60 Prison or Trap?

Leodagan was frowning all the way back to the office of his father. By inadvertence, while accompanying both Jorien and Owen to their teacher, he saw the opened door of the principal office and peeked inside it. The mental state of the princess already recovered a bit, but she seemed awfully quiet compared to her usual self. Because it was not his place to just barge in it, he rapidly descended to inquire about this and finally stumbled upon Leilade. But when he raised his eyes, all he could see was the intense exasperation written on the face of his father. He was even holding his head in one of his hand.

"Now is not the time Leodagan. Istuienn is fine, she was not even physically harmed in the first place. There are no injuries on her body, she just wanted to … eh … have some cookies from Durtang. That's all."

The explanations were received with a mild suspicion and the little boy didn't really believe the lies he heard. If it had been the truth, Alexander wouldn't have paused for a moment and hesitated on the reason why she was in the office of Sarah. But whatever was happening right now, it had to do with the silent girl that was staring at him. Her blue eyes were weirdly dark for that time of the day and the more he looked in them, the colder he felt. Shaking his head to dispel that absurd notion, he switched his target.

"What did you do Leilade? I heard a strange rumor that your teacher is Arthar, the same that is supposedly teaching Istuienn? Is it true? And if it is, do you know what happened?"

All he received was just Leilade turning around to look at Alexander directly. The latter was regretting more and more what he was doing, but he couldn't stop after all they already have done. He couldn't just say to any of them that two magicians defected a day ago and that they were both of the 4th Circle. Meaning that the amount of information spies of that level could gather and manage to transmit to whatever nation they served was high. The news of the arrival of new dark gods was still relatively suppressed, but not for very long.

And since those terrifying monsters appeared in the Massalia Kingdom, everyone feared that they will suffer the same fate as the fallen kingdom of Pankow. If the rest of mankind decided to sacrifice them just to stall and stop the threat, they will dare to do everything. Because he couldn't just say such an important secret in the open and he was getting more annoyed than ever, he just shut down his own son.

"Leodagan, stop. As a magus, I order you that." The young boy was shaken to hear those words coming from the mouth of his parent, but because he already met such a situation, he slightly backed out and let them pass. He still wasn't capable to understand what was so important with Leilade than even his own father sided with her instead of him. As Leilade brushed him, he slowly murmured something.

"I will uncover your secret."

Even if it was pronounced as quietly as possible, and not even destined to be heard, both Leilade as an alien and Alexander as a magus had the ability to hear it. But neither was particularly concerned by it because he had no chance of ever finding what was happening. Following Alexander, Leilade climbed to the highest floor of the building and finally entered a remote room, where not a lot of magicians were present. To enter the location, Alexander spent nearly 5 minutes manipulating the various and numerous spells protecting the door. Only after doing all of this, did they meet the residents of the place.

To be more precise, only two magicians were present but badly shaped. The two men were visibly injured and were enchained on the wall, in a very uncomfortable seated position. Their arms were above their head and they couldn't leave the contact of the wall behind them, meaning that their only available movement was with their legs. But seeing their lifeless body barely breathing and not even reacting to the two newcomers, Leilade understood what was the present condition of those mages. They were prisoners.

"If you feel that it is too gruesome you can …" The magus stopped in his track because Leilade wasn't even reacting at the corpse-like magicians. Remembering that she maybe have experienced even more painful event, he reserved his comment for himself. Alexander himself had a bit of a hard time seeing the state of people he met and worked with for the past decades, but that just his inner feelings. He would never even consider just giving them fresh water if they asked, for they had betrayed everyone here.

"I couldn't say it before, especially in front of my son, but I felt that it was time for you to understand why we are doing all of this. Lying to everyone, covering your innate talent, making you look like a normal student. Behold, two magicians we thought were friends, colleague, even husbands. And no, their wives were totally in the dark, one of them is Melinda, she works with Arthar. That was the reason why we were able to pierce through the disguise of her husband. But, she still didn't know what happened, we sent her away right after we noticed the two trying to escape this Academy."

Alexander approached the most broken of the two bodies but restrained himself before doing anything else. Looking at the disfigured face, he tried to match it with the one in his memories. The day where everyone celebrated their marriage, the birth of their daughter. She was only five years old, but she already had lost one of her parents. And the other was still in danger, considering what she was carrying, Alexander only hoped that she would come back.

