Tock.
My dreams were so nice. Standing in purgatory, Aska and I danced to one of his beloved songs while I joined in and sang.
Tock.
A huge bird flew over our heads, dispersing black feathers everywhere around us. In my black wedding dress I looked like the most beautiful woman in existence. We both looked very delighted as we kissed each other.
Tock.
The bird must have started picking against a tree with its beak again, but that didn’t stop Aska and me from kissing in front of the crowd we called our friends. My mum was there, clapping proudly and wiping a few tears away. Tom applauded Aska and me for finally putting our differences aside.
Tock.
Aska would give me every bit of space I needed for myself and wouldn’t intrude on Solaris. He promised me that.
Tock. Tock.
But most importantly, Luna was there as well. Not as the person she was, but as the one I wished her to be.
“I love you sis!” She shouted while Aska kissed me again, this time a lot more demanding.
Tock. Tock. Tock.
“Lucinda.” Suddenly, the earth shook and my dream was interrupted rudely. “Wake up.”
Tock.
I opened my eyes, wary about the quiet sound that even followed me into my dreams. Slapping my cheeks twice, I sat up on the bed and grabbed the dagger on the nightstand.
Only then did I turn to the window which was the origin of the sound with interest.
I couldn’t see anything in front of it, and this sneaked slowly towards it while Hannah came from the other side. We both looked through it at the same time without noticing anything suspicious.
“It was the window …” She said and opened it fully. I leaned over the windowsill and looked downwards to the ground, only to find a strangely folded piece of paper down there. After hesitating a little, I picked it up and bought it back into the room.
“What’s that?” Hannah asked still warily.
“A message?” I asked myself and started unfolding the paper. Inside there was … nothing. Just nothing.
“Oh shit.” I said and dashed towards my mostly black dress right away. “Get your weapons.”
This paper was primed on me. It flew the shortest route from its sender towards this very room and probably not because Isabelle was a bit scared. Albert had made this for her so that she could call for my help.
I honestly didn’t care much about her life, but I definitely wanted to find whoever threatened her. Because that person was most definitely also the one who attacked Ellie.
In my hectic, I managed to reduce the time I needed to change into my most familiar attire to half a minute and jumped out of the window, the black katana in my hands shortly afterwards. Hannah was right behind me, or rather overtook me as I couldn’t remember the way instantly.
Together, we dashed through the darkness using my night vision and her intuition to get to the girl’s dormitory of the first semester without being spotted by any guests whatsoever.
Before we even arrived there though, we already heard screams from inside and saw a few lights being lit all around the house.
One room in particular stood out though. The lights were lit, and yet a thick nebula of darkness blocked most of my vision inside the room. Still, I could hear the scream very well and dashed towards it right away. Before I got there though, I saw a round object crashing through the glass window, rolling a bit in on the grass outside.
After looking at it for a second, I noticed the brown hair and immediately recognises it as Isabelle’s deprecated head. Her mouth was wide open and her eyes frozen in shock. Blood was seeping out of the stump that was her neck. All help would come too late for her.
Stopping right in my tracks outside the light from the other rooms, I dragged Hannah behind a nearby tree and hid with her for the time being. Half a minute later, I could see a young teenager jumping out of the room, distributing even more glass shards everywhere. He was clad in darkness and wore equally dark clothing. But it was still obvious who it was. It was Schwarz. His black hairs gave him away within an instant, if it wasn’t for his flashy use of magic.
But something felt odd about this. I couldn’t see Schwarz doing such a thing and even if he went crazy, his choice of target was weird.
Sadly, we couldn’t run after him or whoever that was right away as the light would give us away instantly. Instead, Hannah did what I thought of as well and grabbed one of her throwing knifes. She didn’t have much room to manoeuvre, but that wasn’t an issue for her at all.
With the flick of her hand, she threw the knife towards Schwarz. On the way, it picked up more speed thanks to her magic and threatened to hit the target impossibly fast.
Surprisingly for us though, Schwarz managed to parry the flying knife easily and dashed towards a nearby house behind which he took cover. Some of the girls were already at their window, looking at him as he did so.
