Beyond?

“Aah... there is nothing better than taking a well deserved break and drinking coffee.” Clara Veit, director of the capital's educational facility for mages, stands up and walks over to the window. A quick hand gesture opens it to let fresh air into the room.

Upon taking an accidental look at the university's campus Clara freezes. Then the voice of the old woman explodes. “TRINA!!!”

The door to Clara's office bursts open and Trina, the director's secretary, storms into the room. “What happened? I never before heard you scream like that.”

Clara points at the scene on the plaza under her office's window. “Who is that? I am not a supporter of male rights, but that's going too far! Dragging another student across a public area like a pet is completely out of the question! If one of those news reporters films this scene the association for male rights will skin us alive! Why is no one interfering?”

Trina comes closer to take a look out of the window. On the plaza is a girl who is pulling a guy towards the self study classrooms. As a Siorda, Trina is the perfect secretary, knowing every student by face and name. “It's hard to tell at this distance. She is Sariel Gejene, those horns with the silver inlays are unique. And the guy looks like Nathan Shipwright. I'll go and apprehend them.” She turns to leave the office.

Clara raises a hand. “No, wait! Could she be the daughter of Stella Gejene?”

“Yes.”

The director furrows her forehead. “The father is Azir Zait?”

“Yes.”

Without hesitation Clara draws the curtain closed and heads back to her office table. “Let's pretend we didn't see it.”

“But what if it becomes public?” Trina asks astounded.

“Then we will deal with it. As my secretary, you have better things to do than hunting misbehaving students. Do you understand?” Clara pulls one of her folders closer and starts working again. “On another thought, that guy who was here a month ago... the one who caused severe injuries to eight students...”

“Zadkiel Gejene. That's her brother. His experiment failed and he had to throw it out of the window before it caused severe damage to school property. It was by pure chance that he had a prior disagreement with the eight students in question.” Trina answers sarcastically.

Clara grumbles. “Any other kids?”

“Three, if you count Zana too. She is adopted and-” But Trina doesn't get any further.

“The one who was bullied! Thank you, you can go.” Clara answers with a deadpan expression and Trina leaves the room, closing the door behind her.

After sitting there for a few minutes Clara starts massaging her temples. “First there was one... one generation later there are three... four... five... if they double... or triple... six generations? I need to find a successor.”

-A normal day in the director's office.

***Free City States of Nict, Capital***

***Azir***

“What's that, Uncle?” A childish voice asks from beside me and I stop my work to face the child.

“That's the new control circuit for the public transportation carts.” I answer, but the boy's eyes tell me that he understood nothing. “Why don't you go and play with your mother? Where's Ivy?”

“She said that she has to do something important with Daddy and then both of them disappeared into their bedroom.” The boy answers solemnly.

“Ah...” So Ivy and Jeremiah are making out. “So you thought it would be a good idea to run over to my house to search for entertainment?”

The boy nods guiltily. “It's always cool here, Uncle Azir! Can I play with the cats?”

“Sure, sure. You don't have to ask for something as trivial as that.” I wave towards the open window from where the small Jonathan entered my laboratory. Just don't interrupt my work.

“Yay! Thank you!” Jonathan turns and climbs outside to play with the cats.

I return to my work and scratch my head. Where was I? Ah, yes! The connection of the power sink. That's a delicate task, I have to be very careful.

Calling up the circuitry's subroutines I connect to it through the runes which I painted onto my left hand. Information starts scrolling through my field of vision.

“Power sink active... no errors... looks good.” I take the soldering iron and a piece of golden wire to finish the circuitry. I mumble a spell to enhance my vision and zoom in on the small interrupted connection between the main power lines. They are very close together which makes it a very delicate task. “Now don't touch any of the other connection-”

“Azir!” Stella's voice startles me and I twitch, shorting-out the main power line with the grounding of the power sink.

“Shit!” A spark of energy shakes my body and several small runes on the circuit go up in flames. The spasms send me to the ground and I lie there for several seconds, smoke rising from my body. Luckily I protected myself with a minor defence spell before I started my work.

Stella is right next to me, looking down on me without mercy. “I told you that you shouldn't work like that. Pay attention to the safety regulations. There is a reason why people use telekinesis for such tasks.” She pokes me with her tail. “One day you will die on me because of that. Putting a sign in front of your lab would also solve the problem.”

“It's not interesting to work like that. I am doing this for recreation.” I grab her tail and pull at it to get to my knees. “Why did you interrupt me?”

“Doing fiddly work is recreation? I'll never understand that logic.” She shakes her head and draws a rune-set into the air. “Heal!”

Healing energy starts flowing through me and the pain subsides.

