Chapter 70: Payback is a bitch

Ciaran woke up very early the next morning. He was a bit sleep deprived, but it couldn't be helped, he had to compensate for last night.

He sat down in the lotus position and took a deep breath.

'Emptying my mind is always the hardest part.'

Ciaran had a very restless mind. Many intrusive thoughts snuck in and disturbed his concentration. Only after a solid twenty-five minutes was he able to enter a state of concentration. He thought nothing, he only existed in this one moment and the peace it brought him was truly calming.

He had a lot to think about, and even more to do, but that could wait. In the past few days, he had learned how fragile his mind was, and there was no one, not even his mentors that could help him with that. He had to deal with it himself, and meditation was a start.

In this state, time lost all meaning. He was there, he existed, and he was alone, but he was connected. He felt the Wind pass him by. He felt it all around him. He also felt it inside him. Inside his lungs, and even, ever so faintly, inside his blood.

He saw all that the Wind showed him, and heard all it allowed him to hear. His range was small and limited. He couldn't go past the Maze, but that was not surprising.

Eleftherios never bothered to explain to him how this place worked, but it has defied all the laws of physics and then some. There was no way a little Novice like himself could see through something like that.

One minute he was in his bed, and the next the Wind changed, everything did. The smells, the images, they all shifted. And two very distinct silhouettes stood in front of the boy.

One was there, but the Wind barely registered its presence, and even that, Ciaran mused, was because she allowed it to. The other was more majestic. The wind was surrounding him, bending to his will, and merging with his very being.

"Rude! You could have just come to pick me up. Teleporting me without prior notice is dangerous, what if I was indecent." He told his mentors, covering his chest with one hand while the other went for his crotch.

"Wait, when were you ever a decent kid? As long as I'd known you, you have been a demon masked as a child. Always looking to cause some chaos." Eleftherios mocked him playfully, while Verdania just rolled her eyes at their antics.

She had "borrowed" a few servings of eggs and bacon from the Acadamy. There was no need for the kid to go there if he could just eat here. Besides, if he ever left any leftovers, Roxy was just the pup for the job.

"I had a talk with your two guests last night. They tell me you have big plans. Do you care to share with us?" His mentor told him, and Ciaran put a very professional smile on his face.

Both dryads knew he would ask for something, and looked at each other, then sighed.

"What is it, kid? What do you need?"

----

"And so I want to fuck over those scums, who took my opportunity to learn." He told his friends after class.

He had negotiated with his mentors, and they had reluctantly agreed to his proposal.

Rayon was pissed off. He knew his brother was addicted to books since he was young, and denying him what was his was crossing a line. He had no problem with supporting Ciaran through his new misadventures.

Sunny was simply excited she would get to cause more trouble. She started following largely Ciaran because he would cause the biggest of messes and stayed because he and their friends were a great cure for boredom.

"You are cutting off your nose to spite your face Ciaran. Admit it, you are only doing this because they told you 'no'. You don't even care for the second floor, do you?" Clara asked, with one eyebrow raised.

"Nope. I couldn't care less if I tried. I am only doing this to send a message. Are you with me?" He admitted, with no hesitation, devoid of all shame.

Rayon was speechless, and Sunny just laughed.

"Always, as long as you are honest with us." Clara gave a satisfied nod.

Then he looked at his new right-hand man, Eddy. As promised, the boy has reinstated under Ciaran's command first thing in the morning. But the poor boy never imagined that he would rice so high at all, let alone as he just started his carrier as a grunt.

"Eddy my friend, you will be tasked with collecting our troops. Naturally, there will be a very low danger for you. All I want from you is to fan the flames, and make them burn hotter, as the riots begin." Ciaran said, without explaining himself.

Eddy knew this would probably involve a lot of outrageous things, but he didn't care. Ciaran promised he would get him to Year Four, and so he would obey. For all his many flaws, the boy had yet to break a single promise.

"Whatever you need, just give me a heads up first." He answered.

The school was over for the day, and now everyone was about to go do whatever they had planned. But when they stepped outside, they saw that the Maze's Walls had spread to the garden. The exit to the Academy was also gone.

Panic ensued, and questions were asked. The teachers didn't have the answers so they went to ask the principal.

'Due to a serious medical emergency, I am off for the day. Good Luck!' Was the message left on his door. The old man even left a smiley face, and badly drawn two hands with a thumbs up.

"Your doing?" Elizabeth asked her student quietly. The smirk on his face spoke for itself.

Then he got in front of the crowd and spoke.

"Oh shut up! What are you, cowards? Year One and Two, why are you even whining, you were going there, to begin with. As for the rest of you losers, as I said, stop your whining. All you have to do is pass and go wherever you wanted. Let's get this over with. " He said as he stepped into the Maze.

The group looked at where he left off, and soon his friends followed after him. Elizabeth's class got a confidence boost after that and went in as well.

One by one the students went in. Some were complaining that they would lose half an hour of their time, while others were excited to see what this was all about. The teachers however were worried. They knew who the gardener was, or at least they knew of him.

He never harmed children, but he had a very nasty temper, and even tho they didn't know what his relationship with Ciaran was, they knew the boy spent a lot of time in the Maze. He quite literally lived there. And twenty-two individuals went to ask Elizabeth.

They waited for all the kids to disappear in the Maze before they went over to ask. She was peacefully sitting on a bench just outside the Academy. Her crimson hair was at the mercy of the wind, as she was drinking coffee and looking at where the kids had disappeared into.

Most had never seen her unshackled outside, so they were visibly intimidated. One of the senior teachers, another Grand Mage stepped up, ready to question her.

Half a second and the man was left scorched. Barely clinging to life. She just looked at the rest of them. Her face was smiling, and she even gave them a small wave. But her eyes screamed murder, and the heat in the air left them dehydrated even from a distance.

She had been behaving herself in the past few years, so they had forgotten she was one of the real horrors of this place.

"YES! Finally, I was waiting for you to take that stick out of your ass Liza. What did they do? Come on I need a reason to fuck with them too." Fia asked, appearing behind them.

She was much weaker than Liza, but there were a lot of reasons this madwoman was kept away from the young. One of them being she had a knack for violence. And another that she had the power to back up her position. Outside the three powerhouses among the twenty-one still intact individuals, no one else could even stand up to her.

If she got involved in all of this, shit would hit the fan.

"They screwed with Ciaran, he paid me off to look the other way when he was causing a mess." She said matter-of-factly.

For once even Fia was speechless. Her friend had just admitted, publicly to a capital crime, and in front of her enemies as well.

"Don't worry about them, they can't do anything to the boy outside school rules, and even here they already did their worse. Now he is out for blood, and I swear to god, all of you Water types, you are all so messed up." She said as she clicked her tongue.

"My boy awakened to Water?" Fia didn't even see that comment as an insult, but she did get curious.

Elizabeth smirked.

'More like, completely fucked in the head.' She added a little color to the description but kept that part in her thoughts.

"No, but his body is water. He should awaken soon. Probably." She said

Fia got curious and sat down, ready to catch up with her friend. As soon as she sat next to Elizabeth, all sound surrounding them vanished, and their lips became unreadable. The only indication that they were still there was that the teachers could still see them. That, and the fact ice was starting to form at their feet, while their top halves were sweating profusely.