"Are you seriously sleeping?" Levi bursts into Love's bedroom, finding her bundled up under the comfortable blankets. "It's your first day of class, get your ass out of bed!"
Love groans, wrapping the blankets tighter around her, "now it's suddenly a bad thing that I am sleeping?"
"No. Well, kind of since your first class starts at eight."
"What time is it?"
"Seven!"
Love opens her eyes. It's been a long time since the last time she could sleep more than five hours. At night, she would often meditate with Hekate, or sit in the garden with jars of water.
"Ugh, you're so annoying." She lazily rolls herself off the bed and down the carpeted ground, "I have to meet the counselor too at 13. Remind me?"
Levi helps her sister up the ground. The switchblade fell to the ground, letting out a loud sound. "You slept with the blade?" Levi makes a disgusted sound.
Still half asleep, Love reaches for the blade and places it on the bookshelf. "No. It tucked itself to bed with me." She grumbles, still attempting to find the difference between reality, astral or dream world. "What's for breakfast?" She asks, walking toward the wardrobe to pick the outfit.
"Well, parents sent you a box of Fimbulvetr donuts." Levi says, "also me, because they thought I loved the donuts as well."
Love gasps, instantly turning around to see Levi already devouring one donut from the box on the bed. "Oh my god! How?" She grabs the box from Levi and feasts on one donut. "Hmmm. This is the best breakfast ever." She sits on the ground, chewing on the crispy bread and the ice, gooey cream.
"It's all mom." Levi sighs, plopping down on the bed, relaxing. "I think? Dad can't enter Four Lands, so, it has to be mom."
"Well..." Love shrugs, taking another donut out of the box. She tries to remember everything that happened in Underworld, despite feeling woozy from the hangover and the sleepiness. "It seems that dad knows someone from the past that owned the switchblade." She gestures toward the blade, "maybe our ancestors? Or himself?"
Levi joins her on the ground, her brows furrowed in confusion. "What do you mean?"
"I thought I left the blade in my room, but Hades asked me what was in my pocket." Love shrugs, "He said something about The Phoenix Sword. The blade sort of turned into this half-blade sword that can only be activated with Sun or Underworld fire."
"The Phoenix... Hold on, I think I vividly remember reading about it." Levi gets up from the ground, walking toward Love's bookshelf. "It apparently holds the same power as Artemis' bow. But it disappeared when it was used to kill Emperor Jovian."
"Who?" Love grimaces.
"He's an old news. But he used blood magick and create his own, you know, some sort of community." Levi grabs a big book from the bookshelf and quickly open the pages. Love's too busy devouring the donuts to pay attention to her surrounding. "Or as we call it these days, the Dark Practitioners."
"You mean, dark witches?"
"That, too." Levi sits down next to Love, "I think they have been trying to ressurect him from the dead, not sure how though." She flicks page by page until she finally stops, "here. The Phoenix Sword."
Love peeks over while still chewing. She blinks a few times to focus on the small words on the page, but her brain fogs disappear the moment she saw the illustration. "The... Phoenix Sword..."
The image of her dead body on the wooden bed, the sword on the ground. The way the switchblade transformed to a sword and glowing brightly under Hades' grasp. "Man," Love groans, "I don't know how to activate it. Maybe I should ask Hades how to do the-" Love mimicks catching a fire with her palm, fist it and lighting the blade up, "poof thing."
"You really are friends with them, huh?" Levi chuckles softly. "Send a letter to parents, why don't you? It is a big thing." She takes the book and begins reading the passage, "our surname is Phoenix. Dad could be, you know, hiding something."
Love shrugs. She gets up from the ground and places the box of donut on the bedside table. "And you are not worried about this?" Love asks.
"No. I need to focus on my studies."
"That's... gross. Why would you do that? Live your life! Go on a date with Nolan! Oooor, you can go to astral plane with me." Love opens the wardrobe, yawning loudly, "you see all kinds of crap in astral world. It's my version of sleeping."
"What? Why Nolan? She is a mercenary."
"And that's a problem because...?" She grabs a dry towel, cleaner clothes and toiletries bag. "Seriously, go on a date with her or I will."
