Karn, Karlene and Sven ran to the dormitories to see B. It was paramount to track and check the cyclopes and Akiye. Though the cyclopes was only a first year, Akiye was a third year. If the golem was made by Akiye, it was highly likely, she was the one orcastracting everything since last year.
Ash sat in the chancellor's office, gritting her teeth and grinding her nails on the wooden table. When the chancellor walked in, Ash could only turn away.
"I am as frustrated as you but also baffled. The fairy should not be able to resist answering. Ash, now is not the time to get frustrated. I need your mind to be clear. We might have a bigger problem on our hands than you anticipated."
Ash turned to the chancellor, with a frown. "what do you mean?"
"Fairies are bound contract to the university, to do what is asked of them. If it is a question, they answer, it is a task, they carry it out. They were enslaved as punishment for something they did many years ago. The details of their mischief is not known to us but the board of directors know. I am writing a letter to them now but it will take a while for them to come down here to look into the matter."
Ash was on alert, "what do you need me to do?"
"Call the high priestess and look into the contract for me. We need the old Madame to wake up. Now. None of the seers we have on campus is as fully capable of looking into the future as she is. I suspect the fairies are up to something big."
"Isn't it possible someone could have hypnotised it?"
"Possible. It is also possible, someone's mischief and random actions caused the contract to be broken. Go up. C is in a room to the left of the old Madame's guest room, to the right, is the storage. There are all the files related to the college. Confidential files and books that should not be out in the library. Find the section that relates to the establishment of the university. The fairy contract should be somewhere among that section."
Ash ran out and ran up. The fairy sitting outside, tied to the table, watched her with wide, black iris, as if ready to hypnotize anyone who dare look at it in the eye.
Ash knocked in the security room and asked C, "what did you find?"
"A lot of faulty videos but you were right. This Akiye witch is defiantly suspicious. She might have something to do with the fairy but I don't see anything so far. Nowhere has Akiye had contact with the fairies in the last year. It specially looked like she and the fairies avoided each other. In some places, she is even doing a few menial task that should be handled by the fairies."
Ash remembered the first time she had met Akiye, the woman was carrying a load of things.
"Look into the other two in cross relation to the fairy and the witch." she told him, "I will in the storage room."
And so Ash left to check the file.
The storage room was large. There were books on blood magic, and files on cases old and new, marked by year. The deeper she got, the more dusty the books and files were. Some of the books were on summoning. In fact, the deeper she got, the more books were on summoning and lesser books on blood magic. Finally, at the back wall, she saw a huge stack of files marked with the university's starting year. However, the files were nowhere near as many as the books on ancient language, abilities and blessing ceremony. Ash didn't know what to think of this. These were all common things used in the college. Why had they beed banned before and if the ban was lifted why did these books still exist at the back of the storage?
She had no time for this. Ash dusted the files and started going through them. Files after files, she found over rules and regulations, building, specific rules on races, hiring, and so on. There was a whole pile of them.
Eventually she landed on contract. the contracts were not simple either. There were detailed accounts of how the conversation between the employer and he potential employees went. Some contracts failed to establish while others succeeded. She went though them quickly But found no mention of any contract relative to the fairies. Unsure of what to do, she started looking through the case files of incidents on that year's walls. The chancellor had said that the fairies had been up to something bad and were bound here by contract on punishment. So their contract must have come later than the other contracts.
There were many kinds of files but even as she went through each, she did not find the file on fairies. There was no mention of their incident, or their contract.
This worried her more. If the fairies were bound by contract, their contract had to be in this room.
Ash left the room and checked on C. "Did you find soemthing?"
C nodded. "Fairies have been acting suspicious. Each time, they meet a member of the council, they meet up with each other and talk a little."
"As if they have been passing information among themselves." Ash said. C looked worried. "Ash. This is bad. There is a case file on the island. A big case relative to fairies."
Ash frowned, "a case about them where their punishment was to be bound in contract as an entire race?"
"Yes."
"Does the island has the fairy contract with them?"
"Yes. How did you know that? We use that as a case study among cyclopes."
Ash enetered and took a seat. The screen was frozen on Vance and B standing together outside the meeting room. "We need that file. Is there any way you can get it delivered here?"
"I can but all deliveries are handled by the fairies. It will be trouble if it lands in their hands."
Ash asked, "can you remember the details of the contract? Can you get it online? A mail or something?"
"I already asked someone to send me a scan copy on this system," C tapped the machine beside him. Ash sighed, "how long before it can come?"
"A day. There was a big wave on the castle side of the island the storm above has dissipated but a little."
Ash felt uneasy. "A day should be alright. what else did you find?"
The council movements are always stiff and awkward after the full moon. And there is no recording of anything on the full moon days. It looks like..." C hesitated and Ash filled in for them, "as if they have been hypnotised."
