Sunday came way too quickly. Wolf used the time to run his chores. He visited Cornucopia, distributed the food to loudly complaining beggars and took the mission from very helpful and overly winking and smiling Mandy.

With all things settled by Sunday, Wolf was ready for the lunch, after which he could continue onto his next mission.

Just like the last time, Wolf came with three guests, plus Matilda’s personal coachman. This time the coach driver went to an inn, while parking Matilda’s personal carriage near South’s alley.

The four Mage Academy students entered the alley. Just like last time South frowned at Wayde. He was shushed by Anna before he got to say anything, but the young woman was gentler and more apprehensive about her words.

Everything was business as usual, until Matilda entered the alley.

As soon as he’d sensed the young woman, South shuddered. His hopelessly sloppy and perpetually drunk aura vanished so quickly that Matilda didn’t even get the chance to catch a whiff of it.

The drunkard’s clothes were still wrinkled and soiled, but South straightened up. The feel of a limp, boneless body was gone, and the bum suddenly stood tall, very tall and very imposing. He ran his hand through his hair and somehow the unbridled greasy birdnest transformed into a naturally dashing hairstyle in a moment.

Wolf watched in shock as his big brother slightly bowed in a foreign, yet unquestionably regal manner.

“Good day to you my Lady,” South greeted Matilda as if she were a Queen, maybe even a sovereign Empress.

Anna was prepared to shush the drunkard out of habit, but the shushable drunkard was nowhere in sight.

When she saw the scene which unfolded before her, the young woman’s jaw nearly hit the floor and her eyes threatened to pop out of her head.

Was this the same unruly, slovenly pervert who called her names whenever he opened his mouth? He even seemed to stand taller and straighter than before. He looked… reliable, regal and awe-inspiring. Coupled with the memory of that recent incident, South inspired terror in her.

Anna pinched her cheek in shock, but didn’t wake up. The sight before her wasn’t her fancy. The young woman then took a couple of very long moments to come to terms with this new reality playing out in front of her.

Wayde didn’t have enough experience with South to realize how unusual the vagrant was acting. Last time he also changed personas seemingly at the drop of a hat, and Wayde simply believed the bum had mental issues, which was very much true.

Finally, Wolf was just as stumped as Anna was. He was certain Matilda was about to get the “whore treatment” and braced himself for the young woman’s premature death.

Matilda, who was unaware she’d faced mortal peril, was perfectly fine with everything going on. She noticed that South was an impeccable gentleman and that his behavior was in stark contrast with the man’s appearance.

She immediately came up with a romantic history which explained everything and curtsied as she would an elder.

In her mind this drunken bum was of noble origin and simply down on his luck, which was a surprisingly accurate take on South’s current state.

“Young man Wolf, why didn’t you tell me you were bringing a lady of such high standing over for a visit? I would have at least cleaned up for her, if not whitewashed the wall,” South said with a perfectly straight face, but with panic and trepidation in his eyes.

Then the bum turned around towards Matilda.

“My Lady, I must beg your pardon.” You could hear in his voice that South really was begging. “Could you please do me a great favor and step outside my abode for a couple of minutes? I know I am being rude, and I sincerely beseech you for your understanding, but it is highly inappropriate for a person such as yourself to sit in a place as filthy as this.”

Wolf felt his head spin. His big brother actually volunteered to clean up his alley? That was the most shocking thing he’d heard in his life.

Matilda smiled charmingly and waved her hand dismissively. “There’s no need Sir South.”

“I insist my Lady. If I had known in advance I really would have tidied up the whole place to suit your sensitivities, but now I’ll do what I can. Just give me ten, no five minutes. Please, I’m begging you like a god.” South’s insistence and heresy overloaded Anna, Wayde and Wolf, however the latter didn’t care much about the heresy part.

When the chaperone came over and started cleaning, South looked like he wanted to twist the elderly woman’s head off, but now he begged for a chance to clean up the alley?

Matilda smiled weakly, then nodded her head and left the alley.

“You two scram,” South hissed at Wayde and Anna, then turned to Wolf.

“Little brother, how could you embarrass me like this?" South said helplessly while tossing rubbish around like mad.

Moving it from one place to another won’t make the alley any cleaner. Wolf thought, but followed Matilda and the rest out of the alley.

Five minutes later they walked back into the alley.

