A/N: Donomeira is like the Nidusian equivalent of Christmas. Just letting you know.
"Happy Donomeira," I said glumly as I tossed packages at each of my half-asleep friends. Three medium-sized boxes flew into Kiara's lap, one large gift plopped into Tessa's, and two decently big parcels sailed through the air and onto Ella's recently reoccupied bed, a few inches short of her outstretched legs. "Damn," I muttered.
"You too, Miss Cheerful," Kiara replied as she threw me two presents.
"Ditto," groaned a sleepy Tessa. She chucked a bag towards my general area and hit my arm.
"Happy Donomeira to you as well!" said Ella in a funny accent, handing me a gift. She'd just come back from the sickbay yesterday. It had taken much longer than expected to heal the burn damage, especially with the Order of Chaos inspecting everything. Ever since their arrival two weeks ago, everything had been a lot stricter. Instead of letting us go home on the eighteenth of December and come back on the seventh of January like normal, the teachers were forced by the Order of Chaos to keep us in the school, as well as only allowing us the twenty-third of December through the sixth of January off. I was guessing that the outside world knew a little about our plight, because nearly every night we could hear people trying to get in. We could only listen and try to sleep.
"I hope they do a drug-free dinner," said Tessa. I nodded. We'd been eating minimal amounts of the drugged food and washing it down with copious amounts of clean water, and the result was that we were slowly losing weight but still thinking freely. Our skin looked papery white and we could barely function, but all of it was worth it to keep our minds out of the control of the Order of Chaos. Occasionally, the teachers managed to sneak in a bit of untainted food for the people like us who were eating very little, because Professor Menchiot, the Advanced Science teacher, had built a magical fridge that could transport food from anywhere. She'd given us a whispered lecture on magic being energy and therefore able to be manipulated by science as she discreetly passed us food, but when she saw the dazed look in our eyes she realized that barely anything was going to stick in our heads and stopped lecturing. I smiled as I remembered the taste of the first drug-free food we'd had after the Order of Chaos had taken over. Chocolate ice cream...
"Maya, thanks so much!" Ella beamed, holding up the two huge books I'd given her, Theory of Magic and How to Perform Magic Beyond Your Exarae Even If You Weren't Born A Spellcaster (It's Not Too Late!) 2.
"Glad you liked it," I responded. I started tearing open my gifts. Ella got me three books titled Catrops and Monsters, How to Improve Your Natural Magical Energy, and Magical Charm-making For Beginners. "Well, I guess we'll be learning to harness our secondary powers quite a lot!" I chuckled. For most people, magic was a weak power, but spellcasters were quite adept at using it. All people in Nidus could use it, though. Most of the time, it would manifest itself in a person's Exarae. However, there would be the residual magic not used by the Exarae that could be used for small, everyday things. Charms multiplied the power of the magic. I couldn't wait to create a charm, but I had a feeling that the Order of Chaos wouldn't permit it. So by tonight I'd either have to hide my books or destroy them.
For a while, the room was silent except for the noise of paper tearing and thanks being given. From Tessa, Kiara and I both received wine-red sweaters that apparently were woven through with adamant-titanium fibers, making the sweaters bulletproof (Ella's was in emerald green). Ella had given Kiara, Tessa and I all the charm-making book, but Kiara and Tessa's second and third books were different. From Kiara, all of us had been gifted birthstone necklaces that would spiral into breastplates when twisted in a certain pattern. Kiara had also modified whatever armour we had to transform into light jewelry and back. My helmet became a silvery headband, my greaves silvery bracelets and anklets, my gloves a leather and adamant-titanium ring, and my shield a silvery armband. Tessa and Ella, who owned armour similar to mine (Tessa had spiked greaves and no gloves and Ella had a visored helmet and didn't have arm greaves) also got similar jewelry. "I hope that those still count as presents since I got myself those too," Kiara joked. I gave Tessa a large metalworking kit, some welding goggles and gloves, and some scrap metal, which I think she liked very much. What sixteen-year-old girl wouldn't want metalworking supplies for Donomeira? From me, Kiara got greaves, a set of earpieces, and adamant-titanium-and-leather gloves just like mine. Out of all the gifts, the books and earpieces were the hardest to get. They couldn't be made in the school, but I'd ordered the gifts at the first sign of unrest in the castle and Ella did too, before the interwebs were cut and the school was locked down.
"Nice haul this year, guys, thanks," I said.
"Yeah," the others chorused.
Outside, the sun had risen high into the sky. "Wow, it's seven thirty already!" exclaimed Ella. "Wanna go get breakfast?"
"Sure," we replied. The four of us shuffled down to the dining hall, trying our best to look like the other brain-numbed students. When we sat down at our table with our drug-laced food, I was about to bite into my food when I glanced up at the staff table, now also occupied by Order of Chaos senior members. The lower members of the Order of Chaos didn't sit with us for meals, they ate an hour later. But the people at the staff table stayed the same. One of the Chaos members at the table, a burly man who looked like he hailed from the Kingdom of Garrinum named Master Carriway, bit into a chocolate. My chocolate. Well, more specifically, the chocolate my mother and aunt always sent to Kiara and I at Donomeira, when they took their annual trip to the Kingdom of Jadpri. Its distinct reddish hue blinked at me, revealing its past. Suddenly, it clicked. They were taking the gifts the parents were sending to the children. Anger surged through my veins. They can't just do that! I thought. I nudged Kiara. "That's our chocolate!" I hissed as I pointed at the chocolate.
Kiara stared at the chocolates, which were rapidly disappearing. "I like those chocolates," she said. "And I like getting my own property in the mail."
"What?" asked Ella.
"They've been taking our mail," I explained as Kiara glared at Master Carriway like she wanted to murder him.
"Illegal," sang Tessa. "Illegal, illegal, illegal. But of course, they are destroying the evidence and we can't sue them because we are pretty much under house arrest."
"No, we can't sue, but we can make sure that they don't eat my chocolate," said Kiara. "We're gonna need dinef leaves, powdered basinture fangs, a lock pick, rope, wire, a hoop ring, and a huge bag of purple dye. Like, huge. Maybe the size of our closet. Also, various non-lethal toxins would be great."
"And what are you gonna do with all this?" I asked suspiciously. It wouldn't be hard to get, but I was worried about how the supplies would be put to use. When Kiara got that strange glint in her eye, you would normally run for your life.
"Raise hell."
A/N: Well then. I totally have no idea what Kiara's gonna do. Totally. You just have to wait for the next chapter. And since I'm on a road trip of sorts, that update will probably come in a few days. But I'm on vacation and I wanna enjoy myself so get off my case.
-Deepio the Slytherclaw
