•••

Caius had no idea how long had passed since he fell unconscious.

He did notice though that he was no longer lying on a forest floor. His body was cradled by soft bed cushions. There was a taste in his mouth. As though he had drunk a potion. One made with Blood. One that his body didn't reject.

'Someone fed me while I was out?' He asked.

And then he heard a cry;

"ARRRRGGHHHH!!!"

It was a familiar cry and his eyes snapped open as he sat up on the bed. In front of him, at the foot of the bed, someone sat dressed in satin robes. Her long shiny black hair stretched down her back. Though her back was turned to him, Caius could tell she was holding a device. Because the device was projecting a screen.

On the screen was Caius and Belron. The cry that made Caius open his eyes had come from on-screen Belron and it was the same one Belron had made before he unleashed a massive attack.

Sure enough, a Demonic circle appeared on screen and struck on-screen Caius in the chest. A shattering sound of bones was clear to hear from the recording and a second later, Caius hit the ground, creating a Four-foot deep crater.

The lady with her back to him twitched. The move was almost imperceptible but Caius could tell she had winced at the devastating attack.

"It actually looks a lot worse than it was," Caius said then with a smile. It was a lie of course. Terrible as it looked on-screen, it had felt worse and far more devastating to suffer it.

The lady froze. But Caius already knew who she was. He liked to think he'd be able to pick out that back, that hair, that posture, even in a crowd.

Arlette turned off the device and the visual vanished. There were still a few more minutes of footage before things went dark but she had watched it more than enough times already while she waited for Caius to wake.

She turned around slowly and Caius paused when he saw moisture at the corner of her eyes.

"How are you feeling?" She asked with a smile. But there was something about the smile. It was like that of someone trying to put on a brave face and not doing as good a job at it as they could.

"Fine… I think," Caius said and touched his chest. Though there was still some aching, it felt mended. Knowing Nyx's blessing hadn't actually healed and had really just masked his pain so he could fight on, he knew the mending was Arlette's doing.

"Thank you," he said.

"Vampiric Mending potion," she said, "Of my own making."

"It worked great," Caius said.

"I'm glad," Arlette said and but more naturalness seeped into her tone as she said it, "You can wash up if you'd like."

Caius began to move then when he looked down at his hand and realized he had claws and they were digging into Arlette's bed.

"I'm shifted," he said, feeling like that confirmed what he had debated with himself before falling unconscious.

"Don't worry. No one saw," Arlette told him.

Caius looked up at her with a brow raised.

"I got to you first," Arlette told him.

That was almost an understatement. When the veil finally came down, the First Years poured out and as the other Professors checked them for injury, Arlette had raced past. She had leaned into the connection they shared by Divine Seeds and found him before anyone else.

Cynthia Kragsten was right on her heels but Arlette scooped Caius up and ran the other way, covering up his shifted form before the Combat Magic Professor got a chance to see.

"Thank you," Caius said as he stepped off the bed and walked to the bathroom.

Although he was still in his Lochxen Uniform, Arlette had taken the protective vest off him. It was destroyed anyway and she wanted less clothing so she could better assess his condition. The top buttons of his uniform shirt had been open when he woke up.

"How's everyone?" Caius asked in a monotone then as he slid into the water of the bath and let the soothing feel wash over him.

"I didn't hang around after getting to you. I needed to get you somewhere safe first so I didn't see a lot of them.

But the report going through the 'Staff Room' is that everyone is accounted for and alive. There were some injuries but nothing life-threatening.

Though everyone agrees it definitely would have been worse had it not been for your little girlfriends," Arlette said as she sat at the rim of the large bath and moved her hand around in the water.

Caius's brows flew up his head then as he looked over at her.

"What?" He asked.

"The three of them, Kaya, Eloise, and Aylin went about helping the other teams."

"Helping them with the Mid-Semester Tests?" Caius asked, confused.

"What? No. The Mid-Semester Tests were essentially closed by then," Arlette said and when Caius still looked confused, she explained,

"The Magical Beasts were all corrupted. They broke through their enclosures and went on indiscriminate rampages."

Caius's eyes went wide now.

"What?" He asked, incredulous.

That hadn't happened in the original story. The only corrupted Beast was the Clacking Centipede and it was meant to be a herald for the Demon's arrival.

The Professors being kept out of the Forest, he had expected.

The students being trapped in, also expected.

But rampaging Beasts corrupted with Demonic energy? Why in all hell…?

And then Caius remembered what Belron had said after raising the Sealing Cube;

"Don't worry too much about those outside this little slice of Hell of ours. They'll face challenges of their own soon enough. As well as every other godling lurking about.

I only wonder who'll fall first. Them… or you."

'Those were the challenges he meant?' Caius asked in his head, his eyes still wide.

It really drove home for Caius just how much he had derailed the natural course of events. Belron had been sent instead of Tyron because there was more than one potential godling to be tested. And everyone had been faced with hordes of Beasts whose primary objectives were to seek out Kaya, Eloise, and Aylin.

"Caius?" Arlette called to him when he just stared off into nothing.

"I didn't know—" Caius said in a somber voice, his voice heavy.

When he handed out his gifts, he had never thought they'd be used against Demonic threats during the Tests. Except maybe Delia but even that fight had never been intended to be as difficult as it turned out to be.

Arlette nodded.

"I doubt you did," she said and then her voice took on a shrewd tone as she added,

"But you did know there'd be a demon attack, didn't you?"

Caius looked at her but said nothing.

Arlette nodded as she took that as confirmation.

"Of course, you did," she said and then sucked in a breath as her next words were spoken through gritted teeth,

"You know what I was thinking as I watched that screen? I thought about the last couple of weeks. About how everything you've done has been with a purpose but you'd never actually said what the purpose was.

And it finally made sense…"

"Arlette…" Caius started but she interrupted him. Her eyes were looking misty now.

"While you prepared to face a Demonic attack, did it ever occur to you to tell someone… To tell me?

I could have been there. I could have faced that thing with you."

"It doesn't work like that," Caius said.

"Oh? How does it work then?" Arlette asked, her voice now had an irate edge to it as a drop of tear fell from her left eye and slid down her cheek to drip onto the ground,

"Fucking tell me how it works! Because I saw you hit the ground. I saw you struggle to breathe. I felt it as your life dwindled… I can feel that, you know.

Did you know that?

When you were handing me the Arcane Circle to cultivate a Divine Seed, did you know I'd be able to feel you dying and be left staring uselessly at a projected screen, powerless to do anything to save you?!"

"Arlette…" Caius tried again.

And again, she interrupted him, her voice raised as she asked in a voice dripping with anger mixed with pain,

"DID YOU KNOW?!!!"

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