“Are we in an agreement now?” Hannah asked after I sat down on the edge of the desk once more, this time facing the headmaster directly. He gulped, looked at me and then at Hannah, but still shook his head.
“What a stubborn man.” Hannah muttered and I couldn’t agree more. He still thought he had any way of denying what we wanted. He really should have realised that we could act however we wanted without any recuperations.
“I’ll tell everyone you raped me.” I said dryly and crossed my arms in front of my chest. So far, this conversation was quite funny but at this point I thought I was speaking with an idiot.
“Excuse me?” He merely asked, completely taken off guard by my words.
“Once you reveal whatever you may know about us, an investigation by the guards against you with me as a victim will be made public. I don’t have to explain how little others will believe you once your other victims start to speak up as well?” I asked and snipped my fingers. “Oh, I know! None.” I giggled a bit and glanced towards Hannah who knew how to finish him off right away.
“Whatever you have against us which doesn’t amount to much to be honest is completely worthless in the face of a few raging parents who need to wonder what happened to their poor children. Either you disable the circles we asked you about, or we we will replace you with someone … more suitable.” She explained calmly, but also quite sternly … just like a teacher would in all honesty.
“I …” He took his sweet time to decide if he wanted to have a crazy girl to have an underground laboratory, or if he wanted said girl and her more than capable sister as his enemy. “Fine.” He stood up, calmly walked towards a painting and lifted it off the wall. In amazement, I noticed a metallic safe embedded into the wall and walked behind him. It must have been obvious that I peeked past his shoulder as he opened it with a key he had but except a little hesitation, he didn’t stop much.
There were a lot of documents inside, but after some rummaging he found the right piece of paper and handed it over to the other man in the room without any reservations.
“Are you happy now?” He asked Hannah, still not taking me at the person he should talk the most, but I had no issues with that.
“Thank you.” She said nicely and turned around to leave the room. The other person followed closely behind, but I waited a little bit while looking at the exhausted headmaster. Smiling brightly and giggling a bit, I followed Hannah as well shortly afterwards and had the door half closed as I stopped a bit after I made sure nobody else was around.
“Hit me up when you want to fuck around with a girl.” Once again, I laughed healthily and closed the door, but not without hearing his reply.
“I have a wife!” I certainly didn’t know why that was an issue considering what he did with his lover boys, but whatever. If anything, it was tempting me to make this joke into reality …
“Can you work with that?” I heard Hannah a bit further away at the stairwell and tried to catch up fast.
“Certainly.” He said and silence spread between them until I finally caught up.
“Hi, I don’t think I caught your name, did I? Mine is Lucy, it’s a pleasure to meet you.” I said and noticed how he turned his head around to smile back at me, even though I could see the uneasiness in his eyes.
“… you can all me Mole.” He said in the nicest way possible.
“Mole? That’s such a sweet nickname. Who gave it to you?” I asked and tilted my head while giving him the cutest look I could muster.
“My … my colleagues milady.” He said and breathed out as he finally exited the building through the front door. It was still raining heavily outside, which honestly gave me the creeps.
“I guess it is not just a nickname is it? Oh, I know! You are the one Hannah hired to build the underground laboratory!” I explained and jumped in joy.
“You are very sharp milady.” Really? It wasn’t that hard to figure out he was an earth magician considering all the dirt on his attire and his knowledge about the protective magical circles.
He also knew very well how not to provoke and obviously insane person which wasn’t something one gained by dealing with normal costumers. In short, he was the guy Tom sent to dig.
“Thank you so much! W-When will you start? I can’t wait to see everything finished!” I jumped around with joy like a little boy shortly before his birthday.
“I can start right away, milady.” The man admitted and turned towards Hannah for approval.
“Then do that.” She said after a slight pause and caught my collar as I was jumping out into the rain. Just in time … I really had thought she would let me do that.
“But sis, I really wanted to talk with him about his magic!” I said and pouted unhappily.
“You can ask another earth magician. Let him do his job.” She said and forced me to stop jumping by pushing down into my shoulders.
