Chapter 5 The Girl In The Basement.
“What now?” Chadwick asked, struggling to keep up with Clovis’ long strides, “What?” Clovis asked back.
“What do you mean, what?” Chadwick panicked, “We can’t just leave her locked down there! Mr. Dupond, she’s a student!”
“I can,” Clovis said, completely unbothered, “And I would. In fact, I just did.”
Chadwick stuttered in disbelief, “But—but what if the magisters find out?”
“They won’t,” Clovis muttered, turning a corner into the deeper archive.
“How sure can you be?” Chadwick pressed, stepping in front of him to try and block his path. “You can’t just gamble on that!”
Clovis stopped dead in his tracks, he snapped, his eye flaring with a sudden intensity that made Chadwick instantly step back. “Maybe if someone wasn’t reckless and stupid enough to have yelled my title across a public room, we wouldn’t be in this issue to begin with, Mr. Brook.”
Chadwick swallowed hard, the words drying up in his throat before lowering his gaze.
Clovis turned his back on the boy again, dismissing him entirely as he walked over to the central reading table where the ruined volume lay. With a slow movement, he pulled out the book that the entity had escaped from and sat down on a chair.
Chadwick hesitated for a moment, shifting his weight from foot to foot, before he gingerly pulled out a chair and sat with him.
He watched the older man with anxious eyes, the silence stretching between them until he couldn’t take it anymore.
“But we really can’t just leave her there. The girl is frightened out of her mind. A better direction… a better direction could be better for everyone involved.”
Clovis didn’t lift his gaze from the dissolving pages. “Like killing her?”
Chadwick’s eyes widened so hard they looked ready to pop out of his skull. “No!” he yelled, slamming his hands on the table.
Clovis instantly raised a hand to stop him from talking, his expression flattening into utter irritation. “I need focus and silence to do what I want to do. Keep your mouth shut.”
Chadwick bit his lip, but his curiosity got the better of his fear as he leaned over the table, trying to get a look at the strange, watery runes shifting across the parchment. “What are you doing?”
“Tracking the released entity,” Clovis said, his thumb tracing the fractured edge of the book’s spine.
“How long is it going to take?” Chadwick asked.
Clovis scanned through the text, watching the way the magical ink distorted under the influence of the creature’s editing power before letting out a sigh. “I don’t know. But I need to be quick.”
Minutes passed as Chadwick paced the room, clearly restless but Clovis paid him no mind
“I’m going to take the girl out of the basement,” Chadwick said, his voice tense. “We can just bring her up here where we can keep an eye on her.”
Clovis didn’t even look up, “No.”
Finally lifting his head, he said, “I can’t risk it. I already have you to deal with, Mr. Brook, and that is risky enough. Now you want me to manage another person? Worse, a frightened girl who couldn’t even handle a common slaughter?”
Chadwick’s frustration boiled over once again, “Who wouldn’t be traumatized watching something like that? She watched three people get their heads cut off right in front of her! Any normal human being would be broken by that!”
“Myself,” Clovis said, his voice flat. “I wouldn’t be frightened.”
Chadwick let out a bitter laugh, shaking his head. “Yeah, well, that’s exactly why you are the way you are. Bitter and unfeeling.”
Clovis merely shrugged, absorbing the remark as if it were a compliment. He adjusted his sleeves, leaning back in his creaking chair.
“I will only release the girl when I have wiped her memory clean. And that will happen in a few minutes, if you would just keep your mouth shut and let me finish this tracking spell.”
Chadwick didn’t stop pacing, drawing a sigh from Clovis, “If word of my identity gets out to that army or the Magisters, the Archive will break. And if the Archive breaks, the world ends.”
That made Chadwick pause as the reality of the stakes settled over him again. He looked at the closed door of the basement, then back at the glowing book on the table.
“What can I do to help speed up the process?” Chadwick asked.
“Nothing for now,” Clovis sighed, dipping his pen back into the fresh inkpot. “But I need a pair of eyes out there. The Magisters are panicking, and the army at the gates isn’t going to wait forever. I want you to be my eyes and ears inside and outside the academy.”
Chadwick raised an eyebrow, “And what do I get out of becoming a spy for the Mage of Ruin?”
Clovis looked up, interlocking his fingers, “Your reward will be survival. And, if you do it well, I will teach you how to actually use that skill of yours to help hold the library wards together.”
Suddenly, the announcement horn blew from the central tower, vibrating through the walls of the library. Chadwick’s head snapped toward the windows as he rose from his chair to leave, but before he stepped away, he turned back to Clovis, his eyes pleading.
Clovis understood the look immediately and let out an irritated sigh, waving his hand dismissively. “Go. I’ll check on the girl.”
Within minutes, the entire student body had assembled in the grand courtyard. The air outside was cold, and the violet fractures in the sky seemed wider now, casting an unnatural hue over the thousands of teenagers gathered.
At the front of the yard, the Grand Magister stood behind the pulpit.
“Silence!” his voice boomed across the courtyard, his dark eyes sweeping over the thousands of faces.
“By order of the High Council, all standard classes and lectures are hereby cancelled indefinitely,” the Grand Magister announced, before leaning over the stone podium, his gaze hardening.
“You have all seen the lights in the sky and you have heard the rumors at the gates. I tell you now: fret not about this so-called threat. It is an empty provocation by cowards who dare not breach our walls.”
Chadwick stood wedged tightly among the sea of students, his stomach turning. He knew the threat was anything but empty.
