Slowly, more students started to arrive behind us.

  Setsuna walked off to the side, jumping down the bridge and onto the riverbank, leading some of the teachers to yell in fright and concern as she wandered off.

  “Hey, miss, you can’t be going down there, it’s dangerous!”

  The headmaster just laughed again off from the side.

  “Haha! Oh, it’s fine, you worrywart, you don’t need to worry about her. I can personally guarantee you she’ll be fine.”

  “But, Headmaster, she-”

  “Pray, do you recall my old friend? The one who wrote the Book of Five Rings?”

  “Huh? You mean that swordsman? Well, yes, as a practicing wizard, it’s hard not to remember the work that led to the founding principle of the ‘Symmetry of Six’, but what does he have to do with this? Wasn’t he buried two years ago?”

  “He disappeared around a decade ago, no? I was trying to find him for a long time, but I’ve never been able to. Only two years ago did we find his remains, what do you think he was doing during that period?”

  “Sir, are you trying to imply-”

  “Haha! I’m just saying that this year’s talent will be one to write down in the history books!”

  I peered down the steep, rocky drop-off in curiosity, only to find Setsuna meditating at the water’s edge, her blade floating in front of her once again.

  Well, I guess I shouldn’t have expected too much from her when it came to social interaction. At the very least, she would have my back for practicals like these. It was probably a bit greedy to ask for more than that.

  I yelped as Hayate popped out from behind me and slung his arm around my shoulder again, shaking me back and forth.

  “Hey, Estelle, c’mon, tell me, what’s it like living in Arden!?”

  I sighed.

  “Hayate, I told you this morning, I don’t live in Arden. I live in the Yrd’ll Mountains,” I rolled my eyes.

  “Still, you said you go there from time to time, right? C’mon, tell me about it!”

  “Well, I’m not sure what you want me to say about it. I mean, at its core, it’s just a city like any other, people are just trying their best to live their lives.”

  “Is it true that the wizards there commute to work on magic carpets and broomsticks!?”

  I looked at him strangely.

  “No? I think if we discovered how to fly efficiently, the whole world would know about it now. Gryphon riders would be out of business tomorrow if that were true.”

  “Is it true that the stadium for the Evaluation is flying!?”

  “I just told you that we don’t have that technology.”

  “Okay, but the stuff about the Evaluations themselves, that’s all true, right? The giant terraformers that instantly shape battlefields, dungeons, and labyrinths?”

  “Yes, but it’s not as simple or purely technological as you might think. There has to be a whole group of dedicated high-class Earth mages operating it at all times.”

  “There’s a distant relative of mine who got promoted to A-Rank there a couple years ago, he told me some crazy stuff, like how they transformed the testing ground into a huge, sprawling underground cave system at the request of a sponsor. He ended up netting a really lucrative contract from his run with his company there, delving into deep caves now full-time!”

  I blinked. That sounded familiar.

  “Was this three years ago? During winter?”

  “Uh, yeah? That sounds about right.”

  “Hm, I think I might have seen that one with my sister.”

  “You have a sister?” Hayate blinked.

  I chuckled fondly, thinking about home.

  Or, well not home, not right now; she was probably still out with Belle exploring the city underneath Hinanhoro.

  “Yes, she’s the cutest little thing. Very smart, too, much more talented than me. You’ll probably see her at Nindo in a couple years, you see…”

  I immediately started blabbering away about my sister, making the boy a tiny bit uncomfortable.

  He chuckled nervously as he listened to me.

  We passed the time with idle chatter. I told him what Arden was like, but only after I asked him about his life in Tenmai to compare as a baseline. I told him more about my sister, and he seemed to be a bit uncomfortable for some reason afterwards.

  I didn’t get why he was so awkward. Was he an only child or something? I would have thought he had siblings or something – the headmaster described him very specifically as ‘first son’ of Duke Wadatsumi.

  He definitely at least seemed close to his cousin, Kagura.

  More and more students started to pile onto the bridge, coming out from the treeline behind us.

  They staggered along the edge of the river bank, panting and limping as bruises swelled and blood dried on patches of torn skin.

  “She’s a much better witch than me-”

  I paused in the middle of a sentence, my eyes trailing over to their injured forms.

  I frowned.

  My fingers couldn’t stop fidgeting around with my oaken staff.

  I chuckled reluctantly, looking at Hayate with a regretful smile.

  “Sorry, I-”

  “No, no, it’s fine,” he smiled softly, nodding towards them encouragingly, understanding what I was thinking.

  He smiled cheesily, an expression I had quickly come to realise was common on his face.

  “You do you, Estelle, we can continue talking whenever. We have a whole… what? Seven years of friendship in front of us? All the time in the world. Go patch ‘em up.”

  He gave me a bold thumbs-up.

