Vivi woke to banging on her door.

“Lady Vivi?” came Saffra’s muffled, distressed voice. “Lady Vivi, are you awake?”

Distressed?

It was embarrassing how much adrenaline dumped into her veins. She didn’t even bother rolling out of bed. She [Blinked] past the doorway, materializing next to Saffra with staff raised. After finding nothing but a startled red-haired catgirl, Vivi realized she might have overreacted. She dispelled her weapon and, after a brief awkward pause in which Saffra gawked at her, she prompted, “Yes? What is it?”

“Um. S-sorry. I know it’s late.”

However unwilling Saffra was to share her thoughts, Vivi appreciated how easy the girl could be to read at times. Her flattened ears and drooping tail told her everything she needed to know. That Saffra didn’t want to be here, asking whatever she was about to ask. So it was important.

Which had her hackles raised. Her apprentice wasn’t someone to go requesting things frivolously. And considering Vivi’s previous encounters with the Duke—which she and Rafael planned to tackle thoroughly tomorrow—she was primed to expect a disaster.

“I’m not sure how to go about this,” Saffra mumbled, looking down at the floor. “Can I ask you a favor?”

“You can.”

Saffra seemed startled at the quick response. “Do you remember that girl we ran into at the library?”

Having not entirely woken up, Vivi almost responded with ‘Isabella?’ But she caught herself at the last second.

“I do.”

“I think she needs help.”

The adrenaline was well deserved, then. Her attention sharpened on Saffra. “How so?”

Again, Saffra looked caught off guard by Vivi’s intensity. Wide-eyed, she responded, “That was Isabella Caldimore. Of the Caldimore family. Like on the train, if you remember?”

Vivi reminded herself that Saffra thought she didn’t know much about anything. This girl had been very unwilling to talk about her life prior to Prismarche, and so everything Vivi had learned about the Caldimores had been through other channels.

She tried not to sound impatient. “Yes, I remember. She needs help? With what? Where is she?”

“Not, like, immediately. Just—” Saffra bit her lip. “I went and talked with her.”

Vivi digested that admission. That her apprentice had snuck off in the middle of the night to go and find her prior friend. She couldn’t say she was surprised. She should have accounted for the possibility. Her thoughts had been too preoccupied with other matters—with the Duke, the strange dagger, and the dimensional fracture.

“I couldn’t get much out of her,” Saffra admitted. “But I think her dad is planning something bad?” Her voice tilted up at the end; she sounded unsure. But then her expression firmed. “He definitely is. I just don’t know what. She sounds really worried. It’s the Caldimores, so anything they’re planning has to be big. She seemed to think even a high-Titled couldn’t do much to help. But I told her…I told her you could? She’s waiting back at the Institute.” She clenched her fists to her side. “I know I don’t deserve to ask anything of you, considering how much you’ve already done, but…can you, please?”

Vivi was, in that moment, extremely tempted to summon her staff and give the girl a solid thwap on the head. But that wouldn’t be appropriate considering the circumstances, even her inadequate social skills told her. She took a second to moderate her reaction, watching Saffra squirm uncomfortably.

“If you, or anyone else, needs help,” Vivi said, “ask. That’s a command from master to apprentice. And don’t see it as a favor. Okay?”

Saffra seemed bewildered. “Okay?” she stammered.

“Where is she?”

“The Institute. The ninth floor garden annex. I can show you?”

“Please do.”

Vivi [Blinked] into her room, got dressed, and [Blinked] out. She held a hand out, and Saffra accepted. A warp took them to Osmian’s office. In her discussions with the archmage’s ghost, the man had shown her how the challenge door shifted throughout the Institute. Not to be helpful, but to brag about the obscenely complex mechanisms in the creation—which admittedly had impressed her. So she knew how the artifact worked in advance; she didn’t need to puzzle it out.

She adjusted the destination to the ninth floor. Osmian, sensing a presence in his office, extruded his spectral self to crankily demand what was going on, but she ignored him. She strode out into a nondescript hallway and, tone more demanding than she intended, prompted Saffra, “Where?”

The girl oriented, then stalked in the proper direction.

