Chapter 37
After the Goddess informed Adair that her mother now owed Anahel a huge debt, her eight wings lit up, and she vanished from the small girl's sight. Adair contemplated what her mother might have to do to repay a debt for probably saving her life, but since she had no way of contacting her, she decided to put it to the back of her mind for now.
Instead, the winged girl headed towards the crystal house that had appeared. Behind the door, it opened into a grand crystal foyer that had crystal ornaments hanging from the ceiling and the walls. As she looked to the right, she noticed that there appeared to be a dining room with at least a dozen crystal chairs surrounding a huge crystal table.
She then looked through the grand foyer and saw a gallery of sorts. She then looked to the left and saw a massive spiral crystal staircase heading up to the second floor. She then stepped out of the doorway and into the foyer, and as soon as she did, she heard the door slam shut behind her.
Scared by this sudden action, Adair quickly tried to open the door, yet it remained shut. Panic encroached upon, but she eventually reassured herself that if the Goddess wanted to harm her, there was no need for such an elaborate trap. Based on Anahel's reactions, it was very likely that without her interference, Adair would have died from the black liquid.
Once the small girl had made peace with the idea of not getting out that easily she continued exploring her new location. Looking under the spiral staircase, Adair discovered a door that appeared to lead to some sort of restroom. She was tempted to continue exploring the house, but since the small girl still felt tired from her emergency treatment, the most important commodity she wished to find was a bedroom to get some rest.
In the Galactic Empire it was common for the bedrooms to be on the second floor, so Adair chose to start her search for it there. Unfortunately, she was out of luck, and the crystal door at the top of the huge staircase wouldn't budge.
Defeated, she headed down the stairs, and instead of continuing her search for a bedroom, Adair decided to just go lay down on one of the crystal couches she had seen. As she entered this room, she saw that it led to two more rooms, yet she was too tired to see where they would lead.
What came as a nice surprise, though, was that the crystal couch turned out to actually be very fluffy, and when she laid down on it, a sense of comfort overcame her, making her fall asleep within seconds.
Unfortunately, what felt like just minutes later, she was rudely awoken by an angry-looking lady standing above her. Adair could not understand what the lady was telling her, but judging by the tone and gesture she appeared to be berating the small girl for something. The next moment, Adair's wrist was roughly grabbed by the strange person, and she was dragged through one of the doors into a hallway, then into a new room which was set up like a classroom.
Adair wanted to protest this kind of treatment, but as a small child she lacked the strength to struggle free. Only when she saw the classroom did she realize that she was probably late for her first lesson of the day that Anahel had set up. Without an explanation, not that she would have understood anything anyway, the lady forced Adair into a chair in the front row.
For the first time, the small girl was able to get a good look at who had awoken her. From the looks of it, Adair estimated the lady to be over five feet tall and rather on the plump. She had midnight black hair and black eyes as well, which gave her an oddly creepy look.
Once Adair started paying attention to her, the woman started saying something to her, yet due to the language barrier the small girl could only give her a confused look. Noticing her lack of understanding the lady tried again, seemingly in a different language, yet it didn't change the outcome. After a few more attempts, the lady started massaging her temples, clearly frustrated.
Adair felt slightly guilty about her wasted efforts, and so she tried apologizing in the language that George and Hank had taught her, yet her mouth had trouble pronouncing it, seeing as she had mostly communicated with the written language. Out of desperation, she switched to Galactic Empyrion.
Adair nearly had a heart attack when a female voice was suddenly heard throughout the entire room saying. She looked around, yet there was no one else in the room. Then, also without prior warning she heard an unknown voice say. "Unknown language encountered… Scanning the subject's mind to extract it… 5% foreign language comprehension… 25% foreign language comprehension… 50% foreign language comprehension… 75% foreign language comprehension…100% foreign language comprehension… language successfully added to the database."
Adair was waiting for the automated system to say something else, but apparently, that was the end of it. She looked over to the lady who was looking into the air, seemingly reading through something before looking towards the small girl.
