¤ Enough Hate

‘Hmm.’ Grendel peered down at the facsimile pages, scanning through Salmer’s account quickly. ‘Fascinating.’

‘Strange, isn’t it?’ Silver asked from the comfortable armchair she was sitting in, looking up from the open pages of her journal. Right after they finished reading the pages Solomon had sent them, Silver had dragged Jaysen, to his everlasting and loudly-proclaimed despair, all the way up to Grendel’s office in yet another lift pod ride, bursting with questions for the old wizard. ‘If Wing was aiming for the Fire Sentinel, why would the spell deflect to the girl?’

‘It would be logical. It might sound strange, but the girl seems to be in a condition of “greater memory loss”, relative to the Sentinel. It would be like the case of more heat going into colder objects, or that of how water always flows from the highest point to the lowest.’ Grendel explained, stroking his long grey beard as he thought. ‘Does that make sense to you?’

‘So the memory spell recognised the greater memory loss in the girl, and then worked to reverse it in her, preferring her over the Sentinel originally targeted?’ Silver continued, tapping her pen against her chin. ‘Yes, that sounds logical.’ She started to scribble in her journal.

‘You were always a fast learner, Silver.’ Grendel smiled proudly.

Silver laughed. ‘How else would I have caught your attention during my apprenticeship, great O Grendel?’

Jaysen finally felt well enough to speak up, and obeyed the urge to revenge himself on Silver for making him take the lift ride. ‘You would excuse me, sir, but I always had this impression that Lady Silver there somehow terrorised you into becoming her mentor.’

‘Ah, finally someone guesses at the terrible truth.’ Grendel chuckled. ‘I don’t suppose you know how to reverse the damage on my old brain that the torture caused, young man?’

‘Unfortunately not, Grendel sir. But you have my sympathies, sir.’ Jaysen said solemnly, returning the death glare that Silver shot him with a triumphant grin.

‘I’m terribly sorry, Grendel, but you will have to bear with the torture for a while longer.’ Silver decided to cut in now, before the situation got out of hand. ‘Ida said that you knew something about the spell that keeps her name unspeakable. Could you tell me more about how the spell works?’

‘Ah yes. The spell.’ Grendel leaned back in his chair behind his desk, his knobby fingers tapping the side of his nose as he thought. ‘It is actually more of a ritual with multiple stages. The first stage involves the severance of all ties the victim’s spirit has with this mortal plane, the second the magical binding of the victim’s memory and the third the confinement of both memory and spirit to a compressed space in the ethereal plane.’

‘Sounds… painful, Grendel sir.’ Jaysen contributed helpfully.

Grendel’s voice was as grave as his wrinkled face as he looked at Jaysen. ‘It is as painful as it sounds, young man. For the spell to succeed, the spellcaster needs to perform the incantation over the victim’s newly dead body, so that the victim’s spirit is completely unaware of and unable to fight the severance, binding and confinement.’

Newly dead. Grendel’s words hung in the silent room now. ‘So you will have to… kill the person to cast the spell?’ Silver knew the answer, but couldn’t stop herself from whispering the question in her disbelief.

Grendel nodded slowly. ‘The spellcaster needs a lot of hate to carry out the spell from its gory beginning to vindictive end. Enough hate to wish to wipe the existence of the victim completely off the face of this world.’

‘Who could hate her so much?’ Jaysen mused, looking over in Silver’s direction.

The huntress gave him a look of dry amusement. ‘You forgot Hedwig, haven’t you.’

‘Oh yeah.’ Jaysen scratched at his head through his Silver Identity’s cloth. ‘How could I forget Her Frigidness, especially after the time she tried to kill us by sending us to the Gardens of Darkness. Sure, I think she’s evil enough to have cast the spell.’

‘Then again, there’s Wing.’ Silver pondered aloud, tugging at her own silver curls. ‘The way he looked so angry when we asked him about you-know-who, things must not have gone well between her and Wing.’

‘The question is, how did what not go well?’

‘Who knows? Perhaps Salmer’s journal might tell us more.’ Silver shrugged, and looked down at her own journal, where she had scrawled the words ‘binding of spirit’. Something nagged at her, and she felt as if she had forgotten an important question that she wanted to ask Grendel.

