Chapter 28
Levi inhaled the scent of hot food as he walked into the common room and immediately let out a groan of appreciation. Now that his body was coming down from the adrenaline high his stomach felt like it was trying to eat his spine. The fruit he had consumed out on the wall hadn’t even come close to covering how hungry he was. He made a beeline straight for the food tables and claimed a plate full of steak and potatoes, and also a bowl of stew. He wasn’t going to ask what came from what—he just knew this stuff would taste good and fill his stomach. He even snatched up a dead rabbit—skinned thankfully—for Flix, and the dragonet chimed a piercing series of notes as she lifted it from his hand and flapped her way to his room to eat in peace.
Zuzan hopped off of his head and down onto his shoulder before she crept down his arm. The sylvan squirrel sniffed his plate several times and chittered before she claimed a large nut that looked like a walnut, though it was twice the size of one. He swore he could see her stomach expanding and she hadn’t even bitten into it yet. She settled on the cushion of the couch he had decided to sit on, then started gnawing her way into the treat. Levi just leaned back into the leather and let out a sigh as he finally took his weight off his feet. He was too tired to follow Flix to the common room before he ate.
“Once I devour this, I am going to shower for at least an hour,” he groaned, and several of the other students chuckled in weary agreement. Levi looked at his housemates to see how they were doing and noted some with minor injuries. He saw a few students had already changed into clean uniforms. He assumed those had been on the wall closer to their tower. One woman with bark-like skin was missing her arm from the elbow down, though he saw buds forming among the cracked wood. He assumed from the lack of terror and pain on her face that the limb was going to grow back. The injury sobered his mood as he started to eat. I hope Nox and Tawny are okay, I don’t even know where they were stationed, he thought.
Glint sat down next to him, and when Levi looked he saw his friend had a bowl of chocolates—at least, Levi thought they were chocolates. The crunch threw him off and made him suspect differently. Glint wiggled his clawed toes and let out his own sigh as he leaned back against the couch cushion with a flop of his head. “I am so tired,” the swamp imp complained.
“You said it, bud. That was a few hours of pure chaos,” Levi agreed.
After that, the pair ate in silence and simply enjoyed being off of their feet. The windows reflected lightning in a number of colors as the stained glass filtered the blasts. Thunder rumbled and shook the castle, and Levi even thought he felt their tower sway a few times. The storm outside had grown immense in the time it had taken them to get back to Raven House, and he honestly couldn’t tell if the threat from the Horrors had ended. He checked his emblem, but it hadn’t updated yet. He took that to mean the situation wasn’t resolved, which seemed like a very bad sign. He found himself wondering if the various staff like librarians and cooks had joined in the battle, or if they served another role during a situation like this? As far as he knew, the standard staff didn’t have to have great magic potential themselves: just be good at their job.
He scooped up Zuzan and the solid three-quarters of her nut that remained, then took her to his room. Once she was settled on the shelf and he had refilled the water dish, he began getting ready to take his shower. Flix hadn’t had a problem using her jaw to turn the knob on his door, he saw. She seemed happy, gnawing on the bones of the rabbit with a bloody snout, and he shook his head, glad she hadn’t tried to eat it in his bed again. “You two behave while I take a shower,” he requested, and then headed down the hall.
Once in the bathroom, he stripped and tossed his dirty clothes into a heap. He hadn’t noticed anything touching him during the fight, but there was a grime all over them that made him feel greasy. He stepped under the hot water and started scrubbing himself clean as vigorously as he could, making sure to get his hair down to the roots. He paused when he was scrubbing the sides of his scalp and ran his fingers over his skull—it felt like there was a ridge traveling under his hair. It wasn’t very thick and it didn’t hurt, but he hadn’t noticed it before. “With my luck I’m going through some kind of homo draconic puberty,” he muttered to himself.
Now that he knew the ridges were there, it was hard not to play with them. He forced his attention back on scrubbing his skin clean, and then got out to start dressing. A second later, a huge boom echoed and the whole building seemed to rock violently from side to side. The vapor lanterns dimmed as though the magical gas flow was running out, and then everything went silent. Levi dried himself as he waited for the lanterns to return to full power, glancing from one to another as they stayed low. He frowned and focused on getting dressed as quickly as he could. He wasn’t sure what was going on, but he wanted to get back to his room just in case the lights went out. He could see in the dark, but he’d feel better having his companions at his side.
The lights had dimmed even further by the time he’d reached his room. Once inside, he tossed his befouled clothing toward his door. He looked around and found a stash of candles in his satchel—he had gotten them in case he and Glint got stuck outside camping again. Once they were lit, he took in Zuzan and Flix’s reaction to the sounds outside. The squirrel was chewing at her nut with dedication, her cheeks bulging from the food she’d hidden. Flix had carefully stacked the rabbit bones on one corner of his desk and had curled up to go to sleep. Neither beast seemed overly concerned, so Levi took that as a sign it was fine to rest. He dripped some wax off the top of each candle and sunk the base into the melt, letting them harden to the desk like glue.
Content that he was relatively safe, Levi lay down and decided to get some sleep while he had the chance.
The smell of burning oil was everywhere and the air hissed as vapor blasted through rents in the bronze walls. The hallway was tilted sharply to the right, the diagonal floor causing him to stumble when he tried to make his way down it. The air was fast filling with smoke, so he knew he was going to have to get outside the ship or he’d die when the air fouled, or worse. The growing fumes made him think that a mana eruption was imminent.
