Finally, after hard staring that made Vincent fearfully uncomfortable, Master Magnus glanced around at his colleagues before returning his withering gaze to Vincent. “You’re sorry,” he said derisively, “is that the only thing you have to say for yourself?”
Vincent stood frozen and swallowed. “It’s all I can say, sir.”
Magnus slammed his fist on the table and stood up, his face red. “People are going to die because of you, swordsman! Are you aware of that!” Vincent felt a chill. “You have allowed dark miscreants to violate our sanctity and steal sensitive materials! When your classmates are dying in my arms, I’ll be sure to tell them that it’s okay because you’re sorry!”
Silence hung thickly and oppressively in the air during the next eternal seconds. None of the other masters seemed shaken by Magnus’ outburst, and his gaze continued to pierce Vincent’s soul. It made him wish once again that he had died during the attack. Grandmaster Treyfon also calmly gazed at Vincent while he gently put a hand to Magnus’ arm, silently asking him to be seated once more.
The master pyromancer complied and then looked around briefly at his associates before returning his scowl to Vincent. “I motion that this incompetent be expelled from the academy at once. His weak stomach is useless to us; there are normals with greater resolve that might serve us better.” Vincent felt his eyes glisten the slightest bit and noticed Master Clemens, his supervisor, glancing at Magnus and twisting in his chair in silent disapproval of his harsh words.
Instead of saying anything about his mistake at all, Grandmaster Treyfon asked him to finish his story. With trepidation over the matter clutching him fiercely, Vincent did as told and reported everything he could remember. They all listened intently to every word he said, overlooking nothing, and several asked him questions about some of the finer points in the tale, sometimes at unusual places. Magnus kept silent but continued to glare. Vincent was nauseated and discomforted at recalling the events repeatedly, but answered them anyway, not sure what relevance such details had.
At the end when everyone was quietly thinking about what he had said, Vincent couldn’t keep himself from tensely yet politely asking them if he was to be expelled for his mistake. The only reaction he got was indifferent silence from all of the masters except Treyfon, who merely told him it was alright and asked him if there was anything else left in his story. Vincent told him honestly that to his knowledge there was not.
Afterward, Master Magnus folded his arms and leaned back against his chair. “I have not withdrawn my motion,” he reminded sternly.
To Vincent’s surprise, the old green-robed Dwarf man in charge of the Geomancy Department sitting at Magnus’ left, came to his defense. “Granted that his detection of the intruders and survival are both products of chance, he still stood against many of greater power and shows promise. Perhaps we should show him leniency.”
Master Magnus’ angry eyes flicked to the side of his head in the Dwarf’s direction once, but he said nothing. The brown eyes within the master geomancer’s fluffy white hair and beard hadn’t even noticed. Most of the other masters save for Treyfon seemed less concerned with this disciplinary action and more preoccupied with the small bits and pieces about the attackers that he had been able to tell them.
The Elf grandmaster appeared neither to hate him nor harbor sympathy, and instead projected an objective and impartial air as he passed Vincent’s verdict. “These circumstances are unusual, though a gross negligence on your part has not yet been established. Unless someone else is willing to second your removal, I do not feel that an expulsive hearing is warranted at this time.” Treyfon looked around expectantly at the other members, but no one voiced anything.
Master Magnus noticed this and then pointed a finger at Vincent, making it clear that the matter was still unsettled. “Don’t fail us again,” he warned.
“This meeting is adjourned,” Grandmaster Treyfon concluded.
When the masters began to get up and leave the conference room, Vincent waited until Master Clemens came closer and spoke with him while they walked out together. He informed his supervisor that he was fit to resume guard duty. The master crafter, whom appeared more a blacksmith than a wizard, kindly told Vincent to take the week off since he was still having Stan and Craig serve extra shifts as punishment. Vincent thanked him, but made no mention of his intent to speak with them personally.
