Scholar held the grin for a few more minutes before dropping it and grimacing. “Oh man, please tell me that I haven’t turned into some sort of deity over the years for you guys! It was funny the first time, but now it’s just old!”
The trio’s eyes widened in panic as they scrambled to their feet. “N-no!” Iron Will protested. “I-it’s not like that!”
“Yeah!” Gilda added. “It’s just a sign of respect! Come on, it’s not like we’re dweebs or anything!”
“Trixie agrees!” The unicorn added. “Considering how you needed help breaking out, then it is highly unlikely that you are that powerful!”
The Rune Keeper hummed and cupped his chin. “I dunno, I’m still not convinced... what say you, Chrissy? Are they on the up and up?”
The queen didn’t respond. She just stood there, staring at him silently.
Scholar’s smile dropped. “Uh, Chrysalis? This is the part where you help me tease these guys and tell me not to call you Chrissy. Are you alright?”
Chrysalis didn’t respond. She merely began to sway on her hooves.
“Chrysalis?”
Her only response was to tilt to her side and collapse.
“CHRYSALIS!” Scholar cried in panic as he dashed to her side. He dropped to his knees and gently cradled her head. “Nononono, come on Chrysalis, don’t do this to me. Not here, not now, not after so long!” He whipped his head up and glared at the trio. “Hey, you claim to be Alumni? Time for a final exam to prove it! I need something to engrave with, about a ton of flesh, preferably fresh...and something to eat, I haven’t had a proper meal in at least two millennia and I’m hemorrhaging energy to stay conscious.”
The trio were petrified by the sudden requests. Scholar clapped his hands, trying to bring them to their senses. “Today, people! And before you try and say something along the lines of her almost killing you, it’s safe to say that she wasn’t in what I’d call her right mind. NOW MOVE!” The last word was punctuated with a load of magic that sent Iron Will and Trixie scrambling into the nearby forest while Gilda quickly knelt down next to him.
“My gauntlets have lightning generators in them, it’s what I carve with. What do you need?” She demanded.
“Uh, alright alright, let’s see... do you have anything to write with?” Scholar held his hand out.
The griffon quickly dropped her tablet into the waiting palm. Scholar blinked in surprise and looked it over. “Oh, fancy! Things have progressed well since I was away! Now then...” He tapped the blank face, activating the runes, and quickly rearranged the glyphs displayed until they formed a Rune Array. He turned it around and showed it to her. “I need you to carve this on a ten-to-one scale in the rock, a flat surface!”
Gilda quickly scanned it before raising her eyebrows. “A transmutation circle? Alright, that explains the flesh, but what about that series in the medial border?”
Scholar smiled appreciatively. “Smart girl. Those ones are for an arcane pulse. The harmony clogging the air is choking Chrysalis, keeping her from magically breathing. With this, I ought to be able to ward her against it and let her finally get back to full strength. It’s the only reason she’s like this.” He smiled down at the unconscious changeling.
“After all,” he said softly. “We’ve been through worse, haven’t we Chrysalis? Remember that iron quill pack in Shadowridge Cliffs? I took one through the gut and you lost the same leg you went and broke, but you still crushed the last one in a rockslide. Afterwards we laughed and laughed while Serpense berated us for making him waste so much venom healing us. Remember that?” Scholar’s voice was choked with tears as he held his old friend in his arms.
A talon on his shoulder made him look up. Gilda was staring at him solemnly. “She’ll live,” She whispered, “I know you’re not a god, but you are the best. If anyone can save her, it’s you.”
Scholar was silent for a moment before thrusting the tablet into her claws. “Engrave it. Now.” He whispered.
Gilda nodded and hurried over to a flat shelf of rock, activating her gauntlets and setting into carving it up.
Scholar brushed Chrysalis’s face quietly. “Hang in there, bug girl, hang in there.”
-Ten Minutes Later-
Trixie galloped back up to the entrance of Tartarus, a mass of leaves, roots and berries floating behind her. She ran past where Gilda was working, stopping next to Scholar and Chrysalis. She floated the pile to lay next to him. “Trixie knows that this doesn’t seem edible-”
“Mandragora root, athelas, cattails, and a few others. All edible, all nutritious,” Scholar took a handful of plants and shoved them in his mouth. He grimaced as he chewed and swallowed. “They all taste like ass. But at least I can focus more on keeping her alive.”
Trixie was quiet as she watched Chrysalis’ body. Finally...
“Can you do it?” She whispered. Scholar cocked an eyebrow at her. She met his eyes with her own, filled with sadness. “Will we finally be free?” Her voice wavered slightly.
