The flashing of the computer screen shone in the lenses of Senna’s glasses as the Incubus stared at her, still processing what she had just told him. Blinking a few times, he looked the slovenly Nymph up and down, trying to check to see if she was messing with him. He didn’t wish to be judgmental, but the woman hardly seemed accommodating to newcomers, and she seemed to have no qualms when it came to quarrelling with Roach and Wexford.

  But no. She looked deadly serious, staring at him with an intense gaze as she began to idly chew on her hoodie’s drawstrings.

  “You… have no Head?” Cobalt asked dumbly, reaffirming his grip on his cane.

  “Never have,” Senna replied in a nonchalant tone, turning to return her attention to her videogame.

  “Isn’t every Covenant supposed to have one?”

  “Not us.”

  “But… why?”

  She looked at him over her shoulder and pulled a face.

  “Think about it. We’re the house of the weak. Who in their right mind would want to claim to be in charge of us?”

  “I…”

  She made a fair point. In the span of a day, Cobalt had come to learn just how competitive and sinister the Mancer District seemed to be underneath its academic veneer. With Amrifni already constantly taking flak from the others, it made sense that no-one would wish to be its Head. They would be laughed right off the island.

  “How have you managed to last this long with no-one in charge?” he asked.

  Senna shrugged as she drank from a cup on her desk, her computer screen flashing with simulated gunfire.

  “Dunno. If you can believe it, this place was even worse when we got here.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Tell me; why do you think the Mancer District churns out such high achievers?”

  “It hosts the best learning institutions in the world?”

  Senna snorted.

  “Yeah, that and every screw-up gets kicked out on their asses. If you fuck up in your Covenant, the Head can kick you out for any reason. Just like that. And if you get booted, you got two options. Either you can leave the district, or you can go to Amrifni.”

  He could practically hear her teeth gritting.

  “And doing the latter puts a target on your back…” Senna added in a low tone.

  Cobalt glanced down at the floor, his gaze lingering on the faded Amrifni badges pinned to some of her discarded clothes.

  “If it’s so humiliating to be with Amrifni, then why bother at all, if you mind me asking?”

  “We all got our reasons,” came her quick reply.

  Something about her tone indicated that she wasn’t willing to elaborate, so Cobalt deigned not to press. He readjusted himself atop the Nymph’s bed and circled the subject back.

  “You said this place was worse before?” he queried, eyeing up a sizable crack in her ceiling.

  “Yup. Place was halfway derelict, and the students living there could barely stand to do so. Me and the guys’ve been keeping it running, but honestly not by much.”

  “Oh? How so?”

  “Well, Wexford’s been handling a lot of the statistical stuff, like with paperwork and all that. Roach has kept the building from collapsing and puts a lot of money into keeping it that way, and I’ve been doing what I can to bring finances up, as well as boring shit like emails.”

  Cobalt frowned. That sounded a lot like what a Head ought to be doing. Strange; he was learning more about the position from a student than he did from Avery, Rallen, Alyssa and Juliette combined.

  “Sounds tough,” he murmured sympathetically.

  Senna just sighed and shrugged her shoulders.

  “What can I say, it’s a hard knock life. If you’re not a prodigy, then you better be thick-skinned, otherwise the Mancer District just doesn’t want you.”

  Suddenly, Cobalt was feeling a lot less welcome. He knew that every institution in Hell had a skeleton or two in their closet, but this… this was just upsetting to hear. To learn that the venerated Mancer District was built upon the broken aspirations of the academics that failed to measure up to its strict expectations.

  “… What do you study, Senna?” he asked in a quiet voice.

  “Computer forensics. Wexford does something with languages, and I think Roach is doing an engineering course.”

  They were all respectable fields of study. And yet this crumbling heap was the only place that would have them.

  “… I’m sorry…” was all Cobalt could say.

  “Don’t apologise to me, apologise to the rest of the suckers living here. Once we graduate at the end of this year, they’re gonna be fucked without us.”

  She played her game, her words sitting heavy upon Cobalt’s shoulders. A knot had tied itself up in his stomach, and he didn’t know how to unknot it. But before he could try to say anything, Roach appeared in the doorway, signaling his arrival by bashing his horn off the top of the doorframe.

  “Hey, Cobalt? You mind comin’ with me for a sec? Archdean wants to speak with you upstairs,” the gangly Oni asked, gesturing over his shoulder.

  “Of course. It was nice meeting you, Miss Bessda,” Cobalt said, giving her a polite nod.

  She just grunted and gave him a half-hearted wave.

  “Oh, you gotta come too,” Roach added, pointing at Senna.

  The Nymh turned around in her chair, staring daggers at her fried.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “Dunno. Archdean said so.”

  “I’m in the middle of something.”

  “Too bad. Said this is important.”

  “I’m not meeting him.”