Then she pulls me up. “What I wanted to talk about is if you know anything about Sariel's boyfriend?”

I freeze. “B...b... Boyfriend!?” My cute little angel is being defiled by a guy whom I didn't test first? “Where!? From where did you get that information?”

Stella raises an eyebrow. “So you didn't know. There are rumours all over the campus saying that she claimed a certain guy as her personal-”

“Claimed? We have to go and stop them.” I head towards the door when Stella stops me.

She grabs my left horn. “Ooooone moment! Don't overdo it. There are only rumours so far. It seems like our little angel overestimated her control over the female student body.”

“Let me! We have to protect her. She is far too young to do 'that'!” I pull, but Stella doesn't let go of me.

“Too young? She is older than we were when we first did it.” Stella purses her lips. “I think his name is Nathan Shipwright.”

I immediately access his information over the mana net and send it to Stella. My attention is pulled towards the number of requests on this file. “There is something wrong. Someone else accessed this information before me. Four months ago.”

“Hm. Hm. He seems to be a decent fellow. It's just a little sad that he doesn't belong to a big clan.” Stella mumbles. “Probably Sariel accessed his information before going for him.”

Following the path of the information I am led back to my own account, so I immediately change the password. There is only a small number of people who are close enough to me to hack into my personal connection. It would require direct access to my mansion's network. “Sariel... she has some explaining to do when she comes home!”

***Free City States of Nict, Capital***

***Nathan***

“S... Sariel. Could you back off a little.” I try to keep my cool, but the girl at my side comes even closer.

“How am I supposed to teach you when I can't sit at your side? Now try this one.” She smiles and winks at me while she points at another question.

“I thought that Zadkiel would tutor me, but instead you are the one who shows up.” My eyes wander to her chest, but I force them to the sheet of paper. Remember who she is! If her family finds out who my parents are it will be the end of everything! Oh why does she have to show interest in me! I shouldn't have said yes to Zadkiel in the first place and stayed away from the whole lot!

I did badly on my last exam, but Zadkiel was very generous and offered me additional lessons to make it up. Glad that I got another chance, I accepted, but the one who showed up to those lessons wasn't Zadkiel, but Sariel! It's the twelfth time now and it's starting to mess with my brain! Having a beauty like her making such obvious advances on me, which guy would be able to withstand that?

“You obviously have trouble concentrating. Why don't we take a break and talk about something else?” She smiles at me and tilts her head. “Do you have a hobby?”

“Well, I like creating magical circuits when I have some free time. Currently I am working on an amplifier. I am dreaming of creating a new unique magic.” I force myself to smile.

Sariel claps her hands together. “Such a coincidence! I am very good with those. You surely happen to know my father? I could introduce you to him. The two of you have similarities.”

I feel pearls of sweat appearing on my forehead. This conversation is going in a dangerous direction.

But Sariel doesn't let me change the topic and so our conversation unfolds, touching different fields of the arcane masteries. Somehow I find myself drawn into the conversation and whenever we seem to run out of material she starts another interesting topic!

The sun is setting above the horizon when I realize that we were talking for the entire day. “Ah... crap. I forgot the time.”

“Did you miss something important?” Sariel asks concernedly and I realize that I let down my guard completely. Her tail is wrung around us, pulling our hips and mid-sections together like a constrictor snake.

“No. Ahem... do you think... you could let go?” I point at her tail.

She chuckles while playing with a strand of her steel blue hair. Her iris is grey on the outside and turns to different colours on the inside, a trait of the emperor's bloodline.

I honestly don't get what she sees in me. I have plain black hair and while not looking bad, I don't have the face of a playboy either. I inherited my father's hawk nose and the black horns and hair are inherited from my mother. Am I not looking a little too plain for someone like Sariel?

Suddenly she hugs me from the side. “But I don't want to. Say? Are you free this evening? There is a new light sculpture movie! It's a blockbuster about the war and I don't have someone who would watch it with me.”

Ah, I like that kind of stuff! “Yes... No...” If she just didn't belong to that family! She is the perfect girl! “I don't think I have time.”

“But isn't tomorrow free? So you have something planned for tonight?” She pouts her lips, looking sadly at the sheet of paper in front of us, which makes me sad in turn.

“I think it can wait.” Did I really just say that?

She brightens up, making my heart jump. “Really? Then let's go! And afterwards I'll show you my cooking skills!” She stores my stuff away in my bag and gets to her feet, pulling me up with her.

Moments later I am being dragged out of the classroom like a puppet.

No wait. Being dragged like a puppet is no problem if it's being done by a girl like her, but did she just say that she'll show me her cooking skills?

Where does she want to cook? She can't possibly know that I am living alone. So that means that she wants to drag me to her home!

.