Petrichor

3310 words for you my dear little readers.
Enjoy . . .

Part 10 – Magic 101 . . . Do not touch!

Oh, pants; the greatest liberation for females of the 20^th century. As I was putting them on, with my claws I had made a hole in the back so that my tail could fit trough, a thought crossed my mind. How come women were expected to wear skirts and men trousers? One does have to wonder why in the hells society evolves two times in the same way, despite these people being literally dimensions apart. I mean how likely is it for two human societies that as far as I know had no contact, to decide that women had to wear skirts? Even the chance of meeting humans in the first place should be ridiculously low, and yet both things I have confirmed.

First of all, I get summoned to another world or other dimension and what is the first creature I meet: fucking humans! I swear it begins to feel like humans are an interdimensional plague. If a world once has humans it’s inevitably stuck with them until they kill themselves off. And now this, I asked for pants and actually get them but when I asked for why it hadn’t been an option from the beginning, the little Missy told me that proper women of high repute don’t wear pants.

This actually got me thinking. How did I end up here and not on my own planet, world, dimension, or whatever you want to call it? The obvious answer, of course, would be magic, a power that I generally do not understand! So if one would take into account magic it seems summoning stuff is pretty standard. The only thing very un-standard is my starting location. The hells, from where most demons are summoned, at least as I understand it, should be filled to the brim with magic juices, seeing as there are all kinds of demons and magic floating around.

Now I, on the other hand, wasn’t from any of the hells unless you would want to describe Earth as a hell, which would be insulting, as Earth is way worse than any hell. I mean at least demons generally don’t destroy their own living space, they only slaughter each other! Back to my previous thought; Earth despite being a lovable ball of poop and depravity did not have magic last time I checked. So it shouldn’t have been possible to summon anything from there. And yet I had been, so either there actually was magic back on my world or it somehow seeped in. Sadly my musings were rudely interrupted by a very annoying voice calling for my attention.

“Hello!? Fleur? Are you still in there?” Only now I realized that Aliyana had been frantically waving her arms in front of my face.

“What is it?” ‘Could she not see that I had been busy?’

“Uhh, you’ve just been sitting there for like a quarter of a span staring into nothing?”

“Hmph, get used to it, little Missy. Now show me to the bath rooms or whatever you people use, I need to wash.”

“Sure, at least I get to see you naked once more!” Before I could even punish the little shit for her comment she happily skipped off.

Despite my still ongoing disgust towards Aliyana’s reactions I straightened up and followed her out of the room. I didn’t like to be dependent on another person, especially not a younger one at that, but still, the fact was that I had no clue about the layout of this place. This was a carelessness that I soon would have to improve upon. To know your surroundings is to know the battlefield after all and while this school didn’t look much like a battlefield at the moment, I knew from experience that where ever I treaded chaos and mayhem were quick to follow.

Therefore I needed a plan or at least detailed knowledge of where things were. And it wouldn’t hurt to figure out advantage points, easy defendable areas and possible spots for ambushes. ‘Take these windows facing the courtyard, for example, place several armed guards or in this place probably mages behind the walls and you have an easy trap to lure unsuspecting victims into.’

I was just checking out other potential points of interest when we went through a wooden door and the feeling of the entire place just changed. Instead of the rather drab and gloomy servant quarters, the way opened up into a spacious and bright hallway adorned with several of the caged magical lights and pictures of beautiful landscapes hanging on the walls. It was kind of a shock as if one were to step out of the middle ages straight into the 16^th century. Instead of the before so prevalent crooked wooden boards acting as questionable flooring, here the entirety of the ground was covered in white smooth stone that just as well could be marble. The walls were not rough stone, but white-crème colored plaster with a dark red bordure running down the entire length of the hallway. At a second glance, I noticed that the colors strongly resembled the ones of the student uniform, apparently, someone liked to have a theme? All in all, I almost preferred the rustic look of the servant quarters over this.

“So, where are all the people? I thought this was a school?”

I hoped to quickly meet other people or even better groups of people. That was normally the best way to find out how one was seen and regarded by others, as people in groups are often crueler and more hostile and in doing so set a tone for what’s to come. And I really needed to know how normal people took to demons running around; after all, I was now a member of that elusive group. Apparently Aliyana didn’t really share my sentiment as she just waved it off.

“I guess they are around somewhere, this hallway leads to the private rooms of most of the teachers and so early in the morning, no one but some very eager teachers is here. Most of the students are either still sleeping or are getting ready for the bath. Maybe some very early risers are already in the dining hall but that’s rather uncommon. Not that you need to worry about any of that because we are going to take a bath together!” She smiled her obnoxious creepy smile while mentioning that. ‘This girl really knows no boundaries, does she?’