Leaving behind the magical door—she would apologize to the soul fragment sputtering about her rudeness later—Vivi followed her apprentice through the interior of the Institute and to an enclosed garden.

After turning several corners around lush foliage, Saffra slammed to a halt. Her ears flattened. Vivi hurried past, staff in hand, sensing something off about the reaction.

There, lying length-wise on a bench under a gazebo, was not Isabella Caldimore. Instead, a man who Vivi recognized.

‘Tobin.’

If that was even his name. She doubted it, for some reason.

She tried not to jump to conclusions, but even the most optimistic person in the world would make the obvious assumption.

“You two sure took your time.” The man huffed and rolled up, spinning on the bench to face them. “Cute spot you have here.” He smirked at Saffra in a way that almost had Vivi erasing him on the spot. He kicked his feet back and forth. Everything about his nonchalance, his expression and tone of voice, made Vivi’s skin crawl. “Very scenic.”

“Where is she?” Saffra demanded, and Vivi didn’t think she’d ever heard her apprentice sound so distraught. “Who are you?”

‘Tobin’ laughed. He pushed himself into a standing position, cartwheeling his arms as he steadied.

“Where’s who? We’ve only just met. That’s no way to talk to a stranger.” He tutted, and his gaze turned to Vivi. “Kids these days, am I right?”

Vivi didn’t think her voice had ever been so cold. Even she was surprised by how clipped her words came out.

“Answer her.”

The man tilted his head. “And who do you think you are, to order me around?”

“I won’t ask so nicely the second time.”

His grin widened. “You look different, Nysari. Illusion? Transmog? Why are you showing up to a meeting with a duke under an illusion? That’s so interesting.” He breathed in deeply, then released. “Doesn’t matter. Tell me before I kill you—my dagger. Why did you look at it like that?”

Vivi relaxed. Which was probably a strange reaction to a death threat. The assassin paused.

But she’d been given a clear-cut indicator that this man needed to be dealt with. He had erased any ambiguity. Now she could do what she wanted.

…within reason.

That brief moment of reprieve was erased by the very concerning reminder of Isabella Caldimore’s absence.

“Where is she?” Saffra asked shrilly. “What did you do with Isabella?” She pulled on Vivi’s sleeve. “Who is this, Lady Vivi?”

“The adults are speaking, sweetie,” the assassin said. “Be quiet, now.”

“I’ll get answers,” Vivi told Saffra. “But I don’t think he’s going to be cooperative. So move back, please.”

Saffra hesitated, then did so. “Stay in sight,” Vivi told her. The truth was, the safest place in the world was probably near enough for Vivi to instantly respond.

“Not cooperative? You shouldn’t make assumptions,” the man said. “I’m more than happy to chat. You won’t be leaving here alive, after all. So what’s the harm?” His lips curled up. “The girl’s coming with me, unfortunately. The Duke’s really not happy with his daughter. I’m excited to see what he has planned for them. He can get so creative, sometimes. For all his faults, he’s quite the visionary.”

So Isabella had been escorted to her father? Vivi, again, relaxed at learning that. As long as she was alive, everything was salvageable. The reaction had the assassin’s brow furrowing. She clearly wasn’t responding how he had anticipated.

“What is that dagger of yours?” Vivi asked, nodding at the sheath on his right hip.

She was tempted to ask questions after thoroughly battering the man around. But she didn’t have time to play. And despite all justifications present, she would prefer if he started the violence. Abusing the immense power she’d been given was a genuine worry of hers.

Still, he’d threatened Saffra, so he wasn’t walking away unscathed. It didn’t matter who this man was, or whether he was acting with the Duke’s authority. She no longer cared about political consequences.

Surprisingly, the assassin obliged the question. He pulled the dagger out of its holder and held it up. Vivi’s attention locked to it. It was a thin, simple weapon, not longer than six or seven inches, and made from a transparent black and violet material. That same sensation from earlier struck her: the sheer mundanity of the object.

“Just your normal everyday dagger, obviously,” the man said, sounding amused. “An antique. Not special at all.”

“That’s not true.”

“And how can you tell?” Underneath the man’s feigned relaxation, Vivi detected suspicion, maybe even nervousness. He was treating her as a serious threat. Ready to respond at the slightest provocation.

