Outside of The Big Caves, I'm sitting on a fallen log, with Bruno at my feet.
Just what have I gotten myself into? This whole situation could have been avoided if I wasn't so trigger happy.
Sure, the Cyclops was angry and on edge, but so would anyone if someone intruded into their domain, and killed their pet.
No, no, no, that was self defense, but what about the Cyclops?
Surely he wouldn't have attacked me.
Maybe things would've been different…or maybe I would've been the one to die that day. And what of John Diehl?
Without even a photograph, I'm supposed to find him?!
A simple act of self defense due to a school assignment has really left me with heavy baggage to carry.
And it's not like I could've protested this quest given onto me.
You don't question a god, or else Hell might be paid.
"Hey, what are you thinking about?" Bruno asks.
"I'm just trying to figure out how we're supposed to find one man in this whole country." I inform him, a hint of hopeless depression in my voice. "Does it even matter? I mean, Mendacius is the god of deception and lies, right? Even if we find this John Diehl, how can I trust his word?"
"He may be the god of deception and lies, but I've been with him long enough to know when he tells the truth, and what he said was the truth." Bruno tells me.
Can I really trust this dog? He hasn't given me any reason not to, but still.
He's the loyal dog of Mendacius. I'm willing to bet that that dog would prefer to take the side of his god rather than a teenager he just met.
"I just can't wrap my head around how we're supposed to find one guy on this island." I repeat myself.
He thinks a bit, twirling one of his whiskers with his paw in a cartoonish fashion.
"Hmmm…I think, I might have an idea." He states.
"What? Go from town to town, and ask the mayor for a census of the citizens?" I reply dryly.
"No, but we could try to summon The Raven Man." He suggests.
The urban legend?
"But, isn't that fake? I tried it out a few years ago, and nothing happened." I ask.
During one of my internet excursions, I happened to stumble upon the legend of The Raven Man.
Once you manage to summon him, he will answer one question, no matter what it may be.
"Well, that's the internet." Bruno brushes off. "The online ritual is incomplete, it's missing a key factor to summon The Raven Man, Smoke Weepers." Bruno explains.
A smoke what?
"What's that?" I ask.
"It's an alchemical ingredient, which looks like a lump of coal. The only problem is that it's very hard to find. But, I know where they are." Bruno explains.
"Where?" I ask.
"They happen to be found in the forest, follow me."
I stand up from the log, and follow his lead.
As we walk, the dog continues to explain to me Smoke Weepers.
"Like I said, it's used in alchemy, and occurs only under certain situations. They are created when a wizard or witch casts a destruction spell at a tree, burning and destroying it. Think of it as coal. You create coal by burning wood. Smoke Weepers are only created when you burn wood with magic, lightening and fire being the most potent. That's why they are very uncommon in most places, but very common around here."
Once the dog is done with his explanation, Bruno puts his nose to the ground, letting the scent guide us.
While walking, a light rustle is heard from a nearby bush.
A little, green creature with huge ears scurries out and runs across the path, disappearing into the trees.
"What was that?" I ask.
"It's the fairy of good luck, Brownie."
"Are you sure?" I ask. "It looked like a goblin to me."
"That it does." The dog responds.
Bruno continues sniffing until he stops by a bush.
He sniffs it a few times, and sticks his head in it, looking around.
He pulls his head out and looks at me.
A big cheeky smile covers his face.
"Well, what do you see?" I ask.
"Smoke Weepers!" He calls out, a bit excited by his find.
I kneel down into the shrub, and sure enough, an egg shaped piece of something that looks like coal is lying on the forest floor.
"I guess they're not very hard to find." I mutter.
Bruno rolls the Smoke Weepers over to me with his nose.
I pick them up, and roll them around in my hand.
"So, now what?" I ask.
"Do you have a computer?" He asks.
"Yeah, I brought one with me when I came here. It's in my dorm." I explain.
"Good, we'll need that to find the ritual. Do you think they'd allow animals at your school?" He asks.
I think for a bit, before saying
"You're a talking dog. I'll just say you're an experiment."
"Oh great." He mutters, while rolling his eyes.
"This is the page, right?" I ask, pushing the monitor towards Bruno who is lying on my bed.
"That's it." He confirms. "Okay, so the ritual is almost exactly the same as it reads online. However, what the article forgets to mention is that inside of the salt circle, we need to have a basin of Purified Smoke Weepers."
