Welldark B1 Ch. 05

She shifted besides me, pulled a knee in so it didn't poke into my leg. Ever so slightly, she leaned towards me. A tiny smile played around her lips and was gone as quickly as it came. I let out a very long breath as stress was expunged from every fibre of my being.

No permanent damage to our relationship had been caused. She was still clearly willing to be around me, to let me be by her side and to push her here and there. From that base, I could mend the cracks that had formed. Like a broken bone, I would make sure it would come back together stronger than before.

I was too happy with what I had to push it any further. Just feeling her warmth was enough for me at the moment. Letting her acclimate to my presence, hopefully reminding her of all my good qualities, was a good first step. The silence seemed inviting now. Inviting to close my eyes and direct some attention inwards. I failed to remain there for more than two minutes at a time. I had to gorge myself more on Esther's sight. That appetite just couldn't be satiated. Every so often, I caught the lady of my desires looking at me. She was going through the same circles of introspection and observance.

Punctual to the second, the teacher for this class entered. I had felt that Esther's eyes were little suns earlier. Although I found hers much prettier, I had to admit that his deserved that metaphor more. Their colour was a genuine gold and the magic his entire body radiated created genuine light in his irises. He was a bit taller than me, but a bit shorter than the crocodile fellow. His build was moderate - well-maintained but not bulky. Although there was a chance he was slimmer than he appeared to be, under his clothes.

He wore an odd mixture between oriental robe and suit. A dark grey overcoat with loose sleeves hung over a purple top that was closed like a robe by a thick belt. A fair bit of muscle and collarbone was visible in the gap above. It ended below the waist. A pair of dark suit pants and darker shoes covered his legs and feet.

Everywhere on his clothes hung little decorations and items. Charms, ornaments, pins and medals were scattered all over his chest and hung from his belt. A golden necklace and earrings were particularly noticeable. His brown hair was lazily combed back, giving it enough structure to look styled, but not more than that.

The man exuded magic like normal people did moisture.

"'Sup," he casually greeted all of us with a raised hand. His every step and motion caused a series of sounds from the dangling charms clacking together. The supernatural voice suppression didn't affect him in the slightest. "I am Omnius Magnari, Branchmaster of the 11th discipline of Welldark: Magic."

I blinked a few times. 'Was the Master of Magic supposed to teach this class?' I asked myself. Next to me, Esther wrinkled her forehead. Similar reactions were seen all over the room. I wasn't alone in my confusion, at least.

Omnius swiftly ignored all of that and continued on, "In this class you might find things that will leave you perplexed, but you will have to live with it." He arrived in the middle of the room and ran small circles around the ashen centre, looking at everyone as he spoke. "The alternatives aren't exactly pleasant. Neophytes like you tend to think that the Dimensional Truth is only a blessing. The Neverborne among you may have a better idea about the complexities, but even you will fail to grasp the entire reality of what we are in contact with. That is, for the time being, at least. NOW!" His voice was like a whiplash that caused all hands that had been slowly raised to ask a question to be lowered again. "Situate yourself to be as comfortable as you can be. Sit relaxed, maybe slump your back a little, make it a posture you can keep for at least twenty minutes without moving."

He looked around as people shoved aside their confusion to hastily obey. I didn't move. A more comfortable place couldn't exist in the universe, at least not when it came to sitting. For a moment, it seemed Esther disagreed. Then I realized that she was just shifting from cross-legged, to kneeling. The consequence was that we were a little closer and her thigh brushed against mine. I caught a pleased look on her face afterwards.

Omnius looked around. Everyone else had distanced themselves from one another, seeking a form of isolation. His gaze stopped at us for a moment. Then he smiled ever so slightly and pulled a tiny bell out of his left sleeve. Shaking it, he created a ring. Not the soft, high sound one would expect of such a small thing, but the deep, full bellowing of a church bell. I could feel the noise reverberate in my lungs and my teeth, before it was devoured by the walls. It vanished as if a string had been cut.