"No!" Levi protests, then catches herself and coughs, "you go ahead, you've always had the hots for dangerous people."
Knowing she's gotten through her sister's head, Love smirks and walks toward the door: "just go for it before I put some sort of love spell on both of you. Don't make me do it."
"Jeez." Levi chuckles, lounging on the bed now with the book, "love spell is taboo anyways. You'll get bullied in exchange."
"Please," Love rolls her eyes, "I've had my fair share of bullies. It's not going to surprise me anymore."
And with that, Love exits the bedroom to shower and change into fitter clothes to start the day. Somewhere in her mind, she still thinks of the way the switchblade transforms to a fire blade sword. She's considering to travel to Underworld again, had she not been so exhausted and hangover from the day before.
The first class is "The History of The Craft". Love bumps into a few weird-looking people on the hallway, almost as ugly as those in the tavern a couple of days ago. At least they were minding their business.
One particular person caught Love's attention as soon as she walked into the class. Their stench is something unusual. Love can't help but eye them for a while until she gets on her seat which is on the second row. Few people are already chatting with their friends, but some are also quiet at the back of the classroom.
Love shifts in her seat, feeling as if she's sat on something. When she reaches down to get rid of the object, two silver coins can be found, which makes her chuckle to herself.
But then her mood turns sour, as if the entire room flips backward. She clutches her stomach, feeling the nausea hits all of a sudden. No, not the kind of hangover nausea, it feels a lot more intense, like your stomach has been turned inside out.
"For the love of Hekate." she whispers to herself, looking around the room. The person at the end of the classroom is staring directly at her.
Despite the pain, the confusion, and brain fogs, Love forces herself to sit up. Gaining the energy that is slowly drained from the force that is currently pressed against her.
Love looks at the person in the eyes, ignoring the whirlwind state of the world all around her by focusing all of her might to her current enemy. Whispers of ancient words can be heard all around, the spinning has stopped, and emotions drain from her face.
"Your power shall be mine," Love speaks on her mind, causing the person before her to choke from the force, "... shall be mine, your power." She can feel a gush of new, powerful energy running through her veins.
The creature howls in pain, catching the attention of the students in the room, even the teacher that had just walked in. Love inhales her stench; suddenly, a vision of tombs and graveyards flash before her eyes. The skins of the creature turns grey and cracked, showing off their trueself. It gets up from the seat, causing commotion and screams from the students.
It still howls, reaching for their eyes that are already sticking out of its socket, scratching on their dead skins. Love blinks a few times when someone touches her, telling her to get out of the room immediately. As the creature before her slumps down on the ground, dead, just like the walking corpse Love saw before.
"A zombie!" Screams one of the students.
Love grabs her backpack along with the coins on the table. Her nausea is gone, replaced by something way more odd. Stumbling on her own foot a little, she makes her way out of the class with the others. More students peek out from the other classrooms, wondering what is all the commotions about.
"What was that?" She asks the girl with thick glasses.
"She just choked out of the blue and transformed," the girl tells her. Terror still fills her eyes. "Into this horrendous creature. She looked like a rotting corpse."
"But..." Love turns to look at the closed door, "how did she look like before?"
"She sat next to me. I was so worried." She starts to cry. Love doesn't know the girl but reaches out to comfortly squeeze her shoulder. "And she was so pretty too! I can't believe... Whatever took her, whatever happened to her, it must be a curse!"
Love looks at her sympathetically. Her mind runs a mile an hour. "Curse doesn't kill." She tells her, "it just fucks them up at some point, but it doesn't kill."
"But she's not dead! She can't be!"
"Looks like she's been dead for awhile." Love grimaces, "could be something hiding behind a glamour."
She removes her hand from her shoulder. The teacher walks out of the classroom, worries fill her face. It was pure horror as well. "What is it, Miss Kassandra?" A student asks.
"Call the dean. We have a case of necromancy here." She tells the student who wides their eyes in shock and immediately turns away to find the dean. "Listen up, students, I do apologize for the inconvenience. We must find an empty classroom to start the class."
"What about the girl? Is she okay?"
