80 - Price of Betrayal

Arielle cringed back as the hybrid came a few steps closer to her. She was instantly afraid of what he could do.
He could sever her connection to her cores like the other one had done, and he was too large for her to fight back. And she couldn’t trust her professors to protect her. Not anymore. What if this were another test? What if they were going to enact torture, to see if she could take it?
But the man didn’t touch her. He seemed to understand her fear, and he paused a few steps from her, squatting so that he was at eye level.
“How did you know I was a hybrid?” he asked.
“Because…” She caught herself before she said anything. It was because the orbs had moved away from him, but she wasn’t supposed to be able to see the orbs, was she?
She was so easily inclined to honesty that she’d almost spat it out, but she held her breath and shrugged.
“It’s because you’re freakishly large,” Graham offered.
The man didn’t acknowledge Graham but gave her a tiny smile. “Is that true, child? Is it because I’m…freakishly large?”
She nodded, hoping that her lie would be convincing enough so that he would not wrap his freakishly large hand around her neck and disrupt her core connection.
He didn’t seem inclined to, as he chuckled and instead shifted the blanket higher on her body.
“Yes, I am a hybrid,” he said. “And as a hybrid, I can usually sense other hybrids in the vicinity. There’s a marker…a sort of pheromone that we give off to each other. You give off similar pheromones, though you do not physically appear to be a hybrid.”
“I’m a Mossborne,” she said. “Some people think we’re like hybrids.”
“Well, I have never met another Mossbone, so I cannot tell you that for sure. But I have also never met anyone else who exuded the same pheromone you are.”
She didn’t know what to say to that, so she simply blinked.
“Mossbornes aren’t hybrids,” Graham said. “They are strong and remarkably durable, but they are fully human.”
“There are different admixtures and different levels of hybridization,” the man commented. “Just because one doesn’t show signs doesn’t mean that they are not hybrids.”
There were a few seconds of silence, during which everyone watched Arielle closely, and she began to get self-conscious.
“I would like to know about this event that happened when you were a child,” Dean Octavius said. “Can you tell me more about it?”
She didn’t want to. She didn’t want to tell the dean anything more about herself. Maybe he could provide information that might help her, but what if he used that information to manipulate her? What if he set up another cruel trick, one that would harm her, just to test her?
She didn’t think he would actually kill her, but she hadn’t thought that he would do what he did before today, either.
And he was friends with a hybrid, the one creature she was weak against.
She shook her head. “Never mind. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Arielle–”
“I don’t want to talk about it, Dean Octavius.” Short of abject torture, he was not going to get any more information out of her.
The dean stared at her, and she wanted to use her [Empath Sense] to silently read his true expression, but she didn’t want him to know what she was doing.
Right now, his emotion read as sadness mixed with something else. Satisfaction? Smugness?
She didn’t know. Even with the Empath spell, she could only see surface-level emotions, and sometimes she could not even interpret them properly.
Dean Octavius nodded. “I understand.” He glanced at Graham. “You can take her back to campus now that she’s feeling better. And for what it’s worth, Arielle, you have passed the test.”
This was not how she had expected it to go. She didn’t want to pass the test like this, but at least this way she could get the point for Maus.
“I want to use the point to make sure Maus isn’t eliminated,” she told Graham.
Graham cocked his head. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Because you should know that Maus actually passed my test already.”
“He did?” she asked. “How come? He only won two out of five battles?”
“Yes, against a much stronger fighter, but the win is not the only thing I consider. He fought well and has shown rapid growth over the weeks, thanks to you. I weigh that heavily too.”
“So you were never going to cut him in the first place?” she asked slowly. “And this test was for nothing. Another trick.”
He scratched the back of his neck. “Well, I wouldn’t call it a trick per se–”
“Then why not just be honest?” Fury rose swiftly, her voice bouncing off the walls of the cave. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because a student’s approach to the fight is just as important to me as their winning the fight,” he said. “I want to measure things like the bravery of students picking a stronger opponent, and the opportunism of those picking a weaker opponent. For students like Maus, typically after the fight is over, I pull them aside and tell them the truth, and make them keep it from the rest of the class.”
“And you didn’t do that now because you wanted me to accept your test.”
He gave her a weak smile. “I thought when I told you this part, you would be annoyed but more relieved and happy.”
Relieved? Happy?
She was even angrier now, and exhausted with it all.
All the deceit and subterfuge and all the nuances that she did not understand.
She never understood.
She felt stupid, though they said it wasn’t their intention. She had ultimately succeeded, but she felt like she had failed.
Dean Octavius was right about one thing, though. She needed a much better lie-detection spell, or something like that.

---

Professor Graham took her to the healer when they got back to campus to ensure that she was okay. She sat there silently as he tried to ask her questions and make conversation she didn’t respond to. He apologized for tricking her, but she only nodded. In the meantime, the healer looked between the two of them, clearly understanding that something had transpired but not knowing whether to bring it up.
