Lewis pulled Simone back into him, and pushed his face into her hair. “We have a week of this festival, and then back to classes. Once the classes start back, it’ll be showtime again.” Neither one of them were looking forward to the ‘kidnapping’ that would occur, but they had little choice but to deal with it.

“So, I say we enjoy the festival until then….” Lewis started to idly trace circles on her stomach with his fingers. “Well.,..maybe…” He glanced at her,

I’d stay quiet if I were you…Simone.

Sophia walked over to her side of the room and sat down on the bed, reaching underneath to grab one of her more private journals. “Last night was amazing Simone. I don’t think you understand. That cute boy? He’s got a complex…it’s the most ADORABLE thing ever…”

“O-oh really?” Simone gasped lightly. “I-I thought you were only on a trial period with him.” She was flushed, but Sohpia wasn’t paying attention.

“Well, and Lewis, you can’t utter a word of this, secretly, I like the submissive boys. There’s just something so…desirable about their insecurities. I don’t know how to explain it.”

“You won’t…you won’t find me spilling any of your secrets,” Lewis said, sounding as though he were winded.

Sophia started scribbling. “He’s got the cutest laugh, and he likes playing chess. A smart, nerdy boy. Not super strong, but…well, we can work on that. I bet he needs work on his-”

Simone yelped.

“Oh, hiccups? I hear holding your breath works,” Sophia said, crossing her t’s and dotting her i’s.

“Sorry,” Simone breathed, gripping the sheets tight.

“Oh, it’s fine,” Sophia said, looking up from the journal. “Both of you look…flushed. Maybe you overdid it last night?”

What are you up t– Her thoughts got cut short and she stared at Lewis.

“Maybe?” Simone gave a smile. “I do ache a bit…”

Sophia made a look, “Let me go get you some painkillers real quick.” She got up and made her way to the infirmary.

It was enough time that Simone took control of the situation. “Lewis, you greedy bastard.” Simone was flushed but she very clearly enjoyed it. “Come here.” She dragged him down under her.

When Sophia came back Lewis had a passed out Simone in his arms and he was contently watching her. “Oh, she’s asleep.”

“I can give it to her,” Lewis took it and put it down next to the water that Sophia brought.

“It’s so cute how much you care about her!” Sophia was very impressed at their relationship. Almost wanting a Lewis for herself, if only Lewis was more submissive.

Still, Sophia actually got a view of Lewis’s bare ass as he got his pants on. Simone noticed and smirked a bit, “It’s okay. He has a nice ass,” Simone slapped it playfully and Lewis was wrestling with her. She was laughing. “Let me get dressed!”

“I don’t know… I quite like the view,” Lewis teased her before helping her.

–

The rest of the week went by well with Simone and Lewis getting closer to their new friends. Sophia broke up with her beau and Simone wasn’t very shocked as they had tea over it. Turns out he was a playboy.

Simone was in the middle of tea at lunch before magic lessons when she looked up between Terra and Sophia making eye contact and looking away. “Look…” Her voice scared them. “Just ask each other out already. You’ve been eye-fucking each other for three days now.”

“SIMONE!” Sophia was blushing hard and hid her face.

“I’m just trying to help,” Simone sipped on her tea. “He’s submissive.”

“HEY,” Terra was blushing now. “Not fair Simone.”

“I said I’m just helping…”

Today is the day Lewis.

Today as the day that Simone would reveal her sudden ‘power increase’ to the world. And if they were right, she would be taken for further study as the only student who didn’t fail the testing. The first part of the day went on as usual, with nothing of note happening. It wasn’t until the second half of the day that the plan started.

Diplomacy wasn’t going well. It never went well. Lewis and Simone held their resonance with ease, but the two had pushed an intentional discordance into the mix. As it turned out, Lewis being so bored out of his mind and falling asleep had the potential to cause Simone to fall asleep mid-class. So, for both of their sake’s, the less they were connected during Diplomacy, the better.

Still, the dissonance wasn’t enough to prevent Lewis from feeling the use of her hellfire. That warm feeling of mana being pulled, and sparking into a chaotic flame…he knew that feeling all too well now. He smirked. Step one, complete.

A student burst into the Diplomacy Class, and pointed down the hall. “Everyone! That transfer girl is doing Epic Level magic! It’s amazing!” Without waiting for a response, the student moved on to the next class. In the end, most of the students and the professors all gathered to witness the now dying flames of Simone’s Hellfire.

Well, well…you’re the talk of the school now, love…

Simone wielded her abilities easily enough. It was amazing to most that witnessed it for the first time. After all, she was a seasoned magic-user. She could use the hellfire because of what she was and how old she was. Her mana was cultivated with love, at least that’s what Angela made it out to be.

Terra was standing there with Sophia holding on tight. “The heat from that is intense!”

The phoenix smiled back at them, “This is so unexpected! I’m so excited! I’ve only ever read about hellfire before!” Terra smirked knowing she was a liar but she was hiding it well. “Lewis! Look what I did!” She was pointing to the candles she had lit.

