Chapter 53

**Merianna**

We managed to arrive safely through the Council’s gate and divided the task of going around and seeing who was ready to meet with us in Noch’s office between us. Noch was going to go get Fog, Thyrion was begrudgingly going to get Nana Ara, and I was going to see if Nelia wanted to join as well. There was a low possibility that the Ga’s would join too, but with the way they were acting this time around, who knew what they’d say.

Arriving at the infirmary’s entrance I politely knocked and opened the door. Only to have a flurry of soft blonde hair assaulting my face and slender arms snaking around my middle, nearly squeezing the air out of me.

“Save me!” Nelia wailed up at me.

Glancing over her head into the room, I saw Helga, Hilda and Olga all staring at Nelia like she was fresh meat they didn’t want to let go of.

“Oh come now, it’s just a bit of memorising.” Helga said sweetly with a shrug.

“Right, it’s not like you haven’t done it before.” Olga agreed.

“We could use a memory transference spell I guess.” Hilda offered.

Nelia’s arms visibly crawled with goosebumps at that. She nimbly positioned herself behind me just as swiftly as she had run into me.

“No Way! Transferring 2000 years worth of medical knowledge from even one of you would already drive me mad! Not to mention ALL OF YOU!” Nelia vehemently defended herself.

Oh boy, I knew what a sudden onslaught of memories felt like already, and they were my own. The mere thought of having someone else’s memories invading my mind was enough to even give me the chills, it didn’t matter if the memories were carefully selected ones. I understood completely where Nelia was coming from.

“Sorry to disrupt your discussions, but I need to steal Nelia for a bit.” I smiled and quickly dipped my hands behind my back, making shooing motions out the door so we could slowly start backing out the room.

“What could possibly be more important than bestowing our only apprentice with all our collective knowledge?” Olga raised an eyebrow, clearly seeing that we were slowly crawling out the doors.

“Oh, quite a few things you know. Fate of the world and all that, so I will have to quickly hijack my sister for a little while.” After what I just saw, I wasn’t going to invite them to the meeting after all, but I stopped myself and then heaved a defeated sigh.

“Noch, Thyrion and I had just come back from the Council’s archives and are going to be discussing what we found with everyone that’s present. Would the three of you also like to join in?” Asking them to join in the meeting was almost painful. Though, it wasn’t more painful than Nelia’s fingers pinching my back.

The Ga’s all looked at each other for a second, then turned back to me. “We’re coming.”

I could almost hear Nelia’s silent scream of horror through the grip she had on my hands. Turning my face to Nelia I silently mouthed ‘sorry’ before I started leading them all to Noch’s office.

This was probably going to be a very interesting meeting with everyone crammed together in one little office space.

When we finally reached Noch’s office, he was already seated inside with Fog and making small talk. After Nelia and the Ga’s grabbed their seats Nana Ara strutted through the doorway with Thyrion looking slightly haggard behind her. I raised my eyebrow at him in question and he gave me a smile and shrug. Yep, that was all I needed to know. Nana Ara being her typical self whenever anyone interrupted her.

“Alright then! Now that everyone we were able to find in the vicinity is here, who would like to start sharing?” Noch asked sweetly.

“I think I might need to start sharing what I know.” Fog volunteered.

“It’s strange to think that whatever is going on with the Fae has anything to do with the strange going-ons that we have come across as of late, but I have found correlations.” Fog started with a tired sigh.

“From what I know myself, Fae netizens do not react the same way to changes in their environment like others do. Humans would never pick up on small changes in the energy around them, and just go about their days as normal. For psykicks, witches, and more of the energy dependant or sensitive individuals, they might pick up on it and merely think that they are feeling a bit off kilter.” He frowned and studied the floor for a bit.

“But for pure Fae who are created within and live within a certain set boundary for their entire lives, only occasionally leaving the safety of their birthplace, any small changes could have big consequences. Those fae that we’ve seen from what Hezerial had shared are a prime example of that. It seems they had essentially lost the ability to absorb and contain the pure energy of the Fae realm and had literally started to… for lack of better wording…rot away.”

“While still alive?” I asked. Just thinking back to that night they attacked me in my room gave me shivers.

“It’s very uncommon, I’ve never heard of such a case myself, but some of my senior connections were able to recall similar instances in the past.” Fog confirmed.

Now that I was thinking back on that night, it made me recall the smell that had come off from them that night. Not to mention the condition their skin had been in. “They really did look like they were rotting…certainly smelled like it.” I muttered.

Fog nodded in acknowledgement. “While delving through the sun slab I had received I also have reason to believe that the energy coming from the demon realm is the cause of it.”

“Well there is our link I suppose.” Noch sighed. “It seems like almost everything we have gathered is all going to link us back to those creatures.”

“So there is clearly something happening within the demon realm that is causing the energy to leak out into the other realms that are closest.” Thyrion suggested.

“And I bet it would be safe to assume that that asshole Dermon is in the centre of it all.” Noch grumbled.

“What is it that you guys found?” Nelia asked curiously.

“We stumbled across a few taboo texts that had pages ripped out of them. One was a tomb on summonings, and the other had to do with sacrifices and what you are able to summon from said sacrifices.” Noch summarized. “Other than that there wasn’t much else that was useful.”

“That’s… pretty underwhelming.” Nelia raised her eyebrow incredulously. “You guys were gone for so long.”

“And we combed through everything.” I muttered miserably.

“Oh so many books and parchments.” Noch muttered equally miserably.

“Were you guys able to figure out who or what he wants to summon? Or who or what needs to be sacrificed to summon whatever?” Nana Ara asked in disbelief.