"Good, close your eyes," he said and we all did. "Just relax. Think about the happenings of the day and let go of them. Be at ease." Music started to play, a relaxing tune without much intricacies to it. "Today, just meditate. Next week, everything will start in earnest and then you won't have this hour to resolve the things you must."

It did feel like he was talking directly to me.

________________________________________

The class came to an end way too quickly. I was relaxing, relishing in my drifting thoughts and the limited contact I had with my desired lady, when the music the Master of Magic supplied suddenly stopped. Somewhat unwillingly, I rose from my trance. The process was familiar to me, similar to how I roused from sleep every morning, albeit without the pull of tiredness. Meditation, like lucid dreaming, had always come easily to me.

I opened one eye halfway, not wanting to awaken too much and become unable to slide back into the trance. When I realized Omnius was simply gone, I blinked my way to full consciousness.

'Some teachers here have odd habits,' I thought and looked around. Nobody else had surfaced from their meditation yet. Not even Esther. Especially not Esther, as I found out over the next ten minutes. While more and more people rose from their trance, she just continued to sit there. She was deeply relaxed and showed no signs of waking soon. People started leaving, since there was no teacher around to tell them otherwise. Eventually, only the two of us were left behind.

Of course, I did consider shaking her or employing other hands-on means of rousing her. However, I was much too happy to keep enjoying our current closeness. The look on her face was so tranquil, freed from her usual discipline, that I pushed off ending her meditation for as long as possible. Not like we had to be in any hurry. After this class was our lunch break.

'Maybe I should try to implant some hypnotic suggestions, mhm?' my perverted self hummed into my thoughts. 'Not that that would do any good,' the reasonable part of me added, 'hypnotism can't make people do anything they wouldn't normally.' My monologue continued on with, 'There are some things that she let me do in the past that I wouldn't mind repeating...'

The want to implant a hypnotic suggestion that went along the lines off 'you want me to touch your boobs' was as basic as it was potent. Regardless of what my dick thought was the best course of action, I remained sitting still. If she had trances this deep through simple meditation then I might get what I wanted without any underhanded attempts. All I needed was to stay in her good graces and start the relationship properly.

Movement behind her closed lids clued me in that she was finally starting to stir. "Esther?" I carefully whispered into her ear. "My lady?" Almost, I could have nibbled on her earlobe. Her dark, finely swung eyebrows quivered a bit. Then she opened her eyes. She looked at me so quickly, I could still catch the narrowing of her slit pupils in response to the light.

"Good Karitas..." her sleepy voice sent delighted shivers up and down my spine. "What is it?"

"The class is over," I told her and then, redundantly, added, "We're alone."

"I see," Esther was now fully awake again. WIth a couple more blinks, her eyes and expression hardened to her usual stern demeanour. "I was aware of the passage of time...," she denied me the second half of that statement. Instead, she grabbed her tricorne hat that sat next to her on the mat. The white feather bounced slightly when she placed it on her head.

"But?" I tried to tickle that unsaid stuff out of her. I had the inclination that it followed my train of reasoning and I could always use a compliment.

The raven-haired beauty wordlessly rose to her feet. She offered me a hand, which I gladly took. Once I stood, Esther forthright turned on her heels and marched out. I followed, with the obvious excuse that we shared the remaining classes of the day allowing me to keep her company for as long as I deemed appropriate.

"And?" I tried again to prod her in the foyer, to no avail. Esther was now fully committed to the silent treatment. Not the cold shoulder though, as she made sure that we kept close to each other. She wanted to be around me, but not to talk. A somewhat childish response to pressure, but I could work with it.

We made our way to the cafeteria. It was, perhaps, the part of Welldark that could most closely be compared to a normal university. The walls maintained the gothic aesthetic, but inside the large hall were queues of students that held plastic tablets, ordering pre-cooked meals that they then carried to long, white tables lined with cheap, easy to clean chairs.

Welldark's menu was organized in 3 times 3 choices. The remains from yesterday at the cheapest, today's menu at the average and meals the cook felt like preparing individually on the high-cost range. Each of those had two regular and one vegetarian option. Both Esther and I had the steak with mashed potatoes and peas from the middle segment. Esther didn't comment on my choice, not even with a disapproving glance. I opted to wait until after the meal for any new conversation attempts. That had been proven to be the winning experience.

