And so, time passed. The next day, everyone moved into the new house that had been built (well, they had to practically drag Nashra out of her room), and things settled into a comfortable rhythm. Lilith’s days began and ended with experimenting with her Domains, usually under Geb’s watch, and occasionally (when she had the inclination) with Nashra guiding her on demonic Domains (guiding being the keyword – to tell the truth, it was mostly Kali doing the heavy lifting in that regard). She’d go to general combat practice with Agathe and the other kids, and then go exercise or do more general training with Agathe after.

And that was where Lilith hit her first snag. A month after she arrived, Lilith was inside a classroom with Agathe, Kali, Carmen, Alex, and Judy, exercising her wings and tail.

“Um, I heard I could find Agathe in here, I…who’s that?” Thiala’s voice rang out behind Lilith, sounding confused.

“Crap. I forgot to lock the door!” Agathe quickly pulled Thiala in, closing the door behind her. “Sorry, Lilith, I know you didn’t want anyone to know.”

“L-Lilith? She’s human, though?” Thiala said, look closer at Lilith, who still had her back turned.

Agathe sighed, looking to Kali. Seeing Kali nod, she continued. “I’m not going to insult your intelligence and pretend it’s not; you’d put two and two together later, given that almost everyone who normally hangs out with her is here, except for her, and the person you saw has the same hair, same clothes…”

Lilith turned around, smiling weakly. “Hey, Thiala. As long as you promise not to tell anyone about this, except the teachers, I’ll explain, alright? So, come take a seat.”

Thiala nodded. “Uh, sure, I guess? I’m just…a little confused right now.” Nevertheless, she walked forward, sitting down at one of the desks.

“Alright, so, first things first, I’m not actually human. I used to be, but I’m not anymore.”

Thiala tilted her head. “What do you mean? How do you just change race? I thought that wasn’t possible?”

“There’s a lot of stuff going on there, but for now let’s say that I got a very special wish from a djinn. As a result, I got turned into a Perfect Chimera.”

Thiala’s eyes widened. “Really?! That’s awesome! So…why do you normally look human?”

“Tunem made a bracelet for me to hide my non-human features. How do you think Raphael would react if he saw me like this?”

“Oh. I see, that makes sense. What do you do in the times you’re not in class with us?”

“I’ve got private lessons with Geb or Agathe. Geb is helping me unlock Traits and Agathe is working on training my body.”

“Alrighty, so, who else knows?”

“All the teachers know, as well as my roommates, Vithi and Nashra.”

“Cool! Um, can I come talk to you if I want to talk about it? I’ve got a lot of questions.”

“Uh, yeah, I guess. If you have free time, I guess you can sit in on some of my sessions, so long as you’re not distracting. And after school I’ll usually be in the new building they built, so you can come meet me there.”

“So, I get why you’re taking all these special classes and stuff, but why’s Kali always around? She’s always around but doesn’t seem to do much with you, so I haven’t been able to figure out why.”

Kali smiled, grabbing Thiala’s hand. “There are some dangerous people after Lilith. Think of me like…a bodyguard, here to make sure no one gets hurt. Lilith’s very important to us, and we don’t want anything sneaky happening with her. Now, what were you here for?”

“Oh, right! I totally forgot! I needed help with this spell and was wondering if Agathe could help me memorize it better.”

Agathe sighed. “Yeah, I can do that. Lilith, you just resume your exercises, alright? If you forget what to do next, let me know and I’ll remind you.”

The next break in Lilith’s normal routine came about a week later, during a testing session with Geb.

“Hey, Lilith, can I ask you a favor?” Geb asked, watching Lilith as she bobbed in the air, trying to use her wings to keep her altitude more or less constant. They were currently trying to unlock flight-based Traits, and had been met with some limited success, but it was rapidly becoming clear that without more room to fly they weren’t going to get much farther.

“Yeah, what’s up?” Lilith replied distantly, obviously trying to focus on flying.

“You can land for now, take a break while we discuss this.” After she landed, he continued. “So, today’s class we’re going to be discussing Perfect Chimeras. This is, obviously, a bit of a…personal topic for you, so I wanted to sit down and discuss it with you first, and maybe, uh, get your opinion on what I’m going to be teaching, see if it’s entirely…accurate, as far as you can tell?” He said, an embarrassed look crossing his face.

“Yeah, that’s cool with me, how do you want to go about this?”

Looking grateful, Geb answered. “So, first, mind reading off what you have from your Help System?”

Lilith began to read, but quickly stopped. “So, I don’t think I can feasibly read all of this to you. There’s what looks to be…almost 1000 pages that simply list known Domains encompassed by Perfect Chimera. I’m assuming you don’t want to listen to all of that, so do you mind if I just trim it to the relevant part?”

Geb nodded. “Yeah, there’s no time for that, go ahead.”