  I smiled in thanks.

  He was a nice person.

  I spun around and jogged towards the injured arrivals.

  One of the boys groaned and collapsed to the ground, his muscles burning and aching as his scratches and cuts bled out onto the grass beneath.

  I walked up to him slowly and pointed the head of my staff towards his body as he sighed and closed his eyes, desperate to find some rest.

  The grass around us joyously waved and cheered at my presence as streams of golden light fluttered us, encircling the injured boy’s body before suddenly diving into every exposed crack of his flesh.

  The boy paused, stopping halfway through a groan.

  He cracked a confused eye open, inspecting his hands as the skin on them knitted itself closed.

  Suddenly, he found that he had the energy to spring up and sit up straight.

  “Huh?” He lifted his arms up and looked down at his body.

  And then he realised I was standing over him.

  I smiled politely at his confused expression.

  He stared at me in stunned silence for a bit, before forming a hesitant grimace with his lips.

  “I’m not gonna give my thanks to Sol or pray earnestly for salvation or anything like that, okay?” he stared at me warily.

  My smile quickly turned wry.

  Well, that reaction was within expectations.

  “I’m not a priest or nun or anything like that, I’m not expecting you to devote yourself to a god just because I healed some surface-level injuries or anything like that.”

  He reeled in confusion at my words.

  “But… that’s healing magic, isn’t it? If you’re not a priest, then what are you?”

  “A witch… or, well, a daughter of one, anyways. My mother hasn’t given me the right to wear the hat yet.”

  “Huh, a witch?” the boy blinked, as if refusing to properly comprehend what I was saying.

  His gaze turned to the side, where not far away, a young girl our age collapsed onto the grass well, wearing a purple robe and pointy black hat, lined with velvet on the inside.

  “You really don’t seem like one to me,” he looked back at me warily, “you’re not gonna like… collect my organs or steal my blood or anything, right?”

  My awkward smile pulled even further in chagrin.

  “You know, my mother said that’s an offensive stereotype.”

  The boy flinched lightly, having the decency to blush and look away as he scratched his head sheepishly.

  “W-well, to be fair… look, I wouldn’t really be surprised if it were true given all the witches I’ve encountered thus far.”

  I sighed, before chuckling lightly.

  Witches really did carry a bit of a rough reputation, didn’t they?

  “Well, anyways,” I shook my head, managing to find a small bit of amusement within the situation as I recalled when I first said something similar to Belle, “I’m sure it was tough out there, good job on getting through the forest. Thank you for your hard work.”

  The boy just stared at me for a bit.

  I tilted my head slightly in confusion at his silence and gaping expression.

  He snapped back into reality, blushing even more heavily as he looked away.

  “Y-yeah, i-it wasn’t t-that big of a deal… a-and… t-thanks… f-for the healing.”

  He quickly scuttled away, running like his pants had caught on fire.

  I frowned.

  What was that about?

  I turned my gaze towards the other figure close by, presumably a teammate of the boy from before.

  Again, I pointed my staff towards her and healed most of her injuries.

  The girl groaned in annoyance as she sat up.

  “Ugh, finally, it was about time a priest showed up,” she rolled her eyes, “yes, yes, salvation upon this poor witch’s soul, blessings to Sol, yada yada, I don’t care. Thank her for her divine care, whatever, go away.”

  Only after she finished her spiel did her eyes land on me.

  And then she froze.

  But unlike everyone else, what followed next was not confusion, but disgust.

  “Ugh!” She grimaced and snarled, reeling in disgust as she got to her feet and scrambled away to a distance, “You! You’re not a nun, don’t tell me, that wasn’t holy magic, b-but-...”

  She blanched, before recoiling and huffing, glaring at me as she spun around and walked off.

  “Unbelievable! I cannot believe that the sacred halls of Nindo would accept such lowlifes who would dare to call themselves fellow witches!”

  I just forced myself to chuckle as she stomped away, smiling wryly.

  Belle had warned me about this when she first started to teach me.

  People like me, who studied magic for the sake of healing arts, were rare and considered to be outcasts, not only amongst the magical part of society, but the religious part too.

  We were not the devoted, humble, sacred followers of Sol, calling upon her divine blessing of light to soothe the souls of our fellow nomads lost in life’s path. No, our magic was something much more crude and methodical, lacking the almighty, divine prescience and soothing care and embrace that Sol’s light provided.

  It was not gentle or based on the soul, it was something forced into the world through sheer understanding of the body’s workings and the basic mechanisms of life, manifested through a selfish desire to divert the world’s natural order of life and death.

  Well, Belle said there wasn't much of an actual difference behind the principles of the two forms of magical healing, but the followers of Sol and the people around the world certainly perceived there to be such a difference.