"And how do we purify them?" I ask.
"Geez, you're just full of questions today, aren't you?" He jokes towards me. "To purify Smoke Weepers, we first need a reverse hyper kinetic particle matrix arranger. The problem is that I have no idea where to find one."
The other problem is that I have no idea what that is, but I know someone who might.
"Would this happen to be a machine?" I ask.
"Yeah. What of it?" He asks.
"What is I told you I happen to know a certain person who makes up with a knowledge in robotics, for what she lacks in height?" I ask.
He furrows his brow.
"I would say you were crazy."
Standing outside of Amanda's room with Bruno, I knock on her door.
She opens the door, her hair unkempt, and eyes glassy, obviously sleeping just a few moments ago.
"What do you want? Can't you see I was sleeping?" She mutters, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.
"It's 1:30, anyway I was wondering if you've seen Constanze?" I ask.
"You going for a home run, or something?" She jokingly asks, seeming to awake a bit more by this.
"I haven't even been up to bat." I answer.
"Whoa-ho-ho!" She laughs at my response. "Anyway yeah, she's camped out in the janitor's closet."
"Why?" I ask.
"It's her base of ops, you know, where she makes and sells her tech."
"Ah." I respond.
Amanda points at the dog, saying
"Also, I'm pretty sure you can't have pets here."
Really? She's teaching me about school rules?
"Bruno isn't my pet." I say, thinking of a lie. "He's, uh…the focus of my research, animal human cohabitation."
Believing my lie, she rolls her eyes.
"Geez, what an egghead." She mutters, before closing the door.
"Geez, what a jerk." Bruno mutters to me.
"You get used to it." I tell him.
We begin walking down the hallway, in the direction of the janitor's closet.
"So…" Bruno begins. "You're a student here, right? At Luna Nova Academy?"
Thinking that he's talking about the gender differences, I sigh annoyingly.
"Yes...I know that I'm a boy, and this school is generally for girls, but the principal told me that while it may be a girls school at the moment, it's not only for girls-"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah." Bruno interrupts me. "That's not what I was getting out. I was just going to ask if you know the students here."
Oh, was that it?
"I do know a few of them." I respond.
"Do you know a student who has short, kind of messy orange hair? Wears large glasses?"
Is he talking about Lotte?
Before I have time to answer, I hear a faint conversation going on in the alchemy lab.
Upon opening the door, I see Akko, Lotte, and Sucy hunched over a vat of bubbling brew.
"I don't think this is a good idea." I hear Lotte mutter.
Akko notices me enter.
"Ah, Ted, you came just in time! Our chem teacher just showed us how to make a love potion, and we need someone to test it. I don't suppose you'd-"
"No." I say, cutting her off.
"Whaaaat?! But why?"
"I've got things to do, arrivederci." I say.
Before closing the door, I hear Akko proclaim,
"Oh, I got it! We'll sneak it into the teacher's soup!"
Turning back towards the dog, I notice that his demeanor has changed entirely.
Even though the door to the alchemy lab is closed, he still stares on, as if seeing right through it.
Even under all that fur, I can still see the anticipation in his eyes, those brown orbs staring intently forward.
"Was it her you were looking for?" I ask him. "The girl you were asking about? Was it Lotte?"
Upon hearing my voice, he breaks out of his trance.
"N-no, it's nothing." He claims. "That...that's not her. I was talking about someone else. Let's just go to this Constanze."
I'm not sure what all that was about, but something with Lotte clearly made him lose sense of himself, at least for sometime.
Maybe what he says is true, and Lotte only reminded him of his description of this student.
In any case, it's best that I don't ponder on this subject for too long.
Like Bruno said, let's just find Constanze.
We continue walking down the hall, until we reach the janitor's closet.
Bruno looks up at me, a bit doubtful that someone would want to hang out here.
"Are you sure she's in there?" He asks.
"That's what Amanda said."
I open the door, and reveal a dingy, dusty room.
Wires, tools, computer chips, and disassembled household items are strewn all over the stained carpet.
In the center is the silly little short fellow, hunched over and welding into a toaster.
I knock on the door, signaling my arrival.
Constanze looks up from her project, her back cracking in the process, as she takes off her goggles with oil stained fingers. Her unfocused, baggy eyes look up at me.
