Chapter 158: Lies and Truths
A fire no bigger than her thumb floats above her palm.
Jonathan looks very proud.
Maeve is the only Apprentice, aside from Maristella Voss, who can actually wield magic and keep the fire stable.
Maeve looks at her pathetically small floating fla.
She cannot help thinking that if Theo were to see this, he would either laugh out loud or die of anger.
Maeve herself is embarrassed.
She tries to hide it and opens her mouth to speak, but nothing cos out. Her embarrassnt is painfully obvious, and her mind refuses to ignore it.
"Maeve?" Jonathan calls.
Maeve lifts her head and looks at him.
Jonathan smiles proudly. "You’ve done well. Your fire is steady. That’s very good."
Maeve can hardly believe her ears, but a mont later, her mind catches up. Her Teacher has always been proud of her progress in wielding magic. And what she has done here is considered a significant success.
She is only the second Apprentice, after Baroness Voss, to successfully summon fire and keep it stable.
To confirm it, Maeve looks at the faces of the Council mbers. She imdiately knows that her Teacher is not lying, and that she is not mistaken.
She almost scoffs.
If you’re already proud of a fire this small, you’d collapse if you saw Arthur’s firestorm.
Maeve facepalms inwardly.
She sighs and says, "As the mbers of the Council can see, this is the maximum size of floating fire I can produce out here. But inside the dungeon, I managed to summon multiple fireballs, each at least as big as my fist."
The Council erupts.
"That is impossible! Multiple?"
"How... how is that possible?"
"Is what you’re saying true, Ms. Collins?"
"You’re not just saying this, are you? Jonathan, is she lying?"
Maeve extinguishes the fire and waits for the Council to settle down.
It takes the Council several minutes to settle down, their gazes fixed on Maeve in disbelief.
"It’s my turn," Margaret Ellis says impatiently.
"You just said multiple fireballs. Is that how you survived the dungeon? Did you clear it?" Her voice carries a note of excitent.
The Council erupts again. The idea of clearing a dungeon using magic is exhilarating. Especially for mbers of the Arcanus Verdant faction, the ones wearing erald green robes, who believe magic should not be accessible to everyone.
"Unfortunately, no," Maeve says, raising her voice slightly to cut through the noise.
The room quiets.
Nathaniel Moore, a mber of the Arcanus faction, stares at Maeve in disbelief.
"No? You didn’t clear the dungeon?" He catches himself, realizing he has spoken out of turn. "I apologize, Thomas, for taking your turn."
Thomas smiles mildly. "It’s all right. I want to hear this as well."
Maeve shakes her head. "Unfortunately, no. I wasn’t strong enough to clear the dungeon. The multiple fireballs, even at the size of my fist, didn’t do much damage to the haelions. Their hide was too thick, and my fire was too weak."
Silence falls.
Disappointnt settles over the Council. So feel it more keenly than others. The Arcanus mbers most of all. They had already imagined how glorious it would be if the dungeon could be cleared by magic alone.
"Then," Thomas speaks. It is his turn now.
"How did the dungeon get cleared? Who did it?"
Maeve takes a deep breath. This is the mont she has been dreading.
Before flying back to Solarys, she t with Julian and Liam. The three of them video called Arthur and Thea. Together, they discussed what Maeve could safely report.
Arthur and Thea had helped her write the report.
She has been dreading this question because she knows it is not the whole truth, and she is deeply afraid that she might slip.
"I am sure the mbers of the Council have read the article published by the Arvion Daily, as well as the follow-up article," Maeve says carefully. "It was a team of Sentinels, led by Arthur Montrose, who cleared the dungeon."
"Arthur Montrose is a first-generation Sentinel. His skills are exceptional. Another mber of the team was Liam Monfort, who is currently one of the strongest Sentinels in existence. They entered the dungeon together to rescue Julian Montrose, Arthur’s younger brother, who had gone missing a few hours earlier."
Maeve speaks slowly, choosing each word with care.
She pauses to take a breath.
The Council waits for her to continue.
"When I first entered the dungeon, I was terrified. I was never trained to enter a dungeon, let alone use my magic to fight haelions."
"When I first encountered the haelions, I shot out fireballs to defend myself, not to kill them. It was only then that I realized I was far too weak. I thought that was it. That my ti had co. That was how I would die."
Maeve’s voice shakes during the last two sentences.
She stops to steady herself.
"Then Julian Montrose saved . He used his own invention, weapons powered by heartstones. Julian is the mind behind every Montrose Corporation product. He’s an inventor."
Her voice softens involuntarily as she speaks about Julian, though she does not realize it herself.
"He shot the haelions that were about to kill
and saved my life."
"He then took
to safety until Arthur and Liam arrived."
Maeve swallows. Relief washes over her.
I’ve finished telling the story. It isn’t wrong, but it isn’t entirely true either.
The Council falls into silence once again.
No one speaks. Several of them exchange glances, uncertain how to proceed. They have already received answers to so of the questions they most wanted addressed, yet the room feels heavier rather than relieved.
This was not the outco they expected.
Maeve remains still in her seat, her hands folded tightly in her lap. She can feel the weight of every gaze in the room, even those projected through holograms. The quiet stretches on long enough to make her pulse thrum in her ears.
Victor Langford looks deep in thought.
Then, after a asured pause, he speaks.
"Apprentice Collins, did you use your magic at all in the presence of any of the n?"
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