  We were not accepted into the illustrious halls of the Citadel of Magi either. The ideal of a ‘witch’ or a ‘wizard’ was to wholeheartedly pursue magic for its own sake; the pursuit of knowledge was a transcendental experience that would allow the ambitious and single-minded to surpass their mortal coils through the mastery of the arcane arts, and only the most otherworldly geniuses deserved to dream of entering the Citadel's towers.

  No, our focuses were too ‘lowly’, not ‘ambitious’ or ‘unearthly’ enough. It was a waste of magic’s infinite potential to simply be using it on studying plants and biology so we could help others.

  We were hardly better than ‘mundane doctors’ in both of their eyes, stepping on their toes in the realms of the divine and arcane for meagre, selfish reasons.

  It was obvious, looking back on it a bit. The way everyone reacted to my abilities with surprise and confusion, not expecting someone of my dress and aura – clearly holding the presence and general manaflow of a witch – to be capable of healing, even the bright Hayate or the singleminded, ignorant Setsuna.

  I remembered what Belle said, on that night I told her I wanted to see the stars on the 7th of July.

  ‘They don’t exactly call themselves ‘witches’ nowadays either because of the implication.’

  People like me did not like being called ‘witches’. It made them too related to the arrogant scholars of the Citadel, like the girl I had just healed.

  So instead, they simply wandered around under the vague and nebulous title of ‘healer’, holding neither the divine authority of priests and nuns, nor the boundless arcane knowledge of wizards and witches.

  I smiled softly, thinking about my sister, about how she endlessly shouted about becoming a witch.

  I guess she was rubbing off on me.

  I didn’t want to relinquish the title of ‘witch’ either. I think she and Belle just meant too much for me for me to consider letting that title go just because strangers didn’t like it.

  I guess that would mean I had to deal with being an outcast among my magical peers for a bit. It almost felt like I was a lost wanderer again, like I used to be.

  At least I had the love of my family this time, and I didn’t have to be conflicted about it. I didn’t have to keep on running away from the pain in this life. I had enough of that for an entire lifetime, literally.

  At the very least, the normal person wasn’t scornful of my presence, like Hayate, Setsuna or Kagura. Or even the boy I just healed. They just found it a bit surprising that I was capable of it, but they were all thankful nonetheless. To the average person, it didn’t matter whether the person healing them was a priestess or a witch.

  They were just grateful to have been healed.

  And that was good enough for me. If I could prevent just one tragedy out there – if I could just unite one big brother with his little sister – if I could just keep my sister in good health until she became independent, or be there for her when she needed me most, that would be good enough to make me proud to have been a ‘witch’.

  The hours slowly passed, and I continued on with my work, healing the new arrivals that passed.

  More people started to join me in helping; some of the teachers with passing knowledge of medicine joined me, a few of my rare cohort – priests and doctors, and very, very few scant ‘healers’, but none dressed as ‘witches' – also coming to their peers’ aid when they saw me helping out.

  Before long, noon arrived, and the last of our future classmates arrived.

  In the distance, I could see a large boat slowly trailing down the massive river.

  “Alright, boys and girls!” the headmaster called everyone to attention, “Gather around! It is time for a few final words before we board onto the ship that will take you all back to campus grounds.”

  I sighed, almost collapsing onto the grass myself.

  My mana reserves were close to bottoming out.

  I was barely above average in that regard. I was just lucky that no one was too injured, and that there were others around me to pick up the slack. I probably would have passed out from mana exhaustion a long time ago if I had to do it all by myself.

  I closed my eyes and let myself drift off, letting nature’s warm embrace carry away the tiredness.

  I tuned out whatever it was the headmaster was going on about. Some boisterous, inspiring speech about our bright futures and boundless potential, how all of us showed so much vigor and grit within the forest’s endless tide of monsters, how we would all go so far and find it laughable that we had ever struggled with such beasts by the time we graduated from the halls of Nindo.

  I didn’t really care, I just wanted to eat lunch.

  My stomach gurgled.

  I briefly wondered if my garden back home would be alright. I would only be able to tend to it on weekends when I flew back to Yrd’ll, and it was rather rough taking care of plants at such high altitudes.

  I hoped Belle would be able to manage it in my absence. She did come to eventually use it just as much as me to pick fresh herbs for dinner, though she still avoided much of the heavier spices I used.

  “Oi, Estelle, you there?” Hayate poked at me after a few minutes.

  “Yeah?” I opened a singular eye.

  “C’mon, ship’s here, let’s go, they got a whole catering crew on board and everything, let’s go get lunch!”

  “That sounds good,” I groaned, forcing myself up, stumbling as I did so.

  I walked up to the edge of the bridge as both of its halves started to raise to make way for the gargantuan ship, and glanced down onto the end of the riverbank far beneath us.

