Chapter 34: Ren And Edda.

It was flame and muscle that threw the door open. My eyes were open in an instant and I was sitting up at the same time Ash was. She reached for her sword, I reached for the Requiem. The flame tinged the room in orange for a second, and I felt the heat of it against my skin. It vanished a second later, and in its place stood a girl.

She was the short red-haired girl I had seen when the Inker had been leading us to this room. Her jaw was set, her dark eyes glared across the room, and she was folding her arms. Yellow trails went up her arm, branching but not forming any shape in particular. She had a Sigil. There was one more oddity I noticed. While most of the students had worn the same grey garment, hers was just slightly different. The collar was yellow.

“Ren! Seriously! At least knock first!” Another voice at the door said, and there stood a taller girl, who somehow seemed shorter from the slump of her shoulders. Her hair was long and blue, a deep blue that fell past her shoulders.

The color of their hair caught most of my attention.. Red and blue -not colors that any human from my time would have had. I knew what that meant. Both of these girls were Demonbloods then. The anger inside me shifted at that. I let go of the Requiem. Ash had already settled back into her bed.

The red haired girl -Ren- was studying us, and her expression was so plain even I could read it. She was frowning, arms folded and her soot-covered nose tilted slightly up, though she couldn’t have looked down on anyone. “I knew it. We really do have another half-demon at the academy.” Ren’s gaze went from my horns all the way to my feet, and then back up again. “Guess you kind of look like her enough. Even have the same frown and everything.” Then she paused, her eyes narrowing. “So you’re the one….” She mumbled to herself.

“You,” she said, louder now, jabbing a finger in my direction. “You’re the one Master Aldric brought in. A new special student.” She pointed her other hand over at Ash, who had only moved enough to sit up straighter. “And you’re the other one!” She said, her voice growing louder still. “Half the students have been talking about it for hours! Two strangers walk in off the road and get assigned special status on their first day. You two are even living by yourself in this nice little room. I’ve been here for two years and all I get is a closet!”

She took a breath. Her Sigil flickered on her arm, and as it did, wisps of yellow-orange flame trailed her skin. There and gone again. “And now they’re telling me to show you around tomorrow. Me! A Sigil…playing tour guide for a couple of completely fresh faces. They told me you just had Lines!”

I ignored her words. Instead, I glanced past her and at the doorframe. The wood around the latch was scorched black where her flame had struck it. Martha would have wept. “Do you make a habit of destroying doors,” I said, “or is this a special occasion?”

The girl’s chin rose. She was shorter than me by half a head. Her red hair was cut roughly and unevenly, as though whoever had done it had done it in the dark. Her jaw was set. “I didn’t destroy the door, I opened it, actually.”

“You opened it…with fire.”

“It was stuck.”

It had not been stuck. Ash, still on the far bed, let out a slow breath through her nose that sounded very much like she was trying not to laugh. The Hero had evidently decided this particular confrontation was beneath her involvement.

The other girl stepped through the ruined doorway behind Ren. She surveyed the room warily, her gaze drifting from the scorched frame to us and then, slowly, settling on her friend. “Ren,” the blue-haired girl said. Her voice was flat. “You said you were just going to knock.”

“I did knock, they didn’t open it! So I just knocked again, but this time, with emphasis!”

“That was arson.”

“It was a greeting,” Ren insisted. She sounded one step away from pleading.

The blue-haired girl looked at me. It was an odd gaze. I was used to animosity and fear. After Hamel, I was used to…gentler things. This gaze was neither of those. It was simply bored. “My name is Edda,” she said. “Sorry about the door.”

Ren looked back at her grudgingly, before clicking her tongue. I looked at Edda’s arms before I could stop myself. It was starting to become a reflex in this world, the way scanning for mana signatures had been in the last. Edda’s right forearm bore a single Line. It was a strange mark. A pale blue that shifted into red and back again. I had never seen its like before.

Still, she was at Line. One full stage below the red-haired girl and her Sigil and yet from the one glance between them, I could tell their relationship was not as simple as the stronger being the master and the weaker being the subordinate. How curious.

I did not say anything. Ren was staring at my arms. My sleeves covered my marks, but the girl’s eyes bore into the fabric anyway. “Show me,” Ren said.

