The lesson, Lucid decided, was that sometimes you just snapped. It wasn't a grand epiphany. It was more like a glass of water you kept overfilling, drop by irritating drop, until it finally sloshed over the rim and made a mess. Alaric had been the last drop. The shove, the sneer, the way his voice had dripped with the absolute certainty of his own superiority, it had been the final, stupid weight that broke something loose.
What happened next was not heroic, or cool, or even particularly skilled. It was just fast and ugly.
"HOLD ME BACK!!" Lucid roared, the sound raw and unfamiliar in his own throat. It was less a command and more a theatrical announcement, because Brian was already there, wrapping his huge arms around Lucid's chest in a panic.
One second, Alaric was smirking. The next, Lucid's fist connected with his nose with a wet, crunching sound that was deeply, viscerally satisfying. Alaric stumbled back, a look of pure, comical shock on his face before the pain registered and he shrieked, clutching his face as blood streamed through his fingers.
"I'LL RAM YOUR FACE IN, YOU PATHETIC PIECE OF SHIT!" Lucid bellowed, straining against Brian's bear hug. It was a ridiculous sight: Brian, red-faced and wheezing, using all his considerable mass to restrain a seething, mist-shrouded lunatic, his feet slipping in the dirt.
Alaric scrambled backward on his hands and knees, tears of pain and humiliation mixing with the blood on his face. The courtyard, which had been full of casual cruelty, fell into a stunned, watchful silence. Silver badges and black badges alike stared, their expressions a mix of horror and fascinated glee.
Brian's grip slipped. Lucid broke free.
"COME HERE, YOU ASSHOLE!"
"Ahh! Please, please, please, please!" Alaric squeaked, scrambling crablike across the ground. The transformation from vile tormentor to sniveling prey was almost funny.
"THAT'S ENOUGH, SILVER BADGE!" The red-faced PE teacher waddled over, his own considerable belly leading the charge. He tried to wrap his arms around Lucid from behind. Lucid just drove an elbow back. There was a soft *oof* as the man's breath left him, and he stumbled away, choking.
Lucid turned his glare on Alaric's two cronies, who were now pale and frozen. "Where are your friends, huh?" He took a step toward the square-jawed one who'd fired the spell earlier. "YOU! Oh, I wish *you* were dead."
"No, no, ahhh, save me!" the boy squealed, trying to hide behind his own hands.
That was when the real authority arrived. Two professors in severe grey robes burst into the courtyard. One made a sharp, twisting gesture with her hand. Lucid's feet were instantly encased in stone, locking him to the spot. The other professor raised a hand, and bands of solid rock formed around his shoulders and arms, pinning them to his sides. The restraint was absolute and humiliatingly effortless.
"The fuck! I can't move! Unhand me, you bastards!" Lucid's breath came in ragged heaves. The red haze of anger was fading, leaving behind the cold, stupid reality of what he'd done.
Alaric, seeing Lucid immobilized, pushed himself to his feet. He wiped blood from his broken nose with the back of his hand, a desperate, ugly grin spreading across his battered face. "Oh, you are so dead now," he gurgled, his voice nasal and thick. "My brother is here! Ahahaha!"
As if summoned, a senior student accompanied by another professor came into view. The senior took in the scene with a single, sweeping glance: his younger brother, bruised and bleeding, and a silver badge held fast in stone restraints. His expression remained perfectly, chillingly neutral.
Lucid had harmed his brother.
The senior stepped forward, his movements smooth and controlled. He was tall, with silver hair that seemed almost white and eyes the color of polished jet. A slight tan spoke of time spent outside the academy's walls. He wore no badge, but his bearing screamed of a different, heavier authority.
"I, Miguel, third heir of the House of Fenshore, shall evaluate this matter." His voice was calm, carrying easily across the silent courtyard. "Lucid. A transfer student, second-year of the Vex Academy."
That name registered in Lucid's head like a struck bell. *Fenshore*. The very house he had been sent by Karmen to track, to infiltrate, to get their "blue print" from by any means necessary. A slow, involuntary grin shaped itself beneath the mist clinging to his face. "Oh," he murmured, too low for anyone else to hear. "How interesting."
Miguel took statements with detached efficiency, listening to the sputtering accusations from Alaric's friends and the mumbled, fearful account from a few silver-badge witnesses. He then conferred with the stone-wielding professor. It was clear Miguel had standing here; the professor listened to him with a deference usually reserved for other faculty. The decision, it seemed, would not be the professor's alone.
