Vivi had fallen in love with Seven Cataclysms in part because of the spell diversity. The developers had tried to make magic feel real, a part of the world. The arsenal available to a high-level mage wasn’t just fireballs and bolts of lightning—though, the show-stopping offensive spells might have sold her on the game alone.

No, a mage had access to deeper and wider magic than that. As seen by her buffs and debuffs, invisibility, spatial warps, and even that tracking spell. All had been usable in the game, and often helpful in quests and combat.

There was even divination magic. The classic abilities, of course: [Detect Presence], [Detect Magic], [Detect Poison], and so on. But more interesting ones too: [Identify], for example, which described items more comprehensively than the built-in [Inspect], and [Farsight], which she’d made heavy use of.

For the most part, they were utility-based spells. Not a comprehensive branch of magic, and probably the one she was weakest in, since, speaking from a reasonable meta perspective, developers could hardly implement ‘reading the future’.

Scrolling through the filtered list of spells, she found what she wanted nestled between [Locate Person] and [Locate Object].

[Locate Creature].

Unfortunately, the spell required something to anchor off. An article of clothing for a missing person, perhaps. For a pet: hair, a collar, something like that. While she was a powerful mage, she wasn’t omnipotent. She couldn’t will the location of the missing cat into existence with nothing to go off of.

Studying the instructions for how to cast the spell, noting the suggested spell circle, she nodded to herself and dispelled the skill screen. Opening her inventory, she tapped the icon to summon the poster again.

She didn’t actually have to touch items to bring them out of inventory, but muscle memory was hard to shake. Seven Cataclysms hadn’t hooked into the brain so deeply it could read a person’s thoughts, which meant physical gestures were necessary for interacting with the game system, but this system did read people’s minds. Mental commands were often enough to perform a given task.

Which weirded her out when she thought about it, that something was reading her mind to fulfill her silent requests, but she piled it atop the growing mountain of strangeness.

With poster in hand, she scanned the drawing of a dapper gentleman of a cat. The paper announced him as Monocle, the name no doubt inspired by the distinctive black fur eye patch. A reward stood out in bold at the bottom: a full gold piece. She had a skewed sense of money, surely, but she expected that was quite a lot for a missing animal.

She didn’t have a great grasp on how technologically advanced this world was, and she doubted she could rely on her tentative understanding of Earth’s development as a parallel when magic suffused the world so thoroughly anyway, but she didn’t think paper would be the cheapest thing to procure in large quantities in this time period. Creating posters to hang and pass around wasn’t something a commoner would normally bother with, she figured.

Thus, it didn’t surprise her when her quest took her to a wealthy-looking three-story manor in one of the better parts of Prismarche. Having flown over the city a few times, she knew where the noble’s district was, and this was decidedly not that. A well-to-do merchant, perhaps, but not a family drowning in gold.

A servant fielded Vivi when she arrived at the door: a young woman in a maid’s outfit. She secretly admired the uniform, since, aesthetically speaking, she had always loved maids and butlers. Her own assistant—personal assistants were an integrated feature of Seven Cataclysms—had been a butler.

Winston. She wondered whether he was alive. It had been a hundred years. It wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume natural causes had claimed him. Then again, levels seemed to prolong lifespans. He might still be alive.

After explaining why she’d come, the maid escorted Vivi to the sitting room. Ten minutes later, she met with the person responsible for the save-Monocle campaign. Vivi’s earlier guess had been right: it was a young girl, around nine or ten, with brown hair and brown eyes. She looked hopeful as she walked into the room, earnestly blurting out, “You know divination magic?”

“I do,” Vivi said, standing to meet her. “But I’ll need something of his. His brush, if you have one. A toy. Hair would suffice but wouldn’t be ideal. The more conceptually linked the item is, the better the results.”

“Wow,” Daisy breathed.

“Divination magic is unreliable in the best of circumstances, Miss Daisy,” the maid said, obviously trying to moderate the young lady’s expectations for her own sake. “Not that the help isn’t deeply appreciated,” she added gracefully, giving a curtsy toward Vivi.