"Not going to lie to you, miss, but she's dead." She informs which earns gasp from everyone, "she's supposed to be dead. This is - this is not how your first day supposed to go! Please, go find an unoccupied classroom."
"But-"
"You heard the woman. Move everyone, move!" Love practically yells, unable to contain her impatience anymore, "get your asses moving otherwise you'd end up like the dead girl."
The students begin to panic again, causing even more commotions. Love sighs and rolls her eyes in annoyance, somehow she needs to get away as far as she could from the classroom and the fact that she just witnessed a living corpse dying right infront of her eyes.
When she walks up the stairs calmly, or at least she tries to, a familiar face comes up to her. "Hey, what's going on down there?" Laurent asks, "I felt something wrong and I thought someone was hurt."
Love looks around anxiously, before grabbing Laurent by the arm and pulls him to the corner where nobody could hear them. "This person, I think they tried to do something to me," she says quietly, almost a whisper, "people saw her as this pretty girl, meanwhile I could see through her glamour! She looked rotten as if she just woke up from the dead."
"Wait, what?" Eden wides his eyes in horror, "what do you mean, like, she's just a soulless, walking corpse?"
"Yes!"
"Okay," Laurent sighs. He takes a deep breath to compose himself. "What did she do to you?"
Love shrugs, pressing her hand on her chest as more and more pressure comes, "I don't- I don't know, I was suddenly all nauseous, the room was spinning all around. It was weird. And when I looked over, there go the bitch was!"
"So, I'm guessing she tried to put some sort of curse on you," he folds his arms infront of his chest, "and what caused the commotion? Did you fight back?"
"I kind of did." Love grimaces, "but I'm not sure. I was a little out of it. I think I accidentally casted a spell that redo her glamour, maybe that's what killed her." She tucks a hair behind her ear.
Laurent raises his brows when he notices something. He immediately reaches out and takes her hand to examine the fingertips. Dark stains formed at the tips of her fingers, just the tips, it looks as if she just dipped her fingers into a black ink.
"What are these?" Laurent gently touches the dark areas, Love's still staring with wide eyes, taking a look at her other hand.
Which has the same black stains.
"I don't-" she takes her hands away from his grasp, suddenly overwhelmed with emotions and fear.
The dark stains, it could be the soul or the power that veils the walking corpse, she thought to herself. But how?
"I need to go to class." She turns to sprint up the stairs, hands shoved deep into her jacket's pockets to hide the dark stains. She can hear Laurent calling behind her, but she ignored him completely and followed the rest of her classmates toward the new classroom.
***
Love took some notes, nodded along when Miss Kassandra taught the class. She felt bad for the woman, somehow, it felt like the whole chaos in the classroom downstairs happened because of her. Nobody knows what exactly happened, the teachers knew it was an act of ancient magick with a side of necromancy, but nobody really knew why the zombie died.
Walking out of class with her grimoire cradled on one arm, Love heads straight for the east wing where Levi is. A few ugly eyes turn when Love walks pass, not aware yet she's being watched, those same eyes knew what she's done this morning.
Love couldn't decide whether to be afraid or confused. The unexplained spell she casted earlier kept her mind occupied, even when Miss Kassandra talked about the craft taught on Earth and its tragic background story.
She ended up writing about her dark-stained fingertips instead, and the spell that seemed to have sucked out the spell within the girl's body. Migraine begins to hit her when a direct sunlight from the gigantic windows practically blinded her, but she kept going anyways.
On east wing, Levi is involved in a fight with a guy. The crowd boos them. He took a few hits to her face, causing Levi to fall to the ground, blood pours out of her mouth. Seeing the horrendous scene before her, the pent up rage inside of her begins to boil up; burning the blood that courses through her veins.
"Fucking move!" Love drops her backpack along with her grimoire to the ground, pushing past bystanders. She rolled her sleeves up, ready to pounce on the guy.
But he doesn't mind her, Levi notices, but before she could warn her sister. The guy, who can also be described as ugly, rotten and corpse-like, grabbed her by the throat and swung a his foot straight to her stomach.
Levi doubled over, groaning in pain.
