Outside of the rings, they could find no sense of who their attackers were. With Dana’s wound not improving they decided it would be best to head back to the Exalted and cut their date short. Meira helped him return home, the cut across his chest was deep enough to need stitches and wasn’t stopping bleeding.
As they made their way up the stairs the door to the room next to Dana’s opened and inside was standing Kasa. She was wearing nothing but a towel and her hair was wet, probably just getting out of the shower. Meira looked at Dana with a raised eyebrow at the sight of the girl in her state of undress but stayed silent.
“Oh! Professor! You’re hurt!”
“We got attacked out in the town,” Meira grunted as they went past her and through the door into Dana’s apartment. “See if Wilben has any kind of First Aid kit in the office.”
“I… I have one. Give me a minute.” Kasa closed the door again to her room, vanishing from sight as Meira lay the injured human down on his bed. The shadow girl arrived minutes later, dressed in a set of grey shapeless sweats and carrying a small box with her. She moved to the bed, her footsteps making not a sound as she crossed the floor and opened the box.
“We have to clean this before we can stitch you up, Professor,” Kasa said pulling out a bottle of alcohol as she got to work.
“Fine, Kasa… just do it, better than leaving it open.”
“You know what you are doing, kid?”
Kasa nodded, cleaning the wound out and grabbing a needle and thread. “Missions don’t always go as planned… people get hurt all the time. Basic field medicine is taught in my family shortly after we learn to walk.”
Dana gritted his teeth, trying not to cry out as the hooked needle pierced his skin as Kasa began to stitch the wound shut.
“Missions?”
Kasa looked at the elven teacher with a slightly annoyed look for the interruption but her hands stayed rock steady as she worked on Dana’s chest. “It’s not really a secret… my family… my entire species doesn’t truly have a name many know. Normally if you see one of us it’s already too late. Most just call us Shadows or even blades in the dark.”
“Over the centuries my people have been responsible for honestly hundreds of thousands of assassinations. It has become the defining aspect of my species…. More than any culture or contribution, we are just… killers. Treating wounds is almost as important to learn as dealing them out.” She leaned over, quickly cutting the thread with her teeth as she finished her work. Rolling a bandage over the cut and taping it down.
“She and her dad are at odds about the path she should take in the future so she is staying here for a time.” Dana tried to sit up, hand held against his chest. “Sorry, I wasn’t here to help you settle in.”
“It’s okay, Professor… Wilben was such a sweetheart he showed me all around the place. Helped me pick out a room… everything. Not a lot of furniture in any of the rooms though.”
“Anything you need for the room just tell me and I will get it ordered. Depending on how long you think you will stay we can talk about some personalized touches.”
“How about you leave the interior decorating until after your wound closes…”
“I can talk about things just fine, Meira. And it’s not like I can just stay home in the morning when classes start either. Thank you for this by the way, Kasa, it’s a great help.”
“I’m… just glad to be useful.” Kasa looked away, her cheeks darkening. “Just… try to take it easy and you should be fine in no time. I…uh… I should be going.” She repacked and closed up the kit and headed back to her room.
“You heard her, Wilde… take it easy or I’ll come back and break your legs so you have to rest.” Meira smiled at him, just enough that he couldn’t tell if she was teasing or not. “I had a good time tonight… all things considered. Maybe we could try it again sometime when things calm down a little? I’ll be back to pick you up in the morning to help you get to class.”
“Great… Because afterward, I want to hit up the vampire dorms and see if we can find anything out in Laverne’s room. Maybe we can find a few clues there as to why she was looking into the Fount in the first place.”
“Well our first date was quite exciting… can’t wait to see what our second one has in store. Get some rest, Wilde.”
* * *
Classes the next day were not easy, the ache in Dana’s chest seemed to spike every time he moved his arms. Thankfully most of the time was taken up with the girls proposing their ideas for booths or exhibits for the upcoming Faire. Their enthusiasm was infectious but concerns as to where they could work and keep their projects kept coming up as a concern. He would have to check if there was space somewhere on campus or use some of the space at the hotel. After class ended and the girls had left he took a few moments at his desk before getting up to head over to Lestat Hall to meet Meira.