Arielle only said one thing as he escorted her back to her room. “Did Elric know about this?”
“No,” Graham responded. “I don’t think he knew about it. He would not have approved.”
That gave her some hope. So at least she could trust Elric. And maybe Professor Valeria. And Rava.
On the other hand, they could all be lying to her. And she wouldn’t know until something like this happened again.
So how did she ever know who to trust?
How could she even trust her own judgment of a situation?

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She had thought that Dean Octavius favored her because she was an asset, and Graham liked her because she was the best student in his class.
But they had deceived her like it was nothing to them. The betrayal struck deep because she had never even seen it coming.
She opened her door to find both Lyra and Maus conversing in her room. Lyra was at her desk, and Maus was perched at the edge of her bed, looking uncomfortable.
He rose when Ari walked in.
“Hey.” Lyra’s eyebrows furrowed in concern. “What happened?”
“Nothing,” Arielle said. “I passed.”
“You don’t look like you passed.”
“Because I didn’t need to pass. Graham wasn’t going to fail Maus anyway, but he didn’t tell me that because he wanted to trick me into doing his stupid test.”
She clenched her hands into fists so tightly her nails dug grooves into her palm. Emotion mixed in an internal cauldron. Heat filled her chest, rose to her throat, and touched the back of her eyeballs.
She didn’t want to cry. She hated crying, but the tears filled her eyes anyway, and she choked out, “I fell for it. I always fall for it. I just feel stupid sometimes.” A tear broke out, and she wiped it away. “So stupid.”
“Hey.” Lyra’s voice was soft and gentle as she got up and wrapped her arm around Ari’s shoulder, guiding her to the bed. Arielle stiffened at the touch, but she didn’t pull away. She knew from experience that would make Lyra feel bad, which would make her feel even worse.
But Lyra must have understood her too, because she withdrew her hand almost immediately after they were seated.
She let Ari sniffle for some time, then said, “Tell me what happened.”
Ari told them everything, except for getting lost in the In Between. She told them about the Dean’s game, what he’d told her, and how she had discovered everything after she had passed out.
Lyra made a face.
Maus looked angry, too.
They all agreed it was cruel, especially Maus, who shook his head in disappointment.
“I heard that kind of stuff happens in the second and third year,“ he mentioned quietly. “Random tests. They shouldn’t have done that to a first-year, though. That’s too much.”
Ari nodded, and she sniffled back the tears that flowed down her face during her retelling. She hated crying. It made her head hurt and her nose stuffy.
She wasn’t even sure why she was crying. She hadn’t gotten seriously hurt, had passed the test, and had even accidentally discovered more about the Abyssal Drift and her connection to him than she’d thought she would.
When she calmed down, she would probably explore that more.
But right now, it felt like there was a sore on her heart, a longtime wound with a scab that had been picked, and now bled openly once more.
Her emotions were likely due to a combination of things: the dean’s betrayal, her sense of powerlessness in the face of the Shadowlings, and her thought of being stuck in the In Between forever.
Also, the faint shame that accompanied the contemplation that maybe, perhaps, the Dean had been right.
If the dean had actually meant to hurt her, it would have been so easy. He could have used the hybrid on her, or kept her trapped in the In Between, where it simultaneously felt like an eternity had elapsed, but also no time had gone by at all.
Except that now her soul bore the marks of a duration she didn’t feel.
Strangely, she was also affected by the thought of the man trapped in there, the man whose name she remembered vividly.
Cornelius Draco. One of the disciples of the Church.
“You’re not stupid,” Lyra said softly as she very lightly stroked Arielle’s hair, tucking back the strands that had gotten stuck to her tear-streaked cheeks. “There’s nothing wrong with you. You trust people because you expect them to be as honest as you are. That’s a good thing. But people can be dishonest. It’s they who are the problem, and I think that’s what the Dean was trying to portray with his awful test, though he did it very badly.”
“But I already know that,” she said. “I have met untrustworthy people before.”
“Yes, but it’s not just about untrustworthy people. It’s about knowing that even good people have selfish and untrustworthy urges.”
Arielle swallowed, considering her fingers.
“My mother used to tell me that almost no one is ever all good or all bad. Good people can have bad moments, and smart people have their stupid moments. There’s a lot more to people than what’s on the surface, and we judge wrong all the time. For example, with you. I initially misjudged you. Once I knew more about you, I adjusted that. It doesn’t make me stupid. Right, Maus?”
“Erm… right.” Maus didn’t look like he knew exactly what to do or say in this scenario. He had reacted with a jerk to her initial sob and spent most of the time patting her back awkwardly and intermittently.
“I think with people, you have to understand first and foremost who they are and what they want. Only then can you predict them, but even then you’re going to be wrong sometimes.”
“Yes, but understanding people is not something I’m good at. I’m terrible at predicting things based on the unwritten rules, no matter how hard I try. There are things that everyone gets easily that I don’t.” She considered her fingers, twirling around each other. “Things that I might never be able to truly understand instinctively.”
