Chapter 5 - The Invitation that Smelled of Catastrophe

Gabriel squeezed the black envelope between his fingers, the red letters still faintly vibrating in the air, like embers cooling down. "Courtyard of Shadows… Midnight…" The tone of the message, even with the veiled threat about "being the main course," had something… different from Seraphine's usual cutting sarcasm. Was there a hint of… a genuine invitation disguised beneath the domineering pose?

Fay's stamp throbbed, but Gabriel felt only a brief tingle, without the goddess's strident voice. He suppressed a smile. Maybe even Fay was taking a break from her provocations... or plotting something worse. The thought made him shiver. Ignoring the uncomfortable sensation, he focused on Seraphine and her theatrical threats. "Game... main course...".

But, this time, the combination with "Courtyard of Shadows" and "Midnight" didn't leave him as calm as usual. There was something more sinister lingering in the air, even by the bizarre standards of the Arcane School of Luxflutuante.

He looked up, finding the empty space where Seraphine had been. Only the faint, sweet scent of black petals lingered in the air, a ghostly trace of her presence. She had disappeared with the same sudden theatricality with which she had appeared, leaving Gabriel to digest the invitation – or was it an order? – and the growing confusion that Seraphine Noctaria invariably caused him.

"Midnight… Courtyard of Shadows…" He repeated mentally, the tone of the message echoing in his mind. Chocolate, it was obvious, would be the "something sweet" to bring. He still had the intact bag, miraculously not confiscated by any magical creature or bizarre school incident. But just chocolates… would that be enough to appease Seraphine? And appease for what, exactly? What did she really want?

The Courtyard of Shadows… the name itself sounded uninviting. He tried to remember if he had ever passed by it, or if he even knew where it was exactly. The Arcane School of Luxflutuante was a labyrinth of mutable corridors and rooms with enigmatic purposes. Finding the Courtyard of Shadows would certainly be an adventure in itself. And a nighttime adventure, with Seraphine in the mix, rarely ended well for his sanity… or physical integrity.

A shiver ran down his spine. The image of Seraphine, under the Blood Moon, with her canines slightly elongated and that strange glint in her eyes, came back to haunt him. The "affectionate bite"… as she had called it. Affectionate for vampires, perhaps. For humans, it sounded more like the prelude to a blood drain… or worse.

He decided that, despite his fear, he couldn't simply ignore the invitation. After all, Seraphine wasn't the type to accept being ignored. And, to be honest with himself, a part of him – a very stupid part, he admitted – was curious. What did Seraphine want? Why did that invitation sound different? And there was also that strange feeling, a mixture of fear and… anticipation. Was it adrenaline? Or something more… complicated? Fay, with her unusual silence, had only made the situation even more… irresistibly worrying.

He sighed, resigned. Midnight. He had a few hours to prepare for whatever Seraphine had planned. Prepare… and maybe try to figure out where the hell that Courtyard of Shadows was. And, more importantly, how to survive that night without becoming, literally or figuratively, the main course.

With the bag of chocolates firmly grasped, Gabriel ventured through the corridors of the Arcane School of Luxflutuante, determined to find the mysterious Courtyard of Shadows. He started with the obvious: the school map that had been given to him on the first day. An intricate piece of parchment, full of arcane symbols and winding corridors that seemed to change configuration with every glance.

Locating the "Courtyard of Shadows" on the map proved to be as easy as deciphering alien hieroglyphs. Names like "Hall of Unstable Elements," "Library of Forgotten Whispers," and "Garden of Philosophical Gnomes" popped up in each section, but of the Courtyard of Shadows, no sign. He sighed, realizing he would have to resort to the traditional method: asking.

The first student he encountered was a slender elf, with pointed ears and flowing robes, concentrating on juggling small balls of fire that crackled in his hands.

"Excuse me?" Gabriel tried, approaching cautiously. "Do you know where the Courtyard of Shadows is?"

The elf raised his almond-shaped eyes, looking at Gabriel as if he were a particularly insignificant creature crawling on the ground. His flaming juggling faltered momentarily.

"The Courtyard of Shadows?" he repeated, with a drawn-out and disdainful tone. "Why would an insignificant human like you want to know about such a… dark place?"

"It's… a school assignment," Gabriel improvised, feeling ridiculous as he uttered the lie. "I need to… collect… rare herbs. For… a potion."

The elf narrowed his eyes, analyzing Gabriel from head to toe with an evaluating and unfriendly look.

