The Sword of Torakor

Chapter 2 - History of Faerieland

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Tevan was asleep when the tower bells in the final year students' dormitories began ringing to announce the start of the day. Waking with a start he released a groan and longed for the days she he could just hit the snooze button on his 1NP Shop alarm clock. Eyes closed, he stubbornly rolled over towards the wall. Thankfully, last night's dream had been short. The mysterious hooded figure in his dreams must have lost its boldness since the events of the night before, so it had gone back to simply observing the space with the missing statue. Even so, it hadn't been enough to counteract the cumulative effect of nearly a month of interrupted sleep.

Tevan thought back to his first year at the Faerieland Magic Academy. How he felt one month into his first year and how he felt now couldn't be more different. Leaving Neopia City for the first time, playing in an upper league yooyuball team and doing well in his classes, Tevan had felt on top of the world. There was lots about the academy that suited Tevan. Not being in one of the top academic programs meant he was breezing through classes without even trying. Being on the yooyuball team meant he already had a group of friends, and he would spend his off days exploring the Faerie City and hanging out on the yooyuball pitch. Nowadays, he was barely managing to stay on top of his homework and any spare time was spent staring blankly into space, trying to rest but avoiding sleep. His anxiety was coming back too, something that had plagued him as a kid, but that he thought he'd worked through by now. Instead, that creeping feeling of dread seemed to be following him, made worse by the fact that acknowledging it would mean having to confront the dreams.

A renewed peal of the bells broke Tevan from his thoughts and insisted he get up. Obediently, he pushed aside his duvet covered in Neopian constellations, and heaved himself out of his bed. He walked over to the window and opened his curtains, allowing the morning sunlight to stream in. His bedroom was on the side of the tower that faced out towards the Delfinian Ocean, and he had a particularly beautiful view, with the Maraquan ruins just visible on the horizon.

The inside of Tevan's room wasn't quite as picturesque. He wasn't messy, but if his mom saw his bedroom she would certainly set a deadline for tidying it up. Small piles of alternating clean and dirty clothes lined the empty spaces of the floor, yooyuball posters with his favourite players hung haphazardly on the walls, and a long-forgotten plant sat redundantly in the patch of sun on the windowsill. Tevan's mom was up in Neopia City, though, and despite there being no outwardly visible organization to the detritus littering the room, Tevan knew exactly where everything was. Grabbing his favourite green jumper from on top of an orange salt lamp shaped like a yooyu, Tevan carefully pulled it over his horns and opened his bedroom door.

In their small shared kitchen, his roommate Maxi was already sat at the table eating breakfast, polishing their circular glasses and frantically double checking references on an essay they had due that morning. From upside-down Tevan could see the title: Bottled Faeries: From Criminality to Commerce. He grimaced when he saw the length. His own essay for the same class was easily a third the length of Maxi's.

"Do you want some breakfast?" they asked without looking up. Tevan inhaled deeply and registered the smell of freshly made pancakes and a spice the faeries liked using in their cooking that he had gotten used to smelling but couldn't name. With his mouth watering he ambled over to the icebox.

"Duh," he said gratefully, pulling out a container of orange juice.

The striped zafara smiled distractedly, pushing their glasses up their nose, "After three years, what'll it take for you to realize that's never going to catch on here?"