Towards the end of the tour, Samanael had deliberately stayed in the background and was content to observe everything. When she had performed her song of healing, she had noticed that she could only hear the song itself. The magic behind it, which she could otherwise hear echoing like a clear, pure contra tone, was not. The many other phenomena she had been able to observe were not accompanied by the usual sound either. Something was shielding magical perception within the university. So that was what had confused her so much when she entered the grounds!
After the tour, this cute star warrior had warned everyone not to lose their student ID cards, otherwise they would no longer be able to enter the university grounds. With the huge open gate to the university grounds, through which hordes of students wandered in and out unchecked, this seemed rather doubtful to her. And there were no controls to be seen anywhere inside the university either. Afterwards, this strange magician/tinkerer Leo had suggested that all the new students meet up in the evening in a small, unofficial student pub called 'Café Fraktal' and chat for a while. Sam knew such 'unofficial pubs'. Dark cellar holes with a jacked-up beer barrel in the corner and a few 'borrowed' chairs from the seminar rooms. She had therefore declined with thanks and left to have a look around the grounds.
On the tour, she had noticed that the group had taken a rather nonsensical zigzag course through the grounds. At first she had assumed that her guide didn't know his way around as well as he claimed, but he had chosen a lot of shortcuts and secret routes along the way that only someone who knew the grounds like the back of their hand could use. Thoughtfully, the cloaked angel pulled out the map of the university she had been given in the morning. With her finger on the map, she followed the route the group had taken. After restarting three times, she realized that the map was not only inaccurate, but deliberately so. She therefore began to systematically walk the area, comparing the existing buildings with her plan. The individual buildings were arranged quite randomly, none were at right angles to the next and the numerous small parks also added to the confusion. But once she had become suspicious, nothing could confuse her so quickly. After about an hour's walk, she found out what they had obviously been trying to hide. Another nondescript brick building with the meaningless inscription "Administration II". It wasn't marked on the map, and the whole district was only vaguely outlined. And the guide had walked well around the building.
Well, the building was obviously completely uninteresting. Shrugging her shoulders, she turned around and walked on. After all, she still had plans to see if there were any volunteer positions available. After all, this would have been the first university that wasn't still desperately looking for a few volunteers for the telephone helpline, organizing committees and the like. Only two blocks further on did she suddenly stop, as if she had run into a wall. What in the infinite goodness of God was she doing there? She had specifically been looking for this building and now she was just going home?
Angry with herself, she stomped back. Back at the building, she walked purposefully towards the stairs. She got as far as the third and final step before she remembered that she should probably get a coffee first. It was already afternoon, she was tired and the building wasn't going to run away.
This time she didn't get quite as far as last time until she stopped, annoyed. She didn't drink coffee at all! She carefully crept around the suspicious building at a distance, always taking cover from the bushes or the trees along the path. Students and some older people, presumably lecturers, entered the building at irregular intervals. No one seemed to have any problems.
While she stood quietly behind a bush and watched the entrance to the building through a gap for a while, she suddenly heard an amused-sounding older voice behind her: "Lost something?"
As Samanael turned around, she saw the janitor, who had managed to get close to her without being heard, despite his shouldered stepladder and toolbox. "I just wanted to see who goes into this building."
'Administration building two'? You've picked something interesting." He looked as if he was inwardly amused by a joke that only he had understood.
"Do they know what's going on in there?"
"Of course. I'm the janitor." He pronounced the job title with pride, almost like an honorary title. She stared at him thoughtfully for a moment. Many of the other students had been irritated by his resemblance to a notorious historical figure from modern history, but she thought it was just silly. After all, the man couldn't help the way he looked. The only thing she couldn't explain was why he didn't simply shave off his characteristic fly moustache. That and a different hairstyle and he wouldn't have been noticed anywhere in the world today.
"And why can't you go in there?"
The grin deepened and he looked over demonstratively at some students who were walking into the building. "Well, of course, you have to walk this long distance over this well-maintained gravel path. Not an easy task..."
"You know what I mean! Just before the entrance, I suddenly always had something more important on my mind!"
