Lacmere University – A Tale of Chivalry, Monstergirls, and Tuition
Prelude
The forest that surrounds Lacmere's campus is wilder than it has any right to be.
There are the expected evergreen Douglas firs with their penetrating odor, and some tall maples stand out from the conic trees, as well as some red cedars that contribute to the tapestry with their fragrant wood. Dark green mixes with the fiery colors of autumn, and the well-maintained trail I'm on is a carpet of decomposing leaves, wetly crunching under my bare feet.
Once, years ago, I wouldn't have dared walk like this in a forest. I would've been fussy about my blackened soles, my tanned skin marred with streaks of rich loam.
Now…
"You're enjoying yourself," the dean of the college I work for says with a slight, subdued smile.
I am.
Two women walking in the woods, one of them a tall blonde with the kind of beauty of a wheat stalk in the summer, bending in just the precise way to keep pace with the other, shorter one, the woman with green hair cut in a short, razor bob that disguises my unnatural color as a fashion choice rather than what I started becoming…
Long ago.
Long enough that I should be much older than I am.
Two women walking into the heart of deep, dark woods, past colorful mushrooms and clusters of crimson berries clinging to shadowed bushes. It should be the start of a horror movie.
There's even a monster here.
Or…
I look at the dean. At the woman who hasn't aged a day since she came looking for me and took me to this place where my skin darkened, and my hair turned green.
There's
at least one monster here.
"We're near," she says, unnecessarily filling our comfortable silence, the one that's been born out of decades of working together.
And she's telling me about my—about our forest.
There's no need for it.
Except…
Except she takes a turn widdershins, between the unnatural arch below the branches of two umbrella pines that only look out of place in here if you know what to look for, that most students, even the biology ones, wouldn't think twice about their growing in the middle of a Pacific Northwest forest.
As we go through, another path appears, and this is the one we need to follow to reach the heart of the forest.
An oak.
Taller and older than anything in here, the bark is…
It's cracked grey, a tracery of shadows, yes, but… but it's also something deeper. Something that beats calm and steady, like the very forest sleeps, and the oak lulls it deeper with the rhythm of bark shifting yet remaining still under the motes of light raining down on it.
As always, as every year since my employment, I stand at the edge of the clearing that the giant occupies and watch as the tall, slender, eerie woman steps forward with a hand already stretched to touch my—to touch the ancient oak.
Her eyes slowly lid in what could be fondness, her lips lift up at the corners, heartbreakingly away from the mischief and joy she can display at times, and my boss slowly leans forward to rest her forehead against bark that is smoother than it looks, the entire scene wavering like the inside of a dream as golden haze rises from the ground in a way that was easy to ignore the first few times I witnessed it but that keeps being more evident with every year that passes.
With every year that my bare soles on dry leaves bring me a sense of ease I never felt growing up in the streets of Chicago, barren of all but the barest traces of greenery that I didn't know were so important to me.
To the lineage I wasn't aware of.
Until she came for me and told me.
"We were so young. So careless…" she mutters, not for my ears.
I wait, watching the heart-achingly beautiful display of serene pain, and let her… be herself. Like she rarely is when she puts up her mask.
Then, as the sun lowers to shine mottled, erratic gold past the canopy and over us, she finally turns back to me, and the smile turns slightly bitter. The first time, she had to explain what was expected of me.
Now I step forward until I'm by her side with my own hand stretched in front of me to touch ancient, cracked, grey bark, softer than it has any right to be, like the skin of a sleeping lover, reassuring in its presence.
It beats under me. And the beat quickens.
"Thank you, Chloe," she says.
"There's no need for that," I tell her with a reassuring smile, waiting for her to lay her hand atop mine and perform the ceremony we always have since I stopped being a clumsy, airheaded girl wondering why it was so hard to focus and became…
Me.
The me I had always been meant to be.
Her palm is unnaturally warm on the back of my hand, but it doesn't burn. It's like the summer sun. Like light playing across the crests of the waves of golden wheat turned into an ocean by a playful breeze. It's… life itself.
And it washes through me.
