Even while drowning, Lexie subconsciously opened up her system screen and called her cards, but it was difficult to think straight long enough to choose one.

And as a card–she didn't know which–fell into her hands, she couldn't call out the magic from it. Something had wrapped around her entire hand, preventing the skin connection to her card.

What the heck? She fought even harder, her breath building in her chest, fear pulsing through her because she felt like she was going to die. She could vaguely feel the card, but she couldn't touch it. Maybe she could activate it anyway, by connecting to the pathways through the air. That wasn't what she was used to, but she could have figured it out if she had had enough time to think and consider. But all she felt on the horizon was death.

If she concentrated, she could feel a different energy pulsing in her core, spreading through her body.

Suddenly, cold water splashed onto her body, and she could gasp for breath, coughing and gagging all the way.

It took her a few seconds to realize she wasn't being drowned after all. There had just been a forcefield holding water that was wrapped around her face.

"Callitrus!" She heard a spell cast and an insignia flash. More ink-like slime forms held down her legs and her hands, the cool, silky substance sticking to her like a second skin. She blinked back her blurry vision as she gasped for air and finally noticed three girls who stood above her at each corner of her bed.

"Ah. You're awake," a girl with a mop of curly red hair, cut in what should have been an avant-garde style, spoke. The hairstyle would have fit someone with a different, not-so-rounded face. On her, it looked stupid. The only good thing about it was that a tuft of hair was curled, pointing perfectly to a mole underneath her eye.

"Who the hell are you?" Lexie's voice was still shaky and breathless. "What do you think you're doing?"

"Who are we? Consider us your welcoming committee." She had an irritating sing-songy voice that made Lexie cringe. "You can also refer to me as Your Highness, if you want, considering that's who I am."

Lexie blinked at the girl. She did look vaguely familiar. Was she related to a royal family somewhere?

I don't care. I want to kill her.

Calm down. Lexie took deep breaths to calm herself and calm the inner Eldritch voice that she was starting to refer to as Bad Lexie. In, out. Just breathe.

"Aw, look. She's hyperventilating."

You can make them hyperventilate. Have them suffer ten times what you did.

Lexie looked away and continued her breathing exercises. That was when she noticed the girl in the corner turned away from them. She was sitting at her desk, focused on her books, and had huge headphones over her ears. Lexie didn't know if she wasn't hearing what was going on or if she was pretending not to hear. Probably the latter.

Why won't she help me?

I don't know. But we should kill her, too.

"Hey, short stack." One of the other two girls flicked water in her face, and Lexie turned to glare at her. "Listen when we're talking to you."

Rip their jaw apart so they can't talk again.

Stop that, Bad Lexie.

As her foggy, rage-fueled brain tried to make sense of the situation, she realized that this must have been the hazing that her father warned her about.

Wrath tinged the corners of her vision with red, making her hesitate to use any magic. This was exactly what led to the Diana incident: that uncontrollable anger that made her unsteady and resulted in bad decisions.

She had to relax.

No one had hurt her yet; they were just irritating her at best. She wasn't in pain. They weren't going to kill her, or they would have done it already.

They were just annoying brats, and she just needed to figure out a way to get them to leave her alone.

Starting with how to dislodge the slime hands from her skin.

She had a bunch of cards that would work for that.

Problem was that she needed her hands free to actually call the magic from the cards. She could attempt to connect to the card telepathically, probably, but that would waste more mana, and she wouldn't have enough in case a battle were to ensue. She didn't want to have to tap into her Eldritch mana at a time like this.

Not being able to use cards without her hands was a limitation she'd never thought about before. She would need to work on that and train herself to control cards from a distance.

Lexie found that the thinking was helping reduce her anger. That was until someone sprinkled water on her face again, and the killing urge surged.

Lexie really wanted to hurt Carrot-top.

"There you are," she said. "I was asking you a question."

"And I was ignoring you." Lexie vaguely wondered where Dewie and Jace were. In class? At dinner? It was dark outside, so maybe asleep. If she yelled, could she get their attention?

As though she could read their mind, Carrot-top said, "Don't even bother. Elena, here is a soundmeister." She pointed at the third girl, who nodded. "Everyone outside of this room thinks that you're fast asleep. If anyone comes up, she can even mimic your voice and ask to be left alone. And if you don't start answering my questions, she's going to make you listen to the most irritating sound you've ever heard."