Past the hallway leading out of the council chambers, everyone broke up. Many masters headed straight forward to exit the keep and resume teaching classes in buildings out on the campus while others split up to go to different places within the keep. He had always had orders or duties to carry out and now for the first time, Vincent stood there at the edge of the central dining hall, which was busy and full of people, wondering what to do. People talked, plates and dishes clanked, and the air smelt of the same eggs, bacon, and bread he had eaten earlier that morning. It all seemed to fade into the back of his consciousness.
In a way, he felt a sense of relief, but there was also dread. His exoneration had happened so quickly that it hadn’t fully sunk in. Vincent was left worrying about the choice he had made: the choice to fight rather than flee. He also wondered, and worried, if this was just the opportunity he needed. If he was to fight on behalf of Gadrale, and on behalf of the defenseless whom Gadrale’s duty it was to protect, then those who had died or disappeared at the hands of magic, or otherwise, could not be ignored. Arrendis was right: if he had run, someone else would have to do it, even for his own corpse if he ever fell prey as well. Now it was up to Vincent to do something for those who had vanished.
However, this was still not without personal risk himself; potential dangers outside the keep were the least of it-he could get into trouble here. Was it wise for him to continue his investigation if the masters were already conducting their own? He reasoned that if he was still as unsuccessful as he had been up to this point, then it made no difference to others what he did with his free time. He also considered that the masters might be limiting their concerns only to those who had broken into The Crafters’ Vault; in which case, it was his moral obligation to take action where no one else would.
It couldn’t be done the same way though, not if he actually wanted results. His treks into the woods so far had been fruitless. He attempted to take stock of his best alternatives. His highest priority was to pursue leads, his second to seek help. His only lead at the moment was Stan and Craig. If there was a chance they really saw or knew anything at all, he had to talk to them. His mental list of potential help was almost as short. However, if there was nothing for him to go on, that help would be meaningless. He headed toward the first hallway leading right.
Several people in different colored robes passed by him on his way. Some were in the middle of reading books, others were talking with friends on their way to the central dining hall. During the day, the keep was a busy place. Vincent paused outside the opening to the stairway on the left, waiting for a small crowd to come up from the stairs below.
“Do you smell something burning?” A brown haired girl in a healer’s dress asked one of her friends. Vincent did, the smell was still there, and his stomach began to turn again.
As soon as they were out of the way, he rushed past and began descending the many stairs down to the vault. He traveled through each floor as quickly as space permitted. The first below ground level was busy with many students coming up or going down and a few laborers carrying sacks of food upstairs, intending on delivering them to the cooks at the dining hall. The air seemed slightly cooler at each deeper floor. He was fortunate that the thinner, shorter passages of the second floor down, which held doors accessing the external basements, was momentarily free of passerby.
The two library levels below it, however, were not. Crowds had gathered in the first one for classes that were being taught there that day. On the second lowest level, the one above the vault, there were a slightly fewer number of students quietly studying and doing research, t
he only sound the flipping of pages. Each person sat at tables with open books while small light orbs bobbed up and down above their reading surface. The stale smell of old parchment and paper filled Vincent’s nostrils as he walked through the hall alongside them.
When Vincent finally passed them all, he stepped down the wide massive stairway leading to the bottom floor. He didn’t remember being brought out of here, he had been unconscious and nearly dead at the time, but someone had obviously healed him enough to safely carry him all these flights of stairs. At the bottom there was a split into two halls, yet both directions would eventually loop around to merge into one on the far side that led to the vault’s entrance. He took a right, then a left around the corner, and then another left around the next until he was slowly coming within view of the opening to the hallway where he had fought for his life. The carnage had been cleaned away. With how much there had been, including his own blood, he was surprised that there wasn’t a trace left.
He sighted a young man only slightly shorter than himself at the other end, wearing blue atmomancy robes and small glasses with circular lenses. Behind the glasses were brown eyes fraught with worry, and atop his head, curly auburn hair. It was Craig.
