Chương 25: The Morning After

Ch 25: The Morning After As much as Sahirah and I wanted to return to safety and find out what had happened to our friends, getting back wasn't exactly straightforward. We were afraid that Lathara's battle with the Mimic Queen might still be raging, so we decided to recover some mana and prepare a few more spells before returning. That consumed several more hours of the night. We also had to break into a few locked classrooms, destroying their locking mechanisms with a simple spell I crafted on the spot.

All of that while struggling not to mention the kiss we had shared. By the time the first light of dawn greeted us, Sahirah stood near a classroom window, her shirt half-raised as the morning light helped dry the freshly inscribed Presence Erasure spell on her back. I found myself staring at her, at her black hair and pale skin contrasting sharply with the morning sunlight.

"Are... we really doing this?" Of course, I knew she wasn't talking about leaving the classroom and finding out what had happened to the Mimic Queen and Lathara. I walked closer and stopped right in front of her, at which point she immediately averted her gaze. Less eloquently than I probably should have, I said, "I guess we are." I leaned closer and kissed her on the forehead. Our gazes met, and that was that. No exchange of compliments or promises. No defining what the word "this" really meant.

Not even worrying about all the things that would certainly come back to haunt us in the future because of both our privacy limitations and our lack of proper communication. When the ink finally dried on her back, and with a few fresh copies of Haste tucked into our half-destroyed pockets just in case, we left the classroom. To our immense relief, we found no raging battle waiting for us. Instead, we found damaged walls, dead worms scattered everywhere, and a school under an extended curfew.

Grey staff patrolled the halls, preventing the usual busy morning crowds from leaving their rooms and gathering in the food court.

"I think..." I said hesitantly, "we should pay Principal Dickhead a visit." Sahirah nodded, and we headed toward the administration wing. Every Grey we passed stared at our ragged clothes, yet somehow no one questioned why we were outside our rooms during an extended curfew. When we reached the corridor outside the principal's office, we found a busy place.

Teachers and staff packed the hallway so tightly that many of them were forced to stand outside the office itself, arguing loudly enough that we could hear them long before we arrived. Unfortunately, we couldn't understand a word of what was actually happening. And the translation wasn't the problem since all that reached us was a storm of shouted insults and Greys talking over one another. I had never seen Greys behave like that before. Now I was watching dozens of them do it at once.

Once the initial surprise faded, my gaze drifted farther down the corridor, away from the commotion. Niko, Lili, Zira, and the scaled brothers were sitting on the cold floor beneath a window, and they noticed us the moment we arrived. I smiled immediately. Beside me, Sahirah let out a long sigh of relief. Judging by appearances alone, our worries had been unnecessary. Compared to us, they looked perfectly fine. Their clothes were intact, or, in Niko's case, his fur looked no worse than usual.

Sahirah and I exchanged a glance before walking toward them like a pair of soldiers reuniting with their squad after a brutal battle. To my surprise, the usually quiet brothers were the first to speak.

"Why do the two of you look like you've jussst been through..." said Kip.

"... a mating sssession inside an active volcano?" finished Kap. Niko burst into laughter immediately. Even Lili and Zira tried to hide their amusement, though neither managed to suppress the smiles creeping across their faces. Sahirah, however, was the only one who didn't find the joke amusing. Pointing at her ruined pockets and the patches of charred skin visible beneath her torn clothes, she said, "A girl had to pay a price to save your rears from the Mimics after you summoned her, and that's how you treat her?"

That single sentence instantly killed the teasing. Not wanting the mood to become too heavy, I decided to joke instead.

"Well," I said, "a girl also needed someone to save her own rear when the final boss showed up." Wrapping an arm around her shoulders, I added, "But we can't blame Sahirah for that, right? Even the teacher was having a hard time against that creepy creature." Smiling, I steered the conversation elsewhere.

"By the way... does anyone know what happened to Lathara and the Mimic Queen?"

"A Mimic Queen?" Lili's eyes widened.

"So that's why all the teachers are acting so strangely." Niko let out an annoyed huff.

"How is one bigger worm enough reason to cancel breakfast?"

"Did... did the two of you fight her?" Zira asked quietly. Seeing the conversation drifting off course, I repeated my question.

"I'll tell you everything later," I said.

"But has anyone seen Lathara today?" The four of them exchanged uncertain looks.

"She... was the one who brought us here this morning and told us to wait," Zira answered. Niko nodded.