Scholar’s eyes softened. He raised a hand and rested it on her head. “I don’t know,” He whispered. “I don’t know, but I’m damn well going to try. And if we lose...” He smiled calmly. “Then we go down the way we were meant to: with a bang big enough to swallow Celestia whole.”
Trixie smiled sadly and nodded in agreement.
Suddenly, there was a large amount of crashing from the woods. In a flash, Scholar had an arm up with several rings of runes swirling viciously around it. Trixie jerked back in shock. His expression had changed from relaxed to stone cold in moments.
Luckily, his aggression was unwarranted. It was only Iron Will. The minotaur wasn’t alone. Behind him, he was dragging-
“The hell is that!?” Scholar asked in shock.
Gilda glanced over her shoulder and grunted. “A manticore. Yeah, we know, we read the old records. Evolution has all but fucked them over, and the harmony in the air hasn’t helped a bit, but it’s all we got,” She slashed her claw through the stone a final time. “By the way, I’m done.”
The light in Scholar’s lenses twitched like an eyelid as he stared at the large corpse. “That’s supposed to be a manticore...for the love of- the tail doesn’t even look right!”
Iron Will panted heavily as he hauled it over to the engraved Array. “Maybe,” he huffed. “But it’s ferocity hasn’t been lost over the years, Iron Will can testify to that.”
Scholar was silent for a second before bringing his hand up and rubbing his face tiredly. “Damn it, Celestia, what have you done?” He whispered. He breathed heavily and shook his head. “This is wrong, this is all so wrong.”
The sound of breathing drew his eyes downwards. Scholar stared silently at Chrysalis’s mutilated head for a moment. He lightly ran his hand through her mane.
His gaze shifted. Gone was the despair and sorrow. All that was left was steel. “But I’m going to make things right.” He snapped his eyes to Trixie. “Help me move her.”
Trixie nodded and lit her horn up. Chrysalis was engulfed in the aura and lifted from Scholar’s lap and deposited in the Array, right next to the manticore.
Scholar stood up and walked over to the Array. He examined the carved circle for a second, eyes flitting over the glyphs and symbols before finally nodding. “Quality work.”
Gilda chuckled and rubbed the back of her head. “Thanks. So, you gonna heal her?”
Scholar cracked his knuckles decisively. “Without a doubt.” He knelt down next to the array and rubbed his hands in preparation, his runes floating down to interact with the ones in the stone. “Alright, I’ll convert the manticore flesh to chitin and ichor, which I’ll then direct to replace everything that’s missing, unless it’s supposed to be missing of course. At the same time, I’ll be casting a ward on her so that any and all harmony is repelled from her so that she can absorb magic from the air cleanly.” He glanced over the shoulder. “The ward will extend to the rest of you as well.”
The trio’s jaws dropped. “W-what?” Trixie stuttered.
“You’re serious?” Gilda demanded.
Scholar stood up and turned around to face them. He tilted his head so that all could be seen in his hood were his glasses. “That depends. Are you? Once I cast this ward, it will be permanent, feeding passively off your lifeforce, just enough to remain active. You’ll be more powerful than you have ever been in your entire lives. But in return, you’ll have decided your fate. So I ask you: are you serious about this? Are you willing to give your lives entirely to the Academia Arcana? To devote yourself to the propagation and protection of knowledge, in all it’s forms? Are you willing to pledge yourselves to Concordia, to stand for the unity, liberty and equality of all sentient beings, and to wage war against all threats to these rights? Are you willing to stand by me until Death himself comes to collect, and even then?”
The trio glanced between each other. Finally...
They kneeled once more, heads bowed and hands, hooves and claws on their amulets, which were shining brighter than ever. They then spoke as one.
“For the Academia, we offer our talents. For Concordia, we offer our souls. We pledge ourselves until the final star fades and the last light dies.”
Scholar was silent for a moment before the light in his eyes dimmed. He was smiling kindly, benevolently. “Thank you,” He said softly. “For all that you’ve done, and for all that you will do. Thank you.”
He turned around and spread his arms. “Let’s get this party started,” A multitude of runes flew off of him, encircling the array of stone both on the ground and parallel in the air. “First transmutation in millennia,” he mused idly. “Let’s do it with gusto and tradition.”
He clapped his hands together decisively and then slapped his palms against the stone.