Craig immediately spotted Vincent and tensed up visibly. Neither said a word as Vincent approached, and Vincent tried to make his face appear as non-threatening as possible. He could tell already that Craig had probably received a lot of scolding from Master Clemens and expected the same from him.
Craig looked nervous, maybe even upset, and before Vincent could say anything, he preemptively voiced his preconceptions. “I know what you’re going to say, and I’m sorry,” he said emphatically, closing his eyes first and gesturing with his hands, “we stood you up and ran off when we should have relieved you, and you almost got killed. I know it should have been me since it was my shift, or at least one of us, I’ve been reminded of that constantly by everyone. Everyone hates us.” As soon as Vincent was about to slip in a word, he raised his voice in fretful frustration. “You hate us both too, and I understand that, so please just cut the sermon short and leave me be!” Craig folded his arms and looked away from Vincent at the side of the hall.
“I didn’t come here to scold you,” Vincent said.
Craig didn’t look back and didn’t appear convinced either. “Well however you tell it, I don’t care. I don’t need any more lessons or reprimands about duty and honor.”
“I’m not here for that either.”
Craig finally met Vincent’s gaze with troubled eyes and seemed less sure of himself. “What do you want?” He asked, still looking shaken.
“First of all, so you don’t misinterpret my question, I want to tell you that I harbor no grudge against either of you for your absence. You either would have went through what I did, or you might have been killed. It was not an experience I would wish on anyone, not even you or Stan. I came here to ask what you were up to the night of the attack. Master Clemens said you saw something suspicious taking place in the woods outside of the city. He doesn’t believe you, but I would like to at least hear it for myself.”
“Why?”
“I need to know.”
Craig’s eyes became slightly watery. “He told us he doesn’t want us to repeat our lies to anyone or try to get undue sympathy, because we don’t deserve it. He said that if we did, he would punish us with even more shifts. I don’t know who said they saw us on campus, but they were wrong.”
Vincent’s resolve was unhindered. “I swear to you that if you tell me, he will never hear of it.”
“Why are you so interested?”
“A lot of strange things have been happening.” Vincent paused, but didn’t elaborate, and steered the conversation back to Craig. “So what exactly did you see out there?”
“You probably won’t believe me either.”
“I’d still like to hear it. If you really do feel bad about leaving me down here all night, then you can consider it payment in full.” Vincent then repeated his question, sternly stressing each word. “What did you see?”
“Alright fine, I’ll tell you,” he relented at last. “But it’s a long story.”
“I have plenty of time,” Vincent assured him.
“There was this older girl that I really liked. Her name was Jeanette. She was beautiful and smart, and like me, she was also an atmomancer. She never gave me the time of day though, and mostly I would just admire her from afar. Sometimes I would watch her leaving one of her late classes, sometimes I would just send her flowers anonymously. Anyway, Stan convinced me that I should just approach her one day after her class got out and let her know that I was the one who had been sending them. He came with me and said that he would wait further away and watch from a distance, that way he could console me if it went badly.
“The building for her last class of the day was not far from the gardens, and Stan and I waited a distance out on the lawn beyond it. When the crowd came out, we couldn’t see her at first. And when we finally figured out which one was her, we saw her standing near the entrance to the gardens, talking with some man we couldn’t recognize. At first, we thought she already had someone else and that she was going to leave with him, but he looked strange and they didn’t touch each other in any kind of familiar fashion as they talked, so…”
“Strange how? What did he look like?” Vincent interrupted, wanting to know in case he ever saw him, or at least have an idea of whom to seek.
“I don’t know quite how to describe him, I guess he had dark hair, though more straight and less wavy than yours. His clothing was more like that of peasant or common folk, but they were too tight and didn’t seem to fit him…” like they were someone else’s, Vincent thought, “…his eyes and his face though, more than his body, didn’t seem to fit the clothing. There were dark circles around his eyes that looked like paint had been washed away, but not enough, and his bearing, the way he carried himself while he spoke with Jeanette, also made us think that he was more than he appeared to be. He didn’t look like he belonged here, and why would Jeanette be nodding or bowing her head to show such deference to a commoner? Anyway, he didn’t look like he was her boyfriend.
