Relainian Mage Academy
31st Sixtillis, 1055 A.E
When Hinmus came back she looked completely different. Her usually cheerful and hopeful demeanor was replaced by a soulless lifeless husk. Doing everything as quickly and coldly as possible. She was an A grade student but her grades dropped as her magic shifted from a once prominent and powerful holy magic to dark magic.
I could see it in her eyes, wherever she went completely broke her. She even began to sit by herself under the tree in the garden during lunch break. I wanted to do something but she distanced herself.
“Hey Hinmus, you good?” I asked, sitting next to her under the tree. She didn’t respond at all, her eyes still as cold and lifeless like they were when she came back. Everybody celebrated her return. It was true that her family went into a financial struggle after a sudden influx and devaluation of gold.
Her family lost much of their stocks so she went to the adventurers guild and joined a group to get some money. The split payment was more than enough to cover her family's needs for a month. So when I learned she was taking up a job as an adventurer I wanted to go with her but she said she would be fine and you wouldn’t have to worry about her.
After all she was just catching a beast even though beast catching was hard she was shown to be proficient in knocking out her targets as well as healing.
“Have you ever been to hell and back?” She asked, her voice just as emotionless as her eyes.
“What are you talking about?” I asked her, but she didn’t answer the question immediately like she was contemplating.
“I’ve been taken over by demons. They take over my body and they could hurt anybody I know without my will. All I can do is watch nothing more than a puppet on some strings. That's the hell I’m talking about.'' She said coldly, I didn’t know what she was talking about but it sounded like religion could fix it.
“Demons? Why couldn’t you get baptized to get them out?” I asked, although I didn’t understand where she was coming from, all I could do was give her an answer to the best of my abilities.
“Can’t. They are too powerful. All I can do is to wait until they tell me I'm truly free. The things they’ve done to me are beyond our understanding. We could come up with a solution, they’ll just find another way to control me just as easily as they changed me.” She said, I didn’t understand what she was saying. What she was talking about was that nothing except the gods could change someone to the point of being able to change a person's spirit and body.
Then she got up from her spot. “I have to go.” She said emotionlessly while getting up and began walking towards the main campus building.
“Can I go with you to make sure you're safe?” I asked her, she stopped and turned around and looked at me.
“I’m sorry but they’ve ordered me to go alone or kill anybody who dares to follow me.” She said she then continued her walk. I just stood there in shock. I then gathered myself quickly and summoned a spirit when she was out of earshot.
“Vocate Spiritus Equerd.” I said a summoning circle appeared in my hands and a horse-like person appeared.
“My lady, you have summoned me, what are your orders?” It asked.
“I need you to follow Hinmus to make sure she's fine and doesn’t get into trouble please? I can’t follow her or she’ll kill me by whoever is controlling her.” I said to the spirit.
“Right on it ma’am!” It yelled and then disappeared into the walls of the school.
“Please make sure she's fine.”
Hinmus’s mental state wasn’t exactly the greatest. Her mind wiped any and all emotions as a defense measure and what little of her soul remained was hidden under a thick veil of emotionless poker face thoughts.
Her once bright demeanor was broken in just several hours by that demon of a woman and now she was just a puppet and there it was behind, above or under me was that invisible thing getting ready to pounce on anything who dares to attack me, and if that fails there's always her to make sure I won’t die.
I couldn’t see her but I could sense her presence in my mind. She learned all of my magic and made it more powerful beyond anything I’ve imagined. I couldn’t access most of my magic anymore since it all shifted towards dark magic because of my emotional state.
The academy was anxious of having a person like me with this kind of magic on my hands. I was in the top fifty of most powerful mages in the entire Academy. Now it was expected that I would rise to the top ten.
I couldn’t tell them why or she would take over no matter what she's doing whether it be slaughtering an army. She would always know where I am and what I’m doing and if she didn’t like what I was doing she could tell me to stop and I had no choice but to listen.