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  “It’ll be fine, won’t even take that long. Just… I dunno, throw on a new jacket or somethin’.”

  “What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?!”

  “You’ve been wearin’ that for four days!”

  “It’s still good!”

  “Sen, I can smell you from here! When was the last time you showered?!”

  “After you got the got the water heater working again!”

  “That was a fuckin’ week ago!”

  “I don’t have to take this from you!”

  “Too fuckin’ bad!”

  “Gah, you’re so fucking annoying!”

  Despite her – very vocal – protestations, Senna eventually relented. Heaving herself off her chair, she unceremoniously shunted both him and Cobalt out of her bedroom, threatening death upon them both if they even thought of peeking beyond the curtain.

  “No-one wants to see that, Sen!” Roach yelled from the hallway.

  He glanced back at Cobalt.

  “She’s actually alright once you get to know her,” he added quietly, so she wouldn’t hear.

  “I… see. Is she alright?”

  “Sen? Yeah, yeah, she’s just… kinda shut-in, y’know? Gotta keep remindin’ her to take care of herself sometimes.”

  Cobalt nodded slowly, tracking his gaze around the hallway. At first, he thought the state of the building was just plain negligence, but to hear that all of this was Roach’s best efforts to keep the place together put it all into a different light.

  “She told me about your circumstances. It sounds difficult, to say the least,” the Incubus remarked, peering up at an inert light fixture.

  “Eh, it’s not so bad. Pay’s comin’ in next week, so I can finally get the wirin’ here done,” Roach explained, gesturing to the ceiling.

  “You do the wiring yourself?”

  “Oh yeah. Wirin’, plumbin’, walls, floors, ceilin’s; all me. Been meanin’ to tackle the lights in this hall for a while now.”

  “Not before you fix my door, you don’t!” Senna yelled from behind her curtain, her voice muffled by cloth.

  “I’ll take one off one of the empty rooms!”

  “I don’t want someone else’s doors!”

  “It don’t belong to anyone yet! And quit bein’ so picky; it’s just a fuckin’ door!”

  “It was my door, until you blew it to bits!”

  “I said I was sorry!”

  “Sorry doesn’t fix my door!”

  The curtain was pulled apart, revealing that Senna had changed from her old hoodie into a thick, stained jacket that was far too big for her. Noticing the Incubus’ gaze, she scowled and pulled her hood up, hiding away her tangled tresses. Staring at the Nymph, Roach glanced down at her bare legs.

  “… Where’s your pants?” he asked.

  “Can’t find them.”

  “Sen, are you fuckin’ serious?”

  “Either I go like this or I don’t go at all. I don’t wanna be policed on my clothes in my own home. Least of all by you,” the Nymph spat, brushing past Roach as she made her way down the hall.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?!” the Oni cried.

  She didn’t answer, and instead just pulled her phone from her pocket as she walked. With a heavy sigh, Roach gave Cobalt a friendly nod, ushering him to follow.

  Heading to the stairwell, the three ascended up multiple flights of creaky wooden stairs – some carpeted, most not – until they arrived at the Amrifni building’s top floor. Whereas the rest of the place was quiet, this floor was like a complete ghost town. Their footsteps echoed eerily off the exposed brick walls, and when Cobalt peered out one of the windows in the hallway, he felt as though he could feel the building shaking.

  “Head’s office is just up here. We’ve mostly been usin’ it for storage ever since we ran outta room in the basement,” Roach explained, gesturing to a set of double doors up ahead.

  “We could make room if you’d ever bother actually throwing anything away,” Senna added, gazing at her phone.

  “Hey, some of that could be important some day!”

  “You’ve been saying that for years.”

  Cobalt was beginning to extrapolate that arguing was just a way of life for these two, so he turned them out as they approached the office. Once there, Roach pushed the doors open and gestured for him to step inside, his arrival heralded by a cloud of dust.

  The office was clearly intended to have at one point been the administrative heart of Amrifni, but it had never quite been used for that purpose. Everything from the bare desk and old chairs to the empty filing cabinets was covered in dust, and up until recently a fair amount of cardboard boxes had been stacked in here, if the imprints on the floor were anything to go off of. Wexford was already here, sitting atop a pile of Roach’s spare construction supplies, while the Archdean had seated himself behind the desk, his hands dutifully clasped. Lydia was here too, and once the Incubus entered the room, she swiftly joined his side, shunting her fellow Oni out of the way as she did so.

  “Ow, watch it,” Roach grumbled, rubbing his arm.

  Across the room, Wexford clapped his hands.

  “Well, here it is. It’s not much, and unless no-one’s told you yet, Amrifni doesn’t have a Head. In fact, it never did,” the Fallen explained, tracing lines through the dust on the wall.

  “I already told him that,” Senna grumbled, seating herself in one of the chairs.