“We are only going to the bath together; in no way will I bathe with you.”

While she seemed actually disturbed by the thought of not bathing with me, I cared little and further on ignored any attempted of hers to make advances towards me. The way through the teacher section was rather short and only interrupted by two teachers crossing our way, they mostly looked at me oddly but after a greeting from Aliyana and, well a scowl from me, both went on their ways. What was most interesting though was that I could have sworn that one of the teachers had sported what looked like animal ears? If that was actually the case and not just an illusion or fashion trend, then this world might be more of an oddity than I had originally thought. But to be fair, I only had seen about five people so far, and that was not a very big sample size for reference.

After a short while, we left the teacher section and came to another part of the academy I hadn’t really got to see yet the courtyard. Now while I had walked through it before, I had only done so at night and let’s face it, I had been too spooked to actually remember much of what I had seen. Almost as if mocking me for ignoring its beauty before, the sight of the open space took my breath away, the place was by far larger than I had thought! It was one massive botanical garden with a stunning amount of flowers, trees, and hedges. I was so taken aback by the size and splendor of it that I outright ignored the little Missy and almost ran off into the tangle of plants. This, this was fucking magnificent!

Back home there had been a few parks and gardens around, but either because of lack of time or simply disinterest due to the lack of my emotions I had never paid them much interest. Now though I could truly take in the beauty that was nature. The plants were bigger ad fuller than I was used to, so unnaturally in fact that either they had to be hundreds of years old or it was something done by magic. They were beautiful to look at but something about this place was really fucking terrifying. It felt old, ancient even as if it had been here long before the academy had been build. I could almost feel the power of this place resonate with something deep within me; if I didn’t know better I would say that it had a way of reaching out to Acathia’s soul inside of me. The two feelings twirled around me, one from deep below the earth and one radiating from myself, yet both felt caged, as if bound by someone or something. The feeling from inside of me was ancient several centuries old, but the power of those plants, no, of the being beneath those plants seemed to be even older, it was primal.

I tried to focus on the feelings and time seemed to stretch. Pulses of energy went through my body, pulses I tried to reach out to and guide to a purpose. After what felt like hours but most likely had only been a few seconds a sharp pain spread through my body.

It was as if I was trying to draw to much water through a far too slim hose, only instead of it feeling like water moving through it, it was akin to having molten tar run in your veins. Tears began to form inside the corners of my eyes, and as quickly as I had formed the connection I cut it again, with it the pain slowly ebbed always.

Big wet drops fell from my face and onto my clothing, in my daze I didn’t even register what they were at first. I looked down and saw that I was kneeling on the ground and my newly acquired pants looked like a Jason Pollock picture painted in blood.

Only now that the daze faded I realized that the left side of my vision was bloody shade of red. I reached up to verify the situation. A bloodied nose and even more blood leaking out of my messed up eye; because of this place, I had somehow managed to rupture the blood vessels in my eye, which was not good. Yet while annoying and a hindrance, it wasn’t something I hadn’t experienced before.

One time I had a flash grenade explode right next to my face, I couldn’t see through them for four days straight and had to look through the jacked-up security cameras of the compound for the time, it had been funny to act as the home base though. My only hope now was that additionally to normal magic voodoo the people here also had something like healing magic; otherwise, this would be a short and fatal trip through time and space.

As my body was still weak from whatever I had done, I stumbled around the garden for a bit before finding the little Missy again. And damn, I wished I could have recorded her reaction when she saw my messed up face. Her expression went from happy, too shocked and over to terrified, in less than a few milliseconds. I would almost say that exploding my face had been worth it, were it not for the messed up vision and the pain. The thought was washed away when I heard Aliyana tell me how bad the actual damage was.

“Holy shit! Fleur what have you done!? The right side of your head is one huge mana burn! And your eye, I’m not sure what you did but eyes shouldn’t look like that! Doesn’t this hurt!?” ‘Wait; that sounded way worse than I had initially thought.’

“Uh, not really, I felt worse. In other news, you don’t by any chance have a pocket mirror or something like that?”

Aliyana scoffed. “As if I would need something like that! You are seriously the worst summon. I guess you want to see what your idiocy has done to your face? Here take a look.”

With a small hand gesture and a few mumbled words, she cast a spell. The air between us began to glimmer, and a reflective ice sheet about the size of my head began floating in the air. I adjusted the icy mirror to reflect my face and what I saw both shocked and fascinated me. Despite what I had thought at first I hadn’t only damaged my eye, but actually the entire left side of my head.