After I was done with my lunch a new order came to kill the top student of the Academy. The plan was simple: Lure him out into the forest to where I or she could kill him. She didn’t care what class or period it was as long as he was killed.
I was nothing more than a puppet to her and their peoples evil mechanizations.
I went to class when I arrived as expected , everybody was eyeing me, clearly worried. I didn’t answer their worries. I wish I could but it would make her mad. The class began and as expected we were told to head outside.
“Make sure you bring the target to where I am at.” The demon in my head said. Every Friday we were told to line up, grab a wand and fire magic at it to see how well we expanded our offensive magic capabilities.
The top kid is known as Plausgen. He allowed the rest of the class to always allow everyone a chance to unleash their own magic first before doing his. I was behind him.
“Hey.” I said, tapping on his shoulder.
“Oh? Hinmus are you doing better?” He asked.
“A bit. So there's this place I wanna show you after class. It's in the forest. Would you like to go with me? It won’t take long.” I asked him, I didn’t want to do it but I had no choice if I wanted to survive. It’s not like I had a choice either way my body would’ve done subconsciously in my sleep if I didn’t or she would’ve done it for me instead.
“Sure why not, I’ve been wanting to take a walk. It’s been a while since I last talked to you. Why not catch up?” He said, before I got captured by them I was always with him. Everyone thought I would marry him one day.
But sadly it looks like that dream won’t be happening at all. Eventually he went then I went, surprisingly enough I actually did better despite being gone from school for 3 days. But that didn’t mean that it came from nothing.
It was her knowledge I could only access the bare surface of it such as how oxygen burns things that was it I didn’t need to know more or less. This is how she used people. On a need to know basis.
Eventually the bell rang Plausgen and I walked down the forest. I subconsciously knew where to go. When I arrived at the spot a large arrow went right through Plaesgen’s stomach pinning him to the ground.
“Hinmus.” He said with a raspy voice, “Did you betray me? Us? I thought we were friends.” He said.
“How are you still alive after that?” Said a new voice. I recognized it as her voice.
“So you were the one who broke Hinmus? Demon. You sure look like one.” He said, groaning from his wounds. I turned around and was met with a large blue person. It was clear it was the one who stole me.
Her face looked similar to the one who broke me. Though there were some more things on it than her normal face. One was that there were tattoos on it black marking that she was a dangerous person. A warning.
“You could say in a way. I would like to ask how are you still alive after getting hit in the fucking stomach by an arrow that went right through your body? Most would’ve just died from shock from that.” She asked, I remained silent and still those were her orders. While Plausgen continued to grunt to try and get himself unpinned from the arrow.
“Magic. Never heard of it. That would make sense at how you planned it. I was suspicious of Hinmus when she asked me to go with her. She hadn’t talked to me ever since she got back. So give her back you can have my life in exchange for hers.” He said.
“Oh I’m sorry did I hurt your feelings? Well I’m not giving up on her any time soon. She's too useful for our plans.” She said, walking over to him. He was still struggling to get it out of himself.
“Why? What’s your plans?” He asked.
“Well seeing as how you're going to die pretty soon. Might as well inform you a bit of it after all she needs to know why although it's not as if she could object to it? In the small chance that war ever breaks out between our people and this world we would need to remove everyone who would be the greatest threat to our forces. It sounds simple.” She said.
“Oh really? What if I free her then? And I survive wouldn’t that stop your plans” He said while freeing himself from the arrow that was pinning himself down. He fell down to the ground, he wasn’t bleeding as much as I expected him to but he was still dying so he needed to get help quickly if he wanted to survive.
“No, all it would do is delay your fall by only a few minutes. We could overwhelm you with sheer numerical superiority alone.” She said while drawing a knife. Handing it to me she then ordered “Kill him.” Was all she said, I picked it up and I charged at him I didn’t want to but I was willing to sacrifice everything for my own selfish desire of living.
He unpinned himself and drew a sword. In this battle magic wouldn't be of any use.
