Chapter 16

"And we're here." Arek turned around, an expression resembling that of either smugness or pride at being able to show off the massive school he attends to someone else.

"I... Can... See... That." Zeik said between heavy gasps of air. It felt like his lungs had been put through the wash cycle, hung out to dry, then starched. He took a moment to catch his breath. "Do you do this every day?"

"Isn't it obvious?" Arek grinned. Finally, someone who understood his efforts. "Come on, you wanted to see a healer, didn't you?"

"At this point I'm better off just letting this get infected and dying."

Arek couldn't help but laugh at how helpless this guy standing before him was. Not only was he overly worried about a small scrape, he didn't seem to have any clue how far inside the city the Academy sat. "Are you new to the Capital, Zeik?" He asked.

"Yep, just walked through the gate this morning."

Arek was surprised that he'd admitted it so easily. Didn't this guy realize how likely it was for newcomers yo get mugged in the Capital? surely he'd heard stories.

Curious, Arek asked, "Say, where'd you come from? I hear it's pretty hard to get out of the nearby kingdoms. Do you have many connections?"

Arek realized how terrible of a question this was after it left his lips. If Zeik did have connections, he could very well end Arek with hardly any effort, and a sensitive question like that was more than reason enough.

Much to his relief, Zeik only shook his head.

"Nah, actually, it was kind of by chance that I got here. I'd try to tell you the whole story, but..."

"If it's a long story, we can talk later." Arek waved it off, breathing a sigh of relief. "I'll be heading to class now. Just walk straight that way to the healers, you won't miss them."

"Got it. Thanks, man." Zeik hurried off in the direction Arek was pointing in.

Too late, Arek realized that he should have told Zeik where to find him after the school day was over. Oh well, they'll run into each other again, probably.

As Arek walked through the halls and into the classroom, he realized that this was the only time he hadn't exploded through the door in a while. Usually, he'd been so rushed to get to his seat that the state of the door's hinges were hardly the first thing on his mind.

He also felt like he was forgetting something. Something that he was going to do...

Arek's eyes snapped to the back of the room, where he expected to see Juni, sitting there with her hair pulled into a ponytail as always. Their eyes would meet, and he'd walk up to his seat beside her with a smile.

But there wasn't a single trace of her up there. There wasn't a person sitting up behind the rest of the class, no telltale blue hair that somehow blew in nonexistent wind, and no blue eyes for him to meet.

At her seat, there were papers scatted all across the desk, with some even on the ground. The inkwell had also fallen over, its contents seeping into the carpeted floor.

---

"He told me we could talk later, so I can expect to find him around, right?" Zeik mumbled to himself, resisting the urge to scratch at his bandaged palms. "What was his name... Arek? Seems like a pretty cool guy."

Who knew that being healed with what looked like magic would itch so bad? He'd totally expected a sudden physical and mental relief, like in a TV show. Zeik silently cursed the writers of his world for leading him to believe such a myth. The bandages were only there to keep him from digging the wound up again, apparently.

To be honest, he didn't even think the scrapes were that bad, he just wanted to see this world's "magic" at work. And now that he had, he seriously regretted it.

Zeik considered heading into the main school building just to see what prestigious was defined as in this world, but decided against it. He was fortunate enough they'd let him waltz onto campus and get a free heal, he wasn't going to push his luck and walk into the actual building. Just from how the place looked on the outside, though, it didn't look like a place that anyone could easily get into.

"Is that average-looking guy actually really impressive?" Zeik thought, meaning Arek.

In that case, he'd better find the guy again. Having connections like that would definitely be helpful, or at least he'd have bragging rights somewhere.

Zeik figured he should probably find someplace where he'd run into Arek again, and settled with a bench near the campus's front gates. There's no way he'd miss anybody walking out of the school building if he was sitting there.

"I've gotta say, these healers are really no joke." Zeik partially unwrapped the bandages on his left hand, revealing that any trace of the scrapes on there had been thoroughly erased. He removed the bandages altogether, and rubbed his palms against his pants to alleviate some of the itchiness.

"Though this part really suuuuuuuuucks." Zeik said out loud, desperately controlling himself from driving his fingernails right into the opposite palm. This itch was on another level than petting a cat or touching poison ivy. If this was how people recovered in this world, he prayed to God that he'd never get hurt again.

Then, suddenly, a chill went down Zeik's spine. A prickling sensation at the base of his neck, like a spidey-sense of sorts.

Instinctively, he dove off the bench and rolled to the side. He watched as the spot where he was just sitting got run straight through with a giant spear of ice.

"Now THAT'S NOT NORMAL!" Zeik screamed as another hunk of ice cracked the paved path a few feet away from him.

