Chapter 77: More To Learn.
Richard stepped out of the theater with a frown. He had tossed the mask away, and was carrying the letter from his friend written in blood.
His eyes lazily scanned the outside of the Velvet Veil street. He looked over at the theater again, where the receptionist was busy dealing with a new influx of people.
A poster caught his eye. One with a moon, at the bottom, the costumes were credited a familiar name.
“Mrs. Frock…” Richard muttered her name and looked at the letter in his hands again. She was a good person. He didn’t need a reason to look out for good people.
Richard smiled to himself. He rushed ahead from his lane and flagged a carriage down.
“Oh!? Vice Principal?” The carriage driver, surprisingly enough, was Jackie again.
“Jackie!” Richard exclaimed. He handed him the letter in a rush. “Take this and give it to the Principal of the academy! Make sure it reaches him! I have to go help Ethan!”
“Did something happen to the professor?”
“No time to explain! Go!”
***
Loose threads dug into my skin. Splinters were stuck in my hair and grazed my face while shoe stamps were all over my clothes.
“He’s out cold…”
“What a bastard. We broke so many logs and he still isn’t bleeding.”
The voices of the masked men around me echoed. They had tied my hands, feet, and eyes and gagged my mouth with a thick cloth.
“What do we do with him?” Someone asked. It was the voice of the axe-wielder. “Why did we bring him here to this place?”
Someone else, a person who sounded like a smart-ass that would be pushing his glasses up as he spoke, spoke.
“We shouldn’t take a guy like this to our base. It will mess things up.”
Wait. Wait wait wait! That breaks the whole purpose! I only came here because I couldn’t figure out what they were signaling through the play. If they didn’t take me to their base—
“I see, that makes sense.”
Before I could even finish my train of thought, the rats grabbed me from both sides. They lifted me up high and threw me with all their might.
A distant ‘good riddance’ was all I heard as I tumbled toward the ground.
“Ow!”
A stone hit my head.
“Ack!”
I hit a stone.
“Bleh!”
I rolled down, smacking stones and being smacked by stones as gravity pulled me in its embrace. Dust wrapped around me and pebbles stuck in my lips.
Finally, a large boulder came in my way and broke my fall. Not today, mother earth.
I groaned and spat a mouthful of blood out as I tried to push myself up. The mana in this place was immense, infused in every breath.
“Where the hell…?”
The idea wasn’t as much a stroke of genius as I had expected it would be. Though, it had worked perfectly well the last time I used it.
A troop of demons had taken me in as a prisoner of war and that gave me more than enough knowledge about their organization to subdue them.
It was during a time when I didn’t have a good hold of my own mind. A dark time that I didn’t like to think about a lot.
The place around me was strange. The ground was slightly damp, it was a strange roughness on my palms. Moss?
“A place like this was in Glorenstein?” I muttered to myself as I sat up.
“This isn’t in Glorenstein, doofus.”
I heard a voice. Inside the cave.
There was someone else here.
I was still blindfolded, so I couldn’t see earlier, but the voice was unmistakable.
Maybe there was something to learn here.
“And who are you?” I said. “Who are you calling a doofus?”
“I am calling a doofus a doofus,” the voice answered. “Well, what can I say? I am stuck here too. If you’re a doofus then that makes me one as well.”
Maybe there was something to learn from being kidnapped after all.
“Why did they drop you here?” I asked.
“Why else if not for their crazy plan? Who in their right mind would accompany that bitch to lead a fight against the entire town.”
My eyes widened.
A fight against the whole town? Was something like that being signaled through the play?
“It’s all because of that one leading the Anti-Imperial Rebels.”
I froze.
“The crazy bitch Frock.”