57 - The Oath

The burning spread downwards and upwards at the same time. Her entire chest was filled with heat, and the fire made her tongue stiff, such that she couldn’t say another word or do anything except utter choking sounds.
“Arielle!” With her ears ringing, she barely heard Elric yelling her name and casting what she assumed were numerous healing and curse reversal spells.
None of them helped.
Orion, Arielle thought, arranging the orbs with just her gaze. Once she was done, she targeted the spell towards herself, but she needed to see her reflection to know if it worked.
[Mirror Mirage], she vaguely remembered the spell from her spell book and arranged that as quickly as she could, while the fire spread to her eyeballs, setting them ablaze too.
Through her watering eyes, she stared at the reflection of the created pattern around her neck.
It worked!
She could see the orbs now that they were fully activated, but she didn’t even have time to be excited.
She grabbed one of them and tried tugging. For one terrifying moment, it didn’t budge.
The essences were much more securely attached than they were in earthen spells. The Elven spells had more strength and were much harder to sever, and the harder she pulled, the more the pain spiked in her mind, making it hard to think, because it felt like her brain was melting.
She couldn’t see straight, could barely think straight, and felt like she might be close to passing out. Still, she held onto the orb, pulling and pulling and pulling with all her internal focus and might.
Come on…Come on….
Snap!
The spell broke, the backlash hitting her in the chest and robbing her of breath.
Luckily, it didn’t rebound on Elric. Instead, it was purely internal, and Arielle felt like a troll had punched the breath out of her, and she was slowly and painfully dying.
She collapsed forward, gasping for air, her ears still ringing, her stomach still clenching, and her heart still racing.
Pain swallowed her in waves.
Eventually, it faded enough that she could hear Elric again. He was casting more healing spells on her, and this time they worked to alleviate the agony.
Her head was in his lap, and his hand was on her forehead, and he was talking quickly in a worried chatter.
I did it, Ari thought, a blissful smile on her lips. I broke the oath.
She felt a little bad for going back on her word to the elves, but at the same time, she didn’t like the restrictions the oath had placed on her, especially the fact that she couldn’t properly explain her actions to Elric, which made him frustrated with her.
The oath was too stringent, preventing her from talking about the jewels or why she’d needed to open a secret account. That simply wouldn’t do. The last thing she wanted was for Elric to be mad at her for a situation that ultimately wasn’teven her fault. Mostly.
And though she wanted to keep him safe from the knowledge, perhaps keeping him in the dark might endanger him too. He was already on the path to discovering her secret anyway, and then he might not have the proper context to protect himself and her. After all, they were dealing with something bigger now. They were dealing with a primordial.
Elric knew more about ascendant society than she did. He could help her avoid pitfalls and learn more about what had happened to her.
As she finally opened her eyes, breathing normally once more, it occurred to her that, now that she’d broken the oath, its essences, including the non-Earth-compatible orbs, should be floating somewhere around her.
She couldn’t see them right now.
Where were they? What happened to them?
For the ones she was interested in, she didn’t have the right cores to call them to her.
Darn.
She should have trapped it somehow, maybe in a spell, but she didn’t even know its charge, much less what it would do in a given spell. Now, it was gone.
Maybe she would find it later.
It was now on Earth, and it probably wouldn’t get far, as most used essences seemed to remain in the general area they were utilized, or only float as far as nearby villages or towns. She wasn’t sure how, but she would try to locate it at some point.
“Arielle.” Elric looked worried. “Are you okay?”
She nodded weakly, groaning as she sat up. The burn was still there, but it had reduced in intensity and would likely be gone with time.
“What was that about?” he asked, running his hands over her hair and staring at her closely. “You scared the life out of me. I thought you were dying.”
“I wasn’t,” she said. “The pain wasn’t going to be unto death, it was just going to incapacitate me or knock me out so I couldn’t get out what I was saying.”
“I don’t understand. Was it a curse?”
She hesitated, wondering if she was making a mistake. But then she finally admitted, “No. It was an oath spell.”
“An oath spell? Why would you accept an oath? And who did you have an oath with?”
“With an elf.”
Elric blinked at her and cocked his head, as though waiting for her to tell him that it’s a joke.
