By the time Zheng Qing stepped through the entrance of the Applied Magic Institute building, night had fully fallen.
Behind him lay pitch-black darkness, like the world inside Leviathan's gaping maw; before him was an empty, silent lobby without a single soul in sight. The receptionist parrots that had greeted Zheng Qing on his last visit were nowhere to be found either. A few emerald-green feathers still remained on the empty perch, leaving Zheng Qing deeply disappointed.
He stuffed the bird feed he had prepared back into his pocket, stroked Poseidon's furry little head inside his robes, and continued deeper into the building.
Little Fox had completely given up struggling. She stared blankly at this hateful world, her large, watery eyes revealing the slightest trace of utter hopelessness.
"Can you hear it?"
Zheng Qing rubbed Little Fox's ears, a hint of poetry entering his voice. "That elegant draft whispers softly: Poseidon, Poseidon, have you finished your homework, Poseidon? A loving mother, a grateful child... Can you hear it?"
Little Fox let out a mournful whimper from her throat.
"For whom does the bell toll? My heart beats out a silent rhythm."
As the young publicly funded student continued muttering to himself, rambling on with incoherent nonsense, he carried Little Fox toward the Two-Dimensional Evolution Laboratory. "...I drew too few protective talismans in ordinary times, and only now, when I need them, have I realized they can protect neither you nor me... This sorrow flows upstream into a river... Silence, ah, silence. Silence is tonight's Cambridge."
Squeak squeak!
Poseidon seemed to hear the sound called "trembling with fear" coming from the young wizard's chest, and grew even more pessimistic about her future. Gathering her strength again, she struggled and poked a paw out from beneath Zheng Qing's arm. Her pink toes