  Yup, Setsuna was still there.

  “Setsuna!” I shouted towards her, “Come on, time’s up! We’re heading back now!”

  I saw the swordswoman grab her sword in acknowledgement, before quickly climbing up the steep incline at staggering speeds, running up the surface as if it were flat ground.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  The colossal black ship in the distance grew closer.

  I blinked.

  Something about its hull and the material it was made from seemed… familiar.

  I heard the students around me start to whisper and murmur among themselves.

  “No way, isn’t that…?”

  “Wow, Nindo really is the best school out there if it can pull these kinds of connections!”

  I started to make out more of the hull’s details as the ship passed by under the raised bridge and slowed to a halt.

  On a few rare occasions, Belle did end up bringing me into her workshop again every once in a while, only when she was absolutely certain that whatever was going in there wouldn’t affect me and she needed to collect some more data on the anomaly inside of my brain, and on those days, I caught a few more glimpses of that strange rock.

  Azybantum.

  The ship wasn’t made of that stuff, was it?

  “Students!” the headmaster shouted as a long, steep ramp was drawn down to the ground, “The time for struggle and battle is over! You have fought well, and studied long and arduous hours to get into our historied halls! Now is the time to be rewarded for your excellence and your efforts! Today’s cruise is brought to you by none other than the Black Moon Expedition’s very own shipwright and engineer, Artemis Erebus!”

  I guess it wasn’t that unreasonable to expect an encounter with one of Belle’s old friends at Nindo. She did mention that her cohort was invited several times for guest lectures, and only mentioned that Auntie Chang’e and Selenia were barred from visiting again.

  This river also probably connected straight to the open waters out to the east too, if my knowledge of Tenmai’s geography wasn’t failing me.

  The excited crowd of students hastily gathered into a messy line, slowly climbing down the upper edges of the river bank before descending down the raised the raised ramp, onto the deck of the strange ship.

  Next to me was the rest of my newfound team, the four of us being tightly packed shoulder to shoulder as we were pushed along by the mass of bodies.

  Kagura groaned and whined uncomfortably, clinging to her cousin childishly and instinctively as her frail body was pushed around.

  Setsuna just frowned and forced her way through the crowd.

  Hayate couldn’t help but be as excited as all the other kids.

  “Oh, man. First day at Nindo and we’re already meeting one of the Expedition’s founding members!? I can’t wait for the rest of our years at this school! Do you think we’ll get to meet Lady Chang’e!?”

  I smiled wryly.

  “Sadly, she’s been barred from entering school grounds ever again. Apparently, she created too much destruction the last time she was here.”

  Hayate just blinked at me in surprise.

  “Huh? How do you know that?”

  I opened my mouth, preparing to say that the woman in question visited our solitary mountain home from time to time.

  “Oh, right, your mother is Lady Symphonia, isn’t she? Right, she also travelled with that crew! You probably heard from her didn’t you, haha!”

  I closed my mouth.

  “Sure,” I shrugged.

  A couple of awfully tight minutes later, we found ourselves all gathered on the ship’s deck.

  The ship groaned as it started to move down the river again, and a line of students watched in awe as we passed down the beautiful, but dangerous treeline of the Twilight Forest.

  Excitement was still high from the blood-pumping action and tension of the earlier adventure, carrying over onto the deck of the ship. Many of the students, despite their wounds – well, not anymore, thanks to mine and a couple others’ efforts – could not help but feel restless, a feeling that was only intensified by the awe-inspiring, legendary vehicle they were travelling upon, and the slowly rising desire to impress their seniors.

  It wasn’t long before smack-talk and aggravations started to fly.

  “Oh, you think you’re hot shit, huh? Well that’s rich, coming from the team that came in… what was it? Twenty-eighth place?”

  “Yeah, but you only got your rank because your patch of the forest was piss-easy. Might as well have just been taking a fucking stroll underneath Hinanhoro. You know why our group was so slow? Because we faced a damned Blighted Dryad. What did you beat? Maybe a couple of treants?”

  Another pair of students burst out into wild smirks, butting their heads against one another.

  “Hey, cuz, how was your team? Mine’s pretty tight, we took down a Broodmother together! How’s that, huh?”

  “Yeah, right, lemme guess, you hid behind your witch and just let her set fire to the forest? I bet you just ran around like a pansy in that wide, open clearing. My team was stuck in a cave and we had to fight a basilisk!”

  “Yeah, ‘cause you’re a dumbass. What kind of idiot with even half a brain would go into one of the Twilight Forest’s caves?”

  “One who isn’t a coward.”

  It didn’t take long for rambunctious laughter and cheers to spread, as small crowds gathered around particularly heated exchanges and egged the participants in the arguments on.

  “Go on! Fight it out! One on one!”

