A Normal Wednesday

~°°~

"Ugh, ew." Lethe's nose wrinkled, disgusted as she listened to the very audible noises of Eris vomiting the golden liquid.

Eris lost their memories after that stunt they pulled. Lethe and Boreas had to wait for the next Wednesday to return to the Mirror Room and help them regain memories.

"It's quite a hassle if one of us lose our memories again," grunted Lethe as she pulled out a light glyph on her pockets and peered out of the current mirror they were on. No one had followed them.

Eris was sobbing hysterically in a corner. "I can't believe it—!"

"There, there. Let it all out." The pale boy said, taking out a bottle of water and a handkerchief from his bag. He even brought another bag for the 'puking golden liquid hour' for Eris.

"Here, have some water," said Boreas gently, helping Eris on their fourth existential crisis of the day.

"Demons!"

Lethe mused. "Speaking of that. I wonder why on Wednesday—specifically Wednesday—the demons would stop watching us?"

"I don't know." Boreas sighed, standing up. "The video message projector thingy said so and..." He shook his head. "We'll probably find out eventually. For now, let's just use it as an advantage."

"Is their existential crisis done?" Lethe pointed at Eris. Their silhouette stood on a corner, dark, beady eyes still staring at the 'Eris Heindell was here :)' muttering that it wasn't their handwriting, that it couldn't be and something about memories that Lethe couldn't hear.

Eris replied, "I'm fine. Just processing."

"Seriously, what were you thinking?" Boreas scolded. "What did you put in the girl's pockets, anyways?"

Eris pushed the grumbling glasses up their nose. "I think... I remember sneaking into Lethe's bag and I took the experiment we made in the library."

Boreas imploded with rage, blue eyes bulging. "You used the faulty experiment you guys made, a few weeks ago, that almost burned the whole freaking library? And, burned me?"

Eris visibly shrank on the face of the boy's furious glare. Lethe held back a snicker.

"Oh, laugh, you overgrown rat," Boreas spat, a vein popping on his pale forehead. "You were not the one who got his ass and back burned. Let's see you laugh when you got dragged to detention because of two maniac's 'experiment thingy'—"

Lethe rolled her eyes. He made it sound as if they made a nuclear weapon. The 'experiment thingy'—or so whatever Boreas detestably titled it—was just a small clip and a necklace. Eris kept losing their favorite pens and so, they kept borrowing Lethe's pens and kept losing them as well. So, they made a sort of tracker. Put the clip on the pen, and if you activated the necklace, it would drag you into it. It worked. Worked too well, quite frankly.

But necklaces dragging you at six hundred kilometers per hour(usual overestimation of Boreas Poitraz), floating candles with undying flames, and tall bookshelves that stood like dominos—and fell as easily as dominos—didn't exactly mix.

"Look," argued Eris, holding their hands up. "I know. Using it caused disaster. But, we need to know where they sent our classmates."

Boreas ground his teeth, begrudgingly seeing their point. "Well, okay.."

"It was still stupid, though," Lethe said, bluntly. "You shouldn't have done that. That was dangerous."

"Are you saying we should just leave them alone?"

Briefly, blonde hair flashed on Lethe's muddy eyes. Her stomach plummeted as she stoically replied, "Yes."

She continued, "They're not here now and they're not gonna be here tomorrow nor would they be fucking telling us that all of this is a big, crappy prank. They don't know anything, either. And if they do, their memories are probably erased. They can't help; they're not vital." You are. So much.

Boreas laughed nervously. "That's rather—"

"So," Eris loudly intervened, a glare setting down in their eyes as they stood up. "If they're not useful to us, we should just ditch them?"

"We're not in the position to save someone, y'know." Lethe pushed her shaking hands farther down her pockets. "We can't just risk shit just because of your hero complex. We don't have a plan, we don't know anything and—" We can't lose you. That was what she wanted to say. But, Lethe was Lethe and explicitly telling someone that you care for them was a loser in her dictionary. What went out instead was; "—Eris, you acted fucking stupid. You do realize we can't save everyone right?"

Eris' ears turned pink. "We still have to try."

"Fucking hell." Lethe laughed and Boreas winced. "Do you even realize what having a demon farm means? It fucking means that the outside world is demon populated, you dumbass," she sneered, a scowl in her face. "Not even mentioning the being hunted issue, there are like sixty students, not even counting the Unpassed and the new students coming soon. How on earth are we gonna find sufficient food, water, clothes and other basic living shit while also being hunted? Come on. Fucking tell me."

Boreas went between them, sensing the tension simmering in the air. "Now, now... Let's not fight, okay?" He turned to Eris. "Eris, just don't do something quite reckless again. We all," he swerved his head to Lethe meaningfully who sulked, "will soon talk about what to do." Boreas looked back to Eris. "Did you bring the necklace?"

