Chapter 26

“Go ‘way,” Arthur said, surfacing reluctantly from dreams of velvet darkness and the smell of burning feathers.

“You are needed, Arthur,” Cadmarius’ slow voice came from outside his door. “The Headmaster wishes to speak with you.”

Arthur rolled his eyes, and flopped back onto his bed. He was bruised all over from the his fall from the balcony, and he hadn’t even gotten a drop of blood or a scrap of flesh to show for it. On top of that, the collar around his neck was beginning to chafe, whatever padding they’d put on the inside had been cheap, and was starting to peal away. And he wanted to sleep.

“If she wants to talk to me, she can come talk to me,” he mumbled. “Later.” He closed his eyes again, trying to will himself back to the furnace of heat that had been his castle. Not enough castles on Earth, and most of them were built in cold places.

Not that dreams of castles were all that interesting either. Couldn’t he have a sex dream or something? This body was pumped full of hormones, every time he sweated a brace of acne erupted from his skin, the least it could do was be a little more entertaining.

A hand shook his back. Arthur huffed, returning again to the awareness of his thin pillow. He rolled over. Cadmarius was standing over him.

Arthur pulled the blanket over his head. What did he care if the Headmaster wanted to see him? Teenagers needed their rest, or something. Arthur was literally a [Demon Lord], he didn’t get out of bed for anybody. There was absolutely nothing Cadmarius could say that was going to change his mind. If the Headmaster wanted to talk to him, she could come talk to him. At a decent, civilized hour.

“I made cookies,” Cadmarius said.

A Leader of Men is Close—Be Wary.

Jean Cooper was a [Physician], and looked like a [Barbarian]. Long blond hair tied in a pony tail, muscles bulging out of her soft white tee shirt, she wore shorts even though it was cold enough that Arthur wished he’d worn his coat by the time they reached her office.

She smiled when he walked in, revealing a gap in her front teeth, and nothing about her posture suggested anything other than an interested school teacher, albeit a very in shape one. And while [Physician] wasn’t all that common of a class for a returner, it was certainly not uncommon among the many worlds. As far as Arthur knew, she hadn’t even been a [Heroic Physician] on her other world.

But Arthur had never gotten that particular message from status before meeting her, and he’d sacked a fair number of kingdoms in his day, not to mention eaten a fair number of [Kings].

There were ways of hiding one’s true class from his appraisal, especially in its currently weakened state. [Cadmarius] of course was using one of them, but Arthur would bet every drop of blood in his body the headmaster was using another.

“Hi Arthur,” she said, as Arthur slumped into the barely padded chair in front of his desk and Cadmarius closed the door with a soft click. “How is your back doing?”

“Sablés,” Arthur snapped back. “Or I bail right now.”

Wordlessly, the Headmaster pushed a tin piled high with dark brown squares towards him.

Arthur picked the top one off the pile and bit into it with a ferocious snap of his jaws. His immediate reward was an intense chocolate flavor explosion inside his mouth. It was powerful enough he closed his eyes, and slowed down long enough to chew the first cookie thoroughly before swallowing.

“Can we talk now?” The Headmaster asked pleasantly.

Instead of answering, Arthur grabbed two more cookies and stuffed them into his mouth at the same time.

“Slowly, Arthur, slowly,” Cadmarius reproved, taking the chair next to his.

Arthur flipped him off, but took his time chewing again.

He picked up a fourth, broke it in half, and put into his mouth. “Alright,” he said, chewing with his mouth open, “what do you want?”

“Just your opinion,” the Headmaster said. “On the day’s events.”

“My opinion is your security sucks and so does your strategy,” Arthur said. “Also, that I deserve a body for not breaking my way out of this dumb collar by now. Pretty sure there’s four [Wizards] going to waste as we speak.”

“We don’t have many staff with expertise with [Angels],” the Headmaster continued as if Arthur hadn’t spoken. “I thought you might be willing to lend us your insights.”

“Right, because of course every [Demon Lord] must have been beaten at least once by some [Archangel],” Arthur said. “Way to stereotype your own students, Jean.”

“You have, haven’t you?”

“Well…yeah,” Arthur admitted. More than a few times. Flappy jerks. It didn’t really seem to matter what he was doing, either a [Hero] or an [Angel] always seemed to be around to make themselves a total nuisance. It was always worse when it was an [Angel] too, they tasted way worse. No meat on those bones.

“Do you think these mercenaries have an [Angel] on retainer?” Cadmarius asked.