  “Put your money where your mouth is! Come on, prove yourself like a real student of Nindo, man-to-man!”

  “You wanna look like a coward in front of Lady Erebus!?”

  Sparks started to fly as metal weapons were drawn. Echoes of clattering steel slowly became commonplace as a makeshift sparring ring was marked out in the centre of the ship’s massive deck, people using all sorts of props and structures as impromptu seats and bleachers.

  I grumbled as I made my way through the crowd. Maybe I was just being a worrywart, but I had to be on standby just in case something happened and someone got injured. I had recovered at least some of my mana back, enough to heal individuals as long as they came sparsely.

  I saw a couple of the teachers nearby have split reactions; some shook their heads in exasperation while others chuckled at our youthful vigour. Either way, they all stood close by to monitor the situation and break it all up if it got too dangerous.

  A massive ball of fire exploded in the middle of the arena, scattering uselessly against the ship’s strange, impenetrable deck but sending its intended target flying up and away until he bounced to the edge of the impromptu arena, groaning as he was sent to defeat.

  The wizard on the other side of the arena simply lowered his wand and brushed smidgens of soot from his spell off of his shoulders, before casting his arrogant gaze across the spectators.

  “Do I have any other challengers!?”

  I sighed, approaching the downed boy and helping him up, waving my staff over him as I reduced the burns on his body to nothing more than rashes and bruises.

  I was lucky that the presence of mana inside people’s bodies in this world gave those who practiced its circulation, whether through magic or martial arts, enhanced durability.

  A fireball of that size in my old world would have probably instantly incinerated a grown adult, but in this world, it was barely enough to make a thirteen-year-old prodigy faint for a minute.

  “O-ow… thanks,” the boy grumbled, picking up his sword as he hobbled up to his feet.

  He looked up at me.

  “O-oh, i-it’s you again.”

  It was the first boy I helped out.

  “Try not to make this a habit, okay?”

  “Y-yeah,” he scratched his head awkwardly and walked back towards his disappointed team, the witch among their ranks shooting me a small glare in the process.

  It was at that moment that a familiar face pushed their way through the crowd, just in time to spot the wizard being knocked away from the fighting ring by a longsword.

  Before I could run over, however, one of the wizard’s teammates, seemingly a priest, came to their aid.

  Setsuna frowned, trying her best to tune out the chaos of the crowd.

  “Sym-… Estelle, what would this ruckus happen to be?”

  I shrugged.

  “They’re just playing around and sparring. Everyone’s still really excited over their battles in the forest, I think. They want to see how they measure up against each other, now that they know how they measure up against monsters.”

  “Martial challenges?” Setsuna furrowed her brow, observing as another swordsman stepped up to the ring.

  “I suppose this is as fine an opportunity as I shall have. Let the test of thy steel and mettle commence.”

  Behind her, Kagura and Hayate arrived, watching as Setsuna approached the ring, brandishing her rusty blade.

  “Haha, oh, guys, look!” The other combatant pointed at Setsuna and gestured to the crowd, “look at this poor girl and her sword! Oh, man, I pity your teammates. It must have been rough for them to be carrying your sorry ass through the Twilight Forest.”

  A series of jeers and laughs ruptured across the excited crowd.

  Kagura raised an unimpressed eyebrow.

  “What exactly am I witnessing, Symphonia?”

  I just chuckled.

  “I think we’re about to see a slaughter.”

  Kagura just scoffed.

  “How foolish. Do they really think they have the right to stand in the presence of the teammate of Tsukiyo Kagura? They’re lucky they have the right to kneel. They will regret their ignorant laughter.”

  Hayate just grinned cheekily and jabbed her arm with his elbow playfully.

  “Hey, you’re speaking like that wasn’t you a couple hours ago. I remember your face when she cut through that Cave Troll. What happened to your intense distaste?”

  Kagura just blushed embarrassingly, elbowing him as hard as she could – which wasn’t really all that hard, to be honest.

  Not a second later, Setsuna’s rusty katana sent the boy’s sword flying away.

  She did not even offer him a swing of her sword as a mercy of honour, choosing to merely kick him to knees and forcing him to kneel.

  “Thy spirit has temper, but thy sword is weak. Challenge this blade again when thy steel has been forged in the furnace of thy spirit’s temper.”

  She kicked him away, and turned to the crowd.

  “I had thought better of the illustrious halls of Nindo! Art thou the best that the Realm hath to offer!? Where art mine equals and peers among these halls!?”

  Her words of provocation stirred the crowd into a frenzy, and a tide of shuffling metal passed through the students as a line of challengers slowly formed, eager to prove themselves against the arrogant girl and her dull blade.

  Hayate just laughed and took a nearby seat.

