By the time they reached the narrower backstreets behind the fruit stalls, the crowd had thinned and the noise had dulled into the background. The aetheric arrow above the contraption pointed squarely westward, toward a stretch of near-deserted lane where the paving stones gave way to packed dirt, and most of the shops had long since shuttered their doors (even though it was only the sixth bell).

Fabrisse adjusted the dial a fraction. The calibration drifted when he walked too fast.

Severa Montreal was still muttering to herself about the cat, occasionally glancing toward shadows like she expected divine vengeance to emerge. He hadn't understood why she was so invested in a fruit thief. Her tone, however, suggested theological stakes.

The arrow trembled faster. They were getting close.

He stopped to listen for ambient aether shift, but of course, he wasn't well-versed enough to hear anything. If he had that sort of skill, he wouldn't have been swept off his feet by the likes of Cuman.

"Why did you stop?" she asked immediately.

He didn't answer at once. It was empty, too empty; the kind of emptiness that made the sound of his own thoughts too loud.

"Are you afraid?" She continued.

"Maybe," he said. "This is an empty field."

She gave an automatic sort of confidence in reply, "Should anything happen, I will protect you." He didn't comment. It seemed unwise to point out that she hadn't cast a single spell all afternoon, though it would have made their lives that much easier. Then she continued, pointing at the detector still chirping away in his hand. "Why did you even have that thing in the first place? You don't look like the sort of person who wakes up and thinks, 'Today I shall hunt cats.'"

He hesitated. It would have been easy to make something up—to say he'd borrowed it for class or was testing a new calibration method—but the lie snagged on itself before it could form. There was no logical reason to lie. Lying introduced variables, inconsistencies, and follow-up questions. It was simpler, cleaner, just to tell the truth.

Her eyebrows raised. "Then why pretend you didn't want to find it before?"

He didn't have a convenient language for that. Telling her outright that he preferred being alone would probably madden her. She'd take it as an insult, or worse, a challenge. But he couldn't think of a convincing excuse either. Every possible reason sounded like a lie, and lying was, again, too complicated. "Finding it alone is . . . less pressure." He tapped his satchel, half to change the subject. She peered in, saw rocks, and looked personally offended by their existence.

"Less pressure how?" she asked. "You think my assistance somehow increases your difficulty?"

Well, yeah. At least when I'm alone, nobody tells me how I should've done things better every minute.

Before he could answer, the detector clicked rapidly again—westward.

The cat-thing appeared from behind a crumbling wall, the pear still in its mouth. It looked very smug.

"Oh, you," Severa hissed.

Then it ran off, through a gap too narrow for a person to pass.

"After it!" she barked.

He didn't move. "I can't possibly pass that."

"Why?" She turned sharply toward him. "Do you not want to catch that cat?"

"Unless I know flight magic—which I don't—I can't." He hesitated. "You know flight magic. Can you go after it?"

That earned him silence. Then an explosion of offended dignity.

She straightened, smoothing the front of her cloak with a motion that practically radiated offended dignity. "Flying," she said crisply, "is beneath me. I find it gauche. Flapping about in public like some bird with delusions of grandeur."

He stared at her. That didn't make sense. Severa Montreal had never in her life passed up an opportunity to demonstrate her unmatched excellence at thaumaturgy—preferably with witnesses. She could have conjured an aetheric tether, or an air-rope, or any number of elegant, overengineered solutions to collar the cat-thing from across the street. Yet she stood there, arms crossed, glowering at the gap like it had personally insulted her lineage.

"So you insist we walk through the gap?" Fabrisse asked.

"The gap isn't even that narrow." She gestured imperiously toward the incline. "We shall overcome the obstacle together, at your level. Think of it as . . . character training. It builds fortitude, humility, all those noble things."

He studied her face. The certainty didn't match her hands. They fidgeted once before she tucked them neatly behind her back.

He tilted his head, clearly trying to decide whether she was serious. "You want to climb it."

"I intend to climb it," she corrected. "A Magus of Montreal does not retreat before mere geometry."

Silence ensued. Somewhere ahead, the detector clicked again.

Finally, Fabrisse sighed. "All right," he said.

