Veronica Leylon

She closed her eyes as she felt the wheelchair she sat on move across the pavement. Her spiky silver-black hair bobbed up and down with each jittery impact. Looking up, she saw the short redhead pushing her wheelchair.

It was hot. The constant physical strain on Eleanor started to show as well. Pushing a wheelchair the whole day was exhausting, especially coupled with a humid day. A thin sheen of sweat covered Eleanor’s forehead.

Veronica felt a little complicated seeing Eleanor strain herself. Her girlfriend refused to allow anyone else to be her caretaker. While that brought a slight blush to her face, Veronica did feel shame. Every time Eleanor helped Veronica to the washroom, every time she helped her change...every other time…

She felt ashamed. A part of her certainly liked the attention, though. The way Eleanor fussed over her certainly brought the more unsavory thoughts to her head, like when Elean’s heavy breasts pressed against her back, or the way she smelled faintly of hyacinth and vanilla shampoo. Something at her core tingled. Her paralyzed legs wouldn’t shuffle though, so Veronica would simply sit in her wheelchair, embarrassed.

“Elean,” She said, slightly shifting away from eye contact, “Don’t you have a tutorship to attend to? I appreciate the attention but..” her ears burned red.

Eleanor noticed and smiled, “I took time off. You needed it. I needed it.”

Veronica thought back solemnly at what had happened in the Caverns. She closed her eyes, resting against the wheelchair. “Stay with me?”

They went to Veronica’s dorm, now a private one to accommodate for her injured state.

Eleanor placed a peck on Veronica’s cheek before helping her to her bed. Veronica sat upright, letting Eleanor remove her tights. Lately she preferred to wear tights over the black jeans she’d worn previously.

She beckoned her partner to bed, where they spent the rest of the night in quiet bliss, away from the Caverns, the noise, and the monsters.

Eleanor Deveena

It was early in the morning when Eleanor returned to her room to pick up her school supplies. When she unlocked the door, she noticed an angry Elsie glaring at her in the middle of the kitchen.

She was pacing like a cornered animal earlier; her thumb in her mouth, biting excessively as a bit of blood dripped out.

“Where the hell were you?” Elsie’s voice seeped out like a whisper. The anger and barely-contained rage from it paralyzed Eleanor.

“Uh-um what?” She blinked, not understanding why Elsie was so angry. They were on good terms yesterday. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

“I asked where were you!” Elsie snarled, her hand suddenly wrapped around Eleanor’s wrist. A hue of red mana glowed from her hand, nearly crushing Eleanor’s. “You smell like that silver bitch!”

Eleanor winced in pain. “You're hurting me!”

As if suddenly waking from a stupor, Elsie frantically let go. A bruise was forming on her friend’s skin. “That wasn’t...what did I..I...Eleano-”

Eleanor turned away, slamming the door. Her feet took her as far away from her dorm as fast as possible.

***

It was almost time for her first class. Although she enjoyed spending time quietly with Veronica, the journey to class had a sort of suffocating silence. Veronica shifted uncomfortably in her wheelchair.

“Is there...something on your mind?” Veronica winced. She wasn’t very good at sympathetic talks. Those words of concern came out as awkward and stiff as a boulder. Eleanor saw that Veronica was worried.

Eleanor sighed, “Elsie and I kind of had an argument. She was angry that I didn’t come back to the dorm.”

Veronica raised an eyebrow, “Didn’t you tell her you were going to spend time with me?”

“I did,” She nodded, “Which is the weird part. She was just so angry. And then Elsie…”

“Elsie what?” Veronica noted the weird pause. Eleanor shook her head.

Eleanor shifted her eyes. Somehow, she felt saying more would be bad. A sort of paralyzing fear entered her bones. So instead, she moved the conversation, “I think maybe she was just worried about me? We did go through something terrible.”

Veronica didn’t respond, deep in thought at Eleanor’s actions and words, so the redhead continued, “I just hope she doesn’t get angry enough to call off the help of her father.”

“From what you told me,” Veronica spoke up, “Elsie isn’t the type to do that. As irritating a person as she is, she seems honorable.”

Eleanor thought back to Elsie’s outburst and winced. She didn’t really want to think about it.

As they were settling down in the classroom a few minutes before it started, a male student suddenly barged into the couple’s flirty atmosphere, shoving a love letter in front of Eleanor. He had zero awareness of his surroundings and had the density of a black hole to completely ignore Veronica’s death glare.

“Huh? Ethan, what’s this? I’m sorry but I ha-” Eleanor exclaimed. She was about to explain to him that she had a girlfriend when he

“A-a love letter!” He said, “P-please read it!” With that, the bright-faced Ethan ran out of the classroom, leaving a dumbfounded Eleanor and a seething Veronica staring at his back.

Veronica snatched the letter and burned it to a crisp a torrent of black and silver lightning, not even letting Eleanor peek at its contents. “Damn boy.”