The cobbles glistened, polished to perfection. They appeared like they belonged in an extravagant royal plaza, rather than in what was up to recently a dingy alley. The walls were clean and even had decorative curtains which made no sense, but looked kind of elegant.

South had cleaned the place up so thoroughly it put the old minder’s effort to shame, and he’d done it in a flash.

At the center of the sparkling clean alley stood an extravagant dining table with five seats and a pristine white tablecloth. There were two seats on either side and one at the bottom. The head of the table didn’t have a seat and was respectfully empty, even though the tableware was set for six.

“This is your seat my lady.” South pointed towards a massive seat carved out of white wood which almost looked like a throne. He even pulled out the chair for Matilda.

“You sit here.” He pointed at Anna and then at the seat adjacent to Matilda.

Anna had a regular looking chair, identical to the two on the opposite side. South sat across the table from Matilda and gestured to Wolf to sit next to him. The remaining seat was for Wayde. However, that seat was a rickety stool, lacking a backrest.

“You may sit over there, if you want,” South said to Wayde, just in case the latter wasn’t aware of the seating arrangements.

Wolf had no clue how Wayde had offended South, but he didn’t say anything despite feeling awkward. After all, they were in South’s “house”, and now it actually felt housy.

As for Wayde, the young man didn’t bat an eye as he sat on the stool setting his back straight. He pretended not to have noticed that the drunkard had singled him out, showing the kind of self control which greatly impressed Wolf.

With everyone seated, Wolf and South began preparing the meal while other people chatted.

Wolf was under some pressure in these odd circumstances. He constantly paid attention not to soil the tablecloth.

As for South, he sat with his back straight. Finely mincing the fish, without a single speck flying out, nor tainting the white tablecloth. While the drunkard regally chopped, Wolf wondered who’d ironed out and finally pressed the tablecloth.

Matilda looked at the two men preparing food with dexterity she’d never witnessed before. From time to time she whispered something to Anna and Anna would explain some things in a normal voice.

Obviously Matilda’s whispers weren’t secrets, rather she was too shy about everything. The only weird thing was that South didn’t curse once during the course of the lunch, nor did he drink his wine. He was the textbook definition of a perfect gentleman. His bristle was gone, his face was now smooth and clean and he even wore a perfectly fine suit which wouldn’t stand out during a high class formal dinner.

Wolf pretended he wasn’t surprised, while Anna couldn’t help glancing at South every now and then. South served the meal for Matilda and then waited for her to start eating before he started himself.

As soon as she took her first mouthful of soup, Matilda squeaked in joy.

“You are very good at cooking,” she said in a voice barely louder than a whisper. “Do you know how to make sweets?”

Wolf shook his head with an ever so slight sign of annoyance. “I don’t bake,” he grumbled between bites.

“Young man Wolf, don’t be rude to my Lady!” All of a sudden South reprimanded his little brother.

What the hell is wrong with you Big brother? Wolf shouted on the inside, but those words never reached his lips.

He planned to go on a long mission straight after the meal. So he decided to stay patient until the others had left. Then he could ask South about what the hell had gotten into him.

The meal continued and Matilda let out an impassioned squeak of joy when she tasted the fried fish balls with puree made from seven kinds of steamed vegetables.

A moment later she blushed, charmingly burying her chin in her dress’s turtleneck.

Half an hour later everyone was done eating, and after chatting a bit more the group parted ways.

Anna, Wayde and Matilda left for the Mage Academy, while Wolf stayed behind, saying he was going to leave the city for his next Mage Academy mission.

South was busy storing the table and the chairs into the Ring of Holding, which Wolf assumed the bum still hid from him. The vagrant acted as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened today. With the sound of hooves clattering and clacking on the stone street the carriage was gone, and so was the gentleman South, leaving behind the sloppy drunk.

Wolf stared for a moment, not believing his eyes. The transformation didn’t seem to take any time. In one moment South was the king of the world, in the next he was, well, South.

“So are you going to give me an explanation now?” Wolf asked and folded his arms in front of his chest. He kind of looked like South’s wife at the moment.

“Me? You’re the one that brought her, Little brother. Shouldn’t you be the one doing the explaining?” South said with a sly smirk as he took out his wineskin and took a series of big gulps.

“What are you talking about? That girl’s father is just a Marquess, nothing special. I mean Wayde is technically a Duke and you ignore him completely and curse him freely.” Wolf was confused quite a bit about the whole thing.