“Fine…” I said and looked down towards the ground.
“Till next time.” Hannah said nicely.
“It was an honour to meet you. Elevator.” He said and to my surprise the earth beneath his feet began to fall, taking him with him until he was out of sight. Only then did everything turn back as it used to. The earth where he stood previously closed up completely, leaving no trace of the earth magician behind. This earth magician was good, that was for sure but I didn’t expect anything else from the guy Tom picked out for us.
“Are we alone?” Hannah asked me after several seconds of silence.
“Nobody can hear us.” I could only hear the rain falling onto the ground and a few noises from the inside of the building, but otherwise it was eerily silent.
“Why did you act so crazy in there?” She asked while raising her right eyebrow.
“I don’t trust either of them. It’s better if they think I’m crazy instead of seeing who I am for real.”
“Okay … what now? I doubt you can make it home sane even when I put up an air shield.”
“Hmm … do you have a piece of paper?” Wordlessly, she handed me a small note over which I took thankfully. We waited outside for a little while until the door opened once more and a grumpy headmaster walked out.
“What are you still doing here?” He asked while opening his umbrella and stepping away from the closing door. As I already stood beside the doorframe, I had an easy time to slide the paper in between the two strike plates and thus stopped it from closing completely.
“We are just waiting for the rain to calm down a little bit.” Hannah admitted unhappily. She was certainly not very keen to stand around in the cold with me, but she was still there.
“Good luck with that.” The principal said and stepped into the rain.
“Greetings to your wife!” I said and waved happily as he walked away, following the light of the lamps on his way home.
“And now …” I opened the door of the building once more. “We sleep here.” I said and strolled back in.
“Even if there is a bed here, I don’t want to sleep in it.” She did have a fair point if I was honest. Not that it would stop me, but I also didn’t want to smell the principals’ endeavours constantly.
“There should be a fresh set of sheets … hopefully.” I mumbled and together, we searched for a bedroom of some sorts. We quickly found one on the second floor and cleaned up everything as much as we could. Thorough cleaning involves burning everything to the ground – at least that’s what I learned – but Hannah was apparently happy with switching out the sheets.
And so, we listened to the sounds of the rain outside resting in a bed we didn’t own. We were fooling around a little bit in the beginning, but soon settled down and closed our eyes to sleep.
I didn’t sleep very well at all. Neither did I dream anything, nor did I visit my subconscious once more. I was quite uneasy for whatever reason. Maybe it was the different bed, maybe the never ending rain.
But it did help me considerably. In the middle of the night, I heard a loud sound in the distance akin to an explosion. At one, I stood up from the bed and rushed over to the window. I could see far during the night, but the rain blocked most of my vision.
For a long time, I couldn’t see anything until the second explosion resounded around fifteen minutes later this time affecting even the rain in front of my window.
The pressure from the explosion must have pressed it towards me as the rain did act oddly for a second or so. Hannah was awake after the second explosion as well, staring out of the window together with me.
“Maybe we should check it out.” She proposed, even though she knew about my fear of water.
“Nah … probably doesn’t matter.” I wouldn’t got out there, that was for sure. After these explosions, no more resounded close to us for an hour or so. Thus, Hannah chose to go to bed once more while I kept staring out of the window, warily but also slightly interested in whoever would be insane enough to go out during such a weather.
Around morning, the weather cleared up considerably, prompting me to wake Hannah up and to put the glasses back onto my nose.
“Let’s check it out.” I said, threw my attire over me in a rush and ran out of the room, closely followed by Hannah. Luckily for us, we could leave the house without any issues and soon found ourselves in front of an area of the campus I never was before. There weren’t any import buildings there at all, merely a few classrooms for special courses like metalworking and botanic.
It usually didn’t attract such a crowd though as mostly adults stood in between three of these complexes. Some were still wet from the rain, others were as dry as us.
“What happened here?” Hannah asked the nearest teacher while I walked past them and stared a three metre tall statue of … me. A younger me of course, but still me.
The thing was that this statue didn’t stand upright anymore. But it’s legs had been blasted away, toppling the rest over into the mud below.
