29 - Counterfeit

As Selena approached, Arielle belatedly remembered to bow.
Selena chuckled. “I’ve told you, you don’t have to do that. Seriously, it makes me feel uncomfortable. People have bowed to me my entire life, and I’m sick of it.”
Ari straightened. “Of course. I’ll refrain from bowing henceforth.” This was the second time she was making that mistake, and she told herself she wouldn’t make it again.
Selena gestured with her chin to the Vacu coalescence in the room, which was generating a physical black hole that was growing in size with every second. “I assume you’re interested in what he’s doing?”
There was no point in denying it. “Yes.”
“He’s creating an interdimensional portal,” she said.
Arielle’s heart skipped a beat. “How?”
“How?” Selena said. “Well, we’re told Telip’s sort of a rune expert. He has a theory that with enough stabilizing runes and catalysts, he will be able to generate a portal that will give us access to other realms.”
“He’s allowed to do that?” Everyone knew that interdimensional access was severely restricted to almost everyone except high-tier mages, and even then, only with permission from the Ministry.
“Of course,” she said, “So far, most of our interdimensional access points are controlled by other parties. For example, if we wanted to enter the Elven realm, the Elves would need to approve it first; however, they can come here whenever they want via a dimensional rift. After the erasure of the Vaelor’s, humans don’t have any interdimensional portals that we control. I’m assuming that Telip wants to change that.”
Arielle wasn’t staring at Selena while she was speaking. She was looking at the orbs in the room, the shapes stabilized by Luxa triple-bonded interconnected rings surrounding them.
She’d never seen anything like it.
Even as she tried to commit it to memory, the portal continued to grow, and Telip gritted his teeth, gripping his wand, sweat trickling down his face. A vein popped in his forehead as the portal grew to the size of his palm.
“Wow,” Arielle whispered.
“It’s incredible, isn’t it? If he achieves it, he will be the first mage to create such a portal since the Great King Vaelor, two millennia ago.”
She nodded. That was truly incredible.
“However,” Selena said as she leaned in slowly, her eyes sparking with something that Arielle didn’t recognize. “One unsteady step, or shaky breath, or a single second of broken concentration, and he will get dragged in and be lost in the void forever.”
Arielle swallowed.
That was terrifying to think about.
“You’re not supposed to be on this floor, by the way. Did you know that?”
“I didn’t know.” Arielle cleared her throat. “Sorry.”
Selena smiled. “You can go, just don’t do it again.”
Arielle nodded and promptly walked away, although she threw her gaze back a few times in longing.
She really wanted to see if he managed to complete the spell.
It remained on her mind even as she communed with Professor Valeria, who gave Arielle a long lecture about not becoming overly reliant on vitality charms.
“They may not cause adverse effects to your health,” she said. “And they can even be beneficial in some instances, but you have to be careful with dependency.”
“How many would you say will be enough to cause dependency?”
Valeria frowned. “You don’t need any at all.”
“It’s not for me.”
Awareness dawned in the professor’s gaze. “Oh, it’s for Lyra.”
Arielle nodded. “She hasn’t agreed to it yet, but I was thinking of purchasing some for her.”
Valeria sighed. “I can’t say I haven’t thought about it. Before the first severance trials, I had her try one myself. I don’t typically do that for other students, but with Lyra, she has so much potential that I didn’t want to waste it. However, it wasn’t much help, and she claimed it gave her headaches even though I’ve never heard of charms doing such a thing. She might have a rare allergy.”
An allergy to charms. Arielle hadn’t heard of that either. She wondered if Elric would know anything about it.
“If she was going to try it again, I recommend no more than once a week, and for no longer than six months. That timeline will give you enough benefit without encouraging overreliance on the charms.”
“Okay.” Arielle took note of that.
“Have you talked to Professor Woden yet?”
She shook her head. She’d been busy, and Woden didn’t linger after class, always in a hurry to get to wherever it was he had to go.
“I’ll talk to him after my presentation next week,” she said.
“Good. I’ll let him know to expect you.”
After Arielle left, she got her business plan together.
Of course, she didn’t plan on telling anyone that she was the creator of the charms, only that the creator did not wish to be known. That gave her some degree of separation in case of legal issues, and it also obscured the fact that she could make charms. While it wasn’t a rare ability, the adjustments she’d made to the charm could render it high-tier, and that would draw too much attention to her.
There was something to be said for her drawing attention to herself anyway by merely selling them. Elric probably wouldn’t approve, but she had decided not to tell Elric, as he would try to stop her, and she did not want to be stopped. At least not now.
This was just a short-term venture anyway. She simply wanted to be able to afford books and tools to research all the things she wanted to research. Given the limit on her essences and the profit margin on each charm, she wouldn’t be making an egregious amount of money with it anyway. Only enough to sustain herself.
Arielle wanted to no longer be in debt to Elric. Her grandmother said debtors were just as bad as gamblers who were drunks, dullards, and devils.
Though her friendship with him seemed to be on smooth ground, there was a lingering fear that it would all go wrong soon, just like with Greta.
She braced herself for the day Elric realized how odd she was, and no longer wanted to be friends with her.
When that day came, he might ask for everything back, and she didn’t want to be stranded or worse, have her parents forced to buy expensive books for her.
She also wanted to buy Celie something nice for her birthday. It was coming up in just a few months, and Ari wanted to save for it.
She doubted her charm-making would even reach the attention of Winthrome if she only sold to other students and made them vow to be discreet about it. They would, of course, keep to their vow. How to Charm Kings spoke about the concept of ‘honor amongst thieves,’ which demonstrated that once one was benefiting from a secret, they would be more likely to keep it.
However, if it did reach his attention, and Arielle was forced to reveal herself, then both charms would be sent in for an analysis, which would show their difference, and Arielle would not suffer legal consequences.
Her plan was practically perfect. The only problem with it was that she hadn’t figured out a way to convince Lyra to try the charm, and she didn’t know what the other girl’s allergy was. Elric denied that there was even such a thing as a charm allergy.
Perhaps if Lyra saw that everyone else was doing it, she would be willing to give it a try.
Celie always said peer pressure was the single most persuasive force for a young teenage girl. And if there was someone who knew a thing or two about that, it would be Celie.

Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

On the other hand, Arielle could comb through How to Charm Kings again, as some information from it could help her. The book was truly heaven-sent, and with everything she’d learned from it, conversations had gotten easier. She now knew to soften potential criticism with a smile and to maintain distance to foster affection.
Most of all, she no longer found herself paralyzed with indecision when faced with talking to someone new. She only needed to answer the questions asked of her, and in place of that, she had a standard conversational script she could fall back on.
So overall, she was doing well. She had survived her first week without being caught, and she was blending in and making friends.
She even had people to eat meals with now, although she didn’t do it often, given how loud the boys were.
She knew that she still didn’t always respond to prompts the way she ought to, and sometimes she was worried that she didn’t feel things the way other people would feel them.
Most of the time, she still felt alien, like something on the outside of humanity looking in and studying its rituals.
But at least this way, with the help of her book, she could pretend that she was like everyone else.

---

The next afternoon, on her way to the dining hall, Selena was approached by Anne Earthbinder and two other third-year students whose names she’d never bothered to remember. Anne looked uneasy, as though the other two had told her something she didn’t like very much. Her heat signature also showed that she was anxious and more than a little angry.
What’s bothering her now?
“Selena!” Third Year #1 said, appearing no more than a blur of features to her. “So nice to run into you.”
Are they trying to pretend this was a coincidence when they clearly approached me?
Selena smiled regardless as she came to a stop in front of them.
But she let the smile slide off and focused on Anne’s sullen expression.
“Why the sour face?” she asked. “Did they make that terrible tart again?”
“No,” Third Year #1 said. “We were just telling her the awful news, that her cousin is apparently a genius.”
“Is that so?” It wasn’t like Selena hadn’t heard the rumors swirling around campus about Arielle Blacksoil. It had started with the first years gossiping about it, then spread to the second years, then the third, and finally it reached her ears.
Selena thought the news was probably exaggerated. The girl might be skilled, but there was nothing about her that gave off the impression that she was special.
She couldn’t be special, having grown up in a place like Fenway Basin, where they probably didn’t even know what a pensieve was.
This year’s Cohort 1 was just exceptionally untalented, which was likely what made Arielle stand out.
Selena had effectively dismissed the rumors from her head, though she paid attention now while Third Year #2 supplied details.
“I thought it was all talk at first,” she said. “But I was there for the duel against Fiodor Antigones. Her casting speed is at least at an adept tier, and she countered each spell almost before Antigones was done forming them. Not to mention, she broke Antigones’ [Light Web], without even blinking.”
Selena started. That particular rumor, she hadn’t heard. “She broke [Light Web]?”
“Yes. And guess what spell she used. [Air Slice].”
“[Air Slice]?” Selena narrowed her eyes. “Are you sure you heard right?”
“Positive. If I were hearing things, then so were about a dozen other people because we were all there when it happened and we all confirmed that she said [Air Slice].”
“No,” Selena shook her head. “Antigones must have failed the spell somehow. Or perhaps his wand malfunctioned. There’s no way [Air Slice] broke [Light Web].” The Antigones’ [Light Web] was said to be one of the toughest connective substances known to man. The Antigones were masters of Luxa, hailing from the Revelio Skytowers; their influence in their part of the world rivalled only the Lis. They had perfected several Light techniques, and as a second-born to the main branch, Fiodor Antigones would have been taught to refine those techniques since he was young.
[Air Slice] would not have broken it. Fiodor had to have messed up somewhere.
“Have you girls eaten?” Selena asked.
“No.”
“Come sit with me for today,” she said, and they basically vibrated with their excitement.
Selena was used to that reaction when she gave people the gift of her company. Awed eyes, excited smiles, effusive praise, and gratitude. That was the standard she’d come to expect.