Through me and through my second heart. The heart of the forest. The heart of Lacmere.
My binding is redone. I can feel the threads of magic more keenly than ever before, my attunement to this other world steadily growing with every time the enchantment is reapplied as I find it easier to dive past the tall trunk and into the hidden web of dark roots spread deep below the earth, past wet, black loam and into the very rock beneath, granite cracking under the persistence of wood older than anything that surrounds us.
There's… a pattern. A circle that blooms into symbols I don't yet understand, that spirals around the entire campus and the surrounding forest. A circle that echoes like ripples in the lake by the side of the library, and that is engraved in every reaching root spun from the wood of an old oak.
There's an entire world underground made up of the roots of a tree turned into a spell, and that's where my mind goes, my boss working through me, her magic caressing the inside of my veins, making me gasp as life itself, as
my life becomes woven art and wordless poetry.
As my mind gets diluted into a calm ocean of green and I find the focus I never did as a distracted young girl.
Then… Then it's done. The minute adjustments I can barely notice on the great work, the guidance of new growth gently herded into the old pattern, the…
My mind goes back to my other—to my body, and her hand holds me steady.
Like it has every year since she found me.
Since she remade me.
"Let's go. I think this will be an interesting year," she says with a twinkle of mischief in her eyes.
I answer with my own smile, something that I've had the chance to practice and perfect over countless hours guarding her office from regular students and from the other ones.
Lacmere, like my forest, works in seasons. It, sometimes, can pass as a regular place of learning, one where people interested in sports other than the more popular ones gather under the guidance of a board known for its eccentricities.
Then there are the years when the fencing club is filled with… them.
This will be one of those years.
And the dean is looking forward to it.
Remembering who, precisely, is about to enroll…
So do I.
***
Chapter 1: Sabers at Dawn (or Afternoon, if That's Too Inconvenient)
There's a lot to like about fencing. It's a good sport that relies on your brain as much as it does on your muscles. High-speed chess, a friend of mine who's never played a game of chess in his life once called it.
There's also… quite a bit to dislike.
Like, for instance, the protective equipment is necessarily thick, and that makes you sweat.
A lot.
There's… the amount of sweat can't easily be overstated. Like, at this very moment, as I ready myself to face Lucca Costantini, the current prodigy of my college's team, in a saber bout? I'm sweating like a hentai antagonis—
pig. I'm sweating like a pig!
And just… that's just because of the exertion from my earlier bouts and the constant presence of a padded jacket that I only partially unzip for expedience's sake rather than go through the semi-arduous process of removing it after every bout.
Yup. It's just because of my lacking athleticism and peculiar, inborn aversion to heat.
Because of that, and absolutely nothing else.
"Pret? Allez!" Patrick says in pointlessly flawless French rather than state a mere 'Ready? Go!'
like a peasant.
And
maybe I'm a tad too distracted by my not-at-all misplaced frustration, seeing as my mask unexpectedly twangs in a laconic, metallic herald of defeat when Lucca is suddenly in front of me after a jump-advance-lunge combination that I'm too distracted to properly react to.
"I wasn't ready!" I complain
like a bitch to his retreating back as he walks back to his starting position on the fencing strip as Patrick shoots me a flatly unimpressed stare—something that is, now that I think of it,
actually unwarranted because he didn't wait for me to tell him that I
was ready.
"Don't count the point," Lucca says, reassuming his guard on tierce, the blade upright by his armed side, edge aimed outward, his casual acceptance of my complaint making me feel even worse.
So.
Okay.
"Patrick, actually wait for
both of us to nod before you say '
allez,'" I tell him, likely mangling the pronunciation in ways I'm not aware of because just how many ways could there be to butcher two syllables?
"Fine," he says with only mild exasperation before he does raise his right arm like he should've done from the start, the white sleeve of his own half-zipped jacket sliding down past his wrist, letting his metallic prosthesis glint in the late afternoon sun streaming from the high, semicircular windows lining the upper wall to my right and his back, on the other end of the enormous fencing hall that my college, for reasons that Dad keeps laughing at rather than explain to me, so heavily invests in.
