29 – Psyche really has a lot on her plate

Psyche stood at a sink in a deserted bathroom, leaning her body towards a mirror as she carefully inspected her reflection. 

Earlier she’d looked around and determined that she was alone, even setting up a few barriers to make extra sure she wouldn’t be surprised or interrupted, which was probably why she didn’t notice that a few sinks down something strange was emerging from one of the faucets.

She first confirmed that her indigo braids were neatly arranged, and then poked and pulled at her dark brown skin until she was confident it showed no signs of dullness or imperfection.

As for her eyes…  

She moved even closer to the mirror, frowning as she squinted at herself.

As for her eyes, she wasn’t sure.

Were they bloodshot, or had the capillaries in her scleras always been that thick? Did she look tired, or had the skin around her eyes always been a little darker than the rest?

She checked her reflection so often now that she felt like she was losing the ability to judge what she saw, until she began to question if the girl looking back at her was even her at all, as though her face was just a word repeated ad nauseam until it lost all meaning. 

At this she gave both of her cheeks a light smack, jolting herself out of that ridiculous train of thought. 

What did it matter what she looked like? What was a face but a random assortment of bone and flesh and skin, anyway? As long as it was attached to her, didn’t that make it hers?

But if it was her face, shouldn’t it be on her side? Why did it insist on revealing her chronic sleep deprivation with such quick and merciless accuracy? If she didn’t have to check it so often, she wouldn’t be suffering from such silly flights of fancy.

Why did hiding exhaustion have to be so… exhausting?

Belatedly realizing that she’d been staring at herself for gods only knew how long, she gave up on evaluating her own appearance and turned to ask, “Thalia, how do I—”

Only to freeze and fall silent when she remembered that Thalia wasn’t there.  

Instead she finally noticed the creature that was pouring from a distant faucet like a bundle of liquified threads, filling the sink below with its tangled yellow body.

As if acknowledging her attention, it extended a few longer, thicker fern-like growths, whose fronds gently shuddered in the air as if stirred by a breeze.

She slapped a hand to her mouth and choked back a scream. 

Then, resisting the urge to run away, she grabbed the sides of the sink in front of her tightly and forced herself to breathe evenly and focus on her reflection.

… And here she thought she’d gotten used to seeing those damn hallucinations.

No, she corrected. She had gotten used to seeing them, it was just that the alarming conversation she had before coming here had thrown her off. If not for all the insane things her new research assistant babbled at her, stirring her mind into an anxious mess, she’d have been just fine.

As though to prove this, she shot a glare at the vision, her poisonously bright orange eyes burning as she demanded, “What the hell are you looking at?”

It didn’t respond except to continue curling and unfurling its fronds as strands of itself steadily dribbled over the edge of the basin, threatening to spill over.

“Tch,” she spat with disdain, turning her head away so fast that she sent a few of her braids flying.

Even if this phantom was revolting, how could she keep getting frightened like this when she knew it wasn’t real? 

Back when she first started seeing the damn things she’d panic and insist on investigating them every time, but having long confirmed that no one else could see them, and that she couldn’t touch them or sense them through mana, she’d given up.

It was better to just think of them as yet another unfortunate side effect from her ill-fated foray into the Tomb of the Covenant.

In fact, compared to her insomnia, she vastly preferred the visions. If she could trade seeing them all the time in return for being able to sleep again, she’d do it in a heartbeat.

Exhaling a long sigh, she released the sink, shook out her cramped hands, and stood up straight.

She’d procrastinated enough. It was time to confront the conversation that had sent her running in the first place. 

Casting a recording spell, she sent, “Uncle Chiron, do you have a moment?”

“Yes, what is it?” came his swift reply. 

“I just had a very strange conversation with my cohort’s new research assistant—a girl named Euphrosyne. She knew a surprising amount about us, and made some very interesting claims… I don’t suppose you know of her?”

“I do, and everything she said to you is true.”

Psyche bit into her full lower lip, regarded her now inert receiver for a second, and guessed she was too tired and must have heard that wrong.

“Uncle, what was that again?”

“Young Saint Euphrosyne is who she says she is, and it’s true that you’re one of the Goddess’ Chosen Heroes. Congratulations.”

