by Dixon, TJ
“Please!”
“You planned to kill me didn’t you?”
“No.”
“Liar. I can tell when you lie because your aura changes.” Is he just bluffing? To read an aura to that extent should be impossible. I can barely use a person’s aura to tell when they are about to cast a spell and what sort of spell. Most people can’t even do that.
“Please!”
“Do you still want to kill me?”
“No.”
“Well at least that is true.”
“What will you do for me if I release you?”
“Anything!”
“Then apologise to Hermes and Lucy, and never offend or challenge me or my friends again.”
“I promise!”
“Now to drop you into the fire.”
“What?!”
“Just joking… There you go.” He says as he lifts her up and drops her somewhere else. He frees her feet but leaves her hands bound. “You’ll need to free your own hands or go back to the academy like that. It will probably take about an hour if you walk that way.” He says pointing. She nods but is clearly on the verge of tears. “Oh whatever. There’s nothing I can do about your clothes though. They must have been burnt.” He says and unbinds her hands as well. He then touches her stomach and ports her somewhere. Presumably somewhere safe. “I really should have been crueller to make sure she really doesn’t bother us again.” He says with a sigh.
He looks up in my direction and I think he has seen me, but then realise he is looking slightly to the left of me. “Hello Hades. What is it? … Yes. … No … No. … Yes. … Don’t worry, I won’t let that happen.” Then he’s off again. I quickly check for any sign of a gate or similar but find nothing. I then race after him. It takes a while to catch up but when I do there are more dead goblins and the gate is obvious.
Peter is chanting a spell that I don’t recognise but given his gestures and position I am fairly sure he must be trying to close the gate. It certainly isn’t the standard gate closure spell, and sounds more like an adhoc spell that he made up himself. Then I notice someone who wasn’t there before. The mini girl he rescued from the Labyrinth of the Lost Lambs. She is saying the same words he is using moments before him. She obviously doesn’t have the power to close it in her current form but she knows, or perhaps even devised, a pretty powerful spell.
The gate is closed and they fly off together this time. It soon becomes obvious he is hunting goblins. He carries the corpses to the same place where he massacred the large group. I fly back to Emily and report what I saw.
(Peter)
I knock on Rin’s door.
“Who is it?”
“Peter.”
“Just a moment.” She says and after a minute the door opens. She is wearing a thin blue dress and looks a little annoyed to see me. “Come in.”
“Thanks.” I say and enter. When the door is closed I get straight to the point. “Is there any use in alchemy for goblin corpses?”
“Why?” She asks clearly suspicious.
“I happen to have some.”
“Why were you fighting goblins? I thought you had nothing important to do!”
“I didn’t intend to fight them but they were in the forest so I figured I’d deal with them at the same time.”
“Same time as what?” She asks accusingly.
“Just a challenge.”
“Just a challenge! You shouldn’t fight unofficial challenges! You could get in trouble. You could get expelled.”
“I didn’t need to in the end. She got caught by the goblins and I had to save her.”
“That’s not the point. If you get challenged again, then decline. The academy would just love an excuse to expel you, and who’s to say the next person might not ambush you with a group of their friends?”
“We’ll talk about that later. More importantly there are a couple of hundred goblin corpses, so is there any use for them?”
“A couple of hundred! You idiot!”
“What?”
“Yes we can use them, but make this the last time you fight an army on your own.”
“Great! Get your bag and we’ll pick them up.”
“Fine.” Rin says and grabs her bag. I go to grab her hand but she backs away and shakes her head. “You clear up your own mess.” She says and throws me the bag. “If you lose or damage my bag though, I will kill you.” I know she’s partly joking, but also that it is a very important gift from her dead father.
“Don’t worry. I’ll be careful.”
It takes a while but finally all the goblins are in the bag. Just how Rin’s father created this enchantment that allows me to put whole goblins almost as big as myself in such a tiny bag I have no idea. Each time I put the goblin near the opening the goblin is shrunk and sucked inside. Although I have seen Rin do it many times it still feels weird. I hope it’s not possible to get sucked inside myself! I assume it must be dimensional magic because it certainly isn’t any type of elemental magic I have ever heard of.
I port back and give Rin the bag. I then port back to my room. I am surprised to find a worried Hermes still up. She looks at me like she’s about to cry but then runs over and hugs me.
“Are you OK?” I ask.
“I was so worried! What have you been doing until so late?”
“Oh, I killed some goblins. Didn’t Lucy tell you?”
“No, she just said to ask you and then she went straight to sleep.”
“Well it is late. Why aren’t you asleep too?”
“I was worried!”
“Sorry, but I had a challenge to fight so I couldn’t bring you along.”
“A challenge?!”
“Yes, sorry but, I figured you’d try to persuade me to forget about it, so I didn’t say anything.”
“Don’t keep these things secret from me!” She says and I can feel tears on my shoulder.
“OK. Sorry. I’ll tell you next time.” I apologise shocked by the strength of her reaction.
“Try not to let there be a next time.” She says softly.
“I can’t promise that. I promised I wouldn’t die though. Please believe that at least.”
