Chapter 230

A Cass-Tastrophy

(Charlaine)

By the time Jhonny and Charlaine arrived, they were shocked to see the state of the Faculty building. What had once been a building of gloom and doom suddenly seemed to glow with a sense of life and vitality.

SKA-POOF!

“What was that?” Charlaine asked, hearing the clear explosion happening from a room on the second floor.

What was worse, the building seemed to bulge slightly, as if suddenly letting out a pocket of gas before shrinking back down to its normal size.

“I don’t know,” was all Jhonny could reply before he decided to lead the way, easily following the trail of magic up the stairs to the second floor, where a locked door with an opaque glass window was the only thing that protected the outside world from the explosions of magic and lights that erupting from the inside.

“Should we go in?” Charlaine asked.

“I’m not.” Jhonny admitted, before just staring at the door and watching and waiting for what would happen next.

“I need to know what is happening in there.” Charlaine stated, a note of concern in her voice.

With that Jhonny looked at the door and saw that it was in the steam punk style, complete with the open key lock that could allow a person to view into the room if they crouched down and peered in from under the doorknob. Realizing that, Jhonny ducked down to peer into the room, and what he saw caused his blood to run cold.

“Oh shit,” Jhonny exclaimed, backpedaling with a look of fear on his face.

“What is it?” Charlaine asked, as she quickly ducked down to peer into the room where Cass was floating above her seat, as she began pouring vibrant energy from her Pixie body directly into an ink quill that she used to write down something onto what had to be a piece of parchment paper.

Seeing the image, Charlaine paused as all that was happening was that Dr. Spiritlight was diligently writing something down while infusing her strokes with magic. While Charlaine wasn’t an expert, she was fairly certain that a number of processes involved this method to include Enchanting, of which Dr. Spiritlight was a noted master of the profession.

“Look at her, truly look at her.” Jhonny said, backing away as his eyes began to scan the entire room. This only seemed to further Jhonny’s growing fear and tension as he seemed to notice something else from this as well.

Realizing that Jhonny, the person who had been Dr. Spiritlight’s hand picked bodyguard was even now backing up, away from his charge caused Charlaine to question what exactly she was missing.

This time, she peered back down into the room.

Once again, she saw a smaller sized Dr. Spiritlight mystically floating over a desk, while golden wings periodically came in to let her move about over the desk. Still, there was nothing truly odd about this, as this was how Dr. Spiritlight normally moved.

“I don’t see anything?” Charlaine asked, truly confused as to what could cause the bodyguard to be so frightened for seemingly no apparent reason.

“Look at her face, what expression is she making.” Jhonny said cryptically.

With that Charlaine once again peered into the keyhole to view the oversized pixie’s face. This time when she looked, she saw what was clearly a look of intense concentration. Then she noticed that her tongue was sticking out to the side in the cutest way.

Normally Dr. Spiritlight, the pixie, was gorgeous. But now, with the added benefit of her having her tongue sticking out of the side of her mouth in the form of pure concentration, she just looked too precious.

“Aww, she has her tongue sticking out of the side of her mouth. She is so cute.” Charlaine exclaimed, letting her true thoughts be known about the image of the glowing pixie that was beyond words to describe in terms of beauty.

From the change her skin went from a bluish silvery color to the now seemingly magical cream color. Though the color seemed to change with the magics that she was using and casting at the time. Or rather the amount of energy she moved. Right now, her body was an intense bright cream color, the way one would expect to see when passing on to the afterlife, just that bright and intense of a glow. Even her hair seemed to be coming to life as is tiny tentacles that would rise up and out, discharging excess energy, or making sure just enough energy was present for a particular casting. While it was hard to tell for certain, it almost looked like the hair would pulse and change in intensity as well, depending on the amount of energy. Though Charlaine did remember her hair being a slight purple-bluish base color, though even then her hair did seem to alternate in colors depending on the way light hit her, and her mood, and of course the amount of energy she used naturally. So, yeah her hair was, well Charlaine didn’t know exactly what to put down for the actual hair color, other than you will know it when you see it. As for the other changes, her eyes were still emerald green, that much had not changed, nor had the multitude of definitive marks that made her face seem strikingly beautiful.

