The training grounds of the Silford estate were large.
They had to be. The family produced adventurers and the grounds reflected that, wide open space, reinforced training posts lined up along the far end, a thick stone wall behind them that had absorbed years worth of spells and strikes and was built specifically to keep absorbing them. It was not a delicate space. It was built to take punishment.
This would turn out to be relevant.
Arlott led them through the estate with Yuki walking beside him and the others trailing behind in varying states of composure. Word had moved through the household the way word always moves through a household, which is to say faster than anyone official had intended. By the time they reached the training grounds a crowd had already assembled along the edges.
Maids in their uniforms stood in clusters, talking quietly.
"Did you see her ears ?"
"I saw them. Are they real ?"
"Of course they're real, you can't fake ears like that."
"She's Lord Leon's assistant apparently."
"Lord Leon ? Really ?"
"That's what I heard."
"But he doesn't even have a maid."
"I know."
"So where did she come from ?"
Nobody had an answer for that one so they moved on to discussing her hair instead.
The guards along the perimeter were having a similar conversation with less whisper and more elbow.
Cain had arrived without anyone noticing him arrive, which was simply how Cain moved through spaces. He stood slightly apart from the crowd with his arms folded, his expression composed and attentive. Rosa was beside him, her curiosity having given up entirely on disguising itself and settled into open interest.
Julian stood to one side with his arms crossed. His jaw was set. He had an expression on his face that was working very hard to communicate that he was not impressed and had already decided this was a waste of his time.
Lena stood closer to the front, her dark eyes on Yuki, her dragon eyes not yet activated but ready.
Lily was beside her, quiet and watchful.
Arlott stopped at the edge of the grounds and turned to Yuki.
"I'll be straightforward." He said. "I don't disbelieve you. But before I accept this arrangement I need to see something for myself."
Yuki met his eyes, a bit puzzled. "A demonstration ?."
"Yes. A spell will do." He said. "Whatever you're comfortable with."
Yuki glanced around the training grounds. At the posts, the open space, the stone wall at the far end. At the crowd gathered along the edges watching her with everything from open curiosity to barely concealed skepticism.
She nodded and stepped forward onto the grounds alone.
The crowd quieted as she moved to the center of the open space. Her robes settled around her. Her two tails swayed behind her slowly. She faced the far end of the grounds, toward the line of reinforced posts and the thick stone wall behind them.
The quiet that settled over the training grounds was the particular kind that happens when a large group of people simultaneously decide to stop talking and start paying attention.
"Think she can actually cast ?" one of the maids whispered.
"She's a beastfolk. They don't usually use magic do they ?"
"Some of them do."
"How strong do you think she is ?"
"Hard to say. She looks..."
"What ?"
A pause.
"I don't know. Something about her feels different."
Yuki stood with her back to all of them and looked at the posts.
Right now this was the last test before she can finally meet her master.
"This will be a piece of cake" She raised one hand.
A small flame appeared at her fingertips. Violet at the edges and darker toward its center. The size of something ordinary. Something manageable. She held it there for a moment, steady and contained.
Then she let it go.
It moved across the training grounds in a clean straight line and hit the first post.
For exactly one second everything was completely fine.
Then the hellfire did what hellfire always does regardless of what its user intends.
The first post didn't burn.
It ceased.
There one moment. Gone the next. Not a scorch mark. Not ash. Just gone,The flame kept moving. The second post followed the first. Then the third. By the fourth it had spread sideways, widening, reaching out in both directions with a quiet and absolute thoroughness that had nothing to do with a basic spell and everything to do with what Yuki fundamentally was regardless of her current form.
The stone wall at the far end met the hellfire.
The left half of the stone wall stopped being a wall.
Not cracked. Not broken. Stopped. The edges of the remaining half were smooth in a way that stone is never smooth, clean and final, as though the missing half had been carefully removed by something that didn't leave marks.
The heat rolled back across the training grounds in a wave.
The crowd took one collective step backward.
Then the flame was gone.
The training grounds were quiet.
Six reinforced posts, gone.
Half a stone wall, gone.
Yuki turned around and looked at everyone.
"My apologies." She said, with complete composure. "I misjudged the output slightly."
The silence lasted another full second.
Then it broke all at once.
"What." Said a maid.
"The wall." Said a guard.
"Half the wall is just." Said another maid.
"Gone." Confirmed the first guard.
"That was a spell ?" someone said from the back.
"That was the basic fire ball spell right ?.
"What does her high tier look like ?"
"I don't want to know."
"I definitely don't want to know."
One of the younger maids had grabbed the arm of the one next to her and was holding on with both hands. The one being held did not seem to mind because she was doing something similar to the guard beside her who was standing very still and staring at the smooth clean edge where the wall used to continue.
Cain had not moved. His arms were still folded. But the line of his shoulders had changed by a fraction and his eyes had not left Yuki since the first post disappeared.
Rosa was staring with no pretense of composure whatsoever. Her mouth was slightly open.
Lena's dragon eyes had activated on their own. She was reading the residual mana hanging in the air where the posts used to be and what she was reading was making her expression do something she wasn't entirely in control of.
'This mana.' She thought. 'What is this.'
It wasn't like anything she had measured before.
Arlott looked at the remaining half of the wall.
Then at Yuki.
Then at the wall again.
He let out a slow breath through his nose.
'Leon,' the issue now wasn't why Yuki was here, no it was how his little boy had managed to meet such a person, not only that but she's pledging complete servitude to him, he knew his son was strong but this ?, Even this was too much for him to handle.
He thought simply, with the quiet acceptance of a father who has long since made peace with the fact that his son does not operate by ordinary rules but continues to be surprised by the specific shape this takes.
'Perhaps this truly was the golden generation' He thought.
He looked at Yuki.
"Arlott held her gaze for a moment.
Then he nodded once.
"You're accepted." He said.
Julian had not moved since the flame left her hand.
He was standing in exactly the position he had taken to communicate that he was not going to be impressed. Arms crossed. Jaw set. Expression prepared.
He was not thinking about that anymore.
He stared at the smooth clean edge of the half wall.
Then at her.
Then at the wall again.
For the first time all morning Julian had nothing to say.
He wasn't sure he had anything to say for the foreseeable future.
That was a new feeling.
And of course...
He was not enjoying it.