“It can be hard to believe when you do dangerous things like this.”
“Anyway I’m exhausted so I’m going to bed. … … Umm, would you mind letting go of me? Thanks. Sleep well Hermes.”
“Good night Peter. Sleep well.” Hermes says tiredly and falls into bed herself. “You’d better keep that promise.”
“I will.”
I wake up as the sun rises. I am still tired from last night. It is only the third day of the week but it feels like later. It’s not just that the first two days have been hell, but also because my day off was bad. I lie in bed for a while and then clean myself, wake Hermes and port to class.
Hermes ports to class much quicker than normal and moments later Rin appears with Yu Kii. Rin then starts moaning about last night and Hermes starts to agree with her. Only Yu Kii is quiet but it is clear even she is on Rin’s side. Then the girl from last night ports in and I get worried as she walks up to me.
“Thank you!” She says bowing even lower than Yu Kii normally does. It’s unusual for a girl from Contractia to bow to anyone, much less a boy. Everyone in the class looks our way stunned. Then she bows just as low to Hermes. “I’m sorry!”
“What for?” Hermes asks stunned.
“For insulting you.” She says.
“Oh. OK. Don’t worry about it.” Hermes says and gives me a funny look.
“I will apologise to Lucy when I see her next!”
“Fine… It’s not like you can do so when she’s not here. She won’t be in lesson again though.”
“I’ll make sure I apologise!”
“Fine.” I say with a small smile.
“Please let me join your group!” She says and my mouth drops open.
Rin look at me and whispers. “We do need more members.”
I consider for a moment but even if it make
s sense and even if she did apologise that doesn’t change the fact that she pisses me off with what she said before. Can I really trust her? I shake my head and say. “Sorry, but no.”
She looks shocked at my rejection but nods and goes to her seat. The whole class is talking about her, and not in a good way, when the teacher arrives and starts the lesson. It is a good lesson and I learn a lot despite my tiredness.
At lunch I get a load more complaints but I let it go over my head and focus on my food. It tastes great. Rin and Hermes realise I am not paying any attention so they stop moaning after a while. The afternoon lesson is interesting and then it is time for our training.
“I’m just going to get someone. Port ahead of me.”
“I thought you rejected her. Did you change your mind?”
“Not her. Lucy.”
“Why her?!” Rin exclaims.
“Because she knows a lot about magic. With her help we can definitely improve much better than without her.” I say and Hermes and Rin both groan. Yu Kii doesn’t exactly look happy about it either but is more reserved as usual.
Lucy readily agrees of course. She loves a chance to show off how much she knows that we don’t. The training is completely different to normal. We focus purely on dimensional magic and she has us doing things we have never done before. I learn a lot but I will need to train with her a lot more to actually remember how to do any of it. The others find it much harder than me and can barely do any of it but everyone agrees that if we can learn this it would be really, really useful.
I port back with Hermes and she seems unusually chatty. No. Not so much unusually. More like she did when I first met her. It’s been a while since we talked so much about nothing in particular but I find it kind of fun. I am tired though so before long I am in bed and so is Hermes.
The next day is just a normal day and everyone seems to have forgotten, or more likely chosen not to bring up, recent events. The lesson is vaguely interesting and training is really interesting. The next day the lesson seems to fly by and we are in the arena again for training. Before we start I see a girl in the audience. After a moment I realise it is the same girl who I saved the other day. She takes the opportunity to apologise to Lucy, and then asks again to join my group but I am firmer this time that she is not welcome. She stays and watches our training. We don’t own the arena or even really have a right to train here, so just like with Claire before there’s nothing we can do about that. The next day we are training outside and she is watching again but again there is nothing we can do about it. It is our last training session of the week and again she is watching, not causing any harm but…
“Why don’t you want to let her join?” Rin asks.
“She just pisses me off. The things she said really annoyed me.”
“But maybe she would be useful.”
“Maybe but I really don’t think I could ever trust her after what she said. Who’s to say she wouldn’t betray us for a stronger group at some point. All she is interested in is our strength, not us.”
“I don’t know.” Rin says.
“You weren’t there.” I say and Rin has no good answer to that, so we continue our training.
Finally it is our day off again and we have an easy job. It is finished by the end of the morning and we have the afternoon off. We spend our time together and have a leisurely lunch outside. It is definitely getting colder though so Hermes lights a fire for us that keeps us warm. We chat and relax, putting our worries out of our minds.
The next week is our last before the practical tests so we train for even longer than normal after lessons and everyone in the class is much more focused than normal. The week passes slowly but finally it is the last day of the week and our tests are here. They are solo tests and test all of the elements as well as dimensional magic. We get our results right away and to my relief none of us were demoted but not unexpectedly we were not promoted either. If it had been a team test of course I suspect we could easily have been promoted. None of us are experts at all the elements but as a team there is very little we can’t do.
The academic year is over and we have four weeks before the next year starts. We have used most of our power and we don’t feel like training anyway. Instead we all feel like celebrating even if we didn’t get promoted so we are walking to the dinner room. We would normally port of course but none of us feel like using the energy to do so.
