I woke to a pair of enormous golden eyes staring at me from an inch away. They did not so much as blink. Sol was perched on my collarbone and she was staring down at me with singular focus. She leaned forward and pecked my chin.
"Solara," I said. "You should reconsider."
Sol tilted her head. She weighed my warning, found it lacking, and delivered a chirp of such volume that it rang off the stone of the ceiling. That was the whole of her reconsideration.
I sighed and reached up to brush at her. My hand was still slow with sleep. It was then that I became aware of the second gaze in the room. I turned my head, and found Ash already looking at me.
She lay on her side next to me propped on one elbow, her golden hair loose around her face. She had been watching me for some time. I was certain of it. Ash yawned and stretched both arms above her head. "Come on, Lys," she said. "Almost late for first bell. I was going to wake you up myself, but Sol wanted to do the honors."
I pushed myself upright, and the motion caused Solara to half-flap and half-fall onto my thigh. I stretched my own arms. My spine gave a small and satisfying protest. "And why," I said, "did you not simply bring breakfast here, Hero? You have done so before, and I did not find the arrangement objectionable."
Ash coughed. Her gaze flicked to me and then away again, and the flick was so brief that I might have missed it had I not spent so long learning to read her. Her face was just faintly red. "I think," she said, "it'd be good to go ourselves."
"Oh?" Ash offered me no answer. "Very well," I said. I looked to Sol, who had settled onto my thigh and was regarding me. "Do you wish to-"
Sol chirped and launched herself upward. She made it perhaps four hand's width before her wings betrayed her, and she pitched forward and smacked me squarely in the forehead. I caught her before she could fall, my hands cupped beneath her out of habit.
"I will take that as your answer," I said, and set her between my horns. Then, we set out.
Something about the Academy felt wrong. The Academy had never felt particularly pleasant, but something about this was still different. The staring had not stopped. That much was as it ever was. But the quality of it had changed, in some fashion.
No student walked into a wall at the sight of my horns. A boy with a green Spark met my gaze and held it for a full second before he looked away, and there had been less fear in his eyes. Not none, but less than I might have expected.
A pair of demonbloods by a window did not press themselves to its edge as I passed. One of them, a girl with hair the color of frost whom I had seen refuse to blink through an entire afternoon of duels, inclined her head. It was the smallest gesture. Sol chirped back on my behalf, which seemed to please the girl a great deal.
Was this curiosity, perhaps? That was the nearest word I had for it. In my old life I had been looked at in exactly two ways, and this was neither of them.
I glanced sideways at Ash. She was watching me watch the corridor. "You wish," I said, "to say something, Ash."
"I wasn't going to say anything."
"That is not what I said."
The mess hall went silent the moment we crossed its threshold. One moment there were dozens of conversations layered over one another. The next moment there was nothing at all. It was as though the whole hall had inhaled together and forgotten how to release the breath.
I swept my gaze across the room. The hall was full. It was fuller than I had ever seen it. Every bench seemed occupied, and I began to think we would be forced to stand, until I found a stretch of empty seats at a table near the center of the room. I recognized the table. It was the one at which I had sat the first time I had come to this place, on the day a girl named Lena had closed her hand around my satchel and been shown the Requiem for it.
I crossed the hall and sat. The gazes followed me down onto the bench and settled there
"I'll go to the line," Ash said. She glanced around the crowded room. "Do you want to come with me, or-"
"I will sit, Ash."
She nodded. She looked around once more. "I'll be right here." Then, she turned away and joined the line.
Only after I had settled did I see the two others sitting further down the bench. There was a girl of considerable width, and beside her a girl whose nose had claimed rather more of her face than a nose ought. They stared at me. Then they slid backward along the bench until the end of the table stopped them from sliding further.
I studied them. I knew them from somewhere. Though, I could not recall from where. My memory for faces has always been excellent, when the faces belonged to those worth remembering. The freckled one glanced sideways at her broader companion. Then the two of them collected their bowls, stood and left.
Only when they had already left did I remember who they were. The two girls who had been with Lena, on the first day I had come to this mess hall. They were rather inept without their master.
Sol flew from my head to the table. She landed in a small heap that had almost looked graceful for a single moment. Then she righted herself, waddled the length of the table, and returned to chirp at me. She was demanding my attention, and I obliged by scratching beneath one of her wings. She trilled.