The array light up like a spotlight, magic flowing out of every carved nook and cranny. Lightning began to dance and spark, engulfing the two bodies entirely. The rune circles in the air began to spin, faster and faster and faster, blurring into rings of light and energy. Then, the rings contracted into dots of light hovering above the Array. The light and noise died down. All became silent and still...
All at once, the runes exploded outwards, a wave of pure, unadulterated energy sweeping over the surroundings.
Once more, all was silent.
Scholar was panting, hands on his knees as he tried to regain his breath. He smiled as he observed the results of his work. About half the manticore corpse was missing, and in return, Chrysalis had been restored once anew, her chitin repaired and ichor replenished entirely. She was breathing evenly.
“Well,” He chuckled happily. “I’d say that worked perfectly! Not bad for an old-timer, huh guys?” No response. “Uh, guys?” He turned around. “Everything alright back there?”
The trio was...dumbstruck. They weren’t panting, or gasping. Just...staring into the air, breathing a bit heavily.
“Guys?”
“Holy...shit...” Gilda breathed.
“Th-this is...” Trixie said quietly.
“I-Iron Will can’t...” The minotaur stammered.
Scholar smiled indulgently. “First taste of fresh, magic-filled air not what you were expecting?”
Trixie shook her head slowly. “N-not even a bit.”
Iron Will clenched and unclenched his fists, staring at them in disbelief. “T-this feeling, it’s...”
Gilda grinned as lightning began to flow over her. “This. Is. AWESOME!” She cried, electricity blasting off of her and high into the air.
“Trixie agrees entirely!” The unicorn concurred. Light flowed out of her horn and body, whipping around her in a frenzy. “So free, so exhilarating! Trixie can feel the energy flowing into her!”
Iron Will laughed exuberantly.“Iron Will has never felt so alive! So...powerful!”
He stomped his hoof into the ground. The result was the earth around him being thoroughly rocked with tremors.
Scholar chuckled indulgently. “Good to hear it and just you wait! This is just the tip of the iceberg. You three are going to be a lot stronger if I have anything to say about it. For now though,” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Let’s wake the beloved queen up, hmm?”
Trixie blinked, surprised at being broken out of her magic-induced daze. “Huh? Uh, right, right. She’s repaired, right? Why isn’t she awake?”
“Ah, well, that’s the thing,” Scholar stepped over the border of the Array and knelt by Chrysalis. “Her body is good, no doubt about that, but her mind is still in a stupor. For her to wake up,” he gently placed his hand under her head and lifted it up. “Her system is going to need a shock.”
Slowly, gently, he leaned, close, till he and Chrysalis were separated by mere inches. Then...
SLAP!
He struck her straight across her face.
Chrysalis’s eyes snapped open. They darted around for a second before focusing on Scholar’s face.
He grinned gently at her. “I think I’ll ask again: did ya miss me?”
SMACK!
“GAH!”
Her response was to slam her hoof into his face.
Scholar reeled back, clutching his nose. “OUCH! By noze! I thig you broge by noze!”
“I damn well hope I did you arrogant ass!” Chrysalis snarled, scrambling to her hooves. “All this time, all these years, and the first thing you do when you get out is pretend to still be imprisoned!”
THWACK!
“OW!”
“Say some stupid line!”
SMACK!
“ACK!”
“And then slap me awake!?”
SLAP!
“YEOWCH! What did you expect me to do!? Kiss you!?”
“YES!” Chrysalis reared her hoof back again.
Scholar screwed his eyes, ready for another blow...and was surprised when he felt a weight collide with his chest.
He looked down and stared as Chrysalis clung to his person, shaking slightly as she sobbed into his robes. “I missed you so much...” She whispered.
Scholar’s eyes softened. He brought his arms around and hugged her, lightly brushing her mane. “There there,” He mumbled, “It’s alright, it’s alright. I’m fine, you’re fine, everything’s fine.”
The trio was silent as they watched the two old friends re-unite after so long.
-Five Minutes Later-
It took about five minutes for Chrysalis to calm down enough to finally be coherent.
The group was sitting around a fire, waiting as the remnants of the manticore were cooked.
“Sure as hell hope that the taste hasn’t changed.” Scholar muttered as he worked on the spit. Finally, he sat back down again and gazed around at the group. “Alright then! There’s a lot that needs to be said! Where do we start?”
“How about your little disappearing act from Tartarus?” Chrysalis asked. She was a lot better than she had been, sitting regally, not even a trace of her previous bad health.
“Yeah, she’s right!” Gilda exclaimed. “I saw the runes! Right before everything got wiped, you went back into Tartarus! I thought that the royal bitch re-did the seals on the gate, or heck, caught you on the way out!”
