Since Laelia hasn't eaten any lunch yet, or I for that matter, we make our way slowly to the dining hall. On the way Laelia quickly fills me in about the events that have been going on at the Academy in the last week. There were weird posters spread all around the school with a hidden message to anyone with magic, and masks were given out, so students could sneak out there without being identified. And being the kind of person she is, Laelia obviously had sneaked out to see what was going on. It turned out to not be as great as it could've. Not that she actually had her hopes too high up.
And then there was some business with professor Cole getting arrested for using magic.
"Wait," I have to stop her at that point, "What?"
"They arrested professor Cole for using magic," Laelia repeats herself.
"For using magic?"
"Yes."
"Professor Cole?"
"Yes."
"No way," I say, staring at her.
"Yes way," she says, then pauses, "I think. I mean, there are a ton of rumours around it. Someone must've started them just to confuse people. You should hear some of the stories they're telling about why Cole isn't here anymore. Some say he's dead. Some say he got so badly ill they've insulated him in a room at the medical wing, and that's why he hasn't been around."
"So how do you know the magic thing is the one that's true?" I ask, confused.
"Because of all the unbelievable stories that I've heard, it's the least unbelievable," she says, then blushes slightly and frowns a little, "And I happen to have a special talent that helps me figure out the truth," she drops her voice to talk so we won't be over heard. Not that it's a real concern, the yard is suspiciously empty, "And I'm not referring to my especially sharp wits, though they've helped too."
I look at her for a moment, then nod. Apparently that's another thing you can do with magic that I didn't know was possible. Or at least she can.
"So why did he use magic?" I ask.
"That I'm not actually sure about," she says, looking a little embarrassed, "Not yet, anyway. There are a few different versions about it, and none of them seem too likely. So... I don't know exactly."
She sighs. We enter the dining hall and are met with a wall of students.
"What's happening?" I ask Laelia as we push further into the crowd, "Why is everyone having lunch at the same time?"
Laelia shrugs, looking a little confused herself.
"There were some new arrangements, because Cole is gone. So someone had to take over his lessons. Maybe they somehow messed up the dining schedule?"
Her eyes focus on someone in the hall for a brief moment, but before I'm able to figure out who she's looking at, there is a loud bang and I get gravel flying in my face. People scramble away from what is remaining of the main door. There is a figure there, covered in a mask and making the principal float with him. The figure begins his sure walk into the front of the room.
"And that," Laelia whispers in the now silent hall as he climbs to the hall's stage, "Would be Viper."
Then he begins to talk.
"Students! I have great news for you!"
The voice is like a punch in the stomach. It leaves me breathless for a moment.
"That's Arren," I breath to Laelia.
"Arren?"
"I met him on the road one night. He clearly knew who I am, and he knew about my magic. He wanted my help in restoring magic to the kingdom,
or something. It wasn't a very long conversation. He disappeared after I
realised he was the one who poisoned Tauria."
"Then Arren it is," Laelia says, her eyes going cold and ice in her voice.
"I am Viper! The Chosen One of the Almighty Geltoech!"
"The hell you are," Laelia mutters to herself angrily, "You poisoned my friend just to prove you can."
I'm half certain she's about to leap to his throat. And to be honest, I feel like doing the same.
"He did it because he doesn't like me for some reason," I mutter back, "Which makes it weird he came to me asking for help. Or maybe he wasn't actually asking for help. Maybe he just wanted me to know who he is."
"You know what he looks like?" Laelia asks, clearly surprised.
"Well, it's not like your average traveller is wearing a mask to hide their identity. So yeah, both times I met him he wasn't wearing that ugly mask."
"Both times?" Laelia asks.
"I met him briefly in Adhill yesterday. Didn't end so well. I ended up failing at magic, hitting my head and getting a concussion," I say.
"That was you?" Laelia asks, even more surprised, "A rumour came to the Academia that something happened up there, that someone used magic.."
She stops talking and her eyes widen. I turn my eyes back onto the stage. Viper has lifted miss Greysmith into the air, and is strangling her.
"Enough is enough," Laelia says, her eyes full of hate and ice. She takes a spet forwards, but I stop her, inside dying to do the same she is about to.
"Don't. This isn't the time. This isn't the place. At least not until he starts to really hurt people. You can't let everyone know..."
"Stop it!" the voice isn't loud, but it echoes around the room holding its breath.
Arren turns to see who spoke and finds him in the crowd.
"Why?" he asks. Miss Graysmith takes a shaky breath. I try to search for who ever is clearly aiming to distract Arren.