The Hall itself was a gothic building straight out of some old paintings… dark stones and shuttered windows. As he walked up to the creepy-looking building Meira came jogging up to join him. A light sheen of sweat glistened on her skin as she approached.
“I got the information on the room we are looking for. It looks like our golem lived up on the third floor. Room 3-22.” She saw Dana wince a little as he walked and her smile fell. “You don’t have to do this today, Wilde.”
“It’s a student’s room… not a war zone. It’s unlikely anything too strenuous will happen. Probably not even going to find anything worth looking into.” Dana walked with her through the front doors to the ancient-looking building. The entryway was deep with a certain Dracula vibe with a huge chandelier high above with lit candles. Cozy tables with wrought iron chairs around them littered the lobby with many students chatting away in them.
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
Close to the large fireplace at one end of the room Dana spotted a familiar face. Sitting at the table closest to the fire was Cherri, along with two other slime girls, one blue and the other green. They sat together, Cherri typing away at a laptop, the green slime girl scrolling blankly on her phone, and the blue one knitting while she hummed to herself. He did a bit of a double take when he noticed under the table their legs had lost form as all three girls’ slime-bodies met and somewhat mixed on the ground.
Cherri looked up from her work and noticed them walking in and waved the two of them over. “Mr. Wilde, fancy seein’ ya up in the fancy digs.”
“Hi Cherri. We’re just in the… neighborhood looking in on some students.” Dana floundered, unsure how much of what was going on was safe to share with her.
“Oh… I get it, Prof… one of yer secret missions. All the girls know you’re lookin’ into sumtin’. Anyway, I think I mentioned my sisters to you before, this is Mint and Blue. They have a room up on two over here but I like to visit when they are willin’ to slum it with their lil’ sis.”
“Nonsense, Cherri… you know you are always welcome.” The blue slime girl, smiled, though she didn’t look any older than Cherri she exuded an almost motherly feel to her movements.
“Yeah, sis… whatever.” Mint, he was guessing the green girl was, didn’t even look up from her phone. “We know you just miss how it was before we were us.”
Cherri’s cheeks turned even redder at the comment from her sister. Her face flashed between embarrassment and anger in equal measure. Dana looked confused but Meira stepped in.
“Slime beings can reproduce a little differently than we do. A part of them separates and then grows… Further dividing into siblings like these three.”
“Da only expected two of us but I do love these moments feeling connected again… sometimes more than others.” Cherri shot Mint an angry look. “Do you need any help, Mr Wilde? Everyone in class already decided to give you any help you might need in solving your mystery. We don’t know all the details… are there pirates involved?”
“We don’t know Cherri… but thanks for the offer anyway.” Meira tugged Dana’s arm heading towards the stairs. “We’ve got this covered on our own. Thanks!”
The duo made their way up to the third floor, finding the room they were looking for easily enough. “She was just trying to help, Meira.”
“I know… it seems like you have an… effect on all your students, Wilde. Like you said, though, it’s just a room search… no need for reinforcements.” She looked away from him, knocking on the door before trying the knob. “Looks.. Uh… locked. Give me a minute.”
Meira dropped into a squat, pulling out a pair of tools from her belt. With a few deft movements of her wrists, the door swung open almost as fast as if she had used the key.
“Oh look… this door was left open, we should make sure everything is okay inside.” Meira gave Dana a wink, her usual brash self quickly coming back to the fore as she headed into the room.
It was a typical dorm room… a pair of beds and desks. Posters and lights trying to make the place seem a little more like home with doors to two small closets. They got to searching quickly. One of the desks had pictures of the golem, Laverne, on it so it was easy to tell which desk was hers. There wasn’t a lot to find there… school supplies like notebooks and pencils. In the bottom drawer of the desk, they found a stack of letters… they looked like they were letters home that had never been sent.
