My Sister Is The Villainess

The Unorthodox Creature Studies hall smelled like old iron and something underneath it, something faint and organic that I did not let myself think too hard about.

Rows of seats curved down toward a pit at the center of the room, sunken a full story below floor level, ringed with a low iron rail. Cages lined the far wall behind a second, heavier barrier, each one dark, each one silent, and I made a point of not looking directly at any of them for longer than a second at a time.

The professor was already waiting when we filed in.

She did not look like a teacher. She looked like something a teacher might have nightmares about. Tall, pale, black hair falling straight past her shoulders, a high-collared dress the color of dried blood, and eyes that tracked each of us as we found our seats with the unhurried patience of something that had never once needed to rush.

”My name is Eniphia,” she said, once the room had quieted.

”You are here to learn what waits for you on the other side of a gate. Most of you have imagined monsters your entire lives. Today, you will learn how wrong most of those imaginings are.”

”First, I will answer the most asked question: Why do we even need to go to the realm?

”It is simple, it is for two reasons, to get stronger and because if a ritual gate isn’t used for one month, the ritual gate in the academy being the pentagram you awakened on, the unorthodox creatures from the other side would enter Earth through that gate, if we do use it every month though, it remains sealed.

”Now, lets learn about unorthodox creatures.”

’Does she even breath?’

She turned, and a chalk-white diagram unfolded itself across the wall behind her, lines drawing themselves without a hand to guide them.

Six words were written there. Feral, Beast, Devil, Nightmare, Great, Ancient.

”Rank,” she said. ”How dangerous a creature is on its own. This alone tells you nothing about what it can do.” A second column bloomed beside the first.

This time, five words were written. Flesh, Fiend, Horror, Lord, Monarch.

”This is called a Class. How much unorthodoxity has soaked into its core. This tells you what it can do... and how intelligent it is.”

She let that sit a moment, eyes sweeping the room. ”Combine them, and you have a name. A Great Horror. A Nightmare Fiend. An Ancient Monarch, though I sincerely hope none of you ever have cause to know what that particular combination looks like up close.”

”You,” she said, pointing a slender finger directly at a boy in the front row, ”if a Beast Lord and a Devil Fiend stood in front of you, which would you run from first?”

He stammered something. She moved on without waiting for him to finish, entirely unbothered, as though the question had only ever existed to make a point rather than receive an answer.

”Rank tells you how hard it hits. Class tells you how it will try to kill you. A Fiend corrupts and a Lord commands others to do both on its behalf. Learn to read both halves of a name before you ever learn to fight what wears it.”

She turned back to the wall, and the diagram shifted again, a third structure rising beside the first two.

Seven words were written there this time. Seed, Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond, Astral.

”And this,” she said, ”is what you are. Or what you could become, if the Realm of Evil does not end you first.

”Other than this, there are six human ranks, which are Fighter, Awakened, Demi God, and Angel — though Awakened and Demi God each split into two. Fighters are the ones who have a Seed core. Inferior Awakened are the ones who have a Bronze core or a Silver core, while the ones who have a Gold core are called Superior Awakened. A Saint is someone who has a Platinum core. True One are the ones who have a Diamond core, and Angels are the ones with an Astral core. Inferior and Superior Awakened are collectively called Awakened, which is also the terminology for anyone who has a core at all — hehe, it is a pity that Awakened sometimes get mistaken for Fighters when introducing themselves.”

She looked towards us and sighed.

”Sorry, I got off topic. Saint and True One are collectively called Demi Gods.”

”Most of you will die Awakened,” Eniphia said, flat, unbothered, the same tone she might use to describe the weather. ”That is not an insult. That is arithmetic. Very few reach Demi God. Angel is a word most of you will only ever hear spoken about someone else — which can still be considered a blessing, considering only one in a hundred people ever become a Superior Awakened, let alone an Angel.” She paused. ”I say this not to frighten you. I say this so that when you are frightened later, in a moment that actually matters, you will already know the shape of it.”

The room had gone very still.

She clapped her hands once, and the diagram behind her dissolved into chalk dust and nothing.

”Enough theory,” she said. ”Theory does not bleed. Theory does not learn from being wrong. You will.”

My stomach dropped somewhere around my knees.

’That sentence did not need to be that ominous.’

Her eyes swept the room again, slower this time, deliberate, and I made the mistake of not looking away fast enough.

”You,” she said.

I looked around instinctively, the way you do when you are seventy percent sure someone else is being addressed and thirty percent sure your entire body has just betrayed you by making eye contact at exactly the wrong moment.

”Yes. You, Mister Edmund Rhys, son of Baron Alaric Rhys. Come down.”

Arthur made a small, strangled sound beside me that might have been sympathy and might have been barely restrained laughter.

I made my way down toward the pit on legs that had developed a sudden, urgent interest in not cooperating, and Eniphia met me at the rail with something in her hands that had not been there a moment ago.

It was a morning star. It had an iron handle and a chained head.

”Spiritual Power,” she said, pressing the handle into my palm before I had fully agreed to take it. ”Every Awakened carries it. Rituals using mysticism can form it too, which is how this weapon was made, and well, I am going to be honest, it has more bite than your arm currently does. So use it accordingly.”

The weight of it settled into my hand, heavier than I expected, humming faintly against my palm like something with its own quiet pulse.

”What am I fighting?” I asked, and my voice came out steadier than I felt, which I counted as a small, private victory.

”A Feral Flesh,” Eniphia said, already turning toward the cages. ”The weakest possible combination of Rank and Class that exists. An untrained adult civilian could kill one with a spiritual weapon, so I think you should be able to as well.”

’That sentence had entirely too many qualifiers in it for my comfort.’

A groan echoed from the far wall as one of the cages began to rise.

The thing inside did not look like a monster, not at first, not the way I had pictured monsters my entire life. It looked wrong in a smaller, more intimate way, a mass of pale, glistening flesh no larger than a housecat, clinging low and close like it had grown there rather than been born anywhere at all, thin dark veins pulsing visibly beneath skin that looked wet even from here. A single joint flexed where no joint should exist. Somewhere in the mass of it, without any clear eyes, without any clear face, I had the sudden, certain feeling that it was already looking directly at me.

The crowd above the pit had gone completely silent.

I gripped the morning star with both hands, spikes catching the light, Spiritual Power thrumming faint and warm against my palms, and stepped toward the center of the sunken ring.

Eniphia raised one hand toward the cage’s release lever, unhurried, entirely calm, the same calm she had worn through the entire lecture.

”Begin,” she said.

The cage door dropped and the Feral Flesh moved.