I don't own Magi. Please enjoy!

Her fingers moved along the strings with precision; each stroke a mastered, elegant procedure. The sounds of clear, crisp notes filled the wooden room, and the simple, sliding doors would do little to contain the noise from the nearby chambers.

Kougyoku would admit that it gave her a small, vindictive pleasure to know that she was the only one within these rooms with such talent. Let them hear, she thinks to herself on these long mornings, let them know.

The other novices would be listening and knowing that their own skills weren't to be measured to hers. She knew that there would be questions to the attending masters.

"What is she doing here?" They would say with confused voices, worrying that they were missing some obvious flaw in her technique and anxious that they would repeat it. "Isn't she good enough?"

But her music was not for them. It was for that woman to hear.

Kougyoku wanted to be blatant; she wanted to be bold like the First Princess was. But she was not brave enough for that, and so this was her only way of vengeance.

Her fingers worked furiously against the instrument; like a madwoman with the needle and thread.

"What vendetta do you have for your strings?" The clear, crisp voice interrupted her playing, and she nearly plucked a string out of its place in surprise.

She whirled around to see the woman in her mind standing of the threshold of her chamber; her delicate hand pushing the shougi door to the end of the frame to leave the corridor visible. A soft rose-coloured kimono hung from her figure, the trimmings on its hem made of deep reds and white. Her hair was loosely bound in the latest fashion of the empire, as expected of her high status and appearance in the public eye.

"My empress," Kougyoku allowed the words to fall meaninglessly from her lips as she lowered her head respectfully. "I am honoured by your presence."

This woman was supposed to be her new mother, but it was the second time she had ever spoken to her. The first had resulted in a refusal of her courtesan status being promoted.

Ren Gyokuen smiled kindly in response, pressing her long sleeve against her mouth to demurely conceal the expression and stepped further inside the room. The hem of her kimono slid against the wood with ease; no threads were pried loose against splintered fragments of the wood beneath her.

"The morning is quite beautiful," the elder woman commented, peering around the chamber and out of the nearby window with interest. "Nearly unblemished."

Kougyoku needed no hints as to what the empress found distasteful about this morning.

She lowered her head, running her fingers across the strings slowly and almost ignoring the presence of the emperor's wife. She had never been given attention before, and therefore she struggled socially when that changed. She had never stayed long enough in the court to play the games of nobles and traitors; if she heard pretty words, she would blush and believe them.

But that was not the case with this woman. Kougyoku was unsure whether she was simply learning the ways of politics, or whether it was a much deeper, primal instinct, but she knew that there was something irrevocably wrong with the empress. She shivered when the woman passed by her, and her mind screamed danger if she was the subject of her attention.

"Have you come to hear the children play, my empress?" She asked, still avoiding the woman's gaze. Her eyes widened after the words left her lips and how she longed to take them back. A double-edged sword they were; unintentionally vindictive now that she thought about it.

She didn't dare to hope that the empress would not notice the double meaning to her words.

Have you come to hear your own daughter stumble over her strings, while I glide?

The woman giggled; it was an unnerving sound that spoke not of mirth but malice. Kougyoku's head shot up and she could not help but stare at the woman in alarm. She was afraid of the empress; fearful of the power this woman held over her so effortlessly. The strings this woman held were stretched so far apart that they were lethal to the touch.

Kougyoku had tried to pluck them and they would draw the blood from her fingers.

There was a tense silence for a moment, in which the princess dropped her hand from the strings of her instrument and clenched her fist into the skirts of her kimono. Her eyes never left the other woman, who was leisurely examining the room again.

"Your mother was a whore, was she not?" The empress asked loftily, and the princess flinched at the sound of such a crude word from the refined mouth of a noblewoman.

She felt her tongue twist around her words, and nothing would come out. The woman met her eyes once more and she wished as though she would sink into the world underneath the wooden floors upon which she sat.

"S-She wasn't a…w-whore," Kougyoku replied in a stammer, her own mouth struggling to shape such a crude word. She clenched her fingers tightly against her skirts to resist the urge to hide her reddening face with her sleeves as she was wont to do.

"My dear Kougyoku," the woman smiled kindly down at her, though it was a cold sort of kindness. "A lowly courtesan she may have been…but she was a whore, nonetheless." She felt herself flinch at the word again, and began to realise it was not the crudeness she found distasteful, but its association with her mother.

Her mother was kind; her mother would have loved her above all else. She would not have been like this woman, who dared to insult her memory. She realised that she was furious, and the trembling of her hands had begun to shift from fear to anger.

