A Quest for the Stars

The fallout of Mr. Starflower’s arrest was more than anyone, including Lenoria, could have expected. Mr. Starflower was originally going to be sent to the school infirmary until he contacted the authorities to arrest Beau for attacking him. For such a delicate matter, a mage working for the police was brought in to cast a [Zone of Truth] spell to everyone involved. Lenoria was first, followed by Gabrielle. The police hesitated when it was Beau’s turn, for he towered over all of them. They somehow managed to summon the courage to question him and asked the ladies to wait in the courtyard.

Zone of Truth

School: Enchantment

Description: A 20-ft zone is altered with magic that forces anyone within to tell the truth. A Will saving throw negates the effect, but those who fail cannot lie.

Lastly was the headmaster, and he was forced to tell the truth to every question which in the end got him arrested. The screaming that followed, coupled with the injury Beau had given him, delayed his arrest when the pain was too much for him and he passed out. The trio remained in the courtyard and were asked by the police to stay in the school grounds until the order was given to be released. When the police got the full picture, they arrested the headmaster instead for instigating the situation and for reporting a crime falsely.

The headmaster was taken to a prison hospital to be treated for a damaged windpipe, classes were dismissed early (and for the next three months, for it was the last day of the semester), and Lenoria, Beau, and Gabrielle were detained by the police to explain what had happened.

In the brief amount of time Lenoria was alone, she knew it was time for a private chat with Pearl. “Ya mind telling me how Poe did all that?”

“I didn’t really explain the power of the Raven, did I?” Pearl paused for a moment to search for the right words. “Simply put, the Raven holds the power of fortune. You can bring misfortune to your foes and fortune to your allies.”

“Fortune? Like money?”

“Not what I meant, though I suppose wealth is one of the perks. I mean fortune as in good luck.”

“If it’s just bad luck, why did the headmaster act all weird? Wouldn’t bad luck have a more physical manifestation, like him falling down some stairs or something.”

“You subconsciously manifested your power to curse the headmaster. You know how it takes some effort to tell a good lie? All Poe did was befuddle him so that he’d have a harder time looking for the perfect way to word his lies. For this reason, his mind immediately defaulted to telling the truth since it was easier for him, even if it wasn’t in his best interest.”

“You said it was done subconsciously. How do I stop it from happening?”

“It’s simple. You need to learn to control your emotions towards other people. It’s okay to love or show anger to others, but wishing ill intent is how someone gets caught in the crossfire.” Pearl smiled. “Thankfully, the only casualty so far is someone who absolutely deserved it.”

“You’re telling me. Good riddance to that scoundrel.” Lenoria lied down under the shade of a nearby tree, her hands behind her head acting as a pillow. She pondered on her next move; if Gabrielle was an administrator of the Scholastic Guild, did it mean there was no job in the first place? She did tell the former headmaster that the deal was off, and if that was the case Starflower had managed to take away a great opportunity from her grasp.

“Are you having second thoughts?”

“Far from it. But I’m going to need some money if we’re traveling for some stones. And if I had to get a job to even have a chance to get a foot out of the country, we’ll definitely be here a while. This power of yours could affect potential bosses.”

“If it makes you feel any better, this power can only work on someone a single time. After that, it can’t affect them again.”

“That’s a relief, assuming my future boss survives whatever curse falls on them.” Lenoria sighed. “I just hope no one pushes me to that point.”

"There is one more power I need to go over. Since my master has tasked me with retrieving the Soulstones, I can absorb any that we collect. With this, we'll be able to activate the power of any Soulstone that we collect."

Lenoria promptly sat up at the mention of the Raven's second power. "No way! That sounds powerful!" She pictured herself using Aquila's power to shoot feathers at ravenous dragons.

"The power itself is limited in uses, but we'll get to that once you start gathering the stones." Pearl hovered to a branch of the tree when she spotted Gabrielle making her way to Lenoria.

“I admit Beau should have held back, but if it all goes well, they’ll let us go because he attacked out of self-defense.” Gabrielle proudly told Lenoria, who appeared unresponsive and just stared at the sky from her spot. “Is something wrong, Lenoria? If you’re worried about the school, I’ll see to it we hire a new headmaster before the next semester starts.”

“It’s not that,” the young girl said. “I always wanted to speak out against the headmaster, but he made sure no one was on my side. He threatened to fire anyone who ‘spoke out of turn’ so the instructors were always quiet, and he spread rumors about me so that the students would treat me like some outcast. And it’s not fair that he got arrested only after I graduated.”

Gabrielle sat down next to Lenoria. “How long has this been going on?”

