The Orphan Wars (Book One) (11 page)

The first room number he saw was 59.  The next room number he saw was 58.  This was a most unusual numbering system for the rooms.  The second floor rooms were labeled in the 50s.  The third floor rooms were labeled in the 40s.  The fourth floor rooms were labeled in the 30s.  The
fifth floor rooms were labeled in the 20s.  The sixth floor rooms were labeled in the 10s.  Room 11 was the final room on the sixth floor.  Nemeth eagerly grabbed the room key out of his backpack and took it out.  He put it into the lock, turned it sideways and opened the door.  He made his way into the room, closed the door and locked it.  He then quickly put down everything he was carrying on top of the large, elegant desk that was at the front of the room.  He dashed toward the large king sized bed in the center of the room and leapt onto it face first.  Nemeth's body slowly sank into the comfortable bed.  This bed was much better than the one he had back at Justile Dormitory.

"Jaida…" said Nemeth.  "JAIDA???"

Nemeth's body began to glow and Jaida emerged from his body and began floating overhead.

"Jaida, I'm going to need some sleep," said Nemeth.
  "I feel like I'm going to crack from the pressure of all this if I don't get a little bit of rest.  A half hour nap should be all I need and I'll be ready to continue.  Can you please wake me up in a half hour?"

"If you so desire master," replied Nemeth.  "Just remember that as each second
passes, Terazhul grows stronger.  In a half hour, the Forestial Corruption spell's area of effect might even reach here."

"You sure know what to say to a kid to make them have pleasant dreams," said Nemeth sarcastically.
  "It's a risk that I'm willing to take."

"
How can a boy this lazy and irresponsible be capable of stopping Terazhul?" asked Jaida.

"Oh please…" replied Nemeth.
  "Not this again.  You saw what I was able to do against Madame Magica.  Plus, I've got an honorary big sister now…"

Nemeth
drifted into a deep sleep in the middle of his sentence.  He started snoring loudly and drooling on his pillow.  Nemeth began to have vivid dreams of his past.

"Nobody knows the answer?" said Professor Darcy.  "I understand that all of you are first y
ear students here at Lord Dragomir's Academy, but that is no reason for an entire classroom to be unable to answer such a simple question.  This is not Kokinos Nursery anymore so you will not be treated like babies anymore!  Well if nobody raises their hand, then I'm just going to have to call on somebody.  Surely SOMEBODY knows the answer!"

Professor Darcy began to look around the classroom for the student that appeared to be the most timid.

"Hey little boy!" shouted Professor Darcy.  "Whoever is sitting in desk C3, tell me the answer to the question."

"I don't
know," replied the boy in a meek voice.  "I don't know the answer to the question ma'am."

"I don't believe you," said Professor Darcy.  "Your body language tells me everything I need to know.  I'll repeat the question one more time and you WILL give me the correct answer.  What is the process for creating a Transmutation Potion?"

"Ok fine, I'll recite the process for you," replied the boy hesitantly.  "To make a Transmutation Potion, you need to mix 4 parts Bleeding Widow, 6 parts Dark Cuphea, and 2 parts Purple Ternatea with 24 ounces of water."

"So it seems we are both correct," said Professor Darcy.  "You knew the answer to the question all along and I knew that you had the answer.  Surely you will tell me your name, right boy?  You don't want me to call you the boy who sits in desk C3 all year long now do you?"

"My name is Nemeth," said the young boy.  "Anything else you need from me?"

"Well Nemeth,"
replied Professor Darcy.  "I don't need anything else from you now.  At least you're off to a good start.  As for the rest of the class, that remains to be unseen.  They are probably a bunch of morons compared to you."

All of the students in
the class turned their desks around in the direction of desk C3 where Nemeth was sitting.  They began to stare blankly at him and started to cough.  Nemeth slumped down in his chair nervously.  He folded his arms, put them on the desk and pushed his face into the center of his folded arms.  This was one of Nemeth's first memories of feeling embarrassed and he was reliving it through his dreams.