"Rare herbs, huh? In the Courtyard of Shadows? You're in the wrong place, human. That place… is not for herbs. It's for…" He hesitated, as if the words were too heavy to be spoken. "… night things."

And, without further explanation, the elf returned his attention to the fireballs, completely ignoring Gabriel. The flames crackled more intensely, as if they too were warning Gabriel to stay away from the Courtyard of Shadows.

The next encounter was even less helpful. An amorphous, gelatinous creature, which crawled through a corridor pulsing with bioluminescent lights, only emitted an incomprehensible gurgling sound when Gabriel mentioned the name of the courtyard, before slithering through a crack in the wall and disappearing in a gelatinous blink.

The third attempt was with a group of teenage gargoyles, perched on real gargoyles that adorned the top of a gothic arch. They were conversing in grunts and guttural whistles, polishing their sharp claws with small pieces of pumice stone.

"Hey, excuse me? The Courtyard of Shadows…" Gabriel tried again, already with less hope.

The gargoyles stopped their activity, turning their stony and expressionless faces to Gabriel. Their red, empty eyes glowed faintly.

"Courtyard… of… Shadows…" one of the gargoyles repeated slowly, the voice dragged like the scraping of stones. "Place… not… good."

"Danger…" grunted another.

"Stay… away…" concluded the third, with a hissing whistle.

And, without further ado, the gargoyles returned to polishing their claws, leaving Gabriel with more questions than answers. "Night things… Not a good place… Danger… Stay away…" The general tone was worrying, to say the least.

Despite the veiled (and not-so-veiled) warnings, curiosity – and the inevitability of the encounter with Seraphine – propelled Gabriel to continue the search. Corridor after corridor, room after room, the Arcane School of Luxflutuante seemed to intentionally prevent him from finding the courtyard. The corridors changed direction without warning, doors disappeared or led to completely different places than expected, and the environment itself seemed to conspire to disorient him.

At one point, Gabriel realized he was walking in circles, repeatedly returning to the same circular hall, adorned with tapestries depicting grotesque battle scenes between angels and demons. The vaulted ceiling groaned softly, and the flickering light of magical torches cast shadows that danced like specters.

He took a deep breath, trying to stay calm. Getting lost in the Arcane School of Luxflutuante was starting to seem like a local sport. But the Courtyard of Shadows… remained a dark and unattainable enigma. Midnight was approaching, and Gabriel felt that, instead of finding the courtyard, the courtyard would find him. One way or another. And probably, in the worst possible way.

Gabriel's frustration grew with each labyrinthine corridor and sinister warning. He felt like he had been circling for too long, and midnight was fast approaching. He was almost giving up on finding the Courtyard of Shadows when he rounded an uncertain corner and heard a sound… unusual. A low murmur, interrupted by muffled giggles and the slight dragging of something… scaly?

Curious, and having nothing to lose, Gabriel peeked around the next corner. And he came across a… unexpected, and slightly embarrassing scene.

Lira, Seraphine's mermaid friend, was there. Not swimming in some magical fountain, as one would expect, but crawling along the stone floor with her long, iridescent fishtail, moving with surprising grace and a glint of determination in her eyes.

Beside her, a young centaur, of athletic build but with a decidedly… nerdy air, with round glasses and a worn-out book in his hands, now replaced by an improvised bouquet of colorful seaweed, some still dripping salt water, walked at a slow pace, accompanying her. They were holding hands, or rather, human hand and… hoof given in human hand, in a strange and endearing mixture of species.

And Lira, for the first time since Gabriel had met her, seemed… flushed and anxious. A delicate blush tinged her scaly cheeks, and her blue eyes darted shyly, but always returned to the centaur with a glint of delicacy.

Upon noticing Gabriel's presence, Lira didn't get scared. Instead, she straightened up a bit, adjusting her tail with an elegant movement and giving Gabriel a look that mixed defiance and… complicity?

"Gabriel!" Lira exclaimed, her voice firm, but with a subtle tremor of nervousness. "What… a coincidence! I didn't expect to find you… here."

"I'm… lost, actually," Gabriel admitted, feeling like an intruder, but also intrigued by the change in Lira's behavior. "I'm looking for the Courtyard of Shadows. Do you know where…"

Before he could finish the sentence, Lira took a deep breath and, with a radiant smile, turned to the centaur.