She jumped into his arms and he swung her around. It was something extraordinary. Very few students ever learned something of this level. That was when the dean of magic showed up. “Miss Simone, can you come with us?” The students parted and Simone looked toward Lewis.

Here we go…

They went to an observatory where she sat down in his chair and folded his hands, “What you’ve done is extraordinary. There has been little from our school with this much potential. With this, we might be able to compare to Sularia’s Angela Rose. She was and still is the top student from her academy.”

Oh my god. They are out of their minds.

“We would like you to take extra classes every other day. You’ll be working with a specialized group of teachers to measure your growth. We’ll see if we can’t push your magic even farther… Is that okay?”

“That’s fine. I don’t see any problem with that.” Simone agreed and got a whole new set of books. Once she was released she met back up with Lewis. “Compare me to Angela? They are out of their fucking minds… We should get a hold of Xeik.”

I’m on it. We can set up a meeting in the library for tonight.

It was easy enough for Lewis to signal Xeik for a meeting. So, Lewis and Simone made an excuse to visit the library after the last class, and started to wait.

They were a little early, and Lewis found himself wandering the aisles looking at different types of magic. He had never really put much thought into the power that he had access to with Simone’s magic. For the most part, he had only ever drawn on the spells that he knew from his assassin days mixed with the spells that Simone had learned and cultivated throughout her life. He had never really explored other options. With the wealth of mana and experience at hand, he could hypothetically start branching out into new forms of magic, and that meant…

“Here,” he said, pulling out a book on the theoretical composition of spatial magic. He wandered over to the couches, and opened it up. At first glance, it was an extremely complicated book, and he could barely understand anything they were going on about. So, slowly but surely, he started to delve into each of the smaller parts first, accessing Simone’s memory, and using the library to look up more terms. A few more books piled up next to him, and soon he was lost in the books.

Xeik popped into the library almost an hour later, apologizing profusely for being late. “Sorry, I had a rather sickly patient who couldn’t stop sneezing. Turns out, he was allergic to magic. Let me tell you how much fun that was to deal wi-” He paused, noticing that Lewis had not looked up from his book.

“Wait, are you reading?” Xeik asked, shocked that Lewis would even attempt to study.

“Wait, is that what this is?” Lewis said, glancing up from the book. “I was wondering why these books didn’t have pictures and instead had really long and complicated words…” There was the barest hint of sarcasm in his voice.

Which for him, was a lot.

“All right, smart ass…” Xeik replied with a glare. “What are you even reading?”

“Spatial Magic theory. Thinking about adding on to the castle with magic.” Lewis seemed so nonchalant about it.

“I shouldn’t even be surprised anymore…”

“It will be really good when we’ve started adopting children in the hundreds.”

Xeik got wide eyes, “Please don’t you would never be able to keep up with them. Or pay attention to all of them. Then you would get upset and tell me to babysit more when you two wanted sex. It would exhaust me.”

“It’s always about you isn’t it?” Simone held a look on her face and sighed. “All well..”

“You both are assholes you know that?” Xeik sighed.

“Yup,” they answered together.

“Anyways, the reason why we called you here is that they want me to become as strong as Angela. That's what this whole thing is about. I now have to take extra classes to open up my mana to her level of craft…"

Xeik sat down and thought about what he heard. “So, they’re comparing you to a deity?” He frowned. The idea that someone was trying to create the powers of a God or a Goddess was concerning. That kind of power didn’t just come naturally. It took a lot of learning, training, and sacrifice to get on that level. Even to become merely a champion, Xeik had to undergo years of training, and even then the powers were a lot to handle without even more fine tuning.

“This is bigger than we thought. Of course, creating something to rival a God’s power is impossible, but I can see even the attempts going horribly wrong. There have been different experiments all throughout history. Most ended with mere death, but others created abominations that were nigh unkillable, but…” He grimaced. “They couldn’t control it.”

Lewis crossed his arms. “So you think that this is just another grand experiment? And that they’re using the kids as test subjects?”

“More than likely. A school is a great place to do it. You have access to all kinds of magic, and silver is always flowing in. No need to find test subjects since they’re all here anyway. And with the constant testing, they have all the required data to run a successful study.” Xeik didn’t like this one bit. “These classes…you need to be careful Simone.”

“Like she needs to be told,” Lewis replied. The moment he felt something off, he would burn the whole academy down.

“Just…make sure not to eat or drink anything they give you,” Xeik replied. “Be wary of any sprays or mists that might come your way as well. Just as a precaution.” He sighed. “I’ll report this to Angela and see where to go from here. For the time being, just keep up the charade, and see what else you can find.”

Lewis nodded. “If you can, look into the Dean of Magic and the Dean of Potions here. The Dean of Magic was pretty gung ho about these extra classes, but…I can’t get a good read on him. As for the Potions woman, she doesn’t strike me as anyone malicious, but we might as well dig up what we can.”

Simone was nodding with all of them, “I’m worried but we’ll see what happens… If anything I’m more worried about the kids that have been falling ill and disappearing.” She held out her hands as she explained.