"CLASS
!" shouted Professor Darcy.  "Stop pretending like you have to cough and turn your desks around this instant!  Turn them around now otherwise I am going to have to punish you!  This is your last warning!"

The class was unresponsiv
e.  They continued to stare at Nemeth.  The coughs became louder and synchronized.  He remained frozen with fear with his face pushed into the center of his folded arms on the desk.

"Hey silly!" said a familiar voice.  "This is just a dream.  Well, maybe it's a bit of a nightmare.  But you can change the outcome!
  Lift your head up!  It's safe!"

The familiar voice was that of Aria.  A vision of Aria appea
red in the far right corner of the classroom near Professor Darcy.

"Come on silly!" said the vision of Aria.
  "Remember how we spoke about the power of lucid dreaming?  Do whatever you want!  Hee hee!"

Nemeth lifted his head from the desk. 
He unfolded his arms and raised one of them into the air.  Professor Darcy looked at Nemeth.

"Yes Nemeth?
" asked Professor Darcy.  "What is it you have to say?"

"
You're doing a terrible job teaching us," said Nemeth.  "You're doing an even worse job trying to punish these kids.  You've lost all control of the class.  Now you see, I answered one of your questions and I think that it's only fair that you answer one of my questions back.  What in the world is stopping me from punishing you for your poor performance as a teacher?"

The students in the room
stopped coughing suddenly and shifted their attention off of Nemeth and back onto Professor Darcy.

"
Who in the bloody hell are you to judge me little boy?" asked Professor Darcy angrily.

"I'm afraid that's the wrong answer to my question," said Nemeth with a devilish look on his face.
  "Don't answer a question with another question.  Now it's time for you to learn another lesson about Transmutation Potions."

Nemeth envisioned
three steel chains that busted out of the classroom walls.  The first steel chain wrapped around the right arm of Professor Darcy.  The second steel chain wrapped around the left arm of Professor Darcy.  The final steel chain wrapped around the throat of Professor Darcy.  Professor Darcy was locked into place and was unable to move or speak.  He envisioned a very large Transmutation Potion floating in front of Professor Darcy.  He then made the Transmutation Potion smash into her face.  Professor Darcy slowly started to transform into dozens of other smaller Transmutation Potions that floated around the classroom.  The students began to clap and cheer loudly.  The Transmutation Potions suddenly started to zigzag across the room.  Each one of them smashed directly into the faces of one of the students.  The students clapping and cheering quickly turned to screams of terror.  Within moments, each one of the students began to transform into a clone of Aria, just as she looked when she was a first year student.  Nemeth looked over at the original vision of Aria.

"I always wanted you to be in a
ll of my first year classes," said Nemeth.  "Professor Darcy's class was one of those that you weren't in, until now of course!"

"Hee hee!
" laughed the vision of Aria.  "Good job!  I certainly was cute when I was 8 years old wasn't I?  You were cute too, but I've got you outnumbered here!  I told you that lucid dreaming was powerful stuff.  You can do whatever you want to in your dreams!  One of these days, with more practice we're both going to master lucid dreaming!"

"WAKE UP MASTER!!!" shouted
Jaida.  "A half hour has passed already and it's time for you to get up.  We've got to continue on our journey."

Nemeth
slowly awakened from his slumber.  He was face down and covered in drool.  He turned over and saw Jaida hovering above him and let out a large scream.  He rolled over several times to his right and fell off the comfortable bed onto the floor.

"It's me master," said Jaida.  "What's wrong
with you?"

"You scared the hell out of me!" exclaimed
Nemeth.  "I'm sure there will be a time when I don't freak out when I see a Guardian Spirit floating around after I wake up.  But for now, please don't do that Jaida.  Use that 100 foot boundary to our advantage ok?"

"I'm sorry," replied Jaida. 
"I meant no harm.  I was just doing my job. "

Nemeth got up from the floor and looked around room 11.  He walked over
to the window and looked up into the sky.  The heavy rain had stopped.  The sky was pitch black and all he could see Despisa, one of the 10 known moons of Tyraneus.  Despisa had an unusual red halo around it.

