Summoner 16, page 13
I rolled my eyes and forced back my groan.
Maker, the idiots had taken over the Academy.
Fortunately, my next class was History of Magic with Arwyn, so I ignored the gossip of my peers and darted toward the gorgeous redhead’s classroom as fast as I could. Even at my quick pace, it still took me longer than I would have liked to reach my destination. The biology classroom was inconveniently located, and I didn’t think I would be enjoying it as much as I’d hoped.
The bell rang as I entered the corridor, and the flood of students exiting Arwyn’s classroom pushed me backward for a moment before I angled toward the wall.
The red-haired healer had her back to me when I entered, and I stepped quietly up to a desk near the front. When I sat down, I thumped my textbook onto the surface in front of me, and Arwyn jumped in surprise.
“Oh, Gryff, you scared me,” the professor exclaimed as she pressed her palm over her heart.
“Sorry,” I chuckled.
“How was your first class?” Arwyn’s amber eyes were bright with excitement as she took the empty seat beside me.
“Weird.” I frowned. “I’m not sure Professor Cornwall is all there upstairs.”
The red-haired teacher laughed and ran a hand through her flame colored tendrils. “No, I don’t think he is, either. Still, he has the finest mind in the country when it comes to the natural world.”
I watched her movements with an appreciative eye, but before I could respond, the other students began to swarm into the classroom, and the beautiful professor stood up.
Layla, Braden, Mati, Cyra, Nia, and Freya entered the room as a group, and my friends all crowded into the empty desks around me near the front.
“It’s not like you to sit near the front.” Nia gave me a brilliant smile as she sat to my left, and Freya sat on her other side. “I like it.”
“It was mostly accidental,” I confessed with a wry grin. “I was trying to sneak up on Arwyn to surprise her, and then I got distracted by talking.”
“I’m still accepting it as an increased enthusiasm for learning.” The prodigy mage straightened her shoulders, and then she neatly laid her notepad and pen on her desk.
“Don’t let me forget,” I told my fiancée, “I need to talk to you about bridesmaids and groomsmen stuff.”
“Oh,” Nia replied with a frown. “Is there something wrong?”
“No, I don’t think so,” I hurried to reassure her. “I just want to make sure I am doing the right thing.”
“He doesn’t have enough friends,” Layla informed Nia in a conspiratorial whisper.
Before I could counter the petite summoner’s barb, though, Arwyn spoke in a loud voice to the entire class.
“Good morning, everyone,” the beautiful professor greeted.
“Good morning, Miss Hamner,” the class responded in unison.
“Today I would like to discuss something a little different than our normal topics,” Arwyn began with the effortless grace of an experienced educator. “We spend a great deal of time learning the facts and dates pertaining to recorded history, but oftentimes the history books have blind spots.”
A confused murmur swept through the classroom. The history teacher said history had blind spots?
Arwyn chuckled at her students’ reactions. “I’m speaking of myths, of course, and legends, old wives’ tales, yarns, strings, rumors.”
“What does that have to do with the history of magic?” Mati asked with a confused tone.
“One word.” Arwyn paused to let her eyes slide over every single student, and a small smile tilted the corners of her lips. “Shapeshifters.”
A collective gasp went through the majority of my classmates, but my friends just smiled with sudden understanding.
“Ohh, yeah… ” The talkative banisher gave the professor an apologetic smile. “That makes sense.”
The beautiful teacher seized the opening Mati had given her to launch into a factual, yet poetic retelling of her experiences in the land of the shapeshifters. Arwyn’s eyes showed her fascination with the culture and magic of the people of Vay, and she gestured with her hands to emphasize her points. It was a dance, a spectacle completely opposite than what I’d witnessed in my first class of the day, and I loved every minute of it.
I groaned audibly when the bell rang and signaled an end to my time with Arwyn. I moved reluctantly toward the door, but I blew her a subtle kiss before I turned down the hallway.
