Chapter 4: Lord of the Flies
825 Words
Mole's POV
Gauche.
If she were given the chance to sum up the gaudy, dark academia nightmare before her, it would be gauche.
Over the top.
Excessive.
Exorbitant.
Maybe she couldn't stop at just one.
Shifters must have some nerve. To be from a class of people actively losing what little hold they had left in the world, it just seemed like tempting fate.
And they were.
These fools had served up the most tempting buffet of delicacies available to witches everywhere by simply collecting their strongest, wealthiest, most foolish people in one place.
"If you fail us, we will burn you at the stake," her mother threatened, though there was a vicious laugh behind it.
The creeping little mole laughed back.
"Failure isn't an option for me. I will continue your mission, my grandmother's mission, with pride. Don't you worry over me," the mole crooned back.
"I never worry over you, you wicked little thing." Her mother pressed her bright red lips to the crown of her head.
Her mother offered her a pat on the shoulder and then vanished, back to the coven the mole was sure.
The mole stepped quietly out of the deep shadows of the orchard and into the sunlight. Sweltering, blinding sunlight.
Disgusting.
The mole did allow herself to admit she couldn't wait to meet with her grandfather. He had been so thoroughly engrossed in his role here that she had never met the man herself. It was his bloodline that leant the few drops of shifting power that the mole possessed. It was the only thing that actually made this mission possible.
Shifters had held the power in this world for far too long.
The mole's own grandmother had been the original mole. She had schemed and seduced her way into the school, desperate to learn the secrets of shifters. What she had learned was that they relied heavily on a foolish system.
They believed their goddess appointed the powerful among them mates, their idiotic romanticism encouraging them to believe that there might truly be one person cut from the veil, just for them. That those unions could make powerful pups that would ensure their chokehold on the world around them never slipped.
Her grandmother had cast the first spell to muddy the system. Her mother had improved upon it, ensuring the idea of Lunas, powerful female shifters fatefully mated to their alphas, become nothing more than fairytales.
This mole had her own goal. If she could figure out how to do it, she planned to wipe the idea of alphas off the face of this earth. While the shifters struggled to figure out how their system operated without innate leadership, witches could finally take over.
For lifetimes, generations, ages, witches had been treated as second class citizens. That would be no more. Witches only grew stronger as these foolish shifters lost their grip on society, inch by inch.
The mole took her time picking carefully through the orchard. She selected a delicious, brilliant red apple from one of the trees. It ripened to perfection under her touch, aging in seconds and withering to black in the blink of an eye.
The orchard was at the edge of campus, her dorm building just past the edge of the orchard. She didn't need to find her name on a wall of other fools. She would stay in the same room her mother had lived in, the same one her grandmother had lived in.
The deep green of the halls was some comfort to her. It wasn't the rich black of her family home, but it was dim enough to keep her comfortable. The aptly named Orchard Hall had been designed to house those with evening kinds of gifts, those that could move darkness and touch stars and envelope themselves in shadow.
This mole didn't need those kinds of powers. No, she had her own abilities that would allow her to navigate this monument to the shifters' hubris.
The room itself was coated in black. Black silk sheets on a warm black bed. Rich black paintings of night skies with only pinpricks of starlight in the shape of the constellations decorated the wall. A golden lamp sat upon the desk, the only light source in the entire room.
This room didn't have the earthy reek of shifters. They always smelled like dirt and moss and decaying wood. Here, there was none of that. It was a crisp, clean smell, like moving water, like warm, freshly spilled blood.
Settling into her dorm room, she lifted the mattress and pulled out a silver calling dish. The mole pulled a knife from her pocket, slicing the blade across her palm and dribbling a few drops of black blood into the dish.
A cackle came from the bubbling blood.
"Oh, my vilest, I can't wait to see what you're capable of," the ancient voice gurgled.
"Grandmother, I can't wait to make you so proud."
- Writer
