Veritas Virumque/P2E1

"The judge would walk me back to the door of his office, pat me on the shoulder and say in a friendly tone of voice: "That's all for our Antichrist today.""

By the time Turnus returned to Ever After High, it was late at night and Orleans was asleep. Turnus slid into his pyjamas and tucked himself neatly into bed as not to disturb his roommate. He closed his eyes, then opened them. He was far too aware of the fact that he was meant to be sleeping.

He didn’t want to dream.

Sleep, dreams, these were all essentially things associated with incubi or cambion.

Was he going to live the rest of his life like this? Hyper-aware of this new fact about him, hyper-aware of how very little detail might relate to it? It was as if he was transported back again to being fourteen… fourteen and fresh off the boat in Fairytale Europe, realising what intense degree of reliance people had on magic here.

He tried to soothe himself with this logic: the fact that been true all his life, and he had never had any trouble with sleep. The only thing that changed in the way he navigated the world was his knowledge.

In the morning, he passed on bro-eakfast.

~*~

It became habit now, didn’t it? How after school, he would dive straight for the Lifairy. He knew the hexact corner of the place he preferred, and what angle to keep his MirrorBook screen tilted at, so the glare of the sun wouldn’t burn his eyes.

Nearby him, the library assistant was floating. He had a strong English accent, and if it weren’t for the ID badge that was clipped onto his pocket protector, most people would have taken him for a student. He was also often referred to as “one of the librarians”, though if you called him one, he’d kindly correct you.

“You need a degree in lifairy science!” he had said, once. “Perhaps that is something I will focus on post-destiny.”

Before the wedding, Turnus would have simply noted the horns atop the library assistant’s head and say nothing more. Even devils suffered the woes of capitalism and had to take up labour, surely.

But now, any reminder of infernal creatures only reminded him of his father. When Turnus looked at one, he would feel shame, not because he was truly ashamed of his existence, but ashamed of how his own father concealed a truth from him.

“Hexcuse me,” Turnus said, craning his head up to address the lifairy assistant. “I’m looking for a book.” On a scrap of paper, was a scrawled-down ISBN. It was a number of a book on the Matter of Britain, specifically a compilation of all the mythical creatures in the book. It included one of the most detailed accounts of Merlin’s cambion existences, though there was no saying that such detail was either precise nor accurate.

The lifairy assistant took out his MirrorPhone, and typed in the number carefully. “You know, you could have just given me the name.”

“I-” Turnus had no response for that, but let the lifary assistant meticulously type out the name away into a MirrorPad.

“Ah, funny that,” said the lifairy assistant. “Someone just before you was looking for the same thing! She didn’t check if out yet, though, so you’ll find her… around… somewhere.” He frowned. “I can help search?”

“No, I’m good.”

“She was heading in--” he gestured, “-- that vague direction. Surely you’ll find her, she was very recognisable. Literal Roman Emperor.”

There was only one person that it could be.

“Polynices!” called one of the more senior lifarians. “AT, Shelf F321!”

“On it!”

And so, one demon was gone.

And a quarter-demon went off in search.

He found Ablative Charming quickly enough, as the girl’s dress and presence commanded attention at every turn. She occupied an entire coffee table, resting on a beanbag, and was poised with her chin resting in her palm like a dedicated war general.

“I was looking for that book,” Turnus said, as his introduction, and sat down on a beanbag opposite.

“Well, know thy enemy,” she responded. “That’s why I’ve been reading this.”

“I’m not trying to get acquainted with my enemies. Turn to the section on Merlin’s origins.”

She did. The book was spread to an etching of Merlin’s mother - a priestess, talking to Vortigern, explaining the miraculous existence of her son. On the next page, was an etching of Merlin himself, being enchanted by Nimue, the second Lady of the Lake.

“This,” Turnus gestured to the spread of Merlin’s mother talking about her miraculous conception, “is what resulted in my father. Out of all the things I could have found out at my brother’s wedding, being a quarter-demon was not one of them.”

“You don’t look a quarter-demon.”

That was not quite what Turnus wanted to hear.

“I mean, maybe if I squint. Now that you mention it, I guess your eyes are remarkably golden, but who pays attention to people’s eyes these days? From my personal experience, people swoon over my biceps.”

“This is so not relevant.” Turnus changed the subject. “What happened in the week I was gone?”

“Met my King Arthur. Funny boy. Not sure if I want to talk to him again,” Ablative frowned. Her eyes were still on the book. Clearly his question was a second concern. “Uh, Eleanor posted like two blogs onto Veritas, both of them on the safety of Wonderland, and apparently, she got backlash from other Arthurians, saying she should care about Camelot more.”

“Nice,” he said in response, keeping his eyes on the book. He tried his earnest to read upside down, but gave up halfway through a sentence, and spun the book around so he could read it properly. Ablative gave no care for that action, for she was already wrapped up in her own words.

“Oh, and the other day, POMPOUS was like--” Ablative raised her voice only slightly. She launched into a rambling about a prince that Turnus did not know, did not care for, and he tuned her out.

When she was done, he had gone over the entire page by himself, and was ready with questions. “You read, don’t you?”

“Yeah, of course.”

“How much do you know about the Theory of Magic?”

The Theory of Magic is a study that has persisted as long as memory. The existence of magic is undeniable - call it what you will. Energy, particle, wave, force. Human curiosity has persisted as long as memory.

“Uh,” said Ablative. “It’s never really been relevant to me. You could have just asked, like, ‘Ablative, how much do you know about quantum physics?’. They’re basically the same thing, right? Theory of Magic, and quantum physics.”

“Ehh,” said Turnus, who was sixteen and only understood things on a surface textbook and YouMirror videos level. “I guess. I just wanted someone to talk to about the fae-human-celestial division of magical expression.”

