A Deadly Education

Galadriel (El) explains that she decided Orion Lake needed to die after the second time he saved her life. Orion has a habit of rescuing or saving the lives of the students at school, which has earned him the affection and gratitude of the other students, but El resents it because it makes her look as though she needs saving. She is powerful in her own right and does not want to appear to be someone who needs his help.

Orion chases a soul-eater into El’s room and kills it. El responds with a sarcastic expression of thanks, and then she kicks him out of her room. Cleaning up after the dead soul-eater is frustrating and tedious because the magical void that provides for the students consistently gives her spells and magic that tends towards dark magic. This is because of El’s natural magical affinity for death and destruction. Her mother is the opposite: a sensitive, empathetic person with an affinity for helping and healing. El gets angry and uses one of her mother’s meditative crystals to calm down. When she asks again for a spell, the void gives her a book of household spells in Old English, which El does not speak or read particularly well.