The World in Dissonance (Volume 1)

Chapter 3: Thus Liveth Actaeon ~ The hunter became the hunted

Part 1

It was the D-day.

The sun has already risen for quite some time and the two girls christian girls have most likely finished all the necessary preparations since the previous day.

The clock pointed precisely at 8:32 am, Alyss and Sonya were done taking their breakfast and made up their mind to finish once and for all what they started 2 days ago. With their fake identity as Laura and Elena, they would one more time infiltrate Bellemort College but this time, with the goal of setting the necessary fishnets to trap the ones who initiated the witch hunt with their fake ritual. As they have discussed it with their witches collaborators the day before, the idea was to trick the culprit into revealing the truth without them being conscious of their acts. But doing so shouldn’t involve any kind of sorcery, or else the whole point would lose its meaning. The aim was to make them reveal the truth through natural processes, and to record it without them realizing they felt under a trap. And that was precisely why Alyss brought a camera with her.

Because