Chapter 6: Spite
The plateau was a silent, frustrating country. Violet stood in its center, feeling the sun-warmed stones of the university courtyard under her feet, and knew she was stuck. Level 21. It had been weeks since that triumphant leap to 20. The easy drip-feed from the Lotus patrons still flowed, a steady background hum that kept her cores topped up, but it no longer surged. It was maintenance. It was like eating only to remain hungry.
Back in their opulent suite at the Lotus, Kendra observed her with those glowing pink eyes, sipping a shimmering cocktail. “You’ve hit the first wall,” she said, not unkindly. “The beginner’s gains are over. What you’re doing now… it’s snack food. You need a feast.”
“I’m harvesting every night,” Violet argued, pacing the plush carpet. “I’m efficient.”
“You’re a tourist,” Kendra corrected, setting her glass down with a sharp click. “You visit the landscape of desire. You don’t own it. You don’t embody it. Your body… it’s a modest little calculator trying to run a pleasure palace’s mainframe. It can’t channel the voltage you need to break through.”
Violet stopped pacing. She hugged her arms around herself, over the simple cotton sleep shirt. She knew what was coming. “The transformation.”
“It’s not vanity, Violet. It’s optics. It’s antenna design.” Kendra rose, a fluid movement of silk and flesh. “Your current form broadcasts ‘nice girl trying hard.’ It attracts pity, maybe a bit of condescending lust. To pull the deeper, darker, more potent energies? You need to broadcast ‘goddess of filth.’ You need to be a question they’re desperate to answer, a itch they’d sell their soul to scratch. The magic responds to that signal. It rewards it.”
“I don’t want to look like… that.” Violet’s voice was small.
“Like me?” Kendra’s smile was a razor. “You’re afraid of becoming powerful? You’re afraid of being stared at? Darling, they stare anyway. The only choice is whether you weaponize the stare or let it diminish you.” She stepped closer, her scent of jasmine and ozone enveloping Violet. “Level 20 is the first off-ramp. Level 40 is the next. Each one is a chance to sculpt yourself into a more perfect instrument. To want sex more. To feel it more intensely. That isn’t a curse. It’s a direct line to the source code of the magic. Pleasure becomes fuel. Orgasms become tactical events.”
“I’m happy with my progress,” Violet insisted, her jaw set. It was true, in a way. She was passing her classes. The Dean’s suspicion was a badge of honor. The gnawing inadequacy that had haunted her every step was… quiet. Not gone, but muted. “I can keep up now. That’s all I wanted.”
Kendra just shrugged, a breathtaking ripple of platinum hair and bare shoulder. “Suit yourself. But the world doesn’t stop because you’re comfortable. And talent has a nasty habit of reminding you of your place.”
---
The Dueling Practicum was held in the Sunstone Arena, a vast, sand-filled circle under an enchanted dome that shimmered with containment fields. Professor Gunnar, a grizzled former battle-mage with a scar bisecting his lip, called out pairs from his clipboard.
“Valen. Dixon.”
A low murmur rippled through the gathered students. Adrian straightened from his casual lean against the wall, a slow, wolfish smile spreading across his handsome face. Violet’s stomach turned to ice. She hadn’t sparred with him since her transformation began. Since the taunts.
They took their positions on the scorched sand, twenty paces apart. Adrian wore his dueling leathers with an effortless arrogance. Violet was in her standard-issue robes, feeling suddenly childish in them.
“Begin!” Gunnar barked.
Adrian didn’t move. He just looked at her, his head tilted. “Heard you’ve been improving, Dixon. Let’s see it.”
Violet didn’t wait. She drew on her pink mana, feeling it warm and responsive in her core. She didn’t need complex somatic components anymore; desire was a raw, gestural thing. She thrust her hands out, palms forward. A wave of disorienting, feverish energy shot across the arena—not an attack, but a sapping field meant to cloud his focus with sudden, intrusive lust.
Adrian’s smile didn’t fade. He flicked his wrist.
