Staring down at the mouse in her grasp, Fiana was puzzled. There ought to not be any rodents within the tower. The slimes, the tower's cleaners, were relentless in keeping the tower clean, unassuming as they might seem at first glance. They would not tolerate a speck of dust nor would they accept pests past a certain size. Every and all things they saw as 'filthy' would be captured within their gelatinous bodies and be digested within. Only a few areas within the tower were exempted from their presence, one of them being the terrariums.
Fiana found it extremely odd that the mouse was able to make it past the first five floors without being detected. The only explanation she could think of was that the mouse had stowed away in someone's belonging and wounded up here.
As the thought came to her, Fiana turned her eyes towards the bag. She was the only one here at the time and she doubted that the mouse could have survived being in the company of the Dandelion Mandragoras and their ravenous appetite for Aether overnight. As such, it must have arrived in her baggage.
(But, how did it get inside in the first place.)
Fiana was about as paranoid as the other mage can be and was plenty cautious of her belongings. How could the mouse have had the chance to sneak in?
It did not take long for the realization to dawn on her. No matter how cautious and paranoid a mage was, so long as they remained mortal, they couldn't keep their guard up at all times. They all have a blind spot or two; one could even think of it as a place of respite. Perhaps that was why they looked down on the apprentices-in-name so, to the point that they saw them as little more than animals. More than the labor they provided, perhaps the mages, so used to being surrounded by secrets, treachery, and thievery, required something, someone, that they could feel at ease with by their side. If it were to be someone powerless to fight back, much less betray, then even better.
As for Fiana, she did have such a person. Of course, she had no intention of treating or viewing them as animals, there was a sense of condescension when she looked upon them. Although to be fair, it was in the same light a grownup would view a child in, because the person in question *was* indeed a child, at least outwardly.
"Could it be... Is this your doing, Theodore?"
Her lessons with Theodore, those were the only time Fiana had let her guard down, at least as far as she was aware. That was the only time the mouse could have gotten into her belongings.
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Then, there was also the question of how the mouse got past the guards. A question that was soon resolved when Fiana squeezed down on the mouse as it struggled to escape. This creature had no bones whatsoever. The only part of its body that was rigid was the spike of Aether crystal sticking out of its side. This would make it easy for the creature to hide in something small, a vial made of Aethervoid glass perhaps.
Fiana thought back on the time Theodore told her about how he shattered a pair of Aethervoid glass vials. He said that a crow had startled him, flew over and pecked him on the head it did, and caused him to drop the vials as he was returning from the garden.
Upon checking, she did find glass fragments in the garden, but were those truly the fragments of a pair of vials? Could it be that only one vial was shattered and the other was hidden away? At that time, she was more concerned about whether or not Theodore had injured himself than making sure that the story he told was true. She did not even suspect that Theodore, the child with a seemingly straightforward nature, would deceive her.
While Fiana was in thought, the door to the terrarium slid open. Thinking that they must be the other caretakers, Fiana thought to speak with them in regards to the mouse, but in that moment of distraction, the mouse bit down on Fiana's hand. She did not think that the small mouse could hurt her, but she was gravely mistaken. Never did she suspect that within the mouse, sitting right behind the front teeth, the few solid parts in the mouse's body, were shards of Aethervoid glass, incorporated as a countermeasure against mages.
In the end, Fiana allowed the mouse to escape in her moment of carelessness.
Later, when questioned by the guards, Fiana played dumb, insinuating that she knew nothing. The guards did not suspect that Fiana was lying. After all, they had checked her belongings themselves as she entered the sixth floor and found nothing on her that resembled a mouse. They couldn't have imagined that the mouse was made to fit inside of an Aethervoid glass vial. As such, Fiana, as well as the rest of the caretakers, were allowed to go after a long interrogation session, hours past when they were supposed to be off work.
Remaining silent about the truth till the very end, Fiana began walking towards the workshop underneath the darkened sky, the stars and moon at their brightest within what would be otherwise a blanket of darkness, a darkness that matched Fiana's mood at the time.
Fiana looked down at her hand. The wound inflicted on her finger had long been healed by her own magic, though she still had to painstakingly pluck out the glass shards with a pair of pliers due to them not being Aether-phobic in nature.
"We are going to have a talk once I get back. A long, long talk..."
Before she hands him to the guards, Fiana wanted to hear the truth for herself. And if she found Theodore's response to be reasonable, she might just pretend this never happened, just this once.
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End of Chapter 63
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