He reached a dented door and began twisting the wheel to unlock the mechanisms, noting the sprung bolts and twisted rivets. He hoped he could still manage to pull the door open; if he didn’t escape the inner hull before the wrong mechanism cracked, he’d die in the resulting vapor flare. Being burned alive in a mana-fueled inferno was not how he wished to end this trip. The door groaned but didn’t open; he threw all his weight into it and couldn’t get it to budge. He looked around in a panic and found a length of piping that had torn free of a bulkhead. He grasped the metal and shoved it into the wheel, then used it to get leverage on the door. It took both feet pressing against the wall to wrench the heavy portal open, but finally it sprang loose with a horrible squeal.
The open hall had somehow twisted to tilt in the other direction and he realized the ship’s spine must have snapped and left one half to shift along a different access. When he heard the boom of a distant explosion, he started racing down this tunnel toward the outside, praying to himself that the door to the outer hull wasn’t going to be as hard to open as this had been. He heard a gnashing sound and threw a look over his shoulder—the black mass of teeth and eyeballs rolling down the hall at him inspired a new burst of speed. He didn’t know how a Lesser Horror had gotten this deep into the ship, but he wanted nothing to do with it.
The mid-door was open, so he grasped the wheel to haul it shut. Tossing the wheel to engage the locks, he spun it fast and then turned to run again. He had no idea how long the frame would hold against a Horror—he just needed time to get out of the ship. It took squirming through several broken walls before he finally climbed onto the surface, only to discover the ship was lying on its side atop a flaming ruin of a forest. The trees had been blasted down in every direction and the undergrowth was on fire for as far as he could see. He took several deep breaths and leaped off the hull to land on the ground. The smell of metal, ash, and smoke filled his nose and he sneezed. A moment later, he started running to find a space away from the crashed ship. He heard the insane gibbering of other Horrors and knew he had to find a place to hide. He also needed to get distance between himself and the wreckage—he was sure that the ship was going to explode before long.
He tripped going over the peak of a hill and tumbled down with a crash. Fabric wrapped around his head and he struggled to get upright, finally resorting to tearing the clothing free. He stood outside a cavern, the mouth of which faced away from the downed vessel. As he started to crawl into the cave, he caught sight of his reflection in a stagnant pool of water on the stony floor—vibrant green eyes and red lips stared back at him from a very feminine face.
Levi sat up with a jolt as he woke up from the dream. “The hell was that?” he asked his empty room. The beasts sleeping nearby on his desk didn’t answer, and he noted that the candles had guttered out. The gas lantern had also gone out—he had no idea what time it was. His fingers pressed to his emblem to check for a message from the school. All classes canceled due to the emergency; students are asked to stay in their room until called by staff. He sighed at the message and rolled his eyes. “That doesn’t tell me a damn thing about what is going on outside,” he complained as he flopped back down onto the mattress.
He listened intently, but aside from Zuzan’s squeaking snores and a faint rattle coming from Flix, he didn’t hear a thing. No thunder, no high winds. The building didn’t seem to be swaying anymore. Levi took that into consideration. He felt alright, allowing some cautious optimism to begin to take hold. With luck it was a sign that the Director had won in their battle against that huge Horror and that the school was no longer in danger. He reviewed the dream he had had, then frowned; he had never been inside an airship, nor had he been inside a submarine. Running through the corridors on that ship had felt a lot like watching a submarine movie, except he had experienced the emotions of the person in the dream. He had never before seen the person that had reflected back at him and wasn’t sure where those details had come from.
“Must be from listening to Glint go on about those airships,” he said as he started to fluff his pillow and get comfortable once more. He wasn’t sure how long he had slept, but he definitely felt like he could get more rest. He rolled onto his stomach and curled his arms under his pillow as he closed his eyes, and another yawn forced his mouth open. “Hopefully everything is fine, and tomorrow I can talk to Tawny and make sure Nox is okay,” he murmured to himself.
He drifted off again, and this time sleep came deep and uninterrupted. He woke to the feeling of someone pressing against his back, and when he turned his head to look, he realized Tawny lay naked and curled against his back, one dusky arm draped over his chest, the other curled under his hip. The dark elf was snoring softly and he saw bruises covering her arms and legs. Levi shifted until they were facing each other and gave her a closer inspection, finally seeing that she was alright. The house mistress of Raven just sighed in her sleep and rolled over to press herself back against him. Levi let out a little laugh. “Okay, you can be the little spoon,” he whispered to her and she sighed again.
He put his arms around her and hugged her to his chest, feeling her shift, and then she went limp as her sleep deepened. He saw the slack look on her face and heard the tiny sounds she made as she breathed. One of his hands rose to stroke through her charcoal hair, brushing it away from her face so he could look at her and see how she was doing. The woman pouted when his arms loosened, and she pressed back tighter against him if he tried to let go. That wasn’t a fight he was interested in, so he tightened his embrace and laid his head back down on the pillow. He wasn’t tired anymore, but he was also in no hurry to ruin the tender moment. The soft sounds that Tawny let out as she started to dream hinted that she might need this cuddle and he was happy to oblige.
She drew his arm to her face in her sleep, and he had to laugh as she let out a little growling noise and started to bite along his forearm. She wasn’t biting hard and she was producing the most adorable noises.
Levi felt content to relax like this for a while.
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