Time

Finley Cai Aies Hall: March 31st, 20XX

Even without putting the device on, I could feel the heat radiating off it. The magic particles in the air seemed repelled by it, but another substance clouded around it.

Everything else had distracted me from paying it enough attention, but now that it was right in front of my face, I had to acknowledge it. Unlike the bright and energetic particles that bounced around the room, this new substance was like a thin fog that slightly discoloured the surroundings.

It was hard to see normally and only thickened enough for me to see easily around the ring and bracelet set.

The fog had the same properties as the golden particles in the air, but they were so different and repelled each other as eagerly as they sought each other out.

“Aies.”

Theodulus’s curious voice snapped me out of my daze and launched me into action. I hurriedly clipped the armband onto my upper arm and slid the ring onto my ring finger, but before I could get it over the first knuckle I felt the same harsh pull on my hair.

This time I didn’t stop myself and glared at Theodulus.

“What now?”

He pointed to the other lessons he’d somehow written while I wasn’t looking.

“Lesson number two; don’t follow the orders of a person you’ve just met without demanding an explanation first. Lesson number three is don’t do things you don’t know how to do, especially in unfamiliar settings.”

In my irritation, I couldn’t help but think that there was a lot of ‘don’t’ rules for something I hadn’t even agreed to learn yet.

“I’m pretty sure I know how to put on a ring.”

His lips twitched in irritation and he seemed to wrestle with himself before he finally replied to my sarcastic tone as calmly as he could.

“Ordinarily I would let you try it the wrong way and let you face the consequences, but this one would cause your death.”

At the word ‘death’, my fingers released the ring. It stopped only inches from the icy floor, having been caught by the chain. Hearing his serious tone made me want to choke on my previous sarcastic one, but I let go of the dramatics and asked for specifics. My life might not have been the best, but it was definitely one worth keeping.

“My death?”

He first raised his left arm,m teaching me through his body like one would an infant.

“First, the band goes on the nondominant. It’s not a weapon, so it shouldn’t take up the space that an actual weapon might need.”

He then raised a hand, pointing to each finger as he spoke.

“The ring finger is for your relationships; it leads right to your heart, putting the ring there would be like pumping a few thousand volts of electricity directly into your heart. The middle finger is the opposite; your power line, it will help distribute the energy around your body rather than focusing it on one spot.”

I nodded and switched clipped the band around my left arm and slipped the ring over the middle finger as instructed. I considered showing Theodulus the proof I had the ring over the right finger but figured it would only get my hair pulled again.

“Is this it?”

“Its correct, but I suppose it doesn’t matter yet. You won’t be able to use it for a while, if at all.”

Considering I’d gotten hit twice while learning how to put it on, the sudden declaration put me in a foul mood.

“Why not?”

Once again my tone was irritable, but that was because I felt like I’d just wasted quite a lot of precious sleeping time. His hands moved up and down as he motioned for me to calm down while he explained.

“You haven’t gone through your first awakening, never mind the monarch awakening that you need to use that thing.”

He started using unfamiliar terminology that confused me out of my annoyance.

“Awakening? Monarch?”

He suddenly ruffled my hair again and looked at me with a complex expression, like he was about to say something he really didn’t want to say.

“Well, Before I actually teach you anything I want to make sure you want to learn. Goblin magic isn’t all fun and sparkles like whatever those bugs use. It’ll likely hurt you… a lot. So if you don’t want to learn I’ll send you back home and you can pretend that you never met me.”

His heavy words hit me like a brick and I suddenly felt sick. While I appreciated someone finally taking my opinion and desires into consideration, I didn’t enjoy hearing that he would be completely fine with pretending we’d never met.

I still didn’t know what sort of relationship he had to me, beyond him ‘knowing my parents’ but from how careful he acted, I knew he cared about me.

While Cambridge cared about me a lot, there was something different about Theodulus that I wasn’t able to identify. But whatever it was, it wasn’t something I was willing to let go of.

What I felt now were identical to the emotions I’d felt in the dream that had chased me into a deep sleep earlier. While they weren’t sweet emotions, they were intense and addictive.

“I… I want to learn. I understand.”

My voice came out way more desperate than I wanted, but I couldn’t help it. I waited for him to relax and lose the burdened visage he’d adopted, but he gently put a hand on my shoulder through the heaps of blanket he’d layered onto me and slowly shook his head.

His eyes carried a sense of pity that I found hard to swallow, but I couldn’t find any words to make that pity go away.

Aside from wanting to get to know more about Theodulus and my parents, I also wanted to know more about the Goblins in general. Esmeralda would scowl whenever I tried to mention them, and Cambridge would simply shrug and apologize that she knew little outside of killing them.

Theodulus offered a wealth of knowledge that I couldn’t be able to access anywhere else.

“You need to think properly, Aies. I dont know how long the fairies have gotten their feelers into you, but their magic and ours is so different that you can barely call them by the same name. Our magic will require things from you you couldn’t imagine giving up, and even if you do, it might not have been worth the trade.”

The way he spoke made it sound like I’d be going through all of that alone, which counteracted the primary reason I wanted to accept.