“Did you see the message I sent to you in the messaging scroll?”
“No. What did it say?”
“The Unmaker or one of his disciples. I think they’re haunting me.”
“You mean the primordial.”
“Yes.”
He raised an eyebrow, but he shook his head. “Okay, let’s set aside why you think that for a second…what does that have to do with the oath?”
“A few weeks ago, we visited the Unmaker’s disciples’ temple, and I went over to touch the statue of the Abyssal Drift. When I touched the statue, I was teleported to Elfheim.”
“How?” he exclaimed.
“I don’t know. When I got to Elfheim, I met an elven prince, and he said his spell may or may not have brought me there.”
“Wait, hold on. You touched a statue, and a prince’s spell took you to Elfheim.”
“Yes. I put my hand on the statue and felt a ghostly presence surrounding me. Then it pushed its hand down on mine until I teleported.”
“Into Elfheim?”
“Yeah, where I met the prince.”
Elric’s blinking increased in frequency, punctuating the shocked silence.
“I’m not supposed to tell you this,” Arielle said. “Because the Prince would be in trouble if word of my visit reached his father, so you have to promise me you won’t tell anyone.”
“Oh, trust me, no other soul will hear of this from me. They’ll probably think I’ve gone mad if I tell them, or if they do believe me….” Just the thought of it made him grimace. “I’m not going to tell anyone. You have my word.”
She nodded. That was good.
Instinctively, she had known Elric would keep the secret. It was one of the reasons why she wanted to tell him, and this way, the elven prince wouldn’t get in trouble, and Elric could help her figure out what was going on and how she got to Elfheim in the first place.
“I don’t think it was just the Prince’s spell that got me to Elfheim,” she said. “I think the Unmaker’s disciple had something to do with it, and he made time malfunction. It felt like I’d spent at least an hour there, but it was only ten minutes on Earth. Unless there’s a huge duration disparity between the Elven realm and here, that’s just not possible.”
Elric frowned, but he didn’t call her a liar. Lines appeared in his forehead as he furrowed his eyebrows, a deep groove settling between them.
“One of the Unmaker’s powers is time dilation,” he said.
“Yes. And that’s not all. After family day was over, when I came back to my room, there was a message carved into the wall beside my door that said, ‘Find Me’. And then I looked away for a second and looked back, and someone had drawn a pair of eyes next to the message.”

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“That could be a trick.”
“There was no magic attached to it. And it was the same message I found in Telip’s journal.”
“Telip?”
“A senior.” Arielle briefly explained who Telip was and how she’d copied all the information she had from his journal, including the statement about the Unmaker wanting to be found. She also mentioned the Church of the Wayward and Heimenech.
“Heimenech,” Elric repeated after she said it. “The name sounds familiar.”
“Really?”
“Yes, but I’m not sure how. I’ll have to look into it. Send me the notes that you found in Telip’s journal.”
“I wanted to ask him personally as well. I think maybe he’s been through this before. He’s a Vacu-dominant, and I believe the curse, or whatever it is, is targeting Vacu dominants.”
“You’re not a Vacu dominant.”
“No, but I am trying to attain a Vacu lean.”
His frown deepened. “Why?”
“Because Vacu-Calor assists you best with your lean.”
“Arielle–”
“Of course, I’m still going to maintain the balance of my cores, but I want to have spells that can–”
“Arielle, listen to me. I don’t want you picking a lean just because it’s complementary to mine, and I also don’t think a Calor-Vacu lean is good for you.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s too…explosive.”
“I can control explosions better than most people.”
“That’s not the point. I just don’t think you should do it, unless you plan on going into combat, and I don’t want you to do that for my sake. Combat exposes your true power more easily and reveals your abnormally fast casting speed. It’s harder for you to hold back if your life is on the line, so it’s harder for you to hide. I thought you would want to go into something like research, because you like to read.”
Arielle thought about it. She did like to read. She liked to research and experiment with spells, too.
But she couldn’t deny that saving all those people in Khor brought fulfilment that research didn’t quite match.
They would have died without her intervention, both those at the bank and those at the market.