"It's ok," replied Nemeth.
  "So there are two ways to get into the weapon shop next door according to the people I met in the dining area downstairs.  We can either get in through the roof of the weapon shop or through a trapdoor behind the front desk that acts as an underground passageway throughout the town.  We're already on the highest floor of the inn.  All we need to do is get up to the roof of the inn."

Nemeth opened the window which pushed it outward.  He turned around and leaned back looking upwards at the outside of the inn.  He turned around again and took a step backwards into the room.  He closed the window and sighed.

"There's no way I can scale the outside of the building and I can't fly," said Nemeth with great disappointment in his voice.  "I guess I'll have to try the trapdoor instead.  Let's go Jaida."

"If only you had a magic broom," said Jaida. 
"You know, something like an Escoba Retama X."

"Here we go again
!" exclaimed Nemeth.  "I didn't mean to break the magic broom!  And sure, maybe throwing the broken pieces of the broom into the flaming rumble of the potion shop wasn't the brightest idea after all."

Nemeth gathered up his items that he previously placed by the desk before taking a nap.  He opened the door to room 11 and walked out into the hallway.  He shut the door
gently and then locked it.  He began to descend the staircases to the main lobby, doing so very quietly as to not wake up anybody in the inn.  The innkeeper was still nowhere in sight.  Nemeth was very pleased at this and began to smile.  Many of the candles were now blown out, so it was quite dark in the main lobby.

Nemeth
lifted himself up and on to the top of the front desk.  He made his way behind the front desk and started to crawl on his stomach.  He inched his way forward.  After a few minutes of crawling around in the dark, he finally found the blue rug.  He slowly pulled the rug off and found the trapdoor.  The trapdoor appeared to open upwards and toward the back of the room.  Nemeth slowly got to his knees and pulled upward on a moderately sized brass ring on the trapdoor.  He pulled upward until he got to his feet and managed to slowly lower the trapdoor's hatch to the floor.  The trapdoor made a mild creaking noise as it was lowered but nothing too alarming.  Nemeth looked down into the newly revealed hole.  He couldn't see how far down the hole went.  He thought about using the lantern, but figured that someone might be wandering around at night time and he would be caught sneaking around.

"Wait a minute,"
said Nemeth quietly.  "Didn't I see a treasure chest back here too?  Maybe there's something of use in there."

Nemeth began to crawl towards all the wa
y towards the back of the front desk area.  He eventually bumped into the treasure chest.  Nemeth tried lifting the lid to the treasure chest but to no avail.  The treasure chest was locked from the front in the center with a small lock.

"There's only one way I know to pick a lock," said Nemeth quietly.  "My oversized
lock pick should work very well."

Nemeth
drew his sword and sliced the small lock off of the treasure chest.  Nemeth sheathed his sword.  He opened the heavy lid to the treasure chest and began to dig blindly inside of it hoping to find something good.  As his hands ran through the contents of the treasure chest, he felt what seemed to be coins.  He initially wanted to grab coins and stuff them into his backpack but he decided against it.  After all, he probably had enough money from robbing the treasure chest at Madame Magica's Potion Shop to last him for years.  More money wouldn't help him get any closer to getting down below or on top of the roof.  After several minutes of shifting coins around from side to side, he felt something sharp poking his right hand.  He moved his hand slowly around the edge of the object making sure not to get a cut in the palm of his hand.  As he moved his hand around the object he wondered more and more about what the item was.  It felt like a small metal pipe.  He lifted the object out of the treasure chest carefully and examined it carefully.  It wasn't a metal pipe after all.  It was something much better.  It was a metal grappling hook with a large length of rope attached to it.  This is exactly what Nemeth needed.  Nemeth closed the lid to the treasure chest slowly and placed the damaged lock back on it as best as he could.  He slowly crawled his way back over to the trapdoor.  Nemeth took a look down into the hole that the trapdoor was covering once again.  Nemeth came too close to the opening and clumsily fell into the hole.  He screamed loudly as he fell in and was holding on with only his right arm.  He managed to bring his other arm up and out of the hole.  He struggled to pull himself up out of the hole.