  “Oh, yeah, this’ll be good to watch! Sneak peek of what the next seven years of sparring is gonna be like.”

  He jabbed Kagura again, beckoning her to sit down next to them.

  “C’mon, Kagura, let’s watch! I know you want to! Remember when we were younger, we would play pretend and you would always be the swordswoman!”

  Kagura went bright red and punched her cousin to no avail.

  “Shut up!”

  A couple dozen minutes later, as we watched Setsuna reign as the ‘king of the hill’, the fighting was finally broken up by an outside party.

  A vicious shockwave of compressed wind was sent flying from the opposing sword across the ring towards Setsuna, to which she responded with a spinning leap over, already preparing herself to strike at her opponent’s misjudgement of the safety of their range.

  Before her blade could strike true, however, it was suddenly met with an unshatterable wall.

  Jagged spikes of black, twisted rock erupted out of the ship, twisting around the two fighting students and locking them in place.

  “Alright, everyone…” A flat, monotone, serene voice called out from the other side of the ship.

  Students gasped and made way for the legendary figure.

  A deathly pale woman dragged herself across the ship’s deck, her steps rigid and slow, like her legs were made of stone.

  Messy tangles of silver hair flowed from her head, roughly curling and twisting like bundles of pale seaweed.

  Hazy silver eyes looked nowhere in particular, trailing off into the distance, unblinking.

  Disrupting the simple Napoleonic-style navy uniform she wore was an unnatural growth of black rocks across her skin, twisting around her limbs and torso like coral, almost like a layer of armor.

  Held in her other hand was a colossal, ornate hunting harpoon.

  “The catering below deck is open… it is lunch time…” she droned robotically.

  The mass of young teens could not help but stare in awe at the strange figure, at her countless scars of battle that littered her pale skin, marking legendary battles with terrifying sea monsters, and at the strange, writhing, almost alive mass of rocks that clung to half her body.

  “Go eat now, children…”

  Her words snapped everyone awake.

  Gurgles started to echo across the deck of the ship.

  A nearby teacher clapped her hands together.

  “Alright, kids! You heard Lady Erebus, it’s lunch time, enough playing around, you’ll get plenty of time to do that in class! Come on, there’s a big buffet below deck! Top class!”

  Her words whipped everyone up into a hungry frenzy, and soon enough, there was a tide of children rushing towards that direction, hurrying below deck to enter the mess hall.

  As I followed behind, I swear I felt the blind woman’s eyes linger on me.

  I shook it off, choosing to focus instead on the meal I would have in the near future.

  The selection was, indeed, pleasantly surprising, featuring a few dishes from the Eastern Continent that I found strikingly familiar to food I had in my old life that my parents would make for me.

  I carefully selected my lunch, and scanned the wide mess hall for any trace of my team.

  It wasn’t hard to make out my teammates, not with the colourful cobalt and crimson hair they had.

  I plopped down next to them, before quickly reaching for my spoon and eating away.

  Next to me, Kagura carved away at a plate of cutlets and curry, while directly across from me, Hayate slurped up a bowl of noodles inside a funky pork-bone broth.

  And on the opposing corner of the table was Setsuna, who was eating… well…

  A gargantuan pile of slop and whatever, really.

  Kagura briefly paused as she traced her plate with a spoon, looking at the veritable tower of food piled across from her.

  “Are you… sure you can eat all of that?”

  The response she got was simple.

  “Hunger is the enemy.”

  Kagura just furrowed her brow.

  “That… didn’t explain anything.”

  Hayate looked curiously at my own plate; a pile of golden tofu glazed in a sticky, bright red sauce with smatterings of minced beef that almost burned to even just look at.

  “Huh, what’s that, Estelle? Don’t think I’ve seen anything like that before.”

  His words made the shrine maiden give an unwitting glance towards my plate, the contents of it making the girl scrunch her nose, seemingly at memories of pain.

  “Of course you haven’t, Hayate. That’s because it’s from the Eastern Continent,” Kagura explained.

  Hayate blinked.

  “Wasn’t travel blocked off from there to Tenmai? Y’know, the Infinite Dark and all that?”

  Kagura rolled her eyes.

  “Whose ship do you think we’re on, dimwit?”

  Hayate just bristled and chuckled awkwardly.

  “Oh, right…”

  Kagura sighed heavily, before continuing with her explanation, “They weren’t interested in sailing before, and even if they were, the manifestation of the Infinite Dark would have made it impossible. Recently, however, with Lady Nyxth publishing all of her findings about it, along with the tales of Lady Chang’e’s exploits, word has spread of the Infinite Dark no longer being impossible to cross, and combined with Lady Erebus’s vessels, small groups of sailors have started to cross from continent to continent out of curiosity, leading to bits and pieces of their cuisine popping up in our country, like that.”

