Chapter 1061: The public record
"Well," Marisse said, her voice polished enough to pass for cordiality, "if it isn’t you again."
Lucavion inclined his head with a precision that approached courtesy closely enough to mock it.
"Professor Marisse. Fancy meeting you in an Academy corridor."
Her smile tightened. "Magister Marisse."
"Of course." His expression suggested that the correction had already begun slipping from memory. "These distinctions remain difficult for a simple student."
The students lingering near the junction slowed by almost imperceptible degrees. Some pretended to rearrange the books beneath their arms, while others continued conversations that had lost both rhythm and attention. Marisse held enough authority to command interest on her own. Lucavion’s willingness to irritate that authority gave them a reason to remain.
Marisse adjusted the examination pages beneath her arm. "Your difficulty with proper address has become remarkably selective."
"I learn best through repetition."
"Then perhaps you will remember after receiving the same correction often enough."
Lucavion considered that with exaggerated seriousness. "A sound educational philosophy."
Elara stood half a step behind him, watching Marisse’s expression settle into something smoother. The initial hostility had already disappeared beneath professional composure, though her fingers remained firm around the pages she carried.
Marisse’s gaze passed briefly over Elara before returning to Lucavion.
"Did Magister Selenne find your terminology as inadequate as your written papers suggested?"
The question altered the space between them.
Lucavion’s smile remained in place, though the amusement withdrew from his eyes. Elara felt the discrepancy a moment later.
Marisse had emerged from another examination chamber in a separate wing, carrying the completed pages from the students she had supervised. Each Magister received the roster for their own session. The full arrangement of candidates, halls, and examiners remained with the registrar until the scores were submitted.
Lucavion had mentioned neither Hall C nor Selenne.
He tilted his head. "Interesting."
Marisse’s expression held.
"I had not mentioned who examined me."
The students lingering near the junction stopped pretending to leave.
A faint pause entered Marisse’s breathing before her smile regained its polished ease. "You are hardly the only source of information within the Academy."
"Apparently not."
Lucavion shifted his weight and glanced toward the examination pages beneath her arm. "I had assumed Magisters were occupied with their own candidates."
"An instructor should remain aware of notable students."
"Notable." He allowed the word to linger. "That sounds far kinder than your previous descriptions."
"Do not mistake attention for admiration."
"I rarely do."
Marisse noticed the audience as readily as he had. She turned her shoulders slightly, opening the exchange to the corridor rather than allowing it to resemble a private confrontation. The adjustment was graceful enough to transform scrutiny into professional concern.
"Faculty speak with one another," she said. "Hall assignments circulate when unusual candidates require specialized assessment. Your affinity remains unclassified, your practical results contradict your written work, and your wager has ensured that half the Academy considers your progress public entertainment."
The explanation arrived smoothly.
It was possible.
Hall C contained candidates whose records demanded adaptive questioning, and Selenne’s expertise made her a natural examiner for such a group. Marisse could have heard the assignment through another Magister, a registrar’s assistant, or an instructor discussing Lucavion’s irregular results.
Yet possibility did not account for the precision of her opening question.
She had known the examiner.
She had also anticipated that terminology would be the weakness Selenne exposed.
Lucavion’s expression suggested that he had reached the same conclusion.
"The wager is public," he said. "Magister Selenne’s questions were less ambitious."
Marisse’s eyes cooled. "You imagine a mystery because you enjoy believing people spend more time thinking about you than they do."
"A painful possibility."
"One of several you should begin considering."
Lucavion looked toward Elara as though seeking support. "You see how harshly I am treated?"
"You cultivate the conditions yourself," Elara replied.
Marisse’s smile gained the faintest hint of satisfaction. "Your companion possesses better judgment."
"She has been trying to conceal it."
Elara ignored him.
