Authors Note:This chapter will be edited in the future to act as a proper "end" for book two. The content will not change, but the feeling of the chapter likely will. Just for those of you who read it before I can get around to finalizing this chapter~
Thanks for reading my story <3
It takes some time to get everything written down, and to include my observations, but once I’m done I settle in beside her with a pleased sigh.
From what I know, both through experience and rumors, evolutions take a lot out of a person. While the first Tier up usually only knocks a person out for what is effectively a full nights rest, there have been cases where a person is put down for days.
I mentally pray that Cari isn’t one of those people. She’d be devastated to miss out on our delve.
Eventually, I drift into a dreamless sleep. The bed is too comfortable, and Cari is far too warm and huggable to resist.
What feels like only seconds pass before I’m suddenly startled awake by a gentle knocking at the bedroom door.
Slowly, agonizingly, I extract myself from the comfort of my personal Cari-pillow and get up to answer it.
Upon opening the door, I find Bella, her cheeks now recovered from their earlier meltdown. With her clear composure and assessing gaze running over my disheveled form, I start to feel a little nervous.
The memory of my last words to her slaps me fully awake.
“How is she?” she asks.
I stare at her, confused.
“Huh?”
She quirks a frustratingly-perfect brow at me. “Cari? She’s going through her evolution, right?”
“Oh! Right. Yeah, uh, she’s fine. Great, actually,” I say in a rush.
“That’s good. I hope she wakes up in time, she seemed awfully excited to join us.”
I nod, a soft smile blooming on my face. “Yeah, she’s been wanting to go Delving with me for a while, but our Tier difference has made that… difficult.”
She hums. “Yes, I could see that making things difficult.”
Then she quiets, just standing there and staring at me with a small, unmoving smile.
Was… was that it? She’s not going to—oh!
“Uh, would you like to come in?” I ask.
She nods, her smile widening, and she takes the invitation in stride.
Once she’s inside, I close the door behind her and turn to find her watching me.
“I hope you have a bit of time to fill me in on the whole Bluebell situation,” she says. “You did promise to tell me once we got to the dorms, after all.”
I blink.
Oh yeah.
“R-right, yeah. Sure, just… have a seat somewhere, I suppose,” I say, then glance over at Cari, who looks absolutely adorable where she lay, sleeping soundly. “I’m going to get comfortable.”
I nod seriously.
She said I could get my snuggles, so dammit I’m taking my snuggles.
Bella, ever the champion of propriety, takes a seat at Cari’s desk, one leg primly crossed over the other.
I, on the other hand, flop into bed and do my damnedest to wrap myself around Cari like a pretzel.
“Why are you—” Bella starts, sounding scandalized, then takes a deep breath to calm herself. “What, exactly, are you doing?”
I wiggle deeper into my Cari-pillow.
“Snuggling.”
“And why are you ‘snuggling’ an unconscious woman?” she asks, her tone slightly more terse than before.
“Payment for services rendered,” I say, perfectly serious.
I nudge the notebook I’d diligently filled out with a foot.
Bella’s brows arch dangerously, her eyes narrowing into slits.
“She said I could!” I whine.
She hides her face behind her hands and sighs, long and slow.
“Gods, you two are ridiculous.”
I wiggle again, a pleased purr rumbling free.
After a few moments, and right as I’m starting to doze, Bella speaks.
“So how do you know Bluebell?”
Suddenly, there’s another knock at the door, and it opens.
Just as I’m about to leap out of the bed, a familiar voice freezes me in place.
“I would actually like to know that as well,” the Headmistress says, closing the door behind her.
Only one question floats in my mind.
“How in the hells did you get the doors to open?”
From what I’ve learned, these doors shouldn’t open for anyone but us. They’re sealed by mana signatures—which are supposedly nearly impossible to replicate.
Not entirely, but still.
Instead of any guilt or sheepishness, she gives me a blank stare. With a glance, I find Bella giving me an equally perplexed look.
“What? Did I miss something?” I ask.