My mind drifted to the white Crest. The one with the twelve heads.
The shape of it had been Echidna's, or at least it had been close enough to be no other. It had been a hydra of twelve heads, and its eyes had been an endless white where they ought to have been black. If a Sovereign mark were to take the shape of her, then I would have expected it to be black, not white. Why should a mark take that resemblance at all, and then take it wrong? The Inker had said that the ink finds, not that it invents. Unless the shapes of these Crests were tied to something other than the w-
"Sister! How joyous it is that I find you here! How fortuitous!" The voice arrived at a volume that would have been remarkable in a crowded hall and was more remarkable still in one gone quiet. I turned.
Malachor stood behind me, both heads angled down toward me, one wearing a grin wide enough to show teeth and the other wearing a frown deep enough to match it. "It is not that joyous," the left head said. "Nor that fortuitous. Hardly above the ordinary."
"I would call it inevitable, perhaps," I said. "Unless you believe I do not need to eat."
The right head nodded, gravely, as though I had said something of weight. The left head sighed. "Well then, Sister!" the right head boomed. "Allow us to sit and dine with you!"
"She may not want our company," the left head said, "given that you were so loud."
"Ah. She may not want your company," the right head allowed.
"We offer the same company."
"When will I learn?"
I looked at the two of them. There was no harm in it, save for losing any chance to dine in peace. "Very well," I said. "I will honor you with my presence. If you desire it so badly."
Malachor lowered himself onto the bench beside me. Seated, he was still nearly a head taller than I. He craned both faces down toward the table, toward Sol, who had had craned her own neck towards the half-demon to regard the newcomer.
"And who might you be, little one?" the right head asked.
Sol turned toward him and delivered a chirp. "She is Solara," I said. "She is my familiar. She will one day be the greatest steed in the world."
"I see. I see." The right head's enormous hand rose and moved toward her. "I am Malachor, young one. You carry a mighty bearing, for one so young."
"I would not touch-" I began.
Sol turned and struck his descending hand aside with one black wing.
The right head withdrew his hand. "Truly," he said, "a mighty bearing."
"Do not bother other people's familiars," the left head grumbled.
"Bother?" said the right. "I merely wished to greet her, as is proper."
The left head's gaze had fixed on Sol. "What a strange creature," it said, quietly. "And those black feathers. This is no ordinary beast, Malachor."
"For once you speak sense," the right head laughed. "Indeed, I feel a great power from the little one. Good that she is so small, for now."
I doubted very much that the half-demon could feel anything of the sort. I noted, however, that Sol had puffed herself up considerably at the assessment, and had taken in a great deal of air, such that she was now even rounder than she usually was. She approved. I reached out and brushed one of her feathers. I approved of the approving.
Then the left head spoke again. The right stayed silent. "You defeated a Sigil," the left head said, "when you carried only a Line. She could scarcely touch you without her Tenet. I watched." The left head paused. "And then that girl, when the darkness took her." The left hand made a small gesture, toward my forearms. "Your marks. I am no fool. I know about those colors."
The Archon had said that few knew that Sovereigns only came in black and white. He had never said who counted amongst the few. "Is that so," I said.
"And then," the left head went on. "That final attack you used. It was-"
The left head paused. The mouth opened and closed, as if this part of Malachor was struggling for the words. The right head answered for the left. "It showed me everything that I could be," the right head said, "and yet was not." Malachor struck his own chest with his right fist. Only the right half of his body moved with the blow.
"I had forgotten my way in these halls," the left head nodded slowly and continued. "I came to these lands to make my name travel far and wide, from one edge of the world to the other. And it seems I was walking the wrong path all along."
I did not entirely follow. He was speaking of Turn, from what I could surmise. However strange a power the Becoming was, I was fairly certain it could not affect one’s mind. What was I to say to this?
"And so," Malachor declared, and this time both heads spoke together, in a single voice, "we are going to join the Great Hunt!"
I had seen his two heads wear the same expression only rarely. I had never once heard them speak with a single voice."And is this Great Hunt truly so great as to grant your wish?"
I could understand the wanting, at least. My own generals had all of them hungered to see their tales carried far, even if only so that I might approve. Perhaps it was not so different for these half-demons. Ilyasviel's words returned to me unbidden. They say all of us half-demons have something wrong with us.
