Chapter Text
There are very few places left in this world for self-inflicted failures to exist.
In the past, there used to be all sorts of jobs for these types of people. People with no particular skills or aim in life. Cup-bearers, soothsayers, poison tasters. Sophie figured that in another lifetime, she would have made a halfway-decent sibyl. But she had no desire to touch snuff, and there were no openings for female prophetesses anymore. Hence, it only made sense that she should go to the last existing place where it was socially acceptable to be a non-contributing member of society. That place being of course, the Royal University of Ingary.
Having no employment or marriage prospects, and being approximately twenty-five years of age, she was forced to enroll in a postgraduate degree program to obtain something called a "Magister Scientiae."
This might have been a great accomplishment of hers. But her youngest sister Martha was already in school to become a solicitor, which made everything considerably less impressive.
"You're so smart, Sophie," Martha would always say, as if to cheer her up. "Becoming a Master of Alchemy is so exciting! We're all rooting for you."
But you are twenty years old and obtaining your juris doctor, Sophie wanted to argue, And you didn't even need to do a Magister to get there. It's not fair!
Lettie, her other younger sister, was not any better. "Alchemy is a very interesting field," she would say. "You should be proud of yourself for getting accepted to the program. Not everyone gets there, you know."
Sophie made a face. Lettie had already graduated with honors and was about to start physician school next year. Of course she would say things like that, when she had absolutely nothing to feel insecure about it. Beauty, brains or brawn, Lettie had it all.
Sometimes Sophie wondered how it could be possible for them to be related. It seemed to her that there was just not enough brilliance in this family to go around. Or perhaps there was, and it had simply skipped over her the way red hair tends to skip a few generations ("I think your hair really is quite lovely, Sophie darling, you should stop trying to bleach it. I think you might have a lye allergy").
Well, allergy or not, Sophie was determined to make the most out of this remaining couple of semesters. It has been said that the best learning happens in the classroom itself. This meant she would be taking her attendance most seriously. She frowned and narrowed her eyes at the paper in front of her, clenching the quill in her hand so hard that bits of fluff were starting to fall out of the tip.
In the background, she could hear the sound of the door opening as someone made to enter the auditorium. A tall fair-haired man with glassy eyes the color of moonstones walked in. He was wearing a gorgeous silk coat the color of the night sky, with sleeves longer than any woman's sash. A faintly sweet smell of nemophilas also wafted around him like a miasma. The fragrance was just as blue and merry as each of the twinkling jewels in his eyes, but it mostly made Sophie's water.
The blonde man stopped to speak to a group of baccalaureate students, who all giggled and made a big deal of clearing a pathway for him and his stupid golden hair. Sophie kept focusing on writing down her notes without even glancing up. She had much more important things to do. Much more important than looking over at this glassy-eyed man, who surely was just there to distract everyone and waste her time.
The moonstone-eyed man walked over to the seat next to hers and cleared his throat. "Hello," he said in a voice that was practically dripping with charm. "Could I sit here?"
Sophie turned and looked up, although she did not make eye contact with him. "No," she said. "That seat is reserved for my friend."
She had no friends, but he did not need to know that.
"Ah, very well," he said politely, not even showing any disappointment. "Would you mind if I borrowed it in the meanwhile?"
The auditorium was nearly completely empty. This particular class had notoriously low attendance, which was furthermore exacerbated by the rise of cheap black market magic mirrors and crystal balls. Everyone else would rather listen to the lectures through the glow of a fake screen instead of directly from the professor's mouth. Even more students were miffed by the professor's insistence on traditional methods of note-taking. Sophie looked around her with a faint expression of annoyance. "You can do whatever you wish," she replied in what she believed to be a standoffish tone.
"Thank you," the moon-eyed man said, smiling in such a false way that she could not help but grit her teeth. He sat down and began to rifle through his coat pockets. She watched as he took out a quill, various long rumpled scrolls of parchment, cigars, a small box of candies, and seemingly everything but an inkpot.
Sophie found herself growing quite irritated. He better not be hoping to leech off of my inkpot, she thought crossly. Everyone who did that ended up spilling it all over the table or leaving her nothing to write with.
"How are you going to write with no ink?" she asked.
The man looked up at her, and for a second she thought he might be surprised that she had addressed him. But he just smiled and waved the quill triumphantly. "Inkless," he said, as if this meant something to her.
Inkless? Well, that's new. Some people just do anything with their magic, I suppose.
The door opened again. This time, another man entered the room, although this one was dark-haired and not so tall. A few girls tittered excitedly as they saw him, for he was quite pretty in his own way. He was a bit younger though, probably no older than Lettie. Sophie paid no attention to him either, until he walked over and sat behind her. Then, much to her surprise, he leaned forwards and whispered something quietly into her ear.