His robotic fingers straighten in an unnaturally smooth way, the intricate joints resembling an actual medieval gauntlet due to the custom 3d printing job he commissioned for it, like the nerd plenty of fencers actually are.
Except he's Patrick, a national-level champion who retrained himself to compete with his right hand after an accident that he rarely talks about while sober, and the guy…
He
makes it work.
Pompous, Francophile asshole that he is, he makes it work.
"En garde," he says, starting the line
properly. "Pret?" he asks and waits for both Lucca and I to nod. "Allez!" he announces.
And I don't have any excuses this time around.
So I leap back, trying to keep my distance as the physical prodigy rockets toward me, his feet moving so fast I can barely catch anything other than the staccato of cushioned heels beating down on the gridded metal flooring of the strip, trying to read—
The point of his saber hits the precise
middle of my mask.
Just the tip.
Just… If I had jumped a bit farther, just a fraction of a second faster, if I had been just a bit
better… it would have gone past.
Missed me.
Damn it.
He silently nods at me, his eyes hidden from mine when his mask tilts down, and I lose any angle past the tightly woven steel threads.
And then he turns around once again to silently walk to his starting position.
"Attack from the right, zero to one," Patrick says with
maybe a smidge of vindication.
Yes, that could just be me projecting while trying not to focus on how utterly outmatched I am by someone who has
worse technique than I do. No, I don't know why I would be at all bitter about that instead of planning how to try and take advantage of said much-vaunted technique while also trying not to remember Dad telling me that I would one day face this very scenario rather than just lose to more skilled opponents if I kept neglecting physical training to read old manuals.
So.
Yeah.
Bitching.
It's, apparently, a thing that I do.
"En garde," Patrick says, and I'm nodding before he asks, even if I'm not ready. Even if I need all the time in the world to think about how to—
Lucca leaps forward again, with the same speed—
I rush forward to meet him in the middle, but I'm responding to his attack, so he has right of way, and, even if we both hit, the point will be his, so—
A sideways flick, my blade trying to hit his, the beat of metal on metal stealing his priority even as it gets his blade out of the way…
Or that's what would've happened if he hadn't swiftly circled around my flick and struck the inside of my arm, just past my wrist and right on the long, padded cuff of my glove for the tip of his saber to hit a legal target.
I try not to grit my hit, and I raise my left hand, signaling that I've been hit before I turn back toward my starting point.
"Attack on preparation, zero to two," Patrick says with what I could easily take as a bored tone.
I breathe. I… It's not like the points have taken long, but they are explosive movements, and I'm giving it my all—for what little good it does. Not to mention all the other spars I did before deciding to top my lackluster practice with a bout against the hardest opponent in the club.
So. Yeah. I'm tired.
But I'm also
furious.
"En garde. Pret? Allez!"
I rush forward as soon as Patrick's gleaming hand cuts down, and this would count as a double touch if I managed to hit Lucca at the same time as he hits me. No points awarded. A neutral result. The go-to move in tournaments, both fencers launching at the same time to do a mirrored advance-lunge.
He is still
faster.
"Attack. Zero to three," Patrick says as I nod in agreement, acceptance, and bitter frustration.
I walk back a bit slower than before.
Just one point.
That's all I ask for; just one point scored off him. A point scored off somebody who sees this as a
sport. Who doesn't care at all for history, or for…
It's stupid.
It
is a sport.
It's just… also so much more.
So… maybe I should let it be just that?
"En garde. Pret? Allez!"
I immediately stand up straight, my legs unbending from the crouched position of the standard guard, heels touching one another, my arm extended, hand and shoulder aligned, my blade pointing straight at Lucca like I'm holding a spear against a cavalry charge.
Point-in-line.
A static position, a threat made with the point of my saber, one of the very few uses of the tip of the sword that my chosen weapon allows under current rules and practices.
A relic of old days.
Lucca stands still for a moment, briefly confused, and I so dearly wish he was the kind to quip right now, to tell me that I expect him to attack with Capo Ferro so I can answer that it would be natural for him to do so, but that I have found that Thibault cancels out Capo Ferro.