“Freya is staying here to study with Arwyn,” Nia informed me as she caught up to me. “I’m off to my elemental class. I’ll see you for physical training.”
She squeezed my hand warmly before she veered away and headed in the opposite direction.
My next class was Monster Identification, and my excitement returned as I realized one of my favorite pastimes would now be considered school work. Layla fell into step with me, and the petite summoner gave me a wicked grin as she latched onto my arm.
“Onward, Gryffie!” She gestured down the hall with a commanding air while her keichim screeched in agreement on her shoulder.
I chuckled and did as I was ordered, and the two of us set out across campus at a quick pace. We were halfway across the lawn when I noticed a familiar face in the crowd of students.
Rori Brevens.
The professor of summoning wobbled across the grass with his bulging gut swaying in front of him, and his fat chins and flabby cheeks jiggled as the obese summoner huffed and puffed with each step.
The distance between us shrank, and by the time my teacher and I made eye contact, the rank body odor and alcohol stench radiating off him hit my nose.
I grimaced and wrinkled my nose in disgust.
“Ew.” Layla sniffed. “What’s that smell?”
“Him.” I gritted my teeth and jerked my chin toward the approaching teacher. “I think.”
What the fuck had happened? When I’d left for my mission in the Southern continent, Rori Brevens had been recovering from his alcohol dependency, and he’d cleaned up a lot.
The man before me resembled the man I’d first met when I’d joined the Academy, but then I noticed how his beard was neatly trimmed and his clothes looked newer.
“Rori,” I greeted with a friendly wave as I swallowed down my disgust over his smell.
“G-Gryff?” Professor Brevens stared at me with an incredulous expression. “You died!”
“That’s such old news,” Layla informed him with a derisive snort. “He’s been back from the dead for days now.”
“I see.” He narrowed his beady brown eyes at me. “Thank you for the information, Miss Bethel.”
“Yeah, so anyway.” I raked a hand through my hair and tried to change the subject. “How are you doing? You look… ”
My voice trailed off, and I gave him a helpless look.
“I suppose you’re wondering what happened to me,” Rori said, and then he let out a belch that stung my nose.
“Well, yeah.” I spread out my hands, and I gestured broadly at his appearance. “What the fuck, Rori?”
“You don’t understand,” he blurted out in a hurt voice. “Your life is so simple and easy. Just go be the hero, no hard choices to make… ”
I started to argue against the absurdity of his words, but when I opened my mouth, I realized my teacher had started to cry.
My teacher started to blubber, and snot dripped out from his huge nose. Then he smeared his face with the back of his jacket sleeve and gave me the most pathetic look I’d ever seen.
He was drunk in the middle of the day.
And it seemed like I had to be the one to set him straight.
Again.
Chapter Seven
“You need to get yourself cleaned up,” I instructed in a stern voice. “Whatever you’ve got going on right now, bail. Go take a shower and put on some clean clothes.”
“Please,” Rori countered with pleading eyes. “Let me explain.”
“I have to get to class,” I persisted with a concerned frown.
“Just a few moments of your time,” the summoner teacher insisted. “I’ll write you a note to excuse your tardiness.”
“Me, too, me, too!” Layla bounced on the balls of her feet and held out the palm of her hand expectantly. “Just give me, like, three or four of them. You know, just in case I accidentally drop one on the way to class.”
“No,” I argued as I leveled a stern look at the petite summoner. “You need to go to class now. Save me a seat, and I’ll meet you there.”
“Lame!” She rolled her eyes and crossed her arms over her chest. “Why do you get to have all the fun?”
“Layla, please.” I gave her a pointed look, and she sighed in surrender.
“Fine.” The petite summoner stood up on her tippy toes to press a quick kiss against my cheek. “Don’t take too long or everyone will think you’re dead… again.”
Then she trotted off with bouncing steps, and I was alone with Rori.
“Okay,” I said as I turned back to my teacher. “Tell me what’s going on.”