"Can you understand me now?" The woman asked, and Adair quickly nodded. "Seeing as Cassandra had to manually add, it's clear that you understood nothing of what I said earlier, so let me start over once more. My name is Ms. Ortega and I will be your language teacher during your stay. I expect today to be the first and last time you're late to one of your classes."
"You probably can't even begin to imagine how precious your opportunity to learn here actually is. People would literally kill to be in your position, so the least I can expect of you is to NOT waste my time in the future. Do you understand?"
"Yes, I understand." Adair replied. wondering whether Cassandra had been the voice from earlier. Once she responded, it seemed to relieve some of the stress and tension that her teacher had shown her.
"Good, now that we have that out of the way, it appears that we have our work cut out for us. According to Cassandra's scan, aside from this language she extracted, you only have the knowledge of an extremely outdated version of the Old Language so we will need to get you caught on the modern changes to that language. With this kind of knowledge it will be impossible for you to communicate in the galaxy at large."
When Adair heard this, she was shocked by the implications. First of all, Galactic Empyrion seemed to be a completely foreign language, which indicated that she had been reincarnated into a time that was either before its inception, or after its fall, neither possibility sat well with Adair.
Second, the one language she did learn after her reincarnation appeared to be of any relevance in the galaxy as a whole. If she wanted to leave the planet her body resided in, she would have to learn new languages, which didn't exactly sound like a lot of fun.
Alas, it did not seem like she had much of a choice in the matter, so she just sat quietly as Ms. Otega continued her lecture. "I will start you off with four of the most common languages, Galactic Common, Old Language, Mirrodin, and Vuxipesh. After you have mastered these languages enough to at least hold a normal conversation, I will assign you four new ones to learn like Elven, Dwarven, Parseltongue, Whistled, Aquatic, and High Common, and that's just the beginning!"
When Ms. Otega was listing all these languages that Adair was supposed to learn, the little girl wondered just how much time it would take her. She was also unsure how necessary doing such a thing actually was. Clearly, automatic translators were a thing, so why the need to put in all that work, if someone had found a nice and easy way to automate it?
She would love to ask Ms. Otega asked that question, but she understood how rude it would be to ask the language teacher if her job wasn't basically obsolete in this day and age. "So here are physical flashcards for the first four languages." Much to Adair's shock and horror, she started mixing in the thousands of flashcards together.
Ms. Otega, seeing Adair's shocked face, explained, "This is because I need you to learn how to differentiate between the different languages easily, and through my experience, this is the most effective way of accomplishing this feat."
"Don't get discouraged. I'm sure someone who was able to get in Anahel's good graces will be able to accomplish at least this easy feat. Do you have any questions? No? Alright, I will be taking my leave and I'll be with you in three months! Good luck and have fun studying! And with that, she promptly left through a portal in the wall.
Adair was too baffled by this kind of 'lecture' and by the time she looked up Ms. Otega was already halfway through a portal inside the wall. She tried to call out to her teacher, telling her that she had vastly overestimated her, but the woman was gone, and shortly after, the neon blue circle in the wall collapsed.
Adair jumped out of her chair and went up to the wall to check if there was an activation switch or something of that sort. Having wasted a few minutes looking for a way to follow Ms. Otega, Adair's only conclusion was that the portal had to be an ability of her teacher's or a device that the adult had used to allow her to exit the room.
The winged girl then checked the entrance door to the room and was glad to find it unlocked. If she wanted to, she could explore the rest of the house, which might not be the worst idea since this should be merely the first of who knows how many lectures today.
Adair decided to postpone it for now, though, and decided to check on the homework she had been left with. Even if the language teacher seemed to have merely dumped a lot of things on her, from her demeanor she appeared to be a competent teacher, so Adair chose to trust in her wisdom.
Ironically, that trust disappeared in basically no time. Once she looked at the top card of the first pile, Adair quickly recognized that it appeared to be in a completely different language than the one that Hank and George had taught her. It didn't even use the same lettering. It had a bunch of circles that seemed to be deformed to resemble letters.
It would have been okay if each of those piles had been one language, then she might have at least chosen to start with the easier ones, but Ms. Otega had shuffled them around, meaning Adair would first have to sort through all the mess. The three months she had been given, now seemed to be quite a short timeframe.