Bella sighs, apparently too tired to explain. The Headmistress chuckles.
“My husband and I run the Academy, darling,” she says, her tone like that of a mother teaching her child. “We have to be able to go anywhere at any time, just in case of emergencies.”
I suddenly feel very, very silly.
Bella nods sagely. “Someone must always hold the master key.”
That just confuses me again. “Why’s that?”
She narrows her eyes at me, seemingly wary of some unseen shenanigans. Her eyes widen when she realizes I was being serious, but just as she’s about to explain the Headmistress beats her to it with a patient smile.
“It’s a saying from a rather popular story amongst nobles. ‘Never forget—someone must always hold the master key. You’d do well to fear who that someone may be.’”
“Oh,” I mumble. “That’s kind of dark.”
Bella smirks. “As is much of the life of a noble. Secrets, intrigue, assassinations, and so much more… that one line is the only thing that book got right.”
“I’m afraid we are getting off topic,” the Headmistress says, though her tone is light. “I would like to know of this connection between you and Bluebell. As many details as possible.”
She pauses for a moment to glance at Cari.
“And please, do be sure to include how Cari became fae.”
That seems to catch Bella’s attention, who apparently hadn’t checked Cari’s tag when she entered the room. She stares at Cari, shocked and confused in equal measure.
Then her gaze flicks to me and narrows. “You really are endless trouble, aren’t you?”
I give her a sheepish smile and refuse to answer. Instead, I wrap my tail a little tighter around Cari and begin my story.
*********
Some time later, I’d finished telling them everything I knew about Bluebell.
From the first update when she managed to contact me somehow to say thanks, to the Bluebell’s Recompense Dungeon, to my recovered memories. I’d even included everything fae-related that happened to or around me, as the Headmistress asked.
By the end, both the Headmistress and Bella look equally troubled and fascinated.
I actually expected Bella to object to our arranged meeting… but she never did. If anything, I catch the faintest hint of a smile before she smooths it away.
The Headmistress watches Cari and I with an inquisitive glint in her eyes.
“Do you believe you are kin to Bluebell as you are now to Cari?” she asks.
The question gives me pause.
How did I not think of that?
With a simple flick of my will, my Oathstone appears. Intuitively, I probe for the links connected to me and the stone. They all appear before me, each thread stretching off in every direction.
But two stand out the most.
Two thick bands of mana, each woven with an intricacy and resilience that I can’t even begin to fathom.
But different.
I test both, genuinely curious why I feel they are so distinct, and I feel it.
Cari, I know, is my sister, through and through. I couldn’t deny it any more than I could deny that I breathe air.
Bluebell’s bond is… rougher.
Not incomplete, just undefined. Sister, mother, and grandmother all at once. Each equally true, but none as firm as Cari’s.
I know, intuitively, that I can choose how I want things to go.
But I also know that I don’t have to. It’s open. Purposefully open.
The moment I think it, I feel a sense of pride from its other half. Pride in me, for figuring this out.
“Whoa,” I mumble.
“Yes? What is it?” the Headmistress asks quickly, her curiosity piqued.
“One sec…”
I try to return a sense of gratitude through the bond, but a wall instantly goes up.
To my surprise, the bond itself suddenly twists and writes until it begins to form words.
‘Learn to focus. No emotion bombing. Love, B’
Then it snaps taught once more, as if the bond was under immense stress while being contorted so.
I stare at the space, dumbfounded.
I quickly give it a try, my mind immediately racing to the idea of sending messages to Cari every single day rather than only once a week.
If I could bypass messaging enchantments with just bonds, then I could send messages to pretty much anyone at any time. I just have to make some kind of deal or bond with them first.
I push, twist, and prod at the bond, testing its limits to see what I can do with it.
The answer is, depressingly, not much at all.
The bond hardly moves. In fact, it moves so little that I’m fairly certain the time it twitched when I plucked it like a lute string was just my imagination.
I sigh, disappointed.
Then I shove all of my feelings of love and comfort and warmth through Cari’s bond.