“Probably not,” Arthur said, “if they did, they would have used it by now. That thing you vaporized was just some kind of obnoxious drone. And besides, it’s beneath their dignity. Now, if this was a holy crusade, then that would be different. It’s not, right?” He asked, as the Headmaster and Cadmarius exchanged glances .

“Not as far as we know,” the Headmaster said. “So in that case, they’ve just loaned tech to these adventurers?”

“Probably for a huge fee,” Arthur agreed, “no matter what world it is, making money is somehow never below an [Angels] dignity. Although,” he added, using his tongue to pry loose a delicious shard of chocolate from one of his bottom molars, “Usually it would cost more than what this kind of outfit could afford. So…either we’re underestimating the size of this group, or something is off.”

They exchanged glances again.

Arthur’s eyes narrowed. “Any chance this mercenary group wasn’t making some dumb mistake when they decided to turn our house into their next LARPing destination? You guys holding onto anything you maybe shouldn’t be?”

A long silence.

The headmaster sighed. “We’ve…been storing several [Angelic Blades] in one of the vaults in the Headmaster’s office for the past few months. I take it that’s the sort of thing that an [Angel] might get interested in?”

Arthur’s jaw dropped, precious crumbs fell out, tumbling over his bottom lip to be wasted on the floor forever. The angels were all tech freaks, and got really upset when you took their toys away from them. But that was as nothing to how they felt when you took something they actually valued. “You ignorant ding dongs,” he said. “You have an actual angel sword in the vault?”

“Well,” the Headmaster said evenly, “actually we have four. I’m guessing the person who gave them to us for safe keeping was not entirely honest about their value or…hmmm…traceability?”

Arthur whistled, “I don’t know about whether they’re traceable or not. That’s one of those things they like us to keep guessing about. In terms of value, yeah…yeah I’d say you’re holding onto things worth killing for. I wasn’t worried about an [Angel] bothering to come here personally just to deal with you boring apes, but I sure am now.”

The headmaster rubbed at her eyes. “Ok. I guess that means we need to consider changing our strategy a little. Is Night Patrol ready for a more aggressive role?”

Arthur munched on cookies, and wondered why it was they felt comfortable talking about strategy in his presence. He wasn’t interested in whatever Night Patrol was doing, he would never be trusted enough to participate. Not that he wanted to. Crossroads could burn to cinders for all he cared.

Well, he’d miss the cookies.

He tugged at the collar around his neck, and grimaced. Probably they weren’t worried about him overhearing things because they were confident they could hold him if they really had to.

It was a sobering thought, he’d thought they were being overconfident after he’d found it so easy to slip from his room at night. He hadn’t realized that had been something they were, at least tacitly, allowing him to do.

Sobering, and also infuriating.

“And I guess we’ll tell the first years, any that have three skills can volunteer,” the headmaster said. Arthur raised an eyebrow, that was going to cause a lot of trouble at their next training session. He was getting bored of being a human punching bag.

“Should we contact the other schools?”

“No.”

Maybe if he really hurt someone they would let him stop going. Something that would be hard to repair for the healers. Shattered hip bone, perhaps?

Cadmarius seemed to understand the direction of his thoughts, an occurrence which happened often enough it made Arthur wonder if he could actually read his mind. So far the infuriating chef had managed to evade all of his attempts to verify this.

“I will provide cookies at the end of each week if you don’t draw blood,” he said, then turned back to the headmaster.

Arthur squinted at him, wondering if chocolate was really worth all the trouble this was going to cause him. He considered the matter.

It was.

Barely.

“If that’s all, then we should probably get back to our patient queue.”

“Yes,” the headmaster sighed, “It’s going to be days before we get through the backlog. Why do adventurers always seem to generate the most casualties?”

She reached for one of the cookies as she stood, Arthur swiped the container from out of her reach and hugged to this chest.

They stared at each other for a moment, then the headmaster left without another word.

“Was that entirely necessary, Arthur?” Cadmarius asked.

Arthur shoveled another cookie into his mouth, and stepped out ahead of Cadmarius, walking back towards his dorm without another glance.

At least he’d learned something surprising tonight. Not that the school had angel swords, Arthur was never surprised when angels appeared to make a situation worse. It seemed to be their greatest power.

But that there were other schools like Crossroads, and that the headmaster didn’t like them…yes, that was properly surprising. Combined with the cookies, perhaps even worth a few hours’ lost sleep.