Ch 39 – Just when you think you have things under control, someone comes to pull the rug out from under you.

The bed had grown cold by the time I woke. My fingers reached out, as though searching for another warm body, only to not find one. Drowsy eyes peered open, and I gazed around the vaguely familiar room. Much to my annoyance, it was empty, barring the many plush decorations painting the room in reds, purples, and gold.

I winced as my hand began to ache again, despite now being mostly healed thanks to a potion from Lilis. I had to keep from moving it too much, or I’d risk fracturing the soft bones before they’d fully recovered.

We’d all slept in the bed together, except Galia, who’d left the moment she’d begun to feel marginally better. Her annoyance had been clear on her face as she marched out, though given all the noise we’d made while she was resting in the adjacent room, I couldn’t blame her.

I grumbled and rolled over. As though sensing that I was awake, a rolled magical scroll appeared before my tired eyes, hovering in the air with a faint, yellow glow. It unwound, revealing a short message. I immediately recognized the hand writing, and my eyes widened as a familiar dread swelled and threatened to consume me. With a gulp, I shot up and gripped the magical parchment in shaky hands.

Gellin,

My venture has concluded earlier than expected, and I’ll be arriving back at the estate late this evening. It has been a few weeks now since I’ve inquired into your studies. I expect you’ve made a great deal of progress and am looking forward to seeing your advancement with my own eyes. I’ll give your sister your regards.

See you soon,

Your father,Thayn Althon Zelian

As my gaze hovered over the last few lines, the lower right corner of the scroll began to blacken. I watched as the entire thing faded into ash from the bottom up, leaving just the dreaded pit of panic and self-hatred inside me as the only evidence it had existed in the first place.

On its face, it was an innocuous letter, but the meaning beneath was quite clear. He knew. There was no way in the three realms that he didn’t. He likely also knew about my deal with the healer to fix things, and he was telling me to stop dallying and get on with it. I could already hear my fathers upcoming words in my head.

How pathetic. To think that you would stoop so low. Can I even consider such a wretched existence to be my son anymore?

Assuming he deigned to speak the words at all. He would just as often express his condemnation and disappointment with his eyes alone. I couldn’t stop my hands from shaking as I imagined his gaze piercing into me.

That he would bother to message me at all was a good thing, though. Wasn’t it? It meant that he hadn’t fully abandoned me yet. Though the time in which I had to change back and resolve things was both limited and unknown. Given my father, I had very little. I needed to find the last ingredient for the potion yesterday. Finding it today would have to do.

If I could even pull it off.

There was little chance that I could stall him. I couldn’t send a magewrit back to attempt it, even if I wanted to. And chances were, the attempt would only lessen his thin patience further.

Was this it? Was I simply doomed to fail? I truthfully had little idea of where to find the strange flower that I needed for the potion. The fact that the healer couldn’t simply get one herself meant that it was likely quite rare. Sure, she claimed it was somewhere beneath the underhalls of the school, but what were the chances that I could actually find and acquire it? Especially within a mere day’s time. I was well and truly fucked. I’d dawdled, not putting my all into locating it, and now I would pay the price. Just what would my father ultimately do with me? Simply killing me would be too simple. I was sure that he would want me to suffer the consequences of my failure. Everything has a cost. Whatever torture he would come up with would be worse than anything that I could think up. Certainly worse than dropping me within the Elden Forest of Kaveln to be chased down and die at the claws of some horrid—

A hand gripped my shoulder and shook it. I squealed and flailed back onto the bed, falling off of it before jolting up to my feet as I prepared to defend myself.

“Ruby?”

Wild, unfocused eyes found my assailant. As heavy breath after heavy breath left my lungs, I realized that I’d begun hyperventilating. It only served to increase my panic, and I began frantically searching for an exit as I backed away.

“Ruby? Are you alright?”

Her hand reached out, and I flinched backwards, almost tripping over a red curtain that touched the floor. My back pressed against a window sill, and it was only then that I remembered where I was. When my gaze finally met hers, I realized it was Lilis standing in front of me, just off the side of the bed. Not some unknown assailant or assassin, and certainly not my father.

She hesitated to get closer, and I took several shuddering breaths, attempting to steady myself.

“I’m fine,” I lied.

She gave me a skeptical look. “What happened? I kept calling your name and you weren’t responding, just staring off into space. Did you…have a bad nightmare or something?”

I nodded. “Yeah, just a nightmare.”

Her expression made it clear that my words didn’t entirely convince her. Her left hand reached toward me, and I realized she was holding a large flask.

“Here, I managed to get you a flask of blood from the healer. Though she insists that I bring you by later to draw more blood from you.”

