What We Do to Survive

“And just one more time, what do you do if someone is getting too nosy?”

Daphne, who was sitting hunched over in my lap, her ear resting lightly over my heart, turned her head to look up at me, her eyes burning with devotion. “Deflect, hide behind my family, plan to dispose of them, and, only if all else fails, I shall die to protect your secrets, Master.”

“Good, very good,” I crooned softly, running my hand gently down her bare back. “You are no good to me dead, pet.” I was glad that part had finally sunk into her head. It had taken far too long to stop her from defaulting to ‘I will die to serve you, Master!’ and bring her to a much more useful mentality. That was the price of using a ritual designed for saboteurs and spies; it was a very discrete ritual, its effects hard to sense even when you knew what you were looking for, but it also tended to make the victim somewhat prone to fatalistic strategies.

Daphne leaned hungrily into my touch and I obliged her, running my fingers gently up and down her spine. She sighed contentedly and leaned her head back down against my chest.

I glanced over to where Cayla and Rea were busily fussing over the last of Daphne’s bags. “You girls almost done?” I asked softly.

They exchanged a short look, then Cayla turned to look at me while Rea continued working. “Almost, Master. Just a few things left to repack and Daphne has two more assignments she needs to finish before we can return her to her family. Everything should be ready by tomorrow morning like you planned.”

Wonderful. I’d taken care of Daphne’s binding the day after my last exam, the poor girl had been a blubbering, pleading mess when I’d finally decided to check up on her and the bindings around her soul had clicked into place with ease. It seemed that a noble background did not really prepare a girl for weeks of daily physical and psychological torture.

The day after that had been spent making sure she knew what she had to do once she resumed her position as Heiress, had a story ready for how her ‘holiday’ had gone, and a lot of planning. The Avalon portal was going to be moving in two days, which didn’t leave us with very much flexibility, but would hopefully be more than enough time to return Daphne to her home. After that I would just have to hope her bindings and instructions would hold for several years until it was finally time for me to return home in truth and deal with certain people once and for all.

“Perfect. Good work Cayla, finish up and then you can help Daphne with her homework. I assume you’ve made the needed arrangements out in the city?” She nodded. “Excellent. You’ve done well.”

Cayla didn’t visibly respond to the praise, but the clouds of joy bursting through her mana were impossible to hide. “Thank you, Master! I won’t disappoint you.”

“I know you won’t. You’re a good slave, Cayla. There’s a reward in your future, I think. Something to keep in mind.” Slave bond or not, keeping your subordinates happy was always a good habit, and their bindings made them very easy to please.

Speaking of which… “I think that’s enough for you, pet,” I told Daphne, pulling my hand away, “Up! If Cayla tells me you did a good job today, perhaps I’ll let you sleep in a real bed tonight.”

Daphne vacated my lap in a hurry and rushed over to where Cayla and Rea were standing over her luggage. I noticed with some amusement that she made a point of keeping Cayla between her and Rea at all times, which was somewhat difficult since Cayla also did her best to stay out of reach of my purple-skinned slave and there wasn’t really very much room in that corner.

Checking the time, I quickly put all of that out of my mind. I was running a tiny bit late. Well, more behind schedule than late, but I always preferred to be very early instead of on time. It tended to be safer that way.

I’d promised Camille that I was going to meet with her today. It wasn’t a conversation I was particularly looking forward to, but I did value my connection with the girl enough to at least give it a shot. Worst comes to worst, she didn’t really know enough about me to be a real problem and I was confident Miranda and I could arrange an accident without too much trouble should it become necessary.

I honestly didn’t know what to think about the girl. She was a talented, intelligent mage who had made it through the first two-and-a-half years at Avalon despite coming to the Academy with almost as little as I had. At the same time, I was starting to agree with her own assessment of the situation; Camille didn’t really belong at Avalon. She was good, but good wasn’t enough when you didn’t have the option to leave after fourth year.

More than that, she just didn’t have the instincts and… drive to succeed. Camille was a good person. She was friendly, kind, overwhelmingly positive, and had some very firm beliefs about fairness and justice that reminded me of my family. In another place and time, Camille could have thrived. At Avalon, I was afraid her own morals would be her undoing. Avalon was not kind to good people.

Camille, like the majority of my classmates, was unlikely to make it to graduation. I… didn’t like that. I wasn’t sure when it had happened, but at some point in the past year I had grown relatively fond of the girl. She, Alan, and Ulan were the closest thing I had to ‘friends’, and I enjoyed the time I spent with them all, but Alan and Ulan had been raised in a family of mages and understood the way things were. I doubted we would ever be much closer than allies of convenience.