What interested me the most though was a feeling of death on the other side of the pedestal. I was quite happy, expecting some kind of corpse or something, but it nothing of that sort.
It was a golden plate glued to the pedestal, still shining brightly.
“Has that plate always been there?” In worry, I asked the nearest teacher about the golden plate. It stood out from the rest not only because of its unusual shininess, but also because of what was written on there.
“I don’t think so.” He squatted down next to it and reached out to get it off the pedestal. For a second, I thought about letting him touch it, but I also didn’t want to stand right next to a soon-to-be corpse. That wouldn’t look good on my curriculum vitae.
“You would be wise not to touch that.” I warned him. Golden plates usually didn’t give of a feeling of death. I was quite sure it was enchanted in a way, even though I couldn’t explain how or why I was able to feel something.
At least the teacher wasn’t that dumb and stopped short of touching it. Shortly afterwards, even more people, this time mostly students gathered and the teachers began to send us back to our dorms, including me.
Classes were suspended for the day, but the incident was a hot topic for everyone as we sat in the canteen and ate our meals. It turned out that two statues were blown up. One was mine, and the other one was from the founder of this academy. Both had golden plates from a monster called ‘Golden Scaly’ glued to them, but nobody could tell me what was written onto them. At least that explained how I felt anything from the plate as I didn’t hear anyone being hurt from touching them.
Some students even to see this as some kind of prank by one of them, but I didn’t think so. I could still remember the words on the plate after all.
‘You will never be safe.’ Others might need to guess who left these plates behind, but I was in a special position. I could say for sure nobody in the underworld could do such a thing. That it happened right after we got the keys to the protective circles alone put me in a tough spot which Tom would know.
There wasn’t any other group strong enough to infiltrate the academy grounds. The elves were also out of question as we made peace with them a long time ago.
Leaving only one group.
Demons.
I already suspected some would be hiding amongst the humans, but this … blowing up my statue?
Bastards. I took that personal and would laugh at their misfortune … from the sidelines that is.
“Are we in an agreement now?” Hannah asked after I sat down on the edge of the desk once more, this time facing the headmaster directly. He gulped, looked at me and then at Hannah, but still shook his head.
“What a stubborn man.” Hannah muttered and I couldn’t agree more. He still thought he had any way of denying what we wanted. He really should have realised that we could act however we wanted without any recuperations.
“I’ll tell everyone you raped me.” I said dryly and crossed my arms in front of my chest. So far, this conversation was quite funny but at this point I thought I was speaking with an idiot.
“Excuse me?” He merely asked, completely taken off guard by my words.
“Once you reveal whatever you may know about us, an investigation by the guards against you with me as a victim will be made public. I don’t have to explain how little others will believe you once your other victims start to speak up as well?” I asked and snipped my fingers. “Oh, I know! None.” I giggled a bit and glanced towards Hannah who knew how to finish him off right away.
“Whatever you have against us which doesn’t amount to much to be honest is completely worthless in the face of a few raging parents who need to wonder what happened to their poor children. Either you disable the circles we asked you about, or we we will replace you with someone … more suitable.” She explained calmly, but also quite sternly … just like a teacher would in all honesty.
“I …” He took his sweet time to decide if he wanted to have a crazy girl to have an underground laboratory, or if he wanted said girl and her more than capable sister as his enemy. “Fine.” He stood up, calmly walked towards a painting and lifted it off the wall. In amazement, I noticed a metallic safe embedded into the wall and walked behind him. It must have been obvious that I peeked past his shoulder as he opened it with a key he had but except a little hesitation, he didn’t stop much.
There were a lot of documents inside, but after some rummaging he found the right piece of paper and handed it over to the other man in the room without any reservations.
“Are you happy now?” He asked Hannah, still not taking me at the person he should talk the most, but I had no issues with that.
“Thank you.” She said nicely and turned around to leave the room. The other person followed closely behind, but I waited a little bit while looking at the exhausted headmaster. Smiling brightly and giggling a bit, I followed Hannah as well shortly afterwards and had the door half closed as I stopped a bit after I made sure nobody else was around.