"I-If she was…a whore," Kougyoku began quietly avoiding the eyes of the dangerous woman in front of her, "then what are you?"

Outside the walls, the boy abruptly choked on a pip.

The empress was silent, watching the young girl tremble as fear overtook her once more. What had she done? She had been foolish enough to poke the lion that was merely tolerating her presence, and now it would backfire.

Again, a giggle filled the air; muffled slightly by the press of her kimono against her lips.

"What a wretched creature you are," Gyokuen gave her a soft smile; her eyes filled with pity. She crossed the room with the elegance of a dancer and stopped in front of the princess who was so frightened she could not meet her gaze. The empress' voice fell to a whisper, her voice still harmoniously smooth yet edged now with something sharp and cold.

"Pluck your frail strings to your heart's desire, but you will never surpass your whore-mother's lowly rank while I rule."

She was still trembling long after the woman had taken her leave.

Her hands shook as she placed her instrument beside her on the floor. It clattered as the wooden base was dropped onto the hard ground, and the harsh sound made her flinch.

You called the empress a whore, her mind screamed, she's not going to let you get away with that.

"What have I done?!" Kougyoku wailed, burying her reddening face into the crimson folds of her sleeves. She sniffled loudly, too distressed to mind that many of the younger students- and that woman's daughter also- could be listening to her.

She shifted and brought her knees to her chin, leaning over and pressing her face against them as she shivered on the cold floor. She had always been careful to avoid the higher nobles, and now her lack of wisdom would be the death of her. How her older brother would scoff at her stupidity.

There was no higher power than the empress. There was nobody who could save her from that woman.

"That was a gutsy move, you know," a voice interrupted her hysteria, and she whirled to the side to see a young boy peering down at her through the window.

The blush in her intensified tenfold, and she gasped as she hurried to assume a more demure position. She was in the presence of a man- one that was not a relative or her dear tutor- and she was expected to be the perfect lady.

She buried her face in the folds her of sleeves against, but couldn't resist peeking through them out of her curiosity.

He frowned in confusion, and locked gazes with her as she peeped out at him. When she realised that she'd been spotted, her eyes widened and she gave a 'meep!' before retreating back beneath the crimson fabric.

The boy grinned, leapt through the open window and wandered over towards the small girl in the corner. He leant over her, and tugged none-too-gently at one of her looped strands of her hair. His grin widened when she gasped in fright and slapped his hand away from her.

"How long were you going to hide in there, hmm?" He asked, pulling the long sleeve away from her face.

Her bottom lip trembled as she peered up at him, her blush still stark red against her pale skin.

"W-Who are you?" She asked nervously, clenching her fists in her skirts and she turned her head away from him adamantly.

The boy's eyebrow's rose, and he placed his hands on hips with a flare of drama.

"You're saying that Kouen's never mentioned me?" He gave her a mock pout, jutting out his lower lip like a child. "How rude of him. I would expect more gratitude from someone I helped through a dungeon." He side-stepped around her body and bent over so that she was forced to face him. "I am a Magi, after all."

Her eyes widened as she realised the importance of the boy talking to her. Surely it was unbecoming for someone of her lowly status to be even seen with him.

"Y-You're the High Priest!" She gasped out, looking away from him again. "I-I can't be seen with you."

"Eh?" He blinked in surprise. "You're more impressed with that than 'Magi'? You're weird, brat."

Brat?

Her head snapped up in retaliation to the insult, and she was about to open her mouth and protest when she saw that he was still looking at her. He caught her gaze and grinned, which caused her to blush and firmly shut her eyes.

Kougyoku knew that it would be very wrong of her to damage his reputation by association with her, and so she not-so-subtly tried to wriggle over towards the door.

He saw what she was doing, and his brow creased in displeasure.

"Oi, where are you going?" He asked, before stepping down on the skirt of her kimono, which sent her falling forward onto the ground with a very unladylike plod. She kept her face against the ground, her cheeks burning with humiliation, but this seemed to amuse the boy behind her, as he roared with laughter. He released her skirt and knelt down beside her. "I'm Judal, and you're pretty fun to tease."

Don't listen to the bullies, Kougyoku reminded herself adamantly, then they'll get bored and go away.

But this particular bully had no intention of doing so.

"Hey…you going to get up?" He asked her, peering down at her with curiosity as she remained crumpled up on the floor, as if in defeat.