Marisse adjusted the folio beneath her arm. "Your difficulties were predictable. The written assessments already showed inconsistent terminology, and Selenne is known to test whether practical understanding survives when formal language is removed. I required no secret report to imagine how the examination might proceed."
Her recovery was stronger now.
She had reframed knowledge as inference: Lucavion’s written weakness was visible to relevant faculty, Selenne’s examination methods were professionally known, and the combination allowed Marisse to predict the outcome.
Any demand for names or records would make Lucavion appear defensive before the gathered students. Accepting the explanation allowed the conversation to continue without surrendering his suspicion.
"Professional inference, then," he said.
His smile softened as though the answer had satisfied him.
Elara had already learned that Lucavion’s acceptance rarely meant belief.
Marisse seemed to understand that as well. Her gaze remained fixed upon him, and the cordiality around her mouth carried the rigid quality of a door held shut from the other side.
"Academic inference," she said, "is hardly a vice."
"Depending on what one consults before making it."
A silence opened beneath the words.
One of the students nearby adjusted his satchel and finally continued down the corridor. The others followed in pairs, their pace slow enough to preserve whatever fragments of the confrontation still reached them.
Marisse waited until the nearest group had moved beyond easy hearing.
"You proposed the wager," she said. "You demanded witnesses, invited public attention, and attached consequences to your performance. You can hardly object when people observe whether you are capable of supporting your own confidence."
"Object?" Lucavion’s brows rose. "I am touched by the concern."
"You should be concerned with the outcome."
"I will be when the outcome arrives."
"And what did Selenne conclude?"
Lucavion gave a small shrug. "That education remains necessary."
The response offered her nothing.
Marisse studied him, perhaps searching for embarrassment, anger, or some indication that the examination had exposed a weakness worth using. Lucavion stood beneath her scrutiny with one hand in his pocket and the other resting loosely at his side.
Elara remembered how he had appeared upon the dais.
He had offered that same shrug whenever his experience contradicted Selenne’s doctrine. He treated the difference as an inconvenience of translation rather than an injury to his pride.
Marisse’s gaze shifted toward Elara. "And yours?"
"It went well, Magister."
"I see."
The brief answer carried a note of assessment. Marisse’s attention moved between them, measuring the fact that they had left the examination wing together and now stood side by side. Whatever conclusion she reached remained concealed behind the professional calm she wore for the corridor.
Lucavion stepped slightly forward, reclaiming the center of the exchange.
"I will make certain you hear the result when it becomes relevant."
"You assume I require the courtesy."
"You asked."
Marisse’s lips pressed together before easing into another controlled smile. "Then consider the question satisfied."
"Entirely."
The word emerged too smoothly.
Elara saw Marisse recognize the disbelief inside it.
For a moment, neither of them moved. Lucavion’s mockery had receded into something quieter, while Marisse’s pleasant expression held around a calculation she had chosen to postpone. Their wager gave each of them permission to watch the other publicly. The oral examination had introduced a second reason, one Marisse preferred to leave unnamed.
Lucavion inclined his head.
This time, the gesture contained enough genuine respect to make its restraint more pointed than mockery.
"Magister."
He stepped past her.
Elara followed after a brief acknowledgment of her own. As she crossed beside Marisse, she felt the woman’s attention remain upon Lucavion’s back, steady and cold beneath the noise of the corridor.
They walked without speaking until the junction disappeared behind an arch.
Lucavion kept his hands inside his pockets. His pace remained relaxed, yet Elara noticed that he chose the next turn only after glancing at the reflection in a darkened window. The polished glass showed the empty corridor behind them.
"She knew," Elara said.
"Apparently everyone knows everything around here."
"The wager explains her interest."
"Very generously."
"It does not explain how she knew Selenne examined you."
Lucavion’s mouth curved. "You noticed."
"She recovered quickly."
"She has practice."
He offered no further judgment, though his tone placed Marisse’s explanation among the answers he intended to verify rather than accept. Elara felt no need to press him. For once, they had reached the same conclusion through the same evidence.