But for whatever reason, the girl, Arielle, hadn’t done that. Though she’d bowed respectfully, her facial expression and her movements had been stiff and passive, not bright and ecstatic.
Earlier, Selena had thought it was simply that Arielle didn’t know enough about ascendant society, and once she knew who Selena was, she would turn into a sycophant just like the rest of them.
However, that hadn’t happened today either. And she would have thought it was just the girl’s natural disposition not to show her emotions easily, which would explain her strangely flat natural affect, but she’d displayed naked awe and amazement when she’d watched Telip of all people create the portal.
So it appeared she could show admiration.
Not for Selena. For Telip.
Ridiculous.
Of course, she wouldn’t deny the boy was skilled. Selena suspected he was more skilled than his stats showed and that he had [Hidden Abilities], intentionally keeping himself from levelling up. To what end she did not know, but she did know that as skilled as he was, he was still no match for her, as he fell to her lightning whip in every single combat class, and she was smarter than him and faster than him and kinder than him and more charming than him and a better caster than him and better at everything else!
Except for rune making.
A surge of heat rose, but she tempered it with a deep, even breath.
No need for her to get worked up about this. Arielle had just been impressed because she’d likely never seen a portal before, being from Fenway.
Selena had seen a few portals, so while Telip’s portal was unique, it did not move her.
She pushed it to the back of her mind as she began to eat, but the other two girls kept talking about it, as Anne argued back that they had to be mistaken, and the longer the conversation went on, the more Selena’s irritation grew.
She was about to order them to shut up when James, a fourth year, joined them and said, “I think I solved the mystery.”
“What mystery?”
“About Arielle Blacksoil and how she managed to beat Fiodor.” Excitement radiated in his voice because, above all, he liked to gossip. “A first-year told me she uses vitality charms.”
The other three women stared at him, and Anne frowned.
“Vitality charms?”
“Yes. Someone bought her a ton of them, so much that she’s selling them. A kid I know bought one yesterday, and he says it’s crazily effective. He actually felt his core tingling, and the effect lasts for more than a few hours, too.”
“I knew it!” Anne exclaimed, almost slamming a fist on the table in her exuberance. “I knew there was something off about her. And Elric has probably been buying them for her, too, that sneak. How else is a girl from Fenway supposed to catch up with the rest of her Cohort?”
Third Year #2 nodded. “Yes, I did wonder how a Mossborne was so good at magic. It seemed implausible.”
“And here’s the thing,” James continued. “The charms, they’re not Winthrome. She refused to say who they’re from, but they’re much better than Winthrome charms, and they’re cheaper too. Only two silver per charm.”
“That’s stupidly cheap,” Third Year #1 said.
“Because they’re probably counterfeit,” Anne snarled. “That bog blood. How dare she sell counterfeit charms in our esteemed institution?”
“Should we report it?” Third Year #2 asked.
“No,” Selena said. “If we report it now, all she’ll get is maybe a few demerit points and the charms confiscated.” Selena wanted more than that. She was annoyed and disappointed that the scam of Arielle Blacksoil was even worse than she’d imagined.
It would have been one thing if the girl were just overrated on her own merit. It was another thing for her to do this and conjure a reputation as some kind of prodigy, in the same vein as Selena, when she was faking it this entire time.
No wonder the girl never met her gaze. She was likely terrified that Selena would see right through her.
She despised people like that, who got by on stolen valor. Arielle Blacksoil was as counterfeit as those charms.
“Percival Strauss from the second year,” Selena said. “Isn’t he friends with the Wintthromes?”
“Yes,” James said. “Very good friends.”
“You should let them know a student on campus is using counterfeit charms. Have him tell the Winthromes. They’ll take care of it and get her kicked out.”
“Percival is hotheaded,” Anne said. “He might want to confront her himself and find out where she’s getting them.”
Selena hid her smile behind her chalice. “Even better.”

