When Cypher came to, Alvin was standing over him and slapping his cheeks lightly, a concerned look on his face. Cypher’s entire body felt like it was on fire, and he also noticed that all of his physical energy and Zight had been expended. Even most of his mental energy was gone.
He looked around confused as he struggled to sit up with Alvin’s help, “What… happened?” he asked.
Alvin only gave him a strange look, “I was hoping you could tell me. How did you find this place, and why am I here?”
The events of the day came back to Cypher in a sudden burst of pain and confusion. He remembered everything that had happened leading up to when the Order member had launched him through the mountainside, but after that, there was only a blank slate and fragments of memory.
Cypher did his best to explain what he could and when he finished, Alvin looked as though he too had just remembered something. Cypher opened his hands as he took notice of dull pain and saw that both his own Ark, as well as Alvin’s, had cut deeply into each of his palms.
This confused him even more and Alvin gasped as he saw the state of those two items. Their central gems were completely clear. That was an indication that their energies had been drained entirely, which as Alvin knew was not only difficult but almost impossible according to everything he knew.
An Ark could refill a Conductor’s entire Orrium in a short amount of time, but to do that, it had to have Zight of its own to pour into the Orrium. If an Ark ran dry, it was because it had been used multiple times and abused to the point that its gem would grow dim. But Alvin had never in his life seen an Ark so drained of energy that its gem was completely clear.
Confusion and panic surged through Alvin’s mind as he tried to determine what could have been responsible for such an occurrence. Nothing came to mind at the moment and so he turned to Cypher and, equally panicked said, “For now, I want you to forget all that occurred here this evening. You and I both know we aren’t supposed to be in here.
“I have no idea what might happen now… I’ll speak to the Headmaster and do what I can, but you need to stay close in case I need to contact you quickly. Your original room in the dormitories is still available, feel free to use that for the night but don’t return to Seven City, and do not leave the Academy grounds.
“I’ll inform the Headmaster of everything you just told me, so try to get some rest and if you run into anyone, say nothing of this. I don’t need to remind you of the consequences of entering this part of the castle, but something seriously troublesome has occurred here,” Alvin finished speaking, looking as though he was in deep thought.
“Yes sir,” Cypher replied as the full gravity of the situation hit him.
“Cypher,” called Alvin as he turned to leave, “I just wanted to say, before things get out of hand that I am grateful to you for following me down here. I’m not sure what exactly happened here aside from brief flashes, but I feel like you did us all a favor and stopped something truly terrible from happening here,”
Alvin offered a weak smile and Cypher returned the gesture before he stumbled out of the room and headed toward his old quarters.
Today had been one hell of an ordeal, Cypher had only wanted to talk with Alvin about his job, but had been instead wrapped up in a mess he wasn’t sure he could clean up easily. He had stopped The Order from summoning a great evil back into the world and quite possibly saved a country from another war, or so it had seemed.
But looking back, what bothered him most was how sure of his convictions Elder Fergus had seemed. Sure the guy was batshit crazy and Cypher was not about to start seeing the Order in a positive light, but uniting all the races? Creating a world where everyone had a say in matters? That didn’t seem too malicious to Cypher, not completely anyway. Though he was quite certain there was a much better way to go about doing that without reviving a dark God.
Furthermore, what about that strange power he had used? He could still feel some residue from that moment but something about it evaded his mind’s ability to grasp and understand. The answer was close, almost on the tip of his tongue but try as he might, he just couldn’t push through and find clarity.
This would certainly require a lot more thought, and he would also need more pieces to this puzzle before he could really say anything in particular. Alvin didn’t seem to know what Cypher was talking about as he recanted the story Elder Fergus had told him, and given his reaction, Cypher was sure that Alvin was telling the truth.
Cypher soon arrived at his old quarters and realized that he didn’t have his key, but that hardly mattered since the key worked by drawing upon the user’s mental energy. While it was true that Cypher’s mental energy was dangerously low, it was still more than enough to trigger the mechanism to open the door.
He walked inside and plopped down on the old couch and looked around. The room was still just as tidy and neat as he had left it, and it looked like nothing had been disturbed at all in the five years since his departure. He leaned his head back and yawned.
He had been rendered unconscious for who knows how long, but he still found that he was completely exhausted. After a few more minutes of lonely silence and contemplation, Cypher headed to the bathroom to take a nice hot bath.
He disrobed and stared at himself in the mirror. His black hair was ruffled and sticking out at odd angles, and his face was spotted with splotches of dirt, blood, and scratches from where he had traveled through the mountainside, except for around his bloodshot eyes, which was a little odd. He also noticed that his eyelashes had been burned almost completely off, and he shuddered as he thought about how filthy he was right now.
He quickly drew his bathwater and dropped himself into the refreshing warm water. He lay there in silence for a long time, just thinking about what had happened. It seemed crazy that he had survived when the situation had been so impossible.
Elder Fergus had effortlessly caught him off guard, and Cypher could tell he had to have been in the fourth rank in some capacity in order to pull that off. Not only that but Alvin had been snared by his spells as well. His mind had been completely taken over and his body manipulated against his will. But how had all of that ever happened in the first place?
Alvin wasn’t weak, or stupid. How had an Order member gotten into the Academy undetected, worked among the staff for years, and ultimately managed to take control of Alvin?
As impossible as it now seemed, the Elder had been working for the Order all this time, or at the very least, for a while now. Cypher was very confused about how that was even possible since Alvin had explained that the Elders often linked their minds to communicate easily. Speaking of, Elder Fergus had once been inside Cypher’s mind! At the time he hadn’t known much of anything but the fact that a member of the Order had been inside his mind was troubling.
For now, he could do nothing more than wait. Technically speaking, he had committed a serious crime. One that more often than not meant doom for Conductors. That area was off-limits for a reason, and after seeing it firsthand and hearing that strange tale from Elder Fergus, Cypher now had a better idea of why that was.
The bigger question Cypher had though, was where were all the other Elders? Where were the security guards? The headmaster? The odds that Sanctum was completely unguarded were slim to none. Cypher couldn’t imagine any other answer than that they too had either been attacked or distracted in some manner.
He shuddered, knowing that tomorrow was going to be quite a challenging day. Given the circumstances, he could be walking toward the end of his journey as a Conductor. He was resolved to not let it end that way, but if there was no getting around it, he would not put up a fight, nor run. He already had the Order as an enemy, he didn’t need the Academy as one as well.
He dried himself off with a quick spell as he rose from the bath, and put on a pair of cloth breeches before crawling into bed. There wasn’t anything he could do right now, so he got comfortable, closed his eyes, and entered his Athenaeum. The grey fog that usually filled the area as he drifted off to sleep soon expanded within the central room.
Cypher looked around through the dimly lit mental space and took note of how nicely it had expanded over the years. It was now as big as a small library in the real world and contained several rooms filled with various knowledge.
His spells no longer only took up space on an ethereal bookshelf, but now also manifested a form in some of the rooms now that now filled his mental space. Their effects sat atop pedestals and his lightning bolt spell, for example, took the form of stormclouds while his temporal spell took the form of swinging pendulums. Their movement was oddly soothing to watch as they swung back and forth.
Cypher enjoyed touring his Athenaeum and watching the various effects of the spells he had learned. But, for now, he allowed himself to drift into a long and well-deserved sleep while staring at those storm clouds, opting to deal with all of this tomorrow.