Vivi considered him. “I don’t know. But I can. What is it?”

“Why don’t you tell me? Here, take a look.”

He threw the dagger.

As whenever necessary, her perception of the world slowed to a crawl. But while her natural speed might be outrageously high compared to most people in this world, this was undoubtedly a very high-level assassin. The sheer momentum he threw the item with made the blade dart forward even to her eyes. Not quite a blur, but hardly the luxurious pace she could slow other events to. She didn’t have all the time in the world to react.

More importantly, her first instinct wasn’t to dodge physically. She was, for better or worse, a mage. If she’d had enough time to properly think about her next action, her deep unease with the dagger would certainly have made her throw herself to the side.

Instead, she responded with magic. She reached out and tried to halt the weapon using [Telekinesis].

Her metaphorical hands passed straight through the object.

It was the strangest sensation she’d ever experienced. Spells and enchantments and more esoteric anti-magic effects existed, but this…wasn’t that. There was a ghost of a flicker of contact—or maybe she imagined it? Regardless, the spell failed to properly grasp the weapon.

Then, because she’d only had enough time to respond with that one spell, the dagger impacted her shields.

Vivi walked around with heavy-duty defenses as a matter of sensibility. Why wouldn’t she? They weren’t the strongest she could bring to bear, since there were plenty of ways to supercharge spells—and she wasn’t wearing her power-oriented gear set either—but the suite of magic she had layered over herself could tank a direct hit from the Ashen Hierophant, and that was supposedly the strongest monster this world had ever seen.

However this strange material interacted with magic, the dagger couldn’t outright ignore her shields. The sharp point did, however, cut through the dense layers of interwoven mana like nothing she had ever seen. Sensory information exploded through her brain as she watched the black and violet glass slice through spell after spell of twentieth-tier and higher defensive magics.

The spells created just enough of a buffer—slowed the momentum of the attack just enough—that Vivi’s physical body finally responded. Her left hand snapped forward and grabbed the dagger’s hilt, stopping it just as it punctured—but didn’t fully shatter—her final shell: the ever-reliable [Prismatic Barrier]. Which was throwing off distressed multi-chromatic sparks of such intensity that any nearby mage studying the effects would probably go temporarily blind.

She couldn’t even be upset by the sneak attack. It had provided far too riveting a demonstration of the dagger’s alien nature. The ways in which her magic had interacted with the material made for one of the most fascinating and engrossing displays she had ever witnessed.

Then she came back to reality and remembered the danger everyone, and possibly even she, was in.

The assassin stood with his arm still extended in a throwing motion. He gaped open-mouthed at her.

“You stopped it. With magic? Impossible.”

An artifact of this strength had surely been tested quite thoroughly. And if even her heavy-duty shields had struggled to fend it off, any magic anyone else had access to wouldn’t so much as have slowed it down. Or provided resistance whatsoever. Maybe they had thought it completely immune to magic.

But no. Just ninety-nine point nine and several more nines so.

“Fascinating,” Vivi breathed. “Where did you find this?” She held the weapon up and tried to [Inspect] it. The skill bounced off, failing to seize hold of it just like her previous [Telekinesis]. Not like a denied [Inspection] request—just ignored. “What is it made out of?”

A slight twinge on her chest made her look down. She realized, just then, that the dagger had penetrated deep enough through [Prismatic Barrier] to poke her. She pressed a finger to the stinging spot, and a tiny dot of red came away. She frowned at it. He’d drawn blood, if only barely.

“It’s enough,” the assassin said. “[Phantom Retrieval].”

The dagger blinked out of her grip, teleporting back to the man. She frowned at that too. Skills were much harder, if not impossible, to dispel or prevent, since they weren’t actually magic. She hadn’t been prepared enough to try.

“Well,” he said, pupils dilating in excitement. “This is going to be a lot more interesting than I thought. I knew you were something special when I saw you. Let’s see what we’re working with.” He breathed in. “[Blood Tithe].”

Energy gushed out of the pinprick wound on her chest, flowing in great rivulets toward the assassin. She easily read, with her passive perception, what was happening: he’d activated a skill, a siphon, conditional on drawing blood.

He’d stolen a percentage of her own stats.

That…might complicate things.