Waves of Destiny (Twisted Wonderland)

Chapter 58

Chapter 58

"...And that's how I used my signature spell to follow you from Sage's Island," Rook said to the group. Vil had already explained how Ortho decided to release the Phantoms in Tartarus to recreate the world so that he and Idia could be free of having to run Styx. I found the whole idea quite insane. "Once we made it in, I was able to track you down thanks to Vil carrying my 'special' serum. I didn't enclose a note lest it draw suspicion. That was a rather discerning guess on your part, Vil."

"I normally never use enchanted skincare products," Vil explained. "It wasn't hard to put two and two together. It's nice to see my 'good luck serum' working it's magic so soon."

"Do any of you know where Grim is?" I asked the only remaining question on my mind.

"Grim?" said Riddle. "He was brought here as well?"

"Yessir," said Epel. "We saw them carting him off after they captured Vil and Jamil. We thought he'd be here with the rest of you."

"Well, I didn't see Grim during any of our examinations, or at any other point since we've been here," Azul said.

"...Wait a minute," said Leona. "There was that subject who blew off their door and escaped before we did. Was that the furball?"

Riddle scoffed. "Don't be ridiculous! Grim's even more unskilled with magic than Ace and Deuce. There's no way he'd be able to destroy a door made with anti-magic material. Even we had trouble with them."

My eyebrows furrowed in worry. "I wonder what's happened to him." I thought about that night he had attacked me. He had certainly seemed strong then. Was it possible that whatever happened to him increased his magical power?

Vil turned to a Styx technician. "Tell me something - who was in the room at the end of the hall where we were staying?"

"That was Subject F, the direbeast brought in from Night Raven College," said the technician.

"...So it WAS the furball," Leona muttered.

"But his test results for magic performance were all subpar compared to an average mage. As Subject A pointed out, we had no indications he had the kind of power it would take to destroy that door. None at all."

"Hold on," said another technician. "What about that one note in Subject F's file? Here, I found it. We were unable to get an accurate reading on his blot accumulation levels no matter how many tests we ran."

"What does that mean?" said Epel.

"We couldn't find any other instance of this in Styx's entire database. We performed a thorough examination, but still couldn't identify the cause. Our analysis team found layers of ancient sorcery cast on him. They couldn't figure out the effects of it... But they concluded it was likely some sort of curse - or perhaps a blessing - that triggers when certain criteria are met. The direbeast was in stable condition. We were going to keep him under observation and run further analysis..."

"A curse...?" I murmured.

"Blessings and curses are essentially the same thing," Vil said. "People just categorize them differently based on their effect. My signature spell can produce positive effects as well, depending on the terms I set. Basically, a practitioner's emotional state can dictate whether a spell is positive or negative. I have no clue why Grim would have such a thing cast on him, though..."

"Oh!" said a third technician. "Tartarus's internal sensors have logged Subject F's collar! There's been free access in and out of Tartarus ever since its security went offline. According to this log, Subject F went through the Tartarus gate immediately after the emergency started."