The master on the scene was struggling to contain the trolls, and reinforcements weren’t arriving fast enough. Had she not been there, the master might have lost to the trolls, and the girl would certainly have died.
But it had only taken Ari a few minutes to get rid of the danger. At least two people remained alive thanks to a few minutes of her time.
It was interesting to think about it like that, and to realize that she could have subdued the trolls without killing them, in a way that no one else could.
There was so much she could have done, her powers lacking a known ceiling, yet she’d only intervened because she wanted to open a bank account.
It made her feel more than a little guilty in hindsight.
What was the point of being powerful if she couldn’t use it to protect people, if she only used it for her selfish motives? Wasn’t the purpose of magic to help protect those who couldn’t protect themselves?
Arielle told all this to Elric, and at first, he struggled to come up with a response.
Ultimately, he sighed. “You have a point there. It’s just…I don’t want you to decide because of me.”
“It’s not just because of you,” she said. “I also like duelling. I like being helpful. I liked saving people. I think it’s what I’m supposed to do.”
Elric tapped his finger on his knee. “In the future, perhaps. For now, you’re supposed to be a regular student. You’re not supposed to call negative attention to yourself.”
“That’s why I was in disguise.”
“It was a terrible disguise. All you changed was your hair color and eye color. You didn’t even cloak your screen.”
“I’ve gone up a level since then.”
“It doesn’t matter. You’re just lucky I was the one assigned to this case, or someone else could have found you easily. Try not to go into Khor for some time.”
“I can’t do that. I’ll need to sell gems and use my bank to send money to my family, once my brother opens an account.”
“What gems?”
“The elves gave me gems in return for my help and also for keeping their secret. I sold them to some black market traders, signed up at the adventurer’s guild to become a mercenary, then deposited the money into a bank under a business account I opened that same day.”
Elric looked like he wasn’t sure whether to be irritated or amused. “Seems like you had a very busy afternoon.”
“Yes. It was very busy.”
He snorted without a smile.
“I’ll take care of sending coin to your family. Just leave the bank alone until the investigation is over.”
She pursed her lips. She had wanted to use some of that money to buy books.
Then again, she still had her gold bars.
“Can you turn gold bars into coins for me?”
“Yes. Do you have gold bars?”
She nodded and was about to take it out of her inventory, but Elric stopped her. He looked around himself first, then bent forward such that whatever appeared in her hands was hidden from view.
His eyes turned into saucers when he saw how much gold she came up with.
“That much?”
“There’s more,” she said. “This is just how much I can hold for now.”
His eyes flared, and he nodded, taking it from her with the word that he would get it to her family. She also handed over the rest of her gems, which he said he would keep in a safe place for her.
She wasn’t sure about giving it to him, because if he was caught with it, he might get into trouble.
But he assured her he would not get caught.
“I’ll take care of it,” he said. “It might not be a good idea to sell it right now. And about the other thing, the Unmaker haunting you, send me all the information you have by messaging scroll. I might be able to find something on my end.”
She beamed. This was what she was hoping would happen. “Okay.”
“And for now, try not to use Vacu or answer any calls to darkness. And talk to Telip if you can. If not, then I’ll try to talk to him, although he might be less inclined to talk to me than to you.”
“Yes. I’ll try.”
“And don’t go out in that Raven Mask again, at least not until the rumors die down. Hopefully, people will believe that you’re some kind of magical creature, or maybe a visiting elf who disappeared once they were done with their mission.’”
“They think I’m the Drift,” Arielle said. “Over in school, they were talking about it.”
“That’s good. With time, you might just become an urban legend. In the meantime, I’ll go talk to a few other students who were in Khor, so that people don’t think I just interrogated you. And then after we’re done, I’m going to try to take the investigation into your identity in a different direction and muddy the waters until it’s closed down.” He brushed his chin.“Perhaps I’ll see if she’ll want to take credit for it.”
“Who?”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “Let me take care of everything.”
“Okay, Elric.” She felt some guilt. “I’m sorry if I made trouble for you again.”
He gave her a weak smile. “It’s okay. I think I’m getting used to it, and I should have known what I signed up for when I agreed to be your cousin.”
