Were this a video game, the fanfare would play right about here. Melody could not provide any such tune, but she did find her lady awfully fetching in her moment of victory. She settled for a round of passionate applause and a makeshift spotlight with her Luce orbs. It was the least she could do.
Noise soon returned with a vengeance. Monsters had appeared in the Upper District, and the neighbors finally noticed. Reclentos knights hurried to the scene, alerted by the riderless return of one of their horses, and they escorted Melody and her party back to the Rudleberg estate.
“I’ll return to the palace and report what happened,” Maxwell said.
“Allow me to—”
“No need, Sir Froude. I implore you to stay, if you’ll forgive my brusqueness. The Rudlebergs would be safer for your presence.”
The knight could not respond. Melody and Serena rendered the estate safer than the royal palace itself, but the uninitiated (that is, Maxwell) viewed Rook as House Rudleberg’s only protection. Lect, not knowing the full extent of the mad maid’s powers himself, could only agree with the lord’s assessment.
“Lord Maxwell, do you know what’s going to happen with school tomorrow?” Luciana asked.
“Well, had this not happened, we would have returned to the dorms and assembled in our classrooms at noon, but I suspect the academy will put a hold on that. They won’t jeopardize the safety of their students at a time when the capital could be compromised.”
Luciana’s shoulders slumped. “Another delay.”
“I assure you, this isn’t the norm.” Maxwell offered what solace he could with a smile.
Then the lord went off to do his due diligence. Melody was finally free to return to her (mostly) natural self, and she wasted no time righting her appearance. One last check in the mirror to ensure her uniform was in order, and she was ready for work. In the dead of night.
Her powerful smile quickly faded. That was awfully frightening.
Monsters in the capital. They’d come out of nowhere. Melody had had her share of run-ins during her excursions into the forest, and these pests hadn’t been much stronger than the ones she was used to, but she wasn’t used to her lady being present during those encounters.
The maid’s failure to protect her lady at the Spring Ball still hung heavy on her. Her charms and defensive magic could do some wondrous things, but not even they could spare Luciana from harm this time, meaning Melody hadn’t done enough. She’d made a promise to her mother, a promise to be the most perfect maid in the world. Of late, she’d realized doing that meant ensuring her lady’s happiness, but how could she protect something so immaterial if she could not even ensure her mistress’s physical safety?
From her magical storage dimension, she removed the condensed bead of dark mana. Ostensibly, it was the same as the last one, and yet somehow different.
It’s somewhat prickly? Like it’s angry or doesn’t want to be held.
Something told her this would not help her in her search for the Silvershine Raiment’s trigger. A sigh escaped her.
“What if there’s another monster like that, shrouded in this mana?” she wondered aloud. “What if it happens on campus grounds, where I’m not allowed?”
She would live in the dorms with her lady, of course, but as a rule, servants were not allowed on the actual campus where lessons were held. Yet Melody was the only one capable of fighting against the dark mana. Maxwell’s sword had done some damage, but that seemed unreliable at best.
“How do I protect my lady? What can I…?” Her thoughts trailed away as inspiration struck.
Melody hurried to the dining hall. Everyone already huddled there, comforting one another in the wake of the incident.
“Melody,” Paula said. “Back to being a maid already?”
“It’s what I am,” she said.
She and Lect hadn’t returned to their own estate yet. “Shame, really. Cecilia might be my magnum opus. I wanted to ponder her visage a while longer.”
“Then I have good news,” Melody mumbled.
“Huh?”
“Lect.” Melody approached him, clenching her teeth as she did.
The knight froze. “Yes?”
“I have a favor to ask.”
“A favor?”
“I—that is, Cecilia McMarden, would like to apply for enrollment at Royal Academy!”
“She what?”
“She what?!” roared Luciana, Micah, and Paula.
With me at her side, the maid resolved, no harm shall come to my lady!
The Wood lay quiet. In the moments just before wolves ambushed Luciana and her company, the moon cast a mosaic of shadows through the blightland’s gently swaying trees. From one such penumbra, as if out of thin air, a girl appeared.
Celedia Leginbarth.
The grass welcomed the girl’s feet as she strolled, unafraid, clad in nothing but her nightgown, and gently humming. “Seems nobody’s home. Vanargand must be off plotting somewhere.” A chilling giggle slithered from her throat. “Just as well.”
With a deceptively beautiful, unassuming smile and awash in the glow of the moonlight, the girl continued to walk, sending casual glances toward the shadows until a stalker wolf emerged from them. The boorish stranger growled menacingly, intent on ruining the girl’s midnight stroll. Also known colloquially as night-hounds, the beasts were masters of darkness, and certainly not to be trifled with in their own territory.
Celedia regarded the wolf with mild amusement, raising her fingers to her lips as if she’d just heard a joke. “My, how scary.”
The wolf warned her with another growl, but it was too late. The monster salivated as it took in this rare treat of an easy hunt. And such tender-looking prey as well. Oh, how wrong it was.
Even beasts, it seemed, were subject to hubris, for in its ravenous hunger, the wolf failed to notice the girl’s fingers, placed gently at her lips, as the nails turned pitch black. And her mana—oh, her mana. How it swelled within her, as massive as the ocean.
The stalker wolf roared and bounded for the girl, sealing its fate.
“I see through you.”
Celedia sidestepped the charge and then waited. Sure enough, four more wolves leaped from their hiding places, aiming for the girl while she was off-balance. Surely, this was the end, and dinner was imminent, but the wolves would not feast this night.
“Come, my sweets,” the girl said. “Good hounds.”
She raised her hand, and in a blink, black lines streaked from her fingers, shooting into the air, then arcing back down—straight through the five wolves’ hearts.
Silence swept in to replace the snarls and howls. Celedia stood amid the quiet. The beasts spasmed and writhed on the black lines—Celedia’s dark, elongated talons grimly impaling their chests. Her nails began to beat and pulsate like veins, as if pumping something into the monsters. A dark haze oozed from the beasts, and they rose once more, very much alive, and formed a line in front of the girl, each lowering their head to her.
“That’s it. Good little mutts. Don’t make me waste my breath now.”
Her eyes directed the wolves toward the shadow she’d emerged from. They nodded in an uncanny, animalistic kind of understanding before marching into the darkness between the trees. Celedia followed soon after.