Chapter 14: Your Stubbornness Will Kill You One Day
Willow walks into the classroom and the teacher jots down her attendance on the roll book. He then sets it down on the desk beside him before proceeding to fall asleep.
She sets her stuff down beside Boscha's space. As she sits down on her chair she notices the lack of Boscha's stuff on her chair. 'That's weird. Did she go to the bathroom?'
She watches the teacher as he sleeps. He snores, loudly, and Willow approaches his desk. She snaps her fingers a few times in his face for good measure. He's knocked out.
Willow grabs the roll book and searches through their attendance. Man, this book sure is empty! She reaches the current date.
Boscha Ferburn, no mark.
'Ah, why do I worry about her?'
Gus pops open a tile at the back of the detention classroom. He sees Willow at the teacher's desk and conjures up a palm-sized Gus. The illusion approaches Willow and with its tiny voice yells, "Hey Willow!"
"ACK—" Willow slaps her mouth shut and shoves the book down. She looks at the small illusion and stammers. "Wha?!"
It points towards Gus before disappearing. He waves at Willow.
She walks towards him, "Why are you cutting classes?!"
"Shh! Come with us first!"
"Us?"
Mattholomule pops up beside him, "S'up."
Willow sighs. "You brought Matt too?"
"Yes now come!" Gus yoinks on Willow's wrist. She stumbles into the passageway, and blue torches light up the cavern walls. Gus jumps down flawlessly, and Matt falls face-first behind him.
Matt stands up and brushes himself off confidently. "I made those torches myself."
"Hmm nice… But I shouldn't be here!" She clambers up and latches onto the floor. She peers back at the teacher. "I might get into more trouble."
"I promise I'll have you back here before recess," Gus says. He grabs onto Matt's arm and points at him. "But Matt has something really cool he said he'd show us."
"Haha yeah… Gus only insisted on you coming though… So if you really don't want to then you could just… Y'know…" Matt gestures to the boring old empty classroom and puts his arm on Gus's shoulder. "Leave me and Gus to check out the really cool thing."
'Titan, do I really wanna sit through that alone?'
"Hmm… Well it's not like I'm doing anything else!" Willow pumps her fist in the air. "Let's go!"
Matt groans. "Fiiiine okay."
~•✽──────✿──────✽•~
Meanwhile, Boscha's mother walks through a dense forest with Boscha in her arms and arrives at a small cabin. The sign above the door sways and creaks in the dying wind, and the Healing Coven's symbol glows through the dark fog. The door opens, and she walks in.
Boscha stirs. She grumbles under her breath, "Wh… Where are we?"
"We're at your Healer's." Amyl says.
"This… Late…?"
"It's 10 am."
"Oh…" She breathes for a few seconds and takes in the familiar sight of the blue carpet and old spruce wood. The desk is empty… As usual. With only a bowl of candies and fey small trinket sprawled about. Small novels still on top of the bookshelves… Geez… Do they never bother to clean the waiting room? Wait… Amyl's… Carrying her…
"Let go of me!" Boscha wriggles. She falls face first on the sofa, turning it over and knocking a plant off the shelf.
The door creaks. A tall man with eyes of literal fire and no pupils peaks out. He speaks through his surgical mask, and his voice echoes two or three times. "H-hello?"
Amyl waves at him. "Afternoon Mr. Alaryo."
"Ah! Miss Ferburn, you're early. Isn't Boscha supposed to be in her classes first?" He looks at Boscha faceplanted on the floor. "Aye. Is she alright?"
Boscha stands up and rubs the bridge of her nose. "Yeh…"
"Well, I brought her here because she was stuck in a wail storm yesterday."
"Ahh, okay okay."
Alaryo floats Boscha into the clinic and sets her down onto the bed.
~•✽──────✿──────✽•~
"What are we going to be checking out anyway?"
"Shh! We're here." Matt places his hand on the tile above him.
"Wait, Matt. This goes to the Oracle track homeroom." Gus says, noting the eye he doodled onto the wall.
"Exactly. Just follow my lead."
Matt pops open the tile slightly. He peers into the homeroom from behind a bookshelf. The teacher writes down equations on the board. "Now, students, Prediction is simply the act of calculating probability…"
Matt gives Gus the cue and Gus turns them invisible, though still visible to each other.
As they sneak through the classroom Willow accidentally bumps into an oracle ball, she frantically attempts to put it back inconspicuously. The student handling the ball, Luz, notices. Willow grabs Luz's pen and scribbles a small note under her desk before handing it to her.
"Hey Luz it's us don't say anything please -W & G."
Luz nods in acknowledgment as she reads the note.
The teacher notices Luz nodding and asks, "What is it Ms. Noceda?"
"Nothing ma'am! I was just acknowledging how interesting Oracle magic is. Which reminds me, it says here in the book that oracle magic can also be symbolic! And that reminds me of the superstitions we had in our world about dreams where…" Luz goes on about the different ways Oracle magic can be performed.
They follow Matt behind the chalkboard. He places his hand on the wooden wall, and his hand glows brown. A small latch opens to reveal a small staircase down.
Gus whispers. "Uh, we're going in there?"
"Yeah, unless you're too chicken to go." Matt jabs at Gus's side.
"I'm not!"
"What in the world was that?" The teacher looks behind her.
"UHM SO ma'am–" Luz lunges forward and grabs her arm. "Please tell us about what all the different symbolisms mean!" She grabs her small notepad vicariously. "Don't spare any details, I'm sure we'll use these in the future yup yup!"