“Yes,” she said, and he chuckled. He was in a much lighter, though still contemplative, mood when they returned to campus.
Back in her room, she kept searching for information quadrant by quadrant, but she kept her eye on her essences, knowing that she would eventually hit a limit.
Then she had a thought that she probably should have realized earlier…
This is a waste of time.
Of course, there wouldn’t be information here. These were the first-year dorms, and first years were unlikely to know anything about anything. She was better off targeting fourth-year dorms and professors’ offices or maybe the Dean’s abode.
She would do that tomorrow, or tonight if she had time after she was done with homework.
Elric sent her a message later that evening after she sent him the information he’d asked for.
Elric: I remember who Heiminech was now.
Ari: Who?
Elric: He was a student who disappeared in his dorm. A Vacu Dominant. No one ever found out what happened to him, and he became an urban legend that they tell students about.
Ari: No one knows how he disappeared?
Elric: No. One day, he was simply gone. They tried to claim he ran away from home, but it’s not that easy to remain hidden for so long. Something mystical might have happened to him. Once again, stay away from Vacu for now, while we evaluate what’s going on. If a primordial is targeting you because of Vacu, we don’t want you to play into it.
Arielle acquiesced, although a part of her did want to see what would happen when the Primordial finally had her in his grasp.
But Elric was likely right to be cautious. At the very least, they needed to understand what they were dealing with.
She could stay away from her Vacu spells for a brief time. She did want to rebalance her cores with Vitae anyway, though she didn’t know how Vitae would do in combat class.
But it would be interesting to try out new spells and maybe show Lyra interesting combat combinations too.
Speaking of Lyra…
When Arielle returned to the room, Lyra was already there, but she was asleep. Arielle didn’t want to wake her up, so she let her rest, hoping she would feel better the next morning.
As she went to bed, Elric’s last words rang in her mind.
If the primordial is targeting you because of Vacu, we don’t want you to play into it.
The question was…what if it was already too late?

---

The next morning, Arielle approached Telip at breakfast. She waited at her usual table for him to arrive, and then got up while one of the twins was saying something about dragonlillies, and walked over to him.
“Hello,” she said. “Can I speak to you?”
He glanced over, with his spoon of oatmeal halfway to his mouth. “I’m eating.”
She could see that. “Yes.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Can this wait?”
She nodded. “Yes. I’ll wait.”
She didn’t move from her spot, lacing her hands in front of her. Telip didn’t go back to eating. He simply stared at her.
She also became aware of the fourth year’s one table over, halting their conversations to observe them.
Telip sighed. “What is this about?”
“Please be my mentor.” Arielle had spent most of the morning thinking about how to get Telip to tell her the truth, so she didn’t have to waste as many essences searching for it herself. She was still going to continue with the search, but perhaps with him, she could fine tune the words she was looking for.
He might not help her if he knew what she was doing, but then again, he might. She still wasn’t sure, so she figured she could gain his favor by becoming his mentee, and then he would be more inclined to help her. Besides, she still wanted to learn about runes and teleportation, though she wasn’t using Vacu for now.
So far, Lyra had advised her to take it easy and slow with Telip, but easy and slow wasn’t working.
Telip seemed like a straightforward person, just like she was. So she was straightforward with him.
Telip shook his head. “I’m not looking to mentor anyone.”
“What can I do to change your mind?”
“You can’t.”
“You know if you want a mentor, Telip’s the wrong person,” a girl from the senior table said.
“Yes, he’s not a good teacher at all,” another girl concurred. “How about trying your luck with Selena?”
“No, that would be her aiming too high. She’s probably going to say no.”
“You never know. I might not,” Selena said in a sing-songy voice.
“I don’t want Selena,” Arielle announced. “I want Telip.”
Telip froze with the spoon halfway to his mouth again. He gave her a wide-eyed look, then glanced at Selena in alarm.
Other people were glancing at Selena, too.
When Arielle looked over, Selena’s smile had frozen on her face. Her eyes were glowing. Was she upset? Something felt off about her. Now Arielle was even more certain of her choice.
“She doesn’t mean that,” Telip told Selena.
“Yes, I did,” Arielle said. “Now what can I do to change your mind about being my mentor?”