Chapter Forty-One - Unwanted

Just a short one~ Don't know if I'll have time to finish 42 before the night ends, so you get this one!

Also... cover!

By Jegsuu! We have 2 more covers on their way, so we'll have to pick one at the end! Maybe a paid-member vote?

***

“P-P-P-Pepper?” Eleanor asked. She was fiddling her hands together and felt rather awful. It was like she was too warm from the inside. She was desperately worried that her armpits were leaking through the deep green coat that she wore. 

It was her only nice coat, so really, if it got any more stains, she’d be stuck without it, and it could grow surprisingly cold in the evenings around the academy.

At the moment, heat wasn’t something she had to worry too much about, though the glare Pepper sent her way did make her feel even more warm.

The young woman lowered the single sheet of paper she was holding onto. “Yes?” she asked. 

They were in their dormitory’s lowest floor, which happened to have a lounge. There were several old chairs, likely stolen or donated by the students of prior years, a few shelves with second and third-hand copies of textbooks, and a small foyer that currently housed a humble magical fire. 

For all that everything in the room was past new, it was still quite homey. The old rug and the many cushions and the large windows looking out of the dorm helped to make it feel like a safe space, and thus far it had been just that. No one had ever bothered Eleanor in here... well, not too much.

“What do you want, Eleanor?” Pepper asked. “You’re staring again. I truly wonder how you managed to make it this far.”

“Ooo,” Eleanor said. “Um, sorry. I had a question.”

“That much was quite obvious. I may have an answer if you ever deign to ask that question of yours.”

“R-right, so-so-sorry.”

How she had come to the academy, and even been allowed in, was a complicated and old story. It was mostly nepotism, really. She wasn’t ungifted. She had passed all of the entrance exams through her own abilities and grit and hard work. But being able to take those in the first place came down to old favours being owed and cashed in.

Friends of friends of her family, calling in small favours, all adding up to her being allowed to attempt to try her way through the Academy.

It meant that, to those in the know, she was an easy target. The favours were burned getting her through the gates. There wouldn’t be any left if she was expelled.

“The question, Eleanor,” Pepper snapped.

“R-right! Um, did you ever have a maid before?” 

The young woman blinked rather sheepishly. “A maid? Why, yes? Who do you take me for? We might share a dormitory, but I’m not from some overly impoverished family, Eleanor. The Dawntreaders are a well-established family of merchant nobles. We may only be a knightly family--my uncle is a baron but my father and his are knights--but we are far from peasants. Why the question?”

“No, no, just... wondering,” Eleanor said.

“Wondering? Ah, does this have anything to do with the rumours?” she waved the page around.

“What rumours?” Eleanor asked.

Really, she was asking because of that prompt the system had brought up a few days prior. From he moment that appeared, she had been expecting to run into a demoness of great power, some beguiling, evil creature that would force her to take her spot as Demon Lady only to rule in her stead, or... something like that.

“Here, see for yourself,” Pepper said. She casually handed the paper over. “The kingdom has been passing these around, apparently all across the Aerie and its territories. Can you believe it, in this day and age?”

Eleanor took the page, then turned it over.

WANTED DEAD

THE FAITHFUL MAID

REWARD: 7,000 GOLD.

“Ooooo,” she started.

“Oh, this again,” Pepper muttered.

Eleanor’s eyes scanned down. There was art of The Faithful Maid. The woman was an elf, with demonic, sharp features, cruel eyes, and somehow the artist had captured her cruelty. She could imagine this thing reaching out and wringing her little neck.

“Oooooo!”

***

Several hundred leagues away, Penny Numbra stared at a similar wanted poster.

“Fuck.”

***