…

Psyche abruptly engaged in a violent struggle with her own arm as she attempted to put the receiver down gently when all she wanted was to smash the fucking thing to pieces.

She took a deep breath and sternly reminded herself that she couldn’t destroy it, because she couldn’t afford a new one.

Her uncle wasn’t the kind of person to joke about something like this. That meant there really was a new Saint, and a new Calamity coming, and the Goddess wanted Psyche to help out, and…

Surprisingly, that third part was what she was most distressed about.

She knew that was wrong, that she ought to be more upset that her country was in danger, that even if it hadn’t really felt like her country for a long time her people were still technically a part of it and therefore at risk.

Yet, whenever she looked for that feeling, all she found was an irritating and echoing emptiness, like the unpleasant clatter of a bucket dragged along the bottom of a dry well.

Maybe this was because she was a cold and selfish person. 

Or maybe there was simply a critical level of stress at which point any new stress added to it no longer registers, and she’d hit that point over the summer somewhere between the lawsuit she’d been threatened with, falling sick after visiting the Tomb, and the huge fight she had with her mother.

Either way, she didn’t care if the Lady had chosen her, Psyche deeply and emphatically didn’t want to do it.

There were millions of people in Cydonia, surely at least one of them was capable enough to replace her?

Picking her receiver back up, she said, “I’m not interested.” 

“Do you think you’re unqualified?” her uncle replied, his sarcastic voice echoing throughout the empty bathroom so loudly that Psyche automatically checked once again that the barriers she’d put up earlier were secure.

“I never said that,” she snapped back, squeezing the transparent artifact hard to resist the urge to throw it. “I’m just too busy.”

Right now, her graduate project was all she could afford to care about. Completing it was the only way to save her mother’s life, and she was running out of time.

Most spiritual possessions had manageable side effects because most spirits were weaker than humans, but Psyche’s mother wasn’t so lucky. The spirit who’d entangled with her was powerful enough to pose a real threat, and unfortunately lacked either the sanity or intelligence needed to be negotiated with.

For Duchess Atalanta to survive, exorcism was the only option.

Unfortunately, it was a practice that had been lost for centuries, with little to no useful information on it remaining, so Psyche had been forced to start from almost zero. 

Still, she never begrudged the effort this took. She believed that saving the Duchess was worth it and planned to see things through to the end, no matter the cost.

 Even if that wasn’t what her mother herself wanted.

 “You need to think it through first,” Chiron’s message replied.

 “Uncle, you understand what my priorities are.”

“Psyche…” 

Chiron’s message paused in exasperation, then continued in a tone renewed with annoyed vigor, “If you can’t see the reasons for yourself, do you really expect me to feed them to you? Is that how my sister raised you?”

 Psyche was about to argue but stopped short, her eyes narrowing.

 She loved her mother, but Duchess Atalanta was one of those infuriating people who taught almost entirely by asking questions, giving out hints, and then expecting the listener to draw their own conclusions. She believed that it promoted critical thinking, and to a degree Psyche agreed with her, but when she was so overwhelmed and sleep-deprived that she could barely think it could be very frustrating to speak to someone who insisted on holding the answers just out of reach.

 Then again, this was partly her fault. 

 Other than her initial illness, she’d kept the side-effects she received from the Tomb a secret. If just a few days of fever had been enough to make the Duchess fly off the handle, cutting off all of Psyche’s resources and trying to pull her out of school, then if she ever got wind of the fact that her daughter was also seeing things and hadn’t slept in months…

 Atalanta would, without a doubt, try to lock her up again and force her to get treatment, and this time her father, her guardian, and Chiron might agree.

 Putting down her receiver, she ignored the way the hallucination next to her had started spilling onto the floor in earnest and tried to force her mind to focus.

 Being tired didn’t change the fact that she’d always been clever, perhaps even more so now than before her mishap in the Tomb. Things she once had to mechanically memorize now stuck with her instantly, concepts that would have taken effort to comprehend unfolded as gracefully as flowers blooming, and she’d even been able to make impressive progress into a field that was entirely new to her in a very short amount of time.