A lance of pure, crackling blue force—disciplined, academic, brutally simple—speared through her pink mist and shattered it like rotten glass. The backlash made Violet stagger, her own magic sputtering.
“Cute parlor trick,” Adrian said, his voice carrying easily. “Is that what you’ve been learning? To give people erections?”
Snickers from the sidelines. Violet’s cheeks burned. She summoned fire, a roiling ball of orange flame licked with pink at its edges. She hurled it.
Adrian sighed. He didn’t even cast. He held up a hand, and a concave shield of solid force manifested. The fireball splashed against it and dissipated. The heat washed over him, ruffling his hair. He looked bored.
“Come on, Dixon. Show me the power.” He emphasized the word, making it a mockery. “You want to stand with the big kids? Fight like one.”
Rage, hot and clean, blasted through Violet’s fear. She screamed, channeling every ounce of her Level 21 power, drawing not just from her core but from the ambient energy of the arena—the students’ mild interest, their schadenfreude, their latent aggression. It swirled into her, a storm of grey and pink. She unleashed it as a torrent of pure concussive force, a visible shockwave of distorted air.
Adrian’s eyes finally sharpened. He brought both hands up, crossing his forearms. His own aura flared, a deep, solid azure. “Barrier.”
Violet’s attack hit the shield. The sand around Adrian’s feet exploded outward in a perfect circle. The shield held, but it visibly strained, flickering. A hairline fracture of light appeared in its surface.
For a second, hope flared in Violet’s chest. She’d made him work.
Then the fracture sealed. Adrian uncrossed his arms. “My turn.”
He didn’t chant. He simply pointed a finger at her feet.
The sand beneath Violet erupted. Not in an explosion, but in a precise, crushing vortex. It wrapped around her ankles like stone hands, yanking her off her feet. She hit the ground hard, the breath knocked out of her. Before she could even gasp, threads of blue force, like solid ribbons of lightning, snaked out from his fingers and wrapped around her wrists, her torso, pinning her to the sand.
She was utterly immobilized. Helpless. A bug on display.
Adrian walked over, his boots crunching in the sand. He stopped beside her, looking down. The class was silent. Professor Gunnar watched, arms crossed, giving no indication to stop.
“See,” Adrian said, his voice quiet, for her alone. “This is the difference. You learned a few cheap tricks to fool the exams. You maybe even fooled yourself. But this?” He nudged her ribs with his toe, not hard, but with a contempt that was worse than a kick. “This is reality. You are, and will always be, fundamentally weak. Your magic has no discipline. No backbone. It’s all frills and feelings.” He leaned down slightly, his shadow falling over her face. “Whatever you’re doing to scrape by, it’s pathetic. And everyone can see it.”
He straightened up, turned to Gunnar, and gave a curt nod. “Submission.”
The bindings vanished. The sand released her. Violet lay there, the coarse grains sticking to her tear-streaked face, the humiliation a physical acid in her veins. The scattered, polite applause of the class for Adrian’s efficient victory was the loudest sound she’d ever heard.
She didn’t get up until the arena was empty.
---
The Crimson Lotus VIP room was a cathedral of shadows and low light. Violet didn’t remember the walk back. She stood just inside the door, still in her dusty, sand-crusted robes.
Kendra was on the velvet divan, painting her toenails a venomous purple. She looked up, took in Violet’s expression—the shattered look, the grit, the furious, unshed tears—and said nothing. She simply screwed the cap back on the polish.
“Do it.” Violet’s voice was a rasp, stripped raw.
“Do what, darling?” Kendra asked, though she knew.
“The transformation. Everything. I don’t care. Just make me strong enough to wipe that fucking smirk off his face.” The words tore out of her, violent and sincere. “I want to be the question that breaks him. I want to be the answer he chokes on.”
Kendra’s pink eyes glowed. She put the polish aside and stood. This was the moment she’d been waiting for. Not coercion, but surrender. An offering born of hatred was just as valid as one born of desire.
“Of course.” Kendra stated.