"Because you don't have to do that," comes from the crowd at the same moment I'm able to find the speaker. It's Oz, my swords partner. I stare at him for a moment.
"I know him," I hiss to Laelia, "He's my training partner from the sword fighting classes."
Laelia nods and keep looking at what is going on between Oz and Arren. They're both quiet now, staring at each other.
"How would you know what I wanted?" Arren asks after a moment of silence.
"You want to free magic, don't you? You
said it yourself. And I can understand that, I really can. But how is
killing Graysmith going to help with that?" He falls silent for a moment, waiting for a reaction he doesn't get. "Is it not the will of the gods that you free magic in the land? Does
killing this woman really get you closer to your goal?"
"He," Laelia says to me quietly, "Is also Omega."
I blink. It takes me a moment to realise what she's talking about.
"He's..." I begin, not knowing what to ask first, "How do you know about that? And how do you know it's him?"
"The same answer to both: because I'm not an idiot," Laelia says and hisses me into silence, her face a mask of concentration, as miss Greysmith falls to the floor. There is a flinch on Laelia's face.
"Wait, did you do that?" I ask, "Did you just get him to drop her?"
"Yes," Laelia whispers, "And no, he won't know it's me. He won't even know someone did anything. That's the beauty of my talents. I understand how his magic works, so I can poke it gently without him even noticing."
I stare at her for a moment, unable to say anything. That's brilliant and terrifying at the same time.
"Excuse me?" Arren's voice cuts the air like a warm knife cuts butter. My attention is drawn from Laelia back to the events by the stage.
"It's just..." Oz begins from the crowd that has slowly thinned around him, "If you want magic to be accepted, maybe using it to
possess and poison and almost kill people isn't the smartest thing to
do. That tends to have the exact opposite reaction, really."
"I have been sent by the gods," Arren answers, his voice filled with poison "I have been chosen
by Geltoech!" Next to me I hear Laelia snort. Her face is stoned in concentration again.
"Sure, sure, but see, I've been reading a lot on Geltoech recently, and he's a really
chill god. Like, he is a very nice and kind and loving deity and I'm
not sure how this whole... terrorize people fits his repertoire." Arren is slowly lowering the principal to the ground too. He doesn't even seem to notice it himself.
"Shut your blasphemous mouth, infidel! You have nothing against me! I am the ultimate! I am one with the gods!"
Laelia gives me a satisfied face.
"I think we should get out of here, before I really go punch him in the face. I've done all I can without drawing any attention to myself," she whispers, and we begin slowly to move towards the now blown exit. It pains me. It pains me so much to leave now. I want to put an end to all of this. I want to be able to help, help Oz, and miss Greysmith, and the principal. But I can't right now. I don't have enough strength. I'm too tired, mentally and physically. This is not the right time to try to bring him down for good. Right now, he has the upper hand. And if I let people know I have magic now, I wouldn't be able to do any good in the future. I'd rather wait and make sure I get it right the first time, because the chances are I won't get a second chance.
"Okay, man, if you say so. This is
clearly an issue you need to work with your god friends, so I'm just
gonna keep out of it, alright?" Oz is trying to calm down an angry maniac. Because how could it possibly go wrong. He sounds like he's been doing it before. Or at least been in enough weird situations to have gotten used to them. That makes me think Laelia's probably right, that he really is my mysterious pen pal. Arren's voice has dropped to a whisper now, so I can't hear what he's saying anymore.
"Could we maybe.. talk about this?" I hear Oz's voice from behind all the students still frozen in place.
The last thing I see before slipping out the exploded doorway is how someone actually succeeds to punch Arren in the face. I grin to myself a little.
We run away from the dining hall once we're outside. We run across the yard, around a corner of one of the buildings. It's a place where we know we can talk in private.
"I am going to hunt that son of a bitch down and..." Laelia huffs, punching the wall.
I lay my hand on her arm and she stops talking, breathing hard.
"Laelia, calm down," I say, trying to sound soothing though in truth I feel pretty much the same she does inside, "He's dangerous. You know how I know? He made the light of the fire dim. Not the fire itself, the heat remained. But he somehow made the fire less bright. And of course making the world dark isn't especially scary on it's own, but it was creepy, and we don't know what else he's capable of. Not yet at least."
Laelia sighs.
"We need to figure him out, and strike when the time is right. He didn't seem like the sort of person who could be taken down by simple brute force. We need to be patient," I continue, and she relaxes a bit.