"Too late for that one," Lexie muttered. "What do you want?"

Carrot-top raised an eyebrow and then nodded toward her partner.

Suddenly, a vexing whine began in Lexie's ears, merely annoying at first, but the longer it went on, the more she felt like clawing at her eardrums. She thought she could tolerate it, but then the intensity just kept turning up until Lexie felt that anger boiling inside her again. She wondered if eventually, the sound would get sharp enough to puncture her eardrums, but she didn't want to risk it.

Despite that, she wasn't truly scared of these kids.

On the contrary, she was more scared of what she could do to them.

"Okay, fine. What do you want?" she snapped, and Carrot-top and friends seemed slightly taken aback that Lexie wasn't immediately cowering.

Their leader soon recovered her smug smile.

"We just want you to admit what you did," she said. "With your father."

"What the heck are you even on about?"

"The dungeons. He put them there in Hartville, didn't he?" Her eyes glittered with hatred. "I had a friend there. She died because of you."

Lexie wished she could muster up some sympathy right now, but she was currently out of fucks to give. "I'm sorry about that, but that wasn't my fault. Neither my dad nor I had anything to do with the dungeon."

"Then how did you know it was there?"

"Because I have magic," Lexie said sarcastically. "If we were the ones who put it there, why on Earth would I try to warn people?"

"Maybe you had a crisis of faith," she said. "Maybe you felt bad for what your father was about to do. I'll give you credit for that. Maybe he even forced you to do it."

"He didn't force me to do anything."

"Then again," she continued like Lexie hadn't spoken. "Maybe you were both in on it. Maybe he did it so that you would save the day and gain admission into the Hero's Academy. That way, he can get a reduced sentence. I heard that was the deal they struck, so you would be a [hero]. Why else would they let you in here after you tortured someone?"

"I don't know. You should leave me alone and ask them instead."

"You think you're so clever." She leaned in, her breath smelling like spicy lobster. "You don't belong here. Your dad's a [villain]. I may not know what he did, but I know he hurt a lot of people. No doubt, deep inside, you're a villain too."

Yes. I am. Let's show her how true that is.

Carrot-top's eyes had a hint of craziness in them as she continued. "My mother said that your father was the reason your mother died. She said that he made a deal with a demon for power, and it took your mother's life in return. Is that true?"

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Rip her guts out.

Lexie felt that same explosive rage she'd felt when Diana said what she said about Aiden, and it nearly boiled over, scorching her mind of any common sense, making her itchy with the need to scream and hurt all of them. The loss of control scared her, but it also empowered her, and she felt the mana spreading within her, moving her hand without her permission.

The chair scraped, distracting her. The girl at the table finally got up and approached them. She had a brown bob and brown eyes behind large, square-rimmed glasses. She wasn't mousy, but she didn't necessarily have very distinctive features either. Her beady eyes landed dispassionately on Lexie as the other three girls ignored her.

"Excuse me," she said, and they turned to look at her.

"Stay out of this," Carrot-top warned her, and she nodded, but she pointed at the window.

"Mr. Xander is doing rounds. He might be in the hallways soon, and it's past curfew."

They glanced toward the window and must have found that to be true because one of them cursed. Suddenly, the three of them drew back, and before Lexie could say much, one of them opened a portal. Instead of entering the portal, though, the portal itself cloaked them in black mist. It swallowed them up, and they were gone.

Lexie gripped the sheets, still staring at the spot they had previously stood. She took a look at the other girl, whom she guessed was her new roommate, Ava.

Ava returned to her desk without waiting for a thank you, not that Lexie was going to give one. She'd almost drowned, and the girl had just sat there studying. In Lexie's book, she was almost as bad as the other three.

Lexie felt an intense dislike for her, even if she was being irrational. Perhaps the other girl was scared of getting hazed, too. Maybe that was what made her hesitant to help, but she didn't look scared. Simply uncaring.

Or maybe that was just Lexie's demon speaking. She wasn't feeling very charitable right now, towards anyone or anything. She just felt unsteady, like she was still on the verge of a mental breakdown, and was grasping the pieces of her mind desperately to put it back together.

