It's time for semi-random epileptic trees.

I posted a theory last chapter about Hayle's possible collaboration with Fray. Allow me to expand on it.

Hayle has proven himself as an exceptional long-term player. He created the Lambs in anticipation of the current situation: a civil war, the Academy's knowledge in masses, and so on. Fray was the one who started it all.

Exactly how believable is that? The assumption that an unaugmented mind was able to predict the probable actions of an extremly Wyvern-augmented brain and their consequences, long before that brain came into existence? Granted, he didn't exactly do that, he roughly predicted how the world would look like in the near future, but still; implausible.¹

It becomes far less implausible if we assume that Fray and Hayle have been working together from the beginning, long before Fray even officially went fugitive. Check 3.x; Fray mentioned him, knew him.

Was her failure at the bid for professorship unintended, even? Perhaps they acted it out in order to give Fray a convincing motivation, so that nobody investigated her case too thoroughly?

Next, let's look back at 6.x. Fray's so-called 'mole' complains that he/she has no freedom to act, and can only watch helplessly as they are speeding into disaster. Suppose the author is Hayle. Fray receives the message, and then...

Roughly half-a-year passes, Fray allies with Mauer, who eliminates the Duke of Francis, which leads to Hayle becoming the new Headmaster of Radham Academy, riding the wave of the Lambs' succeess. What a serendipity! Oh wait, is it?

To sum it up, Fray and Hayle knew each other long before the story even started. They hatched a long-term plan:

Hayle funds a group of ambitious experiments. Fray goes fugitive, ignites a civil war, gradually takes over it, in the process changing the environment into such that Hayle's experiments are extremely well-adapted for it. Hayle, following the success of his creations, gains influence; if someone gets in his way, like the Duke, Fray and her rebels eliminate them. Fray manipulates the rebellion; Hayle takes over the Academy as an institution. Their combined power grows.

What's their endgame? Good question. But, contrary to what Mauer says, they do have a reliable plan. Mauer probably isn't in on it, though.

That theory is probably incorrect, mind you. But it's a fun thing to speculate on.

^{1. Alright, I'm dramatizing here. It may not be all that much implausible.}