I was almost too distracted by watching her devour her meal to eat myself. She had the voraciousness of a lioness but the grace of a noble. By the time she was done with the main meal and moved onto the free treat that came with it, usually a small bowl of pudding or something else sweet, I had barely moved through half my meal. Once she had gone through that as well, her eyes wandered over the table.

She was staring sideways at my tablet or, more specific, my own treat. A bowl of cold rice pudding topped with cinnamon and sugar. Silently, I picked it up and put it on her tablet. She hesitated even after I pulled my hand back, so I gave the bowl a little prod from the side, causing it to slide in front of her. "That's free, so I can do what I want with it. You won't owe me anything because of it and it's not a sacrifice I can't afford." I stated all of that and then dedicated myself to my steak again.

"You have my gratitude," Esther replied and we finished the rest of our meals at about the same time. It had been tasty, not as good as the steak at the restaurant, but certainly good for cafeteria food.

"Are you still angry, Esther?" I asked right out of the gate.

"No," she answered with an uncharacteristic quickness. I heard no lie in that single word, not even a white one. With that, the rest of my tenseness fully melted away. Some of Esther's rigidness also vanished. I hadn't even noticed it before, but now that it was gone, the difference was palpable.

"Thank you Holy Father," I mumbled under my breath, then tried to dig a little deeper. "Anyway, what do you mean you will pay me back?"

"I will act exactly as stated, you shall be compensated for everything you spent on me," Esther explained swiftly and to the point. "Every last Dark, you will receive back."

I opened my mouth to protest, but I quickly worked out that she would not be dissuaded no matter what I said. She was beautiful, noble, stern and proud -- and women of that mixture were maybe the most difficult people to be moved from their chosen course. "You don't have to," I nevertheless assured her, just to put it on record. "The last thing I want is you putting yourself in a bad situation because of me."

"Nothing negative will happen," she said like she was recounting a simple fact. Her hands moved to scrape the last remains of pudding out of her bowl.

"...What, did you contact your family to get you money?" I asked and earned a terrible noise as my answer as Esther's spoon scratched over the inside of the porcelain bow. I had a terrible flashback, the sound mimicking that preceding her anger at the restaurant.

"No," the single word was like a crack in a thin sheet of ice that separated me from a vast, black ocean. I added 'family troubles' to the list of topics I would revisit only after we had gotten more intimate.

"Well, if you insist and won't do anything that harms you in the process, I'll take your money, I guess," I said, caving to her will in this affair. "How was yesterday?"

"An utter waste of time," she reported, moving the spoon to her mouth and sucking the little remains of pudding off. It was shining clean when she finally put it down. "A combination of the dullness of the courses and my stressed state of mind. I assume your own Monday hasn't been pleasant?"

"You could say so," I began to extrapolate. "I was shaken by how you left me, my lady, and it hurt me quite deeply. Most of the day, I was caught in worry that you may wish to rid yourself of my person. That you are willing to sit now next to me alleviates my pains greatly." I dared to put a hand on her back and, when she didn't object, moved it a bit further until I held her by the waist.

"Did you cry?" she asked all of a sudden, her eyes downcast.

That did strike me as an odd question, but she appeared to feel actual guilt. An easily exploitable emotion, if one knew not to demand too much at a time. I left it to sociopaths to figure that line out. A proper relationship built on the truth was more to my liking. "No," I therefore responded, "where does that question come from?"

"Your voice is hoarse," she stated, quizzingly tilting her head. A silent request for me to disclose the real reason of that circumstance.

"No, I... well, I sung," I didn't know how to package the truth in a more flattering or interesting way.

"You... sung?" her words carried surprise and amusement, as if the image of me singing was hilariously misplaced. "What did you sing then, Karitas? An ode to loathing?"

