Cira had seen this debatably angelic illustration before—she even modeled the fountain at Acher’s palace after this particular drawing. Beneath it read, ‘Tidus the Explorer, year 9612 of the Primordial Era’. She did not know what that meant, but this was the first time she had seen the illustration attributed to anyone. It always made sense to assume her dad drew it, but apparently not.

  The surrounding students gasped, some even averting their eyes from the page. Frightened murmurs rose up and it amused Cira to no end seeing the boys who made fun of her go squeamish at a simple drawing.

  It may have been a little unsettling how talented this Tidus fellow was at drawing, because the endless eyes and furling wings really gave off a sense of perpetual discomfort, folding in on themselves infinitely. Twisted flesh and bone wrapped around each other in a mess of feathers, revealing eyes you didn’t expect in places you didn’t think they would fit. This picture took up the whole page and it was admittedly much greater detail than any instance she had seen in the past.

  Okay, I can’t blame them too much. This truly is uncomfortable to look at. But what does it have to do with these rules of the sky?

  “Calm down, everyone. Eyes up here.” Eliza pulled their attention away from the book. Apparently there was a time Tidus was hailed as one of the great pioneers of the age of exploration, through which much of the vast sky was first navigated and settled. As the story goes, this image depicts Azrael, the angel who came to exact judgement upon his companion. The necromancer’s name is long lost to time, and Tidus claimed he never learned the details of what brought such punishment on. Supposedly the necromancer kept it secret to prevent Tidus from meeting the same fate, but it was the last adventure that man ever embarked on regardless.”

  Looking between the angel and Eliza, all the students thought they could understand. It was Emma in the front who raised her hand, “What happened to him? That’s hardly a decade from the primordial genocide, isn’t it?”

  Cira winced at the unexpected mention, but Eliza was in teacher-mode. She diligently answered the question with a nod and a smile.

  “After drawing Azrael, Tidus never wrote a coherent word again. These days we don’t even know where they encountered the angel, but it’s said his mind never fully returned from that journey.” She shook her head with a mournful look, “His other companions and crew scattered afterward, and we have no way of knowing if they suffered the same affliction. Most of them were mana-bereft like Tidus, and they all lost their lives twelve years later when the leylines burst.”

  “The leylines… did what?” That sounds pretty serious, but my dad never told me about the primordial genocide either.

  A handful of derisive chortles arose, but Eliza hushed them quickly, “Ah yes, your education likely wouldn’t have included these matters. There are many books on the subject within the archive, but I will summarize it for you. The demon Kazali, also known today as the Curse Lord, used the leylines to absorb many of his kin. This day marked the end of the primordial era, and humanity was thrust to the brink of extinction. Anyone with less mana than me would simply disperse within ten miles of any leyline. Closer than that and you would have to be quite prolific. While some mages endured by sacrificing their aura, those without any mana to speak of had only their soul to spare. There are entire skies where civilizations disappeared overnight, and estimates say less than one tenth of corporeal life in this world survived.”

  “Kazali, huh?” Cira clenched her fist. How did Connie escape? I doubt she was the only one, either, so maybe some curses are better suited to standing up against him. Or they got lucky? Just far enough outside his reach to survive. Still… He destroyed ninety percent of all life—as a byproduct? What a monster. Just what does he want?

  “Erm, Cira… if you could relax your aura,” Eliza’s face twitched, “It appears you’re scaring the others.”

  “…sorry.” Cira sheepishly faced forward, putting a lid on her anger. “But why? What does he want? No, how long has it been—”

  “Hey, come on!” A startling voice behind her interrupted, “This is stuff children learn. Stop wasting everyone’s time!”

  “Eh?” Cira spun around in shock and it seemed he wasn’t the only irritated student.

  “Don’t worry Cira, there will be plenty of time to find out. But make no mistake, class. The primordial genocide is very relevant today as well. Hmmm, can anyone aside from Emma tell me why?”

  It took a few moments, but eventually she cracked and called on Emma anyway. The girl was quite learned. She asked what sounded like an obvious question, “Why didn’t Kazali get punished?”

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  Cira, for one, thought it was an excellent question. Where’s the army of angels lining up to smite him? There’s no way he never did anything wrong. Hell, he’s the one who taught Cira how to remove souls from the cycle. Even the nature of Cira’s being was probably breaking a rule or two if she had to guess.

  “Because a true primordial demon is a manifestation of the very law they hold authority over. These laws are absolutes within the world, and hold no bearing on this world’s natural order.” She conjured an apple and tossed it across the room. It exploded upon the head of a sleeping student who woke up with a frightened shout, holding out his palm and channeling flame. He quickly deflated to see the entire class looking at him, “Many are ambiguous and pertaining to exterior concepts, but some are simple. Gravity is one such law. Putting it more concisely, laws shape the natural world. Without them, these worldly rules would have nothing to influence. Either drawing on them or defying them, think of laws as a lake through which to carry ripples. To answer your question bluntly, a demon will never be able to incur worldly punishment by exercising their own law.”