He nodded with mock understanding: "Yes, yes... The youth of today... Always something to do."
When he saw that Sam was about to lose her temper, he raised his hands in a placating gesture. "It's all right, it's all right! I know what you mean, young lady."
All the cheerfulness seemed to flow like water from a leaky bucket as he looked over at the building, lost in thought. "That building is the source of all suffering and despair..."
"How so?"
"Well, at least that's it for me. But for such a long story, I'd rather put the ladder and all that stuff down for a bit first. Come with me, please..." He turned around and led Samanael to a small park bench two hundred meters away. There he put down his stepladder and placed the toolbox next to it before breathing a sigh of relief, stretching his cramped back and sitting down comfortably. Sam sat down next to him and looked at him invitingly.
"How should I start now... Well, I was born in Austria, as you may know. In the period immediately after the Great War, things were pretty bad for everyone, but I just managed to get by. I had my job as a painter and enough commissions. One day, some strange young gentlemen knocked on my door and wanted to see me about a very urgent matter. They were extremely polite, almost obsequious, so after a moment's hesitation I let them in. Their clothing was very strange, long black leather coats, heavy shod and tied leather boots and glasses with tinted lenses that seemed very strange to me at the time. They told me a fantastic story. They would come from another world. A world that was much more advanced in time and where things had gone wrong in the past." His gaze seemed to look far into the distance as he remembered. "They told me I was a great leader there. The leader. Lord over all of Austria and Germany. And then it all went to ruin because of the shameful intervention of the Americans and my empire sank into insignificance. Of course I laughed at the guys at the time, but in return for this splendid and convincing story, I offered them to stay for coffee and cake. But then they showed me a suitcase as proof, which, when opened, showed moving pictures. Colorful moving pictures! With crystal clear sound! You have to remember that radios were just new on the general market back then. A technical sensation! And I only knew moving pictures from movie theaters, where flickering black and white images were accompanied by a piano player. I had only just acquired my beard because I liked this American actor with the huge shoes so much. That Charlie Chaplin. The man was unbelievably funny! And now I was shown this technical marvel that showed a strange modern world and old footage of myself as a speaker in front of huge crowds cheering me on." He shook his head at himself. "Of course I immediately packed my suitcase and went along. You have to see a world like that! And to emerge there as a hero of times gone by..." He fell silent and shrugged helplessly.
Samanael put an encouraging hand on his shoulder. "And what happened then?"
"I was led to a hackney carriage that was lined with metal on the inside. We drove out of the city and then someone threw a golden powder into the air in front of the carriage and shone the spotlights on it. We drove through a flashing cloud and... stood over there in the parking lot. Just as my companions were showing me around the site, we were suddenly surprised by a group of older men in suits. There was a lot of shouting. They called my hosts 'crazy neo-Nazis' and other incomprehensible things. Then they dragged my companions away and told me that I couldn't go back to my home country."
"Why not?"
"I don't know!" The unexpected outcry with which the janitor vented his frustration shocked Sam to the core.
"No one has ever been able to explain to me why I can't just go home. Except that I couldn't. Principal Argus offered me a job as janitor and I had no choice but to accept it."
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
"These neo-Nazis..."
"I never saw them again. And never heard what happened to them. I assume they were thrown out of university."
"Life here isn't so bad after all..."
He looked her straight in the eye. "I've read books. And watched movies. I know what happened here. What I might have done if my life had been a little different."
Sam wasn't normally a mouthful, but here she couldn't find the right words. She patted his arm reassuringly and mumbled general phrases.
"It's good to talk to someone about it again. But they wanted to know what was going on in the building."
"I almost forgot..." She sounded surprised, because she really meant it.
"That happens easily. Even to me, even though I've been working here for three years and go in and out. You have to have permission and a good reason to go in there. Otherwise you won't make it."
"But what is it?"
"It's the research laboratory for interdimensional sciences. That's where they build the machines they use to travel to other worlds. That's where you learn how to use them. And that's where the few stable portals are located with which you can reach a few fixed points in other dimensions... None of them lead to my home."
