Aqua

Fairburrow spent the next hour marching around the square, forcing everyone back into their dorms. They’d called a full campus lockdown a few hours after that.

So naturally, Mary and I were about as far from our dorms as possible.

“I still don’t think this is a good idea, Princess.” Mary walked beside me, hands trembling as she held out a flickering lantern. “We could do this tomorrow…”

“And give whoever killed Isaac more time? This key isn’t going to find its own lock, Mary; that's up to us!”

She didn’t look convinced. “Though you could have picked somewhere a bit…” Mary flinched as a bit of drainage dripped down from the ceiling. “Cleaner.”

The basement of Call Hall wasn’t the cleanest place in the world. Overgrown weeds sprouted from every crack in the concrete, and suspiciously mold colored stains peeked out between vines.

“Do you think Isaac’s key unlocked something obvious? That’d be so boring.” Besides, he wouldn’t have bothered locking this in his desk if the door was easy to find.

“Yeah, but there's no proof that door’s here.”

“Well, it’s not been anywhere else.” We’d spent the last three hours combing every inch of Rathbone Hall, only to find absolutely nothing. “A secret room feels like it has to be in a place like this. Think about it, Mary. A hard to find basement in a random building, one filled to the brim with nobles? It’s the perfect hiding spot!

None of these stuffy nobles would make it past the first sight of poison ivy.

“I’m sure some of the basements in Everbit are like this too,” Mary said.

“Yeah, but we don’t have murdered princes and mysterious keys back home.” I sliced a nearby vine in half with a bit of ice. “Let me check this out real quick.”

I stopped right as the light illuminated another rusted door. “How many of these things have we tried to open at this point anyway?”

“Four hundred and thirty-six.”

“Ok I was not expecting you to know that, Mary.” But wow, that was a lot of doors.

I brushed away a bit of grime and stuffed it into the rusted lock. It clicked twice, refusing to budge. “Another bust.”

“Excuse me, four hundred and thirty-seven, Princess.”

“I want to strangle you.” I rolled my eyes. “But we're running out of doors. Eventually, one of these has to be right.”

“Maybe…” Mary didn’t look convinced. “We still have all of Durland Hall to look through, assuming Call ends up as a bust.”

“Well, that just means we got fewer places to comb through!” I sighed. Gods, I should've looked into how big these buildings were.

I’d seen big buildings before—I was a Princess, I lived in one—but at least those back home looked their size. This place didn’t look half as big as it felt, nor half as overwhelming.

“Where do you think the door is then?”

“I have no idea, Princess. But we’re wandering around blind.” Mary’s face stared straight at the ground.

“I still can’t believe he came down here every day.”

“I-If his lab was down here. We don’t have any proof of that.”

“No proof so far.” I countered. “You think Isaac would make it easy?. I just wish that the door was like, here! Gods, I wish I could just find it by placing my key against the wall.”

“Like magic?”

“Exactly! Isaac was a Varie, Mary. Like, imagine some combination that allowed me to just stick the key into the wall like this.”

I shoved my key into the wall.

Huh?

But instead of clashing against the concrete, it went straight through, leaving a faint golden glow. “Wait, what?”

“T-Try that again, Princess.” Even Mary sounded excited.

I pushed the key back into the wall. The exact same glow appeared.

“Hit something two inches in, but what kind of magic is this…” I pushed the key out and tried it again and again. It didn’t matter where on the wall. As long as it was solid, I got the same reaction every time.

“Can I see the key, Princess”

“Sure,” I tossed the key over toward her. “You got an idea or something?”

“Kind of…” Mary snatched the key midair with a vine and shoved it into a nearby lock. “Nothing.”

But when she pushed the key right into the door, it went straight through.

“I don’t think this key unlocks any door, Princess.” She stuck the key back into the concrete, letting that same golden glow out. “But… There's only one thing to do with a key, right?”

I grinned. “Twist it.”