It was just that her chronic exhaustion sometimes muddled things. She used to be sharp all the time, but nowadays her mind was either cloudy and useless or as bright and vast as a clear blue sky, and she seemed to have no control over which one it chose.

 Right now thinking at all was a struggle, but she kept at it, slogging through her own sluggish and swamp-like thoughts until she finally dredged something up.

 “Uncle… do you think the Sixth Saint might be capable of exorcisms, like Four was?”

It was widely known that the Fourth Saint had been blessed by the Lady with the divine ability to perform exorcisms, and had passed the knowledge of the art down to her students.

 Even if those techniques were lost now, the fact that someone succeeded had always given Psyche hope.

 “We’re not sure yet what Six’s abilities are, but it’s not impossible. Still, if that’s all the use for her you can think of, Euphrosyne must not have told you everything yet. Let me know when you figure it out. I’ll be waiting.”

 A muscle in Psyche’s eye twitched.

 This bastard. If he wasn’t her elder, she’d give him a beating.

 Still, she was ashamed she’d overlooked something so obvious. If there was even a sliver of a chance that the Young Saint herself could be the key to Psyche’s project, then there really was no way she could turn this offer down.

“Oh… before I forget. There is something else—the other Hero who’s been recruited will be in your cohort as well. I don’t think you’ve met her yet, but I’m sure you’re familiar with Crown Princess Chione.”

Psyche’s breath caught in her chest as her confused mind fumbled its attempt to process this.

She cast another message spell, and her lips parted, but no sound came out. After struggling for a while longer, she finally managed to ask, “Uncle, you’re sure?”

“Yes, but there's no reason to panic yet.”

Psyche nearly let out a hysterical laugh, only to swallow it hard and start hiccuping instead.

Pressing her hand to her chest and using magic to calm her diaphragm, she wondered if ‘panic’ was really what she was feeling. Maybe it would be more accurate to call it despair, because this situation felt so deeply unfair.

Why was it that every time someone threw her a rope, she’d grab it only to find an anchor attached?

The man who’d invented blessing readers had agreed to work with her for a staggering amount of money, only to inexplicably renege on their deal and threaten to sue her.

Studying within the Tomb of the Covenant made her sure its magic was an option, only for her to have to give up on it after developing some type of madness. 

Now this cohort and the Young Saint had offered her a tiny new light in the darkness, only to immediately snuff it out by adding the First Princess.

Trying and failing to keep the bitterness and betrayal she felt out of her voice, she replied, “After what her mother did to Mom—to your sister—how can you possibly expect me to go anywhere near the Princess? Have you lost your mind?”

There was no mystery as to who was responsible for the Duchess’ curse. The evidence their family had gathered against the Empress was as abundant as it was useless, since any and all attempts to hold her accountable had been stymied by the rest of the imperial family.

“Her stepmother,” Chiron clarified.

It was a term no Hesperian would normally bother with, since they believed one was either a mother or one wasn’t, but the rest of the country considered it significant enough to differentiate it. 

“The Princess isn’t what’s important here, and furthermore, she’s aligned against the Empress. She has no reason to target you.”

“Yet,” she hissed back. “She has no reason yet, but what if she finds one? And that’s assuming she needs one at all—you know what that family is like! What do you expect me to do if she tries to sabotage my project!?”

“If that’s what you’re worried about, just keep her at a distance and focus your efforts on the Young Saint. I’ll find time to speak with her later and remind her that managing the Heroes is her responsibility.”

“Chiron, you really…,” she began to record, but cut herself off when she caught sight of movement beneath her. 

A collection of those bright yellow tendrils had squirmed across the floor and were now reaching out to wind around her bare ankle. The firm knowledge that they weren’t real wasn’t enough to stop Psyche from yelping like a startled puppy and leaping a few feet away, her heart pounding like a hammer.

“Tears of the fucking Mother, you fucking—! Agh!” she cursed, finally giving in to her impulse to throw her receiver and violently chucking it at the hallucination. 

Her aim was true, but the device crashed right through the vision harmlessly, making an alarming cracking sound as it hit the floor and slid towards the wall.

