Athanasia has upgraded to being able to cast spells, but they’re not very effective. She essentially has little to no control over them. Her frustration boils over, and Lucas ends up in her crosshairs. I can’t exactly blame her, because like all the tutors before him, he doesn’t seem like a very effective teacher either. All he ever says over and over is that she needs to figure things out herself. Sure, that could work, but then what exactly is he here for? Anyone could’ve told her that same piece of advice. Moreover, this is why they often say the best athletes typically don’t make the best coaches. I’m not sure if this is true, but you can sorta understand the logic. Things come so easily to them, so they can’t understand their students’ struggle. And right now, Lucas isn’t being very sympathetic to Athanasia. She hits the nail on the head, which somehow riles him up.

At the end of the day, Athanasia is still a child, so her frustrations are understandable. She even tries to ask him nicely for better tutelage, but all can do is spout vagaries while giggling at her expense. Lucas might look like a brat in his current form, but he’s supposed to be an adult. In fact, he’s an adult with centuries of experience. So for him to get all pissy because she’s comparing him to the duke’s son is, well, pretty damn pathetic. I mean, c’mon, would you allow a little kid to piss you off? You need some help with anger management if your answer isn’t “Of course not!” Unfortunately, the all-powerful mage is also small and petty, so he casts a spell to send the princess flying straight to the duke’s son.

Luckily for Athanasia, this chance encounter is actually a blessing in disguise. She gets to see for herself that Ijikiel is, well, just another innocent child like her. He’s caught up in his father’s power struggles, so he’s about to be shipped off to faraway place — something about learning useful skills that will benefit the family (read: money). Ijikiel wants to stick around for Jennette’s sake, so they seem to be close like siblings. No doubt the duke probably seized the opportunity to get his son close to Claude’s other daughter. In any case, Athanasia lets the boy open up about his problems, then she even gives him some words of encouragement. She basically tells him to embrace his fate, which I’m a little iffy about. Nevertheless, you can see the clear through line in the narrative.

In the bad timeline, Athanasia didn’t meet her father until much, much later. As a result, he was cold to her and stayed cold. When she was unfairly framed, her pleas went through one ear and out the other. This time around, she still wanted to avoid her father. Her solution was to just run away and escape. Luckily, she met him anyway, and now they’ve actually got a working father-daughter relationship. I still don’t think very highly of Claude, because he did abandon her for years. Plus, with all this talk about Jennette, you gotta wonder if he’s a deadbeat to her as well. Nevertheless, things worked in Athanasia’s favor when she faced her father head on instead of running away. Similarly, by meeting Ijikiel instead of putting it off forever, she has probably gained a new ally.

It’s pretty obvious that Athanasia needs to get to all the important people in her life before they can be led astray. First, it was her father, and now it’s Ijikiel. Jennette is probably the next person she sorely needs to meet and befriend. The moral of the story is pretty simple: you can’t run and hide from your problems. You need to meet them head on and with compassion. It’s easy to hang back and say, “I just want a peaceful life” or “I’m content with where I am and don’t want to rock the boat.” I totally understand that sentiment. If life is going well, why risk changing it? But you also run the risk of becoming a bystander in your own life. You run the risk of having little to no control whenever something major happens. And although we don’t get to see how things exactly played out in Athanasia’s tragic timeline, it is clear that she allowed herself to be isolated for far, far too long.

Eventually, Lucas fetches Athanasia back. I feel like he didn’t get exactly what he wanted from his prank since the princess was actually getting along swimmingly with Ijikiel. As a result, I assume he cut the meeting short. But who can really say? Either way, I enjoyed seeing her giving him a mean right hook to the face. First, she’s a child with barely any muscles on her arms, so it probably felt like being hit by a pillow. Obviously, you don’t want to make this a habit; you don’t want kids to think resorting to violence is okay. But Lucas also did drop her from the skies, so y’know, fuck him and his giggly ass.

In Athanasia’s frustrations, she wanders off yet again. Every time she does this, it seems to work out in favor. As a result, she has a chance encounter with that dream lotus thing in the palace pond again. I can’t quite remember why they allow this malevolent magical being to stick around. I vaguely remember them saying something about how Claude is protected by his magic, but his child clearly isn’t. Plus, you don’t really need it, do you? Unfortunately, kids accidentally drown themselves all the time. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but kids are kinda dumb. My point is, it’s dumb that the dream lotus is still around to pray on Athanasia. It’s extra dumb that her servants always let her run off where she could get lost and drown. But like I said, every time she runs off, things turn out well for her. So when the dream lotus lures Athanasia in with an image of her late mother, the kid recalls Lucas’s words and manages to save herself with water magic. I’m not going to give him much credit, though. I feel like it is the princess’s desperation to survive that does most of the heavy-lifting here. Nevertheless, that’s one spell in the books.