After another night of hard work finishing my part and helping my friends wrap up theirs, I crash into bed around five a.m., almost sleeping through my alarm. But I don’t. We have to be up promptly to make sure that everything goes off smoothly. After breakfast, we send our doubles off to class, and while Folas and Valkallyn nap, I send my spying device, a small bug shaped object known simply in my mind as It. into the Master’s tower. It isn’t hard to find Cellica’s records. Nor is it difficult to find what lab Faera was assigned to work on his project in, or his dorm number, or get It back down into my palm. All in all, it takes less than an hour actually, and I’m rather scared by how easy it was. Nothing is ever this easy. Not at Mossblossom Central.
I wake up Folas and Valkallyn, and we wait till the bells ring and students crowd the hallway before we disappear into the mass heading to their different classes. But instead of going towards the classrooms, we cut across the lawn, heading towards the area assigned to the student labs.
Nobody stops us. Nobody questions us. Nobody is even around the labs at this time of day. I glance upwards before we enter the part of the wall housing the labs, but not even one of the Masters is on the wall above us, or the pathways stretching from the top of the wall to the gigantic tower floating in the center of the courtyard. The whole area is deserted, as it should be at this time of day. Masters and students should both be in classes. Still, I don’t like it.
It doesn’t take to long to find the room specified.
“Remember,” I tell Folas and Valkallyn as they put on their gloves and I pick the lock. “In, destroy, out. Leave no trace, just destruction.”
“Of course.” Folas has a gleeful grin on his face. “I’ll wreck the whole place.” He promises. His twin looks even more ready, and cracks her knuckles while smiling maniacally. I shake my head, unsure why Kai has a crush on Valkallyn of all people. She’s even more scary than Folas’s chaos because she actually thinks hers through first. Although, I tilt my head as the lock finally clicks open, I suppose she and Kai are alike in that manner.
Folas smashes the pots and smears the dirt samples everywhere. Valkallyn burns the plants and papers, and I destroy all chemical samples in there I can find. Then we move to his dorm room, and repeat the procedure, albeit a bit more carefully so that it doesn’t affect his dorm mates' workspaces. We burn papers, burn plants, destroy samples, and Folas dumps a bucket of wormy dirt in the cheater’s bed and laces his clothes in the dresser with poison ivy extract, making Valkallyn burst out into uncontrolled laughter. Even I grin a little, until I glance down, and see the bracelet on my wrist, one that is decorated with a silver bead and a blue one, glowing. It takes less than a second for my mind to connect the dots and start whirling. The blue one is glowing, but not the silver. Briareth is in trouble, but not Faladel. Something has happened to them, but what does this mean for us? How to get to them, when we’re in the middle of finals?
“Guys…” I begin, wondering how to break the news to Folas and Valkallyn. But suddenly the whole ground tremors and I hear a mighty groan from outside.
My gaze flicks from the beads to the doorway and then to Folas and Valkallyn’s eyes. Without another word, we rush out of the dorm room, down the hallway and outside, just in time to hear a giant CRACK and see a minor explosion coming from three different rooms at once. One from each of the classrooms we’re supposed to be in. There is a second CRACK and then a third, the Master’s tower starts to tilt sideways, three of the floating paths that lead into it are broken. The last one groans and screeches, trying to hold it in place. But it can’t, and– almost in slow motion before our horrified gazes, and probably the gazes of at least half the school that has come out to investigate– the last bridge breaks and the Master’s tower crashes to the ground.
What in sangromancy have we done?!
----------------------------------------
It takes less than half an hour before we are all standing straight before HeadMaster Morthose Haulding, listening to what exactly our ‘interference with the school’s enchantments’ as he so delicately puts it, has done. He paces in front of us, long maroon tailcoat swishing behind his perfectly timed steps as he paces the room, long auburn braid bouncing as he twists on his high heel every time he reaches the edge of the room.
Folas looks guilty as heck. Valkallyn stands and stares at him defiantly, looking equally guilty. I pride myself with having a decently confused and properly horrified expression on my face, but when combined with those two’s reactions, it’s absolutely wasted. Instead of focusing on that though, I wonder how we are actually standing straight, instead of standing at an angle as the current leaning of the Master’s tower would say we should. Somehow, the floor is still beneath our feet, instead of us having to stand balanced on the corner between a floor and a wall. I shelve that as something to think about later though as HeadMaster Morthose turns his cold, red eyed glare on me. “Would you three care to explain yourselves?” He asks cooly.
