Page 32 of Messenger of Death
“We’ll join, too,” Morgana said.
A few upperclassmen agreed to join. It was so fucked up. Lola and the rest of them just decided it was my friends, but they didn’t volunteer to help figure out what happened to Elen and the other missing students.
And that mostly seemed to be becauseLoladidn’t want to volunteer.
Iknew I’d mostly been assigned Professor Kane’s research assistant, so she didn’t forget to eat and hydrate, pass out, hit her head, and die. I liked her already, but she took her job and research seriously. So did I, but I at least remembered to stop and eat and I also kept a Hydro flask with me so I didn’t get dehydrated.
“Ah, Kadeem. Welcome. Can you fetch that book off my desk for me?”
Professor Kane had called me about four different names since I TA’ed for her class and none of them were mine. I gave up correcting her after the third time. I figured she’d eventually get it right or see it written down. I just handed her the book.
“Have you come across anyone called the Forsaken Ones in your research?”
She looked up at me and pushed her glasses up her nose. I had her attention now. A new quest and new information to find.
“No, but tell me more.”
“We don’t know who is hurting students, but the familiars that know who it is have a geas and can’t talk about it. Alexios is Apollo, and he had his first prophecy. When the weather is changing from winter to summer, someone called the Forsaken Ones are going to do some nasty shit to the entire world. Sage thinks it’s related to whatever happened to Fairy, but we really don’t know.”
“Which one is Paige again?”
“Sage. She’s the Morrigan.”
“Then you should trust her instincts. The Morrigan can foretell doom. If Jade has a gut feeling about something, she’s probably right, even if you might not like what she has to say.”
“You aren’t wrong, but I still think we need to find out who the Forsaken Ones are.”
“Itcouldbe tied to my research project and answer several questions. I’ve long thought that the old gods aren’t actually gods. They are just really powerful magic users from another realm. Some of them came to our realm and liked being elevated as gods.
“I have several theories. One of them is that we haven’t been able to find a gateway to their world,butif the only way to get from their realm to ours was to go through Fairy, one of them could have destroyed Fairy to prevent more of them from leaving. It would explain why there haven’t been any new gods in a very long time, just reincarnations of the old ones.
“As far as I know the gateway to Fairy is still open, but it’s an instant death sentence if you try to go through it, so I still have alot of questions. I have another theory, but it’s not really relevant to what you are asking.”
“Someone said we don’t get reincarnated if we’re forgotten. Is that true?”
“As far as we know. They’ve found artefacts from ancient civilizations who never wrote anything down that they had gods, but we don’t have names for them. All reincarnations have the birthmark. If they don’t get snatched up by us, then another school or organization gets them. As far as I know, we’ve never ended up with a student who was someone we’ve never heard of.”
“From what I understand, familiars are eternal. They return when their person does. We have long life spans, but we aren’t immortal. This means there are people alive today who have had information about these Forsaken Ones passed down through generations because it sounds like someone tried really hard to erase them.”
“Good job, Kareem. I think they finally gave me an assistant I’m not going to fire after one day. The rest of them treated my research like I’m a batty old witch who is losing her mind.”
“Oh, I think your research is fascinating and I want to help.”
This was basically my dream job, and I got to do it to pay for my education. And I thought her research was important to figuring out where a lot of us came from. She’d probably be able to help us figure out a lot of this, too.
Pretty sure her other research assistants didn’t have a problem with her research. Maybe some of them did, and I was just kidding myself. A lot of them probably had the bigger problem with the fact that Professor Kane wasterriblewith names.
Ididn’t know what to expect when I reported for work study, but it certainly wasn’t having Radames working with me. I still couldn’t get a read on him. It wasn’t like Lola where there was just nothing there to get a read on. Radames was just so closed off, he wasn’t giving anything away.
He always looked like he was thinking really hard about something. Hopefully, it was the fact that Lola’s story kept changing. Some of the teachers kept putting her in her place, but I didn’t think anyone had explained compulsion to her.
We just stared at each other. We weren’t friends. Aside from the trials when they took Lola to separate her from Lucian after he gave her his blood, we hadn’t really talked much.
What were we supposed to say to each other? Radames was with Lola and I sided with the men she’d said hurt her. Iknewhow bad that looked. I wouldn’t be anywhere near Ivar, Ari, and Alexios if I didn’t believe them.
Headmaster Mykene breezed in and sat at her desk. She asked us to sit. Radames and I broke off our staring contest and took a seat.
“You might be wondering why I requested both of you. You’ve both picked a side, so you haven’t spoken much. You’re both children of clergy. It’s not unheard of, but it’s rare to get two of you at once. Sometimes, when this happens, students have trouble adjusting, and it takes them longer to figure out who they are.”