We slashed, dodged, blocked. It was a dance between two people one a puppet the other a being with free will. I was able to get him on the backfoot. I quickly kicked him in the chest causing him to lose balance and spit some blood out when he hit the ground.
I got on top of him and began pressing the knife onto his neck. He grabbed my hands and slowed my advance onto his death. I was pulling my weight onto him so he couldn’t throw me over. He was also bleeding out and was losing strength quickly. The knife got closer to his neck, slowly but surely it eventually touched the neck.
“Hinmus!” Yelled a familiar voice, I didn’t look up to see who it was that wasn’t important. Then I felt a kick in my stomach. I was thrown across into a nearby tree. Looking up from my spot I saw it was the students from the class from before. I couldn't exactly remember their names at this point of time. She didn’t allow it.
There was someone helping Plausgen up. He was on his shoulder and he had the face of hatred on his face. It was understandable why he would be mad because I tried to kill his friend. The knife was to my right a few dozen centimeters to my right. Getting up I tried to grab the knife but someone got to it first. A red head.
“Hinmus. You don’t have to do this, just come back.” I didn’t recognize the person's name, I wasn’t allowed to do so in combat. There's no room for emotions when you're in a battle of life and death.
I then charged up a magic spell that was a fireball and directed it at her and promptly fired it. Oxygen was put into it to make it stronger than you would just use mana. She didn’t move when it hit her and the smoke cleared and someone else was there. The next best student in the class I believe.
“This sure is getting lively, want me to invite some of my friends over to spice up the party?” The blue person said. Everybody readied themselves for combat and then charged her. I wasn’t given any orders to be her body guard so I continued to get the knife back from the girl.
The demon easily beat them off. Blocking and counter attacking against her enemies. She did this all bare handed. Then the sound of an explosion came in, soon followed by something crashing into the forest behind her.
“We need to get out here, she's got reinforcements!” Yelled the Second best.
“Damn it. Come we need to get out of here and alert the mili-” Then an explosion rocked the air and a small hole appeared in his head. He fell to the ground less than a second later.
“Come on, we need to leave!” Said another, they then all began to run some were injured from the fight. They had no choice; they all ran through the forest although the reinforcements caught up.
“How are they so fast!” Yelled a student.
“I don’t want to die, Eium!” Yelled at a female student.
“Come on well run if you don-” He suddenly fell forward, a large arrow penetrating his body pinning him to death almost immediately. The girl from before yelled.
“We should split up, we outnumber them so they should lose us!”
“Agreed.” They said I was keeping up with the group despite my lack of training. They then broke up into many groups and ran into the forest. Some continued going to the campus, others ran towards town.
“Come on Plausgen if we make it to the campus we should be safe!” Yelled a female student with a male student the best one. He was still alive as she somehow got away. They did make it to the campus but I brutally stabbed him when they stopped. Students nearby me just stared in shock as one of the nicest girls in school had just stabbed the best mage and sword fighter in school.
One of the students who saw me charged at me and tried to punch me. It was stopped half way from his arm getting cut off by the sharp blade that was handed to me. His hand fell off of his arm spraying me in blood.
He stopped and then screamed.
“My… My… My hand!” He screamed then fainted from shock. The students just watched in horror then a voice came in my head.
“Your job is complete, come meet me in the forest. Chances are you're not welcomed no more in the school. Also take the girl who was with the target.” She ordered, I got up and grabbed the red headed girl,I put my hand on her mouth. She was struggling to get free. I put her into a coma and began dragging her. At this point the teachers came by.
“Put her down!” They yelled, and I continued my walk towards the forest. A ship was waiting for me there. They didn’t stop me as someone blocked their way a large blue person.
“I advise you not to do that. We just killed your best students in the entire academy. Less you want to have the same fate as them.” Said my boss. How much of me was gone now because of that battle I didn’t know nor care at all since well I don’t know.
The teachers didn’t do anything and stood down all they could do was watch their two best remaining students who were alive get dragged away towards the unknown.