---

“This is strange.”
Rava’s comment had Arielle looking away from the sea. They were on the boat, on their way back from North Base after Ari was done ‘sweeping’ the manalings.
“What’s strange?” Arielle asked.
“There have been very few leakages this week after the craziness that happened two weeks ago,” she said. “And almost no manalings detected.”
Arielle swallowed and looked away.
She’d found a new place–a nook behind the shrub that Rava had been trimming terribly–where she could detect manalings easily.
She’d gone there twice already, late at night to fix the manalings around her.
She’d also been improving her awareness with each session so she could reach further and further to alert the manalings of her presence and direct them to her.
Hopefully, very soon, she’d be able to call them from her room.
Before she’d done it, she’d asked Rava how many manalings were a normal baseline, and Rava had responded: “None of it is normal.”
So Arielle had taken that to mean that it wouldn’t necessarily be abnormal if she’d gotten rid of all the manalings whenever she could.
Right?
“One of the channels had a leak last week that I forgot to fix,” Rava continued talking. “I thought when I finally got around to it, there would be so much spillage of manalings everywhere, but nothing. Very bizarre.”
“Perhaps the students are getting better with spells.”
“No,” she snorted. “This year’s first years might be the worst we’ve had in a while. Except you, of course.”
Arielle wasn’t sure if she should agree with that assertion. She would need to see the rest of the classes in action to know for sure.
“Well, as strange as it is, I don’t think we’ll have to sweep manalings for some time.” She stretched her arms above her head as the boat came to a stop on the campus shore. “Next week, do you want to help me run other errands? I can give you a hundred essences for it.”
She nodded. She needed all the essences she could get if she was going to produce charms. She’d already sold three of them, and Maus had told her all three students were eager for more. He also told her that the news was starting to spread and people were getting interested, so she might want to increase her price.
“It’s only two silver,” he’d said. “That’s really cheap. Winthrome charges two gold coins per charm, and yours are arguably better than his.”
“I don’t care what Winthrome charges. The supplies only cost me one gold piece, five silver, and three copper. Therefore, split between fifty, a single charm costs about three copper to produce. I’m already making a six hundred percent profit. Anything more than that will just be obscene.”
He had smiled and shrugged. “Okay. If you say so.”
As Rava and Arielle walked towards the main building, they heard screams.
They looked to the side to see first-year students running out of the greenhouse with wands out, panic streaked across their faces.
Ten snarling deskrunners were in hot pursuit.