Fenrir above↑
Selene and Anna finally managed to drag the fainted boy to the mansion without being seen, both she and Anna were panting as they closed the door of Selene's room behind them. Anna collapsed on the sofa after she threw the boy on her back on the bed. Selene sat beside the boy lying on the bed after she took of her cloak. He was unconscious but was still crouching inwards in a fetus position, trying to protect himself.
"So what are we going to do with him now?" Anna asked.
"Depends, if I am able to, I will take him in if not....then he is on his own." Selene said looking down. There are two types of abused victims those who close themselves off to everything after the trauma and one who after some help slowly recover and become useful, Selene hoped that this one was the later.
It didn't take long for the boy to regain consciousness, a few minutes after Selene came out after getting refreshed the boy started to stir and slowly opened his eyes, as expected his reaction was sharp as he noticed the unfamiliar surroundings around him. His whole body shook as he tried to get off the bed to escape, Anna came forward to help but Selene stopped her.
The boy's eyes searching all over stopped over the two girls. Immediately he started to back away from them until his back hit the headboard. Selene leaned to Anna and asked in whisper " Umm so who's gonna talk first?"
"Of course you milady!" Anna whispered back.
Selene pointed to herself and mouthed 'ME', when she saw Anna nod her head, she cleared throat and said, " Umm hello........ you need not to be scared of us." Selene said trying to make her expression as soft as possible as she started to walk toward the boy.
"Wh-where am I?" The boy asked in a low voice his head bowed.
"In my room? I kinda spent money for bringing you here but don't worry we are not going to harm -." Selene said drawing closer and closer.
"You brought me here as a bed slave right?" The red head asked quietly with a serious face looking up to see Selene with his heterochromatic eyes.
".........." For few seconds Selene was too speechless to speak as she blinked her eyes, when she realized his words, she burst out laughing.
"Don't you think I am a bit too young for that? Selene asked with mirthful eyes. "But if you want, I can accommodate for you after 8 years or so." Selene said in a suggestive tone.
The boy flushed red with anger and was about to say something when the door of Selene's room swung open revealing Selene's brother, Alex.
"SELENE!" Alex shouted right after the door opened, then he spotted Selene and asked her " Why are you here?"
"That's the question I should be asking after I asked why you came in without informing." Selene replied.
"Well, our first official class in the afternoon that had gotten cancelled is scheduled in the evening today so I thought I should inform you."
"You just came for that?" Selene asked raising her eyebrows after all he could have just sent a maid for that.
"And I wanted to...... wanted to...." Alex seemed to struggle saying the next words.
"To?" Selene urged.
"Iwantedtothankyou." Alex said a jumble of words quickly.
Selene raised her eyebrows and ordered "Say it again, loudly and clearly."
Alex gritted his teeth and said slowly " I. Wanted. To. Thank. You."
Selene was surprised to see the boy who avoided her like disease actually came to thank her, but she saw it as a chance to take revenge. Smiling inside Selene put on a cold expression and said, "Very well now that you have said it you can go."
Alex was taken aback hearing Selene words but hung his shoulders and turned around to go when he spotted the wolf boy hiding behind Selene.
"Who is he?" Alex asked.
"Someone who you don't need to know about." Selene replied.
"Then don't complain when the duke gets to know about this." Alex hmphed.
"You won't do that if you value your life" Selene paused and put on a scary smile "Anna please see my brother out."
"Please." Anna said as she gently pushed Alex out of the room.
"........" Alex stared as Anna slammed the door at it his face. "Tch insolent master, insolent maid."
Back in the room Selene sat on the bed facing the boy and said, " As I was saying before I was rudely interrupted, there are two options you have now you can either choose to leave from here and be on your own, of course there is no need to worry about any consequences or you can stay and work for me."
"So, you are giving me only one option where it is actually possible that my future can be safe right?" The boy grumbled.
"Oh you are smart! That's right you can't blame me though I am neither a person who has a lot of money that can be spent any time nor am I a saint so..."
"Are you sure there will be no one mistreating me here?" the boy asked in a whisper.
"Of course it is my responsibility as an employer to make sure of all those things, so I take it as a yes from you to stay here?" Selene asked. The boy nodded meekly.
"So what's your name?" Selene asked.
"That.....I don't have a name." The boy said wringing his hands.
