Chapter 19: Chapter 18 - Pillows!

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"That's quite a few ships," Miralen commented as the usual group was returning from class. Dozens of armed airships and magisters on flying mounts of different kinds flew past the Academy airspace, apparently going north. The ships varied in size from smallish scout vessels to large ships designed for extended battles.

"At least three task groups. You don't send that many ships out without a real reason." Shaheera speculated. He was more familiar with the military structure of the Aegean Empire, but there were enough similarities between the empire and the Magocracy to make some educated guesses.

“They seem to be heading north. The Sacred Dynasty?” Rein guessed. The Magocracy occupied the majority of the southern portion of their twin-continent. While there were some smaller nations and semi-independent enclaves in their part of the continent, the largest real neighbor they had was the northern holy nation known as the Sacred Dynasty, which occupied the northern part of the dual-continent connected by several narrow strips of land. The two nations had been at peace for thousands of years as the two hegemons of this part of the world.

“Judging by the direction that seems likely, but why? It seems unlikely the dynasty would start anything with us. They know we’d be able to crush them.” The elven enclaves of the continent enjoyed an alliance with the Magocracy and often worked together against external threats.

“It might be that the problem is within the Sacred Dynasty, not the dynasty itself. Those ships might have been sent to help or just something to make sure the problems won’t spread to us.” Karna pointed out. She was more familiar with political machinations than the other three.

“One of the Scourges?” Shaheera suggested.

“That’s as good of a guess as any. It might be anything though. It’s useless to speculate for now.” Karna shut the topic down as they all entered their dorm.

“Could you ask your mother?” Miralen asked, with barely concealed eagerness.

Karna couldn't help but laugh at the hopeful tone in the elf girl's voice. Apparently, she had gotten along well with Duskclaw and had been dropping unsubtle hints since then. “I could. Not sure now’s the time though. I’ll ask her the next time we’re in contact.”

As they approached the door of Karna’s rooms, their most common place to spend time together, she suddenly lifted her arm to block the others and stared at her door. “Someone has been to my room.”

“Are you sure?” Shaheera asked in confirmation while they could all sense him getting into a battle-ready stance. He didn’t really doubt her, but simply wanted to know how certain she was.

“Quite sure. I added my own little tricks to the room’s security measures that were already in place.” Karna explained. The rooms were actually quite well protected from anyone entering them without permission. Not something that a really skilled intruder couldn’t get past, but enough to deter anyone from randomly making an attempt. That's partially why she hadn't bothered adding too much additional protection. The other part was that she didn't keep anything she couldn't afford to lose in the room, so she didn’t care that much if someone did force their way in. “Give me a second.”

She walked closer to the room and her eyes were suddenly covered in bright blue mana as she studied the magical formations protecting the door. She noted that the formations were still intact, and nothing seemed out of place. The door was still closed and locked, and the only oddity was the fact that a personal spell she had added to the system was missing, while another well-hidden spell had been triggered. Both spells would only react if someone other than her tried to open the door. With a subtle trickle of mana, she accessed the spell still hidden inside the door.

Suddenly a transparent image of a young human male was displayed in front of the door. The image seemed to display the boy accessing the spells protecting the door as circles of complex runes rotated around both of his hands. The boy didn’t have an insignia on his uniform, but there was a lighter spot where the insignia had likely previously been until the boy removed it. The boy manipulated the spells protecting the door with quite a bit of skill, before apparently managing to enter the room.

"He knows what he’s doing," Miralen commented. "I do not recognize him. I don't think I've ever seen him in passing either. I have a pretty good memory for that sort of stuff.”

"Not from our year," Shaheera grunted, evaluating the intruder. “I’d say that he’s at least five years older than us, though that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s five years ahead of us.”

“Let’s see what he wanted inside. Shaheera, your spirit can relay messages, correct? Could you send it to fetch master Menkhaf? I think we might want to have his aid with this.” Karna requested and a bird that looked like a hawk seemed to suddenly appear and fly through the walls towards the faculty buildings.

“Are you sure this will be safe?” Miralen asked carefully.

“No, so we’ll have to be careful in case he left traps behind. I have a hunch I know what he was looking for, and he went through some trouble to remain undetected so I doubt he left anything malicious behind, but keep your eyes open.” Karna’s eyes retained the blue glow of mana as she looked around the insides of her place. She was scanning the area for any spells that didn’t belong, while her soul had already swept the whole place and told her nobody was inside.

They spread around a bit to make sure nothing was out of place. Karna had reached the kitchen when she heard Miralen calling out. “Uh, Karna! Would you mind coming here?” As she obliged, she noted that Miralen had looked inside her bedroom and was now keeping the two boys outside. “You boys, out!” Miralen commanded.

The two males realized this was likely something private and obliged with slightly odd looks. “Care to comment?” Miralen suddenly asked with an impish grin as she pushed the door to her bedroom open. The whole room was filled with pillows of different shapes and sizes. Every surface seemed to be covered with them.

“I like pillows?” Karna attempted a somewhat lame excuse.

