Elinora

I don’t know for how long I cried, but a glance out the window told me that it had to be past midnight. For what felt like hours now, my mom had repeated the same thing over and over again. It reminded me of the time when my father told me all my friendships are worthless and I wasn't allowed to play with them again.

And now here I was again, huddled together in mom’s office crying my eyes out. Would my life never change? Was I forever doomed to be this stupid little guy, girl, whatever who ruined everything?

“Do you have any idea of the danger you’ve brought yourself into?” I shook my head. “Have you any idea of the consequences that could have followed?! Didn’t you stop to think for one second that you should have AT LEAST told me?!”

Pulling my knees to my chest I managed a whisper, “I told Sirus.”

“And you knew I wouldn’t allow it. So instead you betrayed my trust and chose Sirus because you knew he has a sweet spot for Arine.”

“I just wanted Arine to be happy for once!” As she mentioned Arine, I lost it. All this we put her through, and for what? There was nothing we could do and I wasn’t even allowed to give her the comfort she so dearly needed. ”Not telling her is wrong! I just wanted...to...to let her be happy for once.” I held my mom’s glare, but tears started blurring my vision again. I am such a pushover.

“Oh, Eli...I...I need to calm down. Olaf, would you be so kind?” Mom left the office, but the sound of her shoes clicking as she wandered up and down the hallway still echoed through the office.

“You have to forgive your mother. She’s just worried about you and Arine. After she learned of Jenna's involvement, she nearly lost it.” Olaf said, sitting down next to me and putting a hand over my shoulder.

“What is with Jenna? I know what she did to Arine is bad but...mom seems to know her?”

“It’s best if you ask her once she calms herself. I’m sure she’ll tell you.”

“And she won’t scream at me again?”

Olaf pulled me in close and I placed my head on his shoulder, “I’m sure she won’t.” We stayed like this for a while, till my tears dried and I was less of an unstable mess.

“Eli, “ he said and it instantly got my attention, I looked up at him but the smile he held couldn’t fool the look in his eyes, ”do you know why you can’t tell Arine?”

“No.” I sniffled while shaking my head again. I didn’t know, but why? Wasn’t telling her the right thing? I know she would never take it well but wasn't that the only way for her to start the healing process?

“Right now Arine has placed some heavy mental barrier around her, shielding her from the emotions that try to overwhelm her day by day. Do you understand?”

“Yes, but… how is that relevant?” Everyone in her situation would do the same to cope with the situation but Arine might have been even stronger than others. I saw it in her eyes, even when she thought it was all over before Olaf and mom gave her that false expression of hope, there was a flame inside her. A flame that told me she would do everything to get her family back. I could have never done the thing she did. She was truly one of the strongest persons I know, even if it was buried behind terrible pain she had to experience.

“You see, when Zere’s soul tried to get a hold of Arine’s body, she couldn't get past these barriers.” Getting up he went to the large window behind his wooden desk, and looked over the barely lit city of Alos. “We fear...I fear that once we tell Arine the truth...she won’t be able to hold them up any longer.”

“What...what will happen if...if...”

“We are not sure. Right now only a small part of Zere’s soul was able to get a hold of her body. You surely noticed the few changes in her appearance after the event?”

“Like one of her eyes changed color?”

“Yes. It’s a manifestation of Zere’s destruction magic. If Arine suffers a mental breakdown, anything might be possible.” Olaf exhaled deeply before taking a seat in mom's chair, letting his gaze wander and focus on a glass of water. “ She might lose control over herself, releasing Zere’s magic by accident, endangering every life in the city or maybe Zere’s will get a hold of her this time, endangering the whole world.”

I was at a loss for words. I knew Arine’s situation was bad, and all but this?... Maybe they were right? Maybe not telling Arine was the right thing to do? What were our alternatives? Did we even have any?

“What would happen if…”

“Eli, I know you will not like my answer but if thousands of lives are on the line there’s only one thing I can do.”

I didn’t want to hear this, it was just wrong. She was barely older than me. She had her whole life ahead of her and he...he... just like that, “NO! I won’t accept this, there has to be another way!” Slowly, tears started to make their way down my face. It was as if they never stopped in the first place, “I...won't...let...you take...her.”

