“Well, I worked my ass out through all this mess, I didn’t want to get caught just because I was being trustful to some strangers.” He told Eudora.
Well, they’d been doing basically the same thing. Who could blame him after all?
“It is crazy, huh?”
The girls waited expectantly.
“University is supposed to be the most exciting time of our lives and we’re already working our asses off, even though it’s only the first week. Like, it’s been like what, nine days since we first came here?”
They didn't respond. But he could tell they felt just the same because they were lost in contemplation until Apricot waddled around his patron and then made up his mind to take a nap on the ground.
"Hello, there," a hideous creature with a green, crooked hat appeared from nowhere in front of them and since they didn’t see that coming, they almost jumped out of their skin.
“Hey,” Anwen said endearingly, looking at that little, elf thingy that displayed himself affront.
“You’re in our way.”
The little elf ditched Eudora’s harsh comment.
“Why would such good-looking students wander around this chilling forest?”
“That is none of your business.”
“We’re not students. We’re way past that.” Brayden’s guffaw pointed out how bad a liar he was.
“How can you tell we’re students?” she asked mildly.
“Anwen!” Eudora yelled.
Apricot seemed to like the little elf since he was lingering around his legs and snuffing him up.
“I know everything dear. That’s practically my job.”
“Hmm…And you are?” Anwen inquired.
"Oh, I'm sorry to let you wondering." He tumbled his hand in the air with a repulsive laugh. "My name is Asterix and I'm an elf." He said loudly.
“Duh,” Eudora muttered obnoxiously.
“I’m the valet de chamber of the forest.” He added proudly. “Now what are you doing here?”
They all looked at each other and hesitated for a while until Anwen decided to be amicable to strangers—which was something that she did very often.
Eudora scoffed in disgrace.
“It’s kind of a long story, but thing is, we’re looking for the palace. We somehow managed to get ourselves in trouble and that’s the only solution for our case.”
“You know I’m here to report people like you while you try to sneak into the Osage Orange Forest? But since I find you really likable, I’m not gonna do that.”
“Really?” she said in awe. “Thank you.”
Eudora could not stand Anwen’s mild behavior, and she couldn’t really decide whether it was a pretense or whether her roommate was really a fool.
“I’d wish to companion you to the forest personally, and show you around, though that’d be so suspicious, and I’d rather help you in a different way.”
“Just being so nice is enough," Anwen said.
“Aughhhh.” Eudora rolled her eyes at the scene.
“Now showing up with those hats upon your heads is risky enough. I can’t picture how you got past the gate.”
“We chose the upper one.” Brayden informed him.
“That makes sense.” The elf commented in his scrambling voice.
He rummaged through a scraggy bag he was holding and came up with a laboratory glass container with a yellow bubbly liquid.
“This is gonna make you draw attention away. No one can catch you this way, except for the royal forest enforcement group.”
With an appreciative smile, Anwen grabbed the glassware from his hands and sipped the ointment.
“I’m not gonna drink some weird liquid that I don’t trust.” Eudora crossed her arms altogether.
“You can always risk getting caught if you want.” The elf suggested.
Chapter Ten
“This is nothing like I imagined it.”
“Huh?” Anwen was lost.
“The forest.”
“Oh.” She shrugged.
“What’s with all these creepy creatures and why is the forest so well-protected, like it’s a sacred thing?”
“It must be.” Brayden intruded. “They wouldn’t have built all these protective structures if there was not something to it that made it distinctive.”
“Yeah, but I thought this place was about healing and recovering.”
"It is," Anwen reassured her.
“I do not believe that anymore. There’s something about it that makes me freak out.”
“I think you didn’t take account of the valuable ointments that can be found only in this forest.”
“Still…”
"But you took the ointment after all."
“You talked me into it. I thought sipping it was the only way to make you stop.”
“I think we were just following you when we decided to come here.”
“Yeah, whatever.” She noted.
The cat meowed, hiding behind his patron. His sound was a little more than a quiver.
With every passing fraction, the frightful silence seemed more annoying. Nobody said any word until a crackling sound could be heard.
“What is it?” Anwen asked in horror, her voice was a little more than a whisper.
“Maybe it’s just a rat.” Brayden said.
“A rat’s crackle would’ve been way less intense than this.” Eudora criticized him.
“What do we do?” Anwen asked.
“We wait,” he offered.
“Meow.” The cat replied.
“Who’s there?” A man’s deep voice could be heard afar.
The crackling sound seemed to move nearby.
"Hm, nobody," Eudora whispered, and her face became so wrinkled, Anwen wished so much to take a picture of it and save it for the rest of their university life as a threat for whenever Eudora bothered her intrusively. But to do that, they had to make it out of the forest without getting into trouble, which was obnoxiously doubtful.