Because that's where this old relic, this weird move, inconsistent with the standard, sports-like maneuvers of modern saber comes from: Master Thibault's dueling system.
And I could accept that. I could laugh good-naturedly at Lucca beating me up again and again if he was the sort to share that kind of joke or to relish a bit of archaeological digging into the minutia of what should be our shared art.
But he just cautiously advances, measuring our distance, keeping his guard up so I won't drop the point-in-line that gives me priority so long as I maintain it rather than go for a surprise attack that is unlikely to land.
And, at the very last second…
He stops.
Our eyes meet through our masks, the woven steel doing nothing to detract from his intensely azure eyes as he peers at me, looking for I don't know what.
And, as I try to read him back, his blade flicks down and forward before rising in an upward semicircle from the inside of my non-standard guard, beating my blade out of the way and taking the right of way from me.
I leap back, dropping my hand to the quarte guard as fast as I can, to cover my unguarded side as well as trying to catch his thrusting saber on the way so I can at least get a proper parry out of this.
I am too slow.
There's a line of burning pain on my left arm, and I raise my unarmed hand to signal his point as I try not to grit my teeth and just accept what just happened. To try and take a lesson from it.
But I can't see what the lesson is, and so it's likely that I won't learn it.
"Attack from the right. Zero to four," Patrick says, and I don't even have the energy to imagine some perceived slight in his tone as I watch Lucca calmly walking back to his starting position.
I do take a moment, this time around, standing where I've last been hit, having the familiar litany of 'just one point' running through my head, but… It's never helped, has it? He's just that much better than I am, and he keeps improving day by day.
It's ridiculous.
Nobody, not Patrick, not
Dad, consistently beat me without me scoring a point. That's just not how fencing works. There's always a distraction, an off day, something,
anything at all, that allows the weaker opponent to get lucky.
And I've got… My repertoire is far broader. Just the element of surprise should be enough for me to do something. To even win.
"Brian?" Patrick asks after I stare down for too long at the blurry sun reflected in front of me.
"Sorry. Just… Yeah," I say, smiling at him even if I'm not sure whether he can see through my mask from his angle.
But that, at least, is one lesson I learned from Dad: your voice carries your smile.
Funny what unsuspected wisdom can come from the lips of an office worker who's also, somehow, a master fencer.
I take the few steps I need to reach my starting point, and, this time, I take care to drop into as proper a stance as I can manage: feet at right angles, heels lined up, with about a foot and a half between them, knees bent low enough for explosive movements, but not so low that it slows down my reactions or stops me from dropping lower when I need to.
Then I think about it and drop my blade from the upright tierce to a low seconde, my blade extended down and forward, the edge at an angle that almost mirrors that of my thigh.
It's a guard barely used in saber because it's no longer legal to strike below the waist—even if accidents
do happen, and nobody has the right to complain to a sabreur about how a kick to the balls feels like. A guard that is meant to defend a part of the body that is no longer a legal striking zone.
And so it's a guard that Lucca isn't used to dealing with.
"En guarde. Pret? Allez!" Patrick's gleaming hand cuts down, and I jump forward.
Just a fraction of a second faster than Lucca.
Just enough.
I shift from seconde to a threat to his head, my hand twisting up and advancing minutely in a feint that I've calibrated fastidiously to allow me enough room to throw three more of them before I'm forced to commit to a final attack.
He doesn't move.
I advance quickly, capitalizing on the chance, switching to my second feint, my blade parallel to the metallic floor I'm rushing through, a bit farther ahead, threatening his unarmed side, making him go from tierce to quarte like I just did while retreating from his attack on my point-in-line.
And he takes a step back.
I feel the smile on my lips without meaning to, speeding up just a bit more, pushing myself to go for a last switch of my line of attack, from the inside to the outside in a quick semicircle that brings my blade as far as my arm can extend as I kick from my back leg, throwing myself into as deep and low a lunge as I can manage…
And he whips his hand forward fast enough that the steel curves around the guard of my saber, the point of his weapon sinking into the padded cuff of my glove, my pained flesh, and whatever dregs of dignity I still had.
