At Wentworth’s Mercy

Previously when John had entered a barrier, he had arrived in surroundings that were immediately identifiable as a version of wherever he had been before entering. This time, that was not the case. Instead, he found himself in a dark room, standing in the center of a very complex looking magic circle, complete with writing in what appeared to be multiple different scripts.

The entire thing glowed an ominous red that would have made John wary of stepping over it even if it was just a simple line on the floor. It was also the only light source in the room, and dim enough that he couldn’t actually see the room. For all he knew, it could have stopped just beyond the magic circle or be large enough to fit his house inside.

Well, he knew it was at least a little larger in one direction because he could see his history and civics teacher standing there, outside the magic circle. Despite the lack of light in all other respects, she was somehow perfectly well lit.

She looked younger too. Not immensely so, just fewer wrinkles and her hair being black with gray streaks instead of gray throughout. All in all, it was the difference between looking to be in her 50s and looking somewhere past 70.

It was also a change that would be easily achievable with cosmetics, but John had a feeling the altered appearance was the one he was used to, and what he saw now was the truth.

“And what, exactly, do you think you were doing?”

Her tone was reprimanding and sharp as a razor. It wasn’t dissimilar to how she sounded when putting an unruly student in their place, but something that was not just the context of the situation made it bite much deeper. Even in a regular classroom situation, the marrow-gripping dread it invoked would have told John in no uncertain terms that his survival hinged on his answer.

“I- I used a skill called Observe. I ha-” Further explanation died in his throat as Wentworth’s eyes narrowed.

A long moment passed, wherein John discovered that ‘trembling with fear’ was, in fact, not just a figure of speech. Then, his teacher finally spoke.

“I see. What happens next is I will ask a number of questions. You will answer truthfully and to my satisfaction. If you lie or attempt to withhold information, I will pry the answers from your mind by means that are mildly inconvenient for me and somewhere between highly uncomfortable and fatal for you.”

John gulped and nodded to signal that he had heard and understood. He didn’t dare say anything until she had actually asked a question.

What followed was Wentworth drilling him through yesterday and what little had passed of today, as well as some questions about the preceding week. Some of it, she seemed completely disinterested in the details of, while for other things she asked a litany of detailed questions, many of which John was thankful to discover that she was willing to accept that he had no answer for besides “I don’t know.”

John was also thankful that the details concerning Qhila’s nest were among the ones Wentworth didn’t care about. John would have liked to be the kind of person who would have at least raised an objection to divulging that, but he was entirely too terrified of Wentworth’s wrath to think it even likely, let alone certain, that he would have been able to muster that much courage. Her questions were mostly focused on his abilities, and Gaia’s commentary.

When Wentworth seemed to have finished with the questions, she was quiet for a little while before making a gesture that caused some of the writing in the magical circle to change.

“Go ahead. Transmute yourself.” While it was worded like a permission, it was spoken like a command. A command John couldn’t fulfill.

“I, uh… I can’t. I don’t have enough experience points to level up.” John almost jumbled the words together in his haste to explain before she punished him for disobedience.

“The altering spell, then.”

“I- I can’t do that either. I’m at the cap. I- I mean, I can only put two alterations on the same person, and there are two on me already…”

Wentworth clicked her tongue disapprovingly, in a manner similar to when someone got an answer wrong in class. Then a rat appeared, hovering in the air in front of John. Like Wentworth, it was strangely well lit despite the lack of a light source.

“Change the length of its tail.”

John wouldn’t have been keen to touch a rat before the encounter with the rat ogre, even one that had hopefully been raised in a clean lab setting rather than a sewer. Or conjured up from thin air moments ago and thus as clean as rats could get. The rat ogre certainly hadn’t made him keener to do so either.

As **** as he was to touch it, though, he was pretty sure that making Wentworth angry was a lot worse. So, after a moment of steeling himself, he quickly poked it, trying to touch it as briefly as possible while still using the spell.

Thankfully, that was all that he needed to, despite the change itself taking about 2 seconds to complete. Once the transformation was finished, Wentworth looked at the rodent for a moment before it disappeared as unceremoniously as it had appeared.

In its place, a featureless wooden box appeared. “Use your thieving skill on it, and show me the result.”

John did as asked without delay, and got a smooth stone sphere. Wentworth looked at him, the sphere and the box a few moments each, with an indecipherable expression. Then the next instruction followed.