“Hit me up when you want to fuck around with a girl.” Once again, I laughed healthily and closed the door, but not without hearing his reply.
“I have a wife!” I certainly didn’t know why that was an issue considering what he did with his lover boys, but whatever. If anything, it was tempting me to make this joke into reality …
“Can you work with that?” I heard Hannah a bit further away at the stairwell and tried to catch up fast.
“Certainly.” He said and silence spread between them until I finally caught up.
“Hi, I don’t think I caught your name, did I? Mine is Lucy, it’s a pleasure to meet you.” I said and noticed how he turned his head around to smile back at me, even though I could see the uneasiness in his eyes.
“… you can all me Mole.” He said in the nicest way possible.
“Mole? That’s such a sweet nickname. Who gave it to you?” I asked and tilted my head while giving him the cutest look I could muster.
“My … my colleagues milady.” He said and breathed out as he finally exited the building through the front door. It was still raining heavily outside, which honestly gave me the creeps.
“I guess it is not just a nickname is it? Oh, I know! You are the one Hannah hired to build the underground laboratory!” I explained and jumped in joy.
“You are very sharp milady.” Really? It wasn’t that hard to figure out he was an earth magician considering all the dirt on his attire and his knowledge about the protective magical circles.
He also knew very well how not to provoke and obviously insane person which wasn’t something one gained by dealing with normal costumers. In short, he was the guy Tom sent to dig.
“Thank you so much! W-When will you start? I can’t wait to see everything finished!” I jumped around with joy like a little boy shortly before his birthday.
“I can start right away, milady.” The man admitted and turned towards Hannah for approval.
“Then do that.” She said after a slight pause and caught my collar as I was jumping out into the rain. Just in time … I really had thought she would let me do that.
“But sis, I really wanted to talk with him about his magic!” I said and pouted unhappily.
“You can ask another earth magician. Let him do his job.” She said and forced me to stop jumping by pushing down into my shoulders.
“Fine…” I said and looked down towards the ground.
“Till next time.” Hannah said nicely.
“It was an honour to meet you. Elevator.” He said and to my surprise the earth beneath his feet began to fall, taking him with him until he was out of sight. Only then did everything turn back as it used to. The earth where he stood previously closed up completely, leaving no trace of the earth magician behind. This earth magician was good, that was for sure but I didn’t expect anything else from the guy Tom picked out for us.
“Are we alone?” Hannah asked me after several seconds of silence.
“Nobody can hear us.” I could only hear the rain falling onto the ground and a few noises from the inside of the building, but otherwise it was eerily silent.
“Why did you act so crazy in there?” She asked while raising her right eyebrow.
“I don’t trust either of them. It’s better if they think I’m crazy instead of seeing who I am for real.”
“Okay … what now? I doubt you can make it home sane even when I put up an air shield.”
“Hmm … do you have a piece of paper?” Wordlessly, she handed me a small note over which I took thankfully. We waited outside for a little while until the door opened once more and a grumpy headmaster walked out.
“What are you still doing here?” He asked while opening his umbrella and stepping away from the closing door. As I already stood beside the doorframe, I had an easy time to slide the paper in between the two strike plates and thus stopped it from closing completely.
“We are just waiting for the rain to calm down a little bit.” Hannah admitted unhappily. She was certainly not very keen to stand around in the cold with me, but she was still there.
“Good luck with that.” The principal said and stepped into the rain.
“Greetings to your wife!” I said and waved happily as he walked away, following the light of the lamps on his way home.
“And now …” I opened the door of the building once more. “We sleep here.” I said and strolled back in.
“Even if there is a bed here, I don’t want to sleep in it.” She did have a fair point if I was honest. Not that it would stop me, but I also didn’t want to smell the principals’ endeavours constantly.
“There should be a fresh set of sheets … hopefully.” I mumbled and together, we searched for a bedroom of some sorts. We quickly found one on the second floor and cleaned up everything as much as we could. Thorough cleaning involves burning everything to the ground – at least that’s what I learned – but Hannah was apparently happy with switching out the sheets.