She adjusted her gloves, gave him a look of immense authority as she walked over to the wall, and declared, "Would you kindly hold my cloak?"

"Your cloak?"

"Yes, so it doesn't tear or soil itself in the mud while I—" she gestured vaguely upward, "—ascend."

Fabrisse accepted it gingerly, as though she'd just handed him a live specimen.

The wall was twice as high as her and covered in crumbling plaster, which made it look reasonably challenging. The first few holds came easily; she pressed her boot into a crack, pulled, shifted her weight, and hauled herself up with a short breath.

He hadn't expected much. Severa Montreal, for all her exacting composure, seemed like someone who would tiptoe around physical obstacles, not vault them with the ease of someone who'd done it countless times. Yet, within moments, she was scaling the wall like it were little more than a decorative feature. Her boots found cracks instinctively, her hands gripped the crumbling plaster without hesitation, and her body moved with an effortless rhythm that made the whole ascent look simple.

Fabrisse stood frozen, staring. Every motion she made reminded him of the contrast between her polished elegance and raw capability. She could have climbed this wall in half the time it would take him to measure a proper lever for lifting himself. The realization sank in, and he felt the faintest sting of self-consciousness. His own arms and legs were nothing compared to her coordination.

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A spark of amber seeped out of his fingertips again, and he dug them inside his satchel until the shame subsided.

By the time she reached the top, she was panting but triumphant. Her hair had come loose, dust streaked her sleeves, and her pulse thrummed in her ears—but she looked down with all the poise of a queen surveying her kingdom as she smoothed her hair back into place, fingers deftly tucking each braid until it was once again immaculate.

"Now you," she called down.

Fabrisse looked at the wall, then at his hands, then at the wall again. "No."

She frowned. "What do you mean no?"

"I mean it's not—" He gestured. "—climbable. For me."

"You would've learned how to climb," she said crisply, "had you ever bothered to attend the Air Thaumaturgy practicals. Basic elevation control! You could have mastered it in the time it takes to over-polish a rock."

Her tone had that familiar edge again—too exact, too bright, like she was lecturing an audience instead of speaking to a person. Every word seemed to arrive with ornamental precision, the verbal equivalent of a chandelier. It grated at him in all the wrong ways.

If she can lecture me on magic then surely she can spare some of that magic for me, right?

He stared up at her for a long moment, unblinking. "Can you lift me up?"

She scrunched her nose. "Excuse me?"

". . . You are the best Air Thaumaturgy student in the class."

Her scrunched nose softened slightly, the edges of her lips twitching as if on the verge of a small, private smile.

"I could," she began slowly, "but that would be . . . indulgent. You see, if I were to lift you, you would learn nothing of perseverance or resolve. Of the moral imperative to surmount adversity by your own—"

"So you can't do it?"

The sharp, imperious precision in her voice faltered ever so slightly as she coughed into her hand. "I can. I can, you see. I simply choose not to. It is pedagogically unsound to hand out free elevation to every apprentice who can't find a foothold. How will you ever grow if you expect the universe to hand you a ladder?"

"I wasn't asking for a ladder," he said mildly. "Just . . . less gravity."

"Same principle," she declared, perhaps a bit too fast.

There was definitely something wrong with Severa today. He just didn't know what.

A silence followed. The cat-thing mewed somewhere in the distance, taunting them both.

Fabrisse pointed vaguely at the wall. "So . . . do I just stand here or . . ."

Severa let out a long and dramatic sigh. "No, no, of course not, we shall find you a way through. Together. Non-aetherically." She said the last word like it was a fine vintage.

She scanned the alley of rubble and dust, and found a half-broken cart leaning against the wall. Her eyes lit up. "Ah. There."

"What?"

"We build you a path using simple mechanical advantage," she said with decisive grandeur. "Leverage."

She then jumped from the wall. He watched as she marched over to the cart and began pulling it toward the wall. It screeched against the dirt, not moving an inch.

She pulled again. Nothing. Her boots slipped.

Fabrisse offered unhelpfully. "You're pulling it the wrong way."

"I am testing its resistance," she said through her teeth, giving another yank. The wheel came off and rolled three feet before flopping on its side.

There was a long pause.

