Chapter 76 Please, Sit.

  Esmerelda Gnosis had been on a pleasant date with the cutest, but not most handsome, boy in her Introduction To Divination class. Her family was one known for divination magic and she probably already knew more than the instructor at the ripe old age of eighteen. She was taking the class because it was required before she could get into the higher level courses where she actually had a chance at learning anything. She could have tested out of it, but when she saw the names on the course list, she just had to show up to the first class.

  Lucius Arbencroft was the biggest name but there were plenty of others with promising futures. What she hadn’t expected was for Lucius to be positively adorable. He was older than her, by about three years, but from the minute she laid eyes on him, Esmerelda needed to pinch his cheeks.

  Once she had been to the first class, Esmerelda stayed after class and searched for every strand of hair from every student that she could find. The teacher knew what she was up to but decided that it would be best just to let the Gnosis heir do what she wished. It was pretty obvious, even without the use of divination magic, that Esmerelda was not taking the course to learn anything about the art itself but had ulterior motives.

  Esmerelda then spent the next three days figuring out who each hair belonged to and then reading their fortunes. Thanks to that, she now knew that one of the promising future party candidates for the Heidenburg family had feelings for Lucius, one had feelings for the Heidenburg Heiress, and two of the regular students were lovers and often snuck into each other’s dorms. When she got to Lucius, however, all she saw was black. That was it, just the total absence of color. There was something going on, but she just couldn’t see it. It was as if something was going to interfere with her divination but hadn’t yet. Whatever it was had to be on a level of supreme authority if it was able to work backwards through time when she was just trying to read his future.

  The method that Esmerelda had used was one that lacked direction and almost seemed to work off of vibes on what information she would learn and how clear that information would be. Usually that meant that she would get more of the person’s feelings than with other kinds of divinations. It also meant that it was much harder to detect and stop. The fact that she was learning nothing should have been unsettling. Esmerelda, in her inexperience with things that she couldn’t creep on, was suddenly very intrigued. Add that intrigue onto how cute she thought Lucius was, and that was what led to her dropping dozens of hints for the poor boy to just ask her out already.

  Lucius was… disinterested. Esmerelda got the feeling that he understood that she was dropping hints after around the tenth one. The rest of the time was him just ignoring them. She did all of the classical things that a lady should do. She left her handkerchief behind, distinctly in his way so he would return it to her, he didn’t. She tried the same with her jacket, notebook, hairpins, and even her purse. He always had someone else deliver the items to her. Whenever she joined his table for lunch, he would seamlessly act as though she had always been there. He never made her feel unseen or unwelcome but he also never gave her any extra attention. She purposefully locked eyes with him whenever she could, gave him her cutest faces, and made sure to only praise him when he either obviously worked incredibly hard or had done an amazing job so he wouldn’t think that she was patronizing him. Eventually, right when she was getting disheartened, Lucius had finally stopped her to ask what she truly wanted from him.

  Their conversation was one of half-truths. She was interested in him, yes, but just as much as a research subject as she was in a romantic sense. She was not, however, that interested in his title. That was something that had surprised Lucius greatly. He was used to women wanting to marry up. Those women never understood the nature of Safeharbor, its people, and its problems. They could never understand the smells, the lack of sunshine, the endless threat of a drow invasion, the armored worms the size of wagons that hunted mages. It was those things that Lucius always used to try and scare off every pretty girl who had cornered him into going on a date with them.

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  Esmerelda knew this, in part from talking to his friends, but also just from watching the young man. Lucius was a kind person and also a very real one. He did not like liars, pretenders, and swindlers, but he also had a sly side to him. She often wondered if he hated that side of himself too or if that side of him was how he was able to tell when others were being underhanded towards him. Her large indigo eyes had seen through him like no other had before and the longer their eyes met, the more they both knew it.

  Their date had been going well, almost as if it were scripted, as Lucius went through his routine. He acted polite but rarely asked any questions about her and his favorite topics of discussion were the troubles that his father and mother so gallantly defended the realm against. How hard they had to work in their positions and how insurmountable their burdens were for anyone who hadn’t resolved themselves to give their lives for the duchy and kingdom. He made sure to crush any ideas of an easy life as a duchess. He drove home the fact that he hadn’t even seen the sun until his fourth birthday. He spoke of the recent caravan troubles and how many had died defending them in the recent months. He spoke about how little time his parents got together, so little in fact that their meals are scheduled like appointments just so they can see each other's faces throughout the day.

  None of that scared away Esmerelda. She was not Serentia Arbencroft, she was stronger and weaker in her own ways. Unlike Serentia, Esmerelda was a mage through and through. She was a divination wizard. She could see calamity before it struck. She could use magic to assist her daily tasks and his. One day, she would be able to teleport the entire way to the capital by herself, without the need for a court mage. She was going to be an Archmage and a Duchess if their relationship could be nurtured in the right direction. Esmerelda did not care about marrying up, she was already a pseudo-high noble and the high noble titles meant little to her. Her family had enough money that she had been raised without a want and only the best tutors were allowed to teach her. She was just waiting for that to get through Lucius’ thick skull so they could get on to the actual date where they talked less like it was a business interview and more like two friends looking for more.

  That was how the date had been going, however, until a pair of the most stunning people she had ever seen walked in. She knew who they were even before Lucius had called out to them. As soon as she realized it, the blackness of Lucius’ future came into a perfectly clear view. Esmerelda’s mind was suddenly assaulted by visions of buildings on fire inside of a massive redstone cavern. Sulfur and rot assaulted her nostrils. She heard a cry of pain and she felt her soul shudder under the weight of mana reverberating with someone’s voice.

  “Lucius, we would love to.” Was the reply from Lord of Darkness to her date and Esmerelda instantly knew that the voice that rattled her soul in her vision of the future was the very one that had just called back to the cute young man sitting across from her. For the first time since Esmerelda had laid eyes on Lucius, she started to doubt if going after him was a good idea. Maybe that future was shrouded in pitch black shadows for a reason. Maybe Darkness from the Future had hidden it for said reason. Or maybe she was overreacting. That was the problem with divination magic. Just knowing about what might happen in the future could either cause it to come true or keep it from happening.

  Esmerelda was still mastering herself after her sudden vision when she saw the lord in question and his lady begin to approach them. The ground under their feet was a void darker than the night sky on a cloudy night. The windows next to them were covered in ink black swirls that seemed to ride along the edges of the windows’ enchantments. As they moved, so too did the blackness. It was smooth. Seamless. Perfect. Control by definition that seemed so casual that it could only come from someone more used to using their power than walking or breathing.

  She had seen archmages before. Plenty of them. She had seen them show off their control before, seen them set an example of what one should strive for, of what was possible, but they couldn’t even hold a candle to what the Lord of Darkness was doing. He was not using a spell, a system made specifically to interact with mana and guide or control it, no, it was just his will. It didn’t even look like he had to force the mana to comply. It just did because that was what he wanted.

  The woman beside him didn’t even look mortal. If anyone had said that she was a divine being, Esmerelda wouldn’t have questioned it, but she was not, at least not as far as the rumors claimed. ‘There were a few rumors claiming that the Lord of Darkness was working on sharing his divinity with her, maybe it had worked.’ She thought to herself and then shook herself out of her musings just in time for the Lord of Darkness and his Lady of Hellfire to arrive next to their table and for Lucius to wave for her to slide into the seat closer to the window as he did the same.

  “Please, sit.” Lucius bid the two newcomers. Somewhere deep in Esmerelda’s mind, she knew that meeting them would be a sure thing if she and Lucius actually got together, but she was in no way ready for that time to be that exact moment, a few moments before their actual first date could even begin.