Zeik dove behind the nearest bit of cover-a large apple tree-as the jolly St. Nick's entire elf battalion unleashed their wrath upon him. His eyes shot from one side of the courtyard to the next, trying to find his assailant.

There-standing in the center of it all, right beside the generic fountain that stood before every single prestigious school-was a girl with light-blue hair, an incredibly fair complexion, and eyes cold enough that Zeik would not have been surprised if he was told that she was sending those frozen bits of hell in a jar towards him with just her gaze.

Seriously. The amount of hatred in her expression directed solely at Zeik was almost enough to make him piss his pants. It was like bumping into a high-level player in the starting fields where PVP was allowed. The only difference being that if he died here, he'd probably not be able to come back.

Zeik opened his mouth to try and reason with her, but his voice was completely drowned out by the sound of ice whizzing by, embezzling the other side of the tree with shiny ornaments capable of rending flesh, and shattering upon hitting each other.

In situations like this, it'd be pretty normal to be doing some combination of freaking the hell out and asking oneself the question of "why am I getting attacked, and who hates me enough to do it?" But no such thoughts crossed Zeik's mind. In fact, his mind was in such a state of panic, he himself couldn't believe that these were the things he was feeling. He was behind cover, temporarily safe. Yet his heart pumped harder and harder, to the point where he felt like his chest was going to explode. Why was he so terrified? He'd always thought of himself as a relatively tough guy. Even if someone was trying to kill him, he wouldn't wimp out so hard, right?

But this was different. Zeik felt as if he'd experienced this firsthand before, which was impossible. There was no way he'd have been assaulted by a hail of icy daggers in his world, and he would have remembered such a thing in this world. He closed his eyes and tried to calm his breathing.

Just as he began to calm down, a blade of ice pierced the side of his shoe and drove itself into Zeik's foot. A shock ran through his body, and sparks appeared on the backs of his eyelids.

---

"Just what do you think you're doing?" Arek yelled as he jumped over the half-broken fountain, almost tripping on the cratered walkway. He had been the only one who immediately rushed out of the building when the first chunk of ice smashed the sidewalk. Nobody else even batted an eye. Was this stuff normal around nobles?

Arek had basically seen all of it. Zeik was sitting down at a bench near the gates, and suddenly around the corner comes Juni, who immediately starts shooting deadly bits of ice at him. The two might have had a history, but Arek didn't know that. He just felt like he needed to step in since nobody else would.

And the best way to do so, he figured, was to head-on tackle the girl who had reality wrapped around her fingers.

Arek didn't realize how stupid that sounded until he was flying through the air on a collision course with Juni's midsection. Somehow, the tackle connected, and the barrage of ice abruptly stopped.

Juni let out a frustrated groan, much like a teenager who'd been told by their parent to clean their room would, and grabbed Arek by the back of his collar. As she tossed him off her, another wave of icicles formed above their heads, aimed at Zeik, who had fallen over and into plain sight.

"Wait, stop!" Arek yelled, landing a good ten feet away. "Why are you doing thi-"

His words were cut off by confused silence, as Juni was no longer standing there before him. The fountain to his left was running normally, and the ground under him was no longer riddled with craters, small and large alike. The only thing that was out of place was Zeik's unconscious form, half visible from behind the tree. It seemed that he had passed out.

Arek looked towards the school building, then back to Zeik, and then at the ground he was sitting on. "What just happened?" He asked nobody in particular.

---

Juni felt all the air leave her lungs as she was flung into a wall. Her vision darkened around the edges, and one of her ankles was bent at an unnatural angle.

She had no time to take in her surroundings. A foot flew out from the darkness to connect with her ribs, and she was sent skidding sideways across the cold, stone floor.

She had just been in the courtyard of the Academy, about to kill that wretched Prince, who had escaped from her Uncle's grasps and been missing since. Just when she thought she'd found him, and was about to get rid of him, once and for all, how could this-

Her thoughts weren't allowed to finish. She was grabbed by the collar of her shirt and slammed against the wall again. Her vision began to clear up as she was held in this position for a moment, and she realized that she was in a room made completely out of white stone, starkly lit with black furniture to contrast. The darkness had only come from the fact that her eyes had been unable to see clearly as she was being tossed around.

Before her stood a small girl whose skin was so pale, it almost looked grey. Her long, green-silver hair was tied up sloppily in a single tail off the left side of her head. She was slightly shorter than Juni, with a slim, relatively "childish" body, as Juni would have described it. The girl wore strange clothing that looked to be something similar to a simple shirt, just as simple pants, and slippers. The girl seemed to be an early teenager, around 13 or 14 years old, 15 if one were to stretch their definitions a bit, but the rage in her emerald eyes was genuinely terrifying, even to Juni. To see such an innocent, pure-looking face contorted in complete hatred... It sent ice water through Juni's veins.