"I—yes, I did," Eris revealed the necklace hidden beneath their uniform.

"Okay, be careful not to activate it. Lethe." He swerved his head to the brunette. "Just calm down. We're not gonna get anywhere by fighting."

Lethe huffed and crossed her arms, brown eyes staring at the ground. "Fine. Whatever." When Boreas continued to pin her with a stare, she grumbled out an apology. "I'm sorry."

Boreas looked at Eris expectantly.

Eris toyed with the ends of their braids, looking solely at the ground as they gritted out, "I'm sorry as well."

"Anyways!" Boreas clamped his hands together with a forced grin on his thin face, intending to immediately change the subject. "We should try and think of something, considering we only have a day in a week to do so without surveillance. Any ideas?"

"The ghost person we saw," Eris said, a hand on their chin. "Should we try and find him? He might know something.."

"He's not a ghost," Boreas corrected firmly. "But that can work," He hummed, thoughtfully as he caressed his temple. "But we don't know him." His lips curled. "Can we trust him? Not to mention, do any of you even remember what mirror we went through?"

"You don't remember, Boreas?" Lethe asked.

He shook his head.

Eris chuckled, lightly. "Maybe, we should just explore the mirrors, instead? It's not much, but maybe, we can find something. Plus, I'm done puking my stomach out."

~°°~

The mirrors didn't give them any answers. Quite frankly, it gave more questions. Each room could had question marks written all over them while simultaneously spitting mathematical equations in a different language, and Lethe Walth would understand that much easier.

Lethe felt like she was back at Potion class; trying to understand which worked, which ingredients to use and how. Creating was exhilarating—that she knew. Even when it failed, there was this thrill—a sort of pride, mixed with a mind-numbingly urge to grin like a fucking maniac. It was oddly soothing yet also strangely chaotic.

It's good. It's distracting and there's a thrum of excitement in her veins. She could breath and no longer had to think. To say the rooms were weird would be an understatement. It was like the books she had read, going on mysterious adventures and unraveling mysterious.

"I wonder what the Dome was originally made for.." Eris wondered aloud.

Two mirrors contained rooms filled with dusty prison cells of rust and empty bunk beds. The strange boy with numbers on his skin didn't appear in any of them. One room had no gravity in it. The next one tried to crush them.

Her light glyph died out. She looked at Boreas expectantly and held out a palm.

After a sigh and a smug yet also exhausted 'These mother truckers can't live two days without me' smirk (somehow, Boreas was still that expressive even with the whole 'distorted face' and 'weird voice' thingy), two light glyphs were placed in her outstretched hand.

One room was empty. Well, it looked like it was until it tried to eat Boreas. The next one... They didn't even enter that one because the moment Eris peeked their head through the mirror, a loud growl emitted in the darkness and they almost lost their head.

The next rooms were... Normal.

White tiles encountered their boots while white walls met their eyes. A light bulb sat atop in the centre. The Dome had electricity, huh? Lethe turned the switch on. It flickered, seemingly trying to force itself to light up, akin to a dead man's torch amid a snowstorm.

Lethe shut it off. She activated the light glyph and watched the paper turn blue and circular before cautiously stepped forward. There was a crinkle of papers beneath her feet.

In the middle of the room, a circular table surrounded by chairs stood. Erratic notes and clattered papers filled with unknown languages were thrown all over the place. Boreas took some papers and shoved them in his bag. He wanted to try and 'decode' them.

"Nerd."

Boreas flipped her off. "Idiot."

"Arguing." Eris rolled their eyes.

"...That's not an insult, Eris."

"I wasn't insulting," Eris said affronted.

They left that place, right after. There was something off with that place. An eerie shadow sort of followed it. In hindsight, that place should be better than literal, fucking prison cells. Maybe it was the deja vu inducing, ice-cold, white tiles and the windowless, suffocating walls.

The next mirror was made of wood. Lethe jumped in tentatively. The world shifted—brief motion sickness that she had begun to get used to—and she was there, falling against a cracked marble floor.

One small, arched window made of marble sat on the side of the room. Lethe could imagine them spilling sunlight, painting this dim place with yellow. It could not now—the window was filled with cement. Pale blue from her lone light glyph stained it, instead.

This room was older; older than anything they had seen so far. There were cracks on its sculpted walls and the door in the side, seams of wisteria and ivy filled the gaps and curled around almost everywhere: the made bed near a desk with half-finished books, the faded pictures nailed on the walls, the wheelchair on the dust-filled carpet and the discarded guitar (It's called guitar right? Fuck, she should have listened on History class) that leaned on its arm.

There was a hollow space on the wheelchair as if someone sat in there recently.

Lethe licked her lips as she deftly strummed the strings. The dust that sat on it for ages, jumped in the air as she did. It creaked shrilly; ringing in a way that the brunette knew sounded beautiful on the rightful hands—on hers, it sounded wrong. Lethe felt like an intruder.