It wasn’t too hard for him to settle on us as culprits. It was ‘us’ who had exploded in the classrooms after all, and we were found outside the dorms– where we shouldn’t have been. It could have been worse though, we could have been found at the labs. However, with the HeadMaster’s glaring red eyes fixed on me, I have a feeling he knows exactly what we were doing and why we were there, and I haven’t even opened my mouth yet.
I breathe out, careful and slow, trying to calm my emotions. “You think we were involved?” I ask, allowing just a bit of my fear to come into my voice. Just enough to make me seem confused and innocent, not enough to make me look guilty. Perhaps I’m a student who needed sleep, and had a double attend class in my name. I know nothing about what happened or why. I blink at the HeadMaster.
He doesn’t look convinced, but I don’t get discouraged. I knew that he knew we were guilty as soon as we stepped into the room. Still, it is good to practice on him. And I don’t know how much he knows so the less I appear to know the better.
“Oh stop playing around.” He snorts, “Your mimics overloaded, exploded, and set off a chain reaction along all the delicately balanced major enchantments this school holds. Even most of our illusionary defense went offline! You all are in serious trouble if you can’t give me at least a viable explanation of your actions. I hate to expel students so close to graduation, but you three have been in almost constant trouble since you started here. Not all of it you were caught in, and most of it was even amusing, but I draw the line at crashing my tower while I’m still in it and trying to take a dump!”
Valkallyn can’t hold in a giggle at the mental image, and Folas is also smirking. Even I have to avert my eyes from those piercing red ones so I can control my facial expression. That at least explains why he’s so pissed then.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
“We didn’t mean to.” Valkallyn says. “We just–” She looks at me helplessly, clearly asking how much she should tell. I debate taking center stage. But Folas beats me to it.
“We were busy trying to uphold our academic honesty.” He chimes in, his earlier fear almost completely gone from his expression. His eyes still have a twinkle of that fear though, but he controls the tenor of his voice and his talking speed quite admirably. I feel inordinately proud of him for that, even though I groan internally at his excuse as he continues. “Somebody stole my Capstone Project, Sir, so I was making sure they couldn’t present it as their own. We were trying to use the doubles to hide our absence from class as we destroyed all the research he had stolen from me.”
“And you used research stolen from me to do so?” HeadMaster Haulding smirks slightly. “An interesting definition of academic honesty you have, Folas Danala, do your twin and friend share that definition?”
I sense a trap here, and I turn to Folas, desperate to warn him about it, but the nitwit just blazes ahead. “What? You suggested the problem's answer?”
Great, now he’s basically admitted that we crashed the tower, broke into two separate off limits areas, and were responsible for stealing the HeadMaster’s answer key.
“Of course I did,” The man flops into his swivel chair, which spins slowly to the side before he stops it with one booted foot. He pulls his bowler hat off and tries to smooth his hair beneath it. It is slightly frizzly where it escapes from his braid, and won’t calm down beneath his hand. “I write all the questions for the finals, with advice from the Master’s of course. But I have the final say.” Satisfied with what he can get from the hair, he puts his hat back on and leans forward, lacing his fingers together on his desk as he stares up at us. Somehow, this calmed down man is even scarier than the pacing version. Probably in how his gaze analyzes us and begins to pick me apart at the seams. It sets me on edge, and I gulp, unable to stop Folas’s rambling reasoning. “So you use stolen work to destroy stolen work. Tell me, children, how do you possibly deal with the cognitive dissonance?”
“We weren’t going to ever claim credit for your work!” Valkallyn strikes in her twin’s defense. “If all had gone according to plan, no one would have discovered the ruse!”
“And you would have, what, carefully disposed of your products?” HeadMaster Haulding tsks and shakes his head at us, almost like he’s disappointed. “I somehow doubt that all three of you would be able to hold back from the delight of being the person to gleefully declare that the impossible is now possible. I assure you, it is a delightful feeling to be the first. And it is quite profitable. And also brings all the right sort of attention in today’s political environment.” His eyes travel from Valkallyn to Folas and finally land on me, and I know what we’re both thinking. My parents could use that sort of boost. Although their idea to mass produce magic enhancers is going according to plan, they could always use extra publicity. If I had ever deigned to tell them about this, they wouldn’t have thought twice about using it.
