Santa's Secret Transfic Anthology Vol. 2 / Everyday Sweets #7

She's Such a BWitch

by Azura

She's Such a BWitch is a romantic vignette between two girls set in the backdrop of a dark fantasy magical school.

— Azura

Eris clenched her jaw as that bloody girl sat down next to her. There was a whole bloody library of seats, and yet Ms. Savior always seemed to find her way next to her. She didn’t even try to talk with her, not that Eris would bloody do anything other than tell her to shut up, but it would at least be a reason for why Lily was always following her around like some sort of lost puppy just begging her to kick it.

Eris settled on her usual response to Lily Baniaga’s now constant intrusions, rolling her eyes and letting out a huff before going back to work. And Lily responded with her usual small smile as she did so, why Eris’s annoyance with her presence seemed to please Lily so Eris would likely never understand.

After a brief rustle of setting out books and papers, Lily set to work beside her. As usual, the only sounds to intrude on Eris were the subtle scratching of a pen on paper, and the turning of ancient pages. Normally Eris could just block it all out, but ever since Lily had come out as her true self, that she was in fact not the boy of prophecy, but the girl of prophecy, Eris had found herself increasingly… aware of Lily’s proximity. A subtle tingling on her skin when Lily would stand too close, or a warmth (which was definitely just rage!) that flickered inside her when she had run into Lily when she went into the gym outside of her normal time and saw how the sweat traced its way down the sharp muscular lines of Lily’s body.

Eris had been alone her whole time in this wretched school. The school was well known for its abysmal student survival rate, and for the students that ended up shunned, such as herself, well, the odds were far worse. Instead of giving up and dying though, Eris had just been more determined to show all of those bastards just how wrong they were (Did ranting to herself about how she’d show them all play into the evil sorceress vibe people seemed to get from her? maybe). Eris worked twice as hard as any other student, and it showed. Eris was leagues beyond her peers in power and had better grades than them too (which, of course, just created rumors that Eris had started practicing dark magic to get ahead). The only one who was actual competition for her was Lily herself, which was just one more thing about the girl savior which drove Eris mad.

Every scratch of Lily’s quill cranked the tension in Eris up another notch, making Eris’s jaw tighten until she could hear her teeth creak. Eris gave Lily every ounce of the venom she’d built up to lash out at the all the classmates which had cast her aside, and yet the stupid girl just seemed to keep coming back for more punishment. Eris had thought ignoring Lily would do the trick, that clearly the chosen one would get bored of whatever this is, but it had been weeks, and Lily still kept showing up wherever Eris was, like a soul seeker. Lily flipped the page on her book again, and Eris just couldn’t stand it for one moment longer.

“What do you want?” Eris hissed, casting her pen aside, which clattered against the desk, so very noisy in the deep silence of the library. Lily just looked up at her dumbly, as if not understanding that Eris would be speaking to her, which, to be fair, Eris would very much rather not be.

“Why do you keep following me, you twit? It’s not like I’m nice to you,” Eris said, using that sneer she’d practiced which would always send the first years running, and leaning towards the much shorter girl. Eris’s posturing didn’t seem to bother Lily, it never did, which was just one more thing about Lily that drove Eris mad. Instead, the foolish girl just cocked her head as if it was some fascinating question, her dark eyes meeting Eris’s own.

“Well, maybe it’s because you’re not nice to me.”

“That’s idiotic,” Eris said. She was close enough to Lily now that she could feel the soft puff of the shorter girl’s breath against her, which sent those wretched tingles skittering across her skin.

“Well, maybe I’m an idiot,” Lily said, her lips forming that same little smile she always made when Eris would huff as she sat down next to her.

“An idiot wouldn’t be able to outdo me in classes, as few as you have managed. But what you’re saying is idiotic. Everyone loves you, literally every student in the school would kill to be your friend and have you around for protection, but you just seem to insist on hanging around the one person who doesn’t want you around, or even remotely need your protection oh great savior.” Lily only sighed in response to Eris’s rant, Lily’s short ginger curls falling into her face as she shifted away, and looked off into the distance at nothing.

“I… I don’t have to guess with you. You’re right, they all want to get close to me, have me at their lunch table, or study group. So they feed me compliments and gifts, and I just… I hate it all, because they don’t give a shit about me, Eris. I try to keep everyone safe as it is, but they want that for themselves specifically, or they just want to get close to me as an in with my family. It’s never about me. At least with you I know you’re snapping at Lily, and not whatever figure people have built me up to be,” Lily said, her voice quiet. Eris didn’t think she’d ever seen Lily look so small and vulnerable. Lily always stood tall, so sure of herself, but now she was shrunk in on herself, her toned arms wrapped around herself as this painful truth was pried out of her.

Rage bubbled up inside Eris, because now she could see it, all those interactions she’d often found herself spiteful over. None of them were even real. How dare all of those worthless little worms treat Lily this way? Eris, of course, considered Lily’s constant heroics ridiculous, but even she had to admit Lily was bloody good at it. Magical schools were somewhat notorious for their… unique view on student safety. Most classes that came through tended to have a graduation (survival) rate of about 80%, which to be fair was a lot higher than magical kids had before the school system went into place, kids without the protections of the schools tended to either blow themselves up, or fall prey to the many, many monsters that fueled themselves off of mana (of which still mostly defenseless young mages were a uniquely dense source of). But in the past seven years of Lily being at the school, there had only been a single student to flunk out (die), which was completely unheard of.