Lethe heard two 'thump' behind her; Eris and Boreas.

Eris was immediately drawn to the guitar as well and began strumming it with childish glee, while Boreas approached the desk and took one of the books in it.

Lethe peeked on the door in the side, curiosity now at its pinnacle. It was then she noticed small, horizontal lines written on its hinges. It gradually reached higher and higher; Lethe imagined a kid rushing in here with a pen in their hand, trying to stand straight and tall as they tried to measure their height.

There were dates scrawled near the lines. The lines stopped midway through the door. October 21, 2867.

Lethe twisted the door handle: it was another bedroom. Siblings, she concluded. The room here was similar yet also not; a bed, a desk bearing scars and doodles of flowers with a lone, green notebook, flowerpots of withered blossoms hung around the room, an enormous closet that stood on the corner, and scattered pens, littered papers adorned the floor.

Lethe grabbed the notebook. Expectedly, she couldn't read it at all. It looked like... A diary..?

There were also similar lines on this side of the door, albeit this one ended farther and taller. Lethe pictured a smug, leering older sibling boasting their height on the shorter one.

Two pairs of shuffled feet followed behind.

"No, Eris, you can't bring the guitar with us—"

"How dare you interfere with my true love, Boreas—"

"You said your true love was a bottle of juice when we were kids."

"I can have two true loves."

"That's not how—Lethe, help—" Boreas pleaded, panting, "they're not letting it go! Eris, you're well aware that we can't. It's not gonna help with the investigation." Boreas finally pried the guitar out of their hands, huffing.

Eris pouted.

"Man, I was hoping for more bloodshed." Lethe sighed, kicking a pencil dejectedly. Her thigh scorched again and okay, okay she regretted doing that—no more kicking things.

Boreas' whipped his head to her with a frown. "Thanks for the non-existent assistance. Did you find something in here, atleast?"

Lethe tossed the notebook, hiding her limp. "Just that. Not many books in here to add to your nerd empire. Plus, I think it's a diary."

Boreas quirked an eyebrow as he shove the notebook down his bag. "Why'd you say so?"

"Just the way it was formatted." Lethe shrugged. Her thigh finally cooled.

A slight smirk tugged his distorted lips. "And how'd you know how a diary's formatted?" He tutted, in mock shock. "Lethe Walth secretly write diaries in her spare time!?"

Lethe stomped his foot and held no regrets.

"There are so many flowers in here and drawings of it too," Eris murmured as they looked around, eyes gleaming in marvel. "The one in there," they pointed at one drawing, "those are aconites. The ones beside it are roses and dandelions... I think." They turned to another page. "Those are lilies. Next to it, are chrysanthemums..."

They paused.

Lethe whistled. "Eris is a flower whizz. Who'd have thought? Don't be poetic and sappy on me about flower languages because I will hit you."

Eris stuck out their tongue. "Lethe writes diaries. Who'd have thought?"

Oh, so they were listening. "Oh, whoops, look at that, there's a closet," Lethe said, monotonously. "Who knows, it might have a secret world on it that would answer all our questions."

She pulled it open.

A hollowed skeleton stuttered out of it and fell directly on Lethe's hands. Blood pounding in her ears, she pushed it off her, watched it fall limply on the floor. The closet creaked. Deafening silence.

Lethe took out a shaky breath, clasped her hands together and hoped it was enough to warm her frosty fingers. "Well, that makes the confirmed body count into two." She laughed nervously, fighting the urge to run. "You should be thankful, though, Eris. Atleast, you didn't stay at the closet that long."

Eris cocked their head slowly as if they couldn't hear her. Eyes still glued into the dead body. Lethe's words registered soon enough. Shaky, sunken chuckles. They sounded wrong and out of tune—a shrill song played in the old strings of the guitar. Death's fingers strummed them this time and the beat was Lethe's heart.

"We should go," Boreas said, quietly.

Lethe allowed her nails to dig her palm. She poised her face. They had expected this, or atleast, they should have.

Lethe and Boreas jumped down to the mirror, feet back to the dim pathways and endless mirrors. Eris staggered limply behind them. Boreas drew the mirror they had just gone through, marked it, and wrote something on his notepad. Lethe knew they would be observations, remarks and avid descriptions of everything. How annoyingly reliable.

~°°~

Boreas shoved the books onto the floor and carefully scanned every inch of them.

"Boreas... Are those really necessary? We can't even understand them." Lethe sat down nearby, crossed-legged, eyes slanted and bored. Eris shuffled beside her, hugging their knees as they blinked drowsily. Lethe nudged them, awake. Usually, they would be still full of energy but to be fair, it was probably past midnight now.