"What?"
"What?"
************
It's been 3 months since Selene saved the slave boy from the alley and it was not easy to keep him. Why? Because the Duke found about it, at first she thought it was Alex who informed him but turned out a maid had seen him while he had sneaked out of the room. Of course Selene faced a mountain of questions from the duke ranging from where she got him and what intentions she had with him.
Fortunately, Selene was prepared for this she had already thought of the job she was going to give to Fenrir (the name she decided after she found out he had no name), her personal assistant/servant. She said that as she only had Anna as her personal maid it would be more convenient if she had another servant to her with her daily errands. As it was normal for noble kids to have several helpers, the duke after a bit of convincing from Selene's side, let Fenrir stay.
Fenrir was given to the butler of the mansion to be trained, which led to another discovery for Selene- Fenrir was a genius no, a genius of geniuses. Quite much any work that was taught to him was perfected by him the next day. From tea making to preparing her schedule and managing time he learnt everything to do precisely. At first the butler was hesitant to teach Fenrir as he was one of the beastmen, they weren't exactly popular in the magnus empire not to mention his unusual heterochromatic eyes scared away most of the servants.
But soon as Fenrir showed his talent the butler got so crazy about him that he was unwilling to leave Fenrir to Selene after the training and begged her to give Fenrir to him so that he could make him his successor. Of course Selene didn't agree, she had sacrificed her precious money to save him from the slave dealer. But she had to admit she had hit the jackpot, when she had first found him, she only thought of having him as her errand boy so as to not burden Anna with more work but of course that changed when she saw his incredible learning ability.
After 1 month Paul contacted her with a letter which was delivered by a weird looking bird. It contained only three words Send the goods. Selene who had already prepared the crystals immediately sent them to him with Fenrir acting as the deliveryman. Then Selene informed by him that the arrangement is for her to send the crystals fortnightly. That's how the transaction between Paul and Selene has been going on for the past two months.
Now that she had enough money, Selene decided to move to the next part of plan that was to start her own independent business. After a lot of thinking Selene categorized her steps into three categories one was to get rich without her father, second to get strong and third of course was to try her best to avoid all the death flags. After doing some research she finally found the perfect idea to start a business without much investment. That was to make magical appliances. Why was it so ideal for her? Simple because she had the main two materials required to start it, that is crystals and ancient magic.
In fact, Selene read that half the magical appliances around in present were invented after the re-discovery of ancient magic that was 50 years ago. Even now after so much research on ancient language only a very small part of it has been uncovered yet and is applied properly. It is an area with a lot of potential but since no one has the proper skills and resources to exploit it, it's not that popular except among mages who know it value. Selene laughed delightfully thinking of the money she would earn if her idea succeeded.
Anna who was cleaning the table after the breakfast cringed away from her seeing the scary face she was making while she was laughing. She wondered what Selene was thinking to make her laugh so scarily. What Anna didn't know was that this was Selene's normal laugh, Anna cleared her throat which snapped Selene out of her fantasies.
"It's time for you to go to Mage Val's classes milady." Anna said.
"Right, Fenrir please bring my books needed for today." Today was the day when Val would be telling her and Alex about ancient languages. After days of convincing him that it is a subject important for kids like them he finally agreed for today.
"Yes."
"I could do that too....." Anna mumbled beside her.
"Hmm? What did you say?" Selene who didn't hear her words properly asked looking up.
"Nothing." Anna replied glaring secretly at Fenrir.
"Thanks" Selene said as Fenrir handed her the books " 'kay I will be going then."
"Hope you have an enjoyable lesson today."
Selene reached the library and opened the door to see Alex sitting on one of the chairs in front of the blackboard which was put up for their classes. Her and Alex's relationship had improved a lot since she had saved both of them from the hyena monsters. Although Alex was a bit skeptical about Selene not revealing her magical awakening to the duke, he did not probe about it once Selene showed her reluctance to talk about it.
"Late again?" Selene asked.
"Yeah, should take few more minutes to drag his lazy ass in here." Alex replied with a disdainful expression on his face.
As Alex had predicted five minutes later after Selene sat beside Alex the door of the library opened again and Val entered dragging his feet, dark circles loomed beneath his bleary eyes. He stood in front of them as he yawned deeply.