“At least three years now.” The girl wiped a tear from her eye.

“If that was the case, why didn’t you report it?”

“Because he’d always tell me that the Scholastic Guild never listened to reports made by a single person. I needed at least a group of eight people to make a report, he’d always say.”

“W-we made that rule to avoid petty reports. I didn’t know-” Gabrielle shook her head. “No, there’s no excuse for making a rule like that. Starflower used it to torment you, didn’t he?”

Lenoria nodded.

“I am deeply sorry this happened to you, Lenoria. Since no one complained about him, we had no reason to investigate him until now. I was expecting to find some level of corruption, but not this much.”

Lenoria sniffled. “I-it’s fine. Beau said you guys came from Thule, so I know you can’t always be around.”

“Nevertheless, I’m part of the administrative team and I’m as responsible for this as they are. But if there’s anything I can promise, it’s that I’ll see to it that everyone who took part in Starflower’s lunacy is brought to justice. I’ll start with erasing Carpathia’s affiliation with the Guild; someone like him does not have a place here, and the best he can hope for is freelance work in prison.”

Gabrielle’s reassuring words helped Lenoria feel better. However, “Thank you, but it won’t undo everything he and the head-, I mean, former headmaster, did to me.” Lenoria sighed. “At least the girls can rest easy now, even if I couldn’t help them with the letter.”

“Maybe not with the letter, but you did help in a different way. It was because of you that I was able to confidently call him out.”

“How? I don’t think I did anything.”

“When Alistair saw how Carpathia was behaving towards you, he felt the need to report it to me after the Constable let him go. Before he told me, I was at a loss on what to do. I had enough faith in the Scholastic Guild to believe they would have weeded out any undesirables by the time of my arrival, and really thought the letter written by the students was just something that had been blown out of proportion. When Alistair gave me his report,” she said she shook her fist, “I was livid.”

“Oh.” There was disappointment in Lenoria’s voice. “Alistair got the ball rolling. That’s good.”

“He also told me you were there because a child cried for help.” Gabrielle smiled. “The way I see it, if you hadn’t made the conscious decision to help a child in need, I would still be undecided about what to do with Starflower. Think about it.”

Lenoria didn’t think about the incident too much. She and Clara heard a child cry out for help, and there was no way either girl would have left him alone. But after some thinking, the girl realized where she fell in this equation.

Without her, Clara wouldn’t have found Alistair, Thomas would have stayed out of the park, Alistair wouldn’t have set up Thomas or witnessed his cringeworthy behavior, and if none of those things had happened then Gabrielle wouldn’t have received a report on Thomas’s behavior. Without Alistair’s report, Gabrielle would have been uncertain and would have just as likely dismissed the allegations instead of responding to them.

A simple, yet heroic decision sparked a chain of events that ultimately led to the arrest of a headmaster who obstructed justice. Justice for Lenoria was brought to her by the domino effect that she herself had caused.

I’ll find a way. Lenoria’s promise to the headmaster that she’d have a hand in exposing him to the Scholastic Guild came true. Just not in the way she expected. “Oh, my gosh.”

“Don’t ever take yourself for granted ever again. Every decision we make has meaning, no matter how small. In the end, thanks to you, Starflower got his comeuppance.”

Just when she believed the world had given up on her, the girl found a reason to believe in the future. This stranger had no reason to help her, because like anyone else in the school, she could have contributed to her suffering. Instead, Gabrielle took the high road and went out of her way to spare Lenoria from further torment, even if she was four years too late. What would the Guild become now that the two worst people in the institution are gone and behind bars?

“I guess this means you don’t need me anymore, huh?”

“What gave you that idea? I still need your knowledge in robotics for the project I want to invest in.”

“You do?”

“Of course! Thule may not be a safe place for a young lady such as yourself, but we’ll offer payment and protection in exchange for flawless work. Think you can do that?”

“As long as gratuity is still on the table,” Lenoria joked, but was slightly surprised to see Gabrielle seriously considering her suggestion.

“Sounds like a deal to me,” Gabrielle said. “Let’s go over our terms and come up with a contract.”

“Okay!” If only Alistair was here, Lenoria would call it the perfect day. Oh, well. She had plenty of time to ask Gabrielle once business concluded.

***

Clara was disheartened to hear that class had ended early after the police had arrived at the Guild. Word spread like wildfire about the headmaster all in due thanks to the school’s nurse, the local gossipmonger. Some of the instructors cheered, the majority were saddened to hear about their headmaster’s fate, and the rest remained indifferent.

And the students? A group of them came to a single conclusion. Clara hid herself around a corner so they wouldn’t see her.