“Stan claims to be able to read lips and thought the man said something to her at one point like ‘…it is time, we must go,’ or something like that. It made us curious because he didn’t look as if he were someone employed by the keep. If he was, they were already here, where would they go? He just gave us a bad feeling altogether. If we were wrong, and it looked like they were just going somewhere private to…you know, then I would be embarrassed and we would merely have to leave them to it. It was already late, almost nighttime, and what made us really suspicious is that she didn’t turn to go back to her quarters in the keep. Instead, she walked with him toward the gate to leave the campus. Stan and I tried to act casual when we walked by them, going in the other direction as they passed, and we pretended to be talking and laughing about something so they wouldn’t think we were paying any attention.
“After we walked by a good enough distance, we ducked behind a building and then turned around to follow them. It was around the same time when Stan was supposed to relieve you. I’m sorry Vincent, but we were so caught up in what was going on that it was the furthest thing from our minds.”
“No offense taken,” Vincent replied, “please continue.”
“We were right, they were walking to the gate, and we knew that something unusual was afoot. After the gatekeeper unlocked the gate for them and let them out, Stan and I kept a safe enough distance and waited an extra amount of time before asking to go out ourselves so we wouldn’t be noticed. We followed them from afar as they went down the open road to the city, wondering if they were going to spend the night there and I was just going to be embarrassed. It got dark by the time they left the city behind, and we continued following them on a dirt road out into the country. Eventually we left the road and followed them when they entered the forest.
�
��It was tough going. We had trouble seeing them and proceeded slowly, following any sound they made while being careful not to make any of our own. Finally, we started to see something that looked like a fire.”
“You’re lucky you weren’t caught,” Vincent pointed out.
Craig looked him in the eyes with a wild expression while he nodded. “We were already scared half to death, but what we saw there made me more frightened than I have ever been.” He took a deep breath as his eyes became lost in thought, he looked almost too troubled to go on.
“I too had my own fright that night,” Vincent commented in reassurance. “What was yours?”
Craig gazed back at him with wet eyes. “I saw…a crowd sitting in a wide circle around a bonfire. Everyone was wearing black hooded robes that covered their faces while they stared downward and chanted things I couldn’t understand.” Craig stared away distantly, looking disturbed at what came next. “Between them and the fire lay four children: a boy and three girls. Their hands and feet were bound with rope, but there were no gags…” he had difficulty uttering the words past his own tense breathing, “we could hear them…crying out for help, to anyone who would listen, asking for their mothers, begging to go home, but we were helpless to do anything about it. I had never felt so powerless and ashamed in my entire life. We wanted to run away, to get help, and the only thing we could do was stay crouched, hiding. I remember shaking from being too scared to move-afraid we would be caught. I knew that I was no match even for Jeanette if there had been a confrontation, and there were many more besides her, and she…” his voice broke and he couldn’t go on.
“Take as long as you need,” Vincent comforted, “I want to know everything.”
Craig removed his glasses and tried in vain to wipe away his tears, more kept coming. His voice was unsteady but controlled enough to continue speaking. “First, she took off her clothes and changed into something black. It covered her head and face, except for her eyes, and was tighter than what everyone else was wearing. The strange man did the same thing. Two other people already wearing that clothing left from the circle to stand near them. They each waved a hand over a child, and their cries stopped; something they did paralyzed them and made them quiet. Then they each took out a knife…”-Craig’s face paled-“…Stan and I could only see enough at that distance to know that they were doing a lot of intricate work. The most we could tell was that there was a lot of blood on the front of each child’s chest. At the end…it looked like they were holding something in their hands, and then not long after, Jeanette and the other three were gone, they vanished.
Storm of Prophecy, Book I: Dark Awakening Page 10
