Chapter 25: Lost and first mission.
She would never have worn that dress if she could avoid it, she would have preferred 1000 times to stay with the one Sophie gave her, but wearing the uniform was the only way she had to go around the school without being stopped.
He went over once again all the instructions for princesses that Sophie had given him.
The system put the list of instructions back on the screen.
He opened the door and bumped into a bunch of girls chatting together in the hallway.
It had taken her a lifetime to make a friend, and here they were all best friends in less than an hour.
Agatha simply shook this out of her head and, following the bearing that the instructions she was told to take, she advanced next to them and simply passed them by.
The girls seemed to turn for a moment to see her, but then ignored her.
She breathed a sigh of relief when she left the tower and had lost the possibility of crossing paths with any of them.
A while later she walked through the castle, as lost as Hansel and Gretel in the forest without the crumbs.
That castle was huge.
She didn't remember how to get back to the tower, and wasn't sure which corridor she had walked before.
Sure, all the stained-glass windows were different if carefully appreciated, but they were so cloying that Agatha didn't pay due attention to them.
To her, they were all pretty princesses and handsome princes.
Of course, there were some more recent and well-known stories that he identified better, but they did not help him since he did not remember those in the corridor that led to the Purity tower.
At that moment he heard the voice of his system.
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NEW MISSION
NOT SO LOST:
+2 XP MAP UNLOCKED
ARRIVE ON TIME FOR THE WELCOME CEREMONIAL.
PENALTY FOR FAILURE: BAD PUBLIC OPINION
GENERAL CULTURE:
+3 EXP SPECIAL MEAL
FIND THE GALLERY OF GOOD
PENALTY FOR FAILURE: -
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Agatha blinked.
"ON TIME? Really?" she asked incredulously.
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I TOLD YOU THAT YOU WOULD LEVEL UP AS YOU OVERCAME DIFFICULTIES.
YOU ARE IN TROUBLE.
NORMALLY, AFTER SOLVING IT, YOU WOULD ONLY TENDRILS THE CONSOLATION OF HAVING SOLVED IT.
I'M OFFERING YOU A REWARD, SO DON'T SCOLD ME.
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"I'm sorry," he apologized.
The system was right, it shouldn't vent its anger on him or her, I wasn't sure it was.
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I HAVE NO GENDER, BUT PERSONALLY IDENTIFIED ME AS "SHE".
PLEASE KEEP THIS IN MIND WHEN NAMING ME.
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Agatha agreed, almost forgetting that she had to name her new friend.
He decided to think of a name while searching for the purity tower and that gallery.
He kept opening doors all over the castle, hoping that someone would have a teacher inside or someone who could tell him how to get back to his room.
Out of nowhere he found himself in a dark room with high ceilings, full of paintings, sculptures and glass cabinets.
When his eyes became accustomed to the darkness, he saw the frosted doors in a corner, with these words engraved on glass:
GALLERY OF GOOD
A mural covered the long wall with a panoramic view of a splendid golden castle, a gallant prince and a beautiful princess marrying beneath a gleaming arch, while thousands of spectators rang bells and danced to celebrate.
Under a radiant sun, the virtuous couple kissed, while baby angels fluttered above the married and threw red and white roses at them.
At the top of the scene, capital letters of shining gold could be seen behind the clouds and extended from one side of the mural to the other:
FOREVER
Agatha grimaced.
He had always teased Sophie for believing in being happily ever after, (Who wants to be happy all the time?) But looking at the mural, I had to recognize that this school did an excellent job of selling the idea.
Agatha saw display cases whose things were said to have belonged to Snow White, Cinderella, Rapunzel, Sleeping Beauty, Merlin, King Arthur, Prince Philip and many other famous fairy tale characters.
A wall entitled "Class Captain", full of portraits of students from each grade. The museum got darker as it went, so Agatha used one of her matches to light a lamp.
That's when he saw the dead animals.
Dozens of stuffed creatures stared at her from above, mounted on pink walls.
Agatha dusted off the plaques and found Puss in Boots, Cinderella's favorite rat, the cow sold by Jack, with the names of the children who weren't good enough to become heroes, companions, or servants.
For this group, there was no Happily Ever After.
They were just objects in a museum.
Agatha felt their glassy and shuddering gazes and walked away.
Only then did he see the plaque shining on the bean stalk.
RAINBOW GALE HOLDEN.
That wretched plant had once been a child.
Agatha's blood ran cold.
All those stories she had never believed in...
Now I saw that they were painfully real.
In two hundred years, no abducted child had returned to Gavaldon.
What made you think they wouldn't end up being a crow or a rose bush?
Then he remembered what made them different from the rest.
"We have each other," Agatha recalled right away.
Agatha found a row of paintings and was surprised that they actually illustrated Gavaldon.
He went from the first painting to the last: children readers in the hills and on the lake that were familiar to him, near the crooked clock tower and the rickety church, even under the shade of a house on Grave's Hill.
Then he came to the last painting, which was nothing like the rest.
In it, a group of angry children threw their books into a bonfire in the square and watched as they burned.
Around them, the ominous forest was consumed in flames, filling the sky with intense red and black smoke. Looking at the painting, Agatha shivered.
At that moment, he heard voices.