sibling classes after all.
Stolen novel; please report.
“That… was actually also an accident,” Lyric said. “This time with Elsie herself. She overdosed me with a bit of healing magic.”
Professor Celestia folded her arms and looked up at the red haired student again. “Now this I don’t like at all. What is going on with you and your brother that within the first few days of knowing my dearest pupil you would not only drug her, but then knock cores with her too?”
We’re monsters, aren’t we?
Both of those things were accidents and you know it.
“I mean, if it really was these two anyway! Can we pretend like I didn’t admit to any of that? I don’t want to get them in trouble.” Lyric looked up at her teacher with her sad purple eyes. “Please?”
The professor studied her for a long moment, then relaxed. “Fine, fine. The Great Spark knows I’m not innocent of my share of all that anyway. To be honest it kind of comes with the territory. But you’ll learn more about that in one of my advanced courses, Lyric dear.”
“I look forward to it,” Lyric said.
“Sorry I couldn’t be of more help today,” the professor said.
“It’s not a problem,” Lyric said. “I’ll just do it in my dorm room instead.”
“Best of luck to you then. And to you, dear,” she said to Elsie. “I hope you’ll consider taking Divination, even if you are an Astral Manipulator. It’s harder, but still possible for you to learn this sort of magic you know.”
“I didn’t realize I’d mentioned my class,” Elsie said.
“Oh well of course you didn’t,” the professor said gleefully. “But that’s part of what makes being a Diviner so fun!” She shared a knowing look with her star pupil.
Please don’t tell me we have to deal with two of them now.
I doubt it, unless we take a class from her.
Elsie and Lyric made their goodbyes and returned to their dorm together. It was time to make a divination prediction the hard way.
---
“Now for the fun part,” Lyric said. “Would you like to join me?” She held out both hands. The two girls were back in their dorm room within the academy’s keep.
“What are we doing?” Elsie said as she took her roommate’s hands.
“I’m going to connect both of us to the castle’s leylines at once,” Lyric said.
“Is that like what you did with Aeric?” Elsie asked. “Mixing your astra together?”
Lyric’s expression turned regretful. “No,” she said quietly. “It’s not the same thing as that.”
“Alright. We’ll whenever you’re ready. So why do you need to connect me to the leyline? You’re the one casting the spell.”
“A few reasons. First: it takes some of the strain off of my astral channels. Hope you don’t mind a little magic flowing through you, by the way. Second: this makes it easier to include other people in my visions. Usually all I can see are things focused around myself. But if we’re making physical contact and including you in the spell then I should be able to see things related to you too. And that’s what we want,” Lyric said.
“We do?”
“Of course! This is how we’ll win the competition. I’ll just see which areas you would have failed and then we can spend time focusing on how you can win them. That way we can accomplish more even if we spend less time than the boys.”
“That feels a bit like cheating,” Elsie said hesitantly.
“Nah, it’s just using all the tools we have available to us. Now, are you ready?”
“Let’s do it.”
Lyric closed her eyes. Elsie focused on her trace sense and looked at the girl in front of her. She could sense the astra building up within her body, extending out, searching for something. She felt it brush against her own astra, though not in a way that would try to form an actual connection like had happened between Lyric and Aeric. Instead it was more of an invitation to follow the same course: to flow in the same direction together rather than to intermix and flow inside of each other’s channels.
Elsie allowed her astra to flow next to Lyric’s, though it seemed like the girl was just flailing their astra around at random.
What is she doing?
She’s trying to connect to the leylines, isn’t she? But she must not be able to see it the way we can. It’s like she’s just groping around in the dark. Do you think I should help her?
Seems a bit improper to push someone’s astra around without their consent, but that’s kind of a bridge we’ve already crossed at this point, isn’t it?
Elsie gently guided their threads towards the powerful leylines below the castle, establishing the connection in less than thirty seconds.
Lyric’s eyes opened. Their normal light lavender color was replaced by a dark, ultraviolet light. Elsie felt a disturbance in the air around them like a high powered fan being pointed towards them. Lyric slowly rose into the air, defying gravity itself, her braid floating as if underwater. Elsie continued holding onto her hands as she rose.
The astra within her felt like it was being pulled towards the leyline like a fishing hook pulling a fish to draw closer to its captor. The feeling was tiresome, though from what she could see of how much astra her roommate was using it must have been even more exhausting for Lyric.
Elsie watched as Lyric’s astral connection to the leyline surged with power, reversing course and entering the girl’s body with reckless abandon. Instead of being pulled towards the leyline, it was now pushing directly back into her channels and eventually into her core.
The flow looked like it would be painful from what she could tell. Like Lyric was trying to drink out of a firehose itself. Within seconds it was over, and Lyric fell back down onto her feet. The ultraviolet glow had left her eyes.
“That was… so cool, Lyric!” Elsie said.