  “It looks sweet!” Hayate looked at my plate with a small bit of gluttony and envy, “Hey, Estelle, mind if you give me a bite?”

  “It’s anything but sweet,” Kagura groaned, “trust me, cousin, it’s nothing but pure pain, heat, and numbness. I like my spice, but even that is unbearable. You’re a pansy, anyways, one mouthful of that tofu would instantly knock you out.”

  I smiled fondly, remembering the first time I gave my best friend this dish – mapo tofu, its name was. He didn’t come from a household that handled spice well, and when I egged him on to try it, it was funny just how red and tearful his face got after just a couple of mouthfuls.

  “I like it rather well,” I shrugged and cut through the tofu, adding a small bit of rice to my spoon before shoving the spicy mess into my mouth, tingling with joy as I felt the numbness already creep onto my tongue, “I grow a whole garden of the peppercorns they use for this stuff back home!”

  Kagura just recoiled, looking me up and down with a strange look.

  “Are all mountain witches as strange as you? First, you’re a healing witch, then you’re a maniac who loves spice and numbness.”

  “I think my sister’s fairly norm-”

  Kagura just held her hand up and shook her head.

  “I don’t want to hear about your sister again.”

  “O-oh, sorry,” I wilted and blushed in embarrassment, “I-I did get excited earlier, didn’t I? S-sorry, I-I just haven’t talked to many people besides my sister and mother for the past four years, since we live in the mountains. I-I was just excited to make some friends again.”

  Kagura squirmed at my nervous demeanour, seemingly feeling a bit bad at her standoff-ish, dismissive behaviour.

  “I-it’s fine, just… keep yourself at a reasonable level, okay?” She then shot a small glare to my plate, “and keep that thing away from me.”

  Across from me, Hayate just slumped in disappointment.

  “Aw, man, you’re telling me that thing’s spicy? I thought that was just like tomato paste or something. I really wanted to try cuisine from the Eastern Continent too.”

  “Hayate, you’re an idiot. Why would that ever be tomato paste?”

  “Well, y’know, cause it’s red!”

  “You’re stupid.”

  I giggled at the cousins’ antics, spending lunchtime happily as we made idle chatter.

  During the last third of the meal, I was suddenly interrupted by a stranger tapping on my shoulder.

  A man in navy uniform, one of the ship’s crewmen, nodded me towards the door.

  “Blonde hair, lavender eyes, white clothes, you’re Estelle Symphonia, right? Faculty wants to see you, come with me.”

  My teammates – aside from Setsuna, who was still engrossed in her ever-tall tower of food that seemingly had not dwindled in the slightest – gave me a slight look of concern.

  I did my best to smile reassuringly at them.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll be fine.”

  I turned my head to nod politely towards the man, getting up from my seat and following him out the mess hall.

  “Hayate, what are you doing?”

  “Come on, just one bite won’t hurt, right?”

  “Hayate, no.”

  “Come on~”

  “Whatever happens next is not my fault, okay? I’m calling the infirmary.”

  “Uh…”

  My smile tensed as I heard the conversation behind me slowly fade from hearing range.

  I hoped Hayate would be okay when I got back.

  I walked through the unfamiliar corridors of the ship behind the man.

  I started to get slowly uncomfortable.

  I wasn’t an expert when it came to ships or anything, but I felt like I knew where we were heading.

  Wasn’t this the path towards the bridge?

  “Alright, lass, in you go.”

  He nodded me towards an ornate, secured door, before departing back towards the mess hall.

  I bundled my nerves, inhaled deeply, and opened the door to the command room.

  It was a strange sight, certainly.

  Jagged veins of black rock pulsing with unknown, eldritch energy lodged themselves into the floor and walls, almost making the ship seem alive, like a pulsing heart.

  The strange woman from earlier, Artemis Erebus, simply sat on a nearby couch, pouring tea into two teacups on the small table between two couches.

  “Come, sit,” she smiled stiffly.

  I approached warily.

  Strangely, I didn’t actually feel all that uncomfortable, despite the strange, indecipherable, almost organic metallic rocks that dug across the room.

  I recalled Selenia’s words from the few times she visited us across the years.

  It seemed she was right, the rock itself didn’t actually cause anything, and it was something to do with my mother’s work.

  “It’s nothing like what your mother can make, but I hope this tea is okay,” she tried to relax me in her stony voice.

  So this was about Belle after all.

  I sighed, sitting across from her and taking a sip of the tea.

  “You seem healthy,” Artemis’s lips curled stiffly.

  “U-umm…” my voice shrivelled at the awkward situation, “were you expecting me not to be?”

  Artemis shook her head slowly.

  “No, not that… You know, I was supposed to be the one who checked on your condition when Belle called for us four years ago… sadly, I was busy then. Or, well… Selenia made me busy.”