"Her robes were clean... but I could smell blood on her." If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. Kip and Kap spoke next.

"We sssaw her meet the principal before sssunrise."

"They both looked exhausted... and perhapsss injured." I frowned. None of them seemed aware that Niori had been taken over by a Mimic before I had told them. The good news, however, was that Lathara was alive. Perhaps Principal Dickhead had joined the fight after noticing something was wrong through the surveillance globe. What I still didn't know was what had happened to the Mimic Queen. Had she been killed by Lathara and the principal? If so... what did that mean for our extermination deal?

Technically, no one had ever agreed to defeat a Mimic Queen when we negotiated the deal. But it was still a gray area. If they had finished her off themselves, I was certain Principal Dickhead would refuse to pay us. And the worst part was that even after everything we had risked, it was Lathara who had eliminated most of the Mimics. Sahirah and I hadn't even managed to destroy the final swarm after FEIO and all of its backup copies had been burned away in that weirdly precise attack. I let out a long sigh.

"Lathara 'the relationship destroyer' aside... does anyone know why the Greys are so angry today?" Instead of answering, every one of them fell silent. Worse, they weren't looking at me or Sahirah. They were staring behind us. I swallowed hard and slowly turned around. Lathara herself stood there. Her arms were folded across her chest as her gaze shifted between Sahirah and me. As always, the green sleeves of her robes contrasted sharply with the rest of her black attire.

Her deep blue eyes met mine, calm enough to make a glacier seem restless despite everything that had happened.

"The two of you," she said evenly, "please follow me to the principal's office." When she turned around, I immediately remembered the last time we had been brought to this office after we had destroyed my old room to kill a Mimic. That time, we had walked out of here forcibly separated, and it had taken us a great deal of effort to undo it. A single glance at Sahirah told me she was remembering the same thing.

I rested a gentle hand against the small of her back, and together we followed Lathara as the crowd of Greys outside the office parted to let us through. I didn't recognize most of the faces, but I spotted a few guards, and even Hoko, who was standing in the doorway with half his body outside the office. Lathara slipped through a narrow gap between him and the teachers crowding the entrance, and we followed her inside. To my surprise, the arguments didn't stop even after we entered.

"You don't seem to understand," said a well-dressed Grey.

"A Mimic Queen hijacking the body of a competent meditation teacher is not some minor incident like you tried to convince my advisor. I can't believe you forced me to come here first thing in the morning just so I could tell you this in person, Principal."

"It was just a misunderstanding. There was no need for you to come here, Fernik," Principal Dickhead replied from behind his desk.

"This school is officially Mimic-free now, and everything will return to normal as soon as we remove the bodies of the poor Granar who lost their lives to those hideous invading creatures." As Lathara waited for an opening to announce our arrival, my thoughts drifted to the Granar seniors whose bodies had collapsed the moment the worms abandoned them. They had died without ever having a chance to fight back. And yes...

I blamed Principal Dickhead far more than I blamed myself for not developing the system's detection capabilities quickly enough to prevent that tragedy. Lathara finally cleared her throat.

"My apologies for the interruption, Mayor, Principal," she said.

"But the first-year students responsible for the detection and extermination plan have arrived, as requested." Every eye in the room turned toward us. Zorik looked at me with obvious disappointment before slowly shaking his head. The well-dressed Grey, apparently the mayor, studied us in silence. As his gaze lingered, the room gradually fell quiet for the first time since we had arrived.

"This," he said, "is the one part of this entire situation I still fail to understand." His eyes shifted between Sahirah and me.

"With an archmage stationed here, a competent faculty, and a principal who graduated from Navar's finest academy... how can two first-year students from rare species be leading the extermination effort?"

"Those two?" Zorik said dismissively.

"They are anything but ordinary students. One is a freak of nature with more mana than some teachers, and the other belongs to that species of cheaters everyone at the Academy knows about." Smirking, he added, "Why would I risk my teachers when those two volunteered for the job?" The brief flicker of surprise on the mayor's face told me I had an opportunity.

"Well," I said, "when you say volunteered, it makes it sound like we're not getting paid." I smiled.

"We are getting paid, right? That was the agreement before we found out there was a Mimic Queen." I still had no idea what had ultimately happened to the Mimic Queen, but I made absolutely sure to mention our payment in front of the mayor and every teacher in the room. And It was a deliberate move that might or might not pay off. But it didn't take long for me to realize I'd made the right decision as another wave of overlapping arguments erupted. A few comments reached my ears.