I hold still, the lunge over, my blade on his unprotected torso, my eyes on deep azure looking down on me while the rounded tip of his weapon remains where it landed, the two of us waiting for Patrick to—
"Attack on the preparation. Zero to five."
For Patrick to crush whatever optimism I still clung to.
I throw a tired smile Lucca's way before I pull myself up from my last lunge, quickly taking my mask off, getting a terrible reminder of precisely how much one can sweat when being stressed, tired, and wrapped in a padded jacket, and I bite the Velcro-lined cuff of my glove to pull it open and take my hand out because Dad
drilled me not to offer my left hand after a bout, much less my still-gloved hand, and—
And swift, dexterous hands with long fingers help me tug it off.
"You think too much," Lucca says, holding both my glove and saber in the same hand he holds his before offering me his free, right hand.
"What?" I adroitly reply.
He… he doesn't
quite roll his eyes, but it's pretty clear that he's frustrated as he looks away from me and toward Patrick before looking back.
"You… You held back. You could have just pushed and caught me—"
"I most definitely
could not."
Another quasi-eye-roll, another reminder that this particular Italian-American manages to break away from the always gesturing stereotype that he apparently isn't.
"Brian," he says as if my name holds any particular meaning, "you
could have gotten that last point. Easily. If you just didn't get in your own way."
And, before I can decide whether he's being supportive or insulting, my glove and saber are back in my hands, and he's turned his back on me.
"He's not a good swordsman, is he?" Patrick says, his prosthetic hand dropping on my shoulder in a by-now familiar way.
"Yeah. Pity we're fencers," I answer with equally familiar bitterness.
He pauses, the metallic fingers cool and still on the jacket I long to unzip, a few errant rays of sun playing along the detailed joints of the fake gauntlet that this quasi-aristocratic nerd felt the need to add to the incredibly expensive, almost futuristic, myoelectric limb that his sports scholarship funded.
"Yeah. Pity that," he finally says before letting me go and turning away, making me feel like I'm missing something.
Which, come to think of it, has been a persistent feeling since I enrolled in Lacmere University to Dad's concerned frown and Mom's manic cackle.
***
"I swear to God, fucking faeries," Conor mumbles as he rummages in his bag, bent over the locker room wooden bench as if he wants to dive into the black, long, almost guitar-case-like thing we're forced to use to carry our fencing gear around in an uncivilized world that doesn't think scabbards are in vogue.
"Faeries didn't steal your keys, Hound," Patrick tells his best friend in the most patronizing tone that he can manage as he laces his shoes in a way that belies how much practice it took for him to learn to use both his prosthesis and left hand for the task.
"It's just a manner of speech. And don't call me Hound," the tall, muscular,
big guy with a passing resemblance to a certain character from a certain TV show that ended in disappointment says, peering over the open zipper with a fanged scowl glinting past his wild beard that very much warrants the moniker.
"Stop being so damn Irish…" Patrick complains as he critically contemplates whether his shoelaces are immaculate enough for his high standards.
"I'll stop being a superstitious hick when fairies stop stealing my goddamn keys, thank you very much," a man who doesn't sound all that grateful says.
And… Well, I guess I
could stay. Join in the joking back and forth that they aren't excluding me from.
But…
'You think too much.'
Damn it.
"Well, see you tomorrow," I say, slinging my own oversized bag over my shoulder and very much wondering yet again why I choose to carry my gear around rather than leave it in the club where ninety percent of all my training takes place.
"Later, Brian," Conor distractedly says. "And, hey, if you see any suspicious women about seven inches high—"
"
For the last time—"
I find myself smiling as the door shuts behind me, and I'm once again in the training hall, the sun even lower than before, lending the whole room a golden, dreamlike atmosphere complimented by the uneven reflection of the light streaks on the parallel fencing strips, the perforated metal seeming to waver and—
"Took you long enough," a girl who's somewhat taller than seven inches says.
