Intervene

This isn’t right. From the time I’ve got to know Kathleen, she is a shy person. Much to shy to want to do something like this. Besides, if I am wrong and she actually wants this, she can always order me out again.

I open the door and walk inside the room. Both Kathleen and Gerald look at me as if they had been caught doing something they weren’t supposed to.

“Darx.” Kathleen calls out to me.

Gerald then gets angry at tells me, “Get out.”

“Why should I.” I reply. “Kathleen and I agreed to meet here.”

Gerald’s expression then turns into surprise.

“You …” He starts, but interrupts himself to look at Kathleen and then back to me. “No way. A peasant like you and the princess …? Do you have any idea what kind of punishments exist for peasants like you touching a princess?”

Shit, if Gerald goes and tells everyone that I’ve been fucking the princess, even if it’s all lies, I’ll be in a lot of problems. I need to fix this.

“Get your mind out of the gutter, pervert. Only a Latrine like you would have a dirty thought like that be the first thing on his mind.” I say in a dismissive way.

Gerald immediately goes back to being angry and yells, “Levine! My family name is Levine, not Latrine. Get it right.”

I roll my eyes and say, “Sure, fine. Whatever.”

“Oh really?” Gerald continues. “You mean to say the princess actually wants the opinion of a peasant? You expect me to believe that nonsense?”

I could say she needs me to help her learn how to cast water spells, but I remember how she wanted that to remain a secret. Fortunately, I have something else I can use.

“Actually, a few days ago Aelbrecht was here.” I tell Gerald. “You know him, right?”

“The Dark Dragon guild master? What’s he got to do with this?”

“He wanted to have a private conversation with me. Apparently, I have sparked his interest.”

Gerald suddenly starts laughing.

“The lich lord himself interested in a lowborn like you? Preposterous.”

“It’s true.” Kathleen replies, pushing past her shyness. But when Gerald turns back to look at her, she becomes all shy again.

“Aelbrecht he … l-later had a m-meeting with my m-mom. He t-told her he was in-in-interested in Darx. I wanted Darx to t-tell me about it.”

“No shit.” Gerald replies, seemingly starting to believe us.

Gerald then turns back at me and asks, “How the hell did you get to be so special you draw the attention of an S rank?”

Oh Gerald, if only you knew I had the attention of 2 S ranks.

“That, Aelbrecht told me to keep secret.” I tell him. “And I shall oblige.”

Gerald’s expression sours. “Fine. Keep your lame secrets.”

He then turns towards Kathleen, offers her a greeting and says, “Until next time, dear princess.”

Then he finally leaves.

As soon as the door closes, Kathleen sighs in relief. I run up to her and ask, “Are you alright?”

Kathleen quickly grabs hold of me and pushes her head against my chest.

“Thank you. Thank you so much for coming in when you did.” She says. “I was waiting for you. But he came in instead. And then he started talking about … vulgar things. I was too scared to say no. Who knows what might have happened if you didn’t come.”

It's like I suspected. Thank the goddess I didn’t choose to stay outside.

“Kathleen.” I say. “Now that Gerald knows he can find you in this room, I think we can expect him to show up here again. I fear it would be best for you to stop coming to the library until after Gerald has chosen a guild and left the castle.”

“I understand.” Kathleen says as she pulls back. “I’m sorry for not being strong enough, Darx. I’ll mis our meetings. Could you … lead me out of the library? I fear Gerald might still be there.”

I accept Kathleen’s request and head out first. I even go down the stairs to the first floor, keeping only a few steps ahead of the princess. Then I look outside the library main entrance into the hall. No Gerald to be seen.

“Thanks for everything, Darx. I’ll miss our meetings.” Kathleen says. She then gives me a kiss on the cheek and leaves.

I will miss our meetings too, Kathleen. Though I guess, this now allows me the time I need to research new skills. I still want to figure out the extent of Kiara’s skills.

I head back up to the higher levels of the library. I remember where I left the book on shadow manipulation. I also remember about Dante and Miranda. I hope I don’t have to go through something like that again. But as I start heading up the stairs to the 3rd floor, Kiara starts coming down from there.

“Kiara. How long have you been here?” I ask.

“A while.” Kiara says as she continues down the stairs while carrying 6 books. “I was searching some books on skills my current trainees have. A couple of them had books that were difficult to find. What about you?”

I feel a bit uncomfortable about telling Kiara I wanted to research her skills, so instead I tell her I’m curious about my father and his rune mastery skill.