"You piece of-" Love grabs the guy by the throat. The new force of power shocks her, but she ignored the feeling by throwing the guy to the ground. He groans when his back hit the solid ground. "Who the hell are you?" She looks him in the eyes, one foot pressing against his neck, "why are you hiding behind a glamour? Why did you attack my sister?"
Instead of fighting back, he laughs, "it is the end for you all. He will take back what was taken from him."
"Love." Levi calls out.
"Beware everyone! This silly girl right here is the reason why our friend is dead. I saw her casting the deadly spell!" He mocks. Without loosening her foot, Love stares at him in confusion, waiting for him to say more.
But the crowds only stare at her in pity and disgust, instead of the man at fault. The stranger suddenly grabbed her by the ankle, twisted it, causing Love to fall back. Within seconds, he kicked her on the side, hard enough it may break a bone.
The crowd roars again.
Love grasps her side, wincing at the painful and burning sensation running up her ribs. "Prick." she attempts to get up, reaching for neglected Levi on the ground.
"Is that all you've got?" Taunts the guy.
"Love, you don't want to get... in trouble with him." Levi coughs, clutching her stomach.
Seeing the pain her sister's in, Love quickly gets up to her feet, feeling the pain on her side may reduce her ability to fight. Grabbing him by the collar, she knocks her head forward, hard enough her forehead hits his nose. It immediately bursts open, causing the glamour on his face fades a little.
"Come on," Love steps forward, blowing a powerful hit to his cheek. She instantly grimaces in pain, he's all bones, "show me how powerful you really are."
The soulless corpse cracks his jawline, causing some people in the crowd to gasp. "Just admit it, you are afraid." He says calmly, "we'll overtake Crimson Cove, just as we've overtook Gardenia. Just you wait and see, mortal."
He delivers an uppercut, followed by a punch on the cheekbone. Bright flashes of pain appears behind Love's eyes, making her stumble backward. Her anger rises even further up, though it feels like her cheekbone may have earned itself an inflammation as much as her chin does. She numbs it all out.
Just like she did back in the classroom. She numbs the pain, quiets down the whole world all around her, and her enemy is her only focus. Love steps forward, the stranger before her only smiles eerily in response as if to taunt her for more.
"Your power shall be mine," she starts to chant. His eyes widen in shock, probably familiarizing himself with the spell. "Shall be mine-" Love grabs the back of his neck, digging her nails into his fragile flesh straight to his upper spine. The guy gasps out for air, feeling as the energy begin to lose his body.
But before Love could finish the spell, a voice snaps her out of it.
"What is the matter with- Miss Phoenix!" Miss Laveau II gasps in horror. "Stop it this instant!"
Love loosens her grip from the guy who immediately falls to the ground. His friends reach out to grab for him. She turns to look at Miss Laveau's furious gaze, a dark-haired with clips pushing back her bangs woman is kneeling next to Levi, she offers her an arm to lean into.
"The stretcher, please!" She commands.
"Lev." Love ignores Miss Laveau by hurriedly approaches wounded Levi. "Are you- are you okay?" She asks, kneeling down to look at how bad her wounds are.
Instead of getting angry, Levi chuckles, "I'm fine. Didn't know you were such a badass, you little Nightingale."
"Come on," the woman carefully wraps an arm around Levi's waist, "your wounds need to be taken care of as soon as possible."
A guy with a stretcher comes in. As Love tries to help Levi up as well, Miss Laveau interrupts her: "you may come with me, Miss Phoenix." She says as calm and collected as she possibly could.
Love, still in her adrenaline rush state, tries to take a breather. She notices the people around her mostly already walks away, but they seem to look at Love differently now.
"Fine-"
"Are these yours?" The girl from before hands Love her grimoire and backpack.
Love hesitantly takes them from her. Though her knuckles hurt, half her face is numb, and her fingertips have dark stains, she still manages to keep her train of thought on pause. "Thank you." She says.
"Miss Phoenix?" Miss Marie Laveau II calls for her one more time. Love nods her head before slipping her grimoire into her backpack and slings the backpack up her shoulder.
"She may need a medical attention as well, dean Laveau." The girl points out.
"She will survive." She insists, gesturing for Love to walk.