"Sophie," the curly-haired man said. "I need a moment of your time."
Well! She sure was popular today. Sophie turned to tell the young man to get lost, until she noticed that he was wearing a brooch that Lettie was particularly fond of on his chest. "I'll say," she said, eyeing him warily. She made to stand up and follow him but had to stop. "Do you mind?" she asked the blonde man, who was sort of standing in her way of the exit.
The blonde man smiled at her. "Please, don't mind me," he said coolly, pushing his chair further in. "Take as long as you need."
Sophie wanted to retort that she was going to do that anyway, but she didn't really know this person, so she just nodded and moved out of the way. She followed the dark-haired man out of the auditorium and into the hallway, where he beckoned her towards one of the benches. As they sat down, he started to fiddle with his collar.
"Just so you know, I'm actually Lettie," the black-haired boy said.
Sophie almost jumped. "What?" she said.
The boy frowned, playing with the enamel brooch so that the beveled edge shone in the faint light. "Please don't faint," he said. "It would be awfully inconvenient to deal with if you had a heart attack right now."
"I'll scream!" Sophie said. "What on earth are you doing here? You should be teaching classes back at the School of Anatomy and Physiology!"
"I am, I am," Boy-Lettie winced. "Only, something awful has happened and I've decided I need to keep an eye on you. It's best if I go undercover like this, so nobody will recognize me."
"What?" Sophie looked at him, and in that moment she could see that it was truly Lettie. He had the same single-lidded eye shape as Martha and prominent dark brows, although his eyes were brown instead of blue now. "Why are you doing this?"
"Because," Lettie spat, "There is a serial killer loose in the university. And you need a man to protect you."
"What?"
Sophie felt more shaken up than when her professor, notorious for giving back exam papers in order of lowest-to-highest grades, had announced her name first.
"We think there is someone going around killing and dismembering people," Lettie hissed.
Sophie shook her head. "Lettie, is this a joke?"
She looked over at the boy, trying to discern any signs of mischief from his expression. But Lettie's face was stone cold serious. Sophie started to feel a pit of dread opening up in her stomach.
"I wouldn't have gone out of my way to disguise myself like this if it was," Lettie said.
"But-"
Surely if there was something this dangerous happening, the dean would have said something!
"The dean won't say it, he's too busy pandering to the school's sponsors," Lettie grunted. "But I can tell you how we know about the killer. I saw it with my own eyes. There were cadaver remains discovered behind the School of Anatomy," Lettie whispered. "It was so gruesome! The bodies had been hacked to pieces, poor things, nearly unrecognizable."
"You saw what?" Her heart was starting to flutter uncontrollably. Sophie brought her hand to her chest and panted, feeling even more concerned than before.
"It was all women's bodies," Lettie said. "Dead women. And when we checked them for their organs and viscera, we found that none of them had a heart! Can you imagine? Isn't that so gruesome?"
"I..." Everything felt quite surreal. Sophie wondered if she was going to faint.
"You need to get out of this place, now."
"I can't!" Sophie exclaimed, distressed. "I have a midterm this week," she said weakly. "I can't leave campus right now. My future is depending on this. If I don't raise my grades by the end of this year, I-"
She shut her mouth. Lettie looked over at her sympathetically and reached out his arm, patting her on the back.
"I had a feeling you would say that," he said in such a righteous tone that Sophie immediately wished she could sink into the floor instead. "That's why me and Martha decided, the best thing would be for us to protect you ourselves. I reckon the killer only targets women, so we found a spell that could turn me into a man and used it immediately. Unfortunately, though, we only had enough for half of the ingredients required by the spell..."
"What does that mean?" Sophie asked crossly.
"It means, that I'm only a man during the daytime," Lettie said sheepishly. "Someone else will have to protect you during the night, as well. I turn back into a woman when the sun sets."
"Where's Martha?" Sophie looked around erratically. "Don't tell me she's prancing around in a ridiculous disguise, too."
"Oh, don't worry, you'll run into her eventually," Lettie said breezily.
"What about your job at the School of Anatomy?" Sophie cried. "They won't let you teach like this!"
"Easy," Lettie said. "I've just contacted them and let them know that I will only be teaching classes at night, when I turn back into a woman."
Sophie was stupefied. "When are you going to sleep?"
Lettie waved her hand. "Don't worry about that. I'll sleep when I'm dead," she said in the same arrogant tone of someone who had almost always gotten her way in life.
"This is the stupidest idea I have ever heard of!" Sophie hissed. "You must call it off! Please, Lettie."
