Emotionless: (Prototype: Zero book 1)

by Shaina Anastasi

  This morning, I decided I didn’t want to get out of bed. However, my guardian, Hopper, doesn’t want anything to do with it. Tugging the blankets up, Hopper sighed irritably, rolled me up into a cocoon and lifted me in the soft white sheets. He was obviously in human form, except for his ears. They twitched and listened to any sound close by while he took me to the bathroom. Dropping me at the door, I walked in Zombified and as per usual, came out a little more energised. Donte and Nixon brushed in, and mumbled a ‘good morning’ as they passed.

  I was nibbling on the bacon when a light wrap came from the door. Isilies already gone, Hopper answered it, and Head Mage came in casually. Behind him were Rebecca and Lawliet. They were a strange combination of mages together. My heart accelerated, and my stomach churned. I was conflicted on what I am supposed to be feeling.

  “Is Donte and Nixon around?” He asked in a straightforward matter.

  “Mika, what is this about?” Hopper asked with worry registered on his face.

  “Good morning Elij . . . Hopper,” he said playfully, and Hopper's ear twitched irritably. “I only need to ask them a few questions. Lawliet came here to talk to his girlfriend.”

  “Ok?” I questioned, dumbfounded.

  This is the first that I am hearing the title of girlfriend. Last that I have heard was the shaking hands and becoming of friends. For it to escalate so quickly, it leaves me questioning, have I done something to earn the status of girlfriend? There isn’t anything particularly interesting about me. He called me ‘fucking insane’ a few days ago and probably thinks I am a mental case to some degree.

  He came towards me, and I went rigid as well as Hopper went highly alert and freaked out with slight anger towards him. Lawliet leant down, wrapped arms around my waist and forcefully pushed my head to his chest, a breath of warm air tickled my ear.

  “Meet me in the classroom at midnight,” he whispered into my ear and stroked my back. “We’re not safe.”

  Understanding, I stepped back. Even knowing it was fake, I enjoyed the warmth that was resonating off Lawliet from the hug. The tickle of his soft hair that brushed against my eye lightly with the hug. Would it be wrong to think this after the frightening thing he spoke in my ear? Probably.

  “Donte, Nixon. May I speak to them?”

  “Sure. Let me fetch them reasonably,” Hopper replied. He stared daggers at Lawliet who stood beside me as if this was perfectly normal.

  “Thank you.”

  “Hey, Droid,” Rebecca smirked. “Where have you been hiding?”

  “Classroom,” I answered softly.

  “Whatever. I don’t care.”

  Our friendship. It reminds me of whiplash.

  I had left before Mika left, as he waited while Donte and Nixon dragged their feet.

  Walking the halls alone, I sensed something wrong with this Academy after hearing Lawliet’s words. The armoured knights who usually stay as still as statues with not a metal clanking coming from them moved now as if they were completely different. As they marched down the corridor, the metal going, ‘tap, tap, tap’ in a rhythmic thrumming as they ran down on the right side of me. The metal helmet flipped open softly and revealed nothing but magical air that was withering inside.

  The hum of cafeteria talk filled the room when I walked in. The only familiar place that doesn’t have unnecessary tension. It’s filled with mages who were laughing, having loud conversations and throwing food across one table to the other. They were swapping meals they were not satisfied with that was on their tray.

  Charlie could be heard from the entrance to my classroom sometimes, so it is no surprise that she was heard from across the hall. Noticing me, she waved enthusiastically while I kept walking. I wasn’t particularly bothering with being nice. Worried that I am being watched, I kept my eyes down to the ground and hoped that I don’t look up and glance at the walls, ceiling or any available place where something unfamiliar and wrong could be lurking, watching and taking everything in.

  A gargoyle in the shadows, its peering yellow eyes glowed from underneath the slot, near the vent where the large banquet sized table with chefs stood. They scanned the students as they grabbed their breakfast. It spotted me, the creature in the darkness and followed me as I walked to the cafeteria and to the exit. The instant gnawing weight lifted, and the twinkling chill from behind my neck dispersed once I was out of the cafeteria and away from those watchful eyes.

  Puffing cheeks, I stepped up the flight of stairs quickly as I could and turned the corner. I felt relief for a moment before it all came crashing down.

  A stranger, someone I have never seen before stood at the door to the classroom. My classroom. The class I go in with Lawliet. He reached out, and a rune on the palm of his hand illuminated his skin as well as the veins. Intense magic rushed out in tendrils. He isn’t a teenager, certainly an adult, but not an adult that was wearing a symbol to represent the Academy. That means he isn’t a teacher.

  Dark brown hair and narrowed dark chocolate eyes and dark skinned. The blue and his veins heightened with his skin colour and made him look similar to an alien as they burst to life. With a small step forward, not knowing what to do, they retracted their hand with a murmur of deactivating his runes and letting the veins dull down to a minor throb. He turned, a snap of the head and eyes connected with mine instantly. There was no surprise that I was there. His face was passive from any type of emotion. With the turning of his body, an emblem shimmered on his chest. My heart nearly stopped, and I instantly wanted to leave and hide.