“Well, aren’t you lucky.” Kiara smiles with her black painted lips. “One of my new trainees also has the Rune mastery skill.”

She then offers me one of the books she is holding. It is a big one, with many pages and it was titled ‘The runic alphabet’.

“That one’s the reason I spent such a long time searching. It was quite well hidden.”

I thank Kiara and join her on the way to the reading rooms.

“So why the sudden interest in your father’s skills?” Kiara asks.

I then tell her about the meeting I had with Aelbrecht. How he told me about my dad being a rune master and also that my adventurer card apparently allows me to choose my own skills.

“Choose your skills?” Kiara asks with surprise in her voice. “Darx, if you can really do that, you should seriously consider choosing the rune master skill. It may be a hard one to master, but it is also incredibly versatile.”

Once inside the reading room I open the book. As I flip through the pages, I see that every page is dedicated to one rune. That makes the information well organized. There are only few runes whose information is so plentiful they require 2 pages, but those are always on a 2-page spread.

Due to the ease of reading this, I offer Kiara to read this book together with me. She accepts and for the next hour we both have our heads above the book. When Kiara finishes reading the page, she holds her finger under that page, ready to flip to the next. But she waits until I am ready. Then I bring my finger under that page as well and we both flip the page together.

After a while, Kiara uses her shadow manipulation to create a pen. This way, when she waits for me to finish reading, she can practice drawing the rune. I guess, if she needs to teach someone how to use this skill, she’ll need to know how to draw the runes herself.

After an hour of studying with Kiara, I start feeling tired. It’s unusually early for me. I guess the training with Dante must have been more exhausting than I thought.

Before I leave though, Kiara asks me what I thought about Aelbrecht.

“A bit scary on first sight.” I admit. “But that’s the whole him being dead thing. Not exactly every day that I talk to a moving skeleton, you know. But all in all, he was quite a nice person.”

Kiara snickers at my admission. “It was even worse for me.”

“Oh?” I ask, hoping she would tell me.

“I was brought to the Dark Dragon guild when I was only 11 years old. Everybody was very friendly and welcoming. But every time Aelbrecht was present, I hid behind one of the guild members. I was that scared of him.”

Brought to?

I frown, cock my head and ask, “Wait. You grew up in the guild hall?”

“I certainly spend all of my teenage years there.” Kiara admits. “Then one day, when I was 14, I got lost and stumbled into a chamber full of books. Later I discovered it was Aelbrecht’s personal library, but at that moment I had no idea. I looked at all of the books, took one that seemed interesting and started reading.”

I try my best to imagine a 14-year-old Kiara. But the best I can manage is a shorter Kiara without black lipstick.

“What kind of book was it.”

“That’s not important now. When I was done, I turned around to put it back where I found it and there he was. Standing as still as a statue.”

By Imris, if it had been me at that age, I probably would have shit my pants out of fear.

“You didn’t pee your panties, did you?” I joke.

“Thank the goddess, I didn’t.” Kiara replies while smiling. “I had no idea how long he had been standing there. I feared he would be angry, that I would be in trouble. Instead, he asked me if the book had given me some of the answers I had been looking for. I was too afraid to speak, so I just nodded. Next, he asked me if it had also provided me with new questions. I nodded too.”

“What happened then?”

“He asked me to return the book to him, which I did. He put it back on its place for me. Then he found me another book and told me I could read that one if I wanted to.”

“Is that when you stopped being afraid of him?”

“Ehe, no. Remember, I was a 14-year-old girl back then. Of course, I was still afraid.” Kiara says. “But it did get me to see him as less of a monster and more of a person.”

I get what she’s saying. Aelbrecht really fits the whole ‘not judging a book by it’s cover’ mentality. But after so many people speaking so highly of him, I kinda start wondering if maybe he is too perfect.

“You should go.” Kiara tells me. “You’re starting to look tired.”

The next day, after training, I head for the library again. This time Shalia and Ryul join me. Shalia says she wants to start studying nature magic. Ryul is mostly tagging along with her. He is not so fond of books.

I do worry a bit, though. Could Kathleen have ignored my warning and come to the library anyways? Is Gerald waiting there? Could Kiara be there again?

As we enter the hallway that leads to the library’s main entrance, we see Gerald. He is further in the hall, past the library door, and he is walking away from us. It looks like he tried to meet Kathleen again. I hope she took my warning serious and wasn’t there.