Lilith read off the relevant section, which turned out to be just the one she had gotten after reading The King in Yellow.

“Alright, that’s good. I’m going to be going over some of the more popular theories on Perfect Chimeras, and while that one isn’t popular, I think I remember some obscure theory that went something along those lines. I’m going to open it up to the class to theorize on it, would you be alright bringing that theory up?”

Lilith paused. “Yeah, shouldn’t be an issue.”

“Alright, last thing, I guess, and this is just a heads-up because I can’t really do anything about it, but Tunem’s already changed our curriculum to include you among the number of known Perfect Chimeras. He’s having us keep your name a secret, but he said we should at least update the number, as all the important parties already know that there’s another one running around.”

Lilith sighed. “And Thiala?”

“I’ll talk to her, make sure she knows to keep the secret. Alright, that’s everything, I think. You can leave for now, prepare for your next class, I’ll see you during my class, alright?”

A few hours later, Lilith walked into the classroom, feeling slightly apprehensive. Much of the class was already there, looking by and large pretty bored. Thiala was already there, and waved Lilith over when she saw her.

“Hey, how are you feeling about this?”

“I’m kind of worried about what people are going to say, to be honest.”

“It’s alright, this stuff is cool! I’m sure it’ll be fine!”

Lilith smiled weakly. “I hope so. Just remember what Geb told you, alright?”

“Got it!”

“Good. Anyway, I’m going to get to my seat, we can talk later, ok?”

“Sure thing!”

Lilith walked over to her seat, not noticing the odd look Raphael was giving her. Shortly afterwards, Geb walked in and called the class to attention.

“Alright, everybody settle down, we’ve got a bit of a different lesson for you all today. Will someone please remind the class what we’ve been talking about lately?”

“We were discussing domains and maximum number of them people can have.” Thiala answered promptly.

“Very good, Thiala. Now, can anyone tell me about the exceptions?”

Raphael raised his hand. “If someone has more Domains than is normally possible, we call them a Chimera.”

“Correct. Any others?”

“If someone has all the domains that’s a Perfect Chimera, right?” Veit asked.

“Excellent. Today, we’re going to talk about Perfect Chimeras. There have been 5 recorded Perfect Chimeras-”

“I think you misspoke, teacher. There have only been 4. Isa Longshot, Errus the Wise, Mother Mai, and Winston the Render.” Raphael said quickly, cutting Geb off.

Geb frowned. “Your information is out of date. As of a few months ago, a fifth has surfaced. Their identity is confidential, to better protect them from the Society, but the Council has recently notified all relevant parties of this situation.”

The class broke into a murmur at this, speculation running rampant.

“I bet they’re from the Mint family,” Conrad said, leaning forward to talk to Lilith, “They’re a bunch of elves who are always tinkering around. I wouldn’t be too surprised if one of them figured something out.”

Lilith shrugged. “That sounds plausible, but I wouldn’t know.”

Geb cleared his throat, causing the class to hush. “Alright, that’s all well and good, but who can tell me more about Perfect Chimeras?”

Raphael immediately spoke up. “My grandmother fought alongside Winston during the war. She said that Winston could dive into the ground like it was water, and moments later he would appear underneath an enemy, grab them, and vanish back into the earth. He could fly like a bird, swim like a fish, and if someone managed to actually pin him down, he’d just vanish! The moment he set you as his target, you were dead!” Raphael puffed out his chest, like he had personally been fighting alongside Winston.

“Yes, those are the stories. But, can you give any confirmed reports of one in action or at the least, offer speculation on how the effects in those stories might be achieved?”

Raphael frowned. “Shouldn’t my grandmother’s testimony be counted as a confirmed report?”

Geb shook his head. “While Councilwoman Elenoa is indeed a trustworthy individual, stories she told you aren’t official documents. They are not after-action reports, nor have they been confirmed by another individual. If she has any documents submitted during the war, those would be admissible, but as it stands, any stories told to you are not.”

Emily raised her hand, prompting Geb to call on her.

“Well, I think maybe Winston could burrow through the ground because of subterranean Traits he had, maybe from burrowing animals, as well as things like earth dragons and wall-breaker worms? And swimming and flying is pretty common, so that’s probably coming from Domains that have those? I’m…not sure about vanishing, though.”

“Yes, that’s a good line of thought. A Perfect Chimera would have easy access to any of those Traits, and in all recorded cases a Perfect Chimera is at least able to easily swim and fly. They’re often incredibly strong in these fields, as they’re able to gain bonuses to them from every single Domain that has a bonus to it. For this reason, you should never attempt to outrun a Perfect Chimera under your own power. If you do find yourself in a situation where you need to escape a Perfect Chimera, magic or a vehicle is almost always required. Their physical speed and endurance is unmatched, so you must use other means.

