The Silenced Speaker

Chapter 26 - Challenge

I went to this stupid party yesterday... T_T Wasted my time, and got a terrible headache. *sigh* It was recovering before...

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What a déjà vu! Exactly a week ago, Princess Tathiette had challenged her with similar words. Roxanne chuckled soundlessly at the memory of that dramatic duel. Then she was a loyal subject of Elrtiv, bounded by her obligations, unable to vanquish the Princess severely, but now there were nothing restricting her from thrashing the daughter of… Katheryne Helles. The woman who had her mother killed, jeopardized her life with a curse and deprived the privilege of living as a normal person from her. She only regretted that she hadn’t the skill and resolve to kill Katheryne with her own hands!

Her daughter, presumably uninvolved in all this, should not pay for her mother’s mistakes, sure. Yet –

Natasha had chosen this. She was the challenger. She was the one who had introduced herself as that woman’s daughter. She was the one who chose her own path.

She would get what she had wished for, whether it should turn out as she had expected, or – highly probably – not.

Are you so confident to challenge a Speaker? One word of mine shall lock our fates.

“But you don’t speak.” Natasha responded flatly. In her eyes Roxanne perceived a light portion of shock and disbelief.

This is not the place to talk. Roxanne scanned their surroundings carefully, though her hearing had informed her much. Already past eight in the morning, the suburb had aroused without drawing their attention. Now and then, a few squeaks of tires could be heard, awfully loud for the originally silent atmosphere. Most cars speed pass the school with barely a halt, while a few smoothly swerved through the main entrance and parked before the sign of Carlanthe High.

Natasha gave her a curt nod in agreement, waiting for her to continue.

I’ll meet you at the oval.

With a click of her fingers, Roxanne evaporated in thin air before Natasha’s eyes. Though with her new found abilities, Natasha ought not to be surprised, she was. For a girl who lived for fourteen years with almost no knowledge of magic, instantaneous teleportation was still hard to get used to, right?

Natasha shut her eyes tight with effort, and performed an instantaneous teleportation herself.

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Natasha found herself in the centre of the school oval, for the second time of her short school life cursed the immensity of it. Everything in Carlanthe were huge – no, vast, to spacious for its actual needs. Her eyes could barely touch where the ocean of green end. The wind swept mildly, carrying the fresh morning scent across the field, and lightly brushing the beads rain remaining on the grass from the earlier rain. The oval formed ripples like a real ocean, quite a fascinating sight even for a Natasha who was eager to find Roxanne. Her eyes followed the wind to her right with her head slightly tilted, following on specific wave along.

Her eyes stopped. That wave ceased twenty metres away from her, so did the one following it, and so did the next… Her eyes travelled at that point up to the level that lined with her sight.

“You’re there, aren’t you?” She didn’t speak loudly, but she expected Roxanne to hear it.

The wind started to exceed that point right after she had finished her sentence, as if it had all been her imagination. Natasha stared with momentary bewilderment.