Chapter 25. Of Emotions and Feathers

  [Lorelei]

  Armarillis was turned upside down, and training at the academy had intensified significantly. Where we used to have free hours, now the only free time was breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I didn’t even make it to the shower every day — that’s how exhausted I was…

  But at the same time, I felt myself becoming more resilient with each passing day, capable of new achievements. My skills were developing, and thanks to the intensive training with Calypso, I was controlling my magic better and better.

  Effu hadn’t made himself known yet, and dark creature activity had dropped sharply across all of Forland. It all felt very much like the calm before the storm…

  General Staff, together with Armarillis, was combing the city daily in search of whoever had been opening the pentagrams before. The approximate location where the fourth pentagram should be opened had been calculated, and our teams were stationed there around the clock under careful concealment.

  These pentagrams had to appear on specific days of the lunar cycle, and it was crucial not to miss any attempt to open the fourth pentagram. If it wasn’t opened on time, the Seal of Creation would be disrupted and the ritual would be foiled. All the Inquisition’s forces were now focused on this.

  Every day I visited Felicia in the infirmary. She was in bad shape, but thanks to the healers, she was recovering quickly.

  She told me how her group of twilight wanderers had been patrolling the border of dreams, where suspicious dark creature activity had been noticed in the previous days. And how at that spot, the twilight wanderers had witnessed the fabric of reality tearing apart.

  “When the fabric of reality tears, a huge amount of dark creatures pour out along with a powerful surge of energy… terrifying, nightmarish creatures that are incredibly hard to withstand,” Felicia said quietly.

  “Kernals seem like cute, fluffy household pets compared to them. The fabric was tearing because Effu had broken through to the first level of dreams… the trap for him had been set on the third level it’s a rather eerie dimension, personally it reminds me of some psychedelic version of Hell. The air there is very thin, humans can’t stay there long, and few twilight wanderers are even capable of reaching it…”

  “And you? Can you?” I asked, sitting beside her in the hospital room and drinking herbal tea with my sister.

  Felicia nodded. Though honestly, I’d never doubted that my little sis was capable of handling challenges even greater than that.

  “I’ve been there. Nasty place. But it’s perfect for hiding away some creature like Effu, a primordial spirit of chaos who, I don’t even know if it’s possible to kill at all… He’s primordial, and such beings are immortal… supposedly…”

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  “Yeah, the Mentor explained the same thing to us.”

  “ That's probably how it is. Anyway, I don’t know who helped Effu get out to the first level of dreams, but someone is helping him… From the outside. Helping him very well, with expertise. I also tried to trace the energy signature of this helper, but it just vanishes into nothing at some point… All I could figure out was that someone very powerful is involved… And probably not human, I think.”

  “Our mom also said it’s probably not human,” I recalled Elsa’s words.

  “She leans toward some higher demon or something of that level being involved.”

  “Hell if I know… But if I find that creature, I’ll personally strangle it with my bare hands…”

  “I’m afraid you’re too late. Get in line behind the Mentor. He already promised to personally strangle that creature when he finds it,” I smirked.

  Felicia smiled crookedly, but her smile immediately faded.

  “The energy explosion was so powerful that it scattered our group and tore us apart… And then came the dark creatures… So many of them… A horrifying number of them… Some of my colleagues were devoured right before my eyes,” Felicia winced painfully, clearly from far-from-pleasant memories, to put it mildly.

  “We barely had time to react… Almost everyone died… Only Rayes and I survived…”

  I took Felicia’s hand, wanting to somehow offer support without knowing how.

  “He’s fine,” I smiled.

  “They got him back on his feet quickly at the General Staff infirmary; he got hurt less than you. Though he was also roughed up pretty badly, of course… He’s fully recovered now and can’t wait for you to come back to him.”

  Felicia smiled warmly. She rarely smiled at all, but her husband Rayes — a twilight wanderer working at the General Staff — was one of those rare people who always brought out that warm, open smile in her. Rayes wasn’t a Fortemin and couldn’t enter the Armarillis dimension, as our teleportation gates wouldn’t let him through. So he patiently waited to see Felicia and kept in touch with us through other colleagues who constantly traveled to Staff for work.

  “Where did this energy explosion even come from?” I asked thoughtfully.

  “Something must have triggered it, right?”

  “I don’t know, there could be many explanations. From yet another opened pentagram to gods-know-what else…”

  “No pentagrams were found during those days.”

  “Then we’re dealing with some gods-know-what,” Felicia sighed.

  “I don’t know, Lora. I didn’t have time to analyze it. You know, when the fabric of reality is tearing right in front of you and Effu’s spirit is seeping through with an army of deadly dark creatures, it’s really hard to analyze the situation…”

  “Yeah,” I sighed.

  “So what are we all supposed to do now?”

  “I don’t know, Lora… I don’t know. Forland hasn’t been in a situation like this for thousands of years, and neither have any of the neighboring worlds. For now, Effu has gone to ground somewhere, probably waiting for the Seal of Creation to be broken so he can get his primordial body back… And what happens after that? Well, we’ll just have to wait and see, I guess.”