"I think," Kestovar offered, "you just broke your leverage."

She cleared her throat once more. "That was intentional. This problem simply requires a more hands-on approach." She pushed the broken cart aside and dragged two of the sturdier crates closer to the wall, grunting as one corner scraped her boot. Dust puffed up in a miserable cloud. The stack wasn't elegant, but if she wedged the bottom one tight against the plaster, it might hold long enough for a person to climb. She pressed a gloved palm against the top edge to test the balance. Wobbly, but sufficient.

Then she started climbing up, intending to put a smaller crate atop the bigger ones.

"Would you kindly stabilize this," she growled at him as she placed the small crate where it belonged.

He reached out and held the bottom crate while looking up at her, expressionless. "You're going to fall."

"I don't fall," she said. "I merely descend with urgency." Her boot slipped on the top plank, and she immediately descended with urgency.

She turned as if practicing a landing, and then gravity finished the sequence. Instinct took over before thought did: he stepped forward, one arm under her back, the other braced as if unsure where to place it but committed anyway. His fingers splayed over anything solid enough to give him purchase. One hand shot under the curve of her back, the other hovered, finding the soft space beneath her legs just in time.

[Random Event Triggered—Caught a Falling Girl for the First Time: +1 DEX]

She was lighter than he expected. His knees bent a fraction to take the weight; he leaned forward to keep from toppling.

They froze like that for a beat that lasted too long. Her breath was a startled quickness against his chest. The sunlight was low and warm on the side of her face, and he was acutely aware of how close they physically were. He could smell something unexpectedly domestic on her—warm, sweet, almost like bruised pears falling from a bag before being stolen by a passing cat. It was disarming in a way that had nothing to do with propriety and everything to do with simple, inexplicable human presence.

Her eyes were fixed on him, unblinking, wide, almost vulnerably so, and it was the sort of look that would have made him stumble if he'd met it fully. Instead, he caught just enough of it to register the fleeting openness, one that passed as swiftly as it had appeared.

"Drop me." Her command was immediate.

He let her go. She landed on her feet, adjusted her cloak with the shaky composure of someone erasing evidence, and stepped back as if reclaiming a stage.

The moment broke cleanly; she resumed authority as though nothing had happened.

"Clearly," she said, "your hands are deft enough. Why don't you scale the crates instead of letting me do all the work?"

She was right. Why did he make her do the work? If they were going to not use any aether, theoretically he was more suitable for the job.

Fabrisse crouched, studying the crate stack with quiet deliberation as he tested the edge with his boots. "You could provide better stabilization than me with your Aerolift Minor spell."

She bristled behind him and murmured something about focus. He couldn't quite catch her words.

He started up.

The crates creaked; dust leaked from old joints and fell against his sleeves. He did not look at her. Looking down would produce a vertigo that felt like a judgment; looking up would be admitting pride. So he kept his gaze on the next hold, measured, methodical.

Her hands pressed on the lower crates to steady them when they threatened to shift. She muttered technical corrections—too loud to be a real teaching voice, too sharp to be anything but critique—and he noted each one like data. Her palms were steady. Her timing for shifting the support was right. He found himself relying on the promptness of her adjustments more than he wanted to admit.

Near the top the structure protested; a small, anxious creak sounded from where two planks met. He braced with both feet, shoved one arm over the ledge, then hauled the rest of himself up in a single motion. Dust fell into his hair. For a moment he dangled on the lip, breath burning a little, then flattened himself against the wall and drew a slow, satisfied inhale. He rubbed grit from his palms and looked down at her.

For one treacherous second, it seemed as though she almost smiled.

Then a familiar sound split the air—clickclickclickclick—as the detector on his wrist went wild.

They both turned just in time to see the cat-thing darting out from behind the wall they had just conquered, tail flicking with insolent grace as it bolted in the opposite direction down the street.

The pear was still in its mouth.

"You!" She hurried after it, but it had all but vanished from her vision. She huffed.

They stood there for a long moment in mutual, quiet disbelief. The crates wobbled behind her like a monument to wasted effort. They had spent five minutes assembling it, just for the cat-thing to barge out the gap and insult her like that.

Severa Montreal really should've used her aether, he thought.

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