Levi is already on the stretcher when Love walks with Miss Laveau. Her heart is heavy for her twin, but when Levi holds her index up, Love can't help but forget all about the anger and physical pain.
She presses her index to hers, "bzzt." Levi chuckles, "parents are so going to kill you for this."
It has been a thing they do to uplift each other, in many cases, the touching index gesture between two people means they are transferring positive energies to each other. But for Love and Levi? They do it when one of each are stuck in a whirlwind of trouble, and it involves a little bit of magick.
"Bzzt." Love chuckles, sending her half the strength she has, "see you after school, Lev."
***
In Marie Laveau II's office, Love is seated across a desk. There's an altar dedicated for protection and ward jars and sigils by the door. Most of the candles in the room are lit, and the doorway is guarded by two invisible guards.
It's a huge office.
"He started it." Love mumbles when Miss Laveau sits down across of her.
She nods calmly, pouring a brandy into an empty glass. "No wonder Nyx was after you." She takes a sip of the drink, "you'd kill anyone who threatened you in a heartbeat."
Love's body tenses up. "They're under a spell, I would never kill anybody."
"Miss Phoenix," Miss Laveau sighs, "are you familiar with necromancy?"
"Yes."
"And grave magick?"
"... um, not really." Love winces when the pain on her cheekbone magnifies.
"A spell used to bring the dead out of their own graves. It's a very ancient magick used by those with higher power in order to gain more allies in number." She explains, leaning over to hand Love the cold bottle of Brandy, "the magick has been dead for centuries. Even my grandmother, the first voodoo practitioner herself, punished those who attempted to cast the spell."
Love grabs the bottle, pressing it hard cold on her wound on the cheek. "Who would...? I don't understand."
"You have the ability to see them, Love. Your ability to see through glamours will help us find the necromancer." Miss Laveau says calmly.
"But there are tons of them! They're just swarming around the school like they own the land or something. What do they want?"
"To do exactly what they've done to Gardenia."
"What!" Love shrieks, nearly dropping the bottle, "they invaded Artemis' land? But... how? Artemis is a Goddess."
"Whomever can be put under a blood magick, Miss Phoenix. Whether they are deities, demons, spirits, anyone."
The man did say something about Gardenia. Love grimaces just at the though of seeing that ugly face ever again, not to mention, it's inavoidable since they are everywhere.
"I think... I think I reversed the spell." Love mutters, looking at her fingertips.
Miss Laveau raises her brows in curiosity. "Of the spell? The ancient spell?"
"Yes." She holds a hand up, showing off her fingertips, "gave me these in exchange when I tried to fight back the girl downstairs that tried to boil my mind."
Love's breathing begins to race, she blinks a few times to differentiate between reality and her wandering mind. She subconsciously opens the brandy cap and takes a gulp of the alcoholic beverage.
"May I?" Miss Laveau holds out a hand for Love to take it. She does as she's asked.
"I'm going to try to speak to Nyx tonight," Love sighs when Miss Laveau examines her fingertips, "Underworld is one thing, but Tartarus? If I meet the Titans and they kidnapped me, it's going to be-"
Love notices how the dean has cupped her hand with her eyes closed as if to concentrate. She sighs, taking another sip of the brandy to calm her nerves and ease the pain.
"You do know a werewolf boy," she says, her eyes still closed. Love can't help but wide her eyes in shock. "But where is this boy? ... I can't seem to find him anywhere. His pack seems to be... in a war with dark practitioners."
Oh, boy. Love takes another sip of the drink, but somewhere in her mind, she begins to think of all the possible places Julian might be.
"War...?" She asks.
Miss Laveau finally opens her eyes. Plenty of things she saw, Love could tell. Nervous, she places the bottle of brandy on the table. Though Julian broke her heart once, but she still somehow cared for the dumb boy.
"Is he okay?" Love asks, "can you find him?"
"I'm not sure. Did you have a connection to him? A past-lover, maybe?"
"Um, no." Not something emotionally, but she doesn't need to know about that.
She narrows her eyes, not believing anything at all. Love sighs.
"Maybe a little. But it's not important. How can I find him?"
"Perform a ritual."