Just then, Grendel spoke up again. ‘There is one other thing, Silver. I have studied the rare instances in which the spell was used, but I find something peculiar in this girl’s case. You are merely unable to speak the name of this girl, is it not?’

‘Yes.’ Silver nodded, a slight frown on her brow now. ‘You find something peculiar?’

‘Indeed. The spell, as I know it, not only bans the articulation of a name by all, but also erases the memory of the name from the minds of people who did not know the person before the spell was cast. The spell would also prevent the name from registering in said people, or even allowing the name to be recognised by them, whether in the verbal or the written form.’

‘But we can write, read and remember her name…’ Silver ran a finger along the black Drake leather of her glove, thinking. ‘Something went wrong with the spell?’

‘Spells of this nature usually wear off as time passes, but it seems impossible that the strength of the spell will wane within the mere space of half a century.’ Grendel reached for the staff leaning against his chair and stood up with a drawn-out breath, planting his staff firmly on the ground to support himself. He walked slowly out from behind the desk, stroking his floor-length beard. ‘So, there is reason to believe that the spellcaster could have made a mistake during the incantation. The memory of the girl is not bound as securely as it ought to have been, and the girl’s spirit might not have been contained properly.’

Binding of spirit. Silver looked down at her journal again, flipping the pages back to her prior entries about her dreams. A sudden thought came to her. ‘Then,’ she ventured tentatively, ‘Is there anyway we can get to the ethereal plane and contact the spirit?’

‘The portals to the ethereal plane aren’t tangible, child.’ Grendel said gently, as he examined a tall bookshelf from where he stood before it. ‘But it is possible that one can reach them through complex magical rituals. The occasional dreamer can also stumble upon a portal unwittingly, but that has been rarely recorded.’

Dreams again? Silver rubbed at the creases on her forehead, her head starting to ache a little. ‘If the spirit is slowly escaping its confinement, can it contact anyone on the mortal plane then?’

‘Only if there is a connection for it to follow.’ Grendel made a gesture, and a book floated down from a shelf that was just out of his reach. He turned to Silver, book hovering at his shoulder. ‘For example, it could be an anchor of sorts that can lead the spirit along to the mortal plane, like the calling of the spirit’s name. Or if the spirit has a strong enough will, it can fight its own way out of the ethereal plane.’

‘Either way, it is difficult, for both the spirit to escape the ethereal, and for us to reach past the mortal plane.’ Grendel waved the thick volume over to where Silver sat. ‘This might help you.’

Silver plucked the book gently out of the air, and took a look at its cover. She looked up at the old wizard immediately, all thoughts on her Project now chased away by incredulous surprise. ‘Can’t you continue to be serious for a few more minutes, Grendel?’ she scolded him as if scolding a child.

‘I am.’ Grendel put on an affronted expression that was somehow comical on his bearded, wrinkled face. ‘I am as serious as Master Solomon on this. You need to relax sometimes, Silver.’

‘Serious about what?’ Jaysen craned his neck to see what Silver had received from Grendel.

‘This.’ Only the bandit’s quick reflexes saved him from the fate of being thwaped in the face by the book Silver tossed to him as she unfolded herself from her armchair. She went over to Grendel’s desk to gather up the facsimile pages of Salmer’s journal. ‘Thank you so much anyway, Grendel, for your help. But I don’t think I need that book.’ She made a face at Grendel, before walking briskly out of the room.

‘Hey, wait for me! Don’t leave me lost in this maze, cruel lady!’ Jaysen stood up to chase after Silver, but not before taking a quick look at the book that had nearly flattened his face. Tooled in gold leaf on smooth, green Necki leather, the title of the book read, ‘One Thousand and One Maple Jokes for the Stressed’.

¤ Speculation

Back at floor seven, quarter three, section eleven, Silver continued to read through the books and scrolls there. Her journal lay open next to her on the table, together with the loose facsimile pages of Salmer’s journal. She was alone, Jaysen having no choice but to leave her. The bandit still had no idea how to navigate the complicated maze of corridors that made up the residential wings of the Ellinia Library and needed to follow Rei back to his room. Silver welcomed the solitude anyway; she didn’t mind having some time to herself right now.

Even as she scanned through pages of words and diagrams in the lamplight, her grey eyes were starting to tire, telling her that it had been a long day; the sun had set over Ellinia and the usual hush in the Library was falling into dead silence as librarians finished up their duties and retired to their living quarters for the night.