Realizing what she’d done, her eyes widened in horror as she chased after it, sending the tendrils scattering away from her in alarm. Picking the artifact up, she looked at the new crack running down the center of it and moaned in despair.

“No, no no… please still work, please still work—”

Its surface flickered as she pressed her mana into it, but despite its broken appearance it seemed to still be operational. Sighing in pained relief, she hit it and herself with a few disinfecting cantrips, then turned to give the creature sprawled across the floor a furious glare.

“You!” she hissed, trying to stomp on one of the mycelium-like bundles with her sandaled foot. “Don’t I have enough trouble without you scaring the daylights out of me!? Gods, sometimes I wish you were real just so I could kick you!”

Much faster than she was, the threads dodged her attempts to flatten it and quickly retracted back into its sink.

Putting her face in her hands, she moaned, “Stars above, these cursed things are going to be the ruin of me.”

She’d weathered all sorts of ridiculous rumors and accusations over the years, but if anyone got wind of the fact that she’d started seeing things, her future as an heir would officially be over.

It didn’t matter if her hallucinations were a mostly harmless side effect, or that she knew they weren’t real and usually managed to ignore them.

She’d already seen firsthand what happened to people with problems like this. Even if her family was kind enough to want to keep her, she’d live the rest of her life bringing them nothing but shame unless she could convince them to expel her for their own good, or unless she left herself.

Taking a deep breath, she rubbed her face and tried to calm down. 

She couldn’t let anyone find out, and that meant she couldn’t let herself get used to interacting with these hallucinations no matter how much they pissed her off, not even when she was alone. 

She’d already held out for so long, she refused to slip up now.

As she was preoccupied with the vision, so much time went by without her sending Chiron a reply that he mistook her prolonged silence for reluctance and sent another message.

Her receiver let out a broken little chime as it arrived, and this time his voice finally contained a hint of sympathy,

“Psyche… I know this situation isn’t ideal, but you can’t afford to lose sight of the bigger picture. The Lady Herself has taken an interest in you and, by extension, my sister’s fate. You’ve already received help from one of Her Saints, and now She’s sent Her newest one directly to you. Are you really willing to give that up because of the Princess?”

Surprised, Psyche furrowed her brows and considered his words.

“Wait—what do you mean, I’ve already received help from one of the Saints?”

“Now that you’ve been recruited, I can tell you that when you asked me for help, both the initial direction for your research and the permission you were granted to visit the Tomb were favors from Calliope that I accepted on your behalf. Tell me, do you think I was wrong to do so? Or is running away really how you intend to repay Her Holiness?”

At this explanation, Psyche’s frantic mind finally calmed down. 

Other Cydonians liked to joke that Hesperians had no use for money since they only valued favors, and they weren’t entirely wrong. Even as a child Psyche had seriously collected them, and now as an adult she held a considerable amount of latent power through a web of verbal contracts alone.

However, those agreements were only worth as much as her integrity. Everything else aside, Chiron was right in that if Saint Calliope was the real source of the assistance she’d been given, then there was no way her sense of honor would allow her to refuse. In fact, if she reframed this whole ‘Hero’ and ‘Calamity’ business as just doing what she could when and where she could in order to repay favors, it felt a lot more palatable. 

“Chiron, couldn’t you have just told me that in the beginning?”

“If I make it too easy for you, what’s the point?”

Psyche made a sour face at her receiver.

What had made her mother and her uncle like this? Her grandparents were always so friendly and open, so it couldn't possibly be their fault, could it?

“Fine. I get it. I’ve got a cohort meeting in a few minutes, so before I head into the lion’s den, is there anything else you’d like to warn me about?”

The message that returned began with so much silence that Psyche thought her cracked receiver might have broken after all, but eventually Chiron said,

“… Psyche, I’m not authorized to share any more information provided to us by the Young Saint. Whatever she chooses to tell you and when is entirely left up to her discretion, do you understand? I’ve already bent a lot of rules for you.”

Psyche let out a long and lifeless sigh, then guessed, “You want to warn me about something to do with the First Princess, don’t you?”

“If you want to know anything, ask Euphrosyne.”

“Alright."