The second she did, a poof of dust shot from the concrete wall, and a giant golden frame burst out from the vine-covered hallway.

With a gentle tap, the door slowly swung open with a slight creak. “I-I think this is it, Princess.”

“That it is.” I grinned. “You doubted me, Mary. I knew that we could do this on our own!”

“Because we got lucky…” Mary said.

But both of us knew that I’d won this one.

I smirked, and fully pushed the door open.

Inside could not have been more different from the abandoned basement. Moonlight shone through simple windows, and orange-powered lanterns hung at every corner.

Isaac’s lab wasn’t particularly massive. Three large worktables covered the center, piled up with old artifacts and ancient books that looked like they’d seen better days. “Well,“ I pushed my sleeves back. “Time to search."

“Wait—”

“It’s not going to just give us any answers, Mary.”

“But we don’t even know for sure if this is Isaac’s lab…” Mary stumbled over her words, but by the time she was done, I had already started to go through the nearest stack of books.

Luckily, the place proved itself to be Isaac’s pretty soon, and judging by the thin layer of dust that coated everything, it hadn’t been tampered with either.

“Results of color genetics, historical accounts of Prismas in pre-Vertana ages, it feels like the same kind of stuff that Arthur was looking into!” I was nearly jumping up and down like an excited child.

Though, the books actually here are a bit more… shocking with their titles.

“Princess,” Mary carefully pushed a few books aside and held up a tattered volume that had to be at least a few centuries old. “Look at this one.”

The Connections Between Parentage and Prisma Populations. “That’s a title all right! Pass it here.”

“Y-You want me to throw it?”

“Fine, I’ll be boring.” I sent a few vines her way. “But I’m shocked a book like that even exists in Vertana.”

“Do you know every book in Everbit’s royal library?” Mary very gingerly placed the book on my vines. “It probably got lost a few centuries ago.”

“Only to eventually fall in Isaac’s hands.” I tossed the book onto a nearby desk after glancing at the cover for a few seconds, much to Mary’s horror. “Same with all these gadgets.”

Stolen gadgets, most likely. I thought, running my finger over a glossy, colorful orb, the exact same type of color-identifying orb apparently stolen by Isaac.

There has to be enough gadgets in here to buy a small castle.

The actual gadgets were all hodgepodged together, ancient old relics mixed with new, shiny orbs with the packaging intact.

“Maybe Val was on the money. Why junk it all here?” I’d assumed he was pawning it all off.

“This is a lab. My guess is he was testing something?”

“Okay, but testing what, Mary?” I picked up a color analyzer at random and watched as the glass ball flickered to life with a pale white misty glow. It shifted colors, yellow first, then blue, before suddenly the surface burst into a rainbow. “Figures.”

The newer models didn’t bother to show Prismas, they just turned dark red and started to scream.

“Surely he had to have notes or a lab book—at least like a journal of sorts.” After all our searching, that was the one thing we couldn’t find. There were tons of priceless scanners, probably a thousand books, random bits of gold and jewelry scattered around, but almost nothing actually written by Isaac.

Only a discarded homework assignment with his name on it.

“If it's as dangerous as the rest of this stuff, it could be hidden, Princess.”

“Just as? I’m betting whatever he wrote blows past all this junk. And if I were hiding something that dangerous,” I swung myself under one of the workbenches. “Well, people typically don’t look in the obvious spots.”

Sure enough, built right into the desk, was a second monochrome lock. “Bingo.”

“What did you find?”

“Hidden compartment.” Mary slowly crawled under the desk just as I snapped the door open. “Another monochrome lock.”

“Another?” Mary eyed the lock as it swung open, revealing a small cavern with a single, well-worn notebook. “But Princess, how is that possible?”

“What do you mean?” I gently pulled the notebook out. Judging by the lack of dust on its cover, it’d been hidden away for a bit. “The locks here, I unlocked it.”

