Vance could feel her anxiousness. Her worries were expanding into something bigger. He had thought it was a case of Akiye controlling a fairy or two to do her bidding but Akiye could be brought in. He had called in for professional help and the chancellor, he knew, had called in the director's board to send someone for investigation but Ash looked like things were far worse.
A frown was fixed on her forehead ever since he met her and got deeper with every moment. They were heading to his dormitory to meet with B but Ash didn't look like she needed to meet with B. She looked like she was going to deliver bad news. Her anxiousness was climbing. As they passed the reception she paused to look back and the anxiousness climbed into fear. A small quake of fear and unease gripped her strongly.
Vance asked her again, "What's wrong?"
She didn't answer and wonder if she was unable to process or supressing her annoyance at the constant questiong. Instead he felt a small calm cover through all her emotions. She was determined again. The frown eased. Finally. When she spoke, her voice came out even. "I do not know what's wrong but something is wrong. Very wrong and unsettling. Where is everyone? We need to meet up."
And so, Vance guided her to the second floor, where Karn, Karlene and Lady Bree had the room to themselves. "where is Sven?"
Vance had not even told the others what he had done. All he had told them was Sven had been hypnotised. Again. "He tried to attack me. I trapped him in the room next door."
Karlene burried her face in her hands, "if I hadn't broken up with him. I could have kept watch over him."
Ash shook her head, "you couldn't. This is bigger than we realize. What did you find?"
Vance tensed. Ash had a way of getting on people's nerves. She always gave her opinions straight and asked for straight answers. Then again, she was a moderator and moderators worked alone. She always kept her feelings out of any situation. Most moderators he had come across expected others to keep their emotions out of the equation too. Not Ash. He watched, and stiffened, ready for Karlene to pounce or growl. Not Ash, she said, "you can get angry at me later. I will not lift a finger and let you growl as much as you want. Right now, I need you to focus. The sooner we sort this problem and find the perpetrator behind it, the quicker we can get everyone to normal. Sven included. He is my friend too."
All three of them held their breath. Karlene twisted quickly. Vance moved but Ash held her hand out, blocking him, taking the laptop from Karlene.
Vance could have sighed. Karlene was not attacking her, she was passing her the laptop. The screen was on a frozen frame of a video.
"What is this?" Ash asked, "I am not really good with technology."
Karlene snickered and Ash ignored it.
"We found Akiye moving around suspiciously on the day of the murder." Karlene said. Besides Ash, she felt Vance froze. "It can't be. It cannot be Akiye."
Ash looked at him, "I hope it is true. There are inconsistencies. We will talk about them."
Karlene played the video for them. From the camera angle, they saw people coming and going to the backwaters, including Vance and Lady Bree with their teammates at a different times. Here the video began faulty, breaking off for every couple of minutes. None of the witches passed the area though.
Ash asked, "is this the time for blessing ceremony?"
Vance nodded, unable to speak. Ash turned to him. "We will find what happened to Akiye."
She couldn't even find it in herself to be jealous right now. All she wanted was Akiye, not to be the culprit. Akiye was her first real friend, someone who had stuck by her side, saved her, helped the others with hypnosis and though she was quieter among the council, she was the only one, who never took Vance's side even if she didn't take hers. Even in the beginning, she had always though of Akiye as someone who was kind and soft, not the evil mind needed to carry out something of this scale. If it was single out of control golem, she could believe it but not something of this magnitude.
When none of them spoke. Ash said, "at the interrogation, the fairy had her eyes turned completely. Going on for an extended period, it can affect the mind of the strongest creature. The chancellor called for the high priestess and the warden but they came in to meet me before going in. After that, none of them are nowhere to be found. My guess is the chancellor is under the fairy's hypnosis and keeping the two powerful witches under lock."
Vance added, "she can't hypnotise someone. Certainly not control a large number of fairies who can hynotise even the best of sirens."
Karn's eyes widened, "can sirens even be hypnotized?"
"My worries exactly. Akiye, as far as I know, doesn't have that kind of power." Vance defended her. Ash did not know his reasons for defending Akiye so strongly. Yet, she did not probe into the matter right now.
She added. "there is another problem though," and addressed Karn and Lady Bree, "we need to tell him so that everyone knows what is going on."
Karn agreed quickly but not Lady Bree. To convince her, Ash said, "guess what else I found at the chancellor's mansion?"
"The entire college's security monitoring room and fairy who refused to answer anything the chancellor had to ask."
Lady Bree's eyes widened. Like Vance's parents, she was a part of Sanguine Knights, the youngest of them to have joined when she came of age. She was well aware of the fairies' contract with the university. Ash pushed, "we have stumbled across a bigger problem that may or may not tie into your problem."
"What is? will someone tell us?" Karlene asked, snatching the laptop back to herself. Lady Bree explained, "the fairies are bound by contract to the university." She took a calming breath and added, "as a punishment for something they did a few centuries ago, right after the university was established."
"The moderators and the knights alike decided the race needs to be put under check. For their mischievous and mysterious nature, their cataclysmic action and as an example to other races, human and non human alike, they were put under a severe punishment."
"How can working here be considered a punishment?"
Lady Bree smiled at Karlene, "the fairies are creatures of word and nature. They can make or break an entire environment, echosystem. They are witches of the non human kind, born with natural power that the witches work so hard to cultivate. They were powerful. They still are but their power is under check as the university bound them in a contract of servitude to the university. They fairies involved in that incident can never use their power again and only communicate under the orders of the university reisidents. The details of things are in the contract but that is the gist of it."
