The humans had not yet returned by the time Arthur, Griffin, Brand, and I took wing and headed north, but we couldn't delay for much longer. I had been hoping that we'd be able to get some information from them before we had to split up probably until tomorrow morning, but if we waited any more, it would be past sunset. Already as it stood, the sky was changing colour as we passed Yorving. Griffin's eyes lingered on the city as we left.

«Fires are still burning…» they mumbled, staring at the trails of smoke that rose from the bottom of the canyon.

Brand sniffed and growled. "Bad," she growled in Draconic. "Smells like death."

Arthur's antennae waved in front of his face. «Yeah,» he agreed. «Probably not for the festival anymore. I hope they're just burning rubbish.»

I glanced at the city. It was like it had a gravitational pull, sucking in all our attention as we passed by. I knew the others were still thinking about last night, but wallowing in what was already done wasn't going to get us anywhere, and we needed to be in good spirits to make a positive impression on the scholars. A distraction was in order.

«So, Arthur, I've been meaning to ask, what do those things do?» I flew past and flicked my tail towards his antennae. «I met someone in a pub once who said that bugs use them to smell, but it seems like that would be redundant for you.»

He reflexively flicked them back so they were flat against his neck. «I honestly hadn't thought about it much,» he said. «But it is strange, now that you mention it. I think they help with sensing the air, but also with scent. It's hard to describe. It's not really comparable to any human senses.»

«I get it,» I said. «I've been partly smelling with my tongue, so I'm pretty used to new senses by now.»

«It's interesting that dragons have so many differences,» said Griffin. «Imagine if some humans just had extra senses. I wonder why that is.» They glanced behind us, where Yorving had disappeared over the southern horizon. «I hope the dragons can come back to the city some day. I want to learn. If it's still there, that is.»

«Don't talk like that,» said Arthur. «Barbosa has a lot of power, but he doesn't have enough to tear the whole city down. Yorving's big. It'll recover, as long as we deal with the problem.»

"They are strong," said Brand. She dipped down, angling for a break in the dense tree cover. "We're here."

We were well into the Witchweald by then, with nothing but dark green forest spreading out in every direction. In the evening heat, the trees were filling the air with the scent of damp leaves and bark. Despite some of them having already begun to lose their leaves for the autumn, they were still dense enough that I couldn't see much of Lynnmore from our vantage point apart from the solitary dome of the lake-facing hall, rising over the still lake like a cold gravestone.

It wasn't as much of a swamp here as it was in the place we landed on the way to the academy, but the ground was still wet and muddy despite the only recent rain being the brief thunderstorm last night. The land carried a gentle slope going down to the north, towards the sea, and rising sharply as it neared the lake shore, enough to give the impression that the bowl of earth that kept the lake in would spill all the waters out if the northern side suffered one too many landslides. The gap we had landed in was right next to a dirt path, visible only as a small depression in the ground, that led up to an iron gate set into a stone wall. The bars of the gate framed a phrase written in wrought iron before terminating in sharp spikes at the top:

EX IMAGINIBUS, TRAHET MIRACULA

"Writing?" said Brand.

«Old Lundenian,» said Griffin. «Probably the college's motto. Or something like that.»

The gate was latched. I was about to reach out to push it open when a stiff breeze blew through the clearing, and the gate swung open with an all-too-loud creak of rusty metal on metal, the latch somehow sliding right out of its socket.

«Well…» I said, gesturing vaguely at the path. «The way is open!»

Griffin shivered nervously, but the three all followed as I led the way inside. The interior of the campus wasn't much different from the exterior, save being walled in and with some of the trees cut away enough to expose the three brick buildings. None were as impressive as the lakeside hall, and they were crammed into a relatively small space, leaving a wide open courtyard that spread out between them and the wall.

Things were already strange, and we hadn't even entered a building yet. The courtyard's only two features were a sunken alcove that dug into a small hill to the right, which held seven weathered gravestones, each marked with ancient, withered flowers. To either side of the tiny cemetery were large stone pillars, ridged on the sides and flat at the top, holding polished disks of steel that shone with a mirror finish up on small metal rods. The disks were oriented in the opposite direction of the fading sun. There was a strange scent in the air, like somewhere between rotting leaf litter, fresh fish, and…cinnamon. It was a vile combination, and I made every effort to keep my mouth shut.

The two brick buildings ahead were simple square blocks with the small flourishes of triangular roofs held up by columns standing at the front. Each of them had several windows on the side. All but three of them were dark, and in the three that were lit up, there were the silhouettes of people that stood unnervingly still, posed in just the right way for me to be sure they were staring at us. None of them made any movements. They just watched.

«I'm nervous,» whispered Griffin.

«They're just scholars,» said Arthur. «Students. We're dragons. It'll be fine.»

«This place feels wrong,» Griffin continued to fret anyway.