“I like pillows as well. Not like this though.” Miralen couldn’t hide her mirth at the situation despite the potential threat posed by an intruder.

Karna gave a sigh. It might be better to give a partial truth. "You know I'm an Aura user, yes? Well, the bloodlines we possess sometimes manifest in certain…behaviors. That's my hoard." She was clearly implying a draconic heritage, which was close to the truth in the sense that the reason for the pillows was that she had channeled the draconic greed, which had rubbed off on her due to having spent several lifetimes as one, into a harmless and innocent direction. It didn’t need to be pillows specifically, just that those seemed harmless enough.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

“Hoard as in…” Miralen’s eyebrow was quickly raised.

“As in a draconic hoard yes.” Karna covered her eyes with her hand.

“You have a draconic hoard of pillows? Seriously? That’s so adorable!” Miralen had almost devolved to using baby-talk. “I didn’t realize you had draconic blood though. That’s…” She continued a bit more seriously.

“It seems to be a rather minor bloodline actually. Enough to have spawned an annoying habit, but not the source of my Aura power.” Karna explained curtly.

They both heard the voice of the teacher from the outside. “We’re not done with this topic.” Miralen threatened before they walked outside.

“Master Menkhaf.” Karna greeted as she arrived.

“Karna. I just received a rather worrying message. Your friends here have already filled me in on the fact that someone apparently entered your room without permission.” The dwarven teacher cut to the chase.

Wordlessly Karna brought back the magical recording of the intruder. “Well, this is not among the usual security features, so I commend you for the fine addition.” He pointed at the transparent image showing the face of the intruder. “I know him. He is one of the Artifice students that has actually helped improve many of the spells we use on these doors.”

“Which explains the how, but not the why.” Karna summarized. If the boy had helped design the security, it would make sense he’d know how to break it as well.

“That’s what we’ll need to find out. I’m sure he will claim he was just doing maintenance, but before you even ask, no they’re not supposed to do things like that while the rooms are occupied. Any improvements are done between occupants, or at the very least in the presence of the person living in the room. Was anything stolen?” Menkhaf looked like he had eaten something sour. The boy in question had seemed like a nice kid until now.

“Not that I can see. I don’t keep anything important in the room, just in case something like this happens.” Karna replied.

Menkhaf lifted his eyebrow a bit and spoke with a bit of concern. “You do realize that keeping things on your person isn’t exactly the safest option either.”

“I never said I keep everything on me.” Karna smiled a bit under the veil. Stealing from her would require someone with much more skill than someone at the Academy would be able to exhibit. “I have my ways.”

“Good. We need to get to the bottom of this. This is a disgrace to the whole Academy.” Menkhaf fumed. He drew several magical runes in the air, a line of white power tracing after his glowing fingertips, and when they were completed the runes disappeared in a flash. “I’ve summoned the disciplinary students as well as the teacher in charge of them. They will most likely want to talk to you and also see the recording you made.”

“That will not pose a problem. I can even get them a copy. However, it would be somewhat troublesome if this whole process takes too long.” Karna noted. She had other things to do as well.

“Hmm, we might want to consider the possibility that creating such trouble might have been the whole point. The first tests marking the end of the semester will start in a few weeks. Someone might have wanted to rattle you with this little stunt. It doesn't necessarily take a large distraction to affect the rankings." Menkhaf suggested another possibility.

“If that was their goal, then I’ll have to disappoint them. I have no intention of giving up my spot. It would take a lot more than this to rattle me.” Karna stated with confidence, though she gave the suggestion some credence. It was a decent possibility. She had initially assumed the thief had been after the pills she had received, or maybe some items she had potentially gotten from Arjuna, but there could be multiple reasons for such an intrusion.

Menkhaf frowned suddenly and they could sense that he received a message as a glyph made of glowing power appeared in front of him and exploded in a flash of light. "Well, this complicates things. I just got word that the student in the recording had applied for a leave of absence several weeks ago, and he's already gone. Apparently he left this morning."

“This morning? When exactly?” Karna asked sharply.

“The information wasn’t that specific, but I would assume right after this happened.” Menkhaf gestured towards the door. “Now we can’t question him.”

"That's not the real problem," Karna stated with a steely tone. "The fact that he applied for the leave weeks ago means that he planned things that far ahead. Assuming the person that entered my rooms really was him that is. There’s no proof that the person that entered my rooms was him aside from the recording, and I’m sad to say that a good enough illusion could’ve fooled my little spell. I may be able to see through illusions fairly well, but all my spells don’t share that quality. And now we can’t confirm it was him. Someone could’ve known he was leaving and simply took advantage of the opportunity.”

“Well, this makes things even more complicated. It doesn’t help that we’ve been a little bit distracted as well.” Menkhaf waved his hand towards the ceiling, referring to the ships that had flown overhead. “We haven’t paid as much attention to the movements of uninvolved students as we probably should have.”

“Speaking of, what’s going on?” Shaheera jumped on the chance to find out more about the situation. He was simply curious by nature.