“I didn’t make this decision lightheartedly. The thought alone pains just as much as you. I’d rather not take the life of someone so young. Eli, ” he said as his voice abruptly changed from one full of concern to one that left no room for arguing, “do you understand now why it’s so important to keep this from her?”

I nodded. There was nothing else to say. I liked Arine...no I loved her, she was the best friend I’ve ever had and didn't want her to die, or be possessed by an evil goddess. Why did this have to happen? Why couldn’t this all just go away? Maybe this world wasn't for me after all. Was I so focused on the good sides, the adventure that was learning magic and the possibilities within that I never wasted a thought on the darker nature of magic? Was I so absorbed in my own fairy tale that I forgot not every story has a happy end? Was Arine’s story destined to be a tragedy? A knock on the door abruptly interrupted my thoughts.

“Ah, I think I should leave you two alone now. And Mara, please don’t be too harsh on her.” Olaf said as he stood up and left mom’s office, closing the door behind him.

We stood there for some time, well her anyway. I was still cowering on the floor until she broke the silence that once more crawled between us.

“I’m sorry. I’ve calmed down and I wanted to apologize for shouting at you earlier. I know it wasn’t all your fault and you thought you did the right thing.” She took a step closer and offered me her hand. I took it and she helped me up to my feet again. “I spent the whole day  imagining what might happen to you and I was worried sick. I’m so sorry I lost it earlier.” I didn’t care any longer. All I wanted was to distract myself. I buried myself in her chest and took in her motherly comfort. My breath slowly started to match with her heartbeat and soon we both were much calmer again.

“Mom, what’s with you and Jenna?” She hugged me tighter and started to stroke my hair as she so often did.

“It’s best if we take a seat first.” She tried to let go of me but I wasn't ready yet. I needed someone to hold me, someone I could cry onto. I tightened my hold around her waist, not letting her go. “Okay. I see.” She put her arms around me again and put her chin over my head, “When I first started to teach in Alos, Jenna was one of the many teachers working here.”

“Jenna was a teacher here?!” I had a few ideas surrounding Jenna and her relationship with mom, but being a teacher was not one of them.

“Yes, and she was actually quite good at her job. She taught Rune Manipulation and Magic Transmutation.”

“Rune Manipulation and Magic Transmutation?” Now my interest peaked. No longer did I only want something else to think about, but was actually curious about Jenna and mom’s past. I let go of her and we both took a seat on her desk.

“Both are very specific fields of magic. Once a Rune is made, it has a very specific function. Normally it’s not possible to change it afterwards but there are some ways to overlay one rune with the property of another. It requires a vast knowledge of runes and magic transmutation. Few people are capable of using this skill.”

“What is it used for?”

“Some use it to override old runes that were set to protect places long ago, you can also use it to renew a spent rune. There are many ways it can be useful, but sadly detecting a manipulated rune requires a thorough examination which is a very time-consuming matter.”

“And Magic Transmutation?”

“It’s a related field, that deals with the flow of magic through one's body and ways to manipulate it.” I had an eerie feeling I already came across transmutation magic, when I read the study ‘body modification in newborns' shortly after befriending Arine. I had to suppress a gag just thinking about it again.

“I think I already came across something like that. It was...not nice.”

“I can imagine. It’s one of the darker fields of magic. In the early days of magic research, a lot of experiments had been carried out to study the effects of magic in one's body and how to control and change it.”

“What experiments?” Why I asked was a mystery to me. After reading the study and about the terrible thing they did to the newborns, I was set on never venturing into this territory again and yet, my curiosity got the better of me.

“A few tried to find a way to enhance the amount of magic the human body can absorb, others focused on changing parts of the body and still others focused on infusing unnatural magic into the body. But the worst by far were the ones that messed with normal humans.”

“Normal humans? Aren’t we….normal?”

“You see Eli, not everyone is born with the ability to absorb and channel magic. While it is true that everyone in this world contains at least small traces of magic, most people will never be able to use it.”

“And they used to infuse magic into normal humans to try and find out what will happen?”

“Yes, and it worked...kind of.”

“Kind of?” The way mom said it and how she lost some of the colour in her face made me worry. I knew that people died in those studies, that much was clear. But the way she tried to dance around the topic…was there something worse than being dead?