"I'll get straight to the point, thought I think it's pretty apparent." The girl talked in a tone completely unbefitting of neither her relatively cute voice nor of a lady, and in a strange dialect used only by elves, as Juni had learned during one of her past encounters with the long-eared race. It was almost difficult to understand, but so clear at the same time.

"Lay another hand on him, and I'll show you Hell."

"A-another... hand?" Juni found it hard to speak with a fist pressed against her collarbone. "Who?"

"The boy with the blue hair. You know who I'm talking about." The mysterious girl scowled in an, again, completely unladylike manner. "Touch him again, and I'll do more than just kill you in the most painful and slow way imaginable."

"Why do you care... About him...?" Juni felt a bit of her own anger well up from inside. Did this girl have any idea how much pain Prince had caused her aunt and uncle? Did she realize just how evil that bastard could be?

"I don't. Not about the one you're thinking of, anyway." The girl said. "I'm talking about the one supposedly inhabiting his body right now. He goes by the name of 'Zeik.'"

Juni drew in as much of a breath as she could, and tried to put some assertion into her voice. "That's just a fake name created to trick his- AAAAHHHHHHH!" She screamed as the sound of her collarbone snapping in two reverberated around the room. The girl drove her other fist into the wall besides Juni's face.

"I didn't ask for you to insert anything, DID I?"

Juni was unable to speak, so she desperately shook her head while trying as hard as she could to keep her collarbone as stable as possible.

"I am also under the impression that this 'Zeik' might be a simple alter-ego, so I do have a favor to ask of you... Not like you have the right to decline." The girl's anger was replaced by a smug smile, showing that Juni had no control here whatsoever. "Don't worry, this might end up helping you out, too. I'm not completely unreasonable, you see?"

Juni searched the room for something-anything-to use against the girl with a fist against her crushed collarbone. She tried to imagine a thin, sharp blade that could pierce and slice up any normal person, but nothing appeared. It was as if her powers were being completely overridden.

"I want you to keep an eye on him. Spy on him, hire someone to, or earn his trust somehow, I don't care. But take note of everything unnatural about him, I'll be watching, too." The girl stated her demands. "So if you try to lay even a single finger on him before I can confirm whether 'Zeik' or 'Prince' is inhabiting that body, I'll know."

"Why don't you..." do it yourself, then? Juni wanted to say, but each word she said caused a stabbing pain at her collar, and she couldn't get the entire sentence out.

"Why?" the girl seemed to have understood. "why don't I do it myself, you ask?"

Juni was pulled forward, no longer being held against the wall, as the mysterious girl brought their faces extremely close, to the point where their noses were almost touching.

"Why would I, when I have someone completely at my mercy right here?" The girl said in a low voice, so low, that Juni could hardly hear her even from so close.

"Who..." Each breath Juni took got shorter and shorter, whether it was because of how terrified she was of the girl in front of her, or her broken collarbone, she didn't know.

"You don't need to know that. You don't need to know where this is, either."

Juni couldn't push out words anymore, so she just nodded as subtly as she could.

"You have one job. Watch over Zeik, and make sure no serious harm comes to him. If I'm forced to step in, I'll do so in a manner that'll for sure ruin any and all of your plans. Understood?" The girl didn't wait for a response. "I'm sending you back now. Tell no one about what happened here, and do not try to defy me. Most of all, do not release Zeik's information to anyone that would harm him. Once you've found out what you need to, bring him to me. You'll know where to go, don't worry. Take any action on your own regarding this matter, and you're dead."

Juni fell to the ground as the girl let go of her uniform shirt, which was now messed up enough to be unwearable.

"What is he... to you?" Juni choked out this last question as a somehow even brighter light lit up the room.

"Zeik?" The anger in the girl's tone all but vanished as she said the name. "He's..."

With that, the girl's face split into smile so terrifying, it made Juni want to tear her own throat out for asking the question.

"Did you really think you were going to get an answer out of me?" was the last thing the girl said before Juni found herself sitting back on the ground in the courtyard of the Academy. Her collarbone still hurt, and her clothes were all scratched up and bloody from being tossed around. Her heart was pounding so hard that she could hear it loud and clear.

"Juni?" Arek's voice came from her left, where he was helping Zeik to his feet. "Juni, what happened to you?"

She couldn't answer. The darkness clouded the edges of her vision again, and she fell to the side, unconscious.