Millennium Witch

Book 3: Chapter 230: Unease

Night fell again. The stars were veiled by clouds, letting through only a dim sheen. At the door of a somewhat secluded detached house in District Two, Lucia walked up the cobblestone path and knocked on the wooden door.After a moment, with thudding footsteps, the door opened. A blonde woman in an apron appeared. Fine lines showed at her eyes, yet her bearing was elegant, her face puzzled. “You are…?”

“Good evening, ma’am. I’m here for Anya. My name is Lucia. I’m her friend and a teammate at the Disciplinary Committee branch. She and I are scheduled to report to Beast Spirit College in District Four tonight,” Lucia said politely.

“Oh, you’re little Lucia? I’m her mother. Anya’s in the bath. Come in, quickly.” Mrs. Vida smiled warmly. “Anya often tells me about you. She says you are an unprecedented genius swordswoman.”

Soon, under Mrs. Vida’s enthusiastic welcome, Lucia stepped into Anya Vida’s home, a little nervous and a little curious.

It was her first visit. Until now they had always met and talked on campus, so there had been no need. With final exams wrapping up across the divisions and holidays ahead, there was no longer a fixed meeting point, which was why she had arranged to meet Anya at her home for the first time.

It was just as expected. Anya’s family was comfortably well-off, upper middle class among City of Truth locals.

Her father, Mr. Vida, had started out as a traveling merchant, buying ice-crystal flowers in the Snow Country and reselling them to the Academy of Truth. The Potions College could refine a substance called chill-marrow essence from those flowers. It was an excellent aid for ice-aspected magic cultivation. The only drawback was that overuse turned one’s hair blue. It was said each Ice Saintess of the Three Saints Church in every generation had blue hair for this reason.

Mr. Vida seemed to still be in that line of work. The household was usually only Mrs. Vida and her daughter, as it was today.

After brewing tea for Lucia, Mrs. Vida noticed her looking at a framed photo in the corner. She brought it to the living room table. “This is Anya when she was little. Different, right?”

Lucia nodded. The pink-haired girl was quite polished now, clearly someone who put serious work into her appearance. In the black-and-white photo, Anya looked about twelve or thirteen, like a tomboy making a face at the camera, and her hair was likely not pink.

She wondered what had happened between that tomboy in the photo and the girl she knew now.

“Anya likes you very much, little Lucia. I’ve heard her say more than once that you are how she looks in her dreams,” Mrs. Vida said with a wink.

That had to mean more than looks, or at least not looks alone.

Lucia felt a bit flustered and toyed with the violet-tipped ends of her hair. From entrance exams onward she had been called a super-genius whose strange talent raised the theoretical limit of human magic, but in her eyes all her real strength came from the witch’s selfless teaching. The praise felt undeserved.

Talking with elders was hard. She quickly changed the subject. After a while, she saw Anya at the top of the stairs, in academy uniform and slippers. Noticing the old photo on the table, Anya froze, looked at her mother, and said in a near-panic, “Why did you put my picture out again? I told you to put it away!”

“Oh, I forgot,” Mrs. Vida said.

Anya rolled her eyes hard, hurriedly grabbed her patrol gear, and all but dragged Lucia out the door. On the way to the subway she asked, a little embarrassed, “My mom didn’t say anything weird to you, did she?”

“No.” Lucia thought, as long as I don’t think it is weird, then nothing is weird.

Anya clearly did not buy it, but there was nothing she could do. Skipping past that topic, she and Lucia took the subway to District Four, then transferred to one of the district’s bipedal giant birds as transport and arrived at Beast Spirit College on its outskirts.

“Is Yvette coming?” Anya asked, a touch of concern in her voice. After the lifesaving rescue at the Blossom Street station, her fear of the witch had faded, replaced mostly by curiosity. She was not without sense; she usually kept her distance and watched from the shadows, although it did make her feel like a sneak.

Sometimes she wondered whether that so-called wraith was still on her. Otherwise why did it seem to have vanished, never appearing no matter how she called? The worry had lasted so long that for a time she had not dared to bathe, afraid it would see her. In the end she could not stand it and told herself, let it look if it wants, and finally she eased up.

She believed that since it was a wraith chosen by Yvette, it ought to have some manners. Otherwise it would not fit the witch’s cool, mysterious air.

She thought that if there was a chance someday, she must invite the witch to a bathhouse. Not for anything else, only to see whether the wraith would react with everyone in the bath together. She did not know what state a wraith was in, whether it had a mind, whether it was dead or alive, male or female. But if they all bathed together, the wraith could not very well peep at its own master. If Yvette did not mind, Anya would finally be at ease.

The Snow Country’s hot springs were famous. Her father ran caravans there year-round. When summer vacation arrived, it would be just right to ask Yvette, Lucia, and Flami whether they wanted a trip north. As she pictured future soaks in steaming baths, Anya’s mood lifted. Lucia answered, “Yvette will only come on the day of the festival. She says she doesn’t want spoilers.”

“I don’t want them either,” Anya sighed.

The truth was she just did not want to work.

The entrance to Beast Spirit College was a massive arch carved with entwined whales and squid, imagined portraits of the ultimate sea-beasts from the far Eastern Endless Sea and the Northern Bone-Spiral Sea. As Committee members went in and out, faint ripples appeared in the air at the gate.

That was the magic array at work. Without certain items like a Committee armband, you would be blocked and could not enter. Forcing your way through triggered an alarm.

Passing through the ripples and into the grounds, they found Flami already waiting. She walked over with a grin. “Rough night for everyone. We all drew the same shift.”

“Where is Senior Palea?”

“Day shift. She went back,” Flami said. “Come on, let’s check in with the instructors.”

After assignments from the staff, the on-duty Committee were split into pairs. Since Flami took electives here, she knew the grounds better. She and a male student from the college headed for the deeper beast-pen area. Lucia and Anya, unfamiliar with the layout, were assigned to the theory-building sector together.

Once the assignments were set, patrol began. Lucia and Anya moved up the teaching blocks, floor by floor.

At midnight the buildings were lit only by the bare minimum of magitech lamps, and the halls felt eerie. The classrooms were pitch black. Each time they opened a door, there was a moment before the lights came on. In that moment Anya went rigid and slipped behind Lucia by reflex.

The patrol lasted past midnight. After finishing the final building, Lucia and Anya looked down from the top floor and saw, not far away, a hand-lamp that should have belonged to a Committee member. In the darkness it suddenly winked out and was swallowed by the night.

They traded a look, hurried downstairs, and went to where the light had disappeared, only to find nothing.

Just then, Lucia heard a disturbance from the beast-pen area deep within the campus. Roars rose one after another, threaded with a strong unease.

A faint tang of blood hung in the air. She frowned and reached for her standard-issue sword. Anya cried out from beside a shrub. Lucia rushed over, pushed the foliage aside, and saw a body lying in the dim grass, a Disciplinary Committee armband on the sleeve.