“Are you from the Institute?” Daisy asked.

The Institute?

Vivi wracked her brain. The Institute. The Thaumaturgical Institute? It hadn’t been the most crucial organization of Seven Cataclysms, but it had been featured somewhat prominently. Especially as a mage. It had been the background location for a number of Class Quests.

Lore-wise, the academy served as a place of learning for mages of all varieties—besides those who drew their power from the divine, like priests. But all others, such as mages, druids, conjurers, necromancers, and so on, attended the Institute. She’d been there many times, and had a strong mental image of the looming tower of white stone, with all its winding staircases, classrooms, and multi-storied libraries within.

“I’ve visited,” Vivi said. “But I’m not a graduate, or officially associated.”

Daisy seemed disappointed, but surprisingly for a nine-year-old, she had the grace to wipe the look away. Vivi wasn’t so socially daft she couldn’t read a child’s expression. Apparently, an Institute education represented a badge of merit for mages in this world, and not having one, the opposite.

“Um,” Daisy said, remembering the thread of conversation. “A brush or toy? We didn’t brush him much.” She glanced at the maid, who nodded in confirmation. “There was a ball of yarn he liked though? He played with it every day. I could go find it.”

“That would suffice.”

Vivi idled in the waiting room for a handful of minutes before Daisy and the maid returned with the ball of pale blue yarn in question. The thing was a shredded mess. Good. It seemed like a well-used toy of Monocle’s, an item that had become closely associated with him over the years.

“This will help?” Daisy asked hopefully.

“Perhaps,” Vivi said, already wincing at how she would need to fake a failure. Because she was here to help Saffra. The spell would almost certainly work, but she would have to claim that it hadn’t. She was orchestrating a sinister scheme: Saffra would be the hero of the day, not her.

She took the ball of yarn and set it on a side table. Her staff appeared with a pop of displaced air. She lowered the length of wood toward the item and began to cast.

She considered whether to repress the vocal command and hide the spell circle, but ultimately saw no reason to. The glowing arcane diagram appeared in the air as she slowly pulled together the spell. Very slowly. Trying to seem less competent than she was, so Daisy wouldn’t be surprised when she failed.

The maid pulled a starry-eyed Daisy away, and Vivi glanced toward them, mildly offended at the implication that she might hurt someone with wayward magic. But she guessed she couldn’t blame the maid for being protective.

“[Locate Creature].”

There had been a chance the cat was dead. It might have escaped somehow, yes, but it also might have met some grisly fate that had been covered up by the parents or another party, since the young lady of the house clearly cherished the animal.

She repressed a sigh of relief when images filled her head, and she confirmed Monocle was definitely alive.

As she had discovered earlier, even basic spells tended to be amplified when cast by her, no doubt thanks to the outrageous multi-million points she had in the two primary magic stats. She could adjust the strength mentally if she focused, but in this instance she hadn’t. Divination magic was finicky, and she had wanted the best information she could get.

The mythical Sorceress who had purged the world of seven earth-rending Cataclysms, it turned out, had more than enough magical strength to divine the location of a missing cat.

Images appeared in her head, snippets of Monocle jumping out an open window, being startled by some crashing noise out of vision, and bolting over the low garden wall. He disappeared into the hectic mass of the city.

The visions settled on a rather bedraggled cat, not nearly as finely distinguished as in his poster, slouched in a dark alley somewhere. And not somewhere—a tickling in her brain had her eyes drifting in the direction automatically.

“Did it work?”

Vivi braced herself for crushing the dreams sparkling in the eyes of a ten-year-old girl. “It did not. I’m not certain why. I apologize.”

The poor girl deflated so badly it looked like she might start crying. “Is there anything else you can do?”

Playing the villain, even if she wasn’t actually being a villain, was harder than she had thought it would be. Thankfully, the dismay didn’t reach her face. “I’m afraid not. I’ll keep an eye out, though.”