Marisse’s explanation remained possible. Faculty communicated, and Lucavion’s academic weakness may have been visible in earlier records.
Neither of them believed coincidence alone had produced such a precise question.
The corridor narrowed as they entered an older section of the Academy. The stone here carried darker veins, and the mana-lamps had been set inside shallow alcoves where their light gathered against carved arches. Their footsteps settled into an alternating rhythm.
Elara’s attention returned to Lucavion’s examination.
The memories rose differently now that she had witnessed Marisse’s interest in its outcome.
He had failed to recognize the Ley Conduction Principle by name. When Selenne replaced terminology with a practical description, he explained that ambient mana followed the path of least resistance unless a caster forced it elsewhere. He understood the result while the formal language stood beyond his reach.
The same pattern had appeared with auxiliary chants.
Lucavion knew that a chant allowed one portion of a spell to continue while the caster directed attention elsewhere. When Selenne asked for the mechanism, his fingers closed around an absent quill, and whatever answer approached him dissolved before it reached his voice.
He identified the purpose.
He had lost the path toward the explanation.
During the structural problem, he had located the overloaded junction before the students trained in runic theory completed their analysis. He could neither name the governing rune nor cite the principle behind his conclusion.
He had simply said that the junction was where the structure would hurt.
At first, Elara had treated the inconsistency as another of Lucavion’s cultivated absurdities. He enjoyed unsettling formal rooms, and an examination gave him ample opportunity to turn ignorance into spectacle.
Yet his answers had resisted that interpretation.
He had supplied practical functions too accurately for complete ignorance. His failures arrived at precise boundaries: terminology, formal mechanism, and memories that seemed to approach through physical habits before retreating again.
It was like listening to someone who understood the meaning of a language but had forgotten its words.
Elara looked toward him.
Lucavion walked with his gaze ahead, apparently occupied by the fading confrontation with Marisse. He showed little concern over his score and none over the students who had laughed when he reduced established concepts to battlefield comparisons.
The indifference irritated her because it refused to fit the boy she remembered.
That boy had tried too hard.
He had moved through Valoria’s halls with books held against his chest, ink staining his fingers, and the quiet tension of someone who expected every mistake to confirm a judgment already made about him. Elara had never shared his lessons, but she had seen the evidence of them often enough.
The man beside her remembered almost none of it.
Then there was his final answer.
’By needing to.’
Elara had first classified it as theatrical. The words possessed the shape of a statement designed to sound deeper than it explained, and Lucavion had a habit of dressing difficult truths in memorable language.
That classification became harder to maintain when she remembered his body.
His fingers had closed against his palm. His shoulders shifted as if an older posture had briefly replaced the one he wore through the Academy. The answer escaped before humour could intercept it, and the stillness afterward carried the unmistakable strain of someone who had revealed more than intended.
He covered it with arrogance only after noticing the room’s attention.
The line had probably been true.
Elara disliked that conclusion.
Sincerity complicated anger. It introduced causes where she preferred intent, wounds where she preferred guilt, and a history that refused to remain arranged according to the version she had carried for years.
Lucavion glanced toward her. "You are doing it again."
"Doing what?"
"Thinking loudly."
"That remains one of your stranger claims."
"And one of my more accurate ones."
Elara studied him for another step.
The question had followed her since she touched his shoulder in the emptying hall. Marisse’s interruption had delayed it, while the confrontation had given the question sharper edges.
She stopped walking.
Lucavion continued for half a pace before turning toward her.
"During the examination," Elara said, "what happened to you?"
—————A/N————
Chapters 902-903 were rewritten. Previously, I had assigned the title "Magister Primus" to Selenne as the head of the Magic Block, but looking at her standing, it contradicts her lineage and the academy’s current disposition. Her title is changed to a normal "Magister," and she is not the head of the Magic Block, as in canon. Please treat it as such.