Scholar chuckled cheekily. “Now see, that’s the thing: she did!”
Apparently dropped jaws were in style.
“Wh-how!?” Gilda demanded.
Chrysalis let a sly grin play across her muzzle. “You ran circles around her, didn’t you?”
Scholar gasped and whipped a hand to his mouth. “Madam! I am offended by these slanderous accusations!” He smirked deviously at her. “I would never be caught dead doing anything less than a complicated dance routine.”
“Oh, Trixie has to hear this!” the unicorn squealed.
Scholar chuckled again. “Alright, alright, settle down. Now, here’s what happened...”
-Ten Minutes before Luna Exits Tartarus-
Scholar hissed in pain as light shined through the gates of Tartarus as they opened for the first time in millennia. “Sunnova- so this is what they mean when they say a sight for sore eyes.”
He walked out of the crack in the doors, gazing around nostalgically. “Still though, fifty minutes. I gotta say, I impressed even myself!” he turned around and gazed up at the doors to his prison appreciatively. “Especially considering the quality of this place. So many wards...” He pointed out a section of the gates with his finger. “Like that one! Triple Phoenixian Plasma Seal. Not bad...oh, and combined with that Frost Giant’s Breath Matrix...nasty. Impressive, but nasty.”
He glanced to the side. “At a glance, I’d say it was your work, eh Luna?”
The dark Alicorn stared at her old foe. “How could thou tell?”
“It’s in your nature.” Scholar said as he turned around to face her. “Celestia is adept at the whole ‘wrath of god’ thing, and Cadance tries to act sweet and caring while silently slipping a blade between your ribs, but you? Ah, you’re vindictive! You always made sure that people suffered for crossing you, you were a mistress of vengeance.” His eyes and tone lost their vigor, switching to ice. “I never thought I’d see the day you unjustly turned it on me.”
“Hmph.” Luna snorted. “We remember that thou did not resist thine arrest.”
“Of course not,” Scholar said. “How could I? Doing so would have meant having to injure innocent soldiers that you had convinced of my ‘guilt’. Thank you, not my cup of tea.”
“It was a necessary measure,” Luna said haughtily. “Anything less and escape would have been foals-play for you.”
Scholar chuckled and shook his head. “Ha, foals-play instead of child’s play. You’ve made your own little horse-themed vocabulary. Hilarious. Next you’ll tell me you’re calling the world Equus instead of Mundus.”
Luna didn’t respond, merely staring at him.
Scholar’s laughter abruptly cut off. He stared her dead in the eye, his glasses glowing with hellfire. “This is where you interrupt me and tell me that I’m being ridiculous.” If his voice was ice before, not it withheld hell’s fury.
The lunar princess remained unflinching. “‘Tis our world, we shall name it as we see fit.”
“And by ours, I assume you’re not talking about you and your sister but the rest of the equines.”
“We made this world safe for our kind. There is no fault in our actions.”
Luna and Scholar stared each other down, neither giving ground.
Finally... “I’m walking out of here,” Scholar said calmly, “And I’m going to burn your precious little world down and reduce it to ashes.”
Luna’s eyes and horn lit up. “Over our dead body.”
Scholar chuckled morosely. “Luna, Luna, Luna. What on Mundus makes you think you can make me stay?” he spread his arms out wide, runes lifting off his robe and swirling around him, “I’ve been busy! I control every inch of this hole!”
Luna smirked at him. “For all the good that it does you. Does thou believe us to be fools? At it’s core, Tartarus was designed to hold but a single prisoner: you. Any attempts to turn it against us shall fail most spectacularly.”
Scholar sighed and shook his head. “Ah Luna. You truly haven’t changed. So focused on the big picture that the details completely elude you. You always miss the most crucial points of all.”
Luna frowned. ‘What could he possibly-?”
“WOOF!”
Luna’s train of thought was derailed by several metrics tons of fur, fangs and fury tackling her from behind.
When she was finally able to re-focus her eyes, she was staring into the snarling jaws of three very angry dog heads. She tried to access her magic to blast the rancid mutt off of her, but realized with panic that she couldn’t even begin to manipulate her inner energy. She struggled for a moment beneath Cerberus’s paws before finally sighing in resignation and letting her head hit the stone floor. “Damnation...” She muttered.
Suddenly, the right head stopped growling and instead began panting and whining happily. Scholar cooed as he scratched behind it’s ears. “There you go, good boy, good boy. Good hellhound, best friend!” He smirked down at Luna. “See, it’s better to have the guard dog in charge of your nemesis like you instead of resent you for lining his collars with mind-control runes.”