I try (and likely fail) not to blink stupidly as I look away from the painting-like display and toward the tall double gates where a girl with a mane of black, wavy hair waits with her arms crossed.
Apparently, she's waiting for me.
And it takes a moment for my brain to cue me into the proper answer:
"Shit," I say, as polite as Mom always told me to be to young ladies.
"Where are my books,
Brian?" she says, her amber eyes blazing in a way that would look much, much better if she was doing it over half-moon glasses like the hot librarian that she is—
I mean, like the intimidating, imposing young woman that I very much don't want to piss off.
"I… I just forgot about the—"
"Incunabula. Original copies. Things that should be kept under lock and key and at perfectly controlled temperatures and humidity. And you,
somehow, got the dean's permission to take them away from their rightful place under my watch and care—"
"You're just a library assistant, Roberta—"
"
My watch and care. And then you
dare forget about the return date?"
"I… I'm very sorry?"
She uncrosses her arms,
not making me look at the suddenly released bust held back behind a frilly white blouse, and she walks decisively toward me, the black skirt hugging her hips very much complimenting that look she
may be going for or that I could be projecting into the always stern, overachieving library assistant with too many job positions in the Student Council for me to list in the time it takes her to be right in front of me, staring up into my eyes as her own narrow and mine widen in what I hope is not unattractive shock—
Okay. Okay, Brian,
yes, she's a pretty lady. A very pretty lady, and that stern look she's hitting you with is pushing all sorts of buttons, plenty of them likely related to reading material you would never admit to, even under torture.
She's also… very close.
That's no reason to act like an idiot, okay? Say, 'Okay,' Brian.
"Okay," Brian says.
… Like an idiot.
"Okay?" she asks with genuine confusion.
An opening!
"Okay to whatever it is that you want me to do to make up for it," I say without even a hint of panicked improvisation.
I mean… if fencing's good for something, it's to get you used to thinking on the fly, at the very least.
"And what makes you think that I want
you to do something for me?" she says, likely pouncing on a hint of panicked improvisation.
Right, so… think, Brian,
think.
And, for the love of God, don't say 'Think, Brian,' out loud!
"Come on," I say with a brittle smile. "Why else would you come all the way here?"
"To get
my books back," she says, like somebody who never learned to play along.
"Yeah, but I drop by the library often enough. No need to go to all the trouble when you could've just reminded me the next time you saw me," I say, gesticulating wildly enough to compensate for Lucca's sad betrayal of his ancestry. At least partially.
Her eyes narrow like she doesn't approve of my quaint national stereotypes, which I'm pretty sure has nothing to do with her name being 'Roberta,' and thus likely being a Latina of some kind, even if she's paler than I am, and… uh… is this racist? Is thinking that Latinos are usually tanner than a nerd with indoor hobbies racist? Shit, I don't feel like this with Lucca—
the racism part. There's nothing at all about talking to a pretty girl that reminds me of talking with Lucca other than the racism thing.
… Is this homophobic?
"Fine," she says.
"Fine?" I ask as if granted absolution for my sins against all that Twitter stands for.
"Come by tonight," she says.
"Come by?" I ask, more out of sheer reflex than cogent curiosity.
"By the
library. Come by
the library," she tells me, her arms crossing yet again and doing entirely uninteresting things to her mid-sized, just shy of big, bust that I most definitely don't even notice.
"By the—"
"If you finish that question, I'll stomp my heel on your foot."
"Ah."
"
Yes."
I blink at her.
She
doesn't blink at me. Like, it's very noticeable that she isn't blinking.
Also, she's tapping her fingers on her arm in a way that conveys both impatience and what another Brian, one that lies long-buried in a shameful past, would've likely considered too moe to even process.
And… well, I
could question her about why she wants to meet with me at night. In the library. When it's closed to the public.
When it will be just the two of us in there.
I very much could and likely should.
But…
'You think too much.'
Fuck you, Lucca. In an entirely heterosexual and non-homophobic way.
"Okay," I say.
And she smiles in a way that would definitely look equally sinister with half-moon glasses.
***
"Leaving so late?" Conor asks from the aged leather armchair in the corner when I go through the common hall at the entrance to the dorm building.