The scowl on her face indicated that their conversation hadn’t been pleasant. I nodded, giving a small word of thanks before twisting the lid of the flask and tilting it back to chug down half its contents.  It was unnaturally cold and stale but still brought a flush to my cheeks. Nothing like the blood from last night that gave quite the bubbly high, but perhaps that was for the best.

“You can talk to me, you know,” Lilis said after a moment. “About the nightmare or whatever it was that upset you.”

Her words brought my mind back to the present.

“Where are the other two?” I asked, hoping to bring attention further away from my sudden panic attack.

Such episodes weren’t something that happened often for me, though I supposed a situation like this warranted one. I feared what my father would do if I didn’t get my body fixed soon. Being disowned would be the least of my problems. This time, I stopped my thoughts before they were able to spiral further.

Lilis was once more giving me a look of concern, and I realized that the anxiety and fear must have shown on my face.

“They’ve both already left for class. Are you certain that you’re alright? Really, whatever it is, I can promise that I won’t judge. Talking about these sorts of things can help, you know.”

I hated just how on point she was, or more accurately, how much of an open book I’d become. Lilis knew that this was no mere nightmare I was dealing with, and she could probably guess at what the real problem was.

“Really, I’m fine,” I insisted, convincing neither of us.

The brown haired woman stared me in the eyes as though willing me to fess up and admit the lie for what it was. Then, finally, she relented.

“Well, if you’re certain that you’re feeling alright and don’t want to discuss it with me, we should get to class. I’d rather not be late, and we’re a bit short on time.”

I’d almost forgotten that I was supposed to share classes with her now thanks to the meddling of the provost. That was going to be a problem. As studious as I’d like to be, or rather, as much as I’d like to learn new spells, I had a bigger problem to deal with. Classes would have to wait. It wasn’t as though I could cast magic as I was, regardless. There was a chance that I could figure out how to cast again with this new body with the help of a professor, but such an endeavor would be pointless the moment I was my human self again.

Now I just needed to convince Lilis of this. I met her eyes, ready to explain my reasoning, only to find that her eyes had narrowed in suspicion at my obvious hesitation.

As my lips parted, Lilis crossed her arms, giving me a look.

— — —

“Oh come on, don’t pout about it. We’ll go after class.”

I gave Lilis my best glare, to which she just rolled her eyes. As we walked down the hall, all that I could do was fret, and my lack of a shower to rid myself of any smells of sex was the least of my worries. She claimed that they’d tried to wake me up, only for me to roll over and fall back to sleep. But simply sleeping in was minor compared to everything else. To think that I’d actually let her talk me into attending class with her. I felt like a spineless coward, too scared to stand my ground against her and do what I knew was the smart thing.

And as was usual, the annoying girl was insistent that she knew what was best.

“I know that you may not care about missing classes, but I do,” Lilis continued. “Professor Fell would use my absence as the excuse she needs to finally kick me from her class. I really can’t afford to miss it.”

It was a good argument. Or it would be if my future life and sanity weren’t on the line.

Perhaps convincing her would have gone smoother if I’d told her about the magewrit from my father. But I simply couldn’t bring myself to. Lilis didn’t realize just how limited my time was now. In fact, I’d only even vaguely explained just what I needed to find for the healer’s potion in the first place.

And like a complete fool, I’d let her convince me that waiting a few more hours to attend classes wouldn’t hurt things.

Sure, I knew deep down that I should just tell her everything. But talking about my father was…well, it was easier said than done. Each time I tried to open my mouth to tell her the full truth, my throat seemed to close up in complete terror. It took me a while to realize what the problem was. The issue wasn’t as simple as a mere fear of the man. No, it was that I was scared to admit that I was scared, as ironic as that was.

Each time I imagined it, an image of Lilis looking down on me with complete pity would come to mind. It meant admitting that I was flawed. That I was vulnerable in some way. Which I supposed I’d already done in other ways with her. But this was somehow different. It was like I expected her to look at me as my father would.

The revelation didn’t seem to help any.

Instead, I trudged along beside her, pretending that everything was fine when it so very much wasn’t. My swishing tail made my anxiety clear. Each person we encountered in the halls made me want to flinch backwards, as though around every corner I expected my father to appear and say he was taking me home.

Just as I was about to panic and run off, we arrived at the doors to her first class.

Lilis’s hand touched my back, causing me to jump in place as she gave me a pat.

“Just stick with me, and things will be fine, alright?” she said in a soft voice.

My eyes met hers and I saw the obvious concern within. She’d clearly misinterpreted what had me so anxious, and while I didn’t look forward to this, it wasn’t what had my skin crawling.

Rather than taking on my fears and just telling her, I nodded my head, like the pathetic coward that I was. Then we entered the classroom.