Anwen’s heart raced and she waited in total silence for the man to make an appearance. He was wearing a formal jumpsuit when he showed himself from behind the series of Osage trees. That was not something they expected; getting caught by a guard. But yeah, who was she kidding? She knew all along this was about to happen, one way or another.
“Who are you?” the man asked.
“We’re witches, duh.” Eudora tried to flirt with him. Anwen realized this was flirting by the mellow voice Eudora used while talking to him and the way her eyes were glancing at him all desirably.
The man seemed to ignore her coquetry.
“What is it you want here? You’re supposed to be attending the academy.”
“Academy? What academy?” she kept playing it cool. “We’re witches.”
“I think you’re gonna have to come with me.” He said with his deep voice, totally unaffected by her attempt at flirting.
“Run.”
The voice echoed in their heads, and it was so loud it made the cat jump and it took Anwen a moment to realize where that scream came from. She was eager to comply immediately and impulsively with the scream and the three of them gathered all their forces and ran in different directions.
With just a little effort, the guard had to bring the three of them to a stop just by pointing his palm in each direction, creating a vortex of energy that made their bodies experience a feeling that looked quite a lot like electroshock.
He, then, collected them up and dragged them along the shrubby path and into the palace.
Did he actually know they were heading that direction?
He just made it easier for them to reach it.
They remained silent, walking towards the direction that the man was heading to. The energy that had embraced them was released from some incantation, and it was hard to know what it was, because he hadn’t said a word, therefore Eudora couldn’t ask her book to find an opposite spell to get them free.<
br />
The interior of the palace was worse than they'd imagined. Maybe it was because of the darkness that surrounded the halls, but anyway it was so silent as though nobody had lived there for centuries, and it smelled of fungus that should've had covered up the whole surface. Seriously, it stank.
They were being dragged along a strange room. The hallway led to a series of locked doors and it took them a moment to realize that they were being caged. Well, that’s what those rooms looked like.
And it didn’t last long until they discovered that their impression was actually real. The good thing was that he locked them in the same room, the bad thing was that they were locked.
And right after the man left, they started spewing out all the thoughts they’d been hiding forcefully during the whole way to the palace.
“I cannot believe we’re being locked up.”
“I cannot believe you were flirting with the guard.” Anwen’s eyes showed how shocked she was by that very fact.
“What? He’s hot.” She said.
“Yeah. He’s also the man who locked us here.”
“Like, what do you expect me to do when a hunky muscled man shows up on my way?”
What surprised Anwen the most was that her roommate still managed to find that man hot, and not despise him after everything that he did.
“How on earth are we supposed to get outta here now?” Brayden interrupted their stupid talk.
“Your book,” Anwen shouted after having taken a full trip around the cage for the fourteenth time.
“What about it?” Eudora might’ve been so taken with the guard so she couldn’t be completely focused.
“Use your book to find a way to get us outta here.”
“You think my book is some sort of genius that can get us out of trouble no matter how difficult it might be?”
“It can help.”
Eudora shrugged, and took the book out of her backpack.
“Good thing the hunk didn’t take our things.”
"Yeah, it turns out he's soft-witted like that," Anwen commented.
Eudora ignored them and focused on her book and finally, she decided to share what she discovered with her friends who seemingly were craving to know whatever that book had to offer. Like, whatever it was, they were desperate to hear it.
“Well, that seems strange.” She frowned.
“What is it?” Anwen yelled.
“It shows a thread thingy.”
“How could that be useful?” Anwen wondered.
After a moment of silence, Brayden came up with some idea.
“We can use it to unlock the door.”
“Do you know how?” Eudora raised a brow.
“It turns out I do.” He smiled confidently.
“Boy, you’re such a badass. I shouldn’t look afar to find hunks when one must already be here with me.” At some point, it seemed like she was thinking aloud.
“Now, how do we find a sharp, filament-like thingy?” Anwen wondered.
“Well, I’ve got nothing like that in my backpack.”
“But I do,” she holloed.
“Um, correct me if I’m wrong, you don’t have any backpack with you." Eudora was so contented with her realization.
“You can use your book’s spells to transmigrate my bag. It comprises all sorts of equipment we can use.”
“Good idea.” She congratulated her.
While waiting for her backpack to show up, Anwen was under the impression she was missing something.
“Is that it?” Eudora interfered.
“Augh, no.” She scoffed, dissatisfied.
“What?” she holloed. “Now we’re screwed.”
After a moment of soundlessness, Brayden started talking.
“Since it’s already here, you can rummage through it for something we might find useful.”
"I don't think there's anything useful in this bag, there's only, you know, silly stuff here, like a little mirror," she got each item out of the bag correspondingly, "a ribbon, a stuffed bear…”
“Seriously? A stuffed bear? What are you, like, five?” Eudora mocked her.
Anwen decided to ditch her.
“A brush…” she proceeded to bring out more things from her backpack.
