The Demon Queen Wants To Live.

The whispers started before Aldric's mouth had finished closing.

"…another half-demon? Are you serious?"

"Look at those horns. They're even bigger than Ilyasviel’s."

"Shit, don’t tell me that’s her."

There had been many whispers since I had come to this Academy. Most of those whispers had been in crowds. Barely audible. In this otherwise quiet room, these whispers carried. I let the words pass. Even without the [System], some things were universal. The strong whispered about those they feared. The weak whispered about those they hated.

The Inker took a moment to settle, and I saw the effort it cost him. He took a deep breath, one that was just as audible in the quiet room. He crossed the chamber in four strides. "You are both late. Very late.” He sighed, “Come." He did not wait for an answer. Ash and I looked at each other, then followed. The whispers only grew louder as we moved effortlessly through the room.

He led us to the far corner, away from the rest. His gaze caught on something behind us. I followed it. Ren was there, hovering between two students. One was Edda. I had not seen her immediately. She sat with her back straight and her eyes closed. The other was a boy. He was slight, perhaps fourteen, with dark hair that fell over his eyes and the tiniest nubs of bone rising from his temples. They were so small they might have been mistaken for a trick of the light. His hands rested on his knees and his eyes were shut. Nothing about him glowed.

"You," Aldric called, pointing at Ren. "Ren Eryn! Since you've decided to come in here, you will make yourself useful. Walk the students through their breathing exercises. Some of them are near their final stage. I am sure you can tell which."

Ren's mouth dropped open. "I'm not a-"

"Do as you are told." The Inker said, not breaking stride. Ren's jaw clenched. She shot me a look, though I had done nothing. She turned on her heel and stalked toward the nearest row of students, muttering something that did not carry over the distance.

The Inker settled onto a low stone and gestured for us to sit. The floor was cool beneath me. Ash sat next to me, closer than was necessary. We stared at the Inker. He sighed before he began.

"It seems that the Archon," Aldric said, "has left the particulars of your instruction to me. I am to explain what I can and see you through your core formation." He paused. "I will start with some rather…unfortunate news." He looked at me, and for once, there was no sneer behind his eyes.

He began with basics we had already heard -Essence, its importance, and why a core mattered at all. Neither Ash nor I had asked him to repeat any of it. I suspected he was stretching his explanation to make Ren work longer “An Essence Core,” he said. “Is carved directly out of…or rather inside, a mana core. I said before that it is a painful process, this is why.” Both Ash and I looked at each other, then back at the Inker. “Think of your mana core as your birthright. The land you were born to.” He glanced between us. “To make an Essence Core is to build a foundation on that land, so that one day that foundation may be something great.”

"Then one's potential is limited from birth," Ash said what I was thinking.

“Yes,” Aldric said easily. “One can build a better foundation on suitable land. This much is obvious.”

Ash's core, from what I had felt of it, was no small thing. Especially for a human. Mine had let me wage battles that might never end. This body was different, and my capacity was not quite that extreme, but still. I saw the same understanding in Ash's blue eyes, followed by the smallest of smirks.

“It is not quite as simple as you are imagining,” Aldric said dryly. “The bigger your Mana Core, the harder it is to carve into an Essence Core. The less of it you probably will. The smaller the Mana Core, the more of it you can reshape for Essence. Exceptions aside, most people fall in the same range as far as capacity is concerned.” The greatest exception in history sat before him, and he did not know it.

“Then there must be a measure for this,” I said.

Aldric nodded. "The measure is efficiency. The ratio of your Essence Core to your mana core. An average person achieves perhaps forty to fifty percent. Meaning their Essence Core occupies roughly half their mana core's total volume. This is respectable and is sufficient for most purposes." He raised a finger. "A talented cultivator with good instruction and access to resonance chambers might reach sixty to sixty five percent. This is considered excellent." He raised a second finger. "An incredible core is around seventy five percent efficient. These are rare enough to be noteworthy. Of course, as I said, some cores are easier to reshape than others, so a number might be technically impressive, but practically not worth comment."

He waited. I could admit that this was rather interesting. There was nothing like this in the old System. "How does the formation itself work?" Ash asked. She had leaned toward me without quite seeming to notice. Her side pressed against mine. Between us, the egg in the satchel pulsed once.

I had not been listening. The Inker was still speaking. “-agonizing in practice. You must fill your mana core to its fullest capacity. The resonance chamber provides denser mana that makes this faster and more complete than attempting it in the open air. You must do it until it aches, until you think your core might explode from the inside.”

He looked between us. “Then, you produce Essence through your mark. You force it into the core, replacing some of that mana. This is where the pain begins. Holding Essence is normally impossible, but when a core is full to bursting, you can. With enough focus.” His eyes went distant. “This is perhaps one of the more painful things most people will ever go through, but you endure.”

I did not like the shape of this roundabout instruction. Pain? I had felt pain. “And what happens then?” I pressed. My voice was sharp.

