Auther was there walking in this weirdly equestrian lab, following the back steadied Neon Gold, completely unaware of the troubles his soon-to-be tutor was going through, he curiously looked around the lab looking for a familiar face, but always returned to Neon's back in utter disappointment at failing to find even the faintest hint of her presence.
Stunned at Neon's unexpected turn, his gaze returned quickly. Although Neon was taller than him, the difference was not much, with him at 180cm and Neon at 183cm. As insignificant as these details were, he had never met a person who was nearly as close as he was to being a beauty; that inward competition nearly made his skin crawl.
"Is there a reason perhaps that you seem so absent-minded, your majesty?" Neon suddenly stopped as he reached a storage room filled with hundreds, maybe thousands, of jars containing fluids, dry herbs, mushy sand, and coloured sand.
"I was just awestruck by the workmanship that goes on here; you must be an excellent leader," Auther said, smiling perfunctorily. Neon felt it, as hard as it was to notice, he did. His jaws clenched, highlighting his jaws further his purple eyes lighting up with something close to anger, but he calmed down.
"Do not jest, I am flattered by your praise, utterly so... anyway, here is the storage room where we keep most of the ingredients carefully controlled by magic to slow down rotting and the likes..."
"How?"
Neon took a pause, looking at this young man, maybe just four years younger than he, and also looking at the question posed to him, looking at the grand room around them, but stayed utterly dumbfounded.
"Let me bring the manager, I seem to be inadequate to answer this, sorry your greatness," Neon said, walking away to some unassuming direction. Auther sensing an opportunity took it by its horns, walking off to the other direction, interested in a nearly melted workstation, nearly rotten but still unvacated, remnants of some unfinished work from just hours ago.
"Why isn't this replaced, and more importantly, who doesn't love themselves to this extent?" He touched the corroded spot, feeling the extent of corrosion, when something caught his eye: a half-corroded hair strand pink in color, nearly straight by nature.
"This looks like Lana's isn't it?"
"No, it's Lala's." Neon suddenly appeared behind him, forcing Auther to hide his hair behind his back, stumbling back and nearly causing Lana's station to fall off its legs,
What startled him was not Neon's presence but the lack of his approach.
"How did he get behind me so easily? I have not heard any of his steps, not a single one," he silently thought.
"It seems you are an acquaintance of that incompetent fool, but she is sadly in charge of the storage room, so she can't really explain it to you."
"No, I just happened to hire her to make something a few weeks ago, I had to cram her name..."
"I doubt that thing that she made was of any significant value. If you ever need a new one, I'll make an exception for you; begrudgingly, I'll make it." Neon said with a look of arrogance in his eyes.
"I will, but for now, it is doing excellently, and I think she is very talented in what she does."
"A frog at the bottom of the well, I see, from an outsider's perspective, it may seem that an alchemist is a miracle worker, any type but not all miracles are born equal... Your majesty, I'll see you later, but for now I have more pressing matters to attend to."
Auther soon found himself outside the door, escorted outside by a stranger, wondering what the hell just happened. Neon scared him in a way he did not think possible, while Viola used brute power and violence, Neon was just... he did not know how to describe it, maybe off.
While he was making his way back to his room, unaware of what was happening just a few rooms from his, Lana was soaked in cold water, trembling like a leaf in a storm, fingers blue from being denied blood.
"I told you I'm just a new tutor, I did not do anything to the boy."
"Really, cause I don't believe you."
"You've been doing this for nearly an hour, and I've only given you one answer. Why can't you just believe me?"
"You know, I heard that when that boy was twelve, he denied every scholar in the country an opportunity to teach him. Why would he go for you?"
"Do you even know who I am? I built the mana lamp. I built the I forgot you wouldn't know about the same thing that saved that boy's life."
"How the hell did you know about that?"
"Who else do you think could beat up the prince, he's the damn prince do you know the level of arrogance needed to beat him up, do you know for how long people have been telling me how great he was going to be, how delusional people get when they talk about him, how much they lie to themselves that he is not even human, only detached idiots could treat him like shit the way you do."
"Who are you calling a detached idiot?"
Viola's rapier was now on her chest, ready to punch a hole right through her heart, this time a look not of rage, not of disgust, not of righteous indignation, but of genuine confusion.
"Am I really detached from reality? Why am I interrogating a random civilian just for knowing a guy I almost killed, fuck, how stupid have I become?" She asked, removing her blade just after her blade tip penetrated Lana's delicate skin.
"Get out! right now, tell that boy outside to stop eavesdropping on my quarters." Viola violently ordered tearing Lana's constraints with her rapier, Lana was so scared she didn't have enough clarity to follow he rushed instructions.
Viola didn't have enough patience to repeat and simply took her by the hair and, in the most brutish way, threw her outside the door, briefly glaring at Auther before slamming the door shut.
Lana stood there soaked, trembling, hair plastered to her face, the small cut on her chest slowly seeping blood through her torn clothes.
Auther looked at her for a moment.
Oddly… it didn't stir much in him.
He had already seen her at her worst — face half-melted by acid, eyes wide with pain and humiliation. He himself had been decapitated, had his hands crushed, had woken up in a cosmic void talking to a primordial being. Compared to all of that, this was almost… trivial.
A wet, shivering girl was something he could handle.
"You look rough, guess now you know why I was bloodied."
"Yep, now I know. Can I cancel the lesson? I'll come over tomorrow right now. I'm a mess."
"How about you come to my room, and I care for you as you did me?"
"No, thank you. I do not plan to sleep with a man through coercion."
"I have never coerced you before, have I? You have no reason to refuse, do you?"
She didn't know how to respond to the casual flirting. He was technically right; he had never had his way with her, she knew she had to refuse, but how?