Silver pushed away the book she was reading and sighed. There was precious little information that she could find about the Academy or King Kranz and the next instalment of Salmer’s restored journal would most probably only be available the next day. All this meant that there was plenty of space for speculation, and speculated Silver did.

For one, what did the spell make Aurora remember about her past? Silver rifled through the facsimile pages to Aurora’s strange exclamation about herself being an Advisor. She had read up on the role of Advisors in the fairy court of Orbis, but other than one vaguely mentioned exception, it seemed like most of the fairies appointed to that position were fairy men of middle age by fairy reckoning. Was Aurora just hallucinating, her mind distorted by the rogue spell, or was it the truth?

And what did Aurora do that made her fall out with Wing and made Wing hate her so much? ‘Do you believe that someone, who would make use of someone who loves her and then plot his downfall and disgrace to gain success, can possibly be someone who does… great deeds?’ Wing’s harsh words rang in Silver’s mind. Salmer’s journal revealed that Wing and Aurora had been together; Wing must be referring to himself as the ‘someone’.

I know exactly how that feels. Silver sighed again, as she rested her head on the table, her forehead pressed against the black leather of the glove that concealed her scars. And if I’m so reluctant to even think about it, surely it would be more difficult to make Wing tell me about what happened.

Her eyes drooped, as weariness caught up with her now. Before she surrendered to the dark waves of sleep, her last thoughts were about her strange dreams and what Grendel had said about dreamers walking the ethereal plane. What if…?

A tall muscular figure in blue robes came into view, padding noiselessly to Silver’s side at where she slept at the table. The lamplight revealed it to be Brandon, his coal-black eyes glinting in the lamp’s warm glow. For a moment, he watched Silver sleep, her long silver curls spilling over her arms onto the table as her breathing deepened into the steady pattern of slumber. Then, he reached out a calloused hand to touch Silver’s right elbow gently; she flinched and shifted a little, but did not wake.

Settling himself down quietly on the chair next to her, Brandon watched Silver for a while more, to make sure she was asleep. ‘Just like the good old days, Silver. You and me, alone in the Library at night. Only, you were more awake and more… interesting back then, if you get what I mean.’ A small smile on his lips, Brandon picked up Silver’s journal from where she had left it on the table and started to read through it, learning everything that Silver had recorded about her current Project.

Once he finished reading, he shut the book with one hand, the satisfied smile on his lips becoming a little wider. ‘I’m disappointed though, dear Silver. Your Project doesn’t seem to have the same potential your last one had. At least it’s one less rival in the competition for me to worry about.’

‘Don’t worry though. I’ll still make an effort to get to you, Silver. You don’t know how beautiful you look when you are angry and upset all at the same time.’ Sliding the book back to its original position, Brandon stood up to go, his smile practically a smirk now. He leant down to Silver’s face, close enough to see every dark eyelash on her closed eyelids. ‘I wish I could see your reaction if you wake up now, and find me this close to you.’

As if she heard him, Silver shifted again, a frown appearing on her face.

‘But that wouldn’t be fun enough, would it. I’ll be seeing you soon then, my Silver.’ With that, Brandon finally left the sleeping girl alone, disappearing out of sight and into the shadows amongst the deserted shelves of floor seven, quarter three.

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^___________^ My Major Exams are OVER! I’M BACK! XD

That is, until my Major MAJOR exams come around.
Wait, what Major MAJOR exams? *whistles*

I’m working on another story now, already half-way through it, in fact, and I’m having too much fun to stop. It’s a Maple fanfic, but it’s a short story. Its softcopy is already up to five pages. Nowhere near the length of Aurora’s Redemption, of course, but it does present a conundrum.

Do I break the story up into a few chapters to post it, or just chuck the will-soon-be-roughly ten pages of words into one blog? The first sounds really strange, because a short story doesn’t usually have chapters, and the latter is only to cater to people who like to go ‘ZOMG LOLX long blogz sh0rt PL0X.’ And of course, to prevent my readers from getting headaches.

Guide me, almighty reader!

Since I’m in such a high mood, I want a chocolate-chip-choco-chunk-mocha-chip-almond-cream-hazelnut cookie~! *runs off to Maple*

[Edit] Changed the capitalisation error. Thanks, AlterofGod.