"Kind of, I screamed at the wall for an hour, is how I would describe it," I said. That wasn't as much a lie as it was a healthy over-exaggeration of what had truly happened. Something I was motivated to keep at, by a minor, throaty giggle. "You see, I had been moping during Music class when the teacher, one Maria Trostwald, took interest in my suffering. She told me that I should have been making art rather than be lost in melancholy, for that is just unproductive and my tormented state then was the baseline of great creations. Given that I then continued to horribly abuse the musical range, once she had banished me to a practice room, I have to declare that her view on this has been thoroughly debunked."

With every sentence, the corners of Esther's lips had to concede more ground to the slowly forming grin and I felt the vibrations of withheld laughter in her torso. When I then made a number of sounds that resembled not even a parody of death metal growling, she actually laughed out loud. It didn't last long, but it did make my mood exceedingly bright.

Still smiling, Esther spoke up, "Perhaps, I, too, should pick up singing. It appears to have aided you greatly."

"It will have done so when I sing to you and you don't want me to stop," I put on my best flirting voice. Which, just with Aclysia earlier, was a bit compromised but the intent still got across. "And if you wish to sing a duet with me, there are two places that seem appropriate." I leaned in closer, until her hair tickled the tip of my nose. "One is a much more private affair than the other."

Esther put a hand against my chest and softly pushed me back. "We shall see if you get there, good Karitas," she hummed, putting a hand on my thigh. If she slid just a bit further up, it would have been a truly heavenly touch. Instead, she stood up, leaving me teased and forcing me to take my hand off her waist. "Let us walk - somewhere else."

Where we went and what we said wasn't really that important. Everything we discussed could be summarized as little, unimportant things people talked about when they were starting to get close. Whether or not she liked olives, for example. She did, for the record, and so did I. We talked about this movie or that workout routine. Oftenly, we drifted into the topic of our philosophical values. Stances on things like freedom versus security, rights, and duties. It was interesting to have these talks with her. On a certain level, it was downright necessary.

They say differences attract and on a surface level that might be true. For anything that was meant to last, the underlying structure of values had to be similar, at least in my experience. Two people that didn't believe in the same fundamental values would eventually come to clash over them. Large ethical differences would show in small and petty things, until the disaster was unavoidable. That wasn't to say people couldn't be happy with a partner that had vastly different opinions, only that those opinions had to come from a point both sides could see and agree on. Marrying a sinful succubus to a chaste angel was, nine out of ten times, a recipe for misery.

A noteworthy discovery I made during the talks was that even skirting around the money issue would not make me a happy man. Whenever I tried to tickle out of her what she was going to do to repay me, she pressed her lips together and dismissed the topic. Her solution was shrouded in mystery and I did not like that at all.

I had apologized, I even voiced a few ideas I had for being more careful in the future, but Esther didn't say any more than the 'I will pay you back' she had earlier. I could be patient, yes, but I also thought that whatever she was doing couldn't be that bad that she had to keep it quiet from me. If it was that bad, I needed to know about it. I swallowed all of that for the moment. I didn't want to start a new fight on the day we saw each other again. Light pressure would suffice for the moment.

Just like the girth of our conversation was largely unimportant, so too did the remaining classes of the day fly by without much worthy of mentioning. Yesterday's problem of internal loathing had fully inverted, now that Esther was next to me during all the lessons. Touching her in all the little ways I could get away with was intoxicating. I pushed it too far a few times, Esther slapping my hand on such occasions, but generally she did more than tolerate what I was doing. It was keeping me from paying too much attention.

Tuesday rolled into Wednesday and finally I managed to actually concentrate on the classes. Not that there was a lot to pay attention to. Engineering, like Alchemy, was all about common sense safety precautions. Somewhat alarmingly, Cooking was as well. I couldn't help but giggle at the prospect of what ingredients we would use for us to need warnings about explosion cases.

It wasn't until the last class of Wednesday, Unarmed Combat (Advanced), that something interesting and unexpected happened.

The teacher was an almost dwarfishly small guy called Stiltzkin. He was a hideous person with warts all over his face and on his massive nose. His hair was a dark blue and mimicked a troll doll in texture and style. This mid-forty man did not seem to care, in the slightest, for any kind of boring initiation business.