“It’s awful, Gryff,” Professor Brevens complained as he flung his hands up into the air. “I’m damned if I do, and damned if I don’t! It’s enough to make a man give up.”
“Stop that.” I frowned. “You’re not going to give up, so stop talking like that. What do you mean by damned if you do, damned if you don’t?”
“I was offered a job,” Rori confessed with a dramatic sigh, and his eyes went slightly unfocused as he leveled his gaze toward me. “A wonderful opportunity, really, I’d be mad not to take it.”
“That’s great, right?” I asked in a confused tone. “Why would that make you so upset?”
“If I quit my job at the Academy,” he explained in a solemn voice, “I’ll be a laughing stock to the entire summoning community.”
“What do you mean?” I shook my head. “What kind of job is it?”
“I would be the lead architect for an entire building crew,” the obese summoner answered, and his eyes were full of turmoil.
“That sounds great,” I replied. “What’s the problem? Why are you so upset about getting a job offer? If you really want to stay and be a teacher, then just do it.”
“You do not understand.” Rori shuffled on his feet and stared at the ground. “I was finally being treated with respect. I wasn’t just the grunt mage sent in to clean up after the battle. Summoners were warriors, too.”
“I get that. Nothing’s changed, as far as I know.”
“It would if I quit my job teaching summoning,” my teacher clarified. “My colleagues would think I was admitting defeat, and they’d be right! I’m not cut out for teaching, though, I’ve learned that now. I’ll never be a great professor with many distinguished works, but I’ve always had a knack for building things… I read the job offer again last night, and I’ve been drowning my pain ever since… You’re right, though, I can’t go to class like this. I’m a mess.”
I clapped the shorter man on the shoulder and gave him a sympathetic smile. I finally understood his dilemma. He was torn between maintaining his reputation and doing what he enjoyed.
“I think I can help you,” I said as an idea began to form in my mind. “Do you trust me?”
“Sometimes.” Professor Brevens narrowed his eyes at me. “Sometimes you can be a little shit.”
“What if I told you that you could accept your new job offer and leave the Academy with your head held high?”
“I’d say that I’d do anything,” my teacher replied immediately.
I planted my hands on my hips and struck a heroic pose. “Then I have a plan.”
That sounds wicked, Dio remarked with obvious interest. He popped his head out of my hip pouch and looked up at me with murderous glee in his eyes. What’s the plan, boss?
“You’ll really help me?” my teacher asked with wide eyed amazement. “You’re a good kid, you know that? I’ve always liked you.”
“Thanks,” I laughed. “I try.”
So, I outlined a basic version of my idea, and Rori nodded along in agreement. We decided to initiate the first step of our plan at lunch, and when we parted ways, I had a mischievous smile on my face.
I rushed to my Monster Identification class, and I was glad Layla had chosen a seat in the back when I snuck into the empty chair beside her. Instead of a lecture, an older woman with long gray braided hair stood to the side of a large white surface covering the wall at the front of the classroom.
The teacher waved her hand in the air, and suddenly, the image of an axe goblin manifested onto the surface of the wall. I gasped as I stared up into the red eyes and ugly face of the familiar monster. Along the bottom of the image was a label naming the creature, and several students scribbled on their notepads as the professor gestured again. Another image of a monster slid across the wall, this time it was a box ogre, and I was amazed to see my classmates jotting down the monster in their notes like they would forget.
Is she showing us previews of lunch? Dio peered curiously at the image on the wall. I could go for some ogre…
Were they not familiar with a wide variety of monsters? I thought everyone had a basic level of knowledge about the different types and classes of creatures from the Shadowscape.
By the time the professor had progressed up to various types of giants, my eyes burned from staring at the projection. The silent monotony was mentally draining, and after a short while, I found myself robotically writing down the monster names with my classmates.
“You sure you don’t want to just bail?” Layla whispered, and then she yawned and kicked her feet up onto the desk, which pushed the front two legs of her chair off the ground. “This is the most boring thing I’ve ever seen.”