The whole scene looks like she has been hard at work for hours. I would feel bad, if she was not doing it for her own profit.
Her face is a mixture of anger and curiosity, making an expression of 'What do you want? Can't you see I'm busy?'
I clear my throat, a bit nervous by her gaze.
"Hello Constanze, you remember me, right? Anyway, I was wondering if you had a…"
My voice trails off, as the name escapes me.
"A…a revenue…hypo genetic pasta, uh…" My second attempt ends as the last, in utter failure.
"We need a reverse hyper kinetic particle matrix arranger." Bruno says, cutting in.
Constanze's mouth hangs open, in disbelief at Bruno.
Shaking it off, she rummages through the litter and pulls out a device. Two black cylinders, conjoined together by a clear glass tube, making it look like a dumbbell.
Bruno's eyes sparkle.
"Yup, that's it." He says, with a satisfied nod.
I reach out, only to have her pull back.
The look on her face can only be described as 'How much is this worth to you?'
I pull out a crisp ten euro bill from my pocket.
"How's this?" I ask, holding to out to her.
She shakes her head.
I pull out a five euro bill, now offering a total of fifteen euros.
She shakes her head again.
"I think you're stiffing me." I comment.
In a huff, she grabs a whiteboard and writes her message.
She then holds out the sheet, displaying her thoughts.
'Listen, you're the only one being stiff here! Your mainland money is worth less then British pounds. This machine goes for hundreds of pounds online. But, I'll be nice and only ask for three hundred euros!'
"What?! Three hundred euros?!" I cry out in shock. "I don't even have one-fifty!"
Hearing this news, she shrugs and sits back down to continue working on her toaster.
As she is about to pull down her goggles, Bruno interjects.
"My dear lady, we only need this creation, made by your magnificent design, for just a moment, Perhaps, you could lend it for just a day, at the cost of fifty euros? You see, my acquaintance and I require your invention for a ritual. If you would deny us the right of knowledge, then what kind of person are you?"
Constanze looks up, her stone cold face softened by Bruno's warm words.
After he gives her the literal puppy dog eyes, she completely capitulates.
She exchanges her reverse hyper kinetic particle matrix arranger, for my fifty euro bill.
We exchange a nod, as I take the device under my arm.
Her attention turns back to her project, as I close the door.
I look down at Bruno, and raise an eyebrow.
"Since when did you get so suave?" I ask while grinning, happy by his successful swaying of Constanze.
"Well, I used to have quite a collection of bitches back in the day!" He exclaims.
"Bruno!?" I cry out, a bit surprised that this dog would be so willing to curse so openly.
"What?" He innocently asks, his wide grin betraying his forced cluelessness. "Bitches, female dogs."
"Was that before or after you could talk?" I jokingly ask him.
He rolls his eyes, saying
"Very funny…"
With both of us sitting down on my dorm floor, I insert the Smoke Weepers into the top piece of the reverse hyper kinetic particle matrix arranger.
After a series of loud cracks and grinds, the crushed powder flows into the central tube.
"Now, we have to mix in a certain liquid to the powder." Bruno declares.
"What?" I ask.
"Blood of course. This is a ritual, after all."
Blood, why is it always blood?
"And it needs to be the blood of a virgin." Bruno adds.
This causes my face to grow a bit red.
"Well...uh…" I finger the collar of my shirt, trying to find the right words. "Too bad I'm not one…"
That was a bad lie and one that Bruno saw right through.
"If you want, I could bite you." Bruno suggests.
"As glamorous as that sounds, I have something else in mind." I declare, while reaching into my travel bag, and pulling out a personal item of mine.
A large metallic dagger, complete with ornate carvings running down the handle and sheath. The most profound one being a carving of the she-wolf nursing the brothers Romulus and Remus.
"What is that?" Bruno asks.
"It's a pugio, the Roman stabbing dagger. This has been passed down in my family, since they first came to power in Rome, in 497 BC. This antique is 1515 years old."
Bruno's jaw drops.
"Dang, it must be worth a fortune!"
The dagger gives off a satisfying ring, as I pull the blade from the sheath.
I prick my finger with the point.
A singular drop of blood drips, and onto the charcoal colored powder, now bearing a sprinkle of crimson red.
I dab my wounded finger against my shirt, blocking the flow of blood.
