Chapter 537: Chapter 537: Selara’s Help
Trafalgar closed the door behind him.
"I do, actually. I wasn’t even sure I’d find you here. Since the year’s over, I thought you might’ve already left the Academy."
Selara gave him a look that hovered sowhere between offended and amused while her hands kept working without pause. One vial turned slowly between her fingers, the liquid inside folding into itself in dense green spirals as she mixed whatever madness had caught her interest today.
"It would have been nice to have a vacation," she said. "I think I deserve one, actually. A long one. Tragically, the world disagrees." She kept turning the vial, goggles still resting on her forehead. "We’re preparing for next year, fixing paperwork, pretending the Academy runs on order, and getting ready for the next wave of hundreds of students who’ll co in and ruin the halls with their talent, their lack of talent, and their inability to read simple instructions."
A small grin touched her mouth.
"You, at least, got lucky. You’ll be in second year."
"Right," Trafalgar said. "Well, I wanted your help. It’s not about crafting a new item, before you say no again. I’d like you to analyze a sample of sothing I don’t understand."
That caught her.
Selara stopped turning the vial and looked at him with open curiosity.
"A sample?" she said. "Of what?"
Trafalgar did not drag it out.
"I won’t lie to you."
He set the leather hand-case on one of the few clear surfaces in the room, opened it, and took out a sealed vial. The liquid inside was dense, yellowish, thick enough to cling to the glass, with suspended traces of darker material drifting inside it like remnants that had never dissolved properly.
Selara slid the goggles down over her eyes.
At first glance, it did not seem to impress her. She stepped closer anyway, hand already half-extended, and Trafalgar let her take it.
She raised the vial to eye level.
Her expression did not change imdiately. She narrowed her eyes behind the lenses, turning the glass slightly to catch the light. A few seconds passed. Another. Trafalgar watched her face more than the vial, and that was where the shift ca. Sothing aligned in her head. She began separating ingredients, residues, structures. Whatever she saw, it hit harder the longer she looked.
The usual brightness in her face drained.
When Trafalgar spoke again, he continued from where he had left off.
"In the war my family was involved in, the one between the Sylvanel and the Thal’zar, several things happened. You’re obviously curious about what this is, so I’ll let you investigate it. But I need discretion."
Selara lowered the vial only slightly. She crossed the room, sat down on her chair with the sa vial still in hand, and this ti there was none of her usual playful noise in her voice.
"Trafalgar du Morgain, this is serious. Serious enough that a director of a prestigious Academy like ours should stay very far away from it."
"That’s why I’m asking for discretion," Trafalgar replied. "No one knows I’d ask you for help."
He paused, letting the mont breathe.
"And I could leave this sample with you. For yourself. You’d be free to do what you want with it."
That worked a little too well.
Interest flickered across Selara’s face again, far more dangerous than her earlier teasing. She kept staring at the vial as if it had begun whispering directly into her ear.
"Tell
what you want first," she said. "Then I’ll decide whether I’m helping you or not."
"Before anything else, I need discretion."
"Understood," Selara said. "But you’ll owe
heavily after this. Very heavily. I want high cuisine after being trapped in this place for so long."
Trafalgar nodded at once. "Done."
That seed to satisfy her.
"Good," he said. "I want your help finding who could have made this. Or at least I want nas. Soone capable of producing sothing like that."
Selara rested one leg over the other, still holding the vial.
"I need more than that. Give
the situation. Properly."
Trafalgar went quiet.
He disliked saying too much. Disliked opening doors that could not easily be closed afterward. But if he wanted real help, there was no point standing in front of Selara and pretending this was so small curiosity dragged in from a field exercise.
So he told her enough.
"You’re one of the Academy’s directors," he said. "I’m not naive enough to think this place knows nothing just because it stays neutral. You know about the void creature incident during the war."
Selara inclined her head slightly.
"That would be difficult to miss," she said. "I also know what you did there."
Trafalgar brushed that aside.
"What I did there is the least important part right now. As you know, one of the void creatures was different from the rest. Stronger and smarter. It was the one opening Rifts all over the battlefield." He watched her carefully. "That creature could speak our language."
Selara’s fingers tightened around the vial.
"And that," Trafalgar said, "is what made it possible."
The room changed. Just like that strange mont when soone hears sothing so far beyond what they expected that the mind takes a breath before it decides what to do with it.
Selara’s eyes opened wide.
The vial slipped from her hand.
Trafalgar moved at once.
[Severance Step].
His body blurred through the room in a short curved burst, and he caught the vial cleanly before it could shatter on the floor. By the ti the last echo of movent faded, he was standing beside her chair with the glass already secure in his hand.
"Please be careful with this."
Selara stared at him, stared at the vial, and then the serious expression cracked all at once.
"Yeah, sorry!" she said, voice jumping right back into its usual energy. "And deal. I’ll help you. Obviously. How could I not? Now give
the little monster."
Trafalgar handed the vial back to her, though with more reluctance than before.
"Before that," he said, opening the case again, "I also have notes related to it."
He pulled out several sheets, many of them filled with formulas, annotations, fragnts of process, and dense lines that ant nothing to him but would an far too much to soone like her.
Selara took them.
And transford.
Her face lit up so completely that Trafalgar almost regretted bringing them out. She started bouncing in place in her own chair, boots tapping the floor, hair shifting around her shoulders as she flipped through page after page with the kind of reverence most people reserved for holy texts or obscene wealth.
Trafalgar stood there with the case open, staring at her as if she had beco more dangerous in the last ten seconds.
He decided not to comnt on the hopping.
"How long will it take?" he asked.
Selara did not even look up at first.
"One day," she said. "Co back tomorrow morning."
That was fast enough to be annoying.
"Understood," Trafalgar said. "And please, I an it. I want discretion."
This ti Selara looked at him properly, and the playfulness dropped again.
"Trafalgar, this is serious. If anyone found out I was involved in sothing like this, I would be in danger. I’m obviously not going to speak." Her tone sharpened. "So I expect the sa from you."
"You’ll have it."
"Good."
That was all.
Trafalgar left her there with the vial, the notes, and whatever storms were about to begin inside that laboratory once the door shut behind him. He did not envy the glassware in that room.
For now, Selara was handled.
The next step was Bartholow.
He adjusted the grip on the case and headed toward the dormitory building of the Academy.
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