“I’m not equipped. Find yourself a new armoury.”

“Thank you anyway,” he said, and took out his MirrorPhone to take pictures of pages from the book, before returning to his station.

~*~

The magic of angels and the magic of demons are fundamentally the same. The only difference is morality and ethics, and even so, that’s just a philosophical discussion away.

To keep things short, Turnus checked out a few books on demon magic.

He talked to other demons.

He talked to demons born demons, and demons once human. Polynices, the lifairy assistant, tried to explain the experience, but he struggled. For most demons, celestial magic is so natural, that instinct blindness made their words fail.

To keep things shorter, a few incantations later, with every book checked out returned to the lifairy, Turnus Wyllt came to the conclusion that demonic magic, too, was barred from him.

~*~

Despite having gotten off work, Gabriel was still working. By the end of the semester, he was hexpected to sit his final exams for a diploma at Ever After High. To cram four years of an education into a few months of self-studying was no easy task.

Past routine had prepared him for this. Gabriel Fanfarinet was used to working a day job and taking night classes. He was used to keeping textbooks propped up at his desk, and used to keeping photos of his notes on his phone so he could snatch every second to study. There was never a period in his life that he worked harder than the years after he had lost his mother. It was the luck of having public housing that kept him stable, and public libraries that held books that taught him what to do and say.

He worked hard enough to be a legal scribe, and eventually to start clerking. Out of luck, he always seemed to be surrounded by people who “appreciated his work ethic”, as if the fairytale universe had purposefully put them there to keep him safe.

But it was luck, surely - just pure luck, that got him into the situation he was in now. Luck to have been the son of Fanfarinet, luck for Fanfarinet’s nephew to have found him and take him here to Ever After, the land where elites mingled with elites. He was one of them now.

At heart, Gabriel had hoped to go to university. He would have entered into a public university in Paris in the upcoming autumn, had Bastion not showed up at his workplace. That plan only changed slightly. Once summer fled, Gabriel would attend school again, at the University of Ever After.

Perhaps he was going to live destiny and die. But he was going to die as a learned young man, as his mother wanted him to be. Perhaps that wouldn’t be so bad.

Gabriel pushed his glasses back up his nose and pushed his textbook slightly to the side, then rested his head between a nest of his arms.

A pamphlet of “post-destiny villain resources” served as a bookmark. “The Pocket Reference Book For Navigating Legal Issues As A Destiny-Assigned Villain” was used as a paperweight.

His rest was rudely interrupted by an email notification on his MirrorPhone.

Yet another document had been emailed to him, for him to review, to edit and send back. Even though he was kingdoms away from the people he’d been receiving documents from, Gabriel still felt like an intern assigned to fetching coffees and running things through paper shredders. It gave him an odd sort of nostalgia - a strange pain in remembering that time when he was clerking for lawyers. This was not much different, he reckoned, it was just that the people’s names were much more well-known.

“I hope I’m doing her proud…” he said aloud, to no one but himself, thinking of his mother. His voice trailed off.

He opened up the document, and kept it open on his laptop’s fourth desktop. Gabriel Fanfarinet learnt to compartmentalise his life early. One desktop for Ever After High work, one desktop for this consulting work, one desktop for his own personal life and the fourth for any fellow legacies (past and present) that wished to contact him.

After half an hour of combing through it and editing it to the best of his ability, Gabriel sent the document back, and returned to his studies.

He was just about to finish one practise question when he got another message - a call to MirrorChat from the House of the Adalinda. With a tired sigh, he accepted the question. It was only 8pm, after all.

The two queens, at this hour, were still in their day clothes. They were still in their office, with documents all spread out, and scribes and servants running around looking busy. Coco-Beatrice Adalinda, the Serpent Queen, had her laptop out, and was typing feverishly. She sat in the background, clearly concerned with other matters.

Concordance Beauty, the Princess Consort, was using her MirrorPad for the video call.

“Hi Gabriel,” said Concordance. “Glad you could make it at this hour. I would apologise for disturbing you, but I suppose there is nothing more urgent that this.”

“What’s so urgent?”

“My daughter. Pythia is always my greatest concern, you may understand if you ever have children one day, but that’s not very likely,” she said. “She’s always so busy, so studious, always doing her best. I’m just so sorry for her, now that her little playmate has run off.”

That’s a very weird way of saying close family friend, Gabriel wanted to say, but held his tongue. He was in the company of a royal, and that was absolutely not proper decorum. “And you already understand that whatever happened was not my decision.”

“No, I don’t know who that Grim Reaper thinks he is. Bastion Fanfarinet would probably never sink so low as to abandon Pythia, would he? Sometimes I wonder if Lanius just puts thoughts into his head, but don’t tell him that I said that, will you?”

Gabriel Fanfarinet only worked closely with Lanius on one thing, and that was maintaining the secret of Bastion Fanfarinet. He knew the only reason why the Adalindas were so involved was due to their close association with the boy, as well.

“No, I won’t,” he promised.

“Please do talk to her. You’re a Fanfarinet after all. That name has importance among D’Aulnoy legacies, you know. Pythia loves Ever After High a lot, and you will too, and I hope her last few years aren’t soured by this selfish action.”

“D’Aulnoy stories were once famous, more so than the Grimm stories of their time…” Gabriel reiterated. “That’s fine with me, your Highness. One has to maintain the tradition, after all.”

“There’s this cafe in BookEnd, I’ll send you the address. Go have a playdate there!”

The video ended, and the next email he received was a calendar invite.

Gabriel leaned back in his seat, and rested his eyes.

He thought about his own life. The falling of his own father, the rising of his status in this fairytale world.

Lanius Nightshade always did love an underdog story.