"You see, if it wasn't that incident provoking some much ruckus, he wouldn't have fled and we wouldn't have been able to find not just one but two traitors. Don't worry, neither Oscar Moo or Ella Romba is even remotely suspected, their behavior all too weird for a spy. No, what we looked for was some perfect or near perfect records, something impossible to accomplish for a normal human. Everyone makes mistakes, and those that don't are then a mistake themselves. But you are not here to listen to my regrets, you are here to train. Or perhaps, something else …"

Without any warning, multiple ice shards were thrown at Leilade, all deadlier than the others. Effortlessly, she dodged them all, using the least amount of movement to do it. What followed was a blizzard, surrounding her, trying to cut her entire body. To that, she didn't even move, allowing the normally deadly spell to just do its work. But contrarily to what Alexander hoped, the girl wasn't even reacting at all to the terrible treatment she was experiencing. Like, it was not even hurting her.

Clap Clap Clap

After the snow and the ice fell on the ground, the magus couldn't believe his eyes. The blue eyes he was staring into were slowly turning darker and darker, to a point where no light could hope to even escape. Seeing the eyes forming an ocean of darkness, he remarked that the morphology of the face was also changing. The previously quite cheerful face was now without any expression, as cold as a block of ice. Her brown hair was suffering the same fate, and finally, the illusion was dispelled. To be truthful, she hadn't expected to be found out so quickly since she didn't make any obvious mistake. But after hearing the small tale, she figured out that she was far too abnormal in the first place.

"You … so it was true. It was just a simple test; you were capable of even maintaining an illusion in the most protected bastion of the Academy. Why did you drop the mask?" Alexander wasn't even questioning her purpose or what she was, he was only focusing on her actions. He was not wrong to say that she could have just keep going and hide even more, but now that she had to suffer the company of that blockhead Istuienn, she was not enjoying her rest as much as she wanted.

"Why, good question. What do you think of this?" Leaking from her arms, drops of shadows were merging into a tentacle. The dark creature was shaking like it enjoyed to be reborn again. Even if she was five meters away from those renegade mages, the monstrous being had no problem reaching the unfortunate souls and eat them both alive. The process took merely a few seconds, and two shiny blue orbs were levitating near the right hand of Leilade.

"Dark Gods … dark gods … you were one of the dark gods!" Only at that time did he realized that fact and matched the strange encounter of Muirnë with the current form of Leilade. A strange child, extremely small, with a cold voice and mastering a shadow monster. All his hopes of being wrong were shattered in pieces and for the first time, he felt an intense fear when he looked at Leilade. But he still made the right choice when he brought her here, and now, she will not escape the full force of the two 6th Cir…

"And if you think that two old worms behind that door can prevent me from leaving, you are wrong." She laconically crushed the plan in the mind of the magus, turning his initial fear into terror. It was impossible, even for the Archmage, to sense anything beyond the door. Centuries of researchers worked on this very place, and even if the entire building fell to the ground, this place would still be unharmed. But what he was hearing was the fact that it meant nothing for her? Looking blankly at the alien, he had no words to say.

"But let's see, who is really stronger me, or them?" She was calmly walking to destroy the protections on the door, but the mind of Alexander was in turmoil. Should he stop her by any means? Should he trust the elders and the other magicians to imprison that demonical being? He was still conflicted, but the sight of Leilade working on the seals quickly convinced him. They had no chances at all.

"STOP! PLEASE!" He ran toward her and even stumbled on the ground in the process. Not daring to stand up, he awkwardly walked on his knees, pressing the dark god to not destroy the Academy. Since she hadn't done it previously, they probably had something she wanted. "Please, tell us what you want?"

"Want?" An evil smile was spreading while she repeated that word. "I already have what I wanted. Everything else was just me fooling around. But now that my mask has been dropped and that you did tried to kill me, why should I bother myself with ants? Don't worry, I will let the buildings intact."

The final seal was finally absorbed by the tentacle, and soon, two appendices appeared on it. A rupture was spreading between the two and in no time, Leilade controlled two of her creations once again. The vision of the door crumbling on itself shocked the humans on the other side, and until now, they still had no idea about what was happening inside.

The room was a sealed space, where nothing could enter or exit when the seals were activated. The two elders that reached the 6th Circle came back the day before, but they reported with more details what Muirnë experienced. Because of this, they tested Leilade, that arrived with too many secrets on herself. But it was known that the dark god was really injured, so they still had a chance to take her down before she recovered too much. Everyone already evacuated, and only a small team of experts were present. Every magus, everyone above the 5th Circle, was preparing for the worst. And from what they were seeing, it did happen.