"Cornelius, my dear…" She began, her voice melodious and full of emotion. "This is Gabriel, a… colleague. Gabriel, this is Cornelius, the… the…" She hesitated for an instant, her eyes shining "…the most amazing, intelligent, and kind centaur I've ever met."

Cornelius, the centaur, blushed violently, his cheeks acquiring a reddish hue that matched the seaweed in his bouquet. He offered the bouquet to Lira, with a shy, but meaningful gesture.

"Lira…" He began, his voice deep and a little hoarse. "I… I know I'm not a merman, or a… a submarine prince… But… but I… I really like you. And… and I wanted to know… will you… will you go out with me?"

Lira let out a high-pitched squeal, but this time, not out of fright, but of pure joy. She took the bouquet of seaweed, inhaling the marine aroma with a sigh of happiness.

"Yes! Yes, Cornelius! A thousand times yes!" She replied, her eyes shining like pearls.

Then, completely ignoring Gabriel's presence (and the fact that she was on the floor), Lira leaned forward and kissed Cornelius, a quick but passionate kiss that made the centaur blush even more (if that was possible).

Gabriel, realizing he was in the way, cleared his throat awkwardly.

"Uh… congratulations, guys…" he murmured.

Lira and Cornelius finally separated, both with silly smiles on their faces.

"Oh, yes! Gabriel! The Courtyard!" Lira exclaimed, still euphoric. "I was going to show him the place, since the centaur has never seen it. It's… over there!" She pointed hastily with one hand to a dark and uninviting corridor, but this time, with an air of someone who is sharing a precious secret. "Yes, it's… straight ahead! Go straight and… you can't miss it! It's… right there! Good luck!"

Cornelius, still a little dazed by the kiss, nodded to Gabriel, now with a more confident smile, and offered him one of the seaweed from the bouquet.

"It's for good luck. Or, to ward off vampires. I don't know. It's just seaweed," he said, with a shrug.

Gabriel, feeling somewhat intrusive and slightly amused by the scene, hastily thanked Lira's vague indication, and hurried in the indicated direction. "Go straight and you can't miss it," she had said. In the Arcane School of Luxflutuante, "going straight" could mean anything from finding a shimmering brick wall to falling into an interdimensional portal to a dimension of mismatched socks.

Still, the corridor Lira had pointed to undeniably had an… ominous air. The stone walls absorbed the flickering light of the torches, leaving the environment immersed in an oppressive gloom. The air became colder, and a damp, earthy smell hung in the air, like the aroma of decomposing leaves and… something else, indistinctly… metallic?

As he advanced, the corridor began to slope gently downwards, turning into a steep and winding staircase. The sound of his footsteps echoed on the stone walls, amplified by the heavy silence of the environment. The feeling of descending into the depths of the earth became increasingly strong. And the apprehension, already considerable, increased with each step.

Finally, the staircase opened into a wider space. Gabriel hesitated at the entrance, his eyes adjusting to the relative darkness of the place. And then he saw.

He was in a garden… or something that remotely resembled a garden. But a garden under the unmistakable influence of the Arcane School of Luxflutuante. Twisted and skeletal trees rose towards the reddish sky of the Blood Moon, their bare branches resembling bony fingers grasping the firmament. Black thorn bushes spread across the stony ground, and pale, luminous flowers bloomed in ghostly patches in the gloom. And, strangest of all, a dense, greenish mist snaked across the ground, hovering like a spectral river between the macabre plants.

The Courtyard of Shadows. The name, for the first time, seemed to have an obvious and frightening meaning.

And, in the center of that decadent and beautiful garden in its own way, Gabriel saw Seraphine.

She wasn't on the ground, as any sane creature would expect to be in a garden. No. Seraphine Noctaria was upside down.

Literally.

Hanging from a dark and crumbling stone column, which rose like a gothic obelisk in the middle of the courtyard. Her elegant and slender silhouette defied gravity, her black dress fluttering like inverted wings, and her long, vibrant hair cascading to the misty ground. She looked like a nocturnal creature in perfect harmony with the sinister and magical environment of the Courtyard of Shadows. An elegant and deadly spider in its web of darkness. But there was something else. A slight tremor in her shoulders, almost imperceptible. And her lips… they moved silently, as if she were whispering to the Blood Moon, or perhaps… to herself.

And, seeing her like that, so incongruous and so… Seraphine, Gabriel couldn't help but let out a slight, nervous smile. At least, in a place like the Arcane School of Luxflutuante, finding Seraphine upside down was, in a way… normal. Within the bizarre, it was almost comforting.