A large red burn mark extended from my cheek to almost the back of my skull. It looked a little as if I had burned off my hair in a very precise fashion. My ear was in surprisingly good condition, and I saw for the first time that my ears were kind of pointy like an elf’s or maybe more like those of a hairless red goat; it was hard to say without any real comparison. When my gaze wandered to the damaged left eye, I finally understood why Missy had said that it didn’t look like eyes should look. For one it was completely bloodshot with a solid red color, and two the pupil was and I kid you not softly glowing. Whatever I had done, it had seriously fucked up my face and I had only one verdict.

“Unholy hells, this is fucking badass! While it hurt like shit, I have at least found a way to make myself look properly terrifying!” Once more Aliyana didn’t seem to share my enthusiasm.

“Yes, you have done mighty fine to destroy your beautiful face. Now everyone will only think that my summon is too dumb to use magic properly. Come now we need to get that blood cleaned off.” She sighed and walked on. ‘When did she get so comfortable? Does she honestly think I’m under her control by now? That might be good, but still, I really dislike her talking down on me like that! Should I let it go or should I punish her for her hubris? I probably should let it go for now . . .’

Turns out that when you just act as if you’re a good summoned demon, certain easily trick able people will actually think that you are one, who would have known!? It also turns out that a demon covered in blood is a great deterrent for people even if those people themselves are mages, and even if said demon is wearing the clothing of a student. But I guessed that in this case the fact that I was wearing the uniform only furthered the people's dislike towards me if I understood the pointing fingers and hushed conversations correctly. I think they said something about savage and abnormal I could swear one of those little shit had used the words “disgusting demon”, well I now had a new target for my rage, poor boy he’s going to have a baaaad time with me around.

Another thing I noticed was that there were a lot of people with animal features on the campus, and most of them had a really snobby air around them. That was one thing I would probably have to figure out because they might not be humans but definitely didn’t feel like demons, how I knew what demons felt like, who knows!? Speaking of demons, I saw the first two other members of my assigned race! And I was really disappointed; they were small about the size of a human child, had leathery wings and stubby little horns, they also were rather ugly. When I asked my Mistress ‘Damn it!’ about them I was told that those pitiful creatures were called Imps. Of course, the two Imps had spotted me and had immediately hidden behind their masters' backs as if I wanted to hurt them, well to be honest I did, but how should they know?

Disregarding the demons we went towards the women's dorm, which was located opposite of the male one right next to the big study hall. In there I also got stared at, but I suspect that those stares were more a mix of fear and jealousy than disgust. As no matter what I or anyone else could say, I did have a rather beautiful body now, even if it was hidden behind clothing at the moment. After another while longer we finally made it to the bath, despite all the staring and gossiping surrounding my person.

The bath itself was actually rather impressive, it was a shared bath, so no privacy not that I cared anyway, and had a small dressing room before the actual bathing area were one could clad themself in a towel. I of course simply stripped out of my clothing directly in front of everyone present, much to the dismay of Aliyana who tried to cover my bareness.

“What are you doing Fleur!? It is indecent to strip in the bath!” 'Says she who wants to see me naked.'

“And it is not indecent to climb into the bed of sleeping woman?” As I said this she quickly glanced around as if hoping no one had heard me. They, of course, had, as I was speaking rather loud.

“Th-That is something entirely different! You are my summon you’re supposed to keep me safe!” Her face had now the color of a cooked lobster, pretty fitting.

“Oh, is that how you call it here? Where I’m from when you climb into the bed of a naked woman you call it a little different. Was it shacking up hmm no, a tumble in the pillows maybe, or hanky-panky? Ah no, now I remember how it was called, sex! How could I have been so forgetful? Now, where were we, bathing right!” I simply left her there and walked towards the bathing area.

After seeing her face and the ones of the girls around, I had to fight back hard against my desire to grin; after all, it would have destroyed my image. All around me young girls were either staring at my freshly scared and bloodied face or my naked “tattooed” body, one girl with mouse-like ears even fainted. Yeah, that was reaction I had come to expect when I went anywhere, it was nice to see that some things didn’t change. A lesser person would have now made a sleazy joke about how everyone stares up to the one towering lust-demon in a steamy bath, but honestly, such thoughts were beneath me. It may only have crossed my mind one or two times seeing a particularly weak-looking girl, they simply looked ripe to be dominated. And what can I say; I think I would greatly enjoy someone kissing my feet. But for now I had other things to worry about, one being that I had to get all the blood of me.

‘Ahh, this will be nice, a relaxing bath, in which surely nothing bad will happen. Ah, I jinxed it didn’t I?’

Petrichor

I hope you had fun.
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