Finley Cai Aies Hall April 22nd, 20XX

The sound of my wings filled the empty hall as I travelled back to my quarters.

I’d wanted to ask the General for clarification on a book she had lent me, but the guard fairy around her quarters had told me she’d needed to return to her territory. The guard had said something about an uprising by the previous duchess but refused to go into detail.

It was a little disappointing, but I quickly got over it and prepared to return home. Since the General had returned and Corin and Cambridge were still out on whatever mission they had suddenly received, there was no reason for me to stay in the castle.

I’d prepared a fluttermoth silk scarf and tie set for the Trumans, an enchanted earring for Nikolas, and a similar necklace for Aleka. They were in unique designs, but the flowers I’d moulded into jewelry looked like really expensive gems. I hoped they wouldn’t reject them, but I planned to wrap them up tightly and escape before they could open and try to return them.

While Jake didn’t really play baseball, he’d mentioned enjoying the sport, so I’d gotten him a bat.

I’d made it by splicing woods from the branches of the various trees in my courtyard, so while it was beautiful, it was also a dangerous weapon. It wouldn’t be too much of a threat in the human world since I’d piled on as many weakening spells onto it as possible. I couldn’t take responsibility if he somehow broke a building or, even worse, a person because of my enthusiasm.

Jake was one of the few people at that school that had ever acknowledged my existence before this year, and he had been pretty nice to me, so I wanted to get closer to him before we graduated. He didn’t seem too resistant to it, but I hoped he wouldn’t find this burdensome.

There weren’t any immediate plans to bring Jake, or anyone, to the fairy world with me, but on the off chance I did, or if someone brought him over here like they had me, at least he could protect himself.

But then again, would he always carry around a baseball bat with him?

I would have to make a smaller version as a charm and force him to hang it on his phone. Jake was a pushover, so as long as I asked insistently, I was sure he wouldn’t mind. I also made plans to make similar charms for the others.

There was no one around to say my goodbyes too, so after letting the guards know not to bother me, I activated my transporter and landed in the park by Will’s apartment.

Far from ideal, but much better than landing inside the apartment and being mistaken for a criminal again.

I ducked into a bathroom and changed my appearance before jogging home. The trip took me about half an hour, but I hadn’t wanted to take a taxi and risk Will or Nikolas finding out I was back.

There was a slightly bitter feeling in realizing my employees used my money to keep a few public transportation drivers on payroll and let them know if they saw me, but I supposed they only did it because they cared.

They didn’t have every single driver in the city on their payroll, but I had no way to know who could blow my cover and summon the fury of three adults to my apartment.

From there, I remembered getting home and being greeted by a depressing stack of paperwork that someone had dropped off at the front desk for me. Whoever it was could have sent them digitally, but I supposed they had a point to prove.

As willingly as I was to put Theodulus’s stopwatch to work and tackle them all, I was just too exhausted. It was currently evening, so I set my alarm clock for midnight and crashed on my bed. I was still in my uniform since those were the clothes I’d taken with me to the other world, but they weren’t uncomfortable enough to get up and change out of.

My memories of the day before stopped there and no matter how much I searched my mind and consciousness, I could not figure out how I’d ended up where I currently was.

The serene silver ceiling glistened above my head and reflected the peace I should have been feeling. Then again, it was hard to feel comfortable and rested when one had been on a below-freezing floor for the past three hours in the same uncomfortable position.

My poor bones creaked as I prepared to turn my torso and face Theodulus, who had taken a seat behind me. A fierce growl I should have acclimatized to by now startled me still.

“I understand staying still is a hurdle for a young one as yourself, but you need to persevere.”

I returned to stillness and tried to ignore the numbness in my thighs as I settled back into the cross-legged position on the hard floor. After ‘persevering’ for a few more minutes, I broke and verbalized my confusion.

“I still don’t know why I’m doing this.”

“Do not doubt your earlier decisions, young one.”

His deep voice was smooth and barely fluctuated from the calm tone it had taken on. I was sure that if I could see his face, masked as it was, he would have a matching expression.

“My earlier decision was uninformed.”

“I explained it all to you; your poor attention span is hardly a fault of mine.”

Having Theodulus scorn my capacity to learn and focus was something I couldn’t accept since that was one of the few attributes about myself that I actually liked. I wanted to snap back at him, but I couldn’t deny that I had learned little from what he had told me earlier.

In my defence, though, I’d been fully asleep and hadn’t really woken until the middle of it, and by then, it was too late to understand anything but the importance of listening to his instructions as they came.

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He caught on to my silent turmoil and flatly launched into a summarized explanation of what we were currently doing.

“You currently occupy three important roles in three very different places. One in the human world, one in the fairy lands and most important of them all, your time here with me.”

Well, I couldn’t say I agreed with his distribution of importance, but it wasn’t like I cared enough to disagree with him.

“As different as these realms are, they all require different things from you and this is taking a task on your mind and your body.”

I took stock of the leaden feeling that had spread from my legs to the bottom of my stomach and the mental exhaustion that seductively lured me into a deep sleep. Theodulus didn’t wait for me to agree with him before continuing his lecture.

“I plan to isolate parts of your conciousness and your abilities into according sectors so you don’t become overwhelmed and… collapse.”

The drawn-out silence made me think that he’d wanted to use a different word than collapse, but I decided not to think about it too much.

“Give me that ‘diary’ you speak of and have it describe the ‘ideal fairy’ to me. We can start there.”

Ordinarily, I would be hesitant to give anyone my mother’s diary, but I knew Theodulus wouldn’t do anything to it and that he would give it back. He’d asked to see my locket before and had carried it so gently I would have thought it was his greatest treasure.

