Page 90 of Zero Happily Ever Afters

It seemed like a disservice now, minimizing the assignments I’d posted since I didn’t want to stress all the students on my roster. Caleb found himself breezing through entire units, which left him stagnant. Having finished his work, he rolled over and sat up, telekinetically grabbing his bag of books. Not to be confused with his book bag, also filled with texts. No, no, no. Caleb sported a new tote bag Katherine had gotten him that easily held ten books, and he’d managed to wedge over twenty in it.

Not satisfied with his classwork and a bit burnt out on his casting research, Caleb moved on to a passion project. He flipped through his notebook to a page where he’d sketched The True Witch.

I shuddered at her image, even if the likeness lacked, I synced to the tiny recollections Caleb held for her arrival, her attack. He’d only seen her for a few seconds before the world turned into water, before he couldn’t breathe or think or fight.

But he’d seen enough to draw her hat, her dress, the bone staff. Though he didn’t catch the glyphs tattooed on her, and he made her hair impossibly long, reaching her ankles.

The eyes had this startling gaze, where they seemingly followed everything in the room. Caleb drew them exactly as they were: vibrant green—the only part of his sketch he’d colored in.

It was a topic many minds from Gemini Academy lingered on. The news didn’t discuss The True Witch. Every media outlet simply pretended she didn’t exist. The authorities and guild professions simply acted as if the attack had been fully resolved. Yes, they publicly admitted to Theodore Whitlock’s escape, how he now fled the city, probably the nation, but if The True Witch came up in discussion, the topic was skirted. Avoided. A subject no one wanted to have, so everyone pretended she wasn’t real. Still, she silently haunted memories, even the students who hadn’t seen her appear on the stage beside Theodore Whitlock, who hadn’t seen her and The Sisters Three shatter the mind of the great Enchanter Evergreen, held fear for the ocean that nearly swept them away.

Milo’s collapse flashed through Caleb’s thoughts, repeating again and again and again, hitting me with a gut punch of guilt until he finally buried images with research, focusing his mind on something different. Something he could offer help on.

“You know, I don’t think it’s actually a psychic branch,” Caleb said, running through his notes before opening a book and flipping through the heavily annotated pages.

“Huh?” Katherine asked, attention still fixated on the order of arrangement she wanted for her new spell book.

“I think it’s an arcane branch,” he explained, catching Katherine up on where his brain had darted. “The way she summoned the water into people’s heads, that was real. All the sensations, and yes, psychics can add sensory details, manipulate perception, but there was this heat, a light, a flash of something…I don’t know, cosmic? Primal? Ward? No. Definitely a primal element, though, because of the water. But then another branch to transport it. And of course, the psychic element to invade minds…”

Katherine nodded to Caleb’s rambling theories as he accurately assessed the three branches utilized by The True Witch’s arcane magic. To think he arranged these puzzle pieces with such little information. He’d make an amazing enchanter someday.

“You’re still on this?” she asked.

“Well, it’s important.”

“Yeah, and important enchanters are probably already deciphering things.”

“I just wanted to help.” Caleb shrugged.

“Here I figured you were just avoiding your feelings or thoughts on a certain confrontation during the attack.” Katherine side-eyed Caleb. “With Kenzo.”

“What?” Caleb tensed. “We didn’t fight.”

“Exactly. You fought together, had a bromance moment, and now you’re pretending it didn’t happen while researching some mysterious threat.”

“Do you actually think it was a moment?” Caleb bit his lip, desperately avoiding the topic—even in his thoughts. He didn’t want to dream about the idea of having Kenny back in his life, didn’t know what it meant, didn’t want to face another letdown.

“You know, that weirdo witch lady seemed like a psychic to me.” Katherine shrugged, noticing Caleb’s inability to handle the annoying Kenzo-shaped elephant in the room. “Psychics can doa lot with even seemingly basic magics. Look at what Mr. Frost did?”

“Huh?” Caleb and I thought at the same time.

“You know, using his telepathy to remove the bizarro brain water stuff.”

And like that, Caleb’s mind weaved away from worries and back toward wonders. “You think that was Mr. Frost?”

I hadn’t told anyone I’d been the one to remove Oceanic Collapse. Everyone was so deeply entrenched in their own battle for survival that they hadn’t seen or felt my actions.

“Who else could’ve done it?” Katherine casually mused, piecing together intricate ideas about how my branch worked, how it must’ve pierced through the other psychic magic, estimating vital variables with a whim, then went back to her project without missing a beat.

“I guess I just thought the woman who attacked everyone overexerted herself.” Caleb furrowed his brow, adding new notes on the casting capabilities of The True Witch, wondering what the full level of her channeling range was.

I’d also like to know her channeling limitations. They weren’t infinite, that much I knew, and without her bone staff, she’d lost a lot of her seemingly immeasurable power.

“Hmmm.” Caleb hummed along with Katherine who’d started singing a mnemonic device that she used to use as a child when memorizing the steps required for creating a properly functional grimoire. The song in Caleb’s maze of a mind made his thoughts fuzzy, but he continued taking notes on The True Witch while writing a separate note in the corner of the page.

Telepathy Range?

He circled it and underlined it several times as a reminder to revisit his curiosities about Mr. Frost’s psychic magic.

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