The Inker stared at me. He frowned, but still answered, “The mark does the rest." He lowered his hand. "As Essence is held inside the core, the mark begins to impose a…structure on the surrounding mana. It carves channels into it, one for holding Essence that does not leak. The process happens on its own. It feels like something alive burning inside you.” The Inker shook himself, “Your task is simply to keep feeding it Essence and to not lose consciousness while it reshapes you from the inside."

"Simply," Ash said.

"I did say it was straightforward in concept." The ghost of a smile crossed his face and died. "The final step is mostly just endurance. As more of the core is carved, the pain grows. There is no technique that dulls this." He looked between us. "Many people pass out during formation. Most pass out, in fact. That is when most stop. When consciousness is lost, naturally, the process stops. Others simply lose focus and cannot endure the pain anymore, though that is rarer."

"And it cannot be resumed once it stops," I said. I had already suspected as much from the way he had framed the explanation.

"Yes. There is no second attempt. There is no correction. Once the process properly starts, you must see it through." His emphasis there was not subtle. "This is why will matters more than talent, and more than technique." He looked between us. “There are two reasons this process takes weeks. The first is the time needed to make Essence at all. The second is so you can practice with the pain. Hold your core to bursting and get used to the feeling. Channel the tiniest bit of Essence into your core, such that some of the pain can come, but the process itself won’t start. That way, when the time comes, it is easier.” He frowned. “Though, truth be told, it is still painful in the end.”

I turned it the process over in my mind. Fill the core to bursting, produce Essence and force it in and then finally endure the pain that follows. It was brutal, but not complex. I suspected it was the System doing the carving, not the marks. Not that it changed anything. Ash was warm against my side. I adjusted the satchel.

"Now.” Aldric clasped his hands together. “For the difficult part.” He looked at me. “You carry two marks of the same order. Two…” He glanced at the distant students. “...marks of the same order. This is a problem.'"

I frowned. Ash spoke before I could. “Explain.” The word was sharper than I had expected.

Aldric eyed her, then turned back to me. “If you have two marks of different orders, the process is more complex and slower, but that’s all. A Primal and a Cypher could, for instance, carve the same core without any conflict at all. Their Essences would carve the Core into two different structures, but they would both work. The issue is that they would add inefficiency in the boundary between them”

He turned to Ash. "For you, this boundary is an added limitation, besides the pain. This boundary normally takes up ten percent of your core. So, if you had an Essence Core that was seventy percent efficient, it would have been eighty percent, had you only one mark."

"We'll see," Ash said. Her voice was perfectly even.

Aldric shook his head faintly and turned to me. “There…there is a problem. One almost nobody faces, as most everyone with two marks received marks of different orders. For those of the same order….”

“Explain.” I said it loud enough that it carried. I did not appreciate his theatrics.

The Inker sighed. “Two marks of the same order cannot carve the same core," he said. "They impose the same type of structure in the exact same places, and the two carvings destroy each other. It is like two sculptors attacking the same block of marble from opposite sides. Other…strange things might happen. It is a rarity among rarities, you see." He spread his hands. "There is one, and only one solution to this. You choose one mark to carve your core, and the other operates on raw mana alone. What mana is left from the inefficiency, that is."

He looked at my arms. At the marks that were the wrong colour. “Every mark is valuable,” he said. “Yours especially.” The whisper was almost gentle. “But you will have to abandon one.”

“No.” I said.

“This is not a matter for discussion.”

Ash tensed beside me. Something rose in my chest. The egg pulsed faster against my skin. "I am not asking for your advice," I said. "I see the depth of your ignorance plain enough."

Aldric stared at me for a long moment. He sighed, rubbed the bridge of his nose, and rose from the bench. "I have done my duty," he said. "Do as you will. You will accept it yourself, in time. For today, I would suggest you merely try and get used to the pain, as I have said. More would be…." He shook his head.

He led us back. The nearest students cleared space before we reached them. There were fewer whispers now. Ash sat closer to me than before. I had not asked her to.

The first step was to fill the core, completely. Past completely. In the open air, with this world's thin mana, filling my core completely would have taken hours. Perhaps longer. My core was absurdly large. I had not relished the idea of sitting somewhere for hours or perhaps even days just to fill it.

I observed the others. They drew mana with what I could only loosely call techniques, such that I disliked using the term ‘technique’ at all. I could feel them doing it. They simply breathed it in, opened themselves, let the mana flow, and guided it toward their marks with whatever clumsy method they had been taught. It was as basic as a breathing technique could be. One might as well call it not breathing at all. It was pathetic.

I almost pitied them. Almost. I had actual techniques, twenty of them. Now, I chose the seventh. The method had once been called [The Combined Breath]. It was a compression method, one that drew ambient mana inward through controlled cycles. The modification was simple enough in theory: instead of compressing the mana into my core directly, I would route the flow through both marks simultaneously, letting them convert the mana to Essence on the way in.

The trick was to find the balance between the two marks. A consideration I’d never had in my old world. The Requiem pulled mana with a sharp hunger. The Cradle drew it in gently and slowly. Matching the two was like steadying a scale with a boulder on one side and a feather on the other. It took longer than I would have liked. Someone else might not have managed this at all. I found it. The rhythm settled into something smooth. It almost felt like a second heartbeat. My test had worked. I was making Requiem and Cradle Essence now, and quite a bit of it. It leaked through my core, just as the Inker had said.