Lyric didn’t respond, seeming unsteady on her feet for a moment. Elsie continued holding onto her, making sure she didn’t fall over. Eventually her eyes fluttered a few and she looked up again. Her expression made it clear that she was in pain. She took a few steps away from her roommate and collapsed back onto her bed, the mattress bouncing lightly in response. She groaned and pushed her palms over her eyes, working out her headache.
“I hate doing divinations this way,” she said.
“What happened? I could feel the astral flow and then you rose up into the air like a puppet. Was that not supposed to happen?”
“That’s normal,” she said, removing her hands from her eyes. “It’s just very taxing on my astral channels to go through all that.”
Elsie came over and moved her roommate’s pillow so that the green haired girl could rest her head on it. She sat down on the side of Lyric’s bed next to her and listened.
“Thanks,” Lyric said. “I’m still learning how to develop my internal magic system to become a better vessel. At my current level I’d actually be better off trying to cast that spell further away from the powerful leylines we have beneath the castle. But at least if I had been in the meadow it would have managed some of that excess energy for me.”
“But you still got something didn’t you?” Elsie asked.
“It was basically nothing,” Lyric said.
“Nothing?”
“I mean I saw the rest of what will happen today and a tiny bit of tomorrow. But that really is practically nothing compared to when I used to be able to receive several months worth of predictions. You’re about to tell me that that’s not nothing.”
“Well that’s… not fair,” Elsie said, changing her word choice partway through her sentence. “But you’re right I was about to say it wasn’t nothing.”
Lyric seemed relieved. “Okay, so the things that I saw can still be changed. That’s good to know. I was worried something might be different since the desync has thrown off all my other predictions.”
“So what did you see?”
“Actually… I didn’t just see information about you and me. I could see your brother’s future too.”
What? Why’d she see my future?
I mean I was allowing her to see me. Do you think there’s some way that caused her to see information about you too since we’re Twinborn?
“Is that not normal? I thought you said you saw him all the time leading up to us being summoned.” Elsie said.
“I did, but that was generally in relation to me. It’s not like I can just spy on anyone I want to, you know. That would be way too overpowered if I could just see what any random person was going to do. Usually I only see things related to myself. In this case I saw everything Aeric will do for the next few hours even though it wasn’t related to me after all.”
When she says “everything” about me do you think she means like… everything everything?
I have no idea.
I’m glad I already got back from the hot springs then.
She doesn’t strike me as the type of person to try to peek over the wall, Aeric.
Still… this is awkward.
“Why do you think you saw my brother?” Elsie asked.
“I don’t know. I mean… I do have one idea. It might be that I still have some of his astra cycling through my system. That might have affected it,” Lyric said. She got a far off dreamy look as she stared up at the canopied curtains above her bed. “It’s like he’s still part of me even so many hours after it happened. I wonder…”
“Okay, this is a little weird for me,” Elsie said. “I thought Astraeans didn’t usually talk about the whole exchanging astra thing. Isn’t it supposed to be considered too intimate to discuss?”
Lyric snapped back to reality and looked over at her roommate next to her. “I am not Astraean, remember? I’m new to this whole astral cycling thing too. But I think I can understand why it might be considered a private topic. Sorry for bringing it up. Especially since it’s about your brother.”
Elsie sighed. “I’ll tell you the same thing I told him: I think you two should be taking this slow. Don’t rush into things just because of the experience you shared together.”
Lyric looked with suspicion at her roommate. “In my past visions you actually encouraged us to date. I mean we hadn’t had that exchange at the start of our relationship, so maybe that is affecting things. But this time around you told him not to commit to a relationship?”
“This time around?”
“Like in reality instead of in my visions,” Lyric said.
“I did tell him to wait,” Elsie confirmed. “And I’m telling you that you shouldn’t be so quick to commit to him either.”
Lyric’s expression faded from suspicion to a self-satisfied smirk. “That implies he was at least considering the possibility. You wouldn’t have had to talk him out of it if he hadn’t had at least some desire for it anyway.”
Elsie sighed again. “Now you’re just overthinking things”
“I’m glad he was at the point that you had to tell him that, Elsie. It actually reassures me more than anything. Not to mention that if I can see his future as well as mine, it should be so much easier to figure out the pieces of the puzzle to make him fall in love with me after all.”
Uh oh.
You’re not out of the woods yet, little bro.
I told you, I’m older than you.
Lyric stood up and grabbed a sheet of paper and a pen at her desk. She wrote a few things on it then folded it up and handed it to Elsie. “Here,” she said.
“What’s this?”
“A list of all the books you need to check out from the library,” Lyric said. “You’ll have to leave within the next few minutes if you want to get them before someone else checks them out.”
“You’re not coming with me?”
“I have another urgent matter to take care of. Right now these books are your best bet for winning the competition against your brother.”
Lyric practically pushed her roommate out of the door, then turned and looked at her vanity desk. She smiled at her own thoughts, then got to work.