Which would be a perfectly sensible thing to ask if it weren't for the thick, wagging eyebrows, the grin that his beard can't hide, and the lewd gesture that I refuse to acknowledge.
"Just want to get some cool air," I say, adjusting a brown cotton jacket that is not padded at all and, thus, will hopefully remain not sweat-soaked in the time it takes to walk to the library.
"Oh, so that's what you kids are calling it nowadays," he says with a puerile giggle that makes Patrick shoot him a reproachful frown.
"Yes. That's what we 'kids' call going out for a stroll at night. Getting some cool air," I say, telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, except for all the parts of the truth that I'm desperately withholding from somebody prone to explicit, uncomfortably candid remarks.
"Stop messing with him, Conor," Patrick says from where he's reading a book with a leather jacket, lying on the couch like a decadent noble in front of a fireplace that is currently not in season.
"Thanks," I say with a bit of relief.
"After all," he keeps going as if I hadn't spoken, "it's not like a gentleman to kiss and tell."
His face remains stonily stoic as he turns a page with the pad of a non-metallic finger, and then he slowly looks up at me over the top of his book with a slow grin coming to bear as Conor starts laughing loud enough to bend over.
"You guys are all terrible people," I say,
maybe a tad more truthful than earlier.
"Don't forget to use a rubber!" Conor cheerfully answers.
And, with those parting words and my cheeks feeling
perfectly cool, thank you very much, I push the door to my dorm open and step out into the night's air.
Which is cool. Like, actually cool, as my currently sensitive cheeks, for some reason, are quick to notice.
So… well, I
do take in a deep breath of air. Of cool, fresh air the likes of which I've only gotten before when deep in a mountain trail, in one of those excursions that Dad thought was a good idea to drag me through despite me being built for speed rather than stamina.
… Yeah, I miss him. Them.
Kinda pathetic, isn't it? A college freshman missing his parents on the other side of the country, looking up at a starry sky with the warm light of the dorm coming through the windows on top of the gates behind him, remembering when a tall, thin, athletic man sat him on his lap, both of them on a rock surrounded by ancient pines, and an impossibly big finger pointed at the stars above, speaking of names and stories from the time when words were new.
I probably shouldn't tell Roberta about all this. Don't want her libido to dry up.
But, well… she isn't here right now, is she?
So I start walking down the dimly lit path going from the dorm reserved to the members of the dean's pet project, the quasi-medieval building with enough allowances to modern life for it to be livable growing smaller at my back as I approach the
actual European castle that a riche nouveau with more money than sense, and more sense than sanity, decided to export here, to the Pacific Northwest of the united States of America, just so it could act as the administrative center and staff residence for a college that is not nearly elite enough for how much all this must've cost.
I'm walking on paved stones surrounded by lush, dark green grass, and I find myself staring up at Orion, the most easily found constellation, as I near a building set outside the walls of the castle, made of red brickwork that mirrors a Gothic cathedral architecture with tall, colorful windows that always cast our library in comfortable light that more than one student finds themselves drowsing in.
The forest isn't far, and neither is the lake or the small canal that surrounds only half of the castle's walls, thus not being
quite a moat even if the suggestion's there.
It's just… a beautiful, peaceful night.
But it does very little to calm my thundering heart when I finally reach the library and find the door inset in one of the tall gates open even if the lights inside are turned off.
I…
Okay. Okay. Just… just try to think of this as a tournament. It's fine being nervous. Nothing shameful about that. Yes, being nervous impacts your performance—
not like that.
…
Right. Let's try this again.
I take a deep breath, really taking notice of the scent of wet grass and the cool water of a lake only a few hundred yards away, that is, from this place higher than my dorm, a black mirror dotted by starlight and a streak of wavering silver moonlight.
I look up from it and toward a moon bigger than usual, full, round, and with a face made out of dots, lines, and imagination.
I allow my mind to be a bit fanciful, and the Moon smiles down at me, surprisingly reassuring as I let past failures in tournaments I was too nervous to properly show my skill in fade away.
