Inner Discord

Chapter 13

After waiting another five minutes I opened my eyes again. Now Aphron should have gone. Great! That gave us the opportunity to go on. I walked toward Boeithe and woke her up. 'Hmm? I had already fallen asleep, did you really have to wake me?'

'We have to continue. Any time someone else will come.'

'Oh, okay...'

When Ophelimos had gotten what he needed, he immediately returned to the place where Boeithe and Phoneus were supposed to be. They should be unconscious, what would help him to place it without being noticed. But the moment he arrived there, he smelt something weird, and did not see either of them. Wondering if maybe Aphron had laid them somewhere else, he put his hand to his nose and started to place it. He wanted to finish as soon as possible, the smell was too bad. But gradually he felt how sleep came to him... Had he been this tired all along? Before he could do anything about it, he was sleeping on the place where Phoneus had laid just a moment ago.

After Ophelimos had been away for an hour already, Aphron could not help but be concerned about him. He should have been here already, it did only take about ten minutes to install the hint. Aphron decided to go to his office to see what was going on. Already running, he suddenly realized that he had left the door open. Grouching about it, he hastily returned to close the door, but then he saw he apparently had also left the fridge's door open. Grouching even harder right now, he walked forward to close that one as well. Then suddenly the room's door closed behind him, and he felt something cold, steely pressing against his neck. He wanted to look behind him, but a voice stopped him. 'Don't move or I'll cut your ugly throat open.'

Aphron realized he was put in a tight spot, and decided to listen what this fellow wanted before he would use any magic. 'Sit down in that chair. My partner will tie you up.'

Now Aphron did what was asked too. He felt some soft hands binding his together with rough ropes. The rope was tightened hard enough to hurt. 'Okay, now you can see us.'

The robbers put off their masks. Aphron was shocked. Before him were standing Phoneus and Boeithe.

I was surprised that Aphron had done exactly what we ordered him to. We had been prepared for more sputtering, but it had all gone pretty smoothly. I spoke up again. 'Now I think this will be enough to finish the training, isn't it? Let me kill someone already and then let me go.'

Aphron laughed. 'Hahah, I'm afraid to have to tell you it wasn't enough, but I would appreciate it if you told me how you did this, and how you figured it all out.'

'Isn't that obvious? We both knew what was going on from the beginning', I said.

'Didn't we trick you well, Aphron?', Boeithe continued.

'Yes, you did. Now come on and tell me.'

I spoke up. 'Well, the first thing to say is that I realized all along what you were trying to do when you put me in the desert. If it was just to train my magic, would it not have been much easier then to let me train in a training hall? You could have done the same whilst you were able to keep an eye on me in case I did not perform well enough and my training had to become tougher. But you didn't. There must have been a reason for that. So I figured you wanted me to learn how to survive. But then there was this weird task to find 300 arguria...If you just wanted me to learn how to survive only with use of my magic, there wouldn't have been need for that task. The only remaining possibility was that you wanted me to learn how to solve problems rapidly enough. But you weren't sure I wouldn't die. That's why you set up an observer in the first place.'

'That was the guy that always stole my food. You had hired him and wanted him to make contact to Phoneus. You knew he would bully me again and that Phoneus would cross his path. You figured that Phoneus would join him because he likes killing,' Boeithe explained.

'I had immediately seen through all that because nowhere was a house to be seen, so why would they be in the desert? I decided to do the contrary of what you expected me to do, Aphron. But I didn't think you'd see through that too,' I talked in a way that probably made everyone think that I sincerely believed I had won.

'You had checked on me before, in case Phoneus would save me in place of helping my bully. You knew my powers and before Phoneus even began his task, you had already prepared for both cases,' Boeithe continued the same way as me.

'The letters you had hung were customized to whether I would go with your guy or with Boeithe. They were made in such a way that we would suspect you of having observed us in the desert. But let's not forget some facts. We already knew everything when we met each other, and had predicted your moves completely, except for the task that would be there,' I now almost yelled, triumphantly.

'But then we weren't completely sure yet. So I started to act a little familiar with Phoneus to raise your suspicion. It's not something I regret having done, but it's a pity that you didn't see that.'

'We concluded you can't have been observing us directly. But it couldn't be you weren't keeping an eye on us at all. So after I had collected the arguria, I wanted to fall asleep and gave Boeithe the order to wake me when it was time.'

'But what I did was falling asleep too. With this, we tested how you would know what we were doing. And because Phoneus woke up when we had exactly enough time left, we were sure...'

'That you had infiltrated my mind with soul magic in such a way that I could act on my own, but when there would be an emergency you would be warned immediately and could help us out by taking over my mind!'