  “Frost,” he stated obviously. I nodded the slightest and shrunk lower. I wished that I were somewhere else. Anywhere. Sitting with Rebecca seems inviting at this particular state of time. “How are you?” he asked casually.

  “Ok.”

  “This area is out of bounds for today. You can come back in presumably a few hours, maybe seven or eight.”

  I wanted to ask why. What is so special about this classroom? The fear of them finding something of my Grandfathers worries me more than being cut off from runes permanently because I haven’t made progress. A stump in the ground ever since I came back from the excursion. Illogical things have happened, and I was not able to find the mage I needed to talk to until this morning. Now there is a mage who doesn’t even go to this school, and I doubt from Sorcerer City inspecting the one place I thought safe. Who knows what little devices or strange runes he will mark in there. Hoping to hear conversations and see who comes in and out.

  Before the excursions, everything was fine. Little secrets, finding out my grandfather is alive is one. However, ever since I come back, Mage Academy has been tipped upside down with no answers spilling out. Everything is a huge question mark that was waiting to be unravelled. Head Mage and his strange behaviour. Lawliet who was missing for a few days. Donte and Nixon were not acting like their diabolical selves. Teachers are discussing behind student's back. Now I assume that was bad. Now we have gotten from bad to worse. As a mage from the organisation stood before me and was withering in incredible power. Of course, it is more degrading than anything ever felt before because they know everything about me. My life, family and lack of friends while I know next to nothing about them besides the fact that my mum and Dad are the organisation. If I think that it’s daunting being around a stranger who works for them, I have parents who are them.

  It is like living with a stranger that I will never be able to trust, and that is frightening.

  Chapter 20.

  Eileen – bored.

  I was bored. Having nothing really to do, I was not particularly interested in going home to Hopper and his disapproving looks. Instead, I ended up seeing someone that I haven’t spoken to in a while. I opened the door softly, and there was a slight creaking that was coming from the hinges. I slipped through and targeted a lone seat and moved to it with my head bowed down. I felt the presence of stares when I shuffled through the back seat and pulled out the rune book that was crumbling in the corners, as well as grandfa
ther’s notebook and pencil.

  “When you tap on the stone to get to the heart and essence of the crystal, make sure there is a thin outer layer hard enough that it won’t break with a single touch. Different designs you make can alter the type of crystal and maybe the colour as well to create something special.”

  Isilies, when he is in teacher mode, his voice is graspable. He pulls at ears, makes students listen. Every syllable is alluring and fixating. He spoke while the rhythmic tapping of mages who were peeling flakes of stone that dropped on the table, as they created a crystal.

  I recall that crystals are different, can be altered differently and can look differently with design and texture. However, the essence inside does what it wants. I suppose that is what annoyed me mainly with crystal work and how I never got into it. Perfect precision. The piece of stone turned into a beautiful crystal, and it swirled with unimaginable magic essence on the inside. It was streaming into static veins of electricity and was the complete opposite of what I pictured in my head. The crystal I wanted to be done was healing, what I got instead was electricity. Isilies sat me down after my first crystal and praised me, and was saying how I was advanced for my age. However, I thought otherwise. If the crystal didn’t set out how I wanted it to, like a rune would and gave me something irrelevant, I didn’t care for it. While Isilies wanted me to expand, I reverted to runes. The trusted runes that don’t need pure luck to design but only need the imagination and of course an actual hand that doesn’t shake all the time while drawing. Precision and accuracy perfected runes as well as crystals. Crystals though come from a stone, and each stone is different. Each stone has elements that even shaved perfectly can turn to the feature that I didn’t want in the first place. The brightest green stones will lean more towards health then attack while the bright blue stones will lean towards defence rather than anything else really. I disliked the blue ones that have streams of other colours in there. No matter how hard I tried, the stone will still turn or stay blue. The streams would disperse into a beautiful sky blue that destroyed my patience.

  While I read, a white stone with various streams of colour wiggled around in there and was waiting to be shaved down to size and polished delicately set on the table. The nimble fingers of a crystal worker released his light grip and crouched. He comes at eye level. Those silver eyes softened as he plucked the pencil from my hand and gave me a shaver for tweaking stones into crystals.

  “If you’re going to sneak into my class, Eileen, you have to do the work,” Isilies said with a warm-hearted smile.

  “Ok,” I murmured.

  Putting the books back in my bag, I tapped the stone and puffed cheeks. These are scented crystals. I recall Isilies bought them and brushed it off that it wasn’t for him but rather for the class. I didn’t buy it then, and I don’t buy it now. As he crouched and praised his students, his eyes twinkled at the stones that were being chipped down by students who were, in my view, horrible. One boy cracked the crystal down to the core, and while he freaked out and believed that he was in trouble as he broke into a cold sweat, Isilies brushed it under the rug and said, ‘we never started out perfect.’