"That's severe."
"So was the crime."
"They used a combination of all magic and tried to summon a god or a goddess. The entire university would have been totaled."
Ash felt her gut drop. Vance asked, "what is it?"
Ash asked right back, "how do you know?"
Vance's eyes widened slightly before he looked away, "A... I thought you were about to speak."
Lady Bree asked, "do you remember something."
"I have seen the fairies behaving oddly. They have been having around the mansion, trying to evesdrop, then I found one in the arena trying to spy on me working with the high priestess. And this. The one who was trying to listen in on us yesterday. If it was Akiye, she wouldn't need someone to listen in."
"Maybe we are looking at it wrong. The two thing might not be connected." Karn nudged his sister. "show her the golem."
Karlene switched the video and they saw the videos of a golem, everyday, moving about at the same time.
"Every time, he moved a couple days before the full moon and comes back the early morning of the full moon or the next day when its quiet."
Ash looked at Vance, "we saw a golem too. In the tunnels while we tried to catch the fairy. And..."
Ash paused. The golem she had seen on her first moon blessing day had been hunched over something when she began walking back. If her guess was right. The underground was its hiding spot. But if so, what would it do around the backwaters during those two to three days.
then Ash saw a small video of the golem becoming smaller and smaller in the shadows of the threes a little away from where the dwarfs had made their entry point.
"Do you remember something?" Lady Bree asked gently but Karlene snapped, "out with it."
Ash said, "I know who the fake Vance was."
She held her head and closed her eyes. She needed to cofirm something with the Vance besides her but she couldn't speak of it.
Her phone buzzed.
Come to the backwater and bring your council if you want your friend alive.
Ash stared at the text. Mayra. Mayra speaking as if she were in a movie. Ash's heart crashed with horror.
"Mayra. They have Mayra." she looked at the faced before them. If she had to choose between Mayra and then, she would always, at all costs choose Mayra but her training did not allow her to. She didn't train all her life to be a queen to be blackmailed so easily.
She texted right back. I don't have everyone of the council with me.
Karlene leaned sideways and peered into her screen. Karn whispered, "Karlene," but the she wolf ignored him. "They want you to exchange us for your friend?"
Ash nodded then shook her head. "It's not that simple. Mayra. They must have tried to hypnotize her but she cannot be hypnotized. She must have played along with them. This message. It is code between us if something bad has happened to the other person."
"We should go."
Karlene folded her arms, "I am not going anywhere. Sven is locked, Akiye is nowhere to be found, might be even missing or involved in bad things and we haven't even reached out to Drew, Dwera and Arabella."
"I have no time for that now. I am going. You know where to come if one of you wants to." Ash stepped out of the room. In one swift motion, Lady Bree and Vance were behind her. Karn got up, "count me in. Akiye keeps going to the backwaters. We can split and try to find her."
Ash got a text back, Bring them all or we make her suffer.
Code again. Ash put her phone away and said, "its the fairies."
"How do you know? And since when can fairies leave the campus?" Vance asked, falling in step with her.
"Back in the chancellor's office, we discovered the someone stole a pair of dentures to enact the kelpie's death as vampire murder. They made Bree think it was you when the real culprit was a fake you. A Golem you who used dentures to punch those wounds."
Vance remembered, "the dentures we found in the tunnel."
Ash didn't correct him. Karlene asked, "how can you be so sure?"
Ash looked at Vance. Them being mate, the one thing she knew she couldn't go after was the one thing the circumstances were forcing her to accept. For Mayra, she would. "It's because of him. I could tell that Vance was not himself when he visited us at the backwaters."
Karn nodded slowly, "I was wondering why he didn't have his glasses on. Then again, very few people know Vance abilities are related to his eyes. Certainly no on campus knows. It was because that wasn't Vance."
"Again. How the hell did you know?" Karlene asked.
Ash looked at Vance, "I just know." Vance eyes widened. Ash looked away. Now was not the time for this conversation.
"What is going on with the two of you?" Karn asked. Ash waved her hand, "back to the matter at hand. I once knocked into him while I was crossing through the trees to get to the other side. Not only did he not have his glasses, he was also, not fast enough for a vampire."
Lady Bree said, "if what you have said so far is right, there should be a golem at the backwaters, hiding somewhere now. And Akiye is likely to be there as well. Then we must go to the backwaters."
"Not like this. We need to find someone who can hypnotize or break hypnotism. Anyone we know could have been hypnotized." Karn stopped them all.
"The high priestess is not with us, nor is the warden. Do we know someone powerful enough to break hypnosis?" Karlene asked. Ash felt an overwhelming sense of unease creeping in. "I can try."
Karn said, "Sven first," and Karlene snapped, "no. Experiment on someone else. If you can really do it, then come back."
Vance suggested, "the sirens."
Karn said, "me and Karlene will look for Akiye and the golem."
Lady Bree said, "I will.." but as soon as she spoke, she staggered a little. Ash and Vance caught her. Ash said, "talk to Drew, Dwera and Arabella. Collect students of the council and see who can help. The more people who don't fall under hypnosis, the better."
Ash had the feeling Lady Bree was unwell. Could vampires be unwell?