"Do not be afraid," ordered Brand. "Nothing has happened. Yet."

Despite the peace presently being kept, I still had my eye on the people in the windows as we passed in between the buildings, moving towards the largest hall where I was hoping their provost might reside. The deathly silence of the night was only broken by our claws on the stone walkway that rose out of the mire, and a faint gurgling, slurping sound that was ever-present around us. At first it put me on edge, but soon I realised that this place was covered in snails and slugs, which filled the dark places at the foot of walls, the corners of the walkway, and the bottom of the gas lamps that stood dark in the dying sunlight. They were numerous enough that the sounds of them sliding through slime were audible to us. Why had such a prestigious academy not bothered to clean their campus of nuisances like them?

The hall's main entrance was on the opposite side of the campus gate, facing the lake. It sat beneath a vast balcony that wrapped around the lake side of the second floor, with a few iron instruments of some kind standing tall near the railing and creaking with the breeze. The single lamp post beneath the balcony clicked and flickered to life when we came near, before the wide double doors swung slowly open before us, apparently by themselves. The four of us exchanged wary glances, but apart from Griffin's shudder of trepidation, we didn't balk from entering.

This building was evidently more of a laboratory than the lecture hall I had been expecting. The outer walls were covered in bookshelves, all lined with more tomes than I had seen anywhere else, outdoing even the library at Yorving Castle. Several tables were scattered about without any care for symmetry or meticulousness, which were crowded with chairs that mostly sat empty now. The tools and reagents that laid on them reminded me a little of an alchemist's lab, but not so much that I could actually recognise anything. Intricate knots of metal and adjustable, freestanding lenses were mixed with jars full of strangely-coloured crystals, lumps of what looked like fat or wax, and worms. Though there were candles ensconced on the walls, they were dark, leaving the place to be lit only by an array of jars, vials, and flasks, all containing the same amber-coloured moss-like substance that pulsed with yellow-orange light.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

A staircase led up to a second floor, and silently descending the stairs was the only living soul I could see in the building. He was quite elderly, with a hunched back and slow and careful steps assisted by a cane. He wore a long robe dyed mostly in dark indigo, with yellow and orange trim and a white cravat, as well as a short cape over his shoulders. On his head was a strange piece of headgear I had never seen before, globular in shape and made of some kind of hard material I couldn't quite place. It was perfectly smooth and mostly pitch black, with small points of gold dotted across it and a larger yellow circle on the front above the man's forehead.

"Visitors," he said, his voice a strained wheeze. "It's been some time since Lynnmore has hosted visitors. Unfortunately, that is by choice. State your business, or I'm afraid I will have to ask you to leave."

«We're with the Dragoon Corps,» I hastily explained. «There's been an…issue in Yorving, and we were hoping that your college might be able to help us find some information.» I pulled Florence's letter from my bag. «I'm guessing you're Provost Dulin, so here.»

The man only gave a nod to confirm my guess before taking the letter and unsealing it. It took him a painfully long time to read it despite the note appearing quite short, giving the four of us time to take in the strangeness of the room even more, and to listen to every pop and squirming sound that came from the specimen jars. I wondered what the provost had been doing; this hall clearly didn't have room for his lodgings, but no one else was here, and it was late. Maybe he was up experimenting alone?

"Ah, the House val Lunedor," Provost Dulin eventually said with a long and laboured sigh. "I see. Very well then. Come. We shall talk." He began climbing back up the stairs, with us taking our time following behind him. The second floor he brought us to had fewer objects that looked like tools for experimenting, and more that seemed intended for observation. More lenses and odd telescope-like devices, as well as actual telescopes that were mostly pointed out the windows. A huge orrery hung from the ceiling, with a narrow ladder just outside its radius leading up into a hidden attic.

Dulin kept going onto the balcony, where a simplistic dark wooden rocking chair was waiting for him. I could see now that the instruments I had heard from below were some kind of armillary sphere whose iron rings and joints sounded rusty, and a large circular frame that rested at a break in the railing like a gate leading, only walking through would simply plunge you into the lake below. The concentric circles were clearly adjustable, and were pointed now at a particular spot on the lake's surface.

Dulin rested his cane beside him as he began slowly rocking and the rest of us found clear places to sit. "It is quite a late hour," he observed.

«We wanted to make sure this got done today,» I explained. «The situation is time-sensitive, and this was our earliest opportunity.»

"Do not justify yourself," said Provost Dulin. "We have felt a tremor in the sky. I'd wager your issue has to do with the grotesque happenings on the lake last night?"

«It does,» I said. «It's Vicar Barbosa. Last night, at the equinox ball, he had some creature of his perform a ritual….»

Given the hour, I tried to keep the explanation to only the most important details, mentioning the vicar's takeover, the "submergence", and his promise of a winnowing. Provost Dulin stared ahead the entire time, barely moving a muscle in his sallow face. Were it not for the faint sound of his weak breaths, one could have believed that he died as I was talking to him, until I finished and he finally responded.