The teacher smiles to herself. "Oh, well aren't you an ambitious young lad? It's always been a dream of mine to have a class full of honor students." She then continues to talk about how she too was once an ambitious young student, and as she blabbers on about why being a teacher was her dream, the trio head down the staircase and enter a circular room.
Willow gawks at the large room. Upon its walls mirrors of various shapes and sizes float above the floor. "Titan, how many secrets does Hexside have?"
"Oh you'd be surprised at the amount of stuff I've seen," Gus says.
Matt walks forward in an almost announcer-like fashion and exclaims, "Welcome! To the…" He pauses. He scratches his head for a bit before continuing, "The uh… This room! I don't know what it's called but it sure is cool right?"
Gus approaches one of the mirrors. A shadowy figure looks back at him. "Oooh! How'd you even know about this place?"
"Oh, I uh… I may or may not have been thrown through the window and crashed into this place during a witches' duel…" He rubs the back of his still painful neck. "Anyways that's not the cool part! The thing I gotta show ya is that!"
Matt runs towards the railing and points down at the upside-down copy of the room below. A large pearl mirror is embedded into the ground. Willow looks at the glowing mirror in awe. A white aura radiates from it along with sparks of various colors. "So pretty~!"
She conjures up a small vine ladder and makes her way down. As she steps on the colorful mirror it glows a light purple. The mirrors shake and shoot towards the middle and surround her. As Willow looks up at her reflections she sees various futures, with some of her living a simple life taking care of her older fathers, and in others, she saw a life of fortune in the Emperor's Coven…
~•✽──────✿──────✽•~
Alaryo picks up a small crystal ball from his drawer and places it on Boscha's chest. Her chest glows a flickering white, and her heartrate slowly materializes on the ball, along with the rate her bile sac is producing magic. He checks the ball and compares it to his previous notes from Boscha's last visit.
"…Have you been taking the potions I gave you?"
"I didn't take it yesterday but only then."
"Only then?"
"Yes sir."
He rechecks his notes. "…Well you're getting worse."
"WHAT?!" The crystal ball falls off Boscha's chest as she sits up. Alaryo catches it.
"Agh!" He sets it down on his desk and sighs. "Phew. Anyways… Please don't lie. I only want what's best for you so I need to know if you're actually following instructions. So I'll ask again. Have you been taking your medicine?"
"I have…"
"Then I'm afraid we might have to increase your dosage."
Boscha sighs. Why did she have to be so ashamed of taking her medication… It's just a dumb potion. But… She knows that if her classmates saw her drinking that… And found out what it was…
They'll know how weak she is…
She hugs her knees to her chest, and in shame, she admits. "I've only been drinking it during lunch…"
"You… WHAT?!" Alaryo's eyes shoot out into larger flames, nearly reaching the top of his white hair. He could've sworn that he warned her enough that doing that could very much kill her. Nevertheless, he can still attempt to fix it… However… That isn't to say she can completely cure her.
The healer calmly explains that the dosage would have to increase, and if she drinks it properly, she wouldn't need to continue taking it, and she'll be allowed to play with her friends again.
"Probably," He notes.
"…Probably?" Boscha echoes.
He smiles awkwardly at her. "There's… A good chance…"
Great. There really was no going back…
~•✽──────✿──────✽•~
As Willow takes in the beauty of her reflections a shadowy figure manifests behind her.
As Gus clambers onto the railing and sees Willow in the middle. "Woah! Matt, what is that thing?"
"I don't know? I haven't stepped on that mirror yet."
The figure manifests into Willow, and the illusion of an empty bed appears in front of Willow. It walks past her and approaches the bed slowly with flowers in hand. With each step it takes, the vision grows fainter and fainter. It kneels over the bed. It glitches in and out of existence, and arrows point from Willow's feet towards it. As she walks, the pull of the vision grows stronger and stronger, and as she phases through the illusion's body her feet plant firmly to where the vision stood. And she takes it's place.
The wall of mirrors around her change from individual reflections to one cohesive white room. On the bed, another illusion rises, though a dense fog covers it's face. Unknowingly, and, unwillingly, Willow hugs the figure. Despite the awareness that the illusion was simply… an illusion, she felt the warm embrace as it hugs her tightly, and as the warmth faded into a dead-cold feeling, grief, anger, and depression fills her head.
And everything vanished.
She falls forward, and the mirrors go back to their place. She snaps back into reality.
Gus helps her up from beyond the railing. "What was that?! You looked like you were doing something with nothing."
"I… I'm…" Willow's voice shakes along with her ice-cold hands. Should she even tell him what she saw?
"I don't know… Everything… Was blurry."
"Ooh! How mysterious!" Matt teases. "Well anyways, wanna go, Augustus? I already went before."
"Yeah sure!"
As Matt helps Gus down the railing Willow looks back. "Have fun…"
She climbs back up the staircase, as she reaches the exit she hears the teacher still rambling. She sneaks her way to the open window near the chalkboard. Looking down from the second floor, she summons a bush on the ground and jumps down. Willow looks through the window into an empty classroom. With the bars on the door, she can tell it was the detention track homeroom.
'I hope Boscha's okay…'
~•✽──────✿──────✽•~
Boscha hands the prescription to Amyl, and she sighs.
It's only for a month… Only for a month…
If only she hadn't fought Willow that day…
But should she even be surprised Willow didn't hold back on her? She's surprised Willow's even dealing with her… 'Why does she remind me so much of…'
She looks outside at the waning storm, contemplating what she really feels… Was it anger? Concern? It's all too confusing for her now…
They left you…
She'll leave you too…
Don't be a fool.
Author's Note:
Woof this one really got away from me.