“Won’t you be here to help me though?”

“Of course I will! But there’s only so much I can do. There will be occasions and trials that no matter how much I want to help you, I simply won’t be able to.”

Hearing that I wouldn’t be figuring everything out on my own, I relaxed and made my decision right away. The only reason I'd put up with Esmeralda and all of her ridiculous lessons was to learn more about my parents and myself.

For that same reason, there was no way that I would give up on learning about an entire half of myself from Theodulus.

As for achievable it would be,… I’d deal with that when I got there.

I looked at Theodulus more seriously than I’d been this whole time and nodded.

“I. understand. And I haven’t changed my mind.”

He took a few minutes to stare me down with that same unreadable expression before he finally broke out into a smile. It wasn’t a very happy one, and he still looked burdened, but I could see that he accepted my decision.

“Fine, but remember that you can’t take it back.”

And with that ominous-sounding agreement, he grabbed the sheets around me and quickly unwrapped me, only leaving me with a single sheet to battle the cold.

It wasn’t as bad as it had been when I’d first gotten here, but it was still unpleasant.

He watched me shiver with a slightly condescending expression before wrapping me back up in another quilt.

“We’ll have to work on your body first. Even if I gave you an awakening now, I don’t think you’d survive it, ever mind be able to do anything with it. I’ll also have to teach you the history of the land since I doubt those insects will teach you anything useful. There’s sword-fighting… or maybe you’d be more suited to the bow. Before you meet any other Goblins, I’ll have to show you the etiquette and the old language, you might not need it but it's better to have than not.”

At some point, he had stopped talking to me and started talking to himself, but I stayed quiet and listened. He wouldn’t have been the first poor teacher I’d ever had.

I was all geared up to learn when a sudden important question occurred to me.

“Wait, this will happen every night?”

He scowled at me for pulling him out of his train of thought but nodded.

“When else?”

That was a fair question, but not one I could answer.

“Honestly, I dont know. I have school in the mornings, work in the afternoons, and I have to go to the fairyland in the evenings. I usually use my nights to sort through anything extra I have and to sleep. While I could try, my body would break down in a few days.“

He scowled at the fact that I put the fairy world on my list of important factors, but stayed otherwise didn’t yell at me as Esmeralda had.

“Is school really that important? Can’t you do that... homeschooling thing? Don’t humans have something like that?”

“I’m already more than halfway through my last year, there wouldn’t be much point in switching over now.”

There was also the fact that the core content was all but done. I’d have my finals next month and only have to take part in the showcase to graduate. Even if I wanted to take it to homeschool, I couldn’t.

He gave me an incredulous look, and I didn’t miss the irony in the contrast of my earlier determination to take his lessons and my sudden scheduling issues.

Instead of trying to convince me to drop something or to move here with him permanently as Esmeralda had, he instead went to the drawers at the side of the room while muttering to himself.

“The desecration of priorities, how could he put those humans and bugs ahead of his inheritance?”

He continued to curse them in such ways that I don’t feel it would be appropriate to record before he returned to me with a silver stopwatch.

Theodulus chucked it at my head at a speed barely slow enough for me to catch it. I had to fight out of the tightly wrapped blankets but barely made it.

“The problem is time, right?”

I nodded.

“When I send you back put in how many hours you need and it’ll stop time for that long. That should work, right? You can only set it up once and it’ll only work in the place you set it in, so don’t even think of doing anything stupid with it.”

I carefully tucked it into my pockets and nodded while lamenting at the lack of opportunity. Maybe there was a way I could lure some of Alice’s goons to my flat?

“Thank you!”

I got my hair pulled at again before I got a response.

“Ah!”

“Stop doing that! You aren’t with the Fairies anymore.”

I held a hand up to my scalp to make sure there wasn’t any blood loss before retorting. It wasn’t so painful, but he always targeted the same spot.

“Stop doing what?”

“Hiding your emotions so obviously, It’s annoying”

I thought once again that he got annoyed very quickly, but I kept it to myself, save he hit me again.

“Fine. Now can we start the lesson?”

He looked back at the time-keeping device on the wall and frowned.

“You said you don’t get enough sleep as things are. Go back in and we’ll get started tomorrow night. Dont bother trying to come to me, I’ll fetch you. Also, make sure you dont ’t tell anyone about meeting me. Especially not a fairy."

“What? why?”

Either way, I wasn’t planning on telling Esmeralda, but it was more because I didn’t want to tell her anything about myself than out of any consideration for Theodulus.

“Because it runs the possibility of having the fairies accuse the goblins of kidnapping and starting a war. Which I’m sure no one wants… Of course, if you do, that’s fine as well."

I shook my head rapidly.

“I won’t tell anyone”

Although he’d kidnapped me and had hit me a few times, that much seemed to be the standard for meeting me nowadays. Overall, he’d respected my decisions and had tried to not kill me with his monstrous strength so I could trust him more than I could Esmeralda, who always looked one sarcastic retort away from blasting me with magic and turning me into an animal.

I didn’t have a problem with keeping this a secret.

While I wondered how he would send me back to the human world, I felt a dull force at the back of my neck and the world went blank.