“But Princess…” Mary gripped her right arm. “Isaac was a Varie. If, well, it's pretty obvious that's his stuff, how did he unlock a monochrome lock, often enough to where he stored his notes in it?”

“He just—” Wait… How did he unlock it?

Obviously, the chance of him being a Prisma was slim at best. The Vertanian royal family hiding a Prisma? Fat chance. But clearly, he was locking and unlocking that pretty often…

I turned back toward Mary, and it was pretty clear that both of us came to the same conclusion.

“I don’t think we're looking for one person, Princess.”

“We're looking for two.” I slapped Isaac’s notebook on the table. As big of a reveal as that was, I had a strong feeling that was nothing compared to whatever Isaac had written.

Well, here it is. My heart beat like a drum.

There was a small part of me that kept going back to what Arthur said. It made absolutely zero sense, negative sense even, but there was a part of me that kept asking what if.

What if Isaac actually did hate Prismas; what if his declaration to me that day was actually a trap.

“Only one way to find out,” I whispered to myself, and opened the notebook.

Log one. Isaac’s neat handwriting covered the top third of the page, with hastily scribbled notes covering every inch of the rest. I skimmed down the page, past all the fluff and scientific technical terms that Val would make fun of me for not knowing.

The first round of genetic testing went well today. I used my own blood in a color transfuser to verify the results from a royal perspective. The data, albeit in limited quantities, backs up what little research I can find on the genetic transference of multi-colored traits.

I flipped a few pages. A log number, followed by the same scribbles, covered every page. Log fifteen, forty-five, one hundred and ninety-six.

Every page had more juicy information than the last, also. Log two hundred and forty-five. I finished translating our copy of the Pyrite Sea Scrolls today. At this point, every textual document older than two centuries is all in alignment, and the evidence of how Prismas should be viewed through a religious lens is unanimous. All agree that they are creations of the gods.

“Holy…” I refocused on the notebook. “If what this is saying is true—”

“This is heretical, Princess.”

“Gods…” An image of Isaac’s corpse flashed in my brain. “Isaac wasn’t lying to me after all.”

But that didn’t exactly lift the weight off my shoulders.

“Princess, keep reading.” Mary shoved her hand in front of mine and pointed towards a scribbled note at the bottom of log three-hundred and seven. “You need to read this.”

I followed her gaze. Even with more historical data, not a single source shares the modern interpretation that Prismas are unholy, which makes me wonder exactly how the Church arrived at its current conclusion. My data points are still limited, but it seems my family locked up these books for a reason. It is still early. Saying that, everything is pointing in a way that proves my hypothesis. Prismas are purely genetic.

That last line hit me like a brick.

The Church can never know we had these. Their modern-day ideology is based on the idea that Prismas aren’t natural, something that they must know is not backed up by scientific evidence…

His note trailed off there. “You have got to be kidding me.”

Arthur was off, so off. Isaac wasn’t ever interested in disproving Prismas.

He wanted to prove their existence as natural.

“This is insane!”

I don’t know what to feel…

My brain felt like someone had taken a sword, stabbed it through my skull, and mixed up everything into a soup. “This… This completely kills everything we knew, Mary! If the Church even knows this is wrong, then there's a world where, if we can fix the Church, then I wouldn’t have to hide! It’s—”

Mary cut me off with a finger to her lips. “Listen.”

“I…” It took a lot of restraint to force my mouth shut. Mary wasn’t the type to do this for giggles.

It took ten seconds for her to be proven right, when the faint sound of footsteps echoed through the door.

“What do we do, Princess?” Mary frantically glanced around the room. There weren't any spare lockers, doors to hide behind, or even any inconspicuous corners. We could hide under the table and get spotted in ten seconds.

“Gods, this place doesn’t have any spots, does it?” My mind raced. They could burst in here any second.

There was also a good chance they wouldn’t find this place at all.

I didn’t wanna risk it.