“For too long, this academy has functioned as a house of gentle scholars,” the Grand Magister continued, his voice losing any remaining academic warmth, “We have coddled your talents, and as a result, you have failed to reach your full potential but that ends today.”
He slammed the butt of his staff against the stone, a shockwave of raw mana rippling through the dirt beneath the students’ boots.
“From tomorrow morning, the Obsidian Academy will operate as a strict military encampment,” he declared. “Everyone will be prepared and no one will slack behind. You are the elite bloodlines of this continent, and you will learn to bleed for your titles.”
True to his word, the change was immediate.
The very next morning, at exactly four o’clock, the waking bells shattered the silence of the dormitories, as instructors kicked the doors open, dragging the students out into the freezing morning.
Chadwick, along with everyone else, spent the pre-dawn hours doing sprints around the massive perimeter of the school’s buildings.
As the day progressed, the training took a far darker turn.
The Magisters brought the classes into the subterranean training arenas and introduced the students to blood magic rituals—a branch of arcane arts that had been strictly forbidden by continental law for over a century.
The faculty suddenly deemed the children ready to use them, forcing the trembling students to slice their own palms over silver bowls to fuel their spells, accelerating their power at the cost of their own lifeforce.
Meanwhile, Clovis went down to the basement where Lexi was tied to a wooden chair in the corner and the moment he stepped into the dim candlelight, she flinched, looking up at him with sheer terror.
“Please,” she begged, her voice cracking. “Please don’t kill me. I won’t say anything, I swear.”
“I won’t kill you,” Clovis said flatly, pulling up a small stool and sitting down across from her.
“Then let me go,” she pleaded, straining against the ropes. “If you aren’t going to hurt me, just let me go.”
“Can’t do that either,” he murmured, pulling out a small pocketknife to clean the dirt from under his fingernails.
“Why?” Lexi wept, her chest heaving.
“For the sake of my head,” Clovis replied, looking up with his single good eye, “and for the sake of everyone else’s inside this academy.”
“I’ll keep quiet,” she promised, nodding her head. “I swear to the gods, I will never breathe a word to anyone! Just let me back to my dorm!”
Clovis let out a chuckle that sent a shiver down her spine. “Do you truly think me a fool, girl?”
Lexi gulped in fear, cutting off her own plea as she shrank back into the chair, realizing exactly who she was bargaining with.
Later that evening, Chadwick arrived at the library, looking completely beaten up.
Clovis looked up from his stool, his brow furrowing as he scanned the boy’s disheveled state. “What’s up with you boy?”
Chadwick collapsed against a wooden pillar, his breath ragged. “The Magisters have gone completely insane. They forced us into the lower arenas… made us slice our own hands open to fuel forbidden blood magic. They’re turning the entire student body into a sacrificial vanguard.”
Clovis shook his head slowly, a grim look crossing his face. “They are really taking this too far.”
The two men walked over to where Lexi was tied. Chadwick looked down at her, then back at the older man, rubbing his throbbing temples. “What do we do now?”
“Wipe her memory,” Clovis said simply.
Lexi panicked instantly, thrashing against her bonds. “No! No, please! I don’t want that! Don’t mess with my head!”
“I wasn’t giving you a choice,” Clovis said coldly as he turned his head slightly, ordering the boy. “Do it, Chadwick.”
Chadwick let out an exhausted laugh, dropping his hands to his sides. “I’m afraid I can’t. I’m completely burnt out. I’ve strained my mind too much today with those ritual circles, and it’s only day one. I don’t have a shred of focus left.”
Clovis pinched the bridge of his nose because he couldn’t do it either; his own mind was still severely strained from the magical chaos that had ensued when the library violently glitched earlier.
Forcing a memory wipe now would likely break the girl’s psyche permanently.
Chadwick exhaled, as he walked over and knelt directly in front of Lexi’s chair, bringing himself to her eye level. “Listen to me. No one is ever to know of Mr. Dupond’s identity. Do you understand?”
“Why?” Lexi whispered, her voice trembling as she stared at Chadwick. “But… he’s the—”
“I know what the guy is,” Chadwick cut her off, “But think about it. Though I haven’t heard his full story either, I know the histories they’ve been teaching us growing up have holes in them.
The guy isn’t as bad as you think. Sure, he’s bitter, and yeah, he’s unfeeling sometimes… but he’s actually pretty chill once you get past the scar.”
Clovis rolled his single good eye, leaning his back against the stone wall and crossing his arms.
Chadwick ignored him, keeping his focus on the frightened girl. “Will you be willing to let me show you what happens if the truth actually gets out?”
Lexi looked into Chadwick’s exhausted eyes and thought about it for a long moment, looking between the transfer student and the old librarian in the corner, before she finally gave a nod.
“Alright,” Chadwick murmured as he placed a warm hand gently over her face, “Close your eyes.”
The moment she did, Chadwick channeled the last of his skill, dragging Lexi’s consciousness straight into a shared mental trance.
The basement faded away, replaced by the roaring sound of fire and tearing sky.
Images flooded Lexi’s mind—she saw towering spires shattering into dust, an empire bleeding under a sky heavy with ash. She watched a civilization tear itself apart from the inside out.
Inside the trance, Lexi’s phantom voice muttered in absolute awe and horror. “This… this is the fall of Aethelgard.”
“Yes,” Chadwick’s voice echoed beside her, “And if the truth about him gets out right now, this wouldn’t just be ancient history. This would be Vaelenor and this would be our academy. If this library falls… it’ll be the literal end of the world.”