“We either need to get going or we are found out.” Hannah said while I listened closely to every sound I heard from the screaming of the girls to the tramping of the approaching guards. What I missed completely was someone’s breath behind that house. I also didn’t feel any death coming from there. Looking back towards the dormitory for a second, I memorised the scene and then turned around. I had a very bad feeling about pursuing that person. It wasn’t that I doubted our abilities to defeat him, but rather my intuition telling me that it would be useless to chase after him.
Ducking low, we fled the scene as quickly as we could without being noticed by the guards in high alert.
“Are you sad?” Hannah asked, opening the secret passageway and throwing all of our suspicions stuff in there.
“No … okay, a bit. She was innocent and way too young to die like this.” I answered, gave her my dress and closed my eyes. A tiny patch of darkness appeared beneath my hands and I started searching for Isabelle’s soul. I found it a few seconds afterwards, but it was already completely repaired from the damage, meaning that her memories had been wiped already. Once again, Aska was hindering my investigation wherever he could.
“I heard that this place should be peaceful …” I muttered and forced her soul to a world that I knew as peaceful. This was the least I could do for the girl who saw me as a friend, but never actually got to be my friend … except finding that person who was responsible hot Isabelle’s death of course.
Sighing quietly, I opened my eyes once more and looked at Hannah in her underwear, holding up the other side of the blanket with question marks all over her face.
“Sorry to keep you waiting …” I muttered, slipping under the blanket as fast as I could.
“Was fleeing really the best decision?” She muttered quietly.
“Hopefully … we would have been found out if we followed that guy, which would have been catastrophic. Let’s wait and see what happens next.” I answered while swinging my leg over her waist and cuddled her affectionately.
I placed my cheek on her shoulder and closed my eyes, deep in thought about what I had witnessed. There were so many questions I couldn’t answer right away.
How did he get inside for example? All the dormitories had silent alarms which should alert the guards and teachers. But nobody seemed to have noticed until the screaming started.
Additionally, how did she even survive that long? The paper plane and her death were more than four minutes apart and I honestly doubted he struggles mattered that much.
Well, I didn’t have the time to figure out all these questions myself as the teachers were woken up one by one and even out door wasn’t spared from knocking.
“Miss Dove. We need your and your sisters assistance.” Oh? What an interesting development. Well, they probably wanted to capture Schwarz so it was to be expected that they had asked for our help.
“A second please.” Hannah said and we started dressing in our normal attire once again. A few minutes later, we opened the door and looked at a very bitter guard, not even twenty years old.
“There has been an incident at the girl’s dorm. A student has been murdered.” The guard explained and was quickly pushed to the side by Hannah who feigned to be completely surprised. Immediately, she dashed past him with a mediocre speed that wouldn’t look too suspicious. A second afterwards I ran behind her, heading straight for the girl’s dormitory which was already surrounded by guards.
“I’m sorry, but this is an active crime scene.” The guard said and stopped us with both hands in front of him.
“Let us have a look. I spent years fighting evil and know my work better than anyone else.” Helplessly, the guard looked back to his superior who nodded reluctantly.
“Very well. But do not touch anything.” Both Hannah and I nodded immediately and I kept looking at the whole building. The silent alarm hadn’t been triggered at all, which was why the teachers had to be woken up by a guard. There was the possibility of disabling it, but that was hard.
Guided through the cauldron of guards, we quickly arrived at the scene we had fled seconds earlier. I didn’t think it would look any different than what I remembered, except for the cloth covering the head. But there were slight differences which were hard to ignore.
Hannah had thrown a knife at Schwarz and he blocked it. So it must lay in the grass in front of the dorm somewhere, but I couldn’t find it at all.
Next up was the window itself. The glass was just enough for Schwarz to pass through, but it was definitely less than what I remembered.
“Is there any suspect?” Hannah asked, balling her hands into fists tightly.
“A student named Schwarz. We have already surrounded his dorm quietly, but we fear he may escape without any support from a more … levelled person.” The guard captain admitted a bit ashamed.