"There's two of us," she points out, anger still faintly in her voice, "And only one of him."
"True," I admit, "Unless he's managed to recruit people. And I don't know yet all I can do. With magic, I mean. I don't know what I can do, what are my limits. I simply don't know enough about my own magic. And besides, I'm not up for a fight right now. I apparently got a concussion last night, and I pushed myself way too hard before that, and all of me still hurts. Tonight, I need a good long sleep. And then tomorrow we can figure out what to do about it. I would've loved to stay, to help. But right now, all I can to against Arren is get myself thrown in jail."
She nods. We're silent for a moment.
"About that," she breaks the silence, "You hit your head when he used magic on you in Adhill?"
I nod.
"And you said you failed at using magic? How's that possible?"
"Well..." I begin, "I've noticed I'm able to draw energy from the earth, and use that to what ever I want to do. I did it the first time when I carried Tauria to the hospital after she was poisoned, and I learned to do it while I was away. You wouldn't believe how fast and I can run if I just take the energy from the ground. I got a good way up north before turning back." She nods her understanding. "And when he attacked me... When I tried to attack him, we were in a shop. On a floor. And..."
"A floor isn't the same as bare ground. You couldn't get any energy from the floor," she says. She picks up things incredibly fast.
"Yeah," I say.
"You're one of those sorcerers," she says, almost more to herself than to me.
"The... what sorcerers?" I ask, confused. She knows something about how magic works?
"Oh, just something I picked up somewhere. I can't remember anymore where, though," she says, "People with magic have different kinds of magic. For some people it's based on deep understanding of how things work. Like me. For some, like apparently you, it comes from nature..."
She leaves the sentence like she's about to continue, but instead she stops talking, clearly having had a thought.
"Were you the one who made the tree with all the faeries in the beginning of term?" she asks, looking at me like it would explain everything.
"I think so," I say, "I had just noticed I had magic, and I went to the woods to see if I could do something. I just made some leaves come out of a branch, and then the next day people were talking about a tree in the middle of the clearing and faeries and all of it."
She stares it like she doesn't believe what she's hearing.
"All you did was make some leaves come out of a branch?" she asks, doubt in her voice.
"Yes?" I say, not sure of how to interpret her reaction.
"Wow," she says, "If that's all you did and a tree ended up growing from that branch, with strong enough magic to draw the faeries here... Ok, your magic is strong. Seriously strong."
She just stares at me fora moment, and I stare at her back, not knowing what to think about what she just said. Her eyes widen a little and she begins to talk again.
"This is great. This means you can do something about Viper. You might actually be a match to him! Once you're recovered, that is. And we need to prepare you. I'll coach you. Get your magic all unleashed and under control."
"You'll coach me?" I ask, disbelief in my voice.
"Yes," she says, sure about herself, "I can do it. I can help you find your potential. Ok?"
"Fine. Ok," I say. It does actually sound like a good idea. If it works.
"But now," I say, changing the subject, "Now I need to go find Tauria. I haven't seen her yet since I've been back."
"And we need to find Oz," she says, "Tauria first, I mean. Then we need to talk to Oz."
"Yeah, about that. I'm going to ask again," I begin, "How do you know about him, and that it's him?"
"I picked your pocket," she says, shrugging, "The day you left. You were clearly reading something important but that made you upset, and I thought I needed to know what that was. So I took the letter. And read it, and left him a not in the closet. He even answered it. He had figured out who I am. He gave me the same offer he gave you. Work together to solve this thing. So I think it's time to work together. He's clearly better informed about everything than we are."
I just stare at her.
"You picked my pocket?" I say, baffled.
"Oh, don't make it into a bigger deal than it is," she frowns, "The point is, it's clearly him. I think we was at the barn too, a week ago. And from the letter it seems he's exactly the kind of person who would pull a stunt like that in there. And I just know."
I stare at her for a moment longer.
"You do trust me, right?" her voice softening. I can hear a hint of fear in it I might say no.
"I do," I tell her, "Of course I do. It's just incredible how you do that."
"Yeah, I know I'm pretty incredible," she nods, a smile flickering at her lips, "Come on, it's time we go find Tauria."
___________________________________________________________
I'm suddenly realising that didn't take the story forwards very much. But what was I gonna do, it's not like I could just skip all this. Are we going to be able to finish this in five pieces? Cause I'm not sure we are. Or maybe we are. I don't know.
Anyway. Uhhhhh.....
Your next topic is Planet(s)
~matu
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