“51 seconds,” I mumbled to myself as I wandered the empty corridors.

It was Sunday. The Sunday of the 3rd week of the 4th month of the 5-month semester. The penultimate Sunday before we transitioned into the break. The penultimate Sunday I had to finish the test. The penultimate Sunday before the agreement my Anomalia had with Aclysia would take effect.

Unless I failed.

Which was now looking likely.

I had already written Esther the news. Her reply had been a simple acknowledgement. Then she had asked me if I wanted to talk. I did not. I wanted to stir in these thoughts for a little bit and consider where I went wrong.

Did I not invest enough effort? Doubtlessly I could have done more. For the first few weeks I had been content slacking off. Now that was coming back to bite me. ‘It’s not that bad, I’ll just need a few more days or weeks into the break,’ I tried to convince myself. A foolish attempt that I chased away consciously. ‘Men that don’t do their best don’t deserve women like Aclysia,’ I told myself. ‘And you, Kosmhere, are not doing your best.’

In dark thoughts, I wandered around the campus. Sometimes, I came across the wild student or teacher. All who visited the university on a Sunday did so for reasons and they afforded me as little a glance as I did them. My feet carried me in no certain direction, while I tried to work out what to do next. Was I to accept that I had screwed up and take the challenge slowly? Should I unveil my secrets, only because I was incapable of withstanding the pressure of the Headmaster’s Astral Capacity? Were those my only two choices?

‘I should have listened to Esther when it came to that list,’ I admitted. ‘I owe her an apology.’

An apology owed was not a solution found. I had one more week to bridge 9 seconds. How hard did I have to try and steel myself to overcome that hurdle? What would I even do? There was only so much time I could spend steeling myself mentally, only so many ways I could go about it. If I went to Taurus every single day, perhaps that would do the trick? Would he afford me that?

I sighed and rolled my shoulders, trying to tap into the lessons of stoicism. It didn’t work. The mental discipline was not appropriate for the situation. Stoicism taught that one should not be in anguish over facts of life one could not change. I could change this fact of life. It was my life, my laziness, my pride that demanded I did this in the allocated time and my arrogance that saw me fail.

Again, the thought of giving up and just delaying crossed my mind. I shoved it back down, harder this time, hoping I could shatter that part of my mind like glass smacking against the floor. It cracked and I felt the weight of the cosmic disapproval behind it. ‘There’s no part of you that you could ever undo,’ I reminded myself.

The fact of the matter was that I did not care for a great many things. I did not care about my performances in written tests, so I didn’t study for them when I knew I could scrape by anyway. I did not care if I was the greatest alchemist, because I knew I could get what I needed eventually. I did not care to be the greatest fighter, so I only invested myself in combat training during the classes.

I was talented. I was smart. I had an inheritance that doomed me to greatness and I had decided to pick up that mantle before it picked me up. I did not have to be the most well-read, the greatest crafter, or the most combat-savvy. All of that were things that I was perfectly happy to be adequate at. A Jack of all trades, that was what I would be comfortable with.

The one thing, the only thing that I had ever wanted to be was a good man. The kind that others looked to and knew that he deserved everything he worked for. I never wanted to seriously think that I did not deserve what I got while I had it. Worse could only be if I found out that I did not deserve what I had in the moment I lost it.

And so, surrender was not an option.

Good men did not make their beloved wait. Good men said what they meant. Good men kept true to their promises. Good men were not a distant god whose plan was as ephemeral as the proof of investment in the creation he oversaw.

So, I had no choice. I had to try and fail and get-up again and I had to fail absolutely if I failed at all. Even if it would crush me in the moment, it would still retain what underpinned my mind. To have tried one’s best and to have failed was terrible, but to not have tried as strongly as one could have and to accept defeat was to poison one’s soul. To now give up on making Aclysia mine in time just because it would have been easier to wait a few days or weeks was the same as giving her to someone else.

I was the Karitas that had been arrogant. I would not be the Karitas that had given up. That sin was too heavy for me to bear.

I planted my foot down heavily and breathed in the mystically enriched air around me. The scent of incense and the tingle of mana hit me. My eyes wandered around the corridors. Where students usually wandered, only barely visible traces of magic moved. Like strings of the finest silk, they meandered through the corridors. Purple, they flowed, sparkling silver from its origin from the hundreds of thousands of students that had visited Welldark throughout the centuries.

It was easy to forget, with how well-kept everything was, how old an institution I stood in. Traditions had formed, been corrupted, restored, and outlived their usefulness several times. My hands brushed over the wall, as I slowly began to move again. I felt the bumps of stone and the coldness of the metal. Carved rock and forged depictions, combining to inlay the deep grey and purple of the gothic architecture with the black and bright radiation of the cosmos.

Slowly, I walked along the wall, my determination rising. Just when I had resolved to leave, my fingers reached a point, widening into a horizontal V. I followed its partings, spotted the ridges of a scaled belly between the stars and the scales formed by the rings of planets. My eyes followed a pattern that wandered up to the gently curved ceiling, then down to the opposite wall.

Now that I had spotted the beginning, I could see it snaking down the corridor: the spiralling body of the serpent.

Disregarding any respect for the silence, I ran. My steps echoed in the expansive corridors. I had no idea where in the building I was, nor did I stop to find out. I turned a corner, then another one, ever aware of the spiral of planets, stars, and scales that continued. At some point, the building blurred around me. The details were hazy, except for the snake tail. It coiled around my field of vision, narrowed the periphery, as I ran. I ran and ran, until my lungs burned and the rhythm of my steps became a tired, infrequent stumble. I reached the end of the corridor and saw her before me.