“Why are we standing around then?” Hannah asked, already walking away from the scene towards the boy’s dorm of the first semester. Before I left as well though, I turned around once more to the scene at the window to the left of Isabelle’s room. I thought I had seen a bit of movement behind the closed curtains, but as I looked at it carefully, I couldn’t see anything.
“I hate illusions.” I whispered quietly and ran after Hannah. I had already a pretty good understanding of what must have happened. Whoever that was, sneaking around campus was detected by Isabelle and he noticed.
She probably wasn’t even the real target, but rather more of a hindrance that needed to be dealt with fast. And honestly, it was done in a rather intelligent way.
Isabelle must have been scared and tried to send the paper plane as the assailant was already in her room. Wether he stopped her and sent it afterwards didn’t really matter as it lead to the same result.
Like two idiots, we came rushing to the scene and probably revealed us this way. It was a trap … or rather a stroke of luck for that person. Afterwards, we were all shown the image of Schwarz jumping out of the room while in reality, there was nothing there. Hannah’s knife passed right through the air and hit absolutely nothing. It probably embedded itself somewhere into the ground far away from us.
But that also meant that either the assailant was still in the girls dorms, or that person was good at disabling magical circles.
“Hey. There is an alarms system at the dorm, isn’t there?” I asked a nearby guard who looked slightly more competent than the rest.
“You .. you are not supposed to know that.” He said astonished.
“It’s only logical. Can you do me a favour and look if it has been tampered with?” I asked cutely and gave him a bright smile.
“It was active before we came here and disabled it to access the building … he must have tricked it somehow.” The guard answered, grabbing his chin deep in thought.
“I see. Thank you.” I said, curtsied shortly and then dashed after Hannah.
“Hey, do you mind if I accompany you?” I asked as soon as as I caught up to them.
“She might be able to talk to him.” Hannah said and convinced the guard captain this way.
“In that case.” Well, if Schwarz started wreaking havoc, it would surely mean a lot of trouble for him as well.
Silently, we made our way towards the already surrounded dorm and entered it right away.
I never was in the boys dorms before and honestly expected a lot more … boyish stuff? But it honestly looked exactly like the girls one, if not a little bit less tidy. Walking through the common area, we followed the guards captains lead and quickly arrived in front of Schwarz’s room.
There was already someone lock picking the door for us and opened it quietly, allowing Hannah and the guard captain inside.
Schwarz was still sleeping soundly at first, but was quickly woken up by the guard captain kicking some can through the messy room.
“Don’t resist.” Hannah said and directly threw herself onto him. I was sure she enjoyed ramming her elbow into his guts, especially after he hit her with this strange magic.
The guard captain had already the magical cuffs in hand as Hannah managed to turn Schwarz, still in pain, onto his belly with his arms behind his back.
It was only a mater of seconds until he was cuffed and secured in place.
“You are under arrest.” The guard captain stated, dragged him up from the bed after Hannah had released Schwarz and grabbed his neck.
“What?” Schwarz asked confused as another guard cuffed his feet as well.
“Schwarz … did you murder Isabelle?” I asked as he was slowly pushed out of the room.
“Lucy? What are you talking about?” He asked, simply overwhelmed by the sudden events. Sadly, it didn’t answer my question at all. His soul remained calm as I looked in his eyes but ‘what are you talking about?’ didn’t mean he did nothing.
“Did you murder her? Yes or no.” I asked again, this time a bit more forcefully.
“No!” He said and passed me shortly afterwards. I didn’t turn around, but rather kept looking straight ahead.
“You can tell that the poor girls family.” The captain said angrily and pushed him further down the hallway.
“Lucy, you have to believe me!” Schwarz shouted which was quite ironic considering he didn’t know I could actually help him.
“There are so many witnesses and he still claims to be innocent?” One guard by my side asked confused. “I hate dark magic …” He said and entered the room to search for any evidence. Even if he found any though, it would be planted there.
Because Schwarz didn’t lie to me. It wasn’t him who murdered Isabelle, no matter how many witnesses saw it. It was probably someone in the girls dormitory …
Tock.
