Dance of the Gods

Veronica walked back to her room and placed the books in her wardrobe's corner. It wasn't the best hiding spot, but there was no other place for it.

Then she quickly changed into some lighter clothes and went to bed. After the tiring day and the lecture at night, she fell asleep fairly quickly.

To her absolute surprise, when she woke up in the morning, she had no dreams or nightmares the whole night. As the sun rose and the bell chimed six, Veronica was already heading outside of her room with a big smile on her face.

She stepped outside and tripped on nothing again, but instead of falling this time someone caught and spun her around. The one who stopped her from kissing the wooden floor was non other than Floyd Hawkins.

He stayed a bit too close to her, and a large blush appeared on her face. The fact that she only wore a robe didn't help the situation. Veronica quickly mumbled a thank you and tried to leave, but before she could he caught her hand.

"You are quite clumsy today Veronica, is everything alright?" He said it in a kind voice, but something about his tone seemed off. Whatever it was it gave her the creeps.

"Yeah, I'm seem to be a bit more wobbly lately. Could you let go of my hand now?" She said a bit more forcefully than intended, but she didn't care. Floyd seemed to be a nice enough man, at least that's what she wanted to believe.

He let go of her hand and slowly nodded as a small smile appeared on his face. As he walked past her, he leaned in and whispered, "Do be more careful, the world is more dangerous than you think."

After he left Veronica just stayed in the exact same spot. It took her mind a few minutes to reset, but soon she dismissed the ominous threat like message and went on her way to take a relaxing bath.

After the weird encounter the day went on as usual. She worked as a barmaid serving customers, but this time she wasn't just sitting bored when the work got slow. Instead she read that novel Father Martin lent her.

At first she wanted to read the ancient rener dictionary, but Suze didn't allow it. So a romance detective novel was the replacement.

The day went by fast and soon she was back in the basement ready to learn more about the world. As usual both of them grabbed a drink and Suze brought out a paper with a list of strange names.

Veronica read through it in confusion a few times, then looked up and waited for Suze to explain what they meant.

"These are the ingredients for the dancer ritual. Today we will talk about ethereal materials for a bit, then I will leave you to learn some ancient rener." Her voice was the same monotone, but also a bit tired. Spending all they working, then at night teaching was taking a tall on her.

Suddenly a small smile appeared on her face which hid her exhaustion. Even without words Veronica knew what information Suze tried to convey. 'You don't need to worry about me.'

So instead of asking questions or trying to get her to take this day off, she just stayed silent and waited patiently for her next words.

"As you already know there is a different reality called the ethereal plain. The materials have nothing to do with that. They just have similar semantics, but that's all. Every material that can be used for rituals are part of this group. These materials have ethereal property, which means they have a bit of supernatural energy inside them."

They both stayed silent and drank a sip of whiskey.

"So, these are materials on the paper? But why are they in two groups?" Asked Veronica while holding onto the paper and reading the names for the twentieth time. At this point she knew them like the back of her palm.

"Because there are two kinds of materials, the ones that contain a lot of potential energy, and the ones that are only there for stabilizing the mixture. These are called main and side ingredients."

Suze held out her hand and waited for Veronica to hand over the list. Quickly Suze read through it and pointed to two names.

"For the dancer ritual we will need a Choking Vines' Body, and a Roaming Pointer's Fin. These are the main ingredients and they will be the expensive ones. The side ingredients aren't that important, these are just examples that I wrote down."

The excitement on Veronica's face couldn't stay hidden. With a voice that she could barely hold back she asked the most important question.

"How do we get the ingredients?" Suze tilted her head with a bit of surprise, then she chuckled a bit.

"Do keep your skeleton from jumping out of your skin cause of anticipation!... *sigh* We currently have neither of the two ingredients, so we have to go to an ascended gathering to acquire them. One will be held tomorrow, which we will attend."

Suze downed her drink and was about to stand up when Veronica interrupted.

"What is an ascended gathering?"

"I will explain it in more detail tomorrow, but it is basically a place where rare items change hands and large amounts of money moves around unnoticed."

Before Veronica could ask another question Suze hurried away while saying a mumbled good night.

'Why is she in such a hurry?... Whatever, its non of my concern, I should just enjoy my free time with more learning!... It's weird to be excited about studying...'

Before coming down here she grabbed the books from her room, which for some reason was unlocked. But remembering her morning and that creepy interaction with Floyd it all made sense.

She spent a good two hours staring at words and quickly learning them. With the speed she was learning by her count it would take around a week to master this language.

With a satisfied smile on her face she closed the dictionary and opened one of the other books. Since she had a special connection with history she opened that book to see how much she could read of the texts.

Unlike the history they teach in schools this book started from a different time period, it began from a time before the written records showed. Strangely enough the name of the era was Era of Darkness, or the 4th Era.

'4th? What stupid historian didn't know how to count... Oh! It's not that the fourth was the first era, but they don't know what the other three's names are, or what happened!... So this book has a lot of missing information as well, no that it matters... most of it is still gibberish to me...'

A bit disheartened she was about to close the book when she noticed something strange, quickly she looked over every page of the book until she found what she was looking for. At the third of the book there were multiple pages missing.

'This wasn't here before! Did someone break into my room and took these pages?... But why? Whatever was written on them couldn't have been that important. Suze said these books aren't that rare and any mystic shop sells them...'

With a bit of confusion she looked at the first page that wasn't missing. Veronica couldn't make sense of the text, but her eyes stopped on one word, it was probably a name... Remot.

As the word appeared in her head the sadness and longing inside her turned to the extreme. It felt like her very soul was being ripped apart.

The non existential emotional pain lasted for a few moments. When she opened her eyes the book was closed in front of her, and she had no recollection of the word she had previously read.

Suddenly out of nowhere a deep shiver ran down her spine, like someone was watching her. Combining this with the previous experience she was near hysterical. Quickly she began looking around for the source of this feeling, and soon found it.

At one of the tables in a dark corner sat a very handsome man. He held a glass of wine and raised it in salute when Veronica's eyes finally found him. Behind the glass a small creepy smile was hidden.

Floyd Hawkins downed the rest of his drink, then stood up and went into one of the four long corridors.

As he was walking away Veronica quickly grabbed all her books and nearly ran to the stairs leading out of the basement. The creepy feeling went away with Floyd, but she still had no interest in lingering.

She stumbled again, but didn't care much about it. Only after finally reaching her room and closing it behind her did she take a deep exhausted breath.

After packing away her books she went to bed, and tried to forget everything that happened.