Stowing her receiver in her bag, she checked her reflection again and realized that eye circles were the least of her problems, as her earlier theatrics had completely ruined her makeup. Quickly pulling a few cosmetics out of her bag to touch it back up, she made a point of not looking anywhere else in the bathroom until she’d finished.

Then, cautiously glancing to the side, she saw that the vision had vanished.

Good.

Hopefully that meant it wouldn’t come back anytime soon.

The building her cohort had been assigned to was part of the Menagerie complex. Originally Psyche assumed this old, run-down location adjacent to a large population of smelly monsters was President Ianthe’s way of subtly expressing her displeasure with Psyche for learning her secret, but now she suspected her uncle’s involvement. The fact that most students and professors who used this building preferred to spend all of their time outdoors meant that even if it was dingy, it was relatively private, which was perfect for a cohort that just so happened to contain two Heroes and a Saint.

… Or, was it possible her uncle and the President were in on things together? 

Having relatives in the Golden Shield was as useful as it was annoying. The resources they could offer were truly one of a kind, but the trade off was that their secretive nature left Psyche constantly guessing who was and who wasn’t working with them.

 As she approached the door she paused, scowling.

 Judging by the two imperial knights now stationed outside it, she could guess that the Princess had arrived.

They pretended not to see her as she walked up to them, so she shamelessly gave both of them a once over.

 Good gods, she thought, Do they not allow scar treatments within the imperial knighthood?

 They both gave the impression that they’d been viciously mauled and set on fire. The red-headed one looked like someone had burned off one side of her face, and was missing a big patch of hair as a result, and the mint-haired one’s scarred mouth made Psyche guess something at least the size of a bear had tried to claw it off.

She couldn’t help but think that she could heal them both back to rights in less than ten minutes, but it wasn’t her place to offer, so instead she narrowed her eyes and asked, “I don’t suppose I’m allowed back inside?”

The mint-haired one replied in a rude, grating voice, “You are?”

“Young Duchess Psyche of House Lycoscura,” she replied, trying to hold back her annoyance. And this is my fucking cohort! The President literally set it up for me, why are you bastards even part of it at all!?

She was used to speaking her mind since the vast majority of people she ran into were ones she could boss around. However, she couldn’t afford to carelessly offend these knights, or the Young Saint, or the First Princess, so she needed to do her best to tone herself down.

Especially since, despite Chiron’s assurances, she was convinced conflict with the First Princess was inevitable.

 However…

Her bright orange eyes narrowed as the knight gestured permission, so she grabbed the door and opened it.

As long as the Princess was the one who started it, maybe she could use the Young Saint’s sympathy as a shield.

As she walked into the room, she did her best to pretend to be less standoffish than usual, thinking that as long as she could act even a little like Thalia then everything would be fine. 

“You’re back!” Euphrosyne shouted, startling the white-haired girl sitting at the desk next to her. Her leaf-green eyes wide with concern, she continued, “Are you okay? Do you need more time?”

“No need, I’ll do it,” Psyche said, giving the two of them a polite smile as she set her bag on a table at the front of the room. “Is there anything else you need for confirmation? Paperwork, my mana signature?”

“Ahh, um… no?” Euphy replied, and then in a smaller voice asked herself, “Oh no, should there be…?”

So far, Psyche had only met the Young Saint twice. Once when the girl broke into her cousin’s room and fainted, and again today.

However, she considered herself a good judge of character, and the initial impression she’d formed was this:

Euphrosyne struck her as a half-baked bun that could seriously benefit from a bit more time in the oven.

If Euphrosyne had been chosen as a Saint, then she must be talented, yet she constantly acted confused, hesitant, and seemed to think that her mere existence was somehow inconveniencing the entire world. Psyche felt that was an unacceptable way for the country’s savior to behave and wanted to know who the hell had been raising her until now, and why they’d failed to instill any sense of self-importance in her.

Having unconsciously started thinking of this whole ‘Hero’ situation like an extra-curricular club role she’d been unwillingly assigned, she wondered if she might be able to opt out of a few of the more burdensome Calamity-related events if she offered Euphrosyne some comportment lessons instead. 

Surely teaching a college student how to grow a spine would be less difficult than scuffling with cultists?