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If Professor Tomai thought he was talking too much, Lienna didn’t share his opinion, drinking in every word. She watched with rapt attention as he drew a matrix of symbols on the board, approaching when he finished to examine each in detail. But as she looked, fiddling with the buttons on her sleeves behind her back and counting each Crest, a puzzled look came across her face. Twenty-one, just like the professor said—but that didn’t sound right. What few brief lessons on Crests she’d received from the priest in Hima felt like a lifetime ago, but she hadn’t forgotten that Crests all originated from figures in scripture; the Ten Elites, the Four Saints, Four Apostles, and of course, Seiros and Nemesis themselves. This was the first she’d heard of any crest being passed down from Nemesis, but even adding him didn’t account for every symbol. Lienna wasn’t very good with numbers, but even she could count to twenty. With her back turned to Professor Tomai, she squinted at the board, not familiar enough with the Crest symbols to tell which one didn’t belong. Maybe this mysterious extra Crest was a product of the Professor’s research—or maybe there was something her priest had neglected to tell her. 

She might have asked, but Tomai’s explanation continued without pause, and she was loath to miss a moment of it—especially since each new phrase sounded more outlandish than the last. Lienna turned as he spoke, reeling at the idea that despite apparently having been around for centuries, news of these superhuman Crest bearers had never made it to Hima. Many of the townsfolk—Oma included—thought them cursed, but that was merely out of fear that Crest-bearing children would be whisked away by greedy nobility; in fact, Lienna herself had never really understood why Crests were so valuable that nobles would disown their own children for lack of them, but if what Tomai said about Crest bearers demonstrating supernatural powers was true, then maybe there was some method to the madness. 

Well, [i]sometimes[/i] demonstrating powers, she reminded herself. She didn’t need a Crest researcher to tell her she bore no such thing; if she could turn invisible or pull trees out of the ground with her bare hands, she could have made a fair bit more money as a teenager, and could probably have arranged herself with someone higher born than a Count. 

But she was exceedingly lucky to have even that, she reminded herself starkly. Just by existing, her Crest, and the noble avarice that followed it, had become her deliverance; that alone was a superpower to her. 

Back in the present, the Professor’s lecture grew more puzzling by the moment, launching into catastrophes, divine revelations and impossible Crests. Even the tone with which he delivered his outlandish hypotheses contradicted what she knew; she’d been taught Crests as blessings from the Goddess, but Tomai talked about them like living things, interacting with each other and evolving independent of divine will. As far as she knew, the link between Crests and the Goddess was indisputable, but Tomai sounded unenthused—perhaps even unconvinced. That tone was what drew her in most of all, the confidence with which he contradicted the teachings of the Church fascinating her. Lienna had no history of interest or opportunity for academic endeavours, but if his research was convincing enough to make him question truths that had apparently been accepted since the beginning of time, she wanted to know more about it.

A million questions swirled in her mind when Tomai was done, more than she could reasonably occupy him with, but one unexpectedly stood out. 

[color=baa7c7]“If most Crest bearers are no different from anyone else, then how can you study them?”[/color] She asked thoughtfully, almost by accident. Sure, the ones with powers would be easy enough to observe, probably, but surely they must have studied people whose Crests [i]didn’t[/i] affect them in order to know that at all, right? Those contraptions—Hanneman machines—could detect a Crest even in someone like her with nothing abnormal about them, but how? What were they looking for, and how did they find it in the first place? 

[color=baa7c7][i]Experiments?[/i][/color] The thought came out of nowhere, but it instantly put a stone in her stomach. She’d heard about how doctors would carve up dead bodies to learn about people’s insides, or feed poison to animals to see what it did; did they have to experiment on Crest bearers to learn about them, too? The very idea conjured up horrible images of children strapped to tables, being poked and cut into, or frightened people pitted up against all manner of beasts to see if their Crests would respond—it was the stuff of nightmares, and too awful even to think about. She had to turn away, taking a deep breath and a moment to let her head stop spinning. 

When she’d recovered, she turned back, shaking her head. [color=baa7c7]“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be asking you for an entire lesson,”[/color] she excused herself, waving the question away. [color=baa7c7]“Thank you for telling me so much. You’ve given me a lot to think about.”[/color] 

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