Instead, the real changes came from the fact that she somehow seemed slightly smaller, if even more adorable with the change, and now seemed to all but radiate with magical intensity.

“They didn’t warn you?” Jhonny’s harsh words pulled Charlaine’s mind back from just how beautiful the pixie in their midst was, and caused her to look away and once again take in Jhonny’s frightened form.

“Warn me about what?” Charlaine asked, clearly confused.

“About what it means when Cass makes that face.” Jhonny declared.

Magical pulse.

At that exact moment, a surge of compressed magical energy flared up from inside the room, causing what appeared to be lightning to sparkle from within the tiny office.

Recognizing the flash, Charlaine instinctively turned her head around to look back into the room, where she only saw a bright flash of light.

“WAHAHAAHOOO!” Dr. Spiritlight cried out in excitement causing Charlaine to try to look even harder into the keyhole in an attempt to see what it was that the mad doctor was working on, and apparently succeeding at right now.

Clasp.

Just as Charlaine thought she could see the faint silhouette of a floating childlike form in the intensely burning cacophony of lights that were erupting from the room, Charlaine felt a firm hand grab her. Then after being grabbed, she felt that same hand begin to drag her and pull her away from the keyhole.

“Hey!” Charlaine shouted, indignantly crying out as tried to protest.

Za-joom!

At that exact second, a small narrow beam of light shot out through the exposed keyhole and burned a hole into the whitewashed walls on the far side of the hallway.

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Smolder.

There was a burning scorch mark that lasted on the wall for all of a second. Then Charlaine watched as the still burning embers caused by the rogue beam of energy dissipated and stopped, leaving behind a perfect charred keyhole silhouette on the wall. A silhouette that slowly began to tremble for a second, before the wall seemed to repair itself.

Badump, badump, badump.

Almost echoing her own quickly beating heartbeat, Charlaine paused, and clutched her chest, before realizing that the building itself was also releasing a steady beat.

“What was that?” Charlaine found herself asking, but then stopped talking as she saw the tiny burn mark slowly heal itself until nothing but a perfectly smooth and unblemished wall remained.

Only now, only after the event was over and the echoing beat of drums stopped pounding in the hallway did Charlaine begin to wonder if she had truly lost it. For right now the only logical conclusion to everything that she was seeing and experiencing was too much for her mind to take in.

Then as if finally having a moment to truly comprehend what Jhonny was saying did Charlaine pause to think about what Jhonny had been saying. The fact that he seemed to have almost been expecting all of this, then at that even more questions came to her mind.

Charlaine had heard about the mad Doctor, the crazy scientist who was the ultimate doomsday weapon of the Midnight Hunters. But of course, as with every story there were thoughts that somehow the stories seemed too fantastical to believe, that there was no way the world they were in would allow someone to be that powerful.

Yet, after being near said mad Doctor, and feeling the residual heat from a burning keyhole death ray, a death ray that had burned its way into a wall. A wall that seemed to momentarily have a heartbeat for a second, before seemingly healing itself. No, there had to be something else to this, maybe a self-healing enchantment? Yeah, that made more logical sense, a self-repairing enchantment that would fix any and all damages caused by excessive uses of magic.

“Come on, we need to get out of here.” Jhonny said, his words cutting through Charlaine’s overactive mind and imagination as she tried to piece together all of the different pieces of what was actually happening around her.

“But why?” Charlaine asked, getting her way to her feet. Now that she was out of the blast radius of the open keyhole, she found that Jhonny no longer tried to manhandle her.

“You saw it right, her tongue?” Jhonny asked.

“Yeah, it was cute, what about it?” Charlaine asked.

At that Jhonny looked almost horrified. “They didn’t tell you, or at least warn you about what to do when you see that?”

“What? Doesn’t it just mean that she is focusing? I’ve seen many kids do it.” Charlaine posed, trying to understand the obvious concern being shown on Jhonny’s face right now.

“That might be the case, but you have to realize that we have a protocol to follow when we see that.” Jhonny explained, then reaching out his hand he tried to grab Charlaine’s wrist before pulling her out to the stairwell so they could begin to evacuate the building.

For her part Charlaine only resisted for a second, before ultimately following the protective bodyguard. Though Charlaine did wonder about Jhonny’s integrity as a bodyguard if he was leaving his charge.