Terra came into the library with Sophia and Terra looked concerned. “I’m sorry… I didn’t mean to tell her.”

Simone looked up at Sophia and looked concerned. “Terra…”

“It slipped out of my mouth when we were making out okay!” Terra was looking to explain how his loose lips got him in trouble. Sophia was over hugging Simone and looking at her with concern.

“You should have told me!”

“We didn’t want to get people involved. Terra was an accident. We didn’t think his dick would give him loose lips,” Simone covered her eyes.

“Don’t tell anymore people. You are starting to make this dangerous.” Simone sighed a bit.

“No, it might be good for her to know,” Xeik was thinking about it. “Sophia, can you make sure that no one puts food in your dorm without Simone knowing? If anything looks out of place please tell us.”

“So what are we dealing with?” Terra sat down next to Lewis. “Super evil?”

“Essentially…” Simone sighed as they explained their working theory.

“But that’s fucking insane,” Terra almost yelled but he calmed down. “Listen, those kids who got sick? They haven’t come back. Annie? I asked her folks if they heard from her… Supposedly she went back home. They had no fucking idea she was missing.”

“When did you find this out?” Simone was instantly concerned.

“Yesterday, I had written a letter to her folks. They are business partners with mine.”

At the rate they were going, the whole academy would know their secret by the end of the week. Much to Lewis’ surprise, though, Xeik seemed mostly okay with the fact that Sophia now knew their secret. She, of the two of them, had the better head on her shoulders and would likely not spill the secret as easily as Terra did.

And maybe she could keep him quiet.

“Annie went missing, huh?” Lewis repeated. That was interesting. He had been keeping a tabs on a few of the other students who had dropped, and some had gone home, while others were still recovering in the infirmary. “I wonder if it had anything to do with the effects the potions had on them.” The ‘failures’ must have been the ones abducted. “If there is anything good coming out of this, it’s that Simone can’t be abducted now. She’s too high profile, and her presence would be missed.”

Lewis sighed, and leaned back into the couch as he mulled over more of the details in his mind. “We need to find the books before this ends up as a disaster. He stood up, and started to walk over to the bookcase, and he paused. “Some idiot student has been drinking in here…there’s an empty bottle of wine…” He glanced over to Terra.

“Don’t look at me, I don’t drink!” Terra said, holding up his hands.

“Right,” Lewis replied, not bothering to hide his disbelief.

“I don’t though!” he shot back, annoyed.

“No one here believes you,” Xeik added. “Hey, doesn’t he remind you of-”

“Don’t even mention his name. It’ll summon him here….”

—

Rhenakos was having a field day shopping with his darling Reva. The streets were crowded and bustling, and his darling daughter was happy, and that was all that mattered. Then, out of nowhere…he sneezed.

—

“I need to get back to Elysia,” Xeik said as he stood up from one of the other couches. “Angela will probably have some sagely wisdom. Or…not. Who knows at this point…” He opened a gate, and disappeared.

“Wow, that’s so cool,” Terra said as the gate closed. “I wonder if I can do that.”

“If you practice a lot,” Lewis replied. “But knowing you-”

Sophia huffed, “I can make him practice. Just watch me!” The serious talk devolved into a rather normal conversation, and the evening ended with the boys going one way, and the girls the other.

The next day was a slight change up from the usual schedule. A practical course was held during the first half of the day; swordsmanship.

It wasn’t exactly swordsmanship, despite the name of the class, but more a session that was designed around letting the students learn a variety of different weapons and styles that may suit their magical needs. After all, nobles were originally meant to protect their lands and their ruler. Sure, the actual practice had died out in lieu of standing armies, but nobles were always about their traditions.

Lewis knew better than to stick to his trusty dagger, and instead went for a basic longsword. His time practicing with Llywellyn had given him more than the necessary skills to be competent with the chosen weapon. For now, we just need to pass. No standing out. Well…maybe you can stand out a little, he thought to Simone. After all, she was the magical prodigy of the Academy.

“Okay,” Simone looked excited as she took up a polearm. She was pretty decent at it as she swung it around her body and danced around with it. All eyes were on her. “What? My father had me learn basic self-defense?” It was enough to make others look away.

“Look at me,” Rachel mocked. “I know basic self-defense.” She was quiet about it as she got up. “I’ll spar with Simone.”

Simone looked wearily at it. She wasn’t about to use her magic now that it was considered an upgrade. Something was definitely off about it though.

Lewis… Look at her group moving…

She had been trained to notice things. Lewis taught her the very basics of being an assassin and spy. That was when the flurry of attacks started coming at Simone. FUCK

One actually managed to hit Simone and she cut the resonance so it only affected her. Blood was going down her arm from the sudden hit. The teacher was trying to get it under control but Rachel’s group just pushed him back.

“This is a lesson for being fucking snarky,” Rachel sneered. “You are in over your head. A little beating should be alright.”

“You are going too far!” Sophia yelled and Terra pushed her behind him once someone else was looking too aggressively at them.

Simone could defend herself against one or two but multiples had always been a problem for her.