Chapter 779: A Red Feather’s Echo
The classroom was a strange arrangement of desks separated into four sections by a long, cross-shaped platform. A broad, dark fabric covered in iridescent star patterns that seemed to pulse softly covered the platform. Adam counted around a hundred desks, perhaps whispers of a more prosperous time for the House of Exorcism. In any case, it was more than enough for twenty attendees.
Students quickly filled the desks in the right section, but when he tried to claim one for himself, Jonathan pointed an ink-stained finger to the left while the others barred his way. No words, only a clear meaning: you’ve lost the right to sit with us on the very first day.
With a heavy shrug, he sat at a random desk in the left section. He placed his hands on timber so ancient that the quills of his predecessors had carved symbols onto its surface. In the compartment inside, he found a stack of parchment, a sealed bottle of ink, and a quill made from a flamboyant red feather that murmured of an antique magical beast of the magus tier.
A frown creased his brow. Even for Brineheart’s college, this was too valuable. Students shouldn’t touch such materials, much less risk damaging them. Even marquises wouldn’t dare presume to make a quill from such a rare feather
He glanced at the students. Regular quills in hands, parchments tucked on their desks, and unsealed bottles of ink releasing their old scents. Something was wrong. The left section?
Without wasting a second, he checked the desk nearby—a regular quill.
A trap, then? It felt surreal. How could someone guess where he would have sat, and why target him? Unless... the quill was made to appear in the compartment of any desk he sat at. Was it even possible? Surely, but no student could have done it. Teacher Diane? Why would she? Only Grimhilde had a feud with him, but even the madwoman would have had no time to trap the classroom while training younger students.
TAP TAP
Suddenly, two soft taps echoed on his desk. He gazed down, seeing his own hand taping a parchment with the quill. When did he? Eyes wide, he let go of it as if he had been holding molten steel.
"What in the realm..." he began to mutter, then choked on his words when he noticed a line of red on the parchment. The ink twirled into words he had never written, their shapes far from his minimalistic and clear handwriting and more like the flowing arabesques used by high-borns.
[I feel my master’s grimoire. How nostalgic, but you can’t let others notice.]
The words confused Adam for barely a second before Diane stole his attention with her grand entrance. All the while, she had been waiting for the last students. Now she stepped onto the platform’s fabric, her march as if she were walking in the depths of space. Her large robes fluttered like a nebula, making her seem otherworldly with her golden hair.
"We’ve waited enough." Her voice reverberated across the room. "Since we have a cursed specimen, let’s begin our dark arts and how to counter them lesson with that."
She winked at Adam, who simply nodded. While the other students laughed at his cursed female’s body, his attention was on the damned quill that had somehow found its way back into his whitening knuckles. The feather brushed against his wrist like a finger beckoning for an answer.
Tentatively, he wrote on the parchment. [Who are you? What grimoire?]
The feather trembled against his skin. For three heartbeats, nothing. Then, his blood chilled as his hand moved on its own.
[Me? I’m just what remains of a dream of an ancient dream waiting to warn the heir of House Reverie. My master’s grimoire—Allistair’s grimoire—awoke me.]
It took Adam all his focus to keep his face straight, his voice in—yet his fingers twitched against the parchment as he pondered. Allistair? Yes... he had written about arrangements in his grimoire. But a sentient artifact? It was just too hard to create. He had studied, tried with Lulu’s help for years without success.
His eyes drifted back to the text. A dream of an ancient dream. If the quill was a medium to contain it, it was plausible. Not truly sentient—just imprinted with answers, like a scribe’s ghost trapped in the feather.
His hand moved again without his consent, the quill scraping ink into another cryptic line. His frown deepened—
"I commend your diligence," Diane’s voice cut through his thoughts, smooth as blade sheathed in silk, "but don’t you think writing after the lesson truly begins would be more... productive?"
Adam’s breath caught in his throat. He covered the red feather with his palm, hoping Diane hadn’t seen it. Yet, she approached him. Measured steps echoed on the platform until she stopped right above him.
"Why are you hiding your quill?" Her shadow fell across his parchment, making the red ink glow faintly.
Adam pinched the bridge of his nose. How could he explain the red ink, his ownership of Alistair’s grimoire, the knowledge of man exiled fifteen thousand years ago from this very city, his House dismantled, his heirs sent with him to be forgotten?
His nose pinch turned into a tight fist against his forehead, knuckles white. One of his secrets leaked by a quill. How ironic. How stupid.
Before he could think any longer, Diane let out the sigh of a teacher who had seen too many strange quirks from her students. Adam’s wasn’t disruptive at least, even if mildly annoying.
"Since you’re impatient enough to waste good parchment on drawings, why don’t you join me up here?" She said, curling a finger that made Adam’s frown deepen.
Drawings? He focused on the parchment. The words—gone, replaced by strokes weaving into a drake’s head. Did the quill? He half-raised his palm. It wasn’t red anymore, but the ash-gray feather common to all the classroom’s quills.
"So?" Diane tapped her foot, the impatient sound making him raise his eyes back at her. "Will you come up or waste more of your comrades’ time?"
He reluctantly moved his hand away from the quill. No matter what it was, it had a purpose—a mission that would perhaps unexpectedly help him in college. But the timing wasn’t right. Later, after class.
With one last glance, he rose from his desk under the grumbles of the other students, then climbed on the platform.