“The only thing we can think of that that crazy bastard wants to summon is her.” Noch answered while pointing at me. “Or rather the deity that we know is bound to her soul.”

“And that is something we already knew when we went in looking for clues.” I groaned, not liking that I was at the centre of this entire thing.

“Well, hopefully the measures I have found will help to keep you safe while we try to catch that rancid bag of troll shit.” Nana Ara mused.

“What were you able to find Arasule?” Fog asked curiously.

“On my end I found some texts that explained similar methods and results to the kind of hold that Orbus guy was able to have on Meri.” She explained. “It seems that he was somehow able to cast a ‘soul bind’ of sorts on her. Though, how he was able to do that still boggles my mind. A spell like that would require a lot of preparation as well as something biological that belongs to the person you wish to affect, like a lock of hair or a good amount of blood while said person is still alive. And as far as we all know, none of us had ever met a person named Orbus, neither was he a part of the Fanatic Warlocks from the caves. Also there is the issue that Warlocks very very seldom tend to be able to reincarnate.”

“That’s quite true. Where the hell could that bastard ever have gotten hold of anything that belonged to Meri?” Nelia asked worriedly.

I heaved a sigh as the one theorie that could explain that just became more solid as I remembered an instance where I did indeed get injured enough to at least bleed and lose more than a few strands of hair. “I think it would be highly likely that Orbus is working with Dermon, or at least is being used by him.”

“What makes you think that?” Hilda asked curiously.

“Remember that fight that we had with the Fanatic Warlocks in the caves?” I hinted.

Thyrion, Noch, Nelia and Fog all let out understanding murmurs at that reminder. It wasn’t far-fetched to believe that my blood and hair could have been knowingly collected during my private scuffles with both Dermon and his demon buddies within those caves. At least I could say that I gave as good as I got.

“True, your blood and hair could easily have been collected while you were fighting Dermon during that time he whisked you away into the deeper caverns.” Noch agreed.

“Could that have been the reason then why he seemed to lay low afterwards? Got some materials to work with, and just slinked off to come up with a plan B?” I asked.

“Probably... Araule, is a spell like that transferable from the caster to another individual?” Fog wondered.

Nana Ara thought seriously about it for a minute. “In the documents I was able to dig up on spells like this, they didn’t mention anything about transferring the original spells over to another caster, but in a sense it could be possible yet extremely difficult.”

“So far that would be the best theory if we consider it all together. Any chances of the same spell being activated and succeeding again?” Noch mused thoughtfully.

Arasule shrugged. “After we broke the spell we probably broke all means to be able to cast the same thing again. You know how it goes with spells that use biological matter for casting. It usually all gets destroyed in the process in order for the spell to have a successful outcome.”

“I guess we’ll have to wait for Raska and Jasnine to come back with their information on Orbus before we can know for sure.” Thyrion sighed as he snaked his arms around my waist and hugged me tightly, nuzzling my neck in the process.

“Probably true. I wonder if they are doing alright.” I mused as I brushed my fingers over his cheek absentmindedly.

“Now that we have settled that, I have a question that doesn’t pertain to the current topic.” Fog folded his arms and glanced pointedly between Noch and me.

“What did WE do?!” Was Noch’s automatically defensive reply.

“What did you do indeed.” He deadpanned. “Care to explain why I have suddenly been receiving numerous fire messages as well as parchment mail inquiring if The Order is open to accepting trainees again?”

Noch and I both stared at Fog speechlessly as I felt Thyrion starting to shake against me as he tried to hold back laughter.

“Seriously?” I asked. Fog nodded.

“Wait, SERIOUSLY?!” Noch looked particularly baffled.

Fog sighed exasperatedly. “Yes, I am indeed being serious about this. Have a look for yourselves.” He waved his hand and a pile of letters suddenly plonked onto the coffee table between us.

Noch quickly leaned over and snatched a few up. With each one he opened and scanned over, his eyes got increasingly bigger and he seemed increasingly perplexed. “What on earth is this madness?” He muttered.

“That is what I would like to know.” Fog shot back.

Thyrion couldn’t hold it in any longer and burst out laughing so hard he snorted. “Your demonstration seemed to have done more than just knock them down a peg!!!” He chortled.

“I never saw this coming…” I felt positively shellshocked at this new development.

“Demonstration?” Fog asked like he was waiting for two kids to explain how they broke the house window while playing catch in the house when they knew better than to have done it in the first place.

“So… long story short.” I began hesitantly.

“A haughty Council member who was apparently teaching new methods of using magic pissed me off. We pegged our pupils to fight against each other, his student lost. He’s a sore loser, so I showed him exactly how far he could be thrown off his high horse.” Noch quipped.

“In front of a huge audience too.” I added helpfully.

“And you didn’t think to defuse the situation?” Fog pointedly asked Thyrion. Apparently he was supposed to be the responsible elder sibling that should have stopped the two reckless troublemakers.

He was still shaking with chuckles. “Why on earth should I stop something so priceless?”

Fog sighed dejectedly. “I would probably have to send out a general rejection to them all.”

“Why bother? Just don’t reply at all.” Noch huffed and threw the letters back on the pile. “No need to reply to each and every single one of them. Silence would be answer enough.”

There was really no fault in that logic. No answer to something like that was enough to send the hint loud and clear.

“KNOCK KNOCK!” Came a yell from behind the office door before it got kicked open and revealed a grinning Raska who was carrying a huge flax sack over her shoulder with Jasnine right behind her.

“You’re going to fix that door.” Noch said reflexively before he even looked over at them. When he did look over though, he looked surprised. “What in the gods names have you dragged in? I hope that is what I think it is.”

And that was when I noticed the feet that were very obviously sticking out the bottom end of the bag.