“Ok, stand still, Mary.”

“What are you—” She gasped as purple mist sprang up from the ground. “P-Purple, are you sure?”

“We don’t have another option," I snapped back. “Do you have any better ideas?”

What to do with it… I hadn’t thought this far ahead. We need a hiding place. A drawer? No, too obvious. Another research table is way too complicated. A filing cabinet? No, I’d find a way to screw that up somehow.

“Ok follow me.”

“Follow you where—” I grabbed Mary’s wrist and ran toward the corner nearest the door. If everything in the lab’s too complicated, I’ll just have to become the lab.

A shimmering wall covered us as I imagined the purple jutting out. Surely I can do a wall. A stupidly simple, plain wall!

It hurt to admit, but a wall was around my limit. At least I could typically get that done in practice.

Typically.

But this time, I was able to breathe a sigh of relief as the purple solidified.

“Just in the nick of time too…” I muttered. The literal second that I finished, voices came from somewhere beyond the door. Male, both gruff and hardened.

Followed by the splintering of wood as they smashed straight through the door. “Found it!”

The first of the two men stepped through, a muscular brute dressed in a set of Church robes one size too small. A red glow came from his very bald head, though the way he gripped his fists gave his color away by itself.

My eyes met Mary’s, as both of us froze.

They must have gotten wind of Isaac’s research. I glanced down toward Isaac’s notebook in my hand. If they had arrived a few seconds later, we wouldn’t be the ones holding this.

“Try not to destroy the wall too much, Bruce, we're here unofficially.” The second man, a thin, nasally stick of a person, followed the first with a blob of darkness on his fingertips.

“Do you have a plan to get us out of here?” I whispered.

“I-I thought you had one, Princess.”

“I honestly didn’t think we would get this far.” As confident as I was in beating them if a fight broke out, I was infinitely less confident in simply moving my purple barrier a bit.

“Marco,” The brute, Bruce, stumbled over to the desk. “We're not the first ones here.”

“Preposterous. Do you know how hard this place was to find?”

“Dust,” I mentally cursed as Bruce ran his finger over the desk. “There’s fresh fingerprints.”

Marco, the nasally one, glided over with a look on his face that said he didn’t believe a word of it. “Most likely just an animal. We’re here for the research, we can worry about anything missing later.”

“Don’t blame me when we get yelled at.” The brute pulled a sack from his pocket, sighed, and started to shovel in whatever he could fit.

So much for me treating that stuff carefully.

“Maybe they’ll just leave?” I muttered.

But five minutes later, they were still finding stuff to shovel in the pack. “Ok, I got an idea.”

“What is it?” Mary’s voice was calm as ever.

“Let’s just make a run for it.”

“Wha—”

“You just hop in my arms, and I use a bit of white to blast us out of here. A black magic user isn’t catching up with me in a million years.”

“Me… in your arms…” Mary’s face turned a bright red for whatever reason.

“You got a better idea?”

“N-No.”

“Ok, then the second they both turn away, we go.”

I tiptoed toward the edge of my barrier. Neither of the Church grunts had bothered to do anything more than a quick look around the room, why bother when they could shovel all Isaac’s stuff in their bags like starving hogs.

Not until the brute randomly decided to look in our direction.

Causing his face to turn white as a sheet. “M-M-Monster!”

What?

“Stop blabbering and finish up.”

“B-But, Marco, look!”

“Screw it.” I summoned a giant vine from the floor. “We’re a monster, and the monsters I know don’t hold back.”

“Wait—” Marco’s voice fell flat as my vine smashed him straight through the wooden floor.

“Let’s go!” I swooped Mary off her feet and let light course through my legs. What the hell are they seeing through my purple?

But I never got an answer to that as Mary summoned a second vine under Bruce, sending him straight down to join Marco.

With that, we dashed off through the open door. I didn’t have any idea where we were, but whatever was outside had to have been safer than here.