"This comes as no surprise," he said. "Barbosa has trapped himself in a cave of his own ego. Long have we given up on persuading him of the importance of the world beyond it. But this action is a line that should never have been crossed." Dulin's voice gained a note of anger, though his expression remained unchanged and blank. "Submergence…to think that such an awesome force should be trifled with by one so ignorant as him…."

«It's horrible,» I agreed. «We're going to stop him. But he has the city on his side and the Templar Guard at his beck and call, and our flight is only nine members. We don't have the—»

"Nine," Provost Dulin suddenly interrupted. "Nine. Nine…." His words droned monotonously.

I stared at him for a second, but he didn't seem to have any more to add to that little outburst. «Um. We need help,» I continued. «We understand that your college is very well-versed in magic, and already has something of a history with the vicar. We were hoping you might be able to at least provide us with some information, possibly an idea of what the vicar might be planning.»

"Knowledge is what you seek," Provost Dulin summarised. "I'm afraid that we have less insight on Barbosa's mind than you hope. Though you are right that we've had our struggles in the past, we take care to avoid him. It is not a fight that Lynnmore College wants."

«So you won't help us take him down?» I asked.

"No," said Dulin

I deflated at that. All this, just to get turned down. And it was our best lead, too. After this, all we would have to turn to would be investigating the Skinners, and that seemed both risky and uncertain to give us anything solid.

"…not directly," Dulin added after giving me suitable time to despair.

«What do you mean by that?» I asked, cautiously hopeful.

"Barbosa would surely have our college destroyed if he saw us reaching to resist his rule," said Provost Dulin. "Yet it is clear that he needed the Pure Serpent to be gone for his plan to succeed. Perhaps he believed the spirit would damage his reputation somehow, or be able to physically resist his will."

«Can you help us find the Pure Serpent!?» Griffin barged in. «We want to help heal it! If we can, I mean. I don't want it to suffer like that.»

Dulin nodded. "The Serpent is Lake Amarclere. It is its grace that stills the surface for us to see the depths of the heavens, and its will that lets us uncover hidden and forgotten memories in the abyss. It is the lifeblood of our college. We must see it healed, for its sake and ours."

«So you know where it is, then?» I said.

"Not at the moment," said Provost Dulin. "We will need your aid to find that out."

«Whatever we can do to help, we're prepared to do,» said Arthur.

Brand stepped back, glancing at the circular metal frame. "This is magic," she said. "You have the use of a hrrt'haâk'."

«That's not a word we know,» I said.

"I would call it a 'glyphic lens'," said Provost Dulin. "It is a form of scrying device, capable of seeing beyond ordinary boundaries when pointed towards a reflective body of water. It is one of our most prized instruments, and one of many reasons why our position on the lakeshore is crucial. However, in the darkest hours of last night shortly after the storm blew through, we came to find that its key is missing. Without it, we are unable to use the lens."

«Ah,» I said. «I think I see where this is going.»

Provost Dulin nodded. "We found footprints that indicated where the thieves took our precious key," he said. "But the path leads deep into the Witchweald, which is dangerous at the best of times. Most of the students here have no combat abilities, but you are knights. If you can recover the key, we would be obliged by debt and duty to locate the Serpent." He heaved a long, disappointed sigh. "Though, I must warn you, healing a wound as grievous as this will not be easy, nor will the cost be light."

«We have a duty, too,» said Arthur, holding himself higher and fanning his wings out slightly. «Costs be damned.»

"You have spirit, young dragon," said Dulin. For once, his expression changed when his mouth twitched upwards towards the tiniest of smiles. "It is good that young ones such as you have brave hearts." He picked up his cane, but only used it to point forwards towards the north edge of campus. "There is an old trail that leads into the Witchweald. Our thieves fled that way. Be vigilant; the forest is forbidden for a reason."

«Thank you, provost,» I said. «We'll have that key back before midnight.»

"Thank you kindly, young knights," Provost Dulin said as we took the short route down, hopping over the rail and gliding to the ground near a second gate in the campus wall. Though I hadn't noticed it on our walk in, the small wooden door sat slightly ajar. I pushed ahead with my wing, revealing a dark, cramped, muddy path surrounded by a thorny thicket on both sides. Large but otherwise plain human footprints made a clear trail ahead.

«He seemed nice,» said Griffin.

«Maybe he did, but everything about this place and that hall felt off,» said Arthur. «I'm not saying we shouldn't help them, but I'm definitely ready to get out of here.»

I snorted, staring at the ominous path ahead. «I doubt the Witchweald will be much better.»

He shrugged. «We're about to find out!» he said, and plunged into the dark forest, with the rest of us right on his tail.

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