“You’d find out soon enough anyway, so I might as well tell you. An internal conflict has started inside the Sacred Dynasty. Major religious friction between sects is normal for them, but this goes well beyond that. Their country has had unrest for a long while, but they still had things under control until recently. The old embers started to create actual fires in the form of small revolts a few months ago. The Triarch of the ruling Dynasty defied direct instructions from the Emissary from the Divine Plane and tried to crack down on the unrest with military force. That didn't go over well, and some of the main temples sided with the Emissary, as the Emissary and the Triarch belong to different religious factions. There was apparently a battle in the capital. We don’t know the full details, but the Magocracy is deploying our military on the border to ensure the troubles don’t spread to us. We really don't need a religious upheaval to pull us into the mix." Menkhaf looked disgruntled at the whole situation.

“They picked a fight with an Emissary? Isn’t it kind of pointless to fight an immortal?” Rein raised the obvious question.

"The Emissaries aren't necessarily immortal. They can be and often are as a sign of power, but there's no rule that requires them to be. And the Divine Planes produce mortal children just like every other plane." Karna explained curtly.

"She's correct. In this case, the Emissary was a fresh immortal though. More powerful than any single individual of the Sacred Dynasty, but that doesn't mean they can't be brought down by a larger group of weaker people. In this case, we don't know what happened to the Emissary, but we can be fairly sure that the Triarch won.” Menkhaf added.

“Wouldn’t that be kind of bad for us? If the Emissary is hurt I mean. I would assume there would be reinforcements, and I’m not sure we want to be nearby when that hammer falls. Except we’re neighbors.” Rein pointed out a little scared of the possibility of Divine retribution.

“That’s hard to judge. The Headmistress had experience dealing with Divines, so she might be able to arrange things for us, which is partially why we’ve been so busy, but there is a realistic possibility that this will spill over to us as well.” Menkhaf tried to reassure Rein but undermined his own efforts. That showed he was a little off-balance as well.

Karna was the only one not really worried. She had experience with the way the Divine Planes of this universe did things, and while some things changed, the Divine bureaucracy most likely never would. There would be a reply from the Divines, but it would likely not affect other nations. Mostly because the other nations were still useful, and usefulness trumped indiscriminate punishment. So there would be repercussions, but they would most likely take the form of another nation taking the Sacred Dynasty’s place as the host for the Emissary, some reparations, as well as the heads of everyone involved. Maybe a small display of power to show others not to pick fights with the Emissaries.

“So what’s going to happen with our little problem?” Karna asked, bringing the topic back to the potential thief.

“Well, I’d like to promise a swift resolution, but with the situation being what it is, I can’t really make that promise. Not until we can reach the student in the recording. What we can do, however, is to make sure no one else can enter your room. I have a friend who's an expert in such things. I'll ask her to take care of it. I'll do my very best to see that we'll get to the bottom of this, but it might take time." Menkhaf said apologetically.

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“So the break-in was discovered?” A voice asked over a communication talisman. Menranel preferred the security of talismans over voice transmission spells that could be intercepted, so he insisted on using them.

“Yes. My source in the disciplinary squad just reported in. They talked to the target and got her statement. It seems sending Mint was a good idea since the target managed to get a recording of her breaking in. The squad talked to both the target and the teacher in charge of the class and they weren’t all that convinced by the ruse, but they have nothing else to go on either.” Menranel explained.

“Good. She’s not incompetent at least. And the objects we asked Mint to find?” The voice asked, not seeming too surprised.

“Not at the dorm. Mint is great at finding such things and she had plenty of time to look. If the items had been there, then she would’ve found them.” Menranel replied confidently.

“So the target can protect her property as well. Excellent. I think we can give her a passing grade for now. We’ll see if this has any effect on her performance, but from what I’ve seen of her so far, I doubt it. She has been crushing the competition in her classes as well. I think we can be quite confident that she’ll be joining us come spring.” Another voice came over the talisman. This one clearly female.

“It’s a little early to say for sure, but I would put my money on it as well. Assuming she won’t refuse of course.” The first voice said more carefully.

“I did tell you this would be the end result of the test.” A third voice, clearly male, pointed out smugly.

“So you did. Since you’re the only one that has had contact with her, we’ll give your words more weight in the future. We needed to check things though.” Menranel calmed things down.

“That’s fair, and I did agree to the plan as well. I just wanted my gloating to be on the record.” The third voice said magnanimously.

“Well, we can return to this topic after the exams. Until then, there’s little point in debate. We’ll make contact with her if she can hold her ranking.” Menranel promised and placed the talisman back inside a metal box sealed with dozens of magical formations.

With the little conference over, he could relax again. He had always enjoyed these kinds of little intrigues, even if they could be a little juvenile at times. At least it gave everyone the chance to practice scheming in a safer environment. Getting caught in the Academy carried a lot smaller penalties than getting caught during real court intrigue. With a sigh, he pulled on his jacket. It was time to go off and play the part of a serious student. The little crown on his badge forced him to put on such masks to keep up appearances. Being the best was challenging in more ways than most people realized.