"Alright, class dismissed."
Arya clapped once and the room immediately started moving. Chairs scraping, bags rustling, the afternoon light cutting through the windows in long flat strips across the floor.
Arthur stayed seated for a second.
Xavier stood up across the room. Picked up his bag. Then glanced over at Vexis before walking out.
Arthur caught it.
He looked away first.
Enough with that. I need to focus. Someone in this story is going to kill me in two weeks and I'm sitting here getting into stare downs with the main character.
He stood up.
"Hey Vex." Ivan appeared at his shoulder. "Wanna head to the Ampshire district? Vak said he needs a word with you."
Vak.
Arthur turned the name over.
I don't recognize that. I never read that name. Not once across two thousand chapters. Who is—
A sharp sting hit the back of his skull.
"Ahh—"
"You okay?" Ivan frowned at him.
Arthur pressed two fingers to the back of his head. The sting faded as fast as it came and something settled in behind it. Like a drawer sliding open that had always been there.
Vak.
Right. Vak.
The memory filled itself in without asking. A former student of Magilea Academy. Dropped out. Has been reaching out to Vexis in the weeks before the novel started. Meeting him in the city. Off academy grounds. Away from anyone who would report back.
Contacting me.
Arthur's jaw tightened.
This is a lead. An actual lead. Someone outside the academy with direct ties to Vexis right before he dies. If anyone knows what was coming for Vexis, it's this guy.
"Alright," Arthur said. "Let's move."
Ivan and Cael fell into step behind him without a word. That was the thing about them. They just did that. Moved when he moved. Waited when he waited. Like it was the most natural thing in the world.
The academy was massive. The biggest in the country, according to everything in Vexis's memory. Walking from one end to the other would take the better part of an hour. So nobody walked.
"I'll meet you at the gate." Ivan pulled a small relic stone from his pocket, triangular, and held it flat on his palm. Then he vanished. Just a soft hiss of displaced air and he was gone.
Arthur stared at the empty space where Ivan had been standing.
Cael held out a relic stone toward him without comment. His face was the same as it always was. Still. Like he was waiting for something he already knew was going to happen.
Arthur took it.
He turned it over in his hand. It hummed faintly against his palm, warm, with a low sound he felt more than heard.
Think of where you want to go. That was how it worked. He was almost sure.
Main gate.
The world folded inward. Then snapped back outward.
Cold afternoon air hit his face. The sound of the city replaced the quiet of the corridor. He was standing at the main gate and his stomach did something unpleasant.
Okay. That's a horrible feeling. Genuinely horrible.
He put a hand on the gate post and waited for it to pass.
Across the road, a massive carriage sat parked to the side. Dark wood, brass fittings, and on the door a crest he recognized from somewhere inside Vexis's chest before he recognized it with his eyes.
An eagle. The Lestilaut crest.
A man in a pristine suit stepped forward and bowed. White at the temples, back straight, the kind of man who had been doing this long enough that it stopped being a job and became just how he stood.
"Master Vexis. Where shall we go?"
"Ampshire district."
"Right away, sir."
He stepped aside. Arthur got in. Ivan and Cael climbed in after him.
The door closed and the carriage started moving.
Arthur leaned back against the seat and looked at the ceiling.
So this is what being wealthy feels like.
He thought about his apartment. The desk. The cold coffee. The chair that made that noise.
No.
He sat up straight.
I'm not going back to that. I need to focus. I need to be sharp.
I am not going to die in this story.
Screw you, LazyTurtle. I'll fix your novel myself.
Outside the window the city opened up. He couldn't help it. His eyes moved across all of it and he felt something loosen in his chest despite everything.
Towers that caught the afternoon light along the upper stones. Taverns with knights sitting outside them like it was nothing. A mercenary guild with a boar and sword above the door, men in mismatched armor coming and going. Vendors, students, children sprinting after each other down an alley. A beggar on a corner with his head down.
The world he had read about for two years, sitting right outside a carriage window. Real. Actual weather and actual noise and actual people who had no idea they were in a story.
It was the same as he had imagined it.
He didn't know how to feel about that.
"Guys." Cael spoke up from the seat across. He was looking out the other window, chin slightly tilted. "Isn't that Havier?"
Arthur looked.
A brown-haired kid on the pavement. Academy uniform rumpled, nose still swollen and red, walking with his head down like he was trying to take up as little space as possible.
The kid from the cafeteria. The one Vexis had already broken.
"Man." Ivan laughed. "He looks rough. Where's he even going?"
Arthur said nothing.
"Hey, Vex." Ivan leaned forward. Something in his grin that had a little too much energy behind it. "I heard his mother runs a meat shop. Right around the corner in Shard district. We should stop by. Just to say hello."
Arthur looked at him.
Ivan was still grinning. Waiting. Like this was the part where Vexis would laugh and agree.
Arthur thought about the kid on the pavement walking with his head down.
He thought about what kind of person thought that was funny.
"Ivan."
"Yeah?"
"You've been talking the entire ride." Arthur's voice came out flat. "Your voice is starting to irritate me."
Ivan blinked.
"That's a warning. Not a suggestion."
"Oh." Ivan sat back. "Right. Sorry, Vex."
Silence settled over the carriage.
Arthur turned back to the window.
He waited for the familiar guilt that usually followed saying something sharp to someone who didn't fully deserve the full force of it.
It didn't come.
And somewhere underneath that, something in the body he was wearing felt almost satisfied.
Arthur noticed it. Sat with it for a second.
Then looked away from his own reflection in the glass.
Ten minutes passed.
A sign came into view at the end of the road.
Ampshire District.
The carriage slowed. Arthur looked out at the street ahead and his brain caught up a half second after his eyes did.
Red lights strung between the buildings. Women standing in doorways and along the pavement, talking to men passing through. Music from somewhere inside one of the buildings. The kind of neighborhood that didn't need to advertise what it was.
Arthur put his face in his hand.
Of course.
I should have known the second I heard the name.
Of all the places Vak could have picked.