>>5813530“Hey!’ Zith-Zi protested. “What am I supposed to do?!”
“Stay here and watch Muffins,” you said, without turning back.
“WHAT?” she balked, “but Muffins hates me!”
Your three-headed chimera lifted two of his three heads, one regarding you and one regarding Zith-Zi.
“Just don’t let him bite off anything I can’t heal back,” you told her, and closed to door to muffle the cursing and carrying-on which thus resulted.
It had been weeks now since your return to the Tower—in truth, well over a month since even your meeting in the Mirror Maze with Izirina Henzler. You had at first told yourself (and Pearce, who stopped by to check up on you) that you would return shortly. You had said that you were just taking a few days to reacclimate. Then, you’d told yourself that you were too busy with the matter of Hershy’s well-being, and of keeping your promise to Zith-Zi… But in truth, that might have been an easier matter WITH the Tower’s resources and additional lessons than without. No, there was an underlying truth which you feared to speak aloud in private, let alone to the likes of Logan Pearce, who obviously missed you and was worried for you.
The truth was that you weren’t coming back. You couldn’t.
Part of it was the pain and anxiety which seized you when you thought of returning to classes with Izirina Henzler again. You couldn’t bare the thought of seeing her face and knowing that beneath her outward calm she was working towards those hidden and mysterious goals, walking that strange and eerie path which you could not follow. A part of you feared that, against your better judgement, you would be tempted to follow her.
The other part of it was to do with the Tower itself, with its history and (of course) its Archmage. You’d told Izirina that you had no intention to expose her family’s dark secrets, and that was true… But that didn’t mean they weren’t there. Even I you didn’t yet know the whole story, you knew enough: the Archmage was a wicked woman who had conspired with a race of sinister entities to her own enrichment, and in the process had indulged in forbidden living alchemy of human beings. That much seemed obvious. As someone who couldn’t even stomach the animal-mangling state of current Chimeric doctrines, how could you bring yourself to work and study under such a mage as she?
How ironic, then, that you now approach the Tower with the express purpose of meeting the Archmage herself.
“Tips?”