The snake tail ended below a wall, giving rise to a woman with dark brown skin and silver hair that fanned out into the cosmos. The lamia’s face was framed by scales of astral origin, her enormous bosom covered only by liquid gold. I blinked and the gold began to evaporate. I blinked and it was a flowing band that coiled like fine ribbon around her arms and arched above her back. I blinked and so did she. She beheld me with eyes of black, white pupils narrowing. No iris surrounded them.

“He’s ready,” she said and I dropped into the darkness I stood upon.

I was too tired to mind falling. On all fours, I landed on a platform in a place that could have been in the middle of space or not existed at all. In almost all directions, there was nothing. The stars were an eternity away. Only in front of me, was there a path. Translucent silver, leading up to a picnic table. On it sat the Master of Magic, wearing only a pair of loose pants. Next to him was the lamia, her tail now a length appropriate for her kind and yet still formed out of stardust, opaque darkness, and energy. Her lower half reminded more of skilfully worked glass than a true serpent and yet she moved with the same grace, while receiving strawberries from him.

I shambled over to the table and sat down opposite the two. My breathing was winded and remained so for a long time. Omnius pushed a cup of fluid into my field of view. Of the many things that it could have been, I did not expect to have been hit by the taste of cola.

The absurdity of drinking soda among the stars almost made me shoot the carbonated liquid out of my nostrils. An act that only prolonged my misery, as coughing was added to the panting. “Most are too awestruck to notice what they are drinking,” Omnius remarked. “Even those that have travelled the veil rarely manage to stop and see.”

“We’re in the veil?” I asked, between coughs and looked around. I focused on one of the distant stars. As my attention narrowed on it, it became larger and larger, until my mind’s eye was capable of seeing the planet that rotated around the sun. Blue, as most of the inhabited one’s tended to be.

“A safe part of it.” Omnius’ voice caused my concentration to diminish. Immediately, the planet snapped back into being a dot among many. “Courtesy of my beautiful assistant here.”

“Who is who’s assistant?” the lamia asked, her voice sultry, with just the right amount of vocal fry to it to make her sound teasing. Omnius pushed one more strawberry between her dark lips. Clear fangs of pearly white showed for a moment, before the celestial being raised her voluptuous chest to the level of the teacher’s head. Most of his face disappeared in the sheer quantity of those tits, larger even than Esther’s were. I noted the presence of the Anomalia mark on her finger. As I had theorized, she was another one of Omnius’ haremettes.

I let them have their moment. To respect another man’s right to enjoy a moment of peace in the ample bosom of his beloved was only natural. As was to patiently avert my eyes when he went to knead said ample bosom. I did catch that the liquid gold that covered her deep brown chest moved as if it was just another layer of skin. What a wonderful way to give the minimum of ‘public decency’. Not that they had to do that for my sake.

I continued to peer off into the vastness of the veil. I had been through here so many times, seen it so many different ways, and never had it been so calm. I did not trust it. “The Maleficarum cannot reach this place.” The lamia caressed Omnius’ brown hair, as she spoke. “Rather, they have no need to.”

“You’d casually speak of the Ravagers of All to a first semester student?” I wondered, with a raised eyebrow.

“I’d speak of them to you, casual in gesture, but not in caution,” the cosmic lamia returned. “Understand that the Maleficarum stand nothing to gain from visiting here. No Encephalon and no Infecta could reach this place before we retreated. There’s no bounty here for them.”

“No brain to pick,” I said.

Omnius chuckled, his face freed enough from the lamia’s chest to partake in the conversation again. “Now who is talking of them casually?” he asked and put an arm around his haremette. “Apologies for my state of dress. You came about unexpectedly, although not entirely. I thought you’d stir in your thoughts for a few more days.”

“So you didn’t let me find you because I wasn’t desperate enough?” I asked and he shook his head. “Determined enough?” He nodded to that.

“Let us begin with a simple question, Karitas Desia: who are you?” Omnius wanted to know. I folded my hands together and silently stared at them. Inevitably, the Master of Magic continued. “You are a Neverborne, yet you are not. I can see it in the world that surrounds you.” The golden, glowing eyes of the man traced my outline.

“You are a human, yet you are not,” the lamia supported her king. “What are you?”

“I’m human,” I insisted. “From the tips of my hair to the depth of my DNA, only human.”

“What about your soul?” Omnius wondered and waved off. Again, I averted my gaze. The secret lay behind my lips. How I loathed to keep it in. Secrets had never been my strong suit. Like a spider crawling up my throat, they yearned to escape and I yearned to spit them out before they could bite me.

“His soul did not begin in this body,” the lamia hummed and I tensed up. “A reincarnation, perhaps?”

“Is that how it appears, Sethi?” Omnius hummed, his fingers drummed on the tabletop. “It would be quite bad if you were right. We have strict rules against true reincarnations attending Welldark. It does not do well for us when millennia old entities are leveraging their experience to poach young students.”

“I’m not any older than I said I was!” I insisted. “I’m---I… Why do you have to know?”

“I’m the Master of Magic of Welldark, Karitas Desia.” Omnius stood up and walked to the edge of the silver platform. He traced the rim, step by step. “Arustius is the Headmaster and his power exceeds mine, but his obligation is to keep it all running. I am obliged to make sure magic only twists the school in teaching ways and you… I cannot categorize you.” He stopped after having made the full round. “I need to know what you are, so I know you are safe. I need to know who you are, so I know what contingencies I need to plan for.”

“I…” The words surrounded my drumming heart. “Can I trust you?”

“You’re my student,” Omnius responded with a kind-hearted smile. “As long as that remains true, you are as much under my protection as the rest of this school. I will not share what must not be shared.”

I spoke five words.

Omnius’ face went blank and serious. He asked me to repeat them.

I said them again.