“Sorry mate, I ain’t carried glow toads in years. No one wants ‘em. Probably the last one I sold was to some research upstart. Beautiful and dumb, bought my whole stock for double the normal rate. She saved my business that day, but I ain’t seen her since.”
“Whatever, do you know anyone who might still sell them?” Donovan asked with an irritated groan.
“‘fraid not,” the first man replied.
I pulled away from Valentina, glancing past her to the end of the alley where the voices came from.
A door closed somewhere around the corner, a moment later professor Kaylastal rounded the bend. He strode with purpose until our eyes met and he stopped on his toes.
“Dexter, you’re back…and in an unusual place, what are you doing here?” He asked as he continued towards us. “Did you manage to learn anything new?”
My fists clenched reflexively. He must’ve known what the underground was, he knew how to get there after all.
As his eyes settled on Valentina, the tension in my gut swelled. I stepped around her, blocking his sight.
“You sent me down there to die didn’t you? You’ve had your eyes on Valentina all along, haven’t you?”
“What, no! I—”
“Were you hoping she’d bond with you after I died?” I scoffed, shaking my head. “I can’t believe I trusted you. Ever since the beginning, you were only interested in her.”
I clenched my teeth as a flood of anger burned inside of me. I wanted to hurt him. To punch his stupid, grinning, boyish face, but that would only end with me getting my ass kicked.
“If I wanted you dead…” his aura darkened as his hair grew and his eyes turned red. An all consuming shadow spread out from his feet, covering everything in the alley with darkness. The groans and moans of undead creatures replaced the distant voices of magisters milling about the main road. “I would have just killed you instead of training you.”
The blackness shuddered then popped out of existence.
The alley remained undisturbed and no one came rushing to respond. Kaylastal wasn’t bluffing, he could easily do whatever he wanted to us without being noticed.
The professor laughed, giving my arm a hard slap before his eyes met mine. The red vanished from his iris. His hair and body relaxed as he asked, sounding almost proud, “But you lived, and you returned stronger.”
Smiling he smacked my arm again as he added, “Come with me, I have things to do, but we have much to discuss. We can talk and walk.”
He started away but Valentina stopped him with her arms spread wide across the alley. She glared at the professor then growled, her voice deep and more aggressive than I'd heard it before, saying, “Dexter is stronger than you think, and so am I.”
Valentina's voice changed. The words themselves were spoken by her, but it felt like her mind was somewhere else and that it was another woman's voice speaking through her.
Valentina's body shivered as her arm dropped. She stared, a bit dazed, at the professor. Donovan returned her gaze, seeming unfazed by the sudden outburst.
A smile spread across his face as he said, “Good, very good.”
----------------------------------------
After checking several other pet shops for glow toads, and finding none, Donovan brought me to doctor Gaia’s lab. Along the way I told him about the underground tournament, about the imp, and about the light magister. I told him how the duel ended suddenly after a girl with scales and small horns approached me. His eyes perked up at that part, but he didn’t say anything about it.
Then I told him how Valentina had gone dormant, like what happened after my duel with Amhir. He asked, “So how many spells did she learn?”
I shrugged. I hadn’t checked and it didn’t feel right to ask her to revert so we could open her pages and check for new spells. It had seemed a normal request before, but now it felt like I may as well be asking her to strip bare for us to admire.
Fortunately, Valentina offered a rough estimate of “At least a hundred. It’s hard to explain, but in addition to what I learned from our battles, I also absorbed the knowledge contained within Nyx. I’d say I’m at least as capable as a standard tome of darkness.”
Kaylastal grinned then said, “You’re growing faster than I could’ve hoped, have you by chance recovered any knowledge not related to spells?”
“No,” Valentina answered, swift and firm, as we approached the odd wall concealing Gaia’s lab.
We stopped in the dark hall, just short of entering through the iron gate. Kaylastal took a deep breath, then said, “Once we step past this door, there’s no turning back.”
I scoffed, saying, “What do you mean? Has Gaia got some secret in there that—that could change the world or something like that? Like an immortal elixir, a magic cure for M-genesis? Just tell me what’s going on?”
He shook his head. “It isn’t Gaia, but you who has a secret. Obviously, you know by now that Valentina is special, but it’s time you learn exactly what she really is.”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“She’s Valentina, she’s my—” I swallowed. Spell tome didn’t feel like the right word. “My—my best friend. That’s all that matters.”
She took my hand. I could feel her eyes on me and I turned to meet them. Her gaze was kind but distant. There was darkness and longing in her eyes that left a strange ache in my heart.
She seemed to want to say something, but a quiet smile and a nod was all I got as she gave my hand a firm squeeze then let it slip through her fingers.
Did she want to hear what the professor had to say?
I’d almost forgotten that when she came to me she couldn’t remember anything from before. For her the time we spent together was all she had, but she must’ve wanted to know more. She must have felt lonely, like her missing memories were a missing part of herself.
I took her hand again. I didn’t want her to feel alone, she didn't deserve to be lonely, to have to feel like something was missing. I also didn’t want to be the thing standing in the way of her learning more about her past.