My dreams were so nice. Standing in purgatory, Aska and I danced to one of his beloved songs while I joined in and sang.
Tock.
A huge bird flew over our heads, dispersing black feathers everywhere around us. In my black wedding dress I looked like the most beautiful woman in existence. We both looked very delighted as we kissed each other.
Tock.
The bird must have started picking against a tree with its beak again, but that didn’t stop Aska and me from kissing in front of the crowd we called our friends. My mum was there, clapping proudly and wiping a few tears away. Tom applauded Aska and me for finally putting our differences aside.
Tock.
Aska would give me every bit of space I needed for myself and wouldn’t intrude on Solaris. He promised me that.
Tock. Tock.
But most importantly, Luna was there as well. Not as the person she was, but as the one I wished her to be.
“I love you sis!” She shouted while Aska kissed me again, this time a lot more demanding.
Tock. Tock. Tock.
“Lucinda.” Suddenly, the earth shook and my dream was interrupted rudely. “Wake up.”
Tock.
I opened my eyes, wary about the quiet sound that even followed me into my dreams. Slapping my cheeks twice, I sat up on the bed and grabbed the dagger on the nightstand.
Only then did I turn to the window which was the origin of the sound with interest.
I couldn’t see anything in front of it, and this sneaked slowly towards it while Hannah came from the other side. We both looked through it at the same time without noticing anything suspicious.
“It was the window …” She said and opened it fully. I leaned over the windowsill and looked downwards to the ground, only to find a strangely folded piece of paper down there. After hesitating a little, I picked it up and bought it back into the room.
“What’s that?” Hannah asked still warily.
“A message?” I asked myself and started unfolding the paper. Inside there was … nothing. Just nothing.
“Oh shit.” I said and dashed towards my mostly black dress right away. “Get your weapons.”
This paper was primed on me. It flew the shortest route from its sender towards this very room and probably not because Isabelle was a bit scared. Albert had made this for her so that she could call for my help.
I honestly didn’t care much about her life, but I definitely wanted to find whoever threatened her. Because that person was most definitely also the one who attacked Ellie.
In my hectic, I managed to reduce the time I needed to change into my most familiar attire to half a minute and jumped out of the window, the black katana in my hands shortly afterwards. Hannah was right behind me, or rather overtook me as I couldn’t remember the way instantly.
Together, we dashed through the darkness using my night vision and her intuition to get to the girl’s dormitory of the first semester without being spotted by any guests whatsoever.
Before we even arrived there though, we already heard screams from inside and saw a few lights being lit all around the house.
One room in particular stood out though. The lights were lit, and yet a thick nebula of darkness blocked most of my vision inside the room. Still, I could hear the scream very well and dashed towards it right away. Before I got there though, I saw a round object crashing through the glass window, rolling a bit in on the grass outside.
After looking at it for a second, I noticed the brown hair and immediately recognises it as Isabelle’s deprecated head. Her mouth was wide open and her eyes frozen in shock. Blood was seeping out of the stump that was her neck. All help would come too late for her.
Stopping right in my tracks outside the light from the other rooms, I dragged Hannah behind a nearby tree and hid with her for the time being. Half a minute later, I could see a young teenager jumping out of the room, distributing even more glass shards everywhere. He was clad in darkness and wore equally dark clothing. But it was still obvious who it was. It was Schwarz. His black hairs gave him away within an instant, if it wasn’t for his flashy use of magic.
But something felt odd about this. I couldn’t see Schwarz doing such a thing and even if he went crazy, his choice of target was weird.
Sadly, we couldn’t run after him or whoever that was right away as the light would give us away instantly. Instead, Hannah did what I thought of as well and grabbed one of her throwing knifes. She didn’t have much room to manoeuvre, but that wasn’t an issue for her at all.
With the flick of her hand, she threw the knife towards Schwarz. On the way, it picked up more speed thanks to her magic and threatened to hit the target impossibly fast.
Surprisingly for us though, Schwarz managed to parry the flying knife easily and dashed towards a nearby house behind which he took cover. Some of the girls were already at their window, looking at him as he did so.