"Can you take me with you? I'd like to have a look."
He nodded and raised his voice solemnly: "I hereby appoint you as assistant janitor and instruct you to check the lighting on the second floor of Administration Building II."
Samanael blinked. "That's it?"
"That's all. You should have no problem getting in now."
"No code card, no key?"
"I've never needed it before."
The two of them talked for another hour about his youth and the differences he had noticed compared to the local historiography. Then they talked about more pleasant things. In the end, they said goodbye amicably after agreeing to meet for coffee again from time to time. He then shouldered his ladder and toolbox again and walked to the next building to see what was going on there.
Sam gathered all her concentration and focused her will on one goal. To go into the building.
Without any problems, she walked up the stairs and through the inconspicuous gate. Inside, she found nothing unusual at first. Classrooms in which lectures were held, small electrical laboratories in which incomprehensible experiments were carried out and a large lecture hall in which an ageing professor gave a lecture on a mathematical problem that was completely incomprehensible to Samanael in front of almost empty rows.
None of the other students paid any particular attention to her. Presumably everyone assumed that she was one of them if she had made it this far. Even though everything seemed completely normal, Samanael felt a slight tingling sensation on the back of her neck. She couldn't put her finger on it, but she didn't like something about the building. She didn't like it at all.
It didn't take her long to walk down all the corridors and occasionally glance into the rooms. There were many things she didn't understand, but nothing seemed to provide a reason for this nagging feeling that something was just wrong. Sam stopped and thought. She had roughly looked through the obvious rooms. The layout of the building was too simple to hide entire rooms. The basement... Sam suppressed the urge to kick herself in the ass. All the other buildings on the site had had basements. Here, she hadn't been able to see an entrance. The angel gritted her teeth in frustration. She'd tried to find secret doors enough times to know she was as gifted at it as a pygmy was at basketball. She simply lacked the ability to get into the mind of someone who wanted to hide things. Deceiving others simply went against her nature.
Fortunately, she had other options. As she had not seen any cellar windows, ventilation shafts or similar from outside, the air supply to the underground rooms had to come from the building's ventilation system. This meant that there had to be a way to get down through the ventilation shafts. She looked at the open sheet metal cladding that ran along the ceiling. She was slim, but not that slim. At least not as a human being.
Even after she had made sure that there was no one else in the corridor and that no one could be heard approaching her position at the moment, she still hesitated. She was reluctant to do what she was about to do. She looked suspiciously at the ceiling, the lamps and the pictures on the wall. If there was a camera hidden somewhere and someone was watching her... Well, then she would just have to abandon the job. Under no circumstances would she continue to work in a place where she had been seen like this. She wouldn't be able to stand the embarrassment. Finally, she pulled herself together and hummed a soft tune. Immediately her clothes frayed and disappeared with the sound of a softly tuned harp. Her body underneath shrank into itself. Small white wings materialized on her back and immediately began to beat gently to carry her as quickly as possible to the nearest opening of the ventilation shaft.
Footsteps approached from the corridor around the corner. Now of all times! She fluttered frantically to the ventilation grille, which no longer seemed so small, and shook it. Full of disgust, she looked at the little knobbly fingers of her tiny baby hands. Whoever had started depicting angels as chubby babies with wings during the Renaissance had been lucky never to fall into the hands of an angel. Even boundless goodness sometimes has its limits. When she had been sent to earth for the first time, this was the appearance that people had expected of her. And unfortunately, she was still stuck in this guise. Although a number of her colleagues had managed to spread a much more dignified portrayal of angels in film and literature, this unfortunately did her no good.
Tiny fingers clumsily grabbed the grille of the ventilation shaft in a cute way and tore it out with a force that would have shocked a spectator. Holding on with one hand, Sam tucked her wings close to her body and squeezed herself into the shaft. Behind her, she jammed the grille back into the opening.