"Here," Brayden approached her spookily, bending down so that he could get the thing out of her hands.
When their fingers interlaced, she could feel a whole vibration seeping up her body.
“What, you need to brush your hair?” Eudora said.
Her comment seemed to go unnoticed.
Brayden picked out one of the polylines and held it in two fingers in the air. The girls looked at him and then he walked to the door and quilted the polyline into the latch.
Chapter Eleven
“Apricot," Anwen mumbled as if she was waking up from a horrifying dream.
“Hmm?” Eudora asked.
“He’s not here.”
“I know.”
“But—”
“Please don’t go all cuckoo about it right now. Not right after we managed, well, to get ourselves out. We need to find a way to get into that room.”
“Oh my god, where is he?” she was all terrified, but her roommate decided to leave her alone on her freak-out hour and she turned around to Brayden.
“You did it. I think someday you should teach me how to transgress the rules like you do,” Eudora started using her flirty ways and was touching his arms so endearingly as if she’d been hypnotized or something. Like, seriously, that’s how outlandish her behavior seemed at the moment.
“I thought nobody could do that better than you,” Anwen mocked her. Seemingly, she decided to come to terms with the fact that the cat didn’t tag along. She needed to save herself first, in order to rescue the cat.
“I think there’s something wrong with her,” Brayden commented.
This comment made Anwen focus on her friend while Eudora was sliding into his arms all desirably as if she was already losing consciousness.
“There must be something about the cage. The air must be poisonous or something.” She added, panicked.
“I think it’s just temporarily. A drowsing substance or something like that.”
“Whatever it is, we better get outta here before it gets in our bodies.”
They dragged her along, and Anwen picked up the book and the backpack; realizing they’d been somewhat useful along the way, which was a good motive not to leave them behind.
“The elf,” Eudora mumbled as soon as they were far away from the hallway. “He must’ve snitched on us.”
“What?” Anwen shouted. “Asterix wouldn’t do that, would he?” she refused to believe that the amicable valet de chamber would do such a thing.
“Then how do you explain that we got caught right off the bat?”
“She might have a point.” Brayden supported her opinion.
“I like you Brayden.” Even in that sleepy mood, she managed to crack up a smile and flirt.
Anwen snubbed that.
“Come on, we need to hurry.” Anwen offered.
“What? She’s not capable to move.” Brayden noted critically.
“Leave me.” Eudora offered in a low, inscrutable voice.
“Of all the crazy things you come up with, that's the worst." He smiled at her.
Anwen tried harder to disregard it.
Now, their being so nice to one another was an image she was definitely not used to. And by the way, she felt a little bit jealous he was treating Eudora so nicely. Just because Eudora wasn’t in her element didn’t have to make him pamper her with those eyes and that smile and…Augh, what was wrong with her anyway?
He rummaged through her backpack and grabbed a bottle of a transparent liquid. With all the craziness of this world, it required her a moment to realize that it was just water. He made Eudora sip it and they let her calm for a minute or two.
“We must go.” A
nwen muttered.
“We will.” Eudora tried to get onto her own feet.
“The substance on the cage must’ve had agents that act against oxidation. It happens a lot.”
“Well, great.” She said in a disregarding way. “Will she be alright?”
“She’ll be just fine.” He assured her.
They waited for another couple of minutes to make sure she was able to walk and then she started walking hurriedly, leaving them behind.
“Come on, even turtles would’ve been faster than you.” She said.
“Now I know she’s fine,” Anwen said, trying to reach her.
Brayden laughed.
“Where are you taking us?” Anwen asked as soon as they were leveling up.
“To the ointment chamber.”
She held the book in her hands. The book was showing her the directions.
Climbing a long staircase, Anwen decided to collect herself and not think about her lovely cat.
“We’re so close to it,” she smiled.
"Now I've got a strange feeling about it," Brayden told her and she looked at him strangely as if the flirting moments had ever occurred between them. “That’s supposedly the most important place of the forest with the most precious ointments.”
“And?” she asked.
Her being all cocky annoyed Anwen more than the previous flirting segment.
"And, how come there's no guard or protection whatsoever? You must imagine a place of this priority would be full of guards like the one that got us caught.”
“Just don’t remind me of him. I’m still trying to deal with the image of those arms on my mind.”
“Did you even hear what I said?”
“I did. But we don’t have time to think about it. We got other, way more important matters on hand.”
A sound broke through, and with each passing moment, it became louder. They tried to find the nearest hideaway. There was a little hole in the staircase and they hurried their way to it.
Brayden looked around and noticed two guards and a little elf who reminded him of something.
“Asterix’s here,” he talked softly.
“I knew it,” she wanted to yell but couldn’t. “That untrustworthy teensy-weensy piece of crap.”
“He’s being held hostage.” He added.
An Academy for Witches (A Witch in Progress Book 1) Page 7