“We either need to get going or we are found out.” Hannah said while I listened closely to every sound I heard from the screaming of the girls to the tramping of the approaching guards. What I missed completely was someone’s breath behind that house. I also didn’t feel any death coming from there. Looking back towards the dormitory for a second, I memorised the scene and then turned around. I had a very bad feeling about pursuing that person. It wasn’t that I doubted our abilities to defeat him, but rather my intuition telling me that it would be useless to chase after him.
Ducking low, we fled the scene as quickly as we could without being noticed by the guards in high alert.
“Are you sad?” Hannah asked, opening the secret passageway and throwing all of our suspicions stuff in there.
“No … okay, a bit. She was innocent and way too young to die like this.” I answered, gave her my dress and closed my eyes. A tiny patch of darkness appeared beneath my hands and I started searching for Isabelle’s soul. I found it a few seconds afterwards, but it was already completely repaired from the damage, meaning that her memories had been wiped already. Once again, Aska was hindering my investigation wherever he could.
“I heard that this place should be peaceful …” I muttered and forced her soul to a world that I knew as peaceful. This was the least I could do for the girl who saw me as a friend, but never actually got to be my friend … except finding that person who was responsible hot Isabelle’s death of course.
Sighing quietly, I opened my eyes once more and looked at Hannah in her underwear, holding up the other side of the blanket with question marks all over her face.
“Sorry to keep you waiting …” I muttered, slipping under the blanket as fast as I could.
“Was fleeing really the best decision?” She muttered quietly.
“Hopefully … we would have been found out if we followed that guy, which would have been catastrophic. Let’s wait and see what happens next.” I answered while swinging my leg over her waist and cuddled her affectionately.
I placed my cheek on her shoulder and closed my eyes, deep in thought about what I had witnessed. There were so many questions I couldn’t answer right away.
How did he get inside for example? All the dormitories had silent alarms which should alert the guards and teachers. But nobody seemed to have noticed until the screaming started.
Additionally, how did she even survive that long? The paper plane and her death were more than four minutes apart and I honestly doubted he struggles mattered that much.
Well, I didn’t have the time to figure out all these questions myself as the teachers were woken up one by one and even out door wasn’t spared from knocking.
“Miss Dove. We need your and your sisters assistance.” Oh? What an interesting development. Well, they probably wanted to capture Schwarz so it was to be expected that they had asked for our help.
“A second please.” Hannah said and we started dressing in our normal attire once again. A few minutes later, we opened the door and looked at a very bitter guard, not even twenty years old.
“There has been an incident at the girl’s dorm. A student has been murdered.” The guard explained and was quickly pushed to the side by Hannah who feigned to be completely surprised. Immediately, she dashed past him with a mediocre speed that wouldn’t look too suspicious. A second afterwards I ran behind her, heading straight for the girl’s dormitory which was already surrounded by guards.
“I’m sorry, but this is an active crime scene.” The guard said and stopped us with both hands in front of him.
“Let us have a look. I spent years fighting evil and know my work better than anyone else.” Helplessly, the guard looked back to his superior who nodded reluctantly.
“Very well. But do not touch anything.” Both Hannah and I nodded immediately and I kept looking at the whole building. The silent alarm hadn’t been triggered at all, which was why the teachers had to be woken up by a guard. There was the possibility of disabling it, but that was hard.
Guided through the cauldron of guards, we quickly arrived at the scene we had fled seconds earlier. I didn’t think it would look any different than what I remembered, except for the cloth covering the head. But there were slight differences which were hard to ignore.
Hannah had thrown a knife at Schwarz and he blocked it. So it must lay in the grass in front of the dorm somewhere, but I couldn’t find it at all.
Next up was the window itself. The glass was just enough for Schwarz to pass through, but it was definitely less than what I remembered.
“Is there any suspect?” Hannah asked, balling her hands into fists tightly.
“A student named Schwarz. We have already surrounded his dorm quietly, but we fear he may escape without any support from a more … levelled person.” The guard captain admitted a bit ashamed.