"No, I can't. Yet," Boreas said. "But aren't some of the characters familiar?"

Lethe leaned closer and peeked at one of the pages. "Nope."

Boreas clicked his tongue and pointed at one of the letters urgently. "It looks Vlyrenian. Glyph emblems! But older and used as a real language." His eyes shone brightly. "Isn't that interesting?"

"Boring," Lethe sing-sang. "We should just go into another mirror.."

"No. Not really," Eris said, following behind, despite looking like a minute away from dropping to the floor. "Plus, I can't even read Vlyrenian," both chorused.

"Of course you can't." He rolled his eyes. "This is why you guys are failing," Boreas huffed, disapprovingly. "You guys can't even do mid-level glyphs or chants. You have to have me do it."

"Boreas." Lethe pinched the bridge of her nose, tired. "We're here to understand why our Professor's head exploded and why there are corpses under our fucking school. Is discussing our schoolwork and impending procrastination necessary? Plus, glyphs are useless... We have our Peculiars, anyways."

Boreas scowled, scornfully. "And so do other people. What if there's an Anti-Peculiar Peculiar? Or atleast, what if there's a situation where you can't use your Peculiar? Like, right now? What if the people we're fighting are immune to our Peculiars?" His voice shook and so did his hands. "What would happen to you, then?"

"I—"

His fingers pierced tightly the book he held, tearing a small part of the page. His eyes grew fierce in thinly veiled anger. "We're inexperienced Peculiar owners—our magic is unreliable, the place we fudging live in is unreliable; has corpses in every corner. Do you not understand the gravity of our situation?"

Make a joke. Make something—lighten up the mood for—

"Okay.." Lethe said, weakly as she shuffled her feet.

Boreas paused with gritted teeth. "Anyways," he said in a forced calm, although he still didn't look at either of them. "You guys need a backup of some sorts. I'll try to understand this language."

Eris grabbed the green notebook, enthusiastically. "Uh, I'll help! Teach me Vlyrenian, once we're out of here." They opened a page. Eris paused, eyebrows furrowing in deep thought as they showed the pages to the others. "Hey, don't you guys think this handwriting is familiar?"

Humming, Lethe peered at it for a bit before shrugging. "Eh, not really."

"Huh." Eris frowned, even more so. They closed the notebook. "I'll have this—" They quickly looked at Boreas. "—if that's not a problem."

"It's fine. I have so many books to decode anyways," said Boreas. "Speaking of learning Vlyrenian... I was thinking we should have a code as well."

Lethe tilted her head. "That would be very helpful, especially since we are being monitored. I know some morse code."

"Yeah." Boreas bit his lip. "I know. But, I meant.." He secretly glanced at Eris and looked at Lethe meaningfully.

"Ah."

"Hey, I saw that." Eris pouted. "I can learn morse code. I'm not dumb."

"You aren't, Eris," Boreas began, patiently. "It's just that you— "

"Forget shit in a drop of a hat," Lethe continued bluntly. "Not to mention, you—"

Boreas chimed in as he nodded in fervent agreement, "Keep missing your stuff. Forgetting your pens, your notebook—"

"Have I mentioned, that you also sometimes forget your bloody bedroom and you also mistook my uniform to be yours," Lethe piped. "Then, you somehow wore 'em both backwards. I don't doubt you can learn morse code. It's just... How long?"

Eris chewed their bottom lip. "They say it's much easier to remember stuff when you make it yourself. Does it have to be morse code? Isn't it much better to make our own secret language?"

"That's.." Boreas squinted. "That's actually a good idea. Why did I not think of that? I'll get my notebook. Let's make a sort of code stuff then we go back and rest."

"Already?" Lethe perked her head up, tone disapproving. "I feel like we should explore the mirrors more. We haven't exactly found anything."

"Well... you aren't wrong but..." The boy glanced at the half-asleep Eris. "They look tired, though. Also, I saw you limping earlier."

"I'm okay," she lied. "Just one more mirror. All the stuff we've seen aren't that important," Lethe replied, stubbornly. "Well... if Eris is fine with it..."

Eris looked up at the sound of their name, seemingly awakened from their daydreaming. Their eyes still looked rather unfocused. "Yeah, I'm fine," they said with a grin that didn't matched their eyes. "I just keep randomly hearing..." Their mumble ended up unfinished.

"Okay, fine—"

Eris stood sluggishly. Eyes briefly golden. Then, fell forward to the floor with a thud.

Boreas rushed down to her, worriedly. "Eris—"

Lethe began to help her up. The brunette flinched. Eris' skin burned hot. "What the fuck?"

Eris looked up to them suddenly, eyes widening in horror as they reached for something in their chest. "The necklace," they began, weakly. "The button—when I fell—"

The necklace coiled on their neck began to levitate. Lethe felt goosebumps down her skin. Fuck.

~°°~