I didn’t want Camille to die. I wasn’t sure when I’d come to that realization, but when it came down to it, I’d pushed Camille out of the way of those ice daggers and then worked just as hard shielding her as I had my Miranda. Had it proven necessary, I had no doubts that I would have sacrificed both of them to save my own life, but that was only obvious. My own survival was paramount, all other priorities were secondary to that.

That left me with something of a quandary. What exactly should I be doing when it came to Camille? At the moment, she was doing well enough in her classes and was on good-enough terms with most of our class that I didn’t really worry much that someone was going to try and attack her. Camille almost always traveled with a group for safety, typically the twins and a few of their acquaintances, and judging from her well-developed mana core she would be perfectly capable of casting a fourth-circle spell by the end of the year so that wasn’t a problem either.

The obvious solution was just to kidnap her when it seemed like she was no longer able to keep up. I saw her often enough that I would likely notice the signs before too many other people smelled weakness.

Unfortunately, it was possible that something like that could backfire on me. I didn’t relish the idea of torturing her into compliance and I really didn’t need a reputation for people around me disappearing. If anyone connected me with Camille’s disappearance, it would make my tentative plans for much more valuable targets like Janna and a number of others much more difficult.

It would be much better if I could trick her into coming to me of her own volition. I’d already told her that if she ever needed any help, I was there for her. If I played my cards right, it was possible that when desperation began to set in, she’d come to me begging for help and willing to pay whatever price I asked for. That was a much more difficult proposition––I was considerably better at kidnapping and torturing people than manipulating them socially––but I could probably make it work. Maybe.

It was certainly something to think about.

I made it to the library a few minutes before Camille and I agreed to meet up. The vast space was emptier than usual. I could only sense a few dozen people scattered among the shelves compared to the hundreds I normally saw. I politely bowed to the Head Librarian, who was sitting near the entrance to the library with a serene smile on her face and a massive book floating in the air beside her.

Lireal didn’t respond, but it seemed like a good idea to be respectful towards the second strongest mage in Avalon. I could faintly feel her presence in the air around me, an ever present cloud of mana that filled the entire library and suffused each and every book, shelf, and scroll. The amount of mana and control such a thing must require was mind boggling, especially since I knew the effect persisted even on the rare occasion that the Archmage left the library.

I found Camille already waiting for me in the small room we’d reserved for our meeting. She had her long brown hair pulled up in a high ponytail and held in place with a green ribbon the same color as her eyes and nailpolish. Instead of her usual practical blouse and pants, she was wearing a dress that reminded me of the styles Janna tended to favor, except considerably less ostentatious. It was dyed a rich navy-blue instead of the bright pink Janna seemed to love, only had two layers, and was adorned with far fewer ribbons and frills.

She was sitting in the corner of the room, hands flat against the table and eyes downcast. As I stepped into the room, I just barely heard her mumbling something under her breath before she stopped abruptly and turned to look towards the door.

“Hey Camille. Hope I didn’t keep you waiting too long?”

“Oh, ahh. no, no. I only got here a few minutes ago. Good afternoon Orion, thank you for making time. I know you’re always so busy and…” she trailed off, reaching up to brush one of the strands of hair framing her face behind her ear.

I was immediately on guard. I didn’t think Camille was a threat to me, but she was behaving rather oddly and that was never a good sign. Had someone gotten to her before me? Was this a trap? It didn’t feel like a trap. Camille felt… scared, grateful, and hesitant? She didn’t mean me any harm.

I frowned internally. What? Where had that come from? My mind felt clear and I couldn’t feel any foreign mana intruding within the bounds of my soul.

Camille took a deep breath and soldiered on, unaware of the thoughts rushing through my mind. “I… I wanted to thank you, Orion. You saved my life. I was going to… and you… you pushed me out of the way. If you hadn’t been there I… I…”

She stood up suddenly, her chair scraping backwards across the smooth stone floor and nearly toppling. Mana flared under the surface of my skin, thin strands weaving together into interlocking plates and disks ready to spring forth at a moment’s notice.

Camille bowed, bending at the waist until her torso was nearly parallel with the floor, her hands clasped over her heart. I suddenly noticed the gleam of unshed tears in the corners of her eyes, the hunched way she held herself, cowering away from the world, and the raw emotion billowing within her mana.

“Thank you, Orion,” she whispered. “If you ever need anything, anything at all, I will do my absolute utmost to provide.”