"Oh, great," Love inhales deeply, subconsciously touching the metallic beads around her neck. "I will try to find h-"
A knock on the door startles Love. She turns to see Nikolas peeking his head in, "Miss Laveau, you need me?" He asks, when he notices Love's wounded face, he wides his eyes. "Love? Are you... What happened?"
Love quickly takes the bottle of brandy and hides her cheekbone wound with it. Out of all people... Love sighs heavily. "Come in, Mr. Vero." She gestures for him to enter, "are you busy?"
"Well, I have Demonology in an hour, but..." He quickly makes his way toward Love. His brows furrowed when she attempts to not to look at him by pretending to look at the paintings. "Love, let me look."
"Lev has it worse."
"You were fighting with Levi?" He asks, his tone is straight on surprised now.
"No. It's a long story." She sighs.
"Okay," he says, brows still furrowed, "I'll grab some stuff to clean your wounds. Sounds okay to you?"
"Yeah, sure." Love smiles, cannot contain her smile either from embarassment or from the fact that Nikolas, out of all people, has to see her at the worst.
Miss Laveau raises her brows, sensing the way she shy away and turns into a complete marshmallow. Love looks away, putting the alcohol bottle back to the table. "It's part of his training." She explains, "tending the sick and injured have always been his passion."
"I know." Love catches herself, "I mean, that's nice."
Laveau gives her a warm, knowing smile, "miss Phoenix, I'll look into the spell and its side effect," she tells Love, "from now on, I advise you not to let your anger get the best of you. Can you do that?"
Love nods her head, "yes, ma'am."
"Good," she says, getting up from the seat, "I have meetings to attend to. Perhaps try to find a way to break the glamour spells."
Nikolas approaches Love with a med kit and a bowl of ice. He wraps some cubes in a handkerchief. "It's a complicated one," Nikolas tells, he kneels down infront of Love, "hold this to the swollen area while I clean the scrapes and cuts." He hands Love the handkerchief with ice cubes.
Love can't help but agree, even though she's already distracted enough. When she takes the handkerchief from him, their hands brush each other just a little. Even she has no idea why little things could make her so nervous.
It's freaking Nik! Snap out of it! She thought to herself.
"I know. But I must protect the students from the danger ahead." Laveau states.
Love presses the ice around the swollen area while Nikolas begins to clean the scraped areas with a cotton ball dipped on a cold water. "Do what you must." He says, eyes still fixated on Love's wounds.
She winces and accidentally grips his arm instead. But she doesn't care. With a pain like this? She'd crush his bones if she could. "I get it you want to be a doctor, but no need to abuse my already open skin." Love teases.
"You kids better behave. I need to speak to others and find a way to tell them that we are dealing with something more sinister." Laveau downs the rest of her drink before making her way toward the door.
Nikolas gently touches Love's jaw, aiming her to pull her head back a little, just so he could assess the cuts on her chin. "I can perform a little surgery on you if you'd like." he says quietly, Love wides her eyes.
"No." She whimpers, "I'd pay you not to stitch me."
"Okay." He begins to take another cotton ball on tweezer, dips them on the cold water mixed with yarrow petals. "How about a drink? I know a place." He asks.
Love blushes. In this position, in a very disheartening, unattractive position does he have to ask me out. "A drink, huh? I'm 19."
"The legal drinking age here is 16."
"I- ouch!" Love winces when he touches a painful spot. He discharges the cotton ball and takes a new one. "As I was saying," she sighs, looking over to Laveau who's already gone from the room, "I'm in."
"Good," a small smile plays on his lips, "now tell me what the hell happened, otherwise I'm cancelling."
She chuckles, her mind is finally puzzling back together, "promise me something first?" She raises her brows.
"Promise? Are you in trouble?"
"No, just promise me we'd still go out for that drink if something were to happen before."
"And by something you mean another guy asked you out?"
"Please, after what happened? Nobody would ask me out."
"Hey. I just did."
Love sighs. He lets go of her jaw and they are face-to-face again. "Do you promise?"
He puts the tweezer and cotton ball away. Another hearty smile quirks up his lips. Love notices just how dashing the man actually is, it almost creeps her out.
"I promise."