Valencia

    I stood staring at her retreating figure for a while. I couldn’t imagine she would be so heartless and cruel.

    28%

    She hated me from the start for some reason, I was sure about that but why make poor Sarah suffer. Wasn’t looking after the Novices and tending to their wellbeing a responsibility of the Seniors?

    But then who could Iin to?

    Killian

    He had no authority over here and the King didn’t meddle with the temple’s affairs as well. I imagined the King would want me to start conjuring rabbits out of hats the next time he saw me because Killian had shown that mark on my corbone to the entire court.

    I had not interacted with anybody except him and the temple after that incident because my schedule was jam packed.

    I was barely getting time to eat and sleep. And now this woman wanted me to sit here all night and work on doing this clerical job.

    I sighed and walked back towards the desk to carefully set aside the scrolls Sarah had alreadypleted and counted the

    number.

    Then I did the same with the remaining ones and sorted them into a different pile, keeping a track of their numbers as well.

    And I was impressed by Sarah’s resilience. She hadpleted almost 500 of these and I had not even reached a hundred.

    But the remaining pile that sat in front of me was around a thousand or so.

    1 cracked my knuckles and sat down to get to work.

    This was just like the Bureau, I told myself. I would sit at the desk, leaning on the files andpleting all the assignments. while burning the midnight oil even on weekends.

    I could do this again.

    I bjust /bhad to treat this experience like the one just in Bureau, and time would fly.

    After taking ia /ideep breath. I pulled the quill and ink closer and got to work. The papers had to be dried and the ends of the scrolls properly attached to keep them from rolling over while the ink was still fresh or it would get smudged and my efforts would be wasted

    iSo /ieven if I wanted to do it fast. I had to deliberately slow down at times and ensure the ink had driedpletely before moving onto the next one

    Thankfully, barah had ced almost a dozen candles all around the wall crevices, and only gut up asionally to light one up when one ratinguished

    Minutes turned to hours, and I kept copying stuff religiously I wasn’t aware of box much time had passes or how many bhours /bit was still ich before dawni

    There was no clock around here, and now I wish there was I was also secretly praying to whatever god was listening to look after Sarah and not let her get even more sick

    So I went into full focus mode and didn’t look up or move for the next few hours. I had not really used a quill or a pen to write in a while, and most of my work had been typing and editing files on aputer.

    10:56 Tue, 26 Aug

    28%

    So my hands were starting to hurt after around fifty scrolls. My fingers ached, and I recalled that was not because of just the writing but also because I had tried to break my fingers earlier while trying to hit the stupid dummy on the grounds.

    Sometimeter while I was still hunched over the scrolls, I heard footsteps approaching and looked up to see Nina looking

    at me.

    I didn’t show any resentment or anger because I knew that would only make her gloat. But I was in no mood to fake it and show I excited I was to be surrounded by nothing except scrolls while I should be getting some much needed sleep.

    So, I simply returned my attention back to work.

    “Good to see that you are finally taking the temple and its work seriously,” Nina said in a standoffish manner.

    I didn’t want to argue, so I only blurted out.

    “Trying to”

    Because no reply would have pissed her off.

    “How many have youpleted so far?” She asked, and I looked at the pile on my right topare with the ones on the left.

    “A few hundred maybe”

    Nina didn’t say a word, but she wasn’t scowling, so I asked.

    “Is Sarah okay, Senior Priestess Nina?”

    She picked up a scroll from the pile of ones I hadpleted and read through it while muttering something to herself.

    I was sure she was going to say something bad about it or nitpick my handwriting. But she simply tossed it away into the pile.

    I had carefully ced them one on top of the other, but she just threw one, and it all went toppling down like a house of cards.

    I looked at the scrolls that had fallen all around and tried not to let anger get to me again. Maybe, she was here just to see if she could torture me again.

    But I wasn’t going to give her that satisfaction. So, I simply returned my attention back to the work as if nothing had happened.

    When she didn’t answer my question about Sarah, I asked instead.

    “How long before it is dawn?”

    Nina answered. “A few hours. You can still make it, I believe,”

    The words might be helpful, but her tone definitely sounded like she wanted me to fail.

    “Thank you. Could you let me know the exact time left?”

    I tried my luck with her.

    Surprisingly, she answered with a sweet smile that was a bit too sweet.

    “Three hours and forty minutes, to be exact.”

    Oh no!

    10:56 Tue, 26 Aug DE

    I looked back at the pending pile and realized I was doomed for failure. There were still five hundred plus left.

    “Good luck,” The old woman said and disappeared once again.

    Shit.

    I was going to fail, but I didn’t want the number to be too high. So I wrote like my life depended on it.

    28%

    And my handwriting might have turned a little illegible towards the end, but I couldn’t afford to spend time on calligraphy right now.

    I kept praying for Sarah’s well being all while finishing one scroll after another as if I was starved and hadn’t seen one in

    years.

    My fingers kept going numb every now and then while my eyes were falling shut too many times for me to count. The candles were also flickering and despite the dozen or so fat and thick candles Sarah had ced all around, I could feel the light dimming.

    I didn’t want to run around looking for candles when every minute was precious, so I raced against time to finish as much as I could while there was still light.

    I wished I could write with both hands because my right hand was beginning to ache a lot, and I feared I would not be able to move it even the slightest for a while.

    “Wake up, Novice Valencia,” I heard a sharp voice and saw Nina standing in front of me.

    Shit.

    I had no idea when I had fallen asleep.

    I hastily straightened and noticed that the inkpot had spilled all over the scrolls and some of them had been destroyed beyond measure.

    “Noooo!!” I wailed and hastily got up to salvage whatever I could.

    While I was panicking and trying to save them, Nina muttered.

    “That is a pity. The God of Elorin saw this as an apt punishment for your earlier negligence.”

    She said, and I felt a pang of guilt, as if I had really done something horrible to deserve it.

    I was not much of a crier, but I could feel my exhaustion turning to misery as tears stung the back of my eyes.

    I didn’t want her to see me broken, so I only sucked it up and asked “Can I leave?”

    She seemed to finally pity me and replied.

    “Yes. I will have someone else clean and save whatever can be saved. Good thing I also had another Novice perform the task

    Wait what?

    Somebody had alreadypleted this stupid task and still she made me and Sarah suffer. For what?

    I gave a final look at thepleted pile of mine, half of which was drowned in ink, and only cursed myself and my miserable fate on my way out, vowing that if I ever awakened even a lick of magic, I would give this woman a taste of her own medicine.