"Hadn't we agreed those two were too dangerous to stay together?"

"Why is Zorik making deals without consulting the faculty?"

"I'd very much like to know how much this is costing the school's treasury." A voice suddenly cut through all the others.

"Silence!" It was the mayor. Once the room quieted again, he looked directly at me.

"How much did Zorik promise you?" If I said I wasn't enjoying the direction this conversation was taking, I'd be lying.

"Thirty thousand credits," I replied with a smile.

"Ten thousand have already been paid." The mayor didn't react to the number. The rest of the room, however, looked as though they were struggling to keep quiet. Zorik spoke before anyone else could.

"Our agreement included the full extermination of the Mimics," he said.

"A task they clearly failed to complete, as everyone here can see." Mayor Fernik ignored him and walked toward us. Almost instinctively, Sahirah moved closer until our shoulders touched. He stopped only a few steps away. And unlike Elitha, his presence wasn't intimidating. If anything, he was firm but overall difficult to read. He glanced back at Zorik.

"You came to my home asking for funding after the first body was discovered in your school," he said.

"I gave you three hundred thousand credits and asked for nothing in return." His gaze returned to us.

"Can you imagine how I might feel upon learning you outsourced the task to two first-year students for a fraction of that amount... and didn't even pay them in full?" His eyes settled on Sahirah, then on me.

"Your credit crystals." We exchanged a glance, and I immediately realized she wasn't carrying hers. Smiling, I reached into the small pocket that had thankfully been too awkward to use for spell storage, which was why my crystal had survived that paper-burning attack. I held it out. Under the watchful eyes of the entire room, the mayor raised his own crystal. Both glowed. A number far too large for such a tiny crystal appeared on the upper facet. +20, 000 To my surprise, he immediately turned to Sahirah.

"Do you trust him to give you your share?" Wait... Why would he ask that? Did I really look like the kind of person who would steal from my co-founder and whatever else she'd become last night? She looked surprised as well, but only for a moment. Then she linked her arm with mine and pulled me closer.

"I trust I could even take his share if I wanted to." Fernik smiled, struggling to suppress a laugh. The rest of the room, meanwhile, seemed far more surprised by the mayor's casual handling of the situation, and by how openly Sahirah had acted. Completely at ease while holding my arm, she asked, "We still don't know what happened after we escaped. Is the school really safe now?"

"The school is safe," Lathara answered before the mayor could.

"Most of my spells proved ineffective, but the principal arrived with reinforcements in time, and together we drove the Mimic Queen away.

"She lost interest in the fight once her worms failed to capture the two of you, but I suspect Eric's sphere might still interest her. So we're going to assume she may have been observing you from the shadows for some time, possibly since the very first Mimic detection."

"The school may be safe," Fernik corrected.

"The city? Not so much." His expression darkened.

"And it happened because of how badly things were handled here. A Mimic Queen has gained control of a body that spent an entire lifetime meditating, and your problem is my problem now." My thoughts raced. Had the entire invasion simply been collateral damage? Had the Mimic Queen's true objective always been claiming a powerful body? If so, then my system hadn't been the target at all.

It had merely become an obstacle that forced the Mimics to adapt, and perhaps a source of interest to the Queen after it repeatedly ruined her body-snatching plan. While I considered that possibility, the room once again dissolved into overlapping arguments. Principal Zorik kept glaring at me, his expression making it perfectly clear that, mayor or no mayor, he still considered our business unfinished.

I would safely bet my half of the payment that he would still find a way to push us to participate in that fundraising event. Sahirah, meanwhile, remained quietly at my side. This time, the crisis had become so severe that none of the teachers seemed to care anymore about the taboos surrounding us, or the risk we posed to this institution. Amid the chaos, Mayor Fernik glanced toward the door like a man whose time could no longer be wasted. Before leaving, however, he turned back to us.

"It's a shame the two of you are only first-year students," he said.

"If you had spent enough time in Navar to learn our language, I could make very good use of your tracking expertise." He patted my shoulder and walked away. As I watched him leave, several assumptions settled in my mind. First, not every Grey in a position of power was an insufferable prick. Second, now that our lives were no longer in immediate danger, finishing Magica Principia should become my highest priority. And finally...

After a kiss that neither of us had planned, I certainly didn't need any extra motivation to obtain Elitha's translation spell, and perhaps even befriend a certain mayor as a byproduct.