I can feel it as my emotions flood the pathway, and I know I utterly fail to control specifically which emotions I send… but I know I got the three I was aiming for first and foremost.
Cari lets out a cute sigh, but doesn’t otherwise acknowledge my love-bombing.
Victory! This is going to be easy to practice.
“Ahem.”
This time, it’s Bella who tries to pull me from my testing.
“Oh, yeah,” I start. “Uh… what was it again?”
“Do you think you are kin—”
“Oh! Yeah, pretty much. Kinda.”
“What do you mean ‘kinda’?” Bella asks.
“I mean she’s like… a little bit of everything. It’s hard to explain, honestly. Cari is my Sister. There is no denying it. But Bluebell is… a bit of everything,” I say. Then I pause to think it over a bit, and nod. “Definitely family, though.”
The feeling of it is a bit strange. My mother, father and brother were the only family I ever had until I met Cari. Even then, I never though of her as a true sister until recently—a fact I still feel a bit guilty about even now.
But now, the feelings are the same.
With no small amount of childish trepidation, I test my Oathstone for any other bonds as strong as the ones to Cari and Bluebell, but find none.
While I feel foolish for trying, I don’t let it get to me. I’ve lived my entire life functioning off of silly hopes and wild dreams.
There’s just no way I’m not going to test every possible avenue.
“What of this warning she gave you in regards to the Archivist?” the Headmistress asks.
I stiffen.
The Headmistress, vigilant as ever, notices the reaction immediately. When I glance at her from where I’d tucked myself into Cari’s neck, her gaze is sharp and calculating.
“What did you sell?” she asks, her tone brooking no foolishness.
“Well, you see…” I start slowly, “…I don’t really have many secrets of value. So…”
“Does he know of your Title?”
Her words lance out like whips, each more pointed than the last, and I immediately discard the instinctive ‘which one?’
She means System Waker.
When I glance at her again, I’m unable to look away. Her eyes bore into my own, searching, and I freeze under the intensity of her scrutiny.
“Yes.”
The answer comes out as more of a squeak than a word, but she understands. The moment the word leaves my lips, she’s moving for the door. At the same time, a small box seems to appear, as if from nowhere, where my leg rests over Cari’s waist.
It’s nearly identical to the other box of medicine she’d left last time.
“I need to inform my husband. Take the medicine and go to bed. It’ll clear the overdose effects of the old medicine and kick in by the morning,” she says in a rush, then stops just before stepping out of the room to give me a stern look. “And do not leave school grounds until my husband or I give you the go ahead. Do you understand?”
By this point, I’m already half sat up and cradling the box in my lap.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
“Do you understand?” she demands again, louder.
This time, the words are laced with a pulse of mana that vibrates the room, so I nod quickly.
Then she’s gone.
I hear a faint click from the living space as our dorm door opens and closes, but nothing else.
When I look at Bella, I find her slumped in the desk chair, rubbing her temples.
“What’s happening?” I ask, now thoroughly confused.
She exhales slowly through her nose once… twice… then sits up straight once more.
Instead of answering, she asks me a question.
“You know, I had though it a possibility that you might trade your Title in for whatever Omen you wished to gain… but I thought that given what and who you are, you would have others worthy of exchanging first.”
I grimace. “Nope, just the two… well, technically one. But he didn’t know that.”
She quirks a brow at that.
I shrug.
“I told him it’s possible to have three Classes, which counted for one. My Title as System Waker was the other,” I say, then smirk. “But I get my third Class from the Title. Two for one.”
I can't stop but smug grin that finds its way to my face.
Or course, the Title alone is probably worth more than a single Omen anyways, but... I'm taking the win.
She nods slowly. “I see.”
“So…” I murmur. “What’s the rush about?”
She leans back, and breathes deep, letting it out in a slow exhalation that seems to take some of her tension away.
Then she asks the most terrifying question I’ve ever heard.
“Did you know,” she starts slowly, “that the Archivist holds auctions when he acquires information of sufficient value?”