  He had the whole class eating out of the palm of his hands adoringly. I have never been in one of his classes because schools believed that he would go easy on us and expected him to favour my brothers and me if Isilies was our teacher. It was oddly humorous because I doubt favouritism would be for Donte and Nixon. Evidently, if we were in his class, you would see the work of a stressed teacher who was throwing hard pointy objects at the demonic brothers while I sit there and was being chastised for doing runes instead of crystals. If we were in my brothers’ class, we would be in trouble every day.

  Grabbing the small hammer, I tapped lightly, and the stone shavings and crystal powder twinkled down. The silver stainless steel table was cold on my elbows as I leant forward and sifted the crystal into shape.

  The white stone is scented for a reason. It is a scented bomb crystal usually mages use when they have guests that are coming over. They will shatter the crystal bomb, and the whole room will wither in the scent that was inside the crystals. Only lasts a couple hours and the odour doesn’t disperse, only disappears after a certain time. I recall Nixon and Donte were playing and experimenting some time ago with scents. The problem was, they didn’t smell pleasant.

  I noticed that there was a barely their light blue colour that is nearly translucent in a way but had a slight ting. That was what I was aiming for.

  I tapped a few times, stopped, twisted the stone and searched for the light blue essence. The others around me sounded into a bashful orchestra of sound. Some going fast, a never-ending, ‘tap, tap, tap’, while others ‘thunked’, or, ‘thwap’ and the most annoying ones of all are the chalk scratching people. Even with the sound of stone breaking, the sound of mages that were conversing with one another warped around the stone. Some were hushed, small whispers while others made awe sounds whenever they did something with the rock. Then simply had the ones that were calling and laughing with each other and weren’t paying any attention to their stone as they worked.

  Nauseating.

  It was all I could think about when I did the stone. When I was finished shaving it down to size, Isilies nodded as he found it acceptable and then gave me the thin needle to pierce the crystal. Going in at eye level, I raised the needle to the top while I watched the slithering blue essence twirl around the other essence. When it was nearing the top, in its natural motion, I pushed the needle down, and it slipped through the stone as easily as slipping a sharp knife through soft butter. It went into the nectar centre, and the needle pierced the stream. It broke, inked out and was spooling all over the place. Giving it a few seconds, I then spun the needle delicately and mixed it around before I pulled it out, grabbed the little clear tape and placed it over the crystal. Isilies who was noticing that I was done, happened to be already doing his rounds. He put a small test tube on a rack on everyone’s tables. Handing me mine, I set the stone in the circle stand, put it in place on the hanger - a small area lifted underneath - so the liquid I will be soon pouring over the crystal doesn’t splash all over the table.

  The liquid is a slight hardening, shining and protective liquid that goes over the crystal. The beauty of it comes with the shine and to look at the colour that was gained on the inside. Some mages, if they don’t care what they make usually wing it. They would shake the crystal and swirl the essence around until the only one stood out. Then they would slather it in liquid and be on their way to quickly make another one.

  Lifting the tube, I dribbled it on the top, where I made the incision and watched as it soaked down and covered the crystal. Grabbing the brush, it was like I was painting, as I stroked in a downwards pattern and let it go on evenly while I still poured.

  Some mages clamp the crystal and dunk it into a bucket filled with the liquid and repeat. Isilies was showing the class the importance of perfection, so they don’t work lazily in the field.

  Once finished, I leant back and exhaled deeply and stared at the sparkling light blue crystal with a hint of a white outer layer for protection. It is intense. No denying crystal work is as time-consuming as potions and runes, however, annoyingly hard with the essence that don’t do what I want it to do. I was lucky this time. With nimble rune fingers, I stabbed the light blue stream and pierced the liquid without cutting into any others.

  “Make sure you keep them safe and from breaking for a whole week. Next Tuesday, for our practical exam, to shatter them in class. With this crystal, you will have to keep it beside you at all times until then. You can be dismissed after you finished your crystal.”

  A group already finished, the power mages who want things done quickly stood. While one energetically tossed his crystal from one hand to another, a mage behind him lifted his leg and kicked his feet from underneath him. He stumbled out, clutched onto his crystal as if it was his life support and laughed weakly with the other group. Blinking in the atmo
sphere, I leant down and forward when the chair beside me scraped backwards. Isilies was in brotherly fondness mode. Lifting his arm, he patted my head, and I can admit that I missed it.

  We were never that close. We both often leant towards the things that we loved and have lost each other in passing because of it. He always had Donte and Nixon to run after, while I sat in my room and drew. I know he cares about me as much as a brother and carer should.

  I recall that when I was eleven, he stumbled in my room intoxicated. He found Mum and Dad’s liquor, and he dropped beside the bed, slammed his head into the wooden panel support of the canopy and grunted groggily. I listened to his despair pleads. He wanted forgiveness from neglecting his duties as a brother as well as answers from our Mum and Dad who disappeared all the time. It wasn’t his fault. I wanted to tell him that he was too young to start caring for three young children but he persisted into placing the entire burden on himself so the rest of us could have a happy child life. I felt guilty as I watched him because of the three of us, we already stopped believing our parents were saints.

  “I promise, Eileen, that I will be there when you need me the most!” he sniffed, MOVED to the side and fell asleep.

  All I was done was place a blanket over him and not because I believed him.