“Did ‘Lenoria the Tomboy’ do this?”

“I heard she strangled him without witnesses around!”

“She’s like eighty pounds! There’s no way she could overpower anybody! She probably had help.”

“Heard she got Thomas, too.”

“I heard about that! He’s supposed to be part of a mentor program next semester but now that spot’s vacant.”

Clara elected to leave the gaggle of boys to their gossip. The students had a habit of saying bad things about Lenoria, and after defending her for so long the elven girl realized she might as well had been talking to a wall. No one ever listened to her, except a few of the reasonable folks in the school.

“Let’s teach her a lesson! She’s gotta be alone!”

Clara stopped and listened in.

“Are you serious? My coin purse still tingles from the last time she kicked me!”

“And she graduated! This is our last chance to get payback!”

“I don’t know, if she got the headmaster, we could be next!”

“Bah,” taunted the leader, “you’re both as yellow as she is!”

“Think about it! We don’t have the headmaster’s protection anymore! We risk actual consequences if we do anything!”

The leader banged his fists on a locker. “So what are we supposed to do? If we don’t do something now, there goes our way of life next semester! We should send a message to let the rest of the dweeb population know things are staying the same!”

Clara looked away, seething. “What did Lenoria even do to deserve this? Jerks, all of them!” She suddenly heard the sound of objects falling on the ground. She looked in the direction of the bullies to see them surrounding a young man with downcast eyes. He wore a tan robe and cap, and his skin glistened with a rich spectrum of variants of an orange hue thanks to his lustrous scales. The leader had knocked the books he had been carrying.

“Right on cue, devil freak.” The leader greeted the newcomer with a punch to the chest. The gloomy boy gasped as the other bullies joined in, but he exhibited no other emotion. “Oooh, I’m so annoyed right now and you’re always a pleasure to see! Instead of Lenoria, I’ll take out my frustration on you!”

Clara knew him as Omar, a tiefling boy whose family hailed from across the northern sea and the only person in the Guild who possibly had it worse than Lenoria. While the boys and eventually the girls decided Lenoria wasn’t worth assaulting without losing a tooth, Omar had no way to defend himself and became the local punching bag in the short amount of time he’s been at the Guild.

Clara’s first instinct was to turn around and look for Lenoria, but she stopped herself after hearing the grunts Omar cried from each punch thrown at him. “I’m not allowed to summon on school grounds, and I can’t beat them in a brawl. What would Lenoria do?”

“Damn, you’re fun to torment! It’s your own fault for having that ugly face!” The leader pulled back his fist as it started to hurt from all the punching. “If Headmaster Starflower is gone, I don’t know when’s the next time I get to do this! I’m feeling merciful today, though, so just hold out for another hour!”

Omar's hood was pulled down by one of the other bullies, exposing his jet-black horns and a brown mullet. "You're as ugly as a goat!"

Another bully clasped Omar's horns tightly. "Got your horns!"

"Agh!" Omar's pained groans made Clara turn the other way. "T-those are sensitive!"

"Shut it, freak!" Another punch was delivered, this time to the face.

Clutching her staff, Clara emerged from her hiding place and was just about to scream something when the battered boy spit out a tooth and mumbled something too faint for Clara to hear.

“What’s that? Your pa’s the fiend, not your ma?” The leader taunted.

“I won’t let you…get away with this…anymore…” The bullies gasped when they noticed a black flask on Omar’s hand. It blinked with a red light, its speed going from slow to blinking rapidly. A hot, red flash engulfed the hallway as the orb broke apart to unleash a school-shattering KABOOM.

***

Dozens of students and instructors fled for their lives as a portion of the Artificers Guild began to burn. Lenoria and Gabrielle stood from their seats just as they were wrapping up the terms of their contract.

“Gabrielle, we have to get you to safety!” Beau grabbed his sister by the hand. “You too, Lenoria!”

“Lenoria, we have trouble!” Pearl grabbed Lenoria’s shoulder, startling the girl. “A Soulstone has revealed itself!”

“Already?” Lenoria glanced over at Beau and Gabrielle. She couldn’t speak to Pearl with them around.

“Meet me inside the school! Your friend is there, too!”

“Clara!” Lenoria nodded to the Bisset siblings and made her way towards the danger.

“Don’t go in there, Lenoria! It’s too dangerous,” Beau warned.

“My best friend is still in there! I have to save her!” Lenoria barely escaped Beau’s grasp and made her way inside the Guild. Pearl floated closely behind her. “I promised you would have my support during your confession! I’m not leaving you behind!”

Coming up next week: Clara's interlude and the next chapter, all in one day. Stay tuned.