Lyra didn’t respond to that initially, weighing the words. She opened her mouth, then closed it, and opened it again.
Still, nothing came out.
“I’ll make you some tea,” she said finally and got up.
Arielle lay down at Lyra’s request as Lyra prepared herbs for her headache. Maus went to the dining hall to get Arielle some soup. It was almost dinner time, but Ari didn’t feel like eating.
She didn’t feel like doing much of anything except maybe lying here and talking to her orbs. She missed the Blue Orb and wanted to go back to the cave, but she didn’t have the energy for the journey right now.
Lyra was quiet as she brewed, coming over to frequently stroke her hair and tell her that everything would be okay.
If Arielle closed her eyes, she could almost imagine Lyra as Celie, as this was the type of thing that Celie would do whenever Arielle was upset. She missed her sister. And Brom and her mother and father too.
Her mother would probably threaten to take the dean’s head off with her axe if she learned what he’d done to Ari.
The thought made Arielle smile.
She would see them soon after severance. She should probably respond to their many messages, and she opened her messaging book to see that it was filled with tons of new writing and ended with a desperate plea from her mother asking if she was okay, because she’d had a bad feeling.
It had been sent just fifteen minutes ago.
Arielle took out a quill and wrote back to the most recent message.
Arielle: Hi, Mother. I am okay.
Her mom replied instantly.
Mother: Oh, Arielle. Are you sure? You’ve been awfully silent for someone who’s okay.
Arielle: Yes, I’ve been busy with severance. But I will be home soon.
Mother: When you come home, we will talk about the gold.
Arielle: Okay. Has it been adequate for all your needs?
Mother: Adequate? Arielle, we are stupidly wealthy now. We tried to keep it a secret, but you know your father. He can’t not help everyone in need. Most of the other Mossbornes know we have acquired wealth, although they don’t know how much we have. We’ve managed to get a healer for Hallie and some hearing aids for Fenwick. Arnaud got a new shack. Your grandmother bought an entire wheelbarrow of bogmint. She’s dedicated to smoking herself into an early grave. And with the added coin, we no longer have to cater to the Greenfingers. Your father is speaking to Fenwick about renegotiating our contract with them. We can bring some of our people home, and it’s all thanks to my amazing daughter.
Arielle: That’s good. But offer the Greenfingers a good deal with the new contract. My best friend is a Greenfinger. Her name is Lyra.
Mother: Yes, your father mentioned her. I hope to meet her soon, too.
Arielle: You will probably.
Arielle wanted to say more, but she didn’t want her mother to worry or take anyone’s head off.
She wanted people to stop worrying about her and see her as capable of taking care of herself.
So she had to prove it.
She was not stupid, and she would not let anyone trick her anymore. She would prove Dean Octavius wrong.
“Here,” Lyra came back with the steamy liquid, holding it up to her mouth. “Try this.”
She drank it, and it was liquid comfort. Like drinking warmth that spread throughout her entire body, eased her muscles and rendered her a little more optimistic than before.
“This is very good,” she told Lyra.
“Thank you,” Lyra responded.
Arielle drank it quietly as her mind strayed back to everything she had found out.
A place called the In Between, where the souls of the Church waited for what…
Quests? Cornelius Draco had implied as much. He’d said he wished for a simpler one. Who sent them on the quests? The Drift? Was that why it seemed like there were multiple versions of him, because he used different souls for different tasks?
Did he want Arielle to be one of them? His…disciple?
She should tell Elric, though she probably couldn’t tell him how she knew the information, since she couldn’t talk about the In Between with him. She should at least tell him what had happened to Cornelius Draco.
But now she was apprehensive, because she had already talked to him about the Drift’s initial contact, which, according to Draco, she should not have done.
Had she inadvertently endangered Elric?
She bit her lip. If she’d inadvertently cursed him by telling him these things, she would never forgive herself.
If so, she had to protect him from the Drift.
And from Yseult too.
But first, she had to understand who Yseult was.
That was essentially what she would do now. What she was supposed to have done in the beginning, and had forgotten to do, because she had foolishly thought that she was okay not behaving and perceiving things like everyone else.
She would have to be more stringent in evaluating people.
If she couldn’t do it instinctively, then she would do it with spells and with observation. She would list down everything about everyone she knew, down to their likes and dislikes and what they presumably wanted out of life. Learn their motives, as Lyra had said, and then she would weigh each conversation on a probability scale of how likely it was they were lying to her.
It sounded exhausting, but her current empath spell wasn’t enough. It only told her how people were feeling, but it didn’t tell her exactly why they were feeling that way. But if she could combine that with a new spell that would ensure that she knew the inner workings of their mind, then no one could ever fool her again.
And she would do it without the Dean’s help.
And she would use it to find out everything there was to know about Archmage Yseult and make sure he never laid a finger on Elric.
Enough crying.
Time to get started.