Basic Thaumaturgy for the Emotional Incompetent [A Magical Academy LitRPG]

Fabrisse didn't know Headmaster Draeth had a niece until today, when Aldith atte Mere picked him up in the corridor—not literally off his feet, but with that unmistakable Draeth-family decisiveness—and steered him toward one of the Headmaster's five hundred so-called private studies. She was a little older than him, perhaps by two or three years, with a tall, reedlike frame that gave the impression of elegance only because she held herself so rigidly upright. Her features weren't sharp, but the whole arrangement drew the eye in ways Fabrisse couldn't quite parse. Her skin held a vague sun-warm tint, unusual this far inland, and her hair, dark and heavy, was gathered back in a knot that seemed practical until you noticed the loose wisps framing her face, softening her severity.

Unlike her uncle, she didn't move in silence. Where Draeth's presence hung over a room like a closing door, Aldith filled the hall with a running thread of commentary that seemed to sprout from nowhere. First it was the draftiness of the east stairwell, then how the kitchens overboiled the barley stew on Tuesdays, then an unsolicited critique of the fourth mural of Leader Muradius they passed—"His nose is longer in this one; must've been a bad day for the painter. Doubt he lasted long after that." None of it had anything to do with the Eidralith, or whatever mess Fabrisse had stumbled into, and he wasn't sure if she even knew. She just talked, light and unbothered, as though every passing thought was worth sharing aloud.

"Do you ever notice," Aldith went on breezily, "how the stone in this corridor never matches? One arch is all pale and crumbly, then the next looks like it's been polished up for a cathedral. Drives me mad, honestly."

Fabrisse glanced at the wall. "That's because they're using different quarry strata."

"Different what?" she asked at once, quick to pounce on the smallest sound from him.

He hesitated, realizing she expected him to elaborate. "Strata," he said finally. "They cut the stone from separate layers of the same quarry. Different mineral content, different weathering properties."

Aldith tilted her head, grinning. "So that's why it looks such a patchwork. I always assumed some poor soul had shocking taste."

"The pale sections are limestone. Softer. You could . . ." He was about to go on, but what he was about to say sounded extremely silly.

"Come off it, what were you about to say?" Aldith's grin widened.

"It isn't important."

"That's the worst thing you could've said," she declared, still steering him down the corridor. "Now I'll think about it all afternoon. Out with it. What could you do?"

Fabrisse scratched the back of his head. "It would dissolve if exposed often enough."

"Dissolve? By what—rain?"

"Saliva," he muttered. "If you licked the same spot every day for about ten years, you'd leave a mark."

She stopped, stared at him, and then laughed so loud it startled him. "You're having me on." It took him a second to decipher what she meant with that phrasing.

"I'm not," Fabrisse said with absolute seriousness.

That only made her laugh harder, though the sound turned warmer, more delighted than mocking. When she finally caught her breath, she was still grinning at him as though he'd just revealed some great hidden charm. "Saints, you really mean it. You're the first boy I've met who could make limestone sound fascinating."

He only scratched the back of his head harder, unsure whether she was complimenting him or not.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

"And Uncle says you're the most uninspiring student-magus of the lot. Rubbish, I'd say. If anything, he only holds a grudge because you put him in mind of his younger days!"

"He was like me?" Fabrisse raised his voice without meaning to. He was surprised Draeth spoke about him at all.

"Oh, absolutely. You should've seen him when he still had hair; utterly besotted with rocks. He wouldn't shut up about strata and fissures, always dragging himself into those miserable stratal dungeons the rest of us had the sense to avoid. He came home once with half his boots dissolved and the other half full of gravel, crowing on about 'mineral resonance' as if he'd discovered the crown jewels." She gave a little laugh, shaking her head.

Fabrisse stared at her, speechless. Draeth, the same man who sneered at stonework and treated stratal studies as beneath contempt, crowing about mineral resonance? He almost blurted out that it was impossible.

But Aldith only laughed again, softer this time, and nudged him forward. "I was five then, but I remember it clear as day. Tell you what—if you ever fancy heading across the island and dropping by my workshop, I'll tell you the whole scandalous tale over a pint. Rocks and all."

"Oh, I don't think I can travel that far. I—" Hold on. Did she say 'across the island'? Come to think of it . . . "You don't speak like you're from around here," Fabrisse murmured.

Aldith cocked a brow, amused. "Sharp ear. Most people just say I sound 'odd.'"

"You don't," he said quickly, then corrected himself. "I mean, you do, but not in a bad way. The cadence is different. You must've grown up off the mainland."

Her grin curved. "Go on then, clever magus. Where do you think?"

Fabrisse hesitated, then gave the thought shape. "Your accent . . . the lilt on your r . . . It matches what I've read about the Isle of Merrowen."

For once, Aldith looked genuinely surprised. Then she gave a low whistle. "Well, saints alive. You've done your homework. Yes, the atte Meres come from Merrowen. That's where your Headmaster's maternal line lives."

"So you're not an enrolled student?" He arched his brow.

"Oh dear, no," Aldith said at once, looking delighted at the thought. "Can you imagine me shut up in lecture halls, copying runes like a mouse in a grain sack? Not a chance. I only came across because Uncle begged me—well, all right, ordered me—to see to some 'family matter.' Apparently, the 'family matter' involves you."

Fabrisse opened his mouth to ask more about this supposed family matter, but the words faltered. For the first time since he inspected the patchwork on the walls, he actually looked around.

This wasn't any corridor he knew. The stones didn't even match one another, even moreso than before. The light wasn't glyphlight either; it leaked in pale ribbons from cracks in the joinery, pooling in odd corners and leaving others strangely dim, like the place couldn't make up its mind about day or night.

He slowed. "Where . . . where exactly are we?"

"Oh, here we go." Aldith threw him a sideways grin. "Took you long enough to notice. You're in a Lightfold. Uncle keeps half a dozen of them stitched underneath leylines round the Synod, and only a few can open them. Means no stray apprentice or dustman comes wandering in where they've no business."

Fabrisse blinked, unsettled. He couldn't even picture the turns they'd taken. For all he knew, she could've walked him through a wall without his noticing. And that thought—that Aldith's chatter had carried him along so easily he hadn't realised—sat strangely in his chest.

They came at last to a door that looked far too plain for all the strangeness around it, with oak boards, iron banding, the sort you'd find in a cellar, and definitely not the usual Draeth fashion. Aldith stopped short of it and placed her hand on the latch. "Before you toddle in to face Uncle's grim pronouncements," she said, "oughtn't we exchange glyph contact?"

"Is that part of the family business?"

"Family business?" She gave a bright laugh. "No. This one's for my own amusement." Her eyes swept over him in a way that made him fidget. "You're quite a handsome lad, you know."

His mouth opened, but nothing sensible came out. He thought back through the corridor, the running stream of talk, the laughter, the grin that never quite left her face. Had she been—?

Aldith tilted her head, amused at his silence, and tapped her wrist where her glyph mark glowed. "Well? Or are you the sort who needs written permission to hand over a contact sigil?"

Only then did it dawn on him, with the slow, jolting clarity that always came too late: Aldith atte Mere had been flirting with him the entire time.