He was in the basement when the spider on her collar flagged an alert.
The feed resolved into the practice arena — Clara in training gear, her friends clustered nearby, a group of students from the watching area moving closer. He read the body language of the situation in two seconds and identified the problem: a young man who just so happened to be a young prince of a neighboring kingdom, in expensive dress with the bearing of someone who had decided he was the most important person in the area. He had his eye on Clara, likely infatuated by her beauty, but judging by his demeanor, he wasn't likely to confess his love. No, this guy was all around bad news.
He watched.
The attendant approached first, inviting her to join his master to dinner. Clara declined, pleasant and clear, without even asking who the attendant's master was. The attendant returned. The young man was now offended at her immediate refusal, which Arthur tracked with the specific attention he gave to situations where the next thirty seconds could go several different ways.
The refusal was clean — she said what she meant without apology and without aggression, which was exactly what he had taught her. The young man did not receive it cleanly.
He said several things about how he had looked into her and how he was surprised that a lowly farmer's daughter dared to refuse him. Yet, given that she was easy on the eyes, she can apologize and spend the evening with his company.
He felt the spider register Clara's mana signature spike slightly at the lowly farmers' comment — the specific spike of someone who was very angry and was holding it.
He connected to the spider's audio channel and said, quietly: 'Clara. Don't.'
She went still. He felt it through the feed — the breath out, the deliberate return to composure. She responded to the prince with something that was cutting and graceful simultaneously and turned away, which was the correct move and which she executed perfectly.
The young prince, at his clear and somewhat brutal rejection by a lowly farmers girl, infront of all of the other students present, hurt his ego. He was thinking how this peasant who somehow happens to be pretty, now thinks she is all that and more. Arthur could see the rage building in the prince's eyes.
Then the young man cast an enhancement buff on himself, equipped magic gauntlets, and moved.
'Let's see how you feel once your pretty face is damaged,' the prince announced.
Arthur was watching the feed at the moment it happened. He saw what Clara did — or more precisely, what she did not do. She took the strike. She allowed herself to be pushed far back from the strike. She was not hurt, he could read that in her signature immediately, but she performed hurt with the specific accuracy of someone who had been watching how people moved when they were hurt for years of sparring.
Her skin was so durable from years of dragon meat, and her level being so high that it would take a lot to receive any wounds or damage from a weak little prince.
The spider felt her breathe in the specific way she breathed when she was amused.
'Little brother,' she said, very quietly, below what anyone else could hear. 'He hit me. Can I?'
He watched the arena. More students now, several moved to help Clara's friends, two of her male acquaintances stepping forward and being put on the ground quickly by the prince, who was not pretending anymore. The mana readings from the enhanced gauntlets were significant — they were genuinely dangerous items, not training equipment.
He watched a brave girl step forward trying to shield Clara and take a hit to the arm that dropped her. The next magically enhanced swing struck Clara in the chest, then another on her face. The crowd of nobles and other students watching this beautiful girl being beaten senselessly, while bystanders attempted to intervene, only to be beaten back.
He thought: this has gone far enough. Some of these people, the foreign prince has hit and even injured, are nobles here.
If Clara, a commoner strikes him now, it should be considered self-defense. Plus there are countless witnesses. Plus he is pissing me off.
'Have at it,' he said.
◆ ◆ ◆
He watched Clara get up.
She moved differently when she stopped pretending. Not dramatically — she didn't announce the change, didn't make a speech, just stood with the specific quality of someone who had decided the performance was over and was being themselves now. Everyone who had been watching her be beaten for the past three minutes was still operating on that model.
The prince was not. Instead, he looked angrier than before.
Clara said something to him. Quiet, only for him. Arthur could read it through the feed: she was telling him he was weak and that he was a pathetic and small man. She said it with the sincere compassion of someone offering an accurate clinical observation, which was the version that landed hardest.
Oh my, she is purposefully riling him up so that he makes more grave mistakes and offenses so that once she strikes it can be justifiable. When did my sister get so frightening.
The prince swung.
She was not there.
What followed was brief and entirely Clara — the specific economy of someone who had been training for four years at a level nobody in this arena had a reference for. After all, she was likely the second strongest person in the country, after Arthur. To say that it was an unfair fight would be putting it mildly. In the millisecond it takes someone to blink, Clara moved. First, she drew the sword at her belt — the academy blade, standard issue and moved to stand right next to the prince, where she brought that dull practice blade down on his arms, severing right above where the gloves sat.
The next moment, the prince, who was just about to deliver another punch, was looking at the ground where his gauntlets were lying with an expression of someone who had not yet processed what had just happened.
He saw his hands still in his gauntlets, his arms with bloody stubs, and he processed it.
He screamed.
Clara walked to him. She crouched down and whispered in the princes ears, 'Let me heal that for you, prince.' and cast a unique healing spell — the one Arthur had taught her two years ago, the specific version that closed wounds cleanly and completely and also told the body the structure was already resolved, which had a particular effect on subsequent regeneration attempts.
Then the teachers arrived.
◆ ◆ ◆
The aftermath ran for three days.
Arthur monitored it through the network with the attention it required. The witness statements were comprehensive — nearly forty students had seen the whole sequence from the first refusal, and the accounts were consistent since most of the witnesses had no investment in a particular outcome and were simply reporting what they had seen. The prince had cast first. He had struck students who were running to Clara's defense and trying to help. He had used enhanced weapons in civilian setting.
The academy's healers attempted to reattach what they found. Their spells met the condition Clara had left and stopped at the boundary it had drawn. This produced significant consternation among the healing staff, who had not encountered this working before and were not going to find it in any reference material available to them.
The prince's country sent a letter. The academy sent a response. The response was diplomatically phrased and unambiguous.
Clara's disciplinary review lasted two hours. The panel found no violation. The decision was recorded and filed.
She sent Arthur a message through the communication device that evening. Three words.
*I am fine.*
He sent back: *I know. I was watching.*
A pause. Then: *you are always watching.*
He sent: *yes.*
Another pause. Then: *thank you for the have at it.*
He looked at the spider feed — the academy dormitory, Clara's room, his sister sitting on her bed with a small smile and her friends clustered around her asking questions she was deflecting with the composure of someone who had done something and was not going to make it larger than it needed to be.
He turned back to his workbench.
He had, he thought, the most extraordinary siblings of anyone he knew in two lifetimes.
He picked up his tools and went back to work.