Three-Way Standoff

When the great wolf descended from above, the leading apprentice almost wet himself. Never had he seen a creature so huge. For a moment there, he even thought that he was dreaming. Yet, the aching pain eating into the side of his face told him otherwise. This was no dream and he truly had found himself in a predicament.

If only he had taken the advice of the older apprentice and sat this one out, perhaps he wouldn't have found himself in this sort of trouble. If only he was able to suppress his desire for revenge. If only was he able to suppress his inferiority complex against Aileen.

He had known about the red-headed battlemage apprentice. He was at the entrance exam together with her. At that time, he thought that the girl that couldn't even manifest her Aether would fail. Yet, somehow she wound up becoming an apprentice to a respected battlemage master while he ended up as an apprentice to a no-name alchemist.

'Life was unfair,' so he thought back then, and ever since, he took to slacking off, doing only as little as he needed to in order to get by. He expected no rewards for his hard work and as such, he hardly bothered. Yet, this time, with his bottled-up grievances exploding from within his chest, he went the extra mile.

Now, standing there, faced with the great beast, it would appear that an inglorious death would be his lot.

"Screw you!" the leading apprentice yelled in defiance.

Salome was surprised that the alchemist apprentice did not falter before her beast, as did the other apprentices.

Reaching into his robe, the leading apprentice pulled out a glass vial. Contained within was what appeared to be a foul-colored liquid.

"Try me bitch! I'll take you all out!" he yelled again. "Do you know what's in this vial? Well neither do I! But I got it from my master and he said that if I smash this bottle, everything in the vicinity will be nothing but bones! So come on, give me your best shot! This Tobias Verner will see you in the depth of the Abyss!"

He was bluffing. His master gave him nothing and the vial was just a failed concoction that he was supposed to get rid of but forgot. The liquid would give off a foul smell when unsealed, but that was about it. His name was also not Tobias Verner.

The apprentice claiming to be Tobias Verner was simply sick and tired of being stepped all over by others who he perceived as spoiled brats who had everything handed to them.

***

Aileen was not supposed to be there on this day. While it was true that she was there to spy on Kalman's workshop, it was not originally supposed to be her.

As far as Aileen could tell, 'something' was happening in this city, something urgent enough that most of the most trusted battlemage apprentices had been moved from their original duties to deal with something unknown. This included those that were originally sent to monitor Kalman's workshop.

And so, replacing the trustworthy apprentices were those that were less capable, the reserve apprentices. Aileen was one of those reserved for such an occasion. Others were supposed to come with her as support, but they ditched her to go fool around elsewhere. They even threatened her to not tell a soul, lest she be further ostracized.

In the end, Aileen proved to be not very good at this job, evident in her getting caught on her very first day. One thing happened after another and she found herself cowering in a corner of an alleyway, caught in a confrontation between what she understood as a suicidal alchemist and a ruthless beast user. Even if she wished to take this chance to run away, she could not. The alleyway had only one entrance with a dead end further in. And Aileen was at the furthest end.

(Am I going to die here? Unable to accomplish anything. Unable to do anything. Am I just going to die like this?)

Desperate to find a way to escape, Aileen sought out any path she could find. Eventually, her eyes landed on the manhole in the ground, sealed by a stone cover. It was behind the alchemist apprentices that surrounded her, but they were currently distracted by the stare-down between Salome and the one who claimed to be Tobias.

If Aileen could only make it over there. If she could only tear open the heavy stone cover in time, perhaps she'll be able to escape this.

As Aileen contemplated her escape, her eyes caught movements most unusual. Within the manhole cover, there were holes that could be hooked onto to make it easier to remove. From that hole, she spotted a thread of Aether wrapped around a small orb. With a swing, the Aethereal thread smashed the orb against the ground with force, causing thick smoke to burst forth.

Every person other than Aileen present was surprised by the sudden smoke and began panicking, thinking that the one who named himself Tobias had smashed his supposedly deadly vial of poisonous substance.

Even Salome was panicking. Though she could clearly see the vial of foul-colored liquid in the right hand of 'Tobias', the thought that the vial was but a distraction crossed her mind, that he could have smashed the real vial while she was distracted by the decoy.

Sensing that Salome was fearing for her life through its crystalline horn, the great wolf instinctively grabbed her by her hood and sprinted away from the location before Salome could even protest.

Meanwhile, caught in the thick smoke and amidst the panicked cries of the other apprentices, Aileen remained still, unable to see a thing due to her lack of Aether-sense. However, even if she had them, it wouldn't help her, as the smoke had traces of fine Aethervoid sand within it, the same sand used to make Aethervoid glass, their Aether-phobic properties being used to disrupt the Aether-sense of mages caught within the smoke.

Then, suddenly, she felt a force dragging her upwards. Before she knew it, Aileen found herself high up in the air, over the factory buildings.

Letting out a yelp, Aileen shut her eyes once more out of fear, and when she felt that she was falling, she held in the urge to scream, feeling that it would only put her in more danger.

With her eyes tightly shut, Aileen expected to be splattered across the ground at any moment. Not even able to think about escaping, she could only pray for a painless death. But when her death did not come as soon as she expected it to, she opened her eyes only to be splashed with a face full of water. No, perhaps it would be more appropriate to say that she was dropped into the water face first.

Strangely, she did not feel pain, and when she struggled underwater with her thick robes, she found herself reaching the surface with surprising ease. It was as if a force was pushing her from below.

Upon reaching the water surface, she clung to a wall so that she might not sink back down and slowly made her way along the wall in pitch-blackness. Eventually, she found a set of stairs and climbed to safety.

As it turned out, she was dropped into a nearby canal, the one where alchemical wastes were often dumped. Luckily for her, the slimes had already cleaned up those wastes by this time.

Glad that she survived, Aileen did not bother to ask too many questions and hastily made her way back to her dorm, eager for warmth. Though it was still summer, the water was hardly warm. In Nix, it was chilly even in the middle of summer and all other seasons were cold. It became more so further up north one goes, and Lancea lay at the northernmost coast of Nix.

It was only much later did Aileen realize that she didn't even know what sent her flying. All she remembered what the vague sensation of someone carrying her.

***

End of Chapter 91

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