“Shouldn’t you be there with her?” Charlaine asked.

At that, Jhonny just shook his head. “The last time anyone was near her when this happened there was so much radiation released that well.”

With that last thought Jhonny cut himself off.

“That what?” Charlaine all but demanded.

With that Jhonny just shook his head, only remembering the event that caused his bloodline potential to awaken. Also, it was the same day that many of the Qi cultivators had breakthroughs in their own cultivation. It was also the same day that forced Cass to begin teaching everyone about Bloodline awakenings.

Realizing the threat for what it was, Cass was once again playing around with wild energy, completely oblivious to her surroundings, that the Guild, i.e. Mallory introduced a whole new set of emergency protocols to follow.

THUNDERCLAP!

As the duo exited the building, they were met with a sudden onset of a particularly violent summer storm that seemed to have appeared from out of nowhere.

Then to Charlaine’s surprise a military vehicle was already pulling up to greet the pair as they exited.

“What is going on?” A Guild member who was clearly somewhat of a high rank in the Guild’s hierarchy asked, his gaze directly on Jhonny.

“It’s Cass, she is in full Cass-Tastrophy mode.” Jhonny stated calmly.

“What?” Charlaine found herself asking, but was quickly cut off as Jhonny seemed to be reporting.

“Tongue out?”

“Tongue out.” Jhonny confirmed.

“Any idea for how long?” The Guild guard asked.

“I don’t know, we just got here, but she was alone for twenty-five minutes or so.” Jhonny answered a bit sheepishly.

“Twenty-five?” The Guild guard asked, a bit of incredulity to his voice. Then pausing for a moment, he looked somewhat hesitantly at Jhonny and then seemed to ask a question that he didn’t want to ask, but knew he had to. “Should we tell the boss?”

At that Jhonny just paused, then looked back at the building.

Burble.

At that the building once again flashed with a magical radiance before another pocket of air seemed to ripple out form the large structure.

“Yeah,” Jhonny replied in a somewhat squeaky voice indicating that he didn’t want to answer in the affirmative, but had to.

“Okay, she is in the middle of teaching her class right now, but we will get this to her. Any idea what she was doing?” The guard asked, apparently filling out an incident response card.

Seeing the card Charlaine found it odd that the guild apparently had a card denoting common questions to ask during such an event.

“I don’t really know,” Jhonny said to the guard, then turning to Charlaine he asked, “you saw her more than I did. Do you know what she was doing?”

Flustered.

At that Charlaine felt flustered from the sudden attention. But then thinking about it she paused and then remembered something, “she was writing something.”

“Writing, got it.” The guard noted as he wrote the word down. Then apparently reading the next item in the list, he asked. “Was she doing or saying anything that you remember?”

At that Charlaine paused and then replied honestly, “she was laughing? At least I think it was a laugh?”

“Laughing, yeah this is already getting escalated.” The guard said, apparently checking a box, then continuing with the questions. “Okay, final question, did you hear, see, or experience anything odd?”

At that Jhonny just shrugged his shoulders, and asked for clarity. “Normal odd, or odd for Cass odd?”

“Odd for Cass odd.” The guard confirmed.

With that Jhonny just shrugged his shoulders and turned to Charlaine, “sorry I was trying to get us out of there. Did you see anything?”

“What? There was the whole keyhole sized death ray, and the fact that the wall got burned in the shape of a keyhole, before randomly healing itself.” Charlaine noted.

“The wall healed itself?” The guard asked, a note of incredulity to his voice, as if this was the suddenly odd thing to hear after exiting a building that was seeming to have a sudden case of gas.

“That’s what seemed to happen, there was a thumping sound, that sounded like a beating heart, and then the small burn mark on the wall disappeared.” Charlaine said.

“Okay, I will note that as a paranormal phenomenon for now.” The Guard stated, as he made quite a few notes this time. Then he asked, “anything else?”

At that Charlaine and Jhonny both looked at each other before just shrugging.

“No,” the duo said in unison. With that, duo then turned to look at each other as if for the first time.

“So to be clear, there were no fires, no explosions, and no cursing?” The guard asked.

“Ahh, no.” Jhonny answered, but only after seriously considering the question.

“Wait, what about that beam of energy that burned the wall?” Charlaine all but hissed, remembering how her face almost got burnt off with that beam.