I slide the dagger into my satchel, along with a vial of Purified Smoke Weepers, a wooden bowl, a bag of salt, a book of matches, and five candles. Items we will need for the ritual.
I look at the clock, 11:56 PM.
"Well, we best go outside, and summon The Raven Man. We can only do this at night." Bruno suggests.
I sling the bag over my shoulder.
"Alright, let's do this."
With Bruno lying on the grass, I create a circle of salt, and line up the candles, placing the bowl, filled with Purified Smoke Weepers in the center of the circle.
Alright, time to begin. After lighting one of the candles, I chant
"On this dark night, I call on The Raven Man. Appear before me, here and now, and do my will."
I then grab my blade, and re-prick my finger.
As the blood drips onto the flame, I chant
"The flame is my beacon. The blood is my sacrifice."
I repeat this, until each lit candle is adorned with a drop of blood.
"Come Raven Man, reveal yourself, so that you may reveal your secrets."
After I finish the mantra, the candle flames begin to dance, as a cold wind passes by, causing me to shiver.
I look at Bruno, and notice that the hair on his back is standing up, himself also suffering from the sudden drop in temperature.
The icy winds subside, as a dark shadow begins to manifest inside the salt circle.
The shadow begins to take shape, myself being able to faintly make out the silhouette of a pair of wings, and a beak.
The Raven Man! He came! This spell actually worked!
As if by supernatural forces, or by the fear of the unknown, my knees begin to shake.
I see the beak begin to open, and a rather calm but emotionless voice emerges.
"You are in the presence of The Raven Man.
Telling the future, I can.
Anything you may demand
With just a snap of your fingers, your wish is my command."
That would have been an upbeat welcome, with all the rhymes and all, if his voice wasn't colder than the wind that signaled his arrival.
"Umm yes..." I begin. "I want to know where the man John Diehl lives." I say.
"He lives in a house of brick
On Green Lane, Hardwicke." The Raven Man utters without hesitation.
I guess he really does know everything.
In that case-
"Thank you for your cooperation." Bruno says, interrupting my train of thought. "You may leave-"
"Hold on, Bruno." I whisper to him "If this guy really knows everything, then I think we should ask him a few more questions, before sending him off."
"Are you sure, Theodore?" Bruno asks "Some knowledge isn't meant to be known. Besides, something about this guy just isn't right. I can smell it on him, trust me, I've got a dog's nose."
"I'm sure." I say, before turning my attention to the creature.
"Oh great and powerful Raven Man…what is my future?" I ask, that being the first question that came to mind.
This sets the dog off.
"What?! Don't you know that asking about the future is the worst thing you could ask?!" Haven't you seen the movies?!" He quietly demands.
"Well, this isn't a movie." I retort.
I look back at The Raven Man.
He looks right back at me, studying me, judging me, perhaps deciding if he should tell me or not.
After seeing the twinkle of curiosity in my eyes, he gently closes his.
"Beware wizard folk
For the future is not a joke.
This is worse than the inquisition
But to most this will simply be another transition.
There will be so many dead
The consequences will be widespread.
This is worse than the fall of Rome
So please return to your home.
Say goodbye to your family
And continue life normally.
For an old god pulls the strings
All he wants is to be king of kings.
But there is a beacon of light
A hero that will end the night.
His road ahead is full of peril
His conscience may turn feral.
If he fights the evil full time
The world might be saved just in time."
And with that, the sun begins to rise, consuming the darkness of night.
As the light of day creeps towards the shadow like figure, of The Raven Man, he eventually fades away, and disappears into the morning dawn, leaving me and Bruno alone.
"So, what was that all about?" Bruno asks, himself not getting the meaning of such a riddle.
"I don't know, but it can't be good."
An awkward silence envelopes us, until he eventually breaks it.
"Look Ted..." He begins. "Mendacius just told me to bring you to him. I had no idea any of this would happen-"
"Whatever happens, happens." I say, cutting him off. "All we need to worry about now is finding John Diehl. I just want to get this whole thing over with."
A hint of fear slips into my voice.
Bruno picks up on this.
"Okay, let's." He agrees, as we both begin walking back to the Gloucestershire train station.
Author's Note:Can any of you decrypt the fortune telling that The Raven Man told our heroes? The anime series for Little Witch Academia has been announced to air in January, 2017! A promo/trailer has just been released. Watching it just makes me even more excited!