Her body was shaking. Her hands wouldn't let go of the sheets. She needed to get Naem's help as fast as possible. Those murderous thoughts she'd had tonight….they were so powerful, it scared her. It was so much worse and much more insistent than it had been in the fight with Diana.

Which probably meant that the Eldritch part of her was growing anyway.

So, it was clearly wishful thinking on her dad's part to assume that it would stop growing if Lexie simply ignored it. Naem was the only way to control it now. She just hoped that he would finish with whatever he was doing soon.

Lexie checked the time. It was later than dinner, and she had a message from Xena saying that her training had gone on longer than expected and she would be missing dinner. Dewie had also sent Lexie a message, saying that he'd come to call her down for dinner, but she was still asleep and he didn't want to disturb her. He kept some food for her in her fridge, a little bit of everything.

Lexie swallowed, feeling a little bit of good emotion peek through the bad. She thanked Dewie and put her knees up, burying her head against them. She doubted she would get much sleep tonight, mostly because she was fuming, but also because she was concerned those idiots would come back.

Instead, she spent time working on what she would do if they did return. She didn't want them to catch her unawares again. Feeling as rattled as she did, she just might kill them.

Terrifying, she thought. This part of me is terrifying.

The more she thought about it, the more she realized the only way to keep her emotions from spiraling out of control again was to keep herself as safe as possible. Which meant that this hazing business wouldn't work for her. She needed a way to prevent anyone she didn't want from entering her room. She could maybe set trap cards or some other defensive stuff.

She also needed a way to disable intruders whenever they did come.

That would take some work, but she was up for the challenge.

Eventually, she lay back in bed, opened her system screen, and began to do research. She discovered that the system did give one the ability of hand-less card activation, but only once you achieved level 9 as a card mage. That was probably ways away, considering Lexie hadn't even set her starter deck yet. Great.

Was there a way to get that ability without the leveling? After all, she'd managed to reduce her activation time and complete plenty of other amazing card feats without leveling either. System-leveling protocol didn't make much sense to her anyway. Why could she only level up by affixing her starter deck, considering how much she'd already done with cards? She was probably beyond any other card mage at her caliber, but the system didn't acknowledge that unless she bound that power to a deck. Why? Was it another way of limiting her? Or was there a secret third reason?

Knowing the system, probably both.

She would hold off on it until she met Naem again. Maybe he would have a different perspective on it.

***

Lexie had no recollection of actually drifting into sleep, but when she woke up again, an alarm was blaring out of the speakers near the ceiling.

"The time is seven am," it said. "Breakfast in thirty minutes."

Lexie groaned as she rolled out of bed. She was still groggy and irritable from last night. Ava, who seemed more awake, got out of bed and left the room without another word. Lexie resolved not to speak to her either.

By the time she got out, Ava was nowhere to be found, and both Dewie and Jace were yawning in their pajamas.

"Hey," Jace greeted first, bending backward until his waist popped. "How'd you sleep?"

"Fine," Lexie said, and that was all she was willing to say for now.

It was only while they were at breakfast–which was actually a full, tantalizing buffet–that she finally mentioned what happened.

Dewie gaped at her. "Are you serious?"

"Yeah," she said. "That happened last night. Did you guys have to go through that when you first got here?"

Xena shook her head, looking pissed on Lexie's behalf. "Well, I live by myself in my own tower, and it's pretty well protected, so I don't think anyone can even get in here if they wanted to."

Lexie glanced at Dewie, and he played with his eggs and shrugged. "Maybe a little at first, but not anymore. Jace and I watch out for each other so that no one comes in."

"Yeah." Jace pointed and made a finger gun. "If they try me, I give 'em one of these..." He made the whistling sound with his mouth and then blew the tips of his fingers. "They never try it again."

"I've heard stories about hazing, but I don't think it's ever been that bad. She could have drowned you. You should report it." Xena said. "What's her name?"

"No idea," Lexie said. "All I know is that she had the dumbest haircut I've ever seen and she called herself Your Highness."

Oh…." Xena's eyes widened. "That must be Rufina. She's a second year and she's the granddaughter of Rufus the Great."

"The Emperor?" Rufus the Great was the Emperor of District 8 and its colonies.