“As for being able to vanish, that’s trickier. If I had to guess, that would be either something from some sort of ghost or specter domain, or it would be a spell of some sort. Without more information we just can’t be sure. Alright, so, with what we know about Domains in mind, can anyone give a guess as to where they come from?”

The class was silent for a bit, mulling this over, before eventually Gabe spoke up. “Well, one shouldn’t be able to be born naturally, so it would have to be made somehow, right?”

“True. Any ideas on how to do that?”

The class was silent, and a moment later Geb spoke again.

“To be honest, I don’t expect anyone to be able to give a good answer here. The answer is that to create a Perfect Chimera you’d need a LOT of mana, and you’d have to be able to shape it perfectly to give someone the Domain. Even then, almost every single experiment intended to create a Perfect Chimera has ended in the death of the one they wanted to make a Perfect Chimera. For this reason, attempting to create a Perfect Chimera is forbidden, and so they’ve remained incredibly rare.”

“Well, then, someone must have broken that rule, if we’ve got another one running around now. What’s the punishment?” Raphael asked excitedly.

“The punishment is the same as murder. Those involved are tried and sentenced in a court of law. As for the new one, they were a result of a magical accident. No one was considered at fault, and as such no one is being punished.”

Raphael nodded, looking oddly disappointed.

“With that out of the way, who can tell me some theories on what a Perfect Chimera is?”

Emily frowned. “It’s just something with all the Domains, right? Isn’t that all there is to it?”

Geb shook his head. “That is, technically correct, it is something with all the Domains. However, that cannot be all a Perfect Chimera is. Many of these Domains are mutually exclusive; one cannot be a unicorn and a regular horse at the same time, so, why is the Perfect Chimera able to have both these Domains?”

Raphael speaks up once again, clearly interested in the topic. “Well, prevailing theory is that a Perfect Chimera doesn’t actually have all the Domains, and instead the Perfect Chimera Domain just has every single Trait from every single Domain inside of it.”

“A good theory,” Geb responded, “but there are still issues with that. If that was the case, why is being a Perfect Chimera not passed down from parent to child? Theoretically, if it was a single Domain, then it should be genetic, like all the others.”

Raphael shrugged. “It’s not perfect, but it’s better than anything else we have.”

“Any other theories?”

“Well…” Lilith said hesitantly, “what if Perfect Chimera isn’t really a Domain, but sort of a tag used by the system to catalog the beings it’s seen?”

“That’s stupid,” Raphael said derisively, “Why would this “system” need to catalog beings? You don’t know much about magic for someone your age anyway, so you should just stay quiet while people who’ve actually read about it do the talking.”

“Well, she knows more than you!” Thiala exclaimed suddenly.

“Are you kidding me? Have you heard her questions? She doesn’t know things that any 4 year old would know. On the other hand, I’ve been reading about Perfect Chimeras ever since grandma told me about Winston. I think you saying that just shows that you don’t know anything either, so you should shut up too!” Raphael fired back.

“Settle down, both of you.” Geb said. “Raphael, I asked for theories, and Lilith gave one. She’s in this class to learn, just like you. A similar theory has been proposed before, but that theory is generally not as popular as the one you gave. We can’t discount anything out yet, though, as we simply don’t know enough. Let’s leave this topic behind for now and talk about the four other Perfect Chimeras Raphael mentioned earlier. Now, the first known Perfect Chimera was Mother Mai…”

Raphael lounged in his dorm after class, waiting for the last of his friends to get there. He’d called them all to have a meeting, and he was just waiting for one more.

“More tea, master?” a girl standing behind him asked. Her name was Emily, and she was the maid his family had assigned him. She came from the Windkepeer family, a long line of servants-for-hire and was currently under Raphael as a form of tutelage before a permanent master would be assigned by her own family.

Raphael waved his hand. “Sure. Make it quick, I’ll need you back for the discussion we’ll be having.”

She silently stepped away, reappearing a few minutes later with a  cup of tea, which she handed to Raphael.

Veit looked to the others uncomfortably. They had been here for over 10 minutes, and Raphael wouldn’t answer any of their questions, responding to them all with a noncommittal “I’ll tell you after everyone’s here. I don’t want to repeat myself.”

Fortunately for them, Thomas, the last of their group, arrived after another few minutes. “Sorry, everyone! Alexei made me come see him after classes were over. He offered to move me to a new room, so he was explaining that all to me.”

Raphael leaned forward. “What room?”

“Uh, 1-T, I think.”

Raphael looked towards Emily, who began to speak almost immediately. “1-T previously belonged to Nashra, Lilith, Alex, and Vithi.”

Raphael smiled deviously. “Perfect. That fits right in with what I was going to talk about. Take a seat.”

After Thomas was seated, Raphael continued speaking. “I’ve called everyone here to talk about Lilith. Emily, report your findings.”