“Why are we standing around then?” Hannah asked, already walking away from the scene towards the boy’s dorm of the first semester. Before I left as well though, I turned around once more to the scene at the window to the left of Isabelle’s room. I thought I had seen a bit of movement behind the closed curtains, but as I looked at it carefully, I couldn’t see anything.
“I hate illusions.” I whispered quietly and ran after Hannah. I had already a pretty good understanding of what must have happened. Whoever that was, sneaking around campus was detected by Isabelle and he noticed.
She probably wasn’t even the real target, but rather more of a hindrance that needed to be dealt with fast. And honestly, it was done in a rather intelligent way.
Isabelle must have been scared and tried to send the paper plane as the assailant was already in her room. Wether he stopped her and sent it afterwards didn’t really matter as it lead to the same result.
Like two idiots, we came rushing to the scene and probably revealed us this way. It was a trap … or rather a stroke of luck for that person. Afterwards, we were all shown the image of Schwarz jumping out of the room while in reality, there was nothing there. Hannah’s knife passed right through the air and hit absolutely nothing. It probably embedded itself somewhere into the ground far away from us.
But that also meant that either the assailant was still in the girls dorms, or that person was good at disabling magical circles.
“Hey. There is an alarms system at the dorm, isn’t there?” I asked a nearby guard who looked slightly more competent than the rest.
“You .. you are not supposed to know that.” He said astonished.
“It’s only logical. Can you do me a favour and look if it has been tampered with?” I asked cutely and gave him a bright smile.
“It was active before we came here and disabled it to access the building … he must have tricked it somehow.” The guard answered, grabbing his chin deep in thought.
“I see. Thank you.” I said, curtsied shortly and then dashed after Hannah.
“Hey, do you mind if I accompany you?” I asked as soon as as I caught up to them.
“She might be able to talk to him.” Hannah said and convinced the guard captain this way.
“In that case.” Well, if Schwarz started wreaking havoc, it would surely mean a lot of trouble for him as well.
Silently, we made our way towards the already surrounded dorm and entered it right away.
I never was in the boys dorms before and honestly expected a lot more … boyish stuff? But it honestly looked exactly like the girls one, if not a little bit less tidy. Walking through the common area, we followed the guards captains lead and quickly arrived in front of Schwarz’s room.
There was already someone lock picking the door for us and opened it quietly, allowing Hannah and the guard captain inside.
Schwarz was still sleeping soundly at first, but was quickly woken up by the guard captain kicking some can through the messy room.
“Don’t resist.” Hannah said and directly threw herself onto him. I was sure she enjoyed ramming her elbow into his guts, especially after he hit her with this strange magic.
The guard captain had already the magical cuffs in hand as Hannah managed to turn Schwarz, still in pain, onto his belly with his arms behind his back.
It was only a mater of seconds until he was cuffed and secured in place.
“You are under arrest.” The guard captain stated, dragged him up from the bed after Hannah had released Schwarz and grabbed his neck.
“What?” Schwarz asked confused as another guard cuffed his feet as well.
“Schwarz … did you murder Isabelle?” I asked as he was slowly pushed out of the room.
“Lucy? What are you talking about?” He asked, simply overwhelmed by the sudden events. Sadly, it didn’t answer my question at all. His soul remained calm as I looked in his eyes but ‘what are you talking about?’ didn’t mean he did nothing.
“Did you murder her? Yes or no.” I asked again, this time a bit more forcefully.
“No!” He said and passed me shortly afterwards. I didn’t turn around, but rather kept looking straight ahead.
“You can tell that the poor girls family.” The captain said angrily and pushed him further down the hallway.
“Lucy, you have to believe me!” Schwarz shouted which was quite ironic considering he didn’t know I could actually help him.
“There are so many witnesses and he still claims to be innocent?” One guard by my side asked confused. “I hate dark magic …” He said and entered the room to search for any evidence. Even if he found any though, it would be planted there.
Because Schwarz didn’t lie to me. It wasn’t him who murdered Isabelle, no matter how many witnesses saw it. It was probably someone in the girls dormitory …