"Yup," Xena answered.

"I see," Lexie said. "And is she always such a bitch?"

Jace choked on his food, Dewie patted him on the back, and Xena smirked.

"I guess, although I haven't paid attention. You should still report it."

Lexie thought about it and shook her head. She wasn't against snitching as a rule, but in this context, it didn't seem like the right move. Hazing was generally accepted in Hero school, and even if it wasn't, the girl was literal royalty. While the royal family was merely symbolic in District 9, it was still very much the ruling system of District 8, and there were far fewer heroes in District 8 as well, which made the ones there far more important. Reporting probably wouldn't be enough to get her expelled, but it could put a target on Lexie's back and make the girl far more underhanded.

"Want me to do something about it?" Xena asked.

Lexie shook her head. That would be even worse than reporting it because it would make her seem weak, and then more people would see her as an easy target. Plus, she didn't want to add more to Xena's plate. "I can handle it."

Xena looked unsure. "In the meantime, I'll talk to Lionel about you staying with me for a few days. I think we'll take a break from training. Yesterday was pretty rough."

"You don't have to..." Lexie started, then realized she hadn't asked about Xena's training yet. "How did that go by the way?"

"Good. Lionel is trying to teach me to bend the sun."

Lexie's eyebrow furrowed. "Huh?"

She shook her head. "It's a long story. But mostly, he's trying to teach me to push my powers to the max, without leaking belief all over the place. He wants me to get better control of it, so I don't tax myself and hurt people without meaning to."

Lexie nodded. It was nice to know someone else was having problems controlling their powers.

Also, it was probably the right time to tell Xena and Dewie about her having Eldritch powers. Not right now with Jace there, of course. She hadn't known him long enough to truly trust him yet, but maybe later, when the three of them were alone.

After a pretty enjoyable breakfast, she headed out to her first task of the day. She texted her father on the way to her meeting with Journeyman. He wanted to know how she was doing, and she told him everything, of course, leaving out the bullying.

Her dad was amused to hear about her assembly-crashing and responded:

Aiden: Nice to know Journeyman is still as scatterbrained as ever.

Lexie: Yeah. Have you heard from Naem?

Aiden: Not yet. Let's give it time.

Lexie felt restless. Time was what she didn't have. If she didn't hear from Naem soon, then she would have to research on her own. Maybe by reaching out to that random on the Undernet, which she really didn't want to have to do.

The headmaster's office was on the top floor of the central tower, overlooking the maze that surrounded the school. The door immediately opened to give her access before she could knock, and she found him in a sparsely decorated office, staring out a carved arch of a window into the sky.

He didn't notice when she walked in. She had to knock and clear her throat loudly. "Um, Headmaster Journeyman?"

His head swung around. "Ah. Lexie Sparrowfoot. Yes, I have a meeting with you this morning, don't I? I didn't forget, I was simply thinking about…" He waved his hand. "Never mind. Have a seat."

He gestured opposite her at the sole chair across his large, vintage-looking desk.

When she sat, she felt the chair transform. Not physically, but it felt like it was molding itself into the most comfortable chair for her specific form.

Journeyman grinned. "That's pretty 'swell', isn't it? As the kids say."

Lexie didn't think any kids still used the term 'swell', but she nodded anyway. "Is it alchemy?"

"No, science." He folded his fingers over the table. "Now, explain to me, what is this research topic of yours?"

"Making cards for mundanes."

Lexie said it plainly to gauge his response

He didn't seem surprised. "I see."

Despite his tone not reflecting disapproval, Lexie still felt the need to defend herself. "I know it seems impossible, or like a far-fetched idea. But I don't think it is. I've already started making personalized cards for individuals with almost no free mana, and these cards feed off as little mana as possible."

"Little mana and no mana are two different things," he said gently.

"I know. I still believe it's possible."

"I see." He stood and approached her. "I think I know exactly what you need. I just need to measure something first."

"What?"

"Your potential." He didn't touch her, simply stood there and stared at her long enough that it felt uncomfortable. Lexie didn't know what he was doing, but she felt super exposed, and especially concerned since he was frowning.

What was he looking for? Why wasn't he talking? How long did she have to sit here?

He finally exhaled, pursed his lips, and said, "I think we might need more tests."

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