That was fine. This had just been a test, after all.

"Ash," I said, eyes still closed. "Do you need assistance? I can teach you, if you wish. It should be simple for you."

"I know that one." Her voice was calm.

I opened one eye. She met my gaze, and there was the faintest smile. I smirked and closed it.

We began. The pressure dropped around us first. Mana rushed inward through my skin, through my marks, into the core. Faster than I had expected. Beside me, Ash matched the rhythm.

First, I drew it directly into my core, bypassing the marks directly. The flow using the technique was much thicker than drawing it in normally. This technique opened the world to me, and I could almost see the world around me as clearly as I might have with my eyes. I felt the moment the nearest students noticed. Their own mana draw faltered as the local supply thinned around them. A girl three seats to my left gasped. A boy further back opened his eyes. I did not care for them.

My core filled. It took little more than half an hour until it was brimming, until every corner of it packed with mana so dense it hummed against the walls of the core itself. It should not have filled this fast. The technique was mine, and the chamber was generous, and for these few moments, that was enough.

Ash finished half a breath after me. I felt her exhale settle. Her core was full too, though hers should have happened earlier. I opened my eyes.

Every student in the chamber was staring. A few of them had stopped their own efforts entirely. The girl nearest to us had her mouth open. A boy with a green Spark was gripping his own knees as if to steady himself. Even Ren, halfway across the chamber, stared at us, and her eyes were wide, and for once, she was not talking.

Edda had opened one eye. The same bored expression as always. Ash was right, I was beginning to prefer her. Aldric stood at the edge of the chamber with his arms folded. His eyes were a fraction too wide.

This was the easy part. The air was already shifting around Ash. She had the same thought. My lips almost twitched. I breathed, steadied myself, and reached for both marks at once.

Requiem Essence formed in my right arm. It was cold and heavy and tasted of endings. Cradle Essence formed in my left. It was warm and gentle and tasted of beginnings. The egg pulsed once against my hip. I did not have time to wonder why. I guided both streams inward, toward my core.

For one heartbeat, it held. Both types of Essence sat inside my core, and I could feel them beginning to impose structure on the walls of the core around them. It was working. It was painful. It was-

The two streams found each other. The Requiem's carving tore through the Cradle's, and the Cradle's tore through the Requiem's, and in the space between them was nothing but destruction.

Light leaked from my skin, black and white, twisting togetherr. The air warped. The pain was sharp enough to steal my breath. My hands struck the stone floor. I did not remember putting them there. Something inside me was tearing itself apart. Ash was screaming and-

The Inker’s hand found my shoulder. I felt cold run through all of me at once, and the spiral died. The light died. The warping stopped. The pain receded, slowly, leaving only a hollow ache. The chamber was silent. I raised my head. Sweat ran down my temples. Students had scrambled back. Two were pressed against the far wall. Most of their faces held shock but not all.

A boy near the centre of the chamber was smirking. The girl beside him had her hand over her mouth, but her eyes crinkled. There were other faces, other reactions. I would not have noticed them before. I noticed them now.

"Out." Aldric's voice carried. "I’m talking to all of you. Those of you who have achieved it, come to the measuring chamber tomorrow morning. The rest of you come back here tomorrow, but for today, leave."

The students filed out. Some lingered, casting glances back. Ren shepherded the boy toward the door, her hand on his shoulder. Edda followed. Their gazes held something I might have recognized now, something softer. When the last of them had gone, Aldric stood in front of me with his hands clasped behind his back. The chamber was empty.

"I warned you," Aldric said. "And yet you tried anyway. I should not be surprised." He took a breath. "You said you produced Essence in half an hour when my best students take weeks. That was unreasonable, and I accepted it. You advanced from Spark to Line in a matter of days. That was unreasonable, and I accepted it. You used a breathing technique, one I have never even seen before and one you should not know. That was unreasonable, and I accepted it. You filled your core just now with enough mana that half of the other students couldn’t even draw any more in. That was unreasonable." He paused. "And I accepted it."

His gaze settled on me. "But you cannot be unreasonable with the laws of our world." He said. "Half-demons are unreasonable, but they see sense in the end too. You will choose one mark and carve a core for it that functions. You will still be extraordinary. That should be enough."

I said nothing. My hands were fists at my sides.

Aldric studied my face for a long moment. Whatever he found there made him sigh. "The chamber is yours for the night. Consider it a personal favor from me. The Archon expects results. Given your…absurdity, it may not take long.” He moved toward the doors. “You may even be ready for the measuring tomorrow, but it will be with a core carved for one mark.”

He paused at the threshold. His hand rested on the frame, and I thought he might say something more. He did not. The heavy doors closed behind him, and the sound echoed through the empty chamber.

“Lys.” Ash reached for me. “That was dangerous. Maybe we shouldn't have tried on the first day.” She paused. “It's fine. I couldn't get it either. We can always-”

I pulled away. Ash's hand hung in the air between us. Something in her face shifted. “What-”

“You lied to me.” I said.