And so, we listened to the sounds of the rain outside resting in a bed we didn’t own. We were fooling around a little bit in the beginning, but soon settled down and closed our eyes to sleep.
I didn’t sleep very well at all. Neither did I dream anything, nor did I visit my subconscious once more. I was quite uneasy for whatever reason. Maybe it was the different bed, maybe the never ending rain.
But it did help me considerably. In the middle of the night, I heard a loud sound in the distance akin to an explosion. At one, I stood up from the bed and rushed over to the window. I could see far during the night, but the rain blocked most of my vision.
For a long time, I couldn’t see anything until the second explosion resounded around fifteen minutes later this time affecting even the rain in front of my window.
The pressure from the explosion must have pressed it towards me as the rain did act oddly for a second or so. Hannah was awake after the second explosion as well, staring out of the window together with me.
“Maybe we should check it out.” She proposed, even though she knew about my fear of water.
“Nah … probably doesn’t matter.” I wouldn’t got out there, that was for sure. After these explosions, no more resounded close to us for an hour or so. Thus, Hannah chose to go to bed once more while I kept staring out of the window, warily but also slightly interested in whoever would be insane enough to go out during such a weather.
Around morning, the weather cleared up considerably, prompting me to wake Hannah up and to put the glasses back onto my nose.
“Let’s check it out.” I said, threw my attire over me in a rush and ran out of the room, closely followed by Hannah. Luckily for us, we could leave the house without any issues and soon found ourselves in front of an area of the campus I never was before. There weren’t any import buildings there at all, merely a few classrooms for special courses like metalworking and botanic.
It usually didn’t attract such a crowd though as mostly adults stood in between three of these complexes. Some were still wet from the rain, others were as dry as us.
“What happened here?” Hannah asked the nearest teacher while I walked past them and stared a three metre tall statue of … me. A younger me of course, but still me.
The thing was that this statue didn’t stand upright anymore. But it’s legs had been blasted away, toppling the rest over into the mud below.
What interested me the most though was a feeling of death on the other side of the pedestal. I was quite happy, expecting some kind of corpse or something, but it nothing of that sort.
It was a golden plate glued to the pedestal, still shining brightly.
“Has that plate always been there?” In worry, I asked the nearest teacher about the golden plate. It stood out from the rest not only because of its unusual shininess, but also because of what was written on there.
“I don’t think so.” He squatted down next to it and reached out to get it off the pedestal. For a second, I thought about letting him touch it, but I also didn’t want to stand right next to a soon-to-be corpse. That wouldn’t look good on my curriculum vitae.
“You would be wise not to touch that.” I warned him. Golden plates usually didn’t give of a feeling of death. I was quite sure it was enchanted in a way, even though I couldn’t explain how or why I was able to feel something.
At least the teacher wasn’t that dumb and stopped short of touching it. Shortly afterwards, even more people, this time mostly students gathered and the teachers began to send us back to our dorms, including me.
Classes were suspended for the day, but the incident was a hot topic for everyone as we sat in the canteen and ate our meals. It turned out that two statues were blown up. One was mine, and the other one was from the founder of this academy. Both had golden plates from a monster called ‘Golden Scaly’ glued to them, but nobody could tell me what was written onto them. At least that explained how I felt anything from the plate as I didn’t hear anyone being hurt from touching them.
Some students even to see this as some kind of prank by one of them, but I didn’t think so. I could still remember the words on the plate after all.
‘You will never be safe.’ Others might need to guess who left these plates behind, but I was in a special position. I could say for sure nobody in the underworld could do such a thing. That it happened right after we got the keys to the protective circles alone put me in a tough spot which Tom would know.
There wasn’t any other group strong enough to infiltrate the academy grounds. The elves were also out of question as we made peace with them a long time ago.
Leaving only one group.
Demons.
I already suspected some would be hiding amongst the humans, but this … blowing up my statue?
Bastards. I took that personal and would laugh at their misfortune … from the sidelines that is.
