Nothing. He goes to see the head nun again.

Another night passed with a restful, undisturbed sleep. Audrey awoke feeling refreshed, and for a second almost forgot where he was.

How did he get back to his room last night? He was certain that he hadn’t actually memorized its exact location due to the cluster of other doors. All that he could remember was that he really wanted to return to his bedroom… and he just spontaneously showed up here. Perhaps this was also part of Amans’ spell, or this place was imparting some type of power on his awareness to subconsciously navigate the whole convent – without having ever actually memorized certain locations.

So maybe he could get it to work again?

It did, he walked right over to the head nun’s office and knocked on the doors before coming in. There she was again, in the middle of sorting through a bunch of paperwork.

“So, what do you think?” She asked, expectantly.

Audrey simply nodded his head silently – with this comically awkward expression on his face – as some vague sign of approval and affirmation; what could he really say? Even now, everything had a very surreal and dreamlike quality to it.

The nun simply smiled in response; she understood completely. Audrey did however, have a few questions after seeing what happened last night.

“So… how do the prisoners here live? I don’t mean like, live through the punishments, but that too I guess?”

“Well back when this convent was first established, we didn’t have to deal with the logistics of feeding so many people every day – within the middle of a forest no less. When that became a problem we asked the Mages Guild if they could possibly do anything about this. They had one battlemage who specialized in spells that could sustain the human body for long periods of time without food, water – basic things that everyone needs to stay alive. And this is where things got really interesting. It turns out that virtually all the sisters here, despite never having taken up sorcery, wizardry, enchantment, et cetera, as a formal topic of study, still have an incredibly natural ability to practice magic. We personally never found out the actual reason behind that, but after they sent us a few basic spellbooks and blueprints of that battlemage’s homeostasis-cum-nourishment spells, the rest was history.”

Audrey nodded. There was so much history here that he did not yet know about.

“I see. And so I also saw this man’s… you know like it never… uh, went down.” Audrey stuttered. After all this time the nun always spoke in euphemistic terms so he was just trying to do the same.

The nun of course, knew exactly what he was talking about.

“Yes, and although technically we have oils, ointments, et cetera for that – which, that’s a whole different story – it is also in fact a charm that one of our own sisters created by deriving it from the spells we received from the battlemage.”

That would certainly explain some of what he saw yesterday, then.

“But don’t spells like these make it so that the prisoners want to be here then – at least to some extent?”

The nun nodded, and took some time before answering. “Hmm. Yes and no. These same types of critical questions were asked when this place was first starting out, but there’s still no simple answer for that. I have no doubts that some of the more sick prisoners in here get a kick out of it – but even their twisted desires are too much for them to handle most of the time due to the level of proficiency that our sisters have reached.” She paused for a moment.

“And to be honest, practically speaking we knew that this would be one of our caveats given the extremely… wanton nature of our congregation.”

Audrey understood. He would still be learning much more about this place and its inhabitants as time went on.

“I think that’s all the questions that I have for now, thank you.” Audrey said to the nun, and he had only barely placed his hands upon the door before the nun suddenly called him back.

“Oh and Mr. Ancus, you should really take responsibility for what you said to one of our sisters last night. I found her in her room twirling around and admiring her uniform in the mirror when she was late for her first shift this morning.”

The butterflies came swooping back into his stomach, filling his body with all kinds of mixed emotions. He hadn’t even thought about that at all since last night, but now he was suddenly reminded of it again.

“Oh... yes. I’ll be sure to do that.” Audrey said, quickly leaving the room. He stood in the hallway and exhaled a long breath of a nervous energy. It was actually quite pleasant in a way, despite how the anxiety sat in his stomach and stuck fast in his throat. He couldn’t have been more hesitant and stiff in his delivery, yet here he was: infatuating and charming girls, apparently. It wasn’t even on purpose! But he had been given an order. The slime nun would be working now, so he ultimately decided to try to find her personal room sometime later in the night – whatever would happen.

Audrey hoped, hopelessly, that maybe she wouldn’t see him before that time. Fat chance of that happening though, as he would always be sticking out like a sore thumb.