The Lilliad Part 8 (sorry for extra notification)

“Lilli!” Elathor whispered. “Help!”

She held up her arms. 

“You’re the criminal element, here, I thought that was why you were coming!” Elathor whispered again, more frantic. “I’m a scholar! And I’m not supposed to be here! I was banned for life!”

‘Technically that makes you the criminal element in this situation, then. I got permission to enter the grounds, at least. I can always say I got lost trying to find a bathroom.’

“Who’s there? This area is restricted, based on rule E-178 of the Magician’s Guild! Come out now.” the voice was getting closer and closer. 

Lilli looked around- there was a crawl space under the stairs she could hide in, but there was nowhere that Elathor could fit. 

They made eye contact- and then Elathor stepped into the doorway, slowly.

She ducked behind him and slid into her hiding spot, hoping his robes helped obscure her from view. 

“Marpl?” Elathor called, “You sound worse than ever.”

“Not Marpl, Trelander, you fool.” The person obviously met Elathor in the doorway. 

There was another tense silence. “I thought they banned you from the College.”

“They did, they did.” Elathor said primly, claws behind his back. “I’m just here for my things. You know, my alembics, my notes…”

“Your illegal substances that got you banned from the College on punishment of imprisonment?” What she could now see was a very large man towered over Elathor’s thin figure and stepped forward.

Elathor stumbled back. “Surely that was all in jest- it would hardly be very genteel of you to imprison one of your own for their attempts to better the lives of the poor!”

The other man growled. As he stepped out into the hallway, Lilli could see that his robes were significantly more ornate than the other magicians she’d seen, covered in gems and made of thick, luxurious fabric. The large necklaces and ornate apron probably indicated some higher station. 

‘Oh, no. An authority.’

The man who had identified himself as Trelander stepped forward again. 

Elathor was obviously scared, but she held it together. Coming out now couldn’t possibly help him- but she wanted to. All she knew how to do was to stab things or sneak and steal- her interference would probably make the situation worse. She didn’t know any of these people and couldn’t feign enough knowledge to make it believable. 

“Your cures caused so much bodily harm to the men of this city that it took us years to sort it out!” The man bit out, raising a fist to shake it at Elathor. “You harmed the reputation of the College and mutilated the genitals of over one thousand men!”

“It was a pregnancy prevention treatment for women.” Elathor insisted. “As I said at my disciplinary hearing, it is relatively easy to regrow appendages, and they have that option. Those complaints should never have been heard. Also, if their wives wished to no longer have any children, perhaps these men should blame themselves for their lack of listening comprehension and being bad mates.”

“I’m going to enjoy throwing you into the dungeons.” Trelander growled, with a smile that sent a shiver down Lilli’s spine. “We have our own medical trials in which we’d like your assistance.”

Lilli had a bad feeling about that. 

“I’m happy to help your medical endeavors, and glad that the College is willing to see reason!” Elathor, evidently, did not. “Of course, you would not want to waste the talents of one of the best medical researchers to ever grace the College.”

“As a test subject.” Trelander snapped his fingers, and Elathor froze in place. He leaned forward and grinned again. “You should have never come back.”

“Ad trumin.” Elathor’s motionless body seemed to dissipate, drifting downwards through the floor. 

Trelander chuckled, looking down at the floor. 

“Iltheik momun.” He disappeared.

Leaving the door open. 

‘Go, now.’

She did, slipping through the open doorway and into the storage room. The fact that someone that important had been in there was a good sign. 

Lilli ducked into the shadows immediately, which was good because she could hear voices farther back. 

She avoided bumping into any of the terrifying-looking things under glass domes. 

‘I’m on the right track, though.’ She noted with a grim sense of satisfaction, as she stalked past a preserved ktharys corpse on a table. 

Lilli kept to the edges of the shelves, ducking under tables, working towards the voices. She still couldn’t quite make out what they were saying yet, though. 

She could see the outlines of two robed figures in the dim light of the cellar room. 

There was no one else around, so she ducked under a long table and crept forward, towards the pair. 

“-do you think Trelander will be back soon to finish the autopsy?” One high voice said. Maybe female?

The other huffed. “Depends on whether he remembers what he’s doing. He’s, like, five hundred years old.” This person sounded female, also, but in a husky, alto range.

There was a stomach-turning squelch from somewhere above her. Lilli winced, and didn’t move.

“What are we even hoping to gain from looking at another one of these, anyway? We’ve opened up over a dozen, and most of them aren’t varying outside of normal deviation.” The second magician said. The squelching continued. “Same fangs, same kill method, same magical traits. The only differences seem to be in the snout and eyes- as well as some minor changes in bone structure in the claws.”

“Those are significant changes!” The first voice said. “That’s the thing about the literature- ktharys don’t change. Never. Not in thousands of years. They come, they bring about a plague that dooms civilizations, and they go. Every time they reappear, they look exactly the same.”

The alto sighed. “Fine. You’re right.” There was a soft rustling of fabric, and the ting of metal implements touching each other. “Where was this corpse found, then? This is number ten, today.”

“Supreit.” The voice came out clipped. “It’s spreading. The Poureoin District is just gone. No one left there but the infected and the dead. The city guard will be closing it off soon and burning it.”

“How the hell are they going to do that without alerting anyone?” The voice sounded skeptical, and Lilli felt much the same. Burning over a thousand wooden homes was likely to attract attention.

