Colony of Ants

Fate sat in the now familiar office of Principal Alessandra, the latter affixing him with a placid stare as Professor Redek recounted Fate's actions.

"Even before he 'became' a Journeyman, it was obvious that he had an aura. How else could he have completed an Imprint as an Apprentice?" Redek spoke passionately, eyes staring straight ahead while he stood ramrod straight. "It's plain to see that he has fooled all of us."

After Redek finished his recanting of the day's events, Alessandra continued to give Fate that withering stare. Despite Fate's confidence that he was innocent in this situation, he couldn't help but squirm in his seat a bit under that glare.

It felt like her gaze was breaking him up into hundreds of tiny pieces, scrutinizing each one for malintent only to toss it aside and move to the next one. Fate felt no Mana wafting out from her; as a matter of fact, he couldn't even feel her aura.

Yet he still felt like this, every inch of his skin itching as that pervasive black gaze wormed its way through every cell he had in search of the truth.

After three consecutive minutes of being stuck under her inspection, Fate started to sweat beside himself. The itching was getting worse, so much so that he could barely sit still. It was as if Alessandra had poured a colony of ants over him, watching as they bit and tore into his skin to see his reaction. Even with such uncomfortable sensations, he refused to move, unknowing if doing so would be taken as an admission of guilt.

To his displeasure, he noticed a flicker of satisfaction in Professor Redek's eye as he watched Alessandra's interrogation. Soon Fate had no room to think of such things as he gritted his teeth, the invisible ants starting to bite.

Throughout it all, Alessandra didn't say a word.

Blood dribbled down Fate's lip as her scrutiny turned to his thoughts. The experience of having one's thoughts stripped apart and tossed aside by a foreign force was infinitely worse than what she did to his body. He lost control of his thoughts entirely, shutting down as Alessandra wormed through the most recent of them.

His thoughts on Pride, his falling out with Samantha… the mark on his back.

She focused on this the moment she found it, latching onto it, and through it, his memories of the event. Like that, he was forced to relive the second worst day in his life, the scar on his back pulsing uncomfortably as it was reminded of that terrible whip.

Fate found that he couldn't move, couldn't think, even his breathing had stopped and his heart had halted as his mind and body both submitted to the superior force that was Alessandra. He couldn't even think about his plight; she wouldn't allow it.

As Alessandra used that memory as a springboard into the rest of his life, Fate would've noticed something intriguing about the whole thing… if he could still think, that is.

What this was is how Alessandra viewed these memories. Fate's memories didn't play anything other than his own thoughts at that time, curiously excluding his five senses. He wasn't reliving the lashing, merely the thoughts of how the leather struck his skin.

He couldn't see Samantha's betrayed look, but he felt the overwhelming guilt inside of him at the time as he realized he drove away his only friend.

Perhaps his memories of his mother were the most agonizing in this regard. His eyes weren't open that hour, shut closed by the tears streaming down his face and crusting his eyelids. He hadn't felt the hard wood under his knees as he knelt next to her bed, only the remorse of losing the only person in the world that cared about him.

Every moment of that experience was found in his emotions, and now he was forced to endure it once more.

Finally, blissfully, Alessandra released him.

He slid out of his chair and fell on the ground, curling up in a ball as tears streamed down his face and blood flowed from his mouth. Crimson soon colored the brown of the wooden floors and Alessandra's desk as he coughed violently, his body working desperately to get oxygen flowing through him again.

Alessandra's face wasn't visible at the angle Fate lay at, but he could hear her voice.

"He's clean," she said, a nearly untraceable strand of guilt audible within her voice as Professor Redek stiffened. "I don't know how he did this, but it's clear that he is unaware of how it happened either."

"But, but the Imprint – !"

"But the crystal ball said he was an Apprentice during admissions. That crystal ball was made by the Empress' personal enchanters, each at the Master Stage like you and me. The only way he could fool them is if he was at the same Stage or higher, and what would someone like that need this Academy for?

"Someone that powerful would easily be able to afford whatever knowledge they think they lack from the Empress' library."

"His aura – !"

"Is a quirk of his Facet. With such an unknown Facet, we should be prepared for anything. Honestly, if it weren't for the way the crystal ball works, we wouldn't even know its name. I checked the library; there's not a single recorded instance of this Facet in the entirety of Ziobrun's history."

Professor Redek looked like he wanted to protest, but he sighed and shook his head, his posture slacking as he turned from battle-hardened warrior to tired old man. "I'll trust your judgment, ma'am."

"Why do you care so much anyway, Terry?"

"Truthfully, ma'am? I think I just miss my Inquisitor days. Bringing those who wish to abuse Her Majesty's mercy and grace was the greatest feeling I've ever felt, and perhaps I just wanted to feel young and useful again."

"If you weren't useful, I wouldn't have hired you, Terry," Alessandra said gently. "And I think you do far more good here, raising the next generation, than you ever did as an Inquisitor."

"Thank you, Alessandra." He looked at Fate, still curled up and sucking as much air into his lungs before forcefully exhaling. "I should probably take him to the nurse's office."

"Yes, please," Alessandra said as she pulled out a crystal ball, intending to forewarn the nurse. "And be sure to apologize for what you've put him through. I'll do the same the next time I see him."

Professor Redek nodded, losing all traces of contempt in his eyes as he flipped Fate over his shoulder, striding out of the room. Alessandra watched him go, her eyes lingering on Fate with a complicated light.