*Yawn* "I'm sorry" He opened his book and said," Today we will be reading the magical history and magnus empire's foundation story."
"As you know, Magic in our empire is used for variety of purposes including all the daily activities, defense, travel etc. But do you know that just 40 years ago a lot of the magic facilities that you are seeing now we're not there?"
"Isn't magic being used since the empire's foundation?" Alex asked.
"Yes, but there were not many ways to use it in areas other than defense and some other limited areas, but it all changed after the rediscovery of ancient magic."
"Magic used before this land was blessed with mana was different from the elemental magic we use now. As you know elemental magic can only be harnessed by people who can awaken their mana core and we can only use magic related directly to the various elements. But the discovery of ancient magic expanded its uses exponentially."
"When was the ancient magic invented?" Selene asked.
"We can't say that for sure but according to the recent excavation results it is definitely 2000-year-old technique. It was a magic harnessed by very expert ancient magicians, of course a thing invented by such old crackheads is complicated enough for the old fogeys of the magic tower to break their heads on it."
"What can ancient magic exactly do?" Alex asked curiously.
"Since we don't know its full potential it's hard to say but according to me once its full potential is achieved there would be nothing that can't be done. With ancient magic until now we are able to make flying carriages, teleportation portals, durable magic furnaces etc etc. Basically, ancient magic enables us to integrate elemental magic in any possible object of course with suitable resources and that we find a suitable script to do so."
"So, the ancient language hasn't been fully interpreted yet?" Selene asked.
"Yeah, everything we have accomplished till now is from translating titbits from the ancient magical articles we have found about it. Every single mage in the magic tower after reaching a certain level is assigned to an ancient magic script that they have to translate; you can say that the seventh ancient language is the most difficult problem that the magic tower has encountered till date."
"Now let's move to our empire's foundation history, as you two might know our empire was found more than a thousand years ago. It was founded by three people the first emperor Mellatius de Magnus, Vellitan von Ashford and you Clypeus's ancestor Alastor de Clypeus."
"He was one of the founders?" Alex asked his eyes sparkling in awe.
"Yes, in fact he had a major hand in creating and saving Magnesian empire. Before being formed, the empire was only a land where different clans resided together, but they officially became an empire only after an apocalypse hit their land."
"An apocalypse?"
" Although it is not clearly described there were some dark forces that threatened the existence of the land, and the land was on the verge of getting destroyed. That's when these three figures came into the picture and saved them all."
"That's it?"
"That's it for our class but there are more details about this story but not in the official books. Wanna know?"
"Yes, of course."
"No"
Came two different replies from Selene and Alex. Selene turned her head and asked, "You don't want to know more?"
"I have my swordsmanship classes 20 minutes later." Alex answered.
"You don't have to worry about that I was informed by the butler that classes for you other than mine are cancelled today."
"Really?"
"Yes, so I take it that I am continuing this topic?"
"Yes"
"Yeah"
The classes ended at the evening, with Val giving three worksheets each to Selene and Alex for the topics taught and with that he also gave a sample sheet of 7th ancient language for them to see. This was what Selene was anticipating for in the classes, she quickly went to her room and excitedly opened the yellow scrolls to read. 10 minutes later the smile on Selene's face had turned into a frown.
"Can't read it?" Lumen asked beside her.
"Not even one word." Selene said lying exhausted on the bed after straining her eyes for 10 minutes in hopes of reading even a single line written on the scroll.
'That's because of the language's complexity being too high for your translating gift to work on it." Lumen said.
"Isn't the gift supposed to enable me to read every language in the world though?"
"Yup your gift's evolved version would be able to translate, in the past I knew a person who had the same gift as you it took him nearly 10 years to master the ancient magical language."
"So, should I go to Val and ask for its translation? Maybe then I-"
"Of course not, why would you go to that newbie when you have an expert like me with you." Lumen said lifting his chin high in the air.
"You know this language?"
"Of course what else do you expect from 1000-year-old dragon like me? Anyways, us dragons have always been the guardians of knowledge; we know much more than puny humans such as you."
"Look who is talking." Selene's eyes traced Lumen's small body.
"Anyway, do you want to learn from me?" Lumen asked covering his face that was red with embarrassment.
Selene took the pen, quill and paper and sat in front of him, "Of course."
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