"It is more than great enough," the right head declared. "It is a sacred charge. One goes to a cursed land with companions of one’s choosing, and one helps to cleanse the evil rooted there, and one brings back worthy tribute. And that tribute is presented before the one these people call the Divine. For those of us below Rune, there is no greater honor in all the lands bound by the Covenant."
I nodded, slowly. If this event was as grand as the half-demon claimed, then it might just grant his wish yet. A road that ended in meeting this Divine certainly seemed like it might. "Then I wish you luck," I said.
"Thank you, Sister." Malachor rose. "We are to leave this Academy soon. We simply wished to thank the one who opened our eyes, before we departed."
I understood, then, that the offer to dine had been a pretext. "You are welcome?" I said. My own voice sounded strange.
Both heads grinned. "Until we meet again, Sister. On fields harsher than this one." The right head said. The heads turned to Sol and the right head continued. "And you, little one. May you be the mightiest steed, when that day comes."
"You do not need to talk to the bird as well," the left head sighed.
Malachor stepped back, and turned, and made for the door. Sol loosed a chirp at his retreating back. I checked the bond and got the impression that Solara was wishing the half-demon farewell.
“We will see him again.” I said to her. Sol chirped.
"Here, Lys. Got you two." Ash arrived balancing three bowls. She set them down and read my face in the time it took her to sit down. "Is something wrong?"
"Half-demons," I said, "are very strange."
“What?”
I explained to her over the porridge, which had honey in it though I had not asked, and she laughed at the right places, and Sol took pieces from both our hands, the ones from mine bathed in the Cradle's white fire and the ones from Ash's plain, exactly as the small tyrant demanded. Somewhere in the telling the noise of the hall resumed. I had no notion of what they had been waiting for.
Inker Aldric appeared at the end of our table as we finished. The man cut through the small crowds at the entrance, eyed the hall once, and then made a great show of walking towards our table. We eyed him as he did.
"Pardon, Inker," Ash said, pleasantly. "But you are not a good omen."
Aldric stopped a foot away from our table. His gaze moved to Sol, who was waddling the length of the table. "It is an omen. Though, of what it seems too early to say," he said. “The Archon wishes to see you."
I rose. Ash's hand closed around mine before I had straightened fully. "You're not thinking of going alone, are you?" she said.
"It will only be a moment."
Her grip tightened. "The last time you said that, you ended up in a duel, Lys. I'm coming with you."
Aldric looked between us. "The Archon," he said, "said nothing about her having to come alone."
I let the warmth of her grip stay, and I smiled. "Very well."
Ash scooped Sol up from the table and set her upon her own brow.
Aldric's mouth opened. "If I were-" He closed it. That was twice now that he had begun a sentence to me and swallowed it whole. I was not interested in asking him this time either.
The guards began some corridors from the Archon's office, and they multiplied as we walked. The guards at the Academy all wore deep greys, not unlike our uniforms. These wore a deep blue, in a shade I had seen before. It took me some seconds to remember where from.
"Inker," Ash said. "What is this about?" Sol loosed an angry chirp from atop her head, presumably seconding the question.
Aldric spoke without turning. "I am not entirely sure myself."
I could not tell whether the man lied. I noted only that he walked smaller here than he had in the mess hall, the way he had shrunk in the streets of Koralis where his authority meant little.
There were a dozen guards at the door itself. Their arms carried Sigils, every one that I could see. Two of them stepped forward and set their eyes on us. "Only the half-demon," one said.
"I will not go without her," I said, gesturing to Ash.
They looked at me. I stared back at them. There were twelve Sigils, against my two Lines. Potentially just as many Tenets, doubtless some of which were impenetrable. Poor odds by any honest reckoning. Perhaps not an insurmountable obstacle with Ash, but still a fool’s fight all the same.
The second man shrugged. "Just let them through."
"You sure about this?" said the first.
"Let them through. Didn’t say anything about it just being the half-demon, did he?"
They slowly stepped aside. The Inker had retreated to the side. I looked at him once, stepped forward, and opened the door.
The Archon’s office was as I remembered, and yet not quite. The Archon himself sat behind his desk with his hands folded, and he met my eyes, and held them. The Archon did not speak first.
The Marquis did, seated on the only other chair in the room. The man raised one arm, and the jewels on his clothes glittered in the otherwise plain study. And he spoke with a smile.
"So good of you to join us, Lysanthia."