Luna snorted derisively and turned her head away from him. “So what shalt thou do now?” She inquired. “Kill us?”
Scholar narrowed his eyes at her viciously. “As much as I’d love to gut you and use your intestines as book-lining, I can’t. Your sister saw to that when she warded both herself and you with the mother of all dead man’s switches.”
Luna chuckled morosely. “Our sister might have made an error in placing thine pet as a guard, but her plan to harness the sun and the moon to our wills was quite ingenious.”
“It was madness.” Scholar stated solemnly.
Luna raised an eyebrow at him. “We art alive, are we not?”
Scholar shook his head in disgust. “Enough of this. Now then, here’s the plan: I’m going to wipe your mind of all of this, walk out of here, assess my position, and then, as I said, burn everything to the ground.”
Luna’s glare became hostile. “Thou art free to try, but though we have had little reason to utilize them over the years, our mental shields art as strong as mythril. Weakened as thou art, thou shall not be able to intrude upon the sanctity of our psyche.”
“Maybe,” Scholar said. “But you forget the problem with most mental shields...”
He leaned in until their faces were separated by less than a foot. “Mental shields become weakened.” He leaned in closer, his voice growing softer, more tender, “If the defender is feeling,” Closer still, “Very strong,”
Less than a foot separated the two. “Emotions.” He breathed.
They stared at each other for a second, before finally...
Luna spit in his face.
Scholar groaned and stood up, wiping the saliva off his glasses.
“Save thyself the effort, mongrel,” Luna snarled. “We were once colleagues, nothing more. The only one who ever felt such emotions towards you was your pet mag-GRK!”
Luna was cut off by Scholar’s hand clamping over her muzzle.
Over the course of their discussion, Scholar’s emotions had run the gamut from frigid to barely restraining unholy rage.
At this moment, the Rune Keeper had reached a brand new level of quiet fury. He did not say a word, his face did not show his anger.
His clothes said it all.
Where before the runes had flowed like water, now they clashed and span and roared, a torrent of sharp, harsh letters that swirled around him in an aura of pure wrath. And if his glasses had shown hellfire before, they now reflected the eyes of the devil himself.
“Luna,” He intoned quietly, his voice promising bloodshed. “I believe your memory is faulty. Let me remind you: I am the person who reduced the bandit fortress on Switchblade Mountain to rubble and stuck every rogue and villain in that place on pikes, by myself, because one of their flunkies had the gall to try to seduce Cadance and ended up making her cry. I am the guy who would destroy a city to devastate any fool unlucky enough to willingly harm those I consider to be friends. Now, I’d like you to remember something else: my skills. My knowledge, my powers, my mind. My capabilities. I want you to remember, so that you realize that the fact that I can’t kill you right now? At this moment, it’s not a blessing,” He pressed his forehead to hers, forcing her to stare into his eyes.
“It’s a curse.”
Luna was shivering in fear, staring into his unyielding eyes. She waited, dreading the punishment for her transgressions.
Finally...
Scholar released her snout and stood up, stepping back from her prone body.
Luna blinked in surprise for a moment before smirking victoriously. “HA! Thou hast grown soft over the course of thine imprisonment. Thou hast become a cow-!”
It was at that moment that Cerberus chose to lick her.
Luna’s mind froze, trying to process what had just happened.
When her vision was engulfed by Scholar’s glowing eyes, she realized her mistake.
‘Oh buck u-!’
And then everything went blank.
-o-
Luna blinked, trying to clear the haze from her mind. ‘W-what were we doing?’
A loud snore drew her attention. She turned and sighed in exasperation as she saw Cerberus snoring. “Lazy mutt,” she muttered as she trotted past him. “This entire endeavor is most assuredly the fault of thine negligence.”
“Now let us see...” She lit her horn up and began examining the gates. She swore almost immediately. “Damnation! We cannot believe this! So many vandalisations! And the original wards have not even been properly maintained! Urgh, We shall be having words with Tia on this matter. But for now...”
Her horn lit up like a supernova. Her eyes became twin stars. Power shone out of her entire being, illuminating the cave. Light, energy at it’s purest. Had any other mortal creature been present, they would have most assuredly been incinerated.
When the light finally died down, the gates of Tartarus looked like they had been white-washed. Runes and inscriptions stood out clearly against the stone, and any and all additions had been burned away. Tartarus had been restored to it’s former glory.