“Honestly,” The HeadMaster continues, “I was rather impressed that you tried to implement it on such a large scale so quickly. Setting the whole school wall as the boundary for the illusion was quite ambitious. All you needed to do really was cover a few classrooms, right?”
The question is obviously aimed at me, so I step up to meet it.
“Sir, anyone who has any knowledge of illusion circles knows that they are called circles for a reason. The only unbroken circle that covered all the necessary area was the school walls.” The HeadMaster smiles, apparently delighted with my answer.
“So you have been studying to check the HeadMaster’s key. I’m glad you learned from last year’s examples, Adamar. I heard you had ‘friends’ amongst the group that got caught, so I had hoped it would make an impression.”
I nod, confirming it, while my stomach roils at the memory. We hadn’t been friends, just useful to each other. And what he had done to them wasn’t as bad as the spell that had turned the group of dwarven invaders in our second year inside out, but it still had made a more than lasting impression.
“So,” Folas says, still shunning all traces of his fear. “Did we get the right key?”
“Want to test it?” The HeadMaster says, and his face transforms into a slightly cruel grin. “You know what, that might just be a fitting punishment. You all will have to take the finals early. This afternoon in fact. While all the other students are busy presenting, you shall all be taking your finals. Folas, I’ll just use a previous year’s questions for you. I’m sure I still have some archived finals for Magical Botanicals.” He smiles at me, and I can barely resist the grin that I feel stretching my insides. There’s no way he can know, and yet…
“Since we are taking the finals early, will we be graduating early as well, HeadMaster?”
“Of course.” HeadMaster Haulding’s face falls into a flat expression and his voice dips in seriousness, “I want you troublemakers out of here as soon as possible. And I believe you want to be gone as well from the look of your wrist.”
Folas and Valkallyn first look at their own wrists and then turn to look at mine with Briareth’s bead still glowing clearly. I frown at the HeadMaster, how did he know about that? I know he knows a lot about what goes on in the school, but isn’t this a bit much?
“Sir–” I begin, but he cuts me off.
“You should probably write a note to your parents about this whole punishment and eat some food. I doubt you’ve had anything substantial since breakfast. You have an hour to prepare, and then I want you to meet me back here ready to pass or die trying on those tests.”
I stare blankly at him for a few seconds, already trying to pen the note to my parents in my head while struggling to understand how much the HeadMaster actually knows, and how literally he intends the ‘or die trying’ part of the tests. Tugging at my hand, Folas urges me from my position and I turn to move towards the door.
Morthose Haulding tilts back his head and swivels in his chair slowly, chuckling softly as he calls out after me. “Ah, Adamar, you’ve grown so much since you first came here ready to kill Master Gennixa.”
I freeze in my tracks. Why is he trying to bring that up now? How did he even know about that? I thought my parents and I were the only ones who knew.
Folas turns to stare at me, “You came here to kill Master Gennixia?” He asks, and instinctively I lie.
“I’m afraid you’ve lost me HeadMaster,” I turn to gaze back at him, my carefully innocent and confused face fully in place. “I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.”
The HeadMaster grins at me, red eyes sparkling with mirth. “‘Don’t try and pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about because we’ll both know you’re lying.’ Loved that quip by the way, thought I’d make it my own.”
I can’t stop the blood from draining from my face, much as I want to. That conversation was far outside Mossblossom Central, from before I ever thought of going here. I’d been trying to get information out of my kidnappers, and we’d never actually found out who was behind the whole incident. The idea that HeadMaster Haulding had been watching me even back then, that he might have been involved in it all–.
I stumble my way out of the Master’s tower, Folas and Valkallyn at my heels.
I need to send a letter. I need to pack. I need to figure out where we’re going. But most of all, I need to take a test and then a nap.
But what weighs heavily on my mind, isn’t what is weighing on my friend’s minds as they both turn to stare at me as soon as we’ve left.
“Did you really come here to kill Master Gennixia?” Folas asks in a breathless whisper.
I groan, covering my hands over my face. “It’s a long story. And if my guesses are right, and we don’t die in the next 24 hours, I’ll have plenty of time to tell you all about it.”