When Villin excited the library he felt content. Spending half a day reading and picking spells was something he found extremely entertaining.
The altercation he had with Elinoire had escaped to the back of his mind and he felt good again. He couldn’t help but think of what he could do with his new spells. He would surely spend a bunch of time making new derivatory spell variants of a number of them. Except for ‘Bombarda’ and ‘Void Arrow’ all of the spells he got seemed relatively safe to alter.
As he was thinking about everything he decided to make a small detour and pass by the guild hall before going toward the dormitories. Talking to the black swans earlier caused him to realize the guilds here really provided a variety of services. He wanted to have a better feel of what services could be bought. Things like hiring someone else to test out a derivatory spell that might be dangerous sounded like something that might be possible and quite useful even.
After spending some time in the guild hall looking for such services, Villin’s searches ended up being unfruitful. When he asked other people the answer was always the same “If there’s a guild doing this they’re probably quite small, I doubt they’ll have someone in their stall.”
And so, Villin left the Villin empty-handed, or well he would’ve if he hadn’t found two stalls selling newspapers.
The newspapers were called ‘Todays Oddities’ and ‘A Magus’ aid’. Reading through them Villin noticed both newspapers shared most of the same news, something that was to be expected since there was only so much that could happen in the grade.
Since the papers came out this morning both of the papers’ headings were similar, talking about the arrival of Elinoire Decorus.
Most of the news was pretty basic overall. It talked about conflicts happening in the grade, the actions of the top students, some spells that the papers deemed useful, why they were useful, and more.
Even though Villin called it pretty basic, to him it was just what he needed. Both were daily papers and only cost five credits so there was no doubt that he would be buying them every day. On the third page of the ‘Todays Oddities’ paper, he found an interesting article.
“The Black Swans mystery revealed!
As everyone knows The Black Swan is a guild founded by someone in the second grade! Today, we at ‘Todays Oddities’ managed to figure out the reason Ruby Von Hauser was allowed to create her own guild.
Our sources say that slightly more than two months ago, Ruby was seen accompanying a teacher in the third grade halls. The duo moved through the halls swiftly before disappearing into a teleportation array that none of the students have ever seen used before.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
Now, this bit of information isn’t new, we already put this in our papers when we found out, but there is something else that we recently found out.
Two days ago after midnight one of our third grade companions was up after midnight trying to verify the rumor of the red ghost. When he was quietly wandering the halls he happened to hear someone else walking nearby. This individual was actually miss Ruby Von Hauser!
She was seen walking the third grade halls without supervision, even going as far as to enter the same teleportation array she entered with the teacher months ago on her own.”
Despite the misleading title, the newspaper didn’t really seem to have revealed anything, just continuously stating a few odd facts. Still, the article succeeded in making Villin curious about the situation. Nonetheless, with a distinct lack of information guessing was useless. He sighed before heading toward the dormitories.
Once he neared his room, he felt odd again. He wasn’t sure how to act when he would see Elinoire after what had happened.
After taking a deep breath Villin put up an indifferent expression and entered the room. Elinoire was laying on her bed but Villin completely ignored her as he made his way toward the three other people sitting to his left.
“Ah Hey Villin! What’s up!” Kayley smiled as she talked to him and soon the group was in full conversation.
Amelia had actually told Kayley and Rein about what happened when they asked if she knew why Elinoire had bruises like that but they didn’t really mind. From Amelia’s words what they gathered is that Elinoire stole from them and Villin was a little too hard punishing her, even though neither liked having to hurt people too much, when it came to a thief they had little sympathy, not like any bones were broken anyways.
When Villin showed the others the papers Rein looked a little awkward as he pulled out the same ones. Rein and Kayley passed by the stands as well when exploring.
“Looking at what all is in these things we’re probably going to be in tomorrow’s publications.” Rein said with a complicated expression.
Villin nodded, it was indeed likely, they fought sixteen members of The Shielding Lions and won, and even if this didn’t happen, being new students introduced in the middle of the year would probably be enough to get a small bit of text about them.
After chatting for some time, it was time to go to sleep. Villin and Rein slept on one side of the room while Amelia and Kayley slept on the other half of the room. When it came to changing clothes the situation became slightly awkward but luckily everyone was capable of some sort of invisibility spell at this point of time. That combines with the other party turning away made it doable.
Soon, everyone was in their beds, sleeping, everyone but Elinoire that was.
Whenever she closed her eyes she saw Villin’s cold or disdainful gaze staring at her saying the words ‘Then your mind is as rotten as your face’. Whenever she managed to doze off, she would wake up a few minutes later in cold sweat. ‘It had to be done, this is just temporary.’ even though she kept repeating these words to herself she couldn’t even convince herself really. She knew what all had to be done, she had to follow the path, and even though she always knew it would be hard she never thought it would be hard in this way. Feeling so scared and lonely.
At this time, the sleeping Villin was having another exceptionally odd dream.