“They were able to use magic afterwards but...without the natural magic flow inside them, their body couldn’t withstand the massive pressure it put their body under.”

“What happened to them?”

“They lost their human nature.” she said without looking up from the ground, “I wish that was all I could tell you but…having an army of magical creatures can be very tempting for some.”

I had to support myself on Olaf’s desk. Even while sitting, I was at the risk of passing out. “And Jenna wanted that?”

“It wasn’t all bad. Through the studies, we learned a lot and magic transmutation also has its positive sides. It can be used to cure diseases or regrowing limbs to some degree, nonetheless, studies on the topic are forbidden today.”

“How were they not forbidden in the past?” Shouldn’t common sense at some point take over and tell them how fucked up this all was? How was it possible that the library contained multiple sections of those studies?

“The world wasn't always as civilized as it is now. If you were born without nobility or a gift for magic, your value wasn’t much greater than that of a workhorse.” This was definitely enough information for today...and the rest of the week.

“Did Jenna, you know…?” I didn’t want to come right out and say it. The whole topic was something I’d rather forget but I needed to see the true extent of Jenna’s madness.

“Well, there are a lot of restrictions in place when you want to teach magic transmutations. Officially she only thought how to cure malformations but she also had her own laboratory where she could experiment without much supervision.

“After a few months, students started to disappear. At first, only the ones that were struggling or students without a family disappeared. Our first thought was that we were dealing with a human trafficking ring or a serial killer with a liking for students, but these theories soon proved untenable as more and more of our greatest and most promising students vanished.

“We noticed too late that the one responsible had to be an insider, and when we finally had enough proof she was already gone.”

“The students, what happened to them?” Knowing what Jenna did to Arine, I feared for worst.

“After searching the city with the help of the magistrate, we found all of them. Thrown inside a long since unused sewer system, we found all twenty-six body's completely drained of magic.”

“Drained of magic?”

“Eli, do you remember what happened to you after our first meeting?” Oh yes, I remembered. How could I forget the burning sensation running all through my body burying itself deep inside every inch of muscle, making moving one of the most painful things I had ever experienced?

“This is what happened to them. Jenna drained their magic and used it to infuse herself with it. Their deaths must have been torture and still, compared to Jenna’s other victims they got of lightly.”

“Other victims? There are more?” I started to understand mom and why she was so against us going on this trip. If I had known all this before I would have never agreed to this in the first place. Sure, I wanted Arine to be happy but I didn’t want to subject her or any other of my friends to the same cruel fate.

“After the incident, we started to dig a little deeper. About thirty years ago in a poor village to the south of the Ellad Kingdom, more and more reports of hideous creatures terrorizing and kidnapping people started to appear.

We were able to track Jenna’s birthplace back to this very village. She couldn’t have been older than fifteen when she first started with her human experiments. And I’m sure they continue to this day.

It’s a tragedy really. No matter how cruel she is, no one can deny that she was brilliant in what she did. The transfer of magic from one body to another alone would have been revolutionary. She could have done so much good to the world.”

I was speechless again. This was the woman we were up against? Was she even human anymore? Did she give up her humanity in pursuit of knowledge? Or was it even knowledge she sought and not just a longing for suffering? I knew bad people existed, but to be so close to someone that seems to take pure delight in the face of agony over others was something else.

The stories kept going on until I couldn’t stomach them anymore. It was already 2:30 am and I needed to be alone for a while, digesting all that. There was only one problem, I was not in the mood to walk alone over the dark campus, not after this story.

“Mom? Will you bring me back to my dorm?”

Together, we walked in silence back the door and I grabbed onto her arm the whole way back. The silence bugged me a bit but I understood that she was still angry at me. I was seriously glad that she didn't make me walk alone and so I relished the silence and calmness of the night in the company of my mother as much as possible. She only spoke again after we were at my dorm, “Tomorrow I will replace Sirus as your private teacher. I hope you won’t mind”

I nodded my agreement and before she disappeared again she kissed my forehead and wished me goodnight. Back in my room, I left the lights on as I tried to fall asleep. I laid there for a while thinking not only about the great day I spent with Arine and my friends, but also about the terrible truth that I learned today. ‘There are worse things in this world than torturous plants’ was the last thought I had before the comfort of my bed got me at long last.