And through it all, Cerberus had continued to slumber.
Luna glared at the hound for a second before shaking her head dismissively. “Indolent mongrel. When we return to Canterlot, we shall discuss with Tia the option of replacing you with a particularly half-witted dragon.”
With those parting words, she casually trotted out of the cave, intent on returning to Canterlot before the reception began.
A few minutes after Luna had left, Cerberus’s eyes snapped open, glaring at where she had left. Then, the middle head opened his mouth...
SPLAT!
And spat out a very wet and sticky Scholar.
“EURGH!” He cried, standing up and shaking his body, trying to dislodge the saliva. “Grooooss! I’m covered in hellhound slobber! I swear, Luna, you’re not only going to pay for that insult, you’re going to pay for my dry-cleaning!”
Cerberus’s heads whined pitifully.
Scholar wheeled around and glared at them. “Oh, I’m so sorry I taste dusty! But it just so happens I haven’t had the time to go to the damn spa lately! Or anywhere for that matter! Be grateful I rigged your collars so that Luna didn’t realize anything was wrong on your end!” He stopped ranting for a second, closed his eyes, and steadied his breathing. “Alright, alright. Settle down Scholar, you managed to dodge Luna, you’re safe, now clean yourself up.” Scholar spread his arms out, concentrated for a second, then brought his hands together. The resulting wave of magic blasted all of the slimy liquid right off of him.
The Rune Keeper examined himself triumphantly. “Good as new!”
SLURP!
Then Cerberus licked him from head to toe.
Scholar was paralyzed for a minute before glaring flatly at the hound. “Seriously?”
Cerberus’s only response was to pant and wag his tail.
Scholar only retained his glare for a minute before sighing and smiling. “I can’t stay mad at you! C’mere!” He began scratching Cerberus’s heads, much to the dog’s pleasure. “Who’s a good boy? Who’s a good boy?”
“WOOF!”
Scholar smiled for a second before becoming serious and stepping back. Cerberus watched him silently. “Alright boy, here’s what I need you to do. I want you to stay here and keep up appearances, in case the Alicorns come calling. Don’t attack them, just let them think that everything is ship-shape. When it’s safe I’ll send for you, but till then...”
Cerberus nodded his heads and pointed towards the exit with his paw.
Scholar smiled again. “Smart dog. Until then.” And with that, he turned around and walked out of the cave.
Cerberus laid down on the floor, a doggy smile on his lips as he went back to sleep.
Scholar kept a sharp eye out as he moved through the tunnel. “Alright, there are sure to be traps, but seeing as this is the way out, they can’t be too tough.”
Rounding the corner, he was forced to stop and stare at the sight before him.
“Well well well,” He mused. “Non-euclidean architecture. My old nemesis... we meet again!”
“ROOOOOOOAR!”
“Very hungry non-euclidean architecture!”
-Present-
“In the end, my escape involved three carnivorous staircases, a pack of roaming doorknobs, two rolling boulders of death, a pop quiz, and a dead mouse named Mr. Squeakers.”
Scholar’s colleagues stared at him in disbelief.
“In fact!” He exclaimed, “I think I still have him on me! Let me just get...him...” He trailed off as he dug through his robes. He quickly patted himself down before falling silent.
“Correction,” He finally stated. “Three carnivorous staircases, a pack of roaming doorknobs, two rolling boulders of death, a pop quiz, and an un-dead mouse named Mr. Squeakers.”
The group was...dumbstruck.
Finally...
“So basically an uneventful escape?” Chrysalis asked casually.
“Basically, yeah.”
Gilda felt her eye twitch. “You’re insane.” She stated.
Scholar nodded. “Maybe, maybe, but you’re the ones who willingly pledged your lives to me.”
The trio were silent for a second before sighing despondently.
“He’s right.”
“Good point.”
“Damn it, we did not think this through.”
Scholar smirked at them. “That’s what they all say. So!” He clapped his hands. “Now it’s your turns! Introduce yourselves, names and motivations, the lot of you!”
The three blinked in surprise. “Wait,” Trixie asked. “Names Trixie can accept, but what do you mean motivations?”
Scholar’s mood suddenly flipped to serious. He stared the trio dead in the eyes one after another. “You willingly joined a war against who I am assuming to be the three most powerful beings currently conscious at this time and the nation that they have no doubt built over the course of the past two millennia. None of you appear to be idiots, so you no doubt each have a damn good reason for doing so. Tell me, friends...”
His glasses glinted in the firelight.
“How has the world wronged you?”
To Be Continued...