“No.” I rose from the bed, and folded my arms. I do not show what is mine on command. This girl could not force me to my knees as the old man had. She could barely warm the air. Her mark flared. The trails of her mark lit up, and I felt the heat of it from across the narrow room.

I found that I could not quite muster the contempt I wanted. My gaze kept fixing on her red hair, though I did not mean for it to. “You have a Sigil,” I said. “It is a Primal, correct? One that lets you control flame, obviously.”

Ren blinked. Whatever she had expected, it was not this. “Yeah, obviously. Two years to get this Sigil.” Her chin lifted again. “Two years of work and that makes me a genius. I didn’t get some fancy mark like whatever the hell you’re trying to hide.”

“Is that what you came here to say?”

“I came here,” Ren said, and took a step further into the room, “because a Sigil like me shouldn’t be showing around a couple of Initiates who got handed Consecration for no reason anyone can figure out. So I wanted to see what all the fuss was about.” Her eyes moved over me again. Over my horns. The dress I was still wearing. “So far, gotta say, not super impressed.”

I heard Ash’s voice. “You’re Edda?” she said, not talking to either of us. I had not seen her rise, nor seen her approach the taller girl. They now stood at one corner of the room. “That’s a pretty line. I don’t think I’ve seen that color before. Is that…something like water?”

Edda glanced at Ash. “Nothing like that. Actually-”

I ignored both of them. Why was Ash not throwing these strange little interlopers out? Surely it was a retainer’s job to do that much. When had she even moved there? It didn’t matter.

Ren’s face scrunched and she glared down at my arms again. ‘Come on, show me! What the hell does a girl have to do to see a couple of marks around here!”

“No, like I said. The answer has not changed.”

“Why not!” Ren grumbled.

I looked at her. “You have soot on your nose,” I said. It had been rather hard not to notice. “I do not listen to people who look…ridiculous.”

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Ren’s hand shot to her face. She scrubbed at it with the back of her wrist, her cheeks reddening to match her hair. The effect destroyed whatever image she had been trying to project. Ash laughed, and the girl she was talking to laughed too.

“That’s- that’s from the door! The latch was- it doesn’t matter.” She said quickly. “The point is, I don’t care what Master Aldric says. I don’t care what the Archon thinks. Consecration doesn’t mean anything until you’ve proven you can use what you’ve got. And you” She pointed again “I heard you’re just at Line! You better not go around forgetting that special student or not!”

I almost told her I’d had these marks for less than two weeks. Her reaction doubtless would have been different then.“So I am,” I said instead.

“So you’re below me.” Ren jabbed a thumb at her own chest. Her Sigil flared again as she gestured, brighter this time. Another wisp of flame, there and gone. I was starting to suspect this girl couldn’t control her power very well. “I don’t care what the Archon sees in you. You train to earn your place. If your marks are worth anything, then prove it.” She was breathing harder now. “Think you can do that much? What the hell is your name anyway? Bet it’s something-”

“Lysanthia,” I supplied helpfully.

The girl paused, tilted her head. Then she burst out laughing, pointing a finger at me. “L-Lysanthia? Come on, there is no way your parents named you that. Come on, what’s your actual name?!”

Once, that alone might have been enough to spur my rage. I felt it rise and then it stopped. Because for one instant, the girl standing before me was not this red-headed stranger. The eyes were different. Her two arms became six, each carrying a blade, and the stance was the same. Feet planted, chin raised, eyes gleaming and refusing to yield. Orzathiel had been rather bold, at first. The image passed. The rage went with it. At present, all this girl did was spur annoyance. Perhaps even I had begun to change.

This girl was not quite a simple brute. I had known plenty. They were hollow, and it seemed to me that this strange girl was anything but. Besides, I did not disagree with what she said. Power had to be earned, always. It was amusing to me that she stood before the one who had earned it most of all, and did not realize it. “Very well,” I said.

Ren paused. She had clearly been prepared for argument. For contempt, perhaps, or dismissal. My acceptance seemed to have knocked something loose in her. “What?”

“You wish to see what I can do? Very well. I expect the proper level of respect when I have this Sigil as you do now.” I let my gaze settle on her. “And when I have a Crest, you can serve under me instead. I will allow it. I believe two years is a small time to reach a Sigil, perhaps you have some small amount of potential.”