Well, he had mentioned that he’d known my parents, but aside from acknowledging it, he refused to tell me more. He would tease me with petty stories about my dad as a reward when I passed a tough training session, but I had yet to hear any solid stories.

All I knew was that my dad had been a soft guy that would often get himself hurt trying to save weak animals. It was quite a contrast from the stores I heard about my mother being a war conqueror, but I wanted to hear more about both of them before forming any concrete impressions.

Theodulus let out a harsh laugh as he read through the diary, and the malice he usually worked so hard to keep tapered down around me seeped out and filled the room. It did not scare me since he didn’t direct it at me, but it still made it difficult to look straight at him.

“I’d love to see even a single fairy that meets such lofty ideals, never mind those whelps they call the males of their specie!”

I had nothing to say back since Theodulus was much more passionate about his disdain for fairies than I was in my urge to defend them. As long as he didn’t insult my mother, then I really didn’t care what he said.

“So you’re saying I’ll have multiple personalities at the end of it?”

That sounded hellish and not at all helpful.

“Not quite, you’ll just be able to reorganize your priorities clearly and put distracting thoughts to the side much more easily. It shouldn’t be anything more than a slightly more definitive version of what you already do.”

I still didn’t particularly understand, but I understood it wouldn’t be anything harmful to me. I’d only known Theodulus for less than a month, but I understood that aside from when he was ‘training me,’ he wouldn’t do anything to make me uncomfortable, never mind to hurt me.

“How will I be able to ‘switch’ ‘mindsets’?”

I felt a gentle tug at the locket around my neck and another tap on the armband. The sudden pressure made the chain shake around the back of my hand, but thankfully I didn’t feel any pain.

“I will set the locket and ring set as triggers for you so you can switch between them easily, but remember to never wear both at the same time.”

While it made sense, I didn’t want any reason to take off the locket I got from my mother. Even the few hours I spent here with Theodulus would be too long. I’d taken to wearing the ring set around as well, so I wasn’t too comfortable having my usage of them regulated.

“That sounds good… but I’d rather not have to take them off so often.”

I gingerly turned back to see if Theodulus would humour my troublesome request but relaxed as soon as I saw he was holding a box of earrings in his palms.

They looked to be of the same design and material as the ring set my father had passed down to me, but I knew that asking about it would only make me frustrated. They had the same powerful appeal that I found difficult to resist.

Thankfully, the feeling was only difficult and not impossible to resist. I successfully restrained my desire and avoided trying to snatch it out of his hands.

Theodulus rewarded my patience and wisdom by tossing the bejewelled box into my hands. He watched over me with a warm expression as I tried my best to resist ripping it open and stabbing them into my unpierced ears.

I’d recently received a lot of jewelry, so I should have expected a set of earrings to come out at some point. I’d worn a few earrings in the fairylands, but they hadn’t needed my ears to be pierced and had rather just stuck on to the lobe and other parts of the ear.

After fiddling around with the box and realizing it had a similar lick mechanic as the first box I’d surrendered to Theodulus, I gave up and moved to find a replacement for the locket.

Theodulus quietly watched as I dug out the mini-crown I’d worn on my outings with the General.

“Can’t we use this instead of the locket?”

He took the travel crown with much less reverence than he had handled the locket and placed it to his side.

“Come sit down. I see sitting still for so long was too much to ask for a youngling, human raised or not. I will just handle you like the youngling you are.”

The foreboding feeling I got from his words came to fruition much more quickly than I could find humorous.

Theodulus used his legs to trap my torso close to his body. Despite their slender appearance, each leg felt like a pound of bricks and it became difficult to breathe, never mind to move.

Once again, I wondered how many goblin babies lived to adulthood if the adults treated them so roughly.

“Take in a deep breath and stop panicking Aies, you can handle much more than this.”

I let his familiar voice influence my actions and forcibly calmed down and passively assessed the weights around my torso and body. They were still heavy, and I still couldn’t move, but it wasn’t as bad as I’d originally thought.

Theodulus placed a hand on my back, and I felt a warm energy flow into my body and disrupt my breathing. This wasn’t the first time this had happened, but it was still difficult to get used to with no warning.

My breathing grew ragged as I tried to get used to the new rhythm, but Theodulus refused to lower the intensity.

“Focus Aies, you can do it. The only thing standing in your way is yourself.”

I ignored him as he repeated his favourite line and focused on my breathing. It took longer than usual, but I finally caught the rhythm and could hear my harsh exhales and soft inhales in time with his pattern.

Theodulus gently reduced the pressure until he removed it altogether.

“We shall begin. Close your eyes and keep your breathing in that same pattern. You spent so much time in the human world, so I’ll make that priority as your primary mindset and give you the power to change between the other two.”

I had thought he would try to force me to accept the goblin priority mindset as the primary, but as usual, Theodulus took my feelings into consideration.

It wasn’t like Cambridge and Corin didn’t care about me, but to say they respected me or my opinions would be a stretch.

Theodulus’s voice filled my ears as he chanted in another language. The locket should have been able to translate all the languages, but it failed to capture the ‘olde language’ of the goblins, which meant I had to try my best to translate it myself.

While keeping half of my attention on my breathing and opening my eyes when Theodulus directed me to, I devoted the rest of my attention to picking out as many words as I could recognize.

I got ‘Child’, ‘fairy’, ‘royal’ and ‘monarch.’

At first, I thought it was just another word for ‘royal,’ but the words were simply too different for them to mean the same thing. Theodulus finished and gently released my body from the hold he’d kept me in for over an hour, but before I could ask my translation question, my body became heavy, and a mind-splitting pain assaulted my brain.

This time I didn’t fight off the call to unconsciousness from my body and directly chased after it, eager to escape the agony I was currently subject to.

“You even resemble him in this.”

Theodulus’s cryptic words were the last things I heard before I completely lost consciousness.