“Use your ‘observe’ skill on the stone and both boxes. Then tell me what it tells you.” As she said so, another box identical to the first one appeared.

Stone Sphere
Common
Aside from being perfectly spherical, this peach-sized stone is utterly unremarkable.

Wooden Box
Common
A small wooden box.

Illusion of a Box
This box is actually an illusion.

“Uh. The new box is an illusion. The other two things show nothing special.”

Without answering, Wentworth made another gesture and both the stone and the boxes vanished. The darkness vanished with them, and after a moment John noticed that the magic circle had too. It turned out the room was mostly like a standard Ashcroft classroom, the main difference being that the only furniture was the teacher’s desk.

Wentworth turned towards the door leading to where the teacher’s office would be adjoined to the classroom, speaking as she went, “You may leave. Be warned, though, Vanessa Hawthorne is off limits.”

John wanted nothing more than to get the hell out of here posthaste, but he felt like the risk of getting on Wentworth’s shit list was overwhelming unless he could get that curveball explained a bit.

“Uh… I’m sorry but I think I have to ask you to elaborate. Believe me, I would love to never interact with her in any way, but my attempts to avoid her completely the last few years-” John’s moderately nervous rambling about why he asked came to a sudden stop when his teacher turned around, allowing him to see her annoyed expression.

“****, Mr. Newman. If you survive for long, you will soon find that minimal cleverness can put a mundane entirely at your mercy. Whatever schemes you then concoct to get back at your bullies, you will leave Ms. Hawthorne out of them. And skip the moralistic tripe about being above vengeance, I don’t care to waste time on you lying to the both of us.”

John had actually been about to say that he didn’t plan to seek ****. Instead he stood there for a moment with his mouth open looking like an idiot before his mind managed to pivot to something else.

“What about if she targets me? Do I have to roll over like an obedient chew toy or can I at least tell her to fuck off?” The issue with trying to pivot fast so he wouldn’t look like too much of an idiot was, as he realized the moment after those words left his mouth, that he ended up not thinking through the thing he said instead.

Fully expecting to be in for a world of hurt after that, he was surprised when that seemed to annoy Wentworth less than his initial request for elaboration. “As long as her body, mind and reputation suffer no lasting harm in the process, and she is not stripped of the Veil, you are free to end the interaction as you see fit.”

Wentworth turned towards her presumed office again. Then she added, “And before you ask, with regards to Mr. Dickinson, you may turn him into a slug and trap him in a salt shaker for all I care.”

John had just decided not to risk annoying her further with that exact question, leaving him wondering if she could read his mind. In any case, he was in a hurry to leave now that he had no further questions.

Exiting through the door that would lead to the hallway in a real classroom resulted in a weird mental whiplash. It did so because he realized halfway through stepping out that the proper way to leave the barrier should be the Exit Barrier spell, but that thought was only about two thirds formed before he realized that he was leaving the barrier without the Skill. Into the school hallway outside of Wentworth’s classroom. In another wing than where he had tried to Observe her.

‘I guess the Alleys aren’t the only barriers with spatial distortion. I wonder how powerful someone has to be to make those…’

The hallway was mostly empty, but checking the time John was surprised to find that he would only be a few minutes late to class. Or would have been, anyway, since after half a second of worry, he remembered that he had a free period.

Normally, that would mean it was time to either deal with some homework so he could spend more time on games and porn when he got home or to find somewhere quiet and browse memes and message boards on his phone.

Today, it seemed like a better idea to see if he could find more Abyssals to Observe first, then maybe research the Abyss some more on the Librarians of Alexandria website. Actually, now that he thought about it, the one upside to the incident with Wentworth was that he got a Skill Level in Observe. Which mentioned that it would show more information now.

To test it out, John picked out a student with a safe-looking nameplate floating above his head and gave it a proverbial whirl.

Julian Peters
Lvl 6 student
Family Trivial Pursuit Champion
18 years old
RP: 12
Guild: Ashcroft Academy Glee Club [AAGC]
Guild Rank: Member

The abbreviation in square brackets was also added to Julian’s name in the text above his head, as was common for guild tags.

This was pretty neat. On mundanes, not so much, since it would probably just show stuff like hobby clubs, workplaces, and so on. On Abyssals, being able to determine affiliations like that would probably be valuable, or at the least it would give him a list of organizations to either look up or ask Qhila about.