“They’re doing it tomorrow during the Reklin festival, I guess.” There was a cutting sound, as a sharp object sliced through flesh. “I think they’re hoping the burning of effigies and fireworks and magic will distract people.”

Thick black blood oozed down through the cracks on the table, and landed on the floor. Lilli watched as it bubbled and fizzed, leaving a divot in the stone.

‘That stuff was all over my clothes.’ She thought idly. ‘No wonder I was in such horrible pain.’

“It’s important that we find out how to stop it, then.” The alto voice was no longer resentful, but professional and very blunt. “Hand me those bone-crackers, I need under the ribcage.”

‘Time to go, I think.’

Lilli crept out, watching mindfully for the man that had detained Elathor. But he didn’t come back. 

She now definitely knew that they would need to go to the Poureoin District- but her going there by herself would be useless. She needed Elathor to study the damn things. 

Plus, she didn’t really like the idea of leaving her new friend to be experimented on.

‘Shit, I guess I have to find the dungeon, then.’

Lilli had to go back out to the hallway and up the stairs- there were no stairs leading further down in the building. 

‘If I were a magician, where would I put my dungeon?’ She wondered, out in the sunlight and looking around. 

‘Probably a secured building. There might be traps, or at least guards. Not a building they allow the public into.’

With that in mind, she looked around the campus, avoiding the gaze of the guards out front. The clinic building was obviously not in contention. She’d just been in the library building, evidently. There was somewhere for housing, and a place where younger wizards filed in and out with books. Probably the actual academy. 

‘No, no, and no.’

Where did the older magicians hang out? It would probably be near them- somewhere secure. They wouldn’t trust new students around anywhere like that. 

Towards the back of the enclosed fortress, there was a surprisingly imposing-looking building. The path to get to it was odd. She had to repeat her steps multiple times, and go in odd patterns. 

‘Probably magic- runes or something?’

Whatever it was, she could feel a thrum beneath her feet, even through the soles of her new shoes. 

The door to the building was large and heavy. She wasn’t going to be able to open it. 

The ivy climbing the building was definitely an option for her, though. It wasn’t like she’d never climbed that before. 

‘Going farther up to go down seems counterintuitive, though.’ She grimaced, looking for anything else on the ground level. ‘No windows or grates for me to slip through?’ Lilli crept around towards the back side of the building. There weren’t any openings- but a window up a few floors seemed to be open. 

‘I guess that decides it.’ Looking around, it seemed like a better idea to get inside than to skulk around outside any longer. 

So she checked for any observers, then grabbed the nearest hunk of ivy embedded into the stone walls. 

The climbing took a long time- the ivy was old and well-established, though, so it was stable. Not like when she’d robbed that mansion earlier at all. 

She managed to get to the open window on the second floor and peered inside cautiously. It seemed to be an office and living space- with a magical garden in the center. It was big. 

‘Yikes. Ended up somewhere important.’

And there was a figure leaning over the desk on the other side of the room. Lilli shifted to the side of the window and looked around. 

There weren’t any other open windows that she could see. 

‘I don’t think Elathor can wait forever. I didn’t get the impression that that other magician liked him at all.’

She restrained the urge to sigh. Lilli didn’t want to make noise. 

So she checked the room again. Whoever was there hadn’t moved. They seemed to be reading. 

‘I think I have to take this chance.’

Lilli slipped over the sill and slunk immediately to the ground. There was a lot of junk in the room- trunks and boxes and bookshelves. If luck was with her, she’d be able to stay silent and out of sight until she made it out of the room. 

The door was past the figure, but it was already cracked open. Lilli crept across the stone floor, trying to stay on rugs as much as possible to dampen any noise. 

The figure didn’t move except to occasionally turn a large page in their book on the table. 

‘This is too easy.’ 

She felt suspicion curl up in her stomach. Lilli dropped farther to the floor and rolled under a bookshelf. 

A moment later, sparks of magic lit up the floor in a symphony of colors. It wavered around the room, sloshing around on the exposed areas of the floor like water. 

A leaf she’d evidently brought in with her turned to ash before her eyes. It crumbled away and disappeared, leaving no trace whatsoever. 

‘I think the only thing that’s saving me is that the spell isn’t set to sweep under the bookshelves. They probably don’t want to ruin their own stuff.’

Eyes wide, she watched the magic swirl around for over a minute before it receded between the stones and drained away. It had been so beautiful that she couldn’t have torn her eyes away before.

‘How often does that happen? I don’t think it was necessarily responding to me. That person hasn’t even moved. It might just be a security spell?’

It didn’t matter, really. 

‘I need to move faster.’

She rolled out from beneath the bookshelf and slithered towards the door, sliding past the person at the table with her breath held tight. 

They paused for a second. 

Lilli ducked down and stuck to the wall, right out the door and into a staircase. A dark one. 

Water dropped from somewhere high and fell, splashing on the dark stones. 

‘It seems like magicians don’t maintain their things that well.’ Lilli side-stepped the puddles, willing herself to have steady feet. Slipping could mean noise. ‘It might also be another trap.’

Looking down the seemingly endless staircase, she realized that noise wouldn’t necessarily be the worst thing that could happen if she slipped. 

‘That’s a very long way down, I think.’ She could hear noises, far-off and muffled by the walls. ‘I just hope this is the right building.’

She descended, step by step.