Finally, Miguel approached Lucid, who was still locked in his rocky prison. He stopped a few feet away, his black eyes unreadable.
"Lucid. To my knowledge, it appears this commotion started due to my little brother's… impudence." He spoke the word with a slight distaste, as if acknowledging a faulty but familiar tool. "I shall see that he is taught a lesson in decorum. And… I will cover any emotional damages he might have caused." He paused, his head tilting. "Shall I escort you to the infirmary? You seem to have strained yourself."
A wave of shocked murmurs rippled through the crowd. The older brother of the most feared noble house in the district was not only not demanding Lucid's expulsion or dismemberment, he was offering aid? It made no sense.
But Lucid saw it. Beneath that placid, reasonable veil was a smile so grotesque, a grin so hideous it was almost a physical presence. There was a hidden calculus at work here, a game Lucid didn't yet know the rules to. The noble knew Lucid had caught on. Their eyes met, and an understanding passed between them, this was not mercy; it was a marker being placed.
"Please remain on your utmost best behavior until graduation," Miguel continued, his voice dropping to a tone meant only for Lucid, though it carried in the quiet. "We are, after all… Vex's future. And the only force that might hold resistance against Materna."
*Materna*. The name was a cold splash of reality. The empire that had been the source of so much pain in Karmen's iterated lives, the looming shadow Karmen had warned him about. Miguel was tying this petty schoolyard drama to the fate of kingdoms. It was absurd, manipulative, and deeply unsettling.
The stone restraints dissolved. Lucid stumbled forward a step, his muscles aching.
Sometime later, after a mandatory and pointless visit to the infirmary where a healer clucked over his "adrenaline fatigue," Lucid stepped back out into the hallway. Two familiar figures were waiting, leaning against the opposite wall.
"Wow," Brian breathed, his eyes wide with a mixture of terror and awe. "I didn't know you were that much of a fighter, Lucid."
"Thank you for standing up," Mary said, her voice small but steady. She pushed her cracked glasses up her nose. "You… you have a reputation now. The 'silver-headed rebel.'"
Lucid just nodded. He didn't know what to say. He felt hollow, and stupid.
Mary took a tentative step closer. "Um. Lucid," she began again, wringing her hands. "I never properly thanked you. For earlier. In the hallway. When you stepped in. It was… really brave."
Brian's jaw dropped. "Whoa, you stood up to them for her, too? That's awesome, Lucid!" He puffed out his chest as if some of the bravery had rubbed off on him.
Mary extended a hand, a gentle, earnest look in her emerald eyes behind the fractured lenses. "I was wondering… if you'd like to be friends? Or at least… study buddies? It's easier here when you have people. People who get it."
Brian beamed, slapping his hands on his hips. "Yeah! The more the merrier! We silver badges gotta stick together!"
Lucid looked at Mary's offered hand, then at Brian's hopeful, sweaty smile. He understood what this was. It wasn't just friendship. It was a pact. A truce. *Please defend me and suffer with me.* The weak always stuck together, a fact he'd learned well on Earth. They were offering an alliance born from shared vulnerability and a desperate need for cover.
He didn't object. What was the alternative? More alone? After a brief pause, he took Mary's hand and gave it a single, firm shake. "Sure."
Mary's face lit up. Brian cheered softly.
"Great!" Mary said, adjusting her glasses. "So, um, next class is art class. It's further down the corridors.
" Brian i can see you can't contain your excitement."
She giggled, "it's his favourite..."
"It's the only class where running isn't involved," Brian added, still looking a bit winded from the whole 'restraining a berserker' ordeal. "What about you, Lucid? How old are you? Where are you from?"
"I'm seventeen," Lucid said. "From a distant town called Tyriana."
"Cool! We're the same age, then!" Brian said. "I'm from a farming village west of here. Mary's from the city, but her family's in trade."
They stood, an awkward trio in the polished hallway, and began walking toward the academy's main building. Lucid felt oddly off-balance. Why were they so eager to include him? He was a stranger, shrouded in mist, with a propensity for sudden violence and no background they knew.
Alice's voice teased gently in his mind. "Ooh, my little mortal is making friends…"
He ignored her, focusing instead on the two walking beside him, a panting, cheerful boy who used his bulk as a shield, and a studious, kind-eyed girl. For the first time since arriving in Vex, he wasn't completely alone. And for reasons he couldn't quite name, that thought was both mildly comforting and profoundly, deeply terrifying.
That once again... he might be responsable for a life now.
More than one this time.