  That was beyond unfair. I suppose it is up to me to deliver judgment. Before Cira could ruminate, Eliza kept going.

  “Consider the way an island stays aloft. It must defy gravity by relinquishing earth to the sky. The spring acts as an aura of sorts, pinning an island in place in much the same way as your soul stays hung within your body. From inception, even the smallest debris stones are trying to form a spring, but until one appears they must remain undisturbed or they fall away. These are all rules of the sky, which form with the natural order.

  “Conversely, there are other natural occurrences which challenge these rules. In a similar vein to demons of primordial law, there exist materials that escape punishment by way of lacking will.” She took a glance at her students, checking if any of their faces looked less than curious.

  “Deritium!” Emma shouted, “Right?”

  Cira winced, “Huh…” It had nothing to do with resisting the cycle—at least Cira was pretty sure.

  “Correct!” Eliza brightened up, “As our next session will cover essential entropy, I thought we would finish today by observing that which promotes it.” She slung a pouch from her waist onto the podium and little glowing jars floated out from it. “If you would kindly refrain from touching this sample until I provide instruction—this is genuine deritium.”

  “What—why?!” Cira reeled back as a jar of bright scarlet stone landed before her. She wore a look of shock and confusion as she couldn’t decide whether to look at it or Eliza. “What’s the meaning of… this…”

  Cira’s eyes went wide as she stared at the deritium sample. “This… did not come from Fount Salt.” For some reason, she could just tell. As if she was looking at fire produced by an artifact versus flame on the end of a torch. It was just different.

  “Well of course not,” Eliza chuckled, “That source dried up months ago, if you recall.”

  “Ah…” Do they go through it that quickly? “I suppose that’s a good point.”

  There were a couple stink-eyes and Cira decided not to derail class any further if it could be helped.

  “For those incapable of manipulating earth, you will find a box of aether-tight gloves against the west wall,” Eliza gestured to one side of the room and a handful of students shamefully walked over to grab a pair. “Today we will be observing deritium’s crystalline structure and observing its effects on plant life. Any questions before we begin?”

  Apparently, everyone knew what it was, which was surprising to Cira. She had only just learned about the substance recently. Around the time people started opening their samples and flattening them out to the thickness of a microscope slide, Cira felt herself eager to join in their intellectual pursuits.

  Cira had already been pleasantly surprised at the swath of knowledge in just the last half hour, just as Eliza said she would be, and had been wanting to learn more about deritium for some time. Firsthand from someone familiar with it would be ideal, so she set forth making her own slide, and expanding her perception just for kicks.

  Something immediately caught her eye and she raised a hand in question, “Eliza, I noticed the deritium samples in this room originate from six different sources—”

  “Shh!” Her dark eyes went wide with a finger over her lips, “Don’t spoil my lesson.”

  Instead of ridicule or laughter, this time students around her were surprised, immediately checking their own samples with a confused look on their faces. Perhaps that was one thing they were going to use microscopes for, but Cira didn’t know how her corporeal eyeballs were supposed to help her determine such a thing. In fact, now she was downright curious to find out.

  “Carefully now,” Eliza urged, “While touching it for a brief moment won’t do much, any degree of essential entropy is incredibly difficult to reverse. When considering the longevity of one’s soul, these are things you must consider. You all know of corporeal degradation, but even more dangerous is its inverse effect, aethereal dissociation. There is no way to fully remove the layers of corruption deritium leaves within your soul. Typically not something to worry about within a single lifespan, but one would have to reconstitute or otherwise reform the soul to remove this damage completely. There are supposedly various methods deep within inaccessible areas of the Archive, but I surmise it may even be possible to reverse aethereal dissociation by turning yourself into something like a demi-spirit and removing the corruption as one would manipulate their own element.”

  Eliza’s pointed glance fell on blind eyes as Cira quickly filled up a page of her notebook, but she would have thought it was an interesting theory. She took a sip of water from a glass made of ice and noticed the teacher had paused. As their eyes met, Eliza let out a long sigh and leaned into her microscope, “I would like you all to now sketch the crystalline structure…”

  Cira was terrible at sketching, so she used condensed light to reproduce it. Evidently the others had grown tired of commenting on her antics, so Cira happily filled up the next few pages of her notebook as Eliza had them switch samples around and discuss the supplied text. By the end of the lesson, Cira was so engrossed that the library had almost completely slipped her mind.