The magic class started on time.
Arthur was already in his seat when the rest of the class filtered in. He watched the door, the same way he'd started watching every entrance since he got here, noting faces, looking for anything worth noting.
Kreasial came in third. Nose straight, no bruising, not even a trace of the headbutt from this morning. Healing magic probably. She glanced at Arthur when she passed his row and didn't narrow her eyes the way she had before. Didn't smile either. Just looked, like she was revising something in her head and hadn't finished yet.
He filed that away and looked back at the door.
Four minutes passed.
Havier walked in at the five minute mark.
He kept his head down the whole way to his seat. Same as always. He climbed the stairs to the back row and sat two seats from Arthur without looking up once.
Arthur watched him settle in.
He looked up at Vexis hovering above him.
Hey. Why did you even bully this guy.
'Bully?' Vexis scoffed, arms crossed. 'That little shit deserves everything he got. He can't tell the difference between a normal look and one with ulterior motives. And his face irritates me.'
That's it? Because your memories say otherwise.
Vexis didn't answer immediately.
'He was my classmate. Early years.' A pause. 'His family held the Crescent name. Nobility of the Moon faction.'
Arthur kept his face still.
The Crescent family. One of the older noble houses, tied directly to the Moon faction's political structure. He'd read about them in passing, one of those background details the novel mentioned to fill out the world without ever making central.
Wait. You said held.
'His father was killed. Without the head of house the main Crescent family cut them off completely. Disowned the whole branch.' Vexis's voice had a particular flatness to it. Not cold exactly. Just done. 'Everything he had. The name. The connections. The way he used to walk into a room. Gone.'
Arthur looked at Havier sitting two seats away with his shoulders curved inward and his eyes on the desk.
And you kept going after him. Even after all of that.
'He used to look down on people.' Vexis said it like it explained everything. 'Before the fall. He had that particular way of existing around other people like they were furniture. I couldn't stand it.'
Speak for yourself.
'I'm different.'
You literally do the same shit you know..
'I am direct.' Vexis's voice sharpened slightly. 'I don't perform it. This one dressed it up in manners and titles and quiet little comments that were designed to make you feel small without being traceable. When the family fell all of that disappeared overnight. Like it was never real.' A pause. 'That kind of person deserves what they get.'
Arthur didn't respond to that.
He just looked at Havier.
A fallen noble from a family with Moon faction ties, bullied by Vexis for years, sitting in the same room, five minutes late, like something is pulling at him from outside.
He went up on the list. Not at the top yet. But up.
I need to get a reaction out of him. Something real. See what's actually under there.
The door opened.
A woman walked in. Small, slender, with a hat on her head that was genuinely too large for her, wide-brimmed and slightly tilted like it had given up trying to sit straight. She was carrying a piece of bread in her left hand and a stack of papers in the other and she moved to the front of the room like she'd been mid-thought the whole walk here.
According to Vexis's memory her name was Lydia. Something about the memory felt fond in a distant way, like a room you'd been in once and almost remembered.
She set the papers down and took a bite of the bread without acknowledging anyone.
'Classic.' Vexis muttered somewhere above Arthur's right shoulder.
"Alright." Her voice was tired in the specific way that had become permanent rather than situational. "I won't drag this out. Short lecture, then you apply it immediately. We've already covered the behavioral and biological side of bellus. Today you meet yours."
Arthur straightened slightly.
Bellus.
He knew this. The novel had covered it well enough. A companion species, distinct from regular animals, native to the elven territories but long since adapted to human bonds. The relationship varied depending on the pact. Some were simple. Some ran deep enough to affect combat ability, perception, magic output. Xavier in the novel had formed a pact with a mythic-grade bellus and it had changed the whole trajectory of his arc. Pretty overpowered if Arthur was being honest. He'd mentioned it in a comment once and the author had not responded.
Lydia raised her hand. A shimmer passed through the room and a square of yellow-red paper appeared on every desk at once.
Arthur looked at his.
Dense markings around the edge. A circle carved into the center with a fine instrument. The paper itself had a faint warmth to it.
"Calling Scripts." Lydia took another bite of bread. "Drop your blood on the circle and your bellus will answer. Treat them well. Bellus bond to their caller on first contact and any act of deliberate harm toward a bonded bellus is a criminal offence under academy law. Questions?"
Nobody had questions.
'I hate these things.' Vexis drifted down and hovered over the desk, staring at the calling script with the expression of a man reviewing a bill he didn't agree with. 'Furry little disasters. My sister's bellus once ate through three of my good shirts because she forgot to feed it for two days. Awful creatures.'
Can you please shut up for five minutes.
'Curse you, impostor.'
Arthur looked around.
Kreasial pressed her thumb to the circle without hesitation. The paper lit red and orange and something small and fast shot out of the light, already moving before it fully materialized. It landed on her shoulder, settled, and turned to look at the room with bright amber eyes. Red-furred. Fitting.
Two rows down a quiet kid with round glasses summoned something grey and round that immediately fell asleep.
Havier's script lit black. What came out was dark-furred, small as a fist, and sat on the desk looking at nothing with an expression of complete disconnection from the world around it. Havier looked at it for a second. Then reached out and let it sniff his finger.
It didn't move away.
Arthur watched that.
Then he looked back at his own script.
Alright. Let's see what we get.
He bit his thumb. Blood welled at the surface and he turned his hand over and let a drop fall onto the circle.
The markings lit gold. Warm, steady, not the quick flash he'd seen from the others but a slow build like something taking its time. The paper dissolved from the outside in and the light gathered at the center and then expanded.
Gold. Bright enough that he squinted.
Then it was gone.
On the desk in front of him sat a ball of pink fur the size of his closed fist.
He stared at it.
Rounded. Soft-looking. Two small pointed ears sitting slightly crooked on top. Four tiny hooves, dark, barely visible under the fur. And in the middle of its body, inexplicably, a bow tie. Small and neat and absolutely present.
It opened its eyes.
Red. Deep red, lit from behind. It looked at Arthur. Then at the desk. Then at Arthur again.
Its ears flattened.
"For FUCK sake, human." Its voice was tiny and immediate and deeply annoyed. "I was WORKING."
Arthur stared at it.
The bellus stared back. Eyes narrowed. Ears still flat. The bow tie somehow made it worse.
He felt something in his chest that had been locked down since he woke up on a cafeteria floor in someone else's body.
He smiled.
Not Vexis's mouth firing off. Not a reflex. Just him.
"Nice to meet you," Arthur said. "You tiny furious little disaster."
The bellus's ear twitched.
It did not look charmed.