“While this isn’t the most riveting material,” I whispered back, “I get the feeling the second we look away, it’s going to get interesting all of a sudden.”
“I doubt there will be anything more interesting than the monsters you’ve already seen,” Layla commented dryly.
“Something the two of you would like to share with the class?” the gray-haired teacher asked in a loud voice. She made a semi-circle in the air with the palm of her hand, and the image on the wall vanished.
“Nope, sorry,” I muttered as I sank lower into my chair, and I motioned urgently for Layla to set her chair down.
The petite summoner had a devilish twinkle in her hazel eyes, though, and then she whipped her head away from my gaze to stare down our teacher. “Actually, yes.”
I inhaled sharply. “Layla… ”
“Oh?” the teacher asked with feigned interest.
“Yeah, Dolores, I’d like to share with the entire class how lame this slideshow is.” Layla smacked her chair legs back to the floor, and she hopped up to stand in the seat as she thrust her fist up into the air. “I say we demand scary, ugly ass monsters or we walk out!”
“Miss Bethel!” the professor gasped, and her hand covered her open mouth as her eyes went wide with shock. “Firstly, in this classroom you will refer to me as Miss Sullivan. Secondly, you… You think my pictures are boring?”
Layla blinked at her, frozen in her heroic stance with fist still raised. “Well, duh.”
“Hmph.” The gray-haired teacher got a wicked glint in her eyes, and she waggled her chin like she had some delicious secret. “You want scary? Very well.”
Suddenly, Miss Sullivan waved her hand toward the wall, and the enormous horse skull of the seventy-foot-tall undead satyrid burst onto the surface.
My classmates gasped, and several leapt from their chairs to dart toward the door, but Layla and I exchanged a knowing glance while we watched their panicked reactions.
We’d encountered this monster in the field, and while it was terrifying and intimidating in person, the representation of the actual monster paled in comparison.
As the students slowly realized it was an illusion and not the real monster suddenly appearing within their midst, they began to relax and settle back down into their seats.
“Now,” the professor exclaimed, and she gave Layla a scathing glare, “can we get back to our curriculum?”
The bell rang immediately after her words, though, and a sigh of relief swept through the room.
“Very well, very well,” the teacher chirped, mostly to herself. “Next time. Read chapter five, please, and write up one page on your favorite monster and why.”
“Yeesh, you’d think I’d said she was a lousy teacher or something.” Layla made a sour face, and then she shoved me toward the exit. “Come on, slowpoke, let’s get out of here!”
“What’s the rush?” I laughed as I leaned my weight back against her hands.
The petite summoner pedaled her feet against the floor and huffed, but she couldn’t make me budge. Finally, she growled and planted her hands on her hips. “It’s lunch time, dummy!”
“Oh!” I gave her an innocent smile. “My bad.”
Layla launched herself onto my back, and she grabbed hold of my neck for leverage as she wiggled into a comfortable position. I wrapped my arms backward around my lower back to support her weight, and then I trotted out of the classroom with the tiny summoner riding me triumphantly.
We ran into Cyra on the way to the dining hall, and her little silver dragon chirped at us as we fell into step beside the dark-skinned summoner.
“How’s your first day so far?” my exotic lover asked with a teasing smile.
“I’ve had better.” I shrugged. “Could be worse, though. Gawain could still be a massive asshole to me.”
“I miss it sometimes,” Layla admitted with a sigh. “It was so much more fun to fuck with him when he was a prick.”
“Right?” Cyra laughed. “Now, he just says things like ‘I deserved that,’ and ‘good one.’ Like, what the fuck?”
“Maybe I’ll just switch to pranking Professor Brevens,” the petite summoner mused, and her nose wiggled as she thought it over.
“Probably not a good idea,” I informed her. “It’s not fun to see a grown man cry, trust me.”
“You made him cry?” Layla guffawed, and then a disappointed pout settled over her adorable features. “I miss all the best stuff.”