Emily stepped forward. “There are no Clements families among the great families of the humans. Furthermore, no one has heard of a Lilith Clements, and the company she keeps isn’t much better. The older human always around here is apparently her aunt, Judy Clements, also an unknown. We have been unable to find a last name for the catgirl, Alex, but she spends most of the in-school time secluded with a teacher, often Tunem himself. Kali does indeed appear to be the Kali from the Council, and from what I’ve been able to find, Vithi’s a djinn, although there isn’t much information on her either.”

“Alright, so?” Nissa, a gnome girl, asked.

“So,” Raphael said, “this is strange. A completely unknown woman has entered school here and has been put into the beginner magical classes with us but isn’t in any of the other classes. Normally, the school doesn’t like to mix older students with the children, but it’s made an exception for her. More importantly…”

He nodded towards Emily, who continued. “During school, when she is not with us, she has private lessons from Agathe or Geb. While I have been unable to find out most of what goes on in these lessons, it is known that from time to time she has been seen doing normal exercises on the field with Agathe.”

Raphael’s smile grew deeper. “Right before the first class, Kali mentioned that I “wasn’t important enough” to know who Lilith was. She clearly doesn’t know who I am, so I’ll let that slide for now, but that made me suspicious. Emily?”

“When I attempted to read the minds of Lilith’s companions, I was immediately stopped by Kali. From this, I have concluded that the story they told us about a dangerous ability is likely a lie, and they are instead trying to keep something from us.”

“Which, obviously, made me even more suspicious.” Raphael continued, “And today was the final piece of the puzzle. Before class, Thiala waved Lilith over, and they had a short conversation where Lilith was “worried about what people would say” and told Thiala to “remember what Geb told her”. And when Lilith offered her ridiculous theory on Perfect Chimeras, Thiala backed her up, saying Lilith knows more about this than I do.” He paused for a moment, watching the faces of the group carefully. “I think that Lilith is claiming to be this fifth Perfect Chimera Geb was talking about. But I think she’s tricking everyone somehow. There’s no way someone like her could be a Perfect Chimera. For one, she looks completely normal. Two, she doesn’t know anything. She’s in classes for children, for goodness’ sake! I think she’s a Society spy, here to get information on the Council and their operations and is just pretending to be ignorant.”

An odd expression flashed across Emily’s face, but she said nothing, watching the situation unfold.

“I think that we should go teach her a lesson. We’ll catch her after her lesson with Agathe tomorrow, when she’s tired and about to go eat lunch. We’ll give her a bit of a kicking, make her spill everything, and then go take her to Tunem and be heroes!”

 “Are you…sure about this?” Thomas asked, looking dubious, and the rest of the kids likewise looked uncertain.

“Positive. Besides, she can’t afford to blow her cover, and if she’s good enough at infiltration to fool Tunem and Kali, she’s got to be pretty specialized, so we should be able to take her in a fight. Worst case scenario, we beat her up and the adults don’t listen, we get in a bit of trouble for being in a fight, but we let her know that we’re on to her, and we won’t let her get away with it. If you don’t come with me for this, consider yourself out from this little group. I don’t need to hang out with cowards.”

Thomas paled, nodding slowly. “Alright. I’ll be there. Just let us know when.”

One-by-one, the remaining kids signaled agreement, and Raphael clapped. “Perfect. You’re all dismissed. I’ll give you more information tomorrow.”

After everyone left, Emily gave Raphael a small bow. “Master, I will be taking my leave now. Is there anything you need before I go?”

Raphael shook his head. “No, you’re good. Be on your way.”

Fighterman481

So, school stuff. These characters might not get much loving right now, but I do plan to do more with them later. But that's not written yet, so we got a ways to go.

So, movement for a Perfect Chimera. The things are fast. Really fast. Speed boosters are far and away the most common Trait, followed distantly by strength boosters. This is because a lot of animals and monsters have a need to go fast, and often have Traits to aid in that. The Traits are relatively easy to obtain as well, you just...move. This results in Perfect Chimeras having easy access to a lot of speed.

I consider there to be four main forms of movement (although if anyone has any others I'm not thinking of, let me know), running (which includes jumping), flying, swimming, and burrowing. Burrowing is much less common than the other 3, but common enough to be a viable form of motion for Perfect Chimeras.

As for the kid's plot...well, it's stupid and rash, but they're kids. Raphael's got an over-inflated ego, and everyone else is eager to curry favor with him so they're just sorta dragged along for the ride. Emily's conclusion that the ability is fake is obviously incorrect, but her line of logic is something along the lines of 'they wouldn't need to stop me if the ability existed', which is...also incorrect but, hey, kids.

As for Raphael and Perfect Chimeras, he's got a complex. He thinks of them sorta like other kids may think of superheros, except Perfect Chimeras are real. Kid's got an obsession.