Cassandra - Book 1

9: Preparations

I don't know how long I was unconscious or how did I back to the Academy. I woke up with Lisie and Daniel right next to me.

When Daniel noticed that I was up, he hugged me. Lisie also noticed. "Thank God!" Lisie said.

"You were asleep for one and a half month." Lisie explained. I was still feeling lightheaded. It took two months to regain all the blood that I had lost when I was kidnapped, Lisie explained.

Apparently, the coffee shop was one of Lobos traps so Jill and other high official had it shut down. I never talked. I can't. Daniel left to update the doctor while Lisie kept filling in me what happened when I was asleep.

Apparently I have a month left before the Cup. Lisie told me that they now have the journal but no one read it yet, they knew I would want to be the first time to read it.

Suddenly, Jessie, Franco, Chloe all went in and they all apologized in unison. Where's Alex? I thought.

Daniel finally returned and told me that she can now go back to my own room to take some rest. The school is also allowing me to have a week off from studies. Daniel asked this, I felt it. But I never used a single day of that week to rest; I used it to practice on my own. I would visit the library in the morning; teachers would usually compliment me for this and no one suspected. I would take down notes because borrowing Legacy books would make it suspicious and during the afternoon and night, I would practice in different places. I knew I couldn't let my friends down. They're depending on me and I wasted two months of the preparation.

Other than they felt bad about the incident, my friends also insisted for me to rest first but I kept on sneaking out. I eventually sacrificed my health and sadly, Daniel. We never got the chance to talk during that week and whenever he visits my dorm, I was always away.

I also started reading the journal. It was a tough read because a lot of words were ancient and hard to understand. I used the translation spell that was taught back on my first month in the Academy in order to read everything. I took note of everything important.

The journal was full of magic spells created by Henry Valle. I tried to look for some entries about my real family but there were none.

Unfortunately, there is one part at the end of the book where the translation spell didn't work. I couldn't find a way to translate it.

One day, I decided to tell Lisie about the unreadable page. Lisie and I knew that the journal is like a puzzle. It will never be complete as long as one page is missing. Every magic taught is indeed important to execute the next ones. The powers and techniques learned from studying the first ones is important to the following ones.

"Maybe this is why my parents failed," Lisie said, "not only they are not Legacies but even if they are, they will never execute it successfully." And from that on, Lisie was determined to know the last page as much as I was.

"Maybe Alex knows." I said.

"Oh, no one told you?" Lisie said. "What?"

"Alex's gone. He went to the Salem."

"Since when?!" That is oceans away from here, I thought.

Salem is land far from Labyrinth. I never thought it existed because no one ever talked about it. They said no one wants to hear about Salem because the Nerida hated the Arez family – the one that rules the Salem.

I remembered from my History class that Soraia Arez – the queen - used to be a Nerida until she married Lorenzo Arez. Simon once told me at one private conversation that the Neridas are not the strongest ones because they used to work under the supervision of the Arez family until they developed their own army.