“That was just a photon burst of Qi, not a true explosion.” Jhonny commented, apparently noting a distinction that Charlaine herself was too unaware to understand.

With that the guard nodded to himself, and then seemed to check everything.

“Okay, I think I have everything I need from you two. We are going to call this a level three Cass-tastrophy, and see what the boss wants us to do.” The guard said, seeming to be somewhat relieved at the fact that it wasn’t that bad, apparently.

“The building is bulging gas bubbles,” Charlaine noted, pointing to the building. Though at this point the building was just sitting there quietly basking in everything that was going on around it.

“Okay, so a three plus Cass-Tastrophy then.” The guard noted.

With that Charlaine just stared at the guard who seemed to turn to Jhonny for confirmation. For his part Jhonny just paused, then seemed to debate the distinction before eventually nodding and shrugging his shoulders in agreement.

“Yeah, three plus should be fine.” Jhonny confirmed.

“Okay, I’ll call it in now. You know the drill, stay back a hundred meters from the site. Make sure everyone else stays back with you…” the guard said, trailing off as if it was something that both had heard a hundred times by now.

“Yeah,” Jhonny stated nodding his head and clearly seeming to be at ease with everything that he was hearing.

Hearing the two, Charlaine could only pause and stare, wondering how they could take such an event so lightly.

A three plus? That was it? Magic that made a building both heal itself and seem to burble out gas, like a volcano? Or maybe like a sleeping dog, honestly Charlaine didn’t know what metaphor to go with right now, but the fact that they seemed so calm and casual about everything sent shivers down her spine. Here she was seeing and experiencing residual magic. Residual bone rending magic that all but seemed to pierce her soul, and these two were acting like it was just a standard Tuesday night.

Then pausing for a moment, Charlaine realized that for them, this was just a standard Tuesday night.

“You okay?” Jhonny asked, apparently seeing the look of concern coming to Charlaine’s face.

At that Charlaine collected herself, wondering if this was all a set up. She suddenly wondered if they had rooted out her master plans, the plan for why she was here. It all seemed to be too easy to be honest. Especially with the fact that they openly advertised the high paying vacancy position to be Dr. Spiritlight’s assistant. Apparently, anyone of the new refugees could apply for the position and after two years time be considered to be a formal guild member.

Given her goal and what she was here for, the whole thing seemed to be too perfect.

Especially as none of the actual guild members seemed to want to apply for the position. Obviously it looked like a trap, one designed to catch thieves trying to put their hands into the cookie jar. But clearly they seemed to know what they were doing, as right now Charlaine had only more questions than answers. Worse, all she could do was confirm the utterly frightening reports that came from outside sources, where Dr. Spiritlight was labelled as a magical monster capable of almost any type of natural disaster. That she was listed as an asset to either convert or leave alone, that under no circumstances were they to do anything more than appear to be cordial. This was why the job posting seemed to be too good to be true, though after feeling the intense fear she had just felt, and the way that Jhonny and the rest of the guild members seemed to act in her presence. Calmly, even though she was clearly doing something completely crazy, it made Charlaine question her rationale for choosing this assignment.

Then finally she had to ask, to see if they had known about her true intentions all along.

“Did you know?” Charlaine asked.

“No, I just assumed she was about to do something crazy. Protocol is, when she has her tongue sticking up and out like that we are to run. I’m sorry that this was not given to you.” Jhonny said apologetically.

“Yeah,” Charlaine noted, as there were seemingly quite a few things that were omitted from her introduction. In fact, Charlaine had thought it odd that she was not really told anything other than her job entailed being the assistant for the premier magic and Qi user of the world and that she was very nice and personable, once you got to know her.

Flash.

For a second, Charlaine could swear that the building flashed in a bright color for a moment, before turning back to its normal hue.

“Should we do something?” Charlaine asked.

“What? Go back into the magically changing building? No. Just stay here for now.” Jhonny confirmed.

“Right.” Charlaine replied, clearly wondering what she got herself into.

Then finally Jhonny asked the question that she honestly didn’t know how to answer.

“So, are you enjoying the new job?” Jhonny asked.

Chuckle.

Charlaine could only force out a nervous chuckle as she looked for words to describe how she truly felt.