Omake Week 2014, Day 3: This story was originally written for "Exiled to the Couch's" ongoing fanfiction challenge thread about Lillet's first year at the Royal House of Magic; the prompt was "lantern." Marne, the OC apprentice appearing here, was first introduced to my stories in the fourth chapter of "A Homunculus is Fine, Too."

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Marne Labatt yawned as she walked down the hall in the laboratory wing of the Royal House of Magic. The round-faced brunette wanted nothing more than to get back to her room in the apprentice's dormitory, crawl under the covers, and sleep right through breakfast. She was already going over in her mind what Master Tanqueray would need from her the next day and how late she'd actually be able to sleep, when she was distracted by a flickering light coming from behind an open door.

Curious, she went up and peeked around the edge of the door, and saw a blonde girl about her age standing at a worktable, her wand-hand curled under her chin as she regarded the pattern of glowing green lines, arcs, and symbols set out there. The blonde wasn't anyone that she knew, which surprised Marne, but it also explained the door being open.

"Excuse me," she said softly.

The blonde jumped in surprise, obviously having been lost in concentration.

"Ah!"

"I'm sorry! I didn't mean to startle you."

"Oh, that's all right. I tend to get lost in thought really easily when I'm working on something. Did you need anything?"

"No, I was just coming down the hall when I saw your lantern." She stepped inside and closed the door behind her. The air smelled faintly of lavender, making her wonder if the blonde girl used perfume. "I looked in and saw you were new here. Oh, I'm Marne Labatt, and I'm in Sorcery, though I'm thinking of switching to Glamour."

The blonde brightened at that.

"I have a friend who has that combination of fields. She doesn't really like Sorcery, though, so she'd probably think you should switch."

"You'd probably say Glamour is better too, huh?" Marne asked with a smile, pointing to the half-formed Rune on the table and its telltale green shade.

"It was the first kind of magic that I learned. Oh, I'm Lillet Blan." She extended a hand to Marne, who shook it. Lillet seemed nice; maybe she'd be a new friend.

"Are you in Glamour, too, then?"

Lillet shook her head.

"No, I'm actually kind of a generalist, so Master Freixenet hasn't assigned me to anything specific."

"Wow, that's got to be rough. Getting dragged back and forth on all kinds of different projects, never even sure what the next one's going to be about. No wonder you're up late working! What are you doing, by the way? If it's not something private," she hastened to add. Some of the Royal Magicians could be pretty secretive about their projects until they were done, the better to make sure that they got full credit for them, and Marne didn't want to get Lillet in trouble by pressuring her to spill the beans.

"Oh, no, it's fine. I'm trying to work out how to change the structure of a fire-warding Rune to make it work on heat rather than actual open flame. I'm having trouble, though, because so much of the underlying symbolism is based on the classical fire element, and the need to adjust for the absence of flame makes the pattern fall apart. It's like I'm trying to ask the magic to ward something that's there and not there at the same time, and that really doesn't work well." She started to outline the specific technical problem from there and completely lost Marne within two sentences. "And then there's the intensity problem, too. Most fire wards are designed to stop damaging flame that would burn or ignite whatever was warded, and that's too high a threshold."

"Why?" Marne asked, focusing on the point that she could at least follow.

"I want to put it on a window, to keep the sun from heating up a room too much in summer. And then in winter I could put it on the outside instead, to keep heat in."

"Wow, that would actually be pretty useful. I wish I could help, but that's way beyond anything I've ever studied. Oh! But I know who might know something. My Glamour teacher, Master Tanqueray, is one of the two ward experts among the Royal Magicians. Since you said it wasn't private, then whomever assigned this to you probably wouldn't mind you asking. Unless it was him?"

Lillet shook her head.

"No, this is my own personal project, not something that I was assigned to work on."

"Oh, geez, then I'm really glad I poked my head in. You're new here, so you probably weren't told everything you'll need to know right off, but we apprentices aren't supposed to be using these workrooms by ourselves after hours. I mean, everybody does it, you virtually have to to keep up with all the work, but if they catch you working on a personal project after hours—wow! Just believe me when I say you'd almost rather just give up and go home! Make sure that you keep the laboratory door closed; your lantern-light's really obvious otherwise."

She couldn't help but notice that the lavender scent was starting to become cloying in the small workroom. Marne held her tongue, though, since she'd just met Lillet and didn't want to come off as sounding offensive or judgmental.

"You're right, no one did tell me that. I guess it's a good rule, though. An apprentice could get badly hurt working on something outside their abilities without supervision."

"Maybe," Marne allowed dubiously, "and if you're doing work for one of the Royal Magicians, they'll usually cut you some slack on the grounds that whomever assigned it knew what they were doing. But there's never any time during the day for personal research; the full magicians will end up taking all the laboratory space."

"Any time that you have more magicians than workspaces, you don't have enough workspaces," Lillet said, laughing.

"I knew you'd get it. After all, you're here now, not tucked up in bed."

Lillet groaned.

"I know. First Master Riesling needed me to work with him on a way to compel wraiths to do anything other than attack the living. I had to write up a report on the latest modifications to the Chimera Spawn rune, and then I had to help defuse that mess that they got to over in the Sorcery section—do you realize how easy it is to accidentally overcharge a Hell Gate when you confuse the standard version with the Lusatian variant? I swear, Mistress Artois was ready to hang her apprentices."

Marne giggled at the last one.

"I know! Sandor told me I was really lucky not to have been there. He said Mistress Artois nearly blasted Nikolaschka all the way back to Chernyakov! If it hadn't been for the new magician we'd have been scouring the whole palace for imps!"

It took her about five seconds to make the connection between her last sentence, what Lillet had said, and the fact that every magical work the blonde had mentioned was completely over Marne's head.

"…You're not an apprentice, are you?"

Lillet shook her head.

"Um…no? Is that a problem?"

"Well, not other than me making a bit of a fool of myself. I ought to know better than to assume someone's a teenager based on their appearance alone, here in the heart of Her Majesty's best magicians." Marne was now really glad she hadn't mentioned the scent.

"No, no, I really am sixteen."

Marne's jaw dropped.

"And you're a Royal Magician? You must be some kind of genius!"

Lillet didn't look happy at that.

"That's not exactly true. It's…kind of a long story. Longer than I actually know."

That was certainly enigmatic, but in Marne's experience that was pretty much par for the course with master magicians.

"Well, all right. It was nice meeting you, Mistress Blan."

"Thanks! You, too. I should introduce you to Amoretta; she's going to be working as an apprentice here and it would be good if she could make a few friends."

"That would be nice." Marne wondered who "Amoretta" was, but figured that would answer itself. "Um…I guess I had better get going. I need to get back to bed, and I only stopped in because I saw the light."

"Okay. And I appreciate your suggestion about Master Tanqueray. I don't really know everyone yet, so the advice is handy."

"You're welcome."

"Oh, and could you leave the door open when you go?" She waved her hand under her nose. "I'm working with an herb-infused oil in the lantern that's specially attuned to the ward's magic, but it gets a little heavy if there's not enough ventilation in the room."

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A/N: Marne was first introduced in Chapter 4 of "A Homunculus is Fine, Too!"