"I can't," Lettie shrugged. "The potion will last a couple months or so. There's nothing we can do about it now."
Sophie frowned.
"You don't need to do this," she gritted her teeth.
"Of course I have to. This way, I can watch over you from a distance. You needn't feel alarmed."
"I-what-you don't understand! How is this supposed to make me happy? And, why doesn't someone just call the Constable?"
"The Constable didn't take any of our inquiries seriously. Just said that some medical students must have improperly disposed of some bodies after an autopsy demonstration," Lettie grumbled. "But don't worry, Sophie. I know what is really happening. I'll make sure nothing bad happens to you."
Sophie wanted to groan out loud. Great, now she was being forced to rely on her younger sister (or brother now?) for protection. "Are you positively sure that it wasn't just a mistake?"
"Absolutely," Lettie said in a convinced tone. "There was so much blood...it would absolutely horrify you, Sophie, the state that they were in. And none of them had the identifying tags you would expect on corpses donated for experimentation. I'm telling you, it was not a post-mortem, it was a murder-"
"Excuse me," a voice interrupted them coolly. "Are you coming to the lecture?"
Both Lettie and Sophie stood ramrod straight.
The professor for her lecture on The Ecological Parametres of Water Recycling, also known as the Witch of the Waste, was standing above them with an imposing aura. She smirked at them, and Sophie immediately felt ashamed of the cheap glamour spell that she had paid a woman to cast on her ginger-colored hair. The Witch was a true redhead, with fair auburn locks that curled voluminously around her peach-fresh face like heavy silk curtains. Around her, the scent of roses and sun cream bloomed vigorously.
"Sophie, you're about to miss my class." There was a faintly amused twinkle in her eye. Sophie always felt quite underdressed in her presence. Today, the Witch was clad from head-to-toe in jet black silk, with matching black lace gloves, a black fur collar, and a large sunhat that partially covered her face. This gave her a very mysterious and intimidating aura. In comparison, she made Sophie want to shrink back into the shadows and disappear like a wilting flower.
"Sorry, Professor," Sophie said. She had never bothered to learn the Witch's name, and was now paying dearly for it. "I was just getting ready to go in."
"No worries," the Witch smiled. "You are just in time."
Sophie nodded.
"And there is no need to be so formal, Sophie. Just call me Yersinia."
Lettie narrowed her eyes as the Witch left them alone in the hallway together. "That's her first name?" he asked, making a face.
Sophie ignored this. She turned to face Lettie, crossing her arms.
"I want to have my own life," she said. "I don't know what is real or not, but I'd appreciate it if you didn't follow me around everywhere. I already know that I'm not as clever or capable as you and Martha," she muttered bitterly.
"You are!" Lettie argued. "I don't understand why you keep saying that."
"But it doesn't mean that I can't handle myself. I'm twenty-five, I don't need a chaperone," Sophie glared at him. "And besides, I don't think a serial killer would ever target me."
"You've got all your organs," Lettie said grandly. "And you don't drink or smoke. That's considered prime value for a nasty, sick murderer who wants to steal all your heart."
"Nobody would ever take my heart," Sophie retorted. "It's not good enough for anything."
Lettie bowed his head. "Alright, I'll try to give you some space. But you shouldn't walk alone at night," she warned. "Once the spell wears off and I have to hide, you should find someone else to accompany you home."
Sophie sighed. "I'll think of something."
"You should take this," Lettie reached under his shirt and pulled out a beautiful silver necklace that was much too fine for a young woman of Sophie's age. When he held it out to her, she immediately balked. "I've enchanted it with some heavy protection charms. It should help you."
"I can't accept this," Sophie muttered. Every day, she showed up to lecture looking plainer than a field of wheat! People would simply look at the pendant hanging from her neck and assume it must be fake.
"I insist," Lettie said, unhooking the clasp and closing it around her neck. "It won't protect you from any axe-wielding knaves, but it's better than nothing."
Sophie sighed. "Fine, then."
With that, Sophie stood up and walked through the doorway. At this point, several more people had filed into the lecture theater and it was about half full. As she sat back down next to the blonde man, Sophie smoothed her blouse and tried her best to look as if everything was still completely normal. She took a deep breath.
Everything is just fine, she thought to herself. All I have to do is raise my grades within the next semester... just enough to get into a doctorate program...and not get killed by whoever this mystery serial killer is. I'm sure it will all work out somehow.
When she sat back down in her seat, several eyes followed her. Voices whispered quietly, especially the ones following the movements of the fair-haired man next to her. But Sophie paid them no heed.
As for the blonde man, both of his crystal-colored eyes were now fixed on the silver necklace hanging from her throat.