Zodiac Academy: The Awakening(52)
We passed by Aqua House on the lake and I eyed the floating island made up of glass pods with interest. There was a symbol above the entrance stopping anyone without the Element of water from entering but that wouldn’t keep us out. The urge to explore the building filled me and I filed it away for a later expedition.
The path drew us on, passing over more bridges with iron railings and moss clinging to the stonework.
At the end of the trail, we found ourselves looking at a waterfall which fell over a tumbling rock face. The path disappeared beneath it and I glanced at Darcy in confusion.
“Is this some kind of mistake?” she muttered, looking at the map on her Atlas again. A flashing star indicated that we were standing right outside our classroom but there was nothing here aside from the waterfall.
“Come along girls, no time to dilly-dally. The rest of your class have already headed in,” a deep voice came from behind us and I turned to find a man striding towards us. Although ‘man’ wasn’t exactly the right word to describe him. He only wore a pair of super small black shorts to cover his junk and every inch of his exposed, muscular body was covered in iridescent blue scales.
He stepped towards us, placing a hand on each of our shoulders as he looked down at us. “I’m Professor Washer,” he said kindly. “Are you worried about the class today?”
“I am a little,” I admitted, immediately wondering why I’d been so forthright with this stranger. The place where his skin met with mine beneath the fabric of my uniform felt warm and oddly comforting and it tingled a little at my admission.
“And how are you girls settling in? I heard the other Heirs have been giving you a bit of a hard time?” he said, concern lacing his voice.
I was so surprised to hear one of the teachers acknowledge the awful behaviour of the other students that I didn’t even know how to respond but Darcy beat me to it anyway.
“They’re horrible,” she admitted, her voice catching a little. “It’s so much to take in, we’ve been ripped out of the life we’ve known and we’re struggling to figure this place out and fit in. And then on top of that to have to deal with the four of them...” Darcy trailed off, looking like she was going to cry and I felt tears spring to my eyes too.
“There, there,” Professor Washer said as he pulled us both into a hug.
It should have felt weird to embrace a teacher who was wearing skin tight, tiny trunks and had scales covering his flesh but it was oddly comforting.
I pressed my cheek to his bare chest as I exhaled deeply, letting go of a whole host of the anguish which had been building up inside me since our arrival.
I could feel a strange tugging sensation in my chest, kind of like I was using my power reserves somehow but that didn’t make any sense.
Darcy squeezed Professor Washer tightly beside me and I smiled at her tear-stained face as she glanced at me.
A bark of laughter pulled me to my senses and Professor Washer released us with a smirk. Max Rigel was looking at us with a highly amused expression on his face and my cheeks flushed with embarrassment as I realised he’d just seen us cuddling our nearly nude teacher. What the hell just got into us? To make matters worse, Darius Acrux sauntered up behind him, his face falling into an amused grin as his gaze turned our way.
“Thanks for that girls,” Professor Washer said, his voice a little mocking. “Anytime you need a shoulder to cry on, you can come my way.”
I frowned in confusion as the sense of safety and warmth from his embrace abandoned me and I suddenly realised that I’d been hugging a half naked stranger in the middle of the path.
“What was that?” I demanded, feeling sure that we’d just fallen prey to something but unsure what.
The Professor only chuckled, parting the waterfall with a wave of magic as he headed beneath it, leaving us alone with Max and Darius.
“You two really don’t know anything about our world, do you?” Darius asked, his disgust at that fact clear. “How can you expect to rule over a people you know nothing about?”
I frowned at Darcy in confusion. All this talk of Heirs and birthrights and claiming power was great but no one had actually asked us what we wanted to do.
“The Professor is a Siren like me,” Max explained in a tone which suggested he was talking to a pair of children. “We draw energy from our hosts by feeding on their emotions. So I wouldn’t go feeling all mushy over him caring about you. He just drained a shit-load of your power while you cried your little eyes out for him.”
“You steal people’s energy by sucking out their pain?” Darcy asked.
I hugged my arms to my chest feeling slightly violated by what had just happened to us.
“Any emotion will do it so long as we’re maintaining physical contact.” He stepped forward suddenly and I tensed as he reached out to grasp Darcy’s arm. She tried to jerk back but he held her firmly. “I quite like the taste of fear,” Max said darkly as my sister’s eyes flickered uncertainly.
“Get off of her,” I demanded but he ignored me, shifting his grip on her so that his hand brushed across her chest for a moment.
“Lust will get the job done too,” he added with a smirk.
“In your dreams,” Darcy snapped, batting his hand away.
The two Heirs started laughing as they turned away from us, heading into the space beneath the waterfall, parting the gush of water with their magic just as Washer had.