And, when my heart has slowed down, I turn back to the ajar door and push it with my open hand, the old hinges creaking as I step into a tall room filled with corridors made out of bookcases.
"Roberta?" I call out in a whisper that still feels too loud for this place, particularly at night.
She doesn't answer, so I, trying very hard not to think about all those gory movies that Mom let me watch before I was supposed to be old enough to do so—to Dad's utter horror and a few sleepless nights as a result—step deeper into the cathedral-like library, turning back for a brief moment to check how the light of a full moon comes through the colorful rose window placed above the gates that only open for formal events.
The colors of the stained glass are washed out, and the medieval figures take on an ethereal, not-at-all reassuring quality, seeming to move as I walk back, still staring up, until I'm past the reception desk where Roberta usually glares at me, and then I turn around.
"Roberta?" I ask once again, struggling with all my might not to add a clueless 'Is anyone there?'
There's a sound coming from the bookcase corridor to my left, and I, stupidly imagining an enthusiastic aspirant to the naughty librarian position being trapped in impromptu bondage, follow it deeper into shadows laced with the scent of aged paper.
"I swear, if I find you gagged and tied… I'm
still going to ask for consent," I mutter, for no particular reason at all other than me being apparently an idiot.
Particularly because Roberta never actually
said that something improper would happen tonight and, for all I know, despite my cleanly shaved cheeks, my extra shower, my healthy overdose of deodorant, and my pained gums that have heroically withstood an entirely too thorough brushing, it's quite reasonable to assume that I'm going to be doing inventory until dawn as penance for my sins against late return fines.
There's another sound, deeper still, past the next intersection and leading up to the area filled with desks and crystal lamps.
I walk towards it, slowing down, feet brushing softly over grey, worn stone, my knees reflexively bending in preparation for a burst of speed if I need it, my right hand trailing along the cool wood of the bookcase by my side, maybe looking for something long and easy to hold that I can use to—
The moonlight pours in from a tall arched window by my left, the shafts of silver raining past swirling motes of glowing dust to fall on a desk in the middle of the open area.
To fall on… On…
There's a howl.
I used to have a dog. A happy, fluffy ball of bounding energy who usually yipped rather than barked, but I once heard him howling when I arrived home, and he didn't notice he was no longer alone.
Head thrown back, fangs peeking past his black lips, back entirely arched as the whole body was devoted to letting out something filled with mournful sadness that sent a shiver down my spine.
This is not that kind of howl.
The black fur along its shoulders is spiked, the tail curved, the sound a call for something that isn't there, that
can't be there, making my blood freeze and a rush of cold flash through my head.
That keeps on going and going, answered only by the dancing motes trapped in silver light.
And then, slowly, it fades to silence as the head bows back down.
Equally slowly, it turns toward me.
I meet glowing, amber eyes.
Realize that my jacket is now definitely soaked with sweat.
And I run.
===========================
Hi there, this is my new original project, generously financed by @shaderic, the same patron of the arts responsible for Ginosko. This time around, the focus is kind of different.
That's not to say there won't be maid-focused smut in the future. I know who I'm working with.
Anyway, the story of Lacmere is maybe a bit more ambitious than I should reasonably tackle, given that it started as an excuse for monstergirl smut in a modern setting. I'm honestly a bit hyped to see what you all think when more of the world is shown, but for now, I guess you'll just have to wait for the next chapter to come out.
Speaking of? My current goal is to get this on a biweekly schedule, on Tuesdays, alternating with Wordsworth to fill Wake-up Call's recently vacated spot. This means that Chapter 2 is already up on my Patreon, and that Chapter 3 will come out next week. Look forward to it (I am looking forward to it, just also dreading messing it up).
As always, I'd like to thank my credited supporters on Patreon: LearningDiscord, Niklarus, Tinkerware, Varosch, Vergil1989 Crossover King, and Xalgeon. If you feel like maybe giving them a hand with keeping me in the writing business (and getting an early peek at my chapters before they go public, among other perks), consider joining them or buying one of my books on Amazon. Thank you for reading!
