60 Prison or Trap? (1/2)
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.