“Hey, professor!”

Villin smiled as he noticed professor Crumb in front of him. He found himself in a bright location, or a white nothingness rather. All there was, was himself and professor Crumb.

The professor turned towards him with his usual stern expression “Ah Villin, you better not have been slacking boy.”

“Of course not professor!” after saying so Villin paused for a moment “Professor, I have so many questions.”

Professor Crumb sighed, after which he smiled slightly “Alright then boy, I’ll answer all your questions.”

Villin was about to ask where they were when he noticed something felt wrong

Something else appeared in the white nothingness, a massive pitch-black door inlaid with skulls appeared not far away from them. At first, Villin decided to ignore it but just as he began asking his questions he heard a soft creaking as the pitch-black door opened slightly.

Instantly, professor Crumb’s expression changed “No, I don’t want to go, don’t let it take me!”

He looked panicked and desperate, saying all sorts of weird things, yet, moments later, the door opened fully, and professor Crumb was sucked into the boundless void behind the doors.

After taking professor Crumb, the pitch-black doors closed before disappearing.

---------------------

When Villin woke up he was covered in sweat.

He could feel tears creep into his eyes but stopped himself. His lips were quivering as he fought back the tears.

Noticing he was naked, he managed to keep himself in check, for the time being, he turned to look around properly.

He was in a dark room make out of dark-grey stones. Green moss covered a large portion of them and the air felt uncomfortable to breathe.

Looking at the walls, statues were placed in front of it at regular intervals. The room he was in was rather big, it was fully square and each wall was around fifty meters long. The ceiling was three meters up and other than pillars, the room was completely empty.

At least that was what Villin thought at this point in time.

Directly in front of him, he saw what seemed to be a heavy-duty stone door, the only problem was that it seemed to be mended to the wall beside it.

The room was familiar to him as he recalled his last ‘prophetic’ dream. At this point it also wasn’t hard to figure out where this was, it was a prison cell in Decorus.

Even though Villin knew it was generally impossible for ‘living’ transfiguration statues to keep their ability to move and react to the situation without direct control of the caster. He had a feeling that if he did something such as trying to escape the statues alongside the walls would come to life and either harm, restrain, or kill him.

Seeing the situation he was in, Villin felt dispirited, but as he felt his spirit fading, he would vividly see the explosion of professor Crumb even if he didn’t. His thoughts couldn’t help go back to that point as he failed to contain all of his tears. Because of his photographic memory, the scene was as clear as day, even to the point where his mind would pause at the points where professor Crumb was ripped to shreds, just before the explosion blocked the sight.

“No, no. I have to get out of here.”

In order to try and get these pictures out of his head, Villin quickly got up. He had to make a plan to escape, even if the chances were slim. If he could throw himself into work he might just be able to focus his mind.

Immediately, he got up and began pacing, trying to find a solution to his current situation, successfully stopping his mind from going back to the traumatic scenes. Yet, as he paced back and forth, he noticed something from the corner of his eye.

Behind one of the pillars, he saw the shoulder of a girl, noticing a second person, Villin quickly approached, making sure to keep some distance between them.

After moving to a position where he could see her face, he was shocked to see he recognized the girl.

She had a crooked nose and her face was filled with acne, it was Elinoire.

He quickly noticed the wounds all over her naked body. Cuts covered her legs and large incisions were made in her breasts. The wounds looked fresh, less than a day old. It was likely the wounds were treated with a long-duration healing spell to avoid the forming of scars, with one of those the cuts would disappear within another two days.

Elinoire’s eyes were closed, she had clearly fainted, probably from the pain. Hence, she hadn’t noticed his arrival.

Upon seeing her naked body, Villin didn’t panic and cover up his private parts looking embarrassed. The situation looked bad and this wasn’t time to think about vanity.

After thinking for a moment, Villin walked up to the Decorus princess, as she was called, and shook her. He had a bunch of questions. For one, why she was captured by her mother’s school, and he would also ask about the precautions taken when she was taken away.

The shaking did its part and Elinoire quickly opened his eyes, grabbing his hands as she woke up, holding them tightly.

A few seconds later she took note of the situation and looked at Villin. She couldn’t help but blush after noticing his goods but wasn’t a dumb person either. Just the fact that Villin was here made everything clear, he got captured and put in this cell.

In fact, she was surprised he was put in this cell as it was generally only used for highly important targets. As far as she knew Villin was a talented magus, in no way worthy of being put in this cell by Decorus standards.

Still, she didn’t ask a thing and chose to address Villin after getting up and taking a step to the side, creating some distance between us.

Elinoire didn’t underestimate Villin. In the five seconds she had woken up she immediately put herself in his shoes, trying to gauge what he would want to do at this point.

Thinking up to here, Elinoire felt as if she was in danger. She was sure of at least one of the biggest doubts Villin would have, one that probably wouldn’t go away quickly either.

“Before you ask, I do not work for Decorus and I was not sent here to try and get any kind of information or cooperation out of you.” she felt nervous thinking of how to continue.

Currently, she didn’t have any magic power. The day after an experiment one would still suffer from mana-depravation. This would always happen when one’s magical power was completely emptied.

And, even though she hadn’t spent much time with him, Elinoire knew what kind of person Villin was. If he thought she was a Decorus accomplice, he would probably kill her.

“Then why are you here?”

Villin’s question was simple, he didn’t act like Elinoire’s guess was wrong either. He planned to first ask her the information he wanted to know, it would’ve been best if Elinoire didn’t know of his doubts whether she was truly imprisoned or not.

“I killed my father.”

Elinoire’s words were shocking. If what she said was true then she killed the husband of the Decorus headmaster.

“How and why?”

Once more Villin’s words were very straightforward. Right now, they had to establish the most basic form of trust, to where they wouldn’t expect the other to stab them in their sleep.

And once more, Elinoire answered clearly.

“My father had a fake tooth, the second to the back on the left-hand side. I had an identical tooth. They are filled with extremely deadly poison. In case we get captured, we can use our tongues and a bit of magical energy to unlock the poison within the tooth. The poison kills within seconds.”

Elinoire paused for a moment. She acted confident and apathetic but Villin could see she was trying to hide the fact that she was reliving a bad memory.

“Ever since my mother took control of Decorus my father hasn’t been getting attention like before. At the same time, he can’t have hookers get sent over since the entrances to our house is heavily enchanted, nobody without a significant amount of Decorus blood can enter.

With no other way to relieve his pent-up stress. The man began trying to use me, forcing me to do things I didn’t want to. Still, with mother constantly being busy making it impossible to contact her, there wasn’t much I could do. After some time, I got a message originating from my mother that I would be attending The Academy to try and ease the tension she had created.

The message contained a location and a time, saying that a representative of The Academy would be waiting for me there. Knowing that I would be gone in a week, my father got even bolder. On the final day, he tried to rape me. I pretended I would willingly join him and joined into a kiss with him, I used my tongue and magic power to unlock his poisonous tooth, killing him just before leaving for The Academy, a place where my mother would have no authority and would be unable to capture me.”

Her voice quivered slightly when talking about some of the more horrible stuff she went through, but she kept pretending to be apathetic about the situation. Villin couldn’t help but believe her, at least there should be some truth in her words. He then stayed quiet for a few seconds trying to gather his thoughts.