Something Immortal

07: The Druid and the Strigoi

Now all eyes turned on him the moment he stood up. Som walked to the stage slowly, clutching his chest with both hands and feeling utterly nervous that he was visibly shaking outside and inside. He passed by the Dragon Prince, who looked at him with an unreadable expression. Even the strigoi brothers seemed intrigued by his gift and patiently waited until he reached the edge of the platform.

Som," the strigoi teacher seemed to have known him from the beginning, just like Phet. Speaking of Phet, he was smiling behind her like a proud father, making Som's face wrinkled. Earlier, Phet wanted to disown him for making trouble. "Brother of the druid Jarl Sri and Envoy of the druid race. Welcome to the Arcane Academy."

"Umm..." Som's mind suddenly went blank, and he didn't know what to say. He doesn't even know where to start. When he decided to speak, he stuttered, "G-Greetings teachers, my gift...it's a healing ointment made by druid magic. My brother made this himself, and I—I helped a little. We hope you like it."

The female teacher finds this unbearably cute and turns to look at the others with a smile. When she gazed back at Som, she took the gift gently, and Som couldn't help but return the smile as well.

Som finally went back to the table feeling uplifted this time despite eyes glaring at him steadily, including the Dragon Prince. Even Saanvi raised her brow as she looked at Som with great interest this time.

The program commenced with all the teachers introducing themselves and letting them know that tomorrow would be the official start of the class. Then the music played again, and the food was served, much to Som's delight because he was starving. Much of everything that he had seen so far was almost similar to how he imagined when reading the novel. Since this college was independent of all other organizations, they were much stricter in imposing the laws and cautious of the other races. This was supposed to strengthen diplomatic relationships, opening opportunities for possible allies as well as eyeing potential enemies. Saanvi was right. They were held hostages until the effective date of the renewal of the Peace Treaty, which was the assembly that all the leaders must attend. Sri was scheduled to attend this, while Som must stay in the college as the representative of the druid.

In the story, the college was often blamed for certain anomalies. This was expected, given that the first conflict should start here. It was often believed that certain activities at this college caused that "disaster," and if Som was right about this, he could probably stop it and prevent the death of one minor character.

It was at this precise moment that the strigoi brothers found their way to his table, much to his vexation.

"Som, is it?" the younger one, who was always chatty, put his arm around Som so that he froze. "Why aren't you drinking?"

Som was still chewing at his food and couldn't help but glare, "Druids don't drink alcohol."

"What kind of boring shits do you guys do?"

His brother, who was only an inch shorter than him with long sideburns, smacked him right on the head. "Learn to respect others, idiot!"

"How can you even sit beside this asshole?" Som remembered this person's name was Marko, and during the gift-giving, he seemed to be the older one of the two. He took the liberty to sit on Saanvi's left after referring to her as the asshole.

Saanvi didn't bother replying to his mocking and chugged a wine straight from the bottle making all three guys stare at her with a mixture of astonishment and amusement.

"We haven't been formally introduced," the younger one spoke again.

"I know your names."

He didn't seem to be deterred and ignored Som, "I'm Mica, and this is my older brother. Marko. We're strigoi."