“Who gives a rat’s ass about her father, it's my Lady that’s special.” South said.

“What are you talking about? She’s got a pretty face, I give you that, but she’s obviously no good. She’s even wearing a padded dress to make her chest look bigger.” Wolf grumbled.

“You little twerp. You really don’t know anything about her?” South asked with surprise.

“Know what? Spit it out already!” Wolf was finally annoyed enough to start shouting.

“Shhh!” South put a finger on his lips, then turned around in the direction in which the carriage had gone, as if checking whether Wolf’s party had heard the shouting.

“No need to shout you little squirt. You really didn’t know? She’s got a pure soul. Not a single sin on my Lady’s soul. Well, none of her own, there are some smears left by those around her, but she herself is as pure as a pristine snowflake,” South explained with great respect. The kind of respect Wolf would never expect to hear from him.

Wolf shot his big brother an incredulous look. “How can you see that? And doesn’t that just mean that she’s been living under a glass dome, sheltered from reality?”

South smacked Wolf on the back of the head with an open palm. Unlike Anna’s strikes this one hurt a lot. Wolf rubbed his head as South spoke.

“First of all, you can see that she has a pure white aura,” he explained. “Compared to you, or me or that Wayde kid she’s a saint. Little whore Anna is better than the three of us, she’s just kind of murky for now. As for the little lady Matilda living a sheltered life,” South paused for a moment before continuing.

“That little whore of yours was also living a sheltered life, yet she doesn’t have the aura of purity. It isn’t uncommon for people who’d lived sheltered lives, like those two, to have very dark souls. Darker than us. You and I are just murderers. We rarely torture or act cruelly without a reason. Damn, we don’t even kill out of boredom when we can. That little friend of yours you seem to like so much is not a murderer, but his soul is just as dark. Who knows what that bastard had gone through.”

His voice was even and serious as he explained everything to Wolf. As South spoke the alley filled up with trash he spewed out. All it took was a couple of seconds for South to transform the clean dining place into the dump that was his home.

Finally finishing his little speech the bum threw himself onto a garbage heap. His fancy formal clothes flickered mid flight and became his everyday slovenly rags. Lazily stretching his back on his comfortable heap, South took another good long swing out of his wineskin.

Suddenly the vagrant smiled, as if a thought had struck him. “Instead of dwelling on things like that it’s better to get drunk and sleep in a cozy place.

“Also, whenever you find a person like that you should be kind to them. Untainted souls are a precious resource in this world…”

Wolf ran South’s words through his mind but then realized something important. “You’re saying I can see how pure someone’s soul is?”

South eyed Wolf lazily. “What? You can’t? If that’s the case then how come you granted a leech access to the world of your mind and soul? Don’t tell me you didn’t know what that creature was like before letting it in? Are you an idiot?”

Leech? Silver? Oddly enough, even though he called out to her-him, Silver didn’t say anything in response to this insult and slander.

“Can you teach me how to see that aura you mentioned?” Wolf asked.

“Sure, not a problem,” South said, making it obvious there are plenty of problems. “But, you can’t trust that shit. I mean some people have the darkest of souls, but they still love someone or something. They’ll show affection without much thought if they like you. Just look at the two of us. When I first saw you your soul was no better than that of a crazed degenerate. Not that it’s much better now, but you’re showing some improvement with all the odd and pointless things you do from time to time…”

Then South started explaining how to see the aura of people. This was an ability that with time could become passive. In the middle of explaining how it worked, South stopped.

“By the way Little brother,” he said suddenly. “Don’t use this to see how dark my soul is. For your sake I mean. I can’t see it, but if it’s anything like what I expect it should be, seeing my essence will only frighten you.”

Then South continued with his explanation.

Wolf didn’t quite understand everything South said, but he got the basic concepts. South explained that even with Wolf’s soul it would probably take about a decade or so for him to learn how to read other people’s auras. For the time being Wolf thought that this specific skill wasn’t worth investing that much time. Especially considering that there existed spells which could give you a general impression of one’s aura.

When he mentioned those spells to South the drunkard muttered ‘Training wheels’ before continuing to drink his wine.

After saying their goodbyes the brothers parted. South went to sleep in a pile of trash, while Wolf left Silver City and went to complete his half year long mission.