My train of thought ground to a halt and the mana I had been readying flowed back into my core. I… wasn’t sure how to respond. “I’m glad I sensed them in time,” I finally managed.

Camille straightened, her hands falling to her sides and curling into the folds of her skirt. She took another deep breath, bit her bottom lip, then took another deep breath.

“Camille?” I asked softly.

She squeezed her eyes tightly shut, took another deep breath, then exhaled explosively. “Orion, can you…” she shook her head and mumbled something that sounded like ‘no, no, no’ under her breath.

I watched her silently. She was struggling with something, even I could see that much, but poking her clearly wasn’t the solution here. I would just give her a minute to get her thoughts in order. That seemed like the correct way to go here.

Camille squared her shoulders, clasped her hands over her heart again, and took a final, deep breath. “I’m scared, Orion. I’m so, so scared. I’m going to die. I just know it. I see it every day, every hour, every minute. I’m not good enough and I know I’m going to die. Maybe not today, maybe not this week or this month or even this year, but it's going to happen.”

That was certainly a way to start a conversation. It was probably true, but still a rather strange sentiment to hear from an Avalon student.

Camille continued, “I’m not like you, Orion. Even a blind man can see that you’re going places. I don’t know how I missed it for so long but… but for the longest time I thought we were the same, two struggling commoners just trying to hang on, but we’re nothing alike. I’m… I’m just me. I’m pretty good at magic, everyone tells me I’m a decent student and have a good head for runes, but that’s just not enough. And you. You’re so much more than that.”

She paused again, her breath coming in slow, ragged gasps. “I messed up. I messed up real bad coming here. Everyone told me Avalon was a death trap, but I felt so accomplished. So confident. I cast my first spell at nine, did I ever tell you that? No formal training, no books, no nothing. I figured out how to sense and move my mana around as a kid, but I never told anyone because I didn’t think it was anything special. My mother’s a seamstress, she does commissions for the Justicars sometimes, and I came along with her one day. I saw a couple of young nobles practicing in a park and just listened in on their conversation and copied what they did. I didn’t even realize what I’d done till the bush I was hiding behind caught on fire and I had to run away.”

She hadn’t told me that story, and that was absolutely incredible. Mind-bogglingly so, even. From the sound of it, she’d copied a spell purely from a visual display and some beginner’s commentary. As a nine-year-old. And it hadn’t killed her. Absolutely incredible.

“I got away, but when mom finally found out we didn’t really have the money to send me to one of the local schools. Most of them only teach nobles, justicars, and rich merchants. My mom is good at her job, but not that good. When I finally heard about Avalon, I thought it was a dream come true! The best mage school in the world and it's free if you can show them you’re good enough to get in.” Her voice fell suddenly. “I was good enough to get in… but not good enough to keep up.”

“I need help. And even then, I’m not sure how long I can hold on. I’m not a fighter, I don’t want to hurt anyone! I just want to learn magic and have fun and spend time with friends. I don’t belong here, Orion, I never did, but I was too stupid and too ignorant to know that in time.”

She bowed again suddenly, her long ponytail whipping through the air and then falling over her face. A moment later, she dropped to her knees and looked up at me with her hands clasped in the air as though in prayer.

“You’re my best chance, Orion. I don’t know what I can give you, but anything I have is yours. You’re helping those two second-years, right? I’m not a noble, I’m not rich or connected or anything, but please. Help me too. I just want to live, Orion. I see Matilda’s face in my dreams. Reya, David, Violet, Kam’bal… they scream at me every night that I’m next.”

With every sentence her words grew more and more desperate and I could see the tears now finally flowing down her cheeks and leaving streaks in makeup I hadn’t even noticed before. I didn’t really remember any of those names, but from her words I assumed they were some of our former classmates that had died or vanished over the last five semesters.

“Help me Orion, please. You told me once that if I ever needed help, I could ask you. For our friendship, for whatever I can and have done for you, please. Please.”

She fell silent, eye’s downcast and hands still clasped in the air before her face. I stared down at her solemnly, doing my best to hide the confusion and other thoughts racing through my mind.

“There will be some conditions,” I began.

“Anything.”

“Then I think we’ll be able to make this work.” I knelt down beside her and lightly wrapped an arm around her slowly heaving shoulders. “It's going to be okay Camille. I’ll take care of you.” I always took care of what was mine. “Just breathe for now, and when you’re ready we’ll figure out the details.”

Camille nodded jerkily, instinctively pressing back into my gentle touches. I finally let myself smile.

Well, that was easy.