Bare hands and feet splashed quietly through the darkness of the ventilation shaft, which was only sparsely lit by the few ventilation grilles. Sam didn't need oxygen in this form, and as an angel she didn't know fatigue or exhaustion anyway. As she crawled through the shafts, she drew up an approximate map of the ventilation network in her mind. In the middle of the building, all the shafts met at a larger one, which in turn led to a chimney and was closed at the top by a fan that blew the air out. It was a good thing she didn't have to go up here. Even as an angel, she wouldn't have been able to get through without being chopped. She looked down the chimney shaft. Her gaze was lost in the darkness after less than a meter.
Not exactly afraid, but worried nonetheless, she stared into the depths for a while. According to the laws of aerodynamics, the tiny wings should never have been enough to carry her, but there was also a lot of magic at play here. However, she couldn't spread her wings in such a narrow shaft. And as inadequate as they seemed, she couldn't fly without wings either. If she braced her back against one wall and braced her feet against the other side, she might be able to get down. But she would probably have to think of something else for the way back. And if the shaft led directly into a heating chamber...
Samanael hesitated for a moment, then carefully slid over the edge and supported herself with her clumsy feet, hands and wings. Slowly but steadily, she climbed down bit by bit. More to distract herself than for any other reason, she counted the tiny steps. After what seemed like an eternity, she stopped and did the math. It had to be well over twenty meters by now. The building had to reach much further down than expected. She remembered an article about the possibility of heating buildings with deep shafts using geothermal energy. Would it look the same? Did they pump water or air up there? She wished she had read the article more carefully. If the shaft ended in nothing, she would have chosen a very boring place to wait for the Last Judgement. She tried to climb back a little on a trial basis. At first it seemed to work, then without warning she slipped. The wind rushed around her ears and she reflexively spread her wings and braced herself against the walls with her hands and feet. The fall ended with a nauseating crack as one of the completely overloaded wings came loose from its joint. A small cloud of feathers floated silently down the shaft while Sam remained still in the darkness. That had been close. Too close. If she had needed oxygen, she would have had to take a deep breath. Inwardly, she ticked off the possibility of getting back up the shaft and carefully climbed further down. On the way, she hummed quietly, almost silently, a song of healing to herself until her wing had settled back into place.
When one leg suddenly kicked into the void, she slipped again. This time, however, she fell less than a meter before landing hard on cold sheet metal. The air supply ended here in a shaft that turned at a right angle. Without hesitation, she plodded on blindly. Strange noises could be heard in the distance. Voices. Voices in a large room, distorted by echoes.
After the long climb through the darkness, she saw the subtle glow of a ventilation grille from afar. She quickly crawled on. A surprising sight presented itself to her through the grille. Instead of the expected workshops and laboratories, she looked down on a huge, roughly hemispherical hall. A round room with a diameter of at least 200 meters. The walls seemed to be carved directly into the stone and joined together in a dome more than thirty meters above the ground. Numerous small flickering light sources were mounted along the wall. Ventilation shafts surrounded the hall in two rows, the one she was currently in about five meters above the ground, the other another five meters above that.
However, Samanael paid little attention to the room itself. She found the large circle drawn in the middle of the hall, in which two pentagrams decorated with many symbols faced each other, more interesting. At one of them stood a young man who she probably wouldn't have noticed on the university campus. Long hair, chin beard, jeans and T-shirt. At the moment, he seemed to be making final corrections to some of the symbols before carefully sprinkling a line of golden dust along the ground inside the circle.
Just a few meters outside the circle, something had been set up that strongly reminded Sam of a judge's desk. A high, wide pedestal with a writing surface and three high-backed chairs, from which three men were watching the proceedings in the circle with interest.
The young man took one last look at the glyphs on the floor, then addressed the "judges". Samanael understood very little, as the acoustics of the room distorted the voices considerably. At first glance, she would have thought the whole thing was a summoning circle, but of course there were no demons or demon summoners in reality. The few angels there were were busy enough as it was. As they were not allowed to interfere with people's free will and could therefore only exert influence through good example and persuasion, they would have been far too busy to worry about 'fallen angels' and their machinations.
Tensely, Sam squeezed herself behind the bars so that she had a good view of everything. Then she rested her head comfortably on her hands and waited to see what happened.