"'This is not a school for unwarranted cruelty. Hurt without reason and you are a beast, not a villain" (121/1).
~Lady Leonora Lesso
Prologue
Aric was alive. Truly, miraculously, painfully alive.
He was face down in the dirt, which wasn't a plus, but it was better than bleeding out. In his peripheral vision he could see grooves in the dirt, suspiciously about the size of his own mother; Dragged away by the looks of it. Clearly, they left his body to the stymphs. Well, the stymphs hadn't come, he thought spitefully.
Dovey's face came to mind; The fairy godmother who tried to kill him. Oh, how he hated that insubordinate woman! When he got back to the School-Ah, but everyone was gone. The eyes of stymphs glowed in the brush. Bodies piled high in the mud, ripe for the taking.
So Agatha won. She was still a stupid girl though, to win and simply leave him to rot in his own pooling blood; Had she no respect for the dead? Bitter sarcasm dripped in his thoughts.
The stymphs would be have been eradicated as Aric's first order of business if Rafal had won. He was still bitter that they had prevented his childhood survival outside the Cyan Caves.
Aric drug himself up and grasped the stymph bone sticking out of his spine. Bright stars slithered behind his eyes as he wrenched it out. If he ever saw Dovey again, even in picture, he would be sure to rip her limb from limb.
It was funny how she thought she was so wise when dead stymph bones couldn't actually kill a Never by itself; Only living stymphs were worth anything. How Everish of her, the stupid fairy! Thinks she can teach make-up and dresses and not have the least bit understanding of how to kill somebody; What a disgusting little princess!
No wonder she and his mother were friends. Lady Lecture had no backbone either, except when it came to abandoning her closest kin. He should have killed Dovey first, slowly, and let Mummy watch.
Aric stood then, relishing in the tingling blood clots of his healing shoulder blades. He set his sights on the ravaged forest around him and the glowing stymph eyes that blinked in time as he walked purposefully into the dark woods.
Sophie and Agatha would have to do. But now... to find Hester, the traitor.
-0-
So he got thrown in Pumpkin Point Prison. Who cares? He didn't.
It's not like he meant to look shady in an over sized trench coat. The forests were treacherous outside the Flowerground; He had to keep his wits about him and take a dead villain's coat to protect his identity. Staying dead and off the grid was the issue now.
He hit the concrete running.
And there went the prison security bell. Tch, they wouldn't catch him. He would be across the Garden of Good and Evil by the time they got their act together. Evers never did do the dungeon thing right.
With the fresh smell of pine in his nose, Aric turned his sights northwest towards Bremen, a prudish little town lying beyond the Murmuring Mountains. There he would find out where the traitor lived.
A/N: I hope ya'll like how I'm starting this. This is going to be a very long multi-chapter story. Also, the point of view is going to change in the first chapter, but we'll get back to Aric real soon.