Power of Yore 1: Spell Breaker

Chapter 11

Enith had never known smiling required so much attention. So much so that when the girl she was walking with addressed her, Enith startled. The girl raised a brow in question.

"Is everything alright?" she asked.

Enith hadn't noticed the girl's blonde hair, or her very pale skin. Too pale to be from around here. And she was tall, and shapely, and soft. All signs of an upbringing vastly different from Enith's own.

"Yeah, I'm alright. It's just, this place is so...big. Its kind of distracting."

The girl's expression turned pitying, and even though Enith vastly preferred that to being loathed, it wasn't by a whole lot.

"So you came from some kind of small scale village?" the girl asked, not polite, but not patronizing either.

She did look curious though, like she was looking at some kind of exotic beast. Enith didn't feel comfortable sharing her life story with the girl just yet. She kept her amicable expression as she explained.

"No, it's just the way the buildings in the middle are crowded and how there are so many people."

"Hmm," the other girl frowned, not exactly understanding what she was talking about. "I guess that tracks. You can't be from a poor family, otherwise how did your parents manage to bribe Lady Alexandria into bringing you here?"

"Excuse me!" Enith's expression darkened faster than an exhausted torch.

"Oh, that's what Tim Braille's been saying, over the past few days. Everyone thought he was going to be her apprentice, and suddenly here you are, and you're hiding in her house all these days. It was either that or you were some kind of personal servant she picked up. You know, to satisfy her base desires."

Enith lost her scowl, instead giving the girl a questioning frown. The girl only pointed between her thighs, and then Enith felt all the blood drain from her face. The thought of it didn't disgust her though, and that scared her.

"Yeah, thought so," the girl said with a small chuckle. "I'm Sarah by the way, your new room mate."

She held out her hand. Enith shook it, debating the need to correct the girl's assumptions about her whole family situation.

"I'm Enith. By the way, why are those my only two options? Can't I just be insanely gifted or whatever?"

The girl shrugged. "You don't have a familiar."

It wasn't a question, just stone hard fact. Only the rich, or the extremely fortunate could get familiars. But sometimes even money wasn't enough to offset some natural element as yet unknown. Some people just were that unlucky.

"I don't get it though. Why didn't your parents just set you on the warrior path if they were so determined to have a mana user? Why did they have to choose this path?"

Enith didn't know what to say. Her parents had not sent her here, she'd sent herself. Although she didn't want this complete stranger knowing the circumstances of her coming here, she was conflicted about spouting lies and all that. Sarah must have noticed her discomfort.

"It's alright if you don't want to say. I get it. Some parents, especially those of us wealthy people expect some things from us, perhaps as recompense for all they've given us so far. You'll—"

"How do you know I have no familiar?" Enith steered the conversation toward calmer waters.

"Oh, it's all any of the instructors will talk about. Lady Alexandria is kind of famous, you know, for being so young and successful."

Enith had to stifle her sigh. She had to plaster an even heavier smile this time, and pretend to be a likeable, rich girl.

The route they took didn't lead to the collection of white buildings Enith knew to be the school complex. Sarah explained, in that wordy way of hers that they were only going to the dorm. She wasn't in the same year as Enith, so she didn't know her class schedule at all.