If she needed answers, then I would get them. I'd help her find whatever it was she was missing. I wanted to help, even if the professor was somehow involved or if it was Gaia or both of them together, I had to find out the truth, for Valentina.
Turning back to the professor, I gave him a nod then pushed past the iron door into the lab.
The doctor was in a foul mood, scowling with her arms crossed over her chest. She stood over a lab table, staring into an empty box with her shoulders stiff and her knuckles pale white from the tension in her grip.
“I don’t hear croaking toads, so why the hell are you—” She paused as she lifted her gaze and noticed us. Her glare was fixed on the professor as she barked, “Kaylastal! This had better be important or so help me—I don't have time to deal with your—with you right now.”
“Well, I think the boy is ready to know what exactly he’s gotten himself involved in…actually, I think we don’t have a choice anymore. The boy met the red dragon, in the flesh.”
Gaia’s eyes shot open wide as a mix of emotions flooded her expression. Anger, worry, fear, confusion, then finally rage won out over all the rest, her expression twisted with fury.
I felt my stomach tense again and I fought against the urge to retreat, taking a step back despite myself.
“What did she say?” Gaia asked, her words soft but deadly.
Valentina moved between us, taking my arm again with her free hand. The sudden rush of her aura left my chest tight and my skin crawling, but at least it seemed to keep me from cowering beneath Gaia.
I swallowed my nerves then briefly summarized my encounter with the horned girl. I couldn’t think of any one else who could fit the description, but I still found it hard to believe. At the risk of sounding foolish, I asked. “That girl—no, that child was the red dragon?”
“Who else could she be?” Donovan countered.
“The same one that helped the founder before the time of plague?”
“I can see this is going to take a while,” Gaia groaned. Turning to Donovan she added, “Educate your pupil, and do it quickly.”
The doctor disappeared through a side door into another room.
Valentina squeezed my hand as she let out a heavy sigh and Donovan sighed.
Taking a seat on a swirling stool, he said, “Recall your first day in my class. I mentioned that I made a mistake and that’s why I look this way. The mistake I made was finding knowledge. I learned the truth about The Society Of Magical Things. This tower isn't a blessing and the founders aren’t our saviors.”
I didn’t know how to take what he’d just said, but it made me think of my dad’s message. His words were too choppy to make sense of, but he seemed to be trying to warn me about something. The image of his burned face and my mother’s blood on the screen left me sick and uneasy, but I forced my stomach to settle.
“What truth did you learn?”
“Hush boy, and listen to the story.”
I closed my mouth, nodding. Then he continued.
“Terminia is not a barren land of ruins filled with spell tomes. It is what remains of a once powerful civilization built around a great stone called the Gaia Crystal. I have no idea why, but for centuries, our two nations have been at war.” Nodding toward the door Gaia left through, he added, “You can ask the doctor if you want to know more about that. What I can tell you is that spell tome hunters aren’t going to Terminia to find lost tomes, they're going to continue the battle, only the enemy they face is ready and waiting.
“The founders seem to hope that by sending wave after wave of young hapless magisters, they can overwhelm the forces of Terminia. That, or they are just buying time for some larger plan, which seems far more likely. In any event, they aren't planning to win this war by our hands, if they were, then why would they lie about it? Why would they hide it?”
“How can they hide it? How does no one question—”
“Did you?”
“I—” my words caught in my throat. Even after seeing my father’s message, I never suspected anything like this. But I wasn’t a member of high society with multiple generations of magisters in my family. I didn’t even know there was more than one founder before this conversation. “I always thought it was just the gray man… and I thought he would have died by now. I mean, how could he still be alive after so long?”
Donovan shrugged. “Hell if I know. But you’re actually more aware of the other founders than you realize. There’s Leviathan, the mother of beasts. The red dragon, empress of destruction. Then there’s also the one I met, the storm bird, lord of the skies.
“Tales of each have been told as bedtime stories and shared in bars. You’ll never hear a first hand account though, because anyone who meets one, meets death.”
“Except for you and me apparently,” I scoffed, shaking my head.
The professor sighed. “Look you don’t have to believe me, but this is about Valentina. When I deserted the war, the storm bird came after me. He would have killed me, but then a white haired goddess appeared in the sky. She confronted the bird, scolding him for his apparent failings and warning that ‘Every spell tome you fail to retrieve is another that will be used against us by the enemy. Don’t forget how they used the Dust Reactor to make their Mana Detonator. They are…
“She kept going, but I took the opportunity to run away. To answer what you asked before, why does no one question? It’s because no one makes it back to tell the truth. And the system is designed to favor the elite. You won’t see a kid like Jyanna become a tome hunter, but even if she did, she’d be deployed to a remote location within Syrinthia along with a small squad.”
The professor sighed then finished, saying, “Now what will you do? Will you stay and learn the truth of your spell tome, or will you run away and report me to the next enforcer you see?”
I opened my mouth but didn't know what to say. So much of what he said seemed unbelievable, but it somehow made sense.
Valentina stepped closer, squeezing my hand as she said, “After hearing your story, I’m sure. I need to know who I am.”
The professor smiled. “Then let me show you what led Solari to recover your scattered pieces.”