Someone else she knew was hypnotized but before the full moon.
"Open the camera on every level of the guy's dorminotry and run it on double speed."
C did her bidding. Ash found Sven very quickly.
"Follow this guy's feed. Someone hypnotized him. Can you find who? I am suspecting he was hypnotized before and it was layered later, at the full moon."
"Layered?"
"We studied in class that every race needs a different kind of hypnosis. Temperamental and wilder creatures like nixies, werewolf and kelpies need layering to keep and make the hypnosis strong. Those who posess hypnosis themselves, either cannot be hypnotized at all, or they need a deeper and longer exposure to hypnosis to be pulled under its influence."
C shot out of his seat, "how long has the fairy been here for?"
"More than 12 hours."
"Shit." C left the room and looked down the stairs. The fairy's head was turned and it was looking at the chancellor's office, iris still black entirely. Before Ash could walk down, C caught her and pulled her into the old Madame's room.
Ash almost screamed. The high priestess and the warden were already there. The warden pulling the high priestess through the window. "What is going on?"
C said, "the fairy wanted to be caught. She wanted to caught and sent here so that she could hypnotise the chancellor."
The priestess frowned at C. "Who is this. Wait. No. That's no important. We have trouble on our hands. The chancellor sent for me but before I could enter, she found me and said, if I went through there, the fairy was going to hypnotise me. So we flew in through the broken window."
Ash could feel her head about to explode. "what is happening? How did the fairies break from the contract?"
"Either someone spoke something very specific about the fairies breaking from contract but they would have bound the fairies to themselves first. Otherwise, the fairies could have killed that person to hide that their contact had been broken."
Ash sucked in a great breath. "the kelpie."
"The kelpie was killed by a vampire."
"Or made to look like it. There are dentures that other creatures or vampires can use to pierce the skin of other creatures. A goblin last year lost his final assessment project, a pair of golden dentures."
C shook his head, "the killing had to be instant. Stealing the dentures would show pre-planning."
Warden said, "my sight has many limitations. We need to wake her up. She knows better."
The high priestess looked at the warden for a long moment before she turned to Ash. "I was going to bring you here later, but we don't have the time. stand here."
Ash took the position on top of the old Madame's hand. "Now pull out all the darkness in her heart."
Ash closed her eyes and thought of the darkness like a nightmare, like black swirls in her body, in her heart, wrapped around her mind. Slowly and steadily, she began pulling them out. She kept going and going, until it felt easier. She opened her eyes and saw dark smoke seeping out of Old Madame's nose and ears, the corner of her eyes and the tips of her hands and feet.
Ash kept at it until there was no more smoke left to pull. Light began to glow under her skin.
"If I am not wrong, you should be able to do the same to anyone who has been hypnotised to remove their hypnosis. But not now. We don't want to let the fairies know what you can and cannot do. From now on, we will only meet in my office." The high prietess said.
C asked, "why is the old Madame not waking up."
The warden said, "she will take some time. We just need to stall everything until then. I should head into the chancellor's office now. I am suspecting the fairies or whoever is behind them will want to lock me up. You have the window. Have someone stand guard under it and only let those you know, go in."
C said, "I will stand guard. I can also help boost whoever wants to get in."
Ash and C moved to the door, leaving the priest and warden alone. "Wait. Call Vance and have him check everyone for hypnosis before you start looking into fairies again."
Ash frowned but couldn't ask more as the high priestess began to climb out.
C and Ash left the room but C went to the security room again, "give me a moment."
Ash watched as C connected, some wires to other wires and more wires to those wires and extended all the wires into one wire and extended it from one room to another and through the window, left it hanging.
"what is this for?"
"To get a connection while I am guarding outside. You don't mind if I call other cyclopes. I need someone to get my parcel and my laptop too."
Once they began descending the stairs, the fairy looked back. While Ash stared right at it, C opened his phone and began typing on it.
"Done already. Did you find anything?" The chancellor asked. Ash hesitated, "yea. As I said, one of the council member is involved. She is the one who must have released a fairy or two. It sucks through that we cannot get the footage on full moon."
The chancellor nodded sagely, "I understand. Good work the two of you."
C smiled slightly, "thanks," and went back to his phone.
Once they were outside, C asked, "do you really think a council member released the fairy?"
Ash did not respond quickly. "I cannot be sure. I did suspect the Akiye but now I don't know. It could be that the kelpie released the fairies and the fairies hypnotized Akiye who was present in the wrong place at the time or it could be that that Akiye commanded the fairies to move suspicion from her, and planned the killing to move suspicion from her."
As they circle back to the other side of the mansion, C said, "I feel like we are missing something. Only half part of each theory fits. Akiye does look hypnotized right after the incident which means kelpies were released earlier. But kelpie murder was also preplanned. It could be that we are missing something, someone very crucial in the middle of all this."