“Just what do you both think you are doing in my room?” A shrill cry came from the hallway. They both turned to see a short vampire girl gazing at them in a rage. “Get out before I have you both removed this instant!”
The girl’s red eyes glowed in fury, her black hair styled with a pair of large curls falling alongside her face bouncing with every shake as she stalked her way into the room.
“You were Laverne’s roommate?” Meira didn’t even blink in the face of the girl’s death stare. “Any idea where she might be?”
“Probably went back into whatever hole she crawled out of in the first place like I told her to. Things like her don’t belong in the elite dorms.” She huffed, seeing the letters in Dana’s hands. “Oh, her little make-believe letters? The sad little broken toy liked to write them as if she had a family waiting for her.”
“So you both didn’t get along?” Dana could feel his anger rising… he could spot a bully a mile away and was never a fan.
“Get along? She wasn’t even real… pieced together like scraps and given a jolt my phone is as real as she was… and probably more expensive. I don’t even know how something like that ended up here, let alone my roommate.”
“Well until we can find her you are going to have to deal with a little bit of inconvenience.” Meira went over to the beds, checking underneath one.
“That is unacceptable! I am Samara Nerezza, my daddy paid for this whole building to get built. I was supposed to get my own room anyway so this just worked out how it should have… the rabble crawling back into the shadows.”
“No one gets single rooms until their third year, even your father should know that.” Meira stood and fixed the girl with a glare. “Which closet was hers?” Meira’s voice had a cold detached air to it suddenly that sent a chill through the room.
“That one was hers but there’s nothing of hers in it… I didn’t have enough room for my stuff in mine so I used hers too.” The girl crossed her arms, getting more upset at the intrusion by the moment. “But she kept going in there, probably trying to steal my clothes…”
They checked the closet, and sure enough it was filled to bursting with designer clothes, many still in unopened garment bags with store labels on them. Dana wondered if Samara had ever even worn half the things she needed so much extra space for. Still, he moved the clothes aside, checking the walls for anything that might be suspicious. Meira, on the other hand, grabbed the clothes by the handful and tore them out of the closet to toss them on the bed.
“Hey!” Screamed the girl. “Those cost more than you make in a year… if you even wrinkle them my daddy will make sure you replace every thread!”
After another minute of searching, Dana found a hollow-sounding area on the side of the closet wall. He pointed it out to Meira as he began searching for any way to access the hollow. The elf woman was obviously out of patience by that time as she pulled out her dagger once again, smashing the area of the wall with it, digging the weak plaster of the wall away piece by piece.
Finally, the panel covering the small cubbyhole opened on its own before falling off to clatter on the ground. Inside the recess was an old book, its cover brown and mottled with age. Meira grabbed the book and opened it on the desk in the room… flipping through the pages.
Inside the book was full of scrawling in an ancient writing alongside diagrams with disturbing imagery. Sacrifices and rituals were outlined on almost every page. While the purpose of these rites was unclear, the diagrams made it obvious that the cost to enact them was high. In the middle of the book they found several diagrams pertaining to the Fount… showing an array of three items arranged in formation around the iris. The next picture showed the iris opening and shooting some sort of energy skyward, spreading across the entire island.
With these illustrations, they also saw a repeated symbol. The same on the rings and the walls in the Fount chamber.
“I think we found what our girl’s interest in the Fount might have been,” Dana said poring over the pictures, wishing he could make sense of the writing beside it.
“Though it looks like she needed some other things before she could make it a reality.”
“I’ll get my Aunt to see if she can translate any of this… maybe we can find out what this is supposed to do. Though it doesn’t look very friendly in any case.”
They both found themselves staring at the picture of the energy flowing from the iris to engulf the entire island. Unless this was the world’s strangest way to grow flowers over a large area, Dana had to agree.
“Not friendly at all…”