  I blinked owlishly at the implication and sudden revelation.

  Was she saying that the reason Selenia visited us all those years ago, leading to that momentary rift between Belle and I, was because she was being sneaky around her own crewmates?

  So much for being an ‘elegant lady’, I suppose. Or maybe that included being backstabbing and conniving in that strange woman’s mind. Everyone on the Expedition was, after all, as Belle had described them, ‘lunatics and perverts’.

  Though, the woman in front of me didn’t seem like that at all, aside from her stiff body and slow speech.

  If anything, she seemed to be rather gentle and normal, aside from whatever accident caused… this to happen.

  “I was the first person your mother reached out to when you had a strange reaction to Azybantum. After all,” she raised her hand sluggishly, stroking the black coating on her body, “I am fused with it, now. An unfortunate result of the first expedition. The madness now lives inside of me. The tide still beckons me to drown in it. All I see is the Black Moon.”

  “Does…” I gulped, “does it hurt?”

  The blind woman’s eyes just softened sadly as she tried her best to smile.

  “Not as much… I’ve learned to deal with it.”

  “I-I see,” I lowered my head, “W-what did you want to see me for? O-oh, sorry, I-... I didn’t mean see, I-”

  Artemis just ignored my words, cutting through my faux pas.

  “Curiosity… and worry,” her blind eyes lingered on something beyond my physical form, “Belle… she was in quite a sorry state for the past decade. That call was the first time she had reached out to us in six years, since the passing of her fiance. I suppose that’s why Selenia could not help but engineer a situation in which she was the one to respond… she always liked Belle, coming from the Citadel as well.”

  She chuckled flatly.

  “I’ve only talked to her a few times since in the past four years, but she seems much better now. I’ve mostly just heard about you from Selenia… she can be quite a blabbermouth when drunk. I was wondering what kind of child our dear friend had picked up, what kind of person they must have been to bring her back to life.”

  “I-I hope I’m not disappointing you.”

  “Never,” Artemis shook her head, “A child does not disappoint their mother. You need not more than live to keep Belle happy. That is all I ask.”

  “I-I’ll try.”

  “Do not,” Artemis smiled, “Just live as you would. That is all that is needed. Leave the worrying to adults.”

  I looked up hesitantly, staring into her blind, hazy eyes.

  Something in them almost seemed to lull me.

  “Speaking of which,” Artemis frowned as her blind eyes continued to peer deep inside me, “I worry sometimes, about the things I’ve heard from Belle and Selenia… they say something lurks inside of you.”

  My eyes glazed.

  I saw black.

  A ring of night, beckoning a tide of madness.

  Was this the Black Moon I had heard about?

  “I know the feeling… of voices that never stop calling. What it means to live with madness crawling, always hungering… Even though my eyes cannot open any more… I never stop seeing it. The Black Moon. If you ever need help… call for me, and I will answer.”

  The ring of night became a pupil, transforming into another entity.

  Madness drowned into nothingness.

  I was no longer looking at the Black Moon.

  This was something other. Somewhere other.

  Remember.

  “O-okay.”

  I blinked.

  What was I doing again?

  My eyes felt itchy.

  Artemis smiled softly.

  “You may return to your friends now. Play and eat, as children should.”

  “T-that sounds good,” I rose to my feet shakily, and hastily moved towards the door.

  I shivered.

  I was cold.

  I huddled myself into my white jacket, lovingly made by Belle – a lingering remnant of her care and proof of her connection with me.

  I smiled, feeling a bit warmer again as I thought of home, of Belle and Luna.

  Before long, I arrived at the ship’s mess hall again.

  “Hayate, you moron!”

  “Ah, it burns! Kagura, help!”

  “I told you exactly what you were getting into, but you didn’t listen! Why is it always like this with you!?”

  Hayate writhed dramatically and collapsed onto the floor, reaching out to the ceiling like he was dying.

  “H-help, I-I’m dying…” he looked to the side, “S-Setsuna, p-please, h-help me…”

  The girl in question did not bother to look his way.

  Somehow, the tower of food in front of her seemed to actually be bigger than before.

  “H-Hayate, wait!”

  Kagura shook her cousin.

  She spotted me approaching them again.

  “Symphonia! Please, help Hayate!”

  I smiled wryly at the strange scene in front of me.

  “Uh, sorry, Kagura,” I chuckled sheepishly, “spice isn’t exactly something I can heal… that’s… not really an injury.”

  “W-what!?” Kagura looked aghast, “B-but look at him! He’s about to pass out!”

  She swung her head back towards the boy groaning on the floor.

  “H-hold on for a second, I-I’m calling the infirmary!”

  I giggled.

  It seems like these next few years would certainly be memorable.