  “Ah. Well. It goes without saying then; we are the most pathetic Covenant in the district.”

  “Hey! We’ve just gotta work hard at it this year, and I’m sure things’ll turn around! I got a good feeling about the Tourney,” Roach interjected, clearly passionate about this particular subject.

  “Roach, to be completely frank, we can’t afford to have you holed up in the hospital for a month again. There’s not going to be a Tourney for us. I thought I already told you that-”

  Across the desk, the Archdean cleared his throat, spurring everyone in the room to turn their attention to the little Golem.

  “You know, they say that in the olden days, the Mancer District was protected by a group of five demons, each willing to hold the line against the Devilish masses that encroached upon them. A warrior, a magician, a spy, an aristocrat, and a lowly squire. That squire was forever considered a tagalong and a failure, and in the hour where she was needed most, her shield broke, and she died in ignominy,” he explained in a solemn tone, pushing his glassed up his nose with a thumb.

  Cobalt glanced over at the Amrifni crest on Wexford’s clothes. A shattered shield…

  “The Covenants?” he asked.

  “Exactly. Four stand to commemorate a hero. One stands to commemorate a failure.”

  Getting up from the chair, the Golem clasped his hands behind his back and turned to gaze out of the window. It was so dusty that he could barely see anything.

  “I’ll admit, I’m not fond of the arrangement. Every student should be given a chance, whether they’re outwardly exceptional or not.”

  He glanced over his shoulder.

  “If you would care to turn to your lovely companion, Mr. Trayer…?”

  Now completely bewildered, Cobalt faced Lydia to find his trusty maid presenting him with a metal badge; a circular blue pin, emblazoned with the Amrifni crest.

  Silence reigned for a moment.

  “W- Wait, hold on a second. You didn’t consult with any of us about this,” Wexford quickly said, losing his composure for perhaps the first time since Cobalt met him.

  “Well it was fun while it lasted…” Senna mumbled to herself as she tapped away at her phone.

  Only Roach seemed excited, his eyes lighting up as the realisation dawned upon everyone in the disused, dust-choked office.

  “Amrifni needs a Head. It needs someone who can keep calm under pressure, who can stand their ground against belligerents, and – most importantly – who can lead and be looked up to. You’ve shown all of those qualities, Mr. Trayer, and so I would like to formally offer the position of Amrifni Head to you.

  Cobalt stared at the badge, his heart nearly seizing up entirely within his chest. The two halves of the silver shield glinted in the flickering light, and as everyone in the room held their breaths, he slowly looked around for their reactions.

  “But I… I’m not…”

  “Not from the district, I know. That’s precisely why I believe you’re the best choice. Don’t think I haven’t noticed how you managed to turn one of the worst-performing classes in B.I.D. around in the span of two years. Your legacy has become something of a legend over the intervening years,” the Archdean told him, giving the Incubus a boyish smile.

  “But Mr. Deanson, are you sure this is fair? He’s – no offence, Cobalt – completely green. He’s only been in the Mancer District a day, and no-one even knows where the Hell he’s been the half-decade before that. Throwing him into this is… well…”

  “Try dumb as Hell. All this is gonna do is draw more fire from the other Covenants. I’m betting Alyssa’s already plotting how to take him out,” Senna added unhelpfully.

  Roach raised his hands.

  “Woah, woah, woah! Let’s all just calm down, huh? Let’s not forget this is the guy who ate a-!”

  “I think it would be best to look forward, not back,” Lydia suddenly interrupted, shooting him a steely glare.

  “Lady, what is your problem?”

  “No problem at all. The young master’s safety and comfort are my top priorities.”

  Cobal cleared his throat, drawing all attention back to him.

  This was a big ask, and he couldn’t deny that they all made good points. He was still disoriented from the coma, and his mind still rang hollow with missing memories. In the span of a day, he had gone from being entranced by the Mancer District to being downright horrified upon learning just how the sausage was made. But even despite all that…

  The Archdean wanted him to witness it all firsthand, didn’t he? To meet each of the Heads and experience for himself how their respective egos, ambitions and personal ideals reflected upon those they were supposed to lead. The brutish bullies of Rotalleb. The snooty prodigies of Sucifenev. The secretive ne’er-do-wells of Edifrep. The garish socialites of Silibon.

  And the directionless souls of Amrifni.

  He couldn’t help but feel a twang of sympathy in his heart, coupled with something altogether more invigorating. A spark, ignited by the prospect of starting something new.

  “These three academics before you have done wonders in keeping Amrifni afloat. But they need a leader, Cobalt. They need you. What do you say?”

  Taking a deep breath, Cobalt took the badge from Lydia and rolled it around in his palm. It weighed heavy.

  He looked up into Archdean Dean Deanson’s eyes.

  “I’ll do it.”