We turn the corner and in front of us is a scene that truly shocks me. A girl is hanging from the ceiling by her feet and for a moment I think she is dead. She is mostly encased in ice that is stuck to the ceiling but her head is free. Her eyes are shut and she is not breathing but I can just about sense her aura.
“Get Lucy!” I shout at Hermes and start chanting. It is rare that I chant but if I try to melt the ice with unincanted magic I will most likely kill the girl. Hermes is better at flame magic but not good enough to do this without an incantation. The ice has mostly melted and Lucy is now here. Suddenly I realise it is the girl who has been trying to join our group. Her aura is fading fast. “Heal her! Quickly!” The green light flows and the girl’s aura strengthens but Lucy faints before the spell is complete. The girl is better than before but she is not saved yet.
“Healing potion!” Rin exclaims and ports. A few moments later she is back and throws a healing potion down the girl’s throat. Her aura quickly recovers but she is still not conscious. “I don’t understand. She should be awake.”
Pain shoots down my back and I fall to my knees. I see Rin on the floor and hear what must be Yu Kii and Hermes falling behind me. I can’t sense the enemy but there is no doubt that this is an attack. The pain is getting worse and with no idea where my enemy is I strike wildly with an air slice in every direction but above where my friends should be. It is fortunate that they are all on the floor, because I wouldn’t have been able to do so if they had still been standing. I hear a gasp and send all my remaining power in that direction.
To my relief I can now see our attacker and I gasp to see Claire. She is on her knees and covered in scratches from my attack. If her shield had completely failed she would be dead, but it seems to have held sufficiently to avoid any serious injuries. She glares at me before porting away. I am relieved she didn’t realise I was out of power.
First I check on Rin and use a little of the second healing potion on her. She wakes up but is not completely with it. I then use the rest of the potion on Hermes and Yu Kii. After a few minutes we are all able to stand. Lucy starts to wake too and it is now just the girl who we were focused on helping that is still asleep.
“She’ll wake in a few hours.” Lucy says.
“What’s wrong with her?” I ask.
“She’s under a sleep enchantment. You really should learn to identify enchantments.” Lucy says.
“We can’t just leave her here.” Rin says.
“None of us are able to wake her though.” Lucy points out.
“Does anyone know who her friends are?” I ask.
Rin looks at me and sighs. “She doesn’t have any anymore. They all disowned her for trying to join our group. They said if she gave up on us and insulted us in front of them, they’d be friends again, but she refused.”
“How do you know that?” I ask surprised.
“I overheard them.” Rin says.
“You should have told me. Fine then, we’ll take her back to my room. It’s closer than yours. Could you and Yu Kii port to the lunch room and get us something to eat, and then port back to my room?”
“Sure. The usual?”
“Yes. Hermes, can you port me, Lucy and her to our room?”
“Right away.” Hermes says and grabs my hand and touches the girl on her stomach. Lucy sits on the hand on the girl’s stomach. We are in my room an instant later and we lift her onto my bed before sitting on Hermes’ bed.
“Do you know her name?” I ask Hermes but Hermes shakes her head. “I guess if she’s gone through that much because of us, if she
still wants to, we could let her join our group. What do you think?”
“I don’t mind.” Hermes answers.
“I suspect we’ll see that Claire again. I’m surprised she left so easily. Sure she was a bit hurt but she could easily have finished us. In fact I’m surprised she didn’t just finish us in the first attack.” I say but Lucy shakes her head.
“She said it herself when she captured me. She’s a sadist. She doesn’t just want to kill us. She wants to capture, torture and eventually kill us. She wants us to suffer, not just die.” Lucy says and her words send shivers down my spine.
“Perhaps we should focus on capturing her instead of waiting for her to get us. Any ideas how we could find her?”
“When you do capture her, what will you do?” Lucy asks.
“I’m not sure. If we hand her over then she’ll be killed. I don’t doubt that she deserves it but it does make me a little uncomfortable.” I reply.
“If you don’t hand her over though, you’ll be a criminal too.” Lucy warns me.
“Is there any way we could scare her off without capturing her?” Hermes asks.
“No.” Lucy replies confidently.
“Why not?” I ask.
“In her eyes, you and your friends killed her mother. Hermes especially.” Lucy explains.
“What about this girl?”
“She wants to be your friend so she is considered the enemy as well.”
“Ah, Rin and Yu Kii, you didn’t take long given the time of day.”
“It’s the last day so most people are going home.”
“How do you both feel about letting her join us if she still wants to?”
“Sure.” Rin nods.
“No problem.” Yu Kii agrees. Perhaps nobody else had a problem with her joining in the first place.
“Then let’s eat!” I say and even if it is just our usual meal it tastes great. We are hungry though so it’s soon gone.
“Are we going to train today?” Yu Kii asks.
“No. We should recover our power. Does anyone have any plans for the time off?”
“I figured we could do some more work for my mother and get some training in too.” Rin says.
“Sounds good. How about we try some bounties too though? As a company that’s what we’ll be doing at least initially so some experience wouldn’t hurt.” I say.