***

Something was off about class that day. Professor Alohi was a very strict teacher and expected students to bring their materials to class every day. Anyone forgetting it would receive zero points for the day. Although she was difficult, Alohi taught a necessary class for the honors students: Advanced Continuum Theory.

However, even though Eleanor forgot all of her materials, Alohi simply smiled and winked at her, telling her she hoped she’d enjoy the class.

Eleanor was, to say the least, very shocked.

Throughout the class, each student would sneak glances at her, as if seeing her for the first time. Eleanor knew she was pretty, but this was a bit too much for her.

This included Elsie, who was previously pissed at her, was now gazing at her starry-eyed. Whatever was going on was freaking the mage out.

The entire class time and throughout her day, students and teachers alike gazed at her with the same love-stricken eyes as before. In fact, with each period, they grew more intense, like an ember growing into a massive flame.

Eleanor quickly moved back into Veronica’s dorm after school had ended, ignoring any previous club meetings she had previously scheduled.

Veronica was in a horrible mood the entire day. She expressed discontent by puffing her cheeks in a cutely angry way. The silver-haired girl disliked the idea of people openly gawking at her girlfriend.

After that classday, Veronica prompted Eleanor to sit on her lap. It was a little cramped on the wheelchair, but the silver-haired girl lovingly wrapped her arms around Eleanor’s waist, feeling that soft stomach hiding beneath those mage robes. This was therapeutic, healing Veronica’s mood quickly, until three hard knocks were heard at the door.

The couple deliberately ignored it when the knocks grew incessant. Louder. As if someone was trying to barge into the door. Eleanor decided to get up and check the door, but not before Veronica reminded her to take a wand with her.

Obliging, Eleanor quickly moved to the front door and opened it cautiously. There, she noticed the boy who gave her the love letter, along with six other people: two boys and four girls, one of which was Elsie. The other two she rarely interacted with and hardly recognized their names.

As she stood there dumbfounded at seeing their eerily happy smiles, a teacher came into view: Professor Alohi. She donned that same creepy smile.

“Did you read it?” Ethan asked. His voice was giddy but Eleanor detected a slight undertone of desperation? Annoyance? She couldn’t tell. Ethan continued, seeing that Eleanor hadn’t responded, “Did you read our love letter?”

Our? “I...uh…” Eleanor tried to sneakily put her hands behind the door, but as she pushed the door to close, Ethan’s foot stepped in.

“Are you shy?” Professor Alohi asked in a tone not unsimilar to Ethan’s. Elsie chuckled, prying the door open as the other two stepped back. That coy smile sent shivers up Eleanor’s spine.

The seven people entered the already cramped room. Veronica wheeled in, shocked and angry. “What is going on? Why are you all ambushing Elean?” Clear vile was felt in her silvery voice, “Professor, you are being extremely unprofessional about this, entering a student dorm this late in the day.”

The professor ignored her like she was thin air and directed her sole attention to Eleanor, delight in her voice. “We realized how beautiful you are, Ms. Deveena,” she sang, her hands worming their way to Eleanor’s shoulders, “Come with us.”

Eleanor took a step back and the others stepped forward. She felt a hand grab hers. Looking on her right, she saw Veronica glaring at the group. Her eyes were glowing bright silver, as if scanning them. What Veronica found made sweat drop.

“Why didn’t I see this sooner?” Veronica whispered. She always had a knock for seeing corruption, whether it stemmed from dark magic or miasma. However, up until she scanned them, she had remained blissfully unaware that something snuck onto the ship itself, like a disease or parasite.

She glanced at Eleanor and gasped. From her heart, wisps of black shot out like strings puppeteering the people in front of them. Something had latched onto her girlfriend and warped the people around her.

Deveena felt Veronica’s hand clench hers. “There’s something that took hold of them, Elean,” she squeezed harder, “And it’s coming from you.”

“What?” The mage girl didn’t understand what Veronica was trying to say, but at the moment, it didn’t matter. They needed to get out of the room and possibly find Professor Leylon. Hopefully he could tell them more about the situation.

Veronica focused the swirling divinity inside her, directing it into the palm of her hand. A glowing silver orb with a deep darkness at its core swirled violently in the air.

“Oh no you don’t!” Elsie screamed, red mana coalescing into solid magic as she jumped up, propelling herself into a spiral, aimed right at Veronica.

Ms. Leylon felt the torrent of violent mana inches away from her face as she raised her hand up, releasing divine might.

The shockwave blew everyone away apart from Eleanor. Seeing them stunned, Eleanor quickly grabbed the handles on Veronica’s wheelchair and bolted out of the room.

Hallway doors were wide open, several people running out to chase the couple. “We need to get out of here!” Veronica screamed, focusing on more divine might. Each one made her feel more and more exhausted.

“The sage!” Eleanor wheezed, “She’ll figure...something out!”