"Why should I?" She mumbled, sniffling as her humiliation and previous fear from her day caught up her. "I'm too weak to do anything good."
Too weak to oppose the empress, too weak to help her brother En, and too weak to be a princess of Kou.

It was almost pathetic.

"You're not weak, Kougyoku," Judal's voice took on another form, a kinder, warmer form. Such a change incited her curiosity, and against her better judgment, she peeked up at him. He held a hand out towards her, to help her move from the ground. "You're strong."

She froze, unable to tear her eyes away from this strange boy. Nobody had ever told her that before. Even Ka Koubun had never told her anything like this; anything which, for a second, made her believe in herself.

Was she… strong?

"I'm not," Kougyoku replied miserably, rubbing at the corners of her eyes with her bunched sleeve, "I'm a lowly courtesan." The empress' words rang in her ears and her eyes turned downcast. "And that's all I'll ever be."

He rolled his eyes at her pitiful ramblings, and gave up on her taking his hand. Without asking for permission, he leaned down and roughly began to tug on her wrists.

"Get up, you hag," he scowled at her, and pulled her unwillingly to her feet. She stumbled on the hem of her kimono but righted herself and immediately put and appropriate amount of distance between them.

He glared at her in his annoyance, and she shrunk away from his harsh behaviour. He was in a position of power, and she wasn't. Ka Koubun had told her that she needed to make herself look small to those higher than her, and she wouldn't get squashed.

"Don't look at me like that," he huffed, crossing his arms. "It makes you look weaker than you are."

"But that's what Ka Koubun said to do," she protested on behalf of her tutor and companion, "Be small in front of those who hold power over you, and they won't consider you a threat!"

The magi raised an eyebrow, mulling over the thoughts of whether this man really knew what he was teaching the princess. Chances were that he was only trying to make her more impressionable and submissive.

But he'd already seen that that hadn't worked.

"You clearly didn't listen to him then," Judal grinned, leaning over so that he was on her height level and could meet her eyes properly. "Because you called the empress a whore."
The princess' face grew increasingly red and she whimpered again as she buried her face in her sleeves.

"What have I done?" She whined, the sound muffled to the priest. A thought occurred to her and she peered up at him in alarm. "Will she hurt me?"

The Magi paused, and ran over his knowledge of the empress. She wasn't a likeable woman to him; she was ugly, old and reeked of something rotten. But it wasn't her style to just have a princess killed for insulting her.

No, Gyokuen liked to play first.

"Not likely," he answered, and watched as the girl's face melted in relief before he continued, "but she'll never promote your rank. She'll probably marry you off as part of a trade deal."

Kougyoku's eyes widened in horror, and she stifled an alarmed cry. She had always assumed that there would be little choice in her marriage options, but with the empress controlling her fate, her life was doomed to be spent as little more than traded goods of the Kou Empire.

That wasn't what she wanted.

Not at all.

"What can I do?" She asked, but her thoughts had already answered her.

Nothing.

At the rank of a lowly courtesan cannot defy the orders of the empress. It was her duty to do as the empress demanded, and there was no way around that.

She really was wretched.

"You can let me help you," the boy interrupted her thoughts, and a frown creased her features.

"Help me?" Kougyoku repeated slowly, confused.

What could he possibly do? He was the High Priest, but he still didn't hold more power than the empress. Trying to help her was damaging to his own image, and it would be foolish for him to even try.

"The empress would not be able to touch you so easily," he began, a grin sliding across his lips, "if you conquered a dungeon."

There was a moment of silence, in which Kougyoku wondered if the Magi was joking. She waited, but when there was no joke forthcoming, she realised that he was serious.

And she became even more flustered.

"Conquer a dungeon? Me?" She shook her head as a dismissal. "But I can't do that! Only big brother Kouen has been able to do that, and I'm not nearly as strong as he is!" There was an embarrassed flush on her cheeks as she felt that stab of pity in her heart again. "I'm not strong enough to conquer a dungeon."

Judal was sick of her wallowing in her own wretchedness; that was exactly what Gyokuen wanted her to do. And he wasn't going to let that old hag get her way so easily.

He was going to take away this special toy from the empress.

"You stood against Gyokuen. You are strong enough," he replied, a small tone of admiration in his voice that was gone in an instant. His eyes hardened, and he continued. "And now, you are the second I've chosen."

He held his hand out to her, and this time, she knew that she would reach out to take it, and accept the lifeline he was offering her.

"You are the next King's candidate, Kougyoku."

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