“I understand,” Daisy mumbled.

Vivi extracted herself from the scenario, feeling like dirt even if Daisy would be reunited with her beloved cat in an hour or two.

Now the trickier part. Arranging Saffra’s rescue mission.

First, she wrapped herself in [Invisibility] the moment she escaped from potential curious eyes. Flying across the city, she followed the magical link pointing her to Monocle. Divination spells typically gave vague hints at best, but she had enough mana to raze a city. Monocle’s presence was a blazing beacon to her senses.

She found the cat slumped in that alleyway she’d seen at the end of the divination. She dispelled her invisibility and stepped cautiously toward him. Sensing her, Monocle sprang to his feet, hissing and spitting with an arched back.

She paused as she considered what to do. Just…kidnap him?

She hadn’t formulated a master plan. The extent was: find Monocle, get him in front of Saffra, and let her be hailed as Daisy’s hero. Seizing the poor creature with a [Telekinesis] spell felt rather mean though.

She [Calmed] him first, and his panic at some stranger invading his alleyway eased into him settling on his haunches and seeming wary.

Mentally, she checked on Saffra’s tracking spell. She wasn’t far, searching through the same wealthy section of the city Vivi had just come from. Not a bad idea, but somehow Monocle had ended up slinking around the slums. No wonder Saffra, or anyone else, was having little success finding him.

“Guess I don’t have any choice,” she sighed. “Sorry for this, Monocle.”

Two [Invisibilities], [Flies], and a [Telekinesis] later, she was escorting her prisoner across the city. As expected, the cat found the whole process more than a little disturbing. She cast [Calm] as needed, though it was a bandaid solution.

“Oh, it’s for your own good, stop complaining,” she said, somewhat guiltily, to the flailing animal.

She flew until she found the red-haired catgirl prowling along, eyes swiveling left and right. She was stopping occasionally to show the missing cat poster to random passersby, who received her with varying levels of goodwill. Vivi almost set one of the rude ones on fire, but that would probably be an overreaction. She still considered it.

The floating, invisible cat who was only being moderately assuaged by Vivi’s calming spells made it clear she needed to sort this situation out sooner than later. She set him down in the corner of a set of steps and layered one last [Calm] onto him before dispelling the invisibility and hovering away to see how the situation developed.

Saffra’s vigilant posture wasn’t for show. Her swiveling head and keen eyes landed on Monocle the moment she turned the corner and found the—perhaps more disturbed than was logically appropriate for the situation—cat. She froze, referenced the paper in hand, and hesitated.

Vivi feared she would dismiss the creature as some other stray. The difference between the cat in the poster and the cat in reality wasn’t small. Monocle had had a tough few weeks.

But she didn’t. Incredulity spread across her face. Monocle’s trademark black eye-patch likely dispelled her doubts. Or maybe she was hoping for a win, and seized it when it came.

Appeasing and securing the cat made for an ordeal that Vivi watched with amusement.

Forty-five minutes later, Saffra had made her way across the city and arrived at Daisy’s house.

Daisy started howling the moment she laid eyes on the filthy cat, and surprisingly, he wasn’t put off by the loud noises and sobbing girl: Monocle was happy to be scooped up and pampered.

Daisy made such a ruckus the lady of the house came down and checked on her, seeming surprised but pleased her daughter had reunited with her pet, though wrinkled her nose and made a clear allusion toward the maid to get it cleaned up posthaste.

Saffra all but glowed with happiness throughout, and even staunchly refused the reward of a full gold coin.

It was when Vivi was basking in satisfaction at a plan well executed that everything went wrong.

Daisy, clearing the last of her tears away and still petting Monocle despite the maid’s tentative but increasingly desperate requests to have him bathed, asked Saffra, “Did the woman from earlier help?”

Saffra blinked, a cup of tea half-raised to her lips. “The woman?”

“The demon. With white hair. Vivi, I think she called herself?”