Eris had never been particularly good at things like social interactions, understanding her own emotions, or dealing with people in general, really. Most people seemed to just instinctively pick up on that there was something wrong with her and give her a wide berth. So she found herself coming up short, not quite sure how to handle this sudden confession from the woman she’d found herself in some strange unrequited rivalry with. So, of course, she went with her usual instinct.

“I’ll kill them. You have saved each one of them a dozen times over, and yet somehow someone like me is better company,” Eris said, suddenly shaking with fury, her fists clenched so tight that her nails dug painfully into her palms. Eris practically jumped out of her seat when a hand rested itself on her wrist, tanned skin warm against her own stark paleness.

“I’d say there isn’t better company than someone like you,” Lily said, not quite meeting Eris’s eyes, her cheeks suddenly flushed in a way that Eris couldn’t look away from.

“And what’s that supposed to mean?” Eris spluttered, suddenly finding herself warm, despite the eternal chill that seemed to permeate the school’s spatially flexible library.

“People seem to think you’re evil because of your aura, or just from rumor, but you know what, Eris? I see you, I see your actions, and who you choose to be. Like last month, when I was trying to fight off those constructs that were going to break into the first years’ dorm, and that big one knocked me aside. Everyone just assumed I got it somehow, but that thing had nearly knocked me out, and there was no way I was going to stop it before it got someone. I saw you cast, Eris. It would have been so much safer for you to just run like everyone else, but when it came down to it you didn’t,” Lily said, so fervently that Eris could hardly meet her eye.

Eris could remember that day. She’d been practically chanting to herself that she needed to turn around and leave. That it wasn’t her problem, and that at best all she was going to do was look like a fool for standing around, and at worst be one of the gormless victims these things always incurred. But when she saw Lily’s head crack against that pillar, the woman that gave everything to keep others safe suddenly limp and bleeding on the floor, and not a single soul stepping up to help her the one time she needed it, something in Eris snapped.

It wasn’t uncommon for a mage to be born with a speciality, some specific field of magic that they found almost effortless to learn, and could often cast spells of that would normally require far more mana than a single individual could possess. Eris herself was blessed with a speciality, if you could call it a blessing, that is. She’d figured out shortly after being sent off to school that she had one for destructive magic, but not really your everyday fireball or lightning bolt, no. Eris had a speciality for the kind of destructive magic that most sane societies would consider a war crime, the sort of magic that would kill at a scale where the bodies became a statistic. It was considered too expensive to have actual teachers in the school, so students ended up just being given materials by the school itself, and fortunately (or unfortunately) the school had a penchant for encouraging a student’s speciality. So when a young Eris had started on the spell tome that had appeared in her room, she had the fun experience of learning a spell that would set off a super volcano.

Suffice it to say that Eris had plenty of options on how to kill the wretched monster stalking its way towards Lily, unfortunately most of those options would also leave Lily and every other student in the room equally dead. But Eris’s mind was nothing if not good at supplying her with a killing spell when she needed one, and an ancient Sumerian food preparation spell found its way to her tongue before she even gave it thought. It turned out that given the right sort of power, a spell designed for a butcher’s shop was perfectly capable of dealing with a towering boar/snake chimera. And after a dreadfully hard to look at few moments, there was a tidy pile of various cuts wrapped in butcher’s twine and paper laying on a perfectly cleaned (If rather ugly) hide.

“You don’t know me, Baniaga,” Eris said, trying to push away the feeling that Lily had seen right through her.

“No… but you are the first person who I so very much want to know,” Lily said, her voice so soft and earnest that Eris wanted to run. She could feel the resistance inside herself slipping away, the feelings she’d kept pushed down and masked beneath a poor excuse of being simple jealousy suddenly surging to the surface. After being quietly rejected so many times, someone she would try to befriend avoiding her, or a lunch table suddenly not having room when she’d go to sit there, it was easier to just decide you were better off that way. But faced with Lily trying so very hard to reach out to her, it was suddenly impossible to keep it all away. Eris wanted this desperately. Wanted someone to be there for her more than she wanted to breathe.

Eris leaned forward slowly, wanting to leave time for Lily to pull away. The quiet lurking fear inside her insisting that she not fully commit in case this was all some sort of prank warring with the furious desire inside her that had been unleashed. Lily’s eyes were like inky pools in the ghostly magelight, those dark eyes flickered to Eris’s lips, and suddenly Eris was a little more sure that this wasn’t just her. Maybe she could have this after all.

Lily leaned in, meeting her halfway, long eyelashes fluttering as her eyes closed. There wasn’t an explosion of feeling as their lips met, like in some of the more risque books Eris had traded for, but it felt… right. Lily’s lips were slightly rough beneath hers from the way Lily chewed on them when she was nervous. Eris shuddered softly as Lily let out a quiet sound, which Eris already wanted to hear again. Eris surged forward, lacing her fingers through Lily’s wild curls as something scary and addicting surged inside her with the way their lips moved against one another’s. Awkward, a little messy, and so very perfect.

After a blissful eternity, they both pulled away. Each of them gasping for air. Lily looked wild, her hair somehow even more of a complete mess than usual, pupils blown wide, and her lips puffy pink and wet. It turned out that her well kissed look was just one more thing about Lily that drove Eris mad.

Thank you so much for reading, I hope you enjoyed this short piece as much as I enjoyed writing it. I'd love to hear you thoughts, and you can find my other works over on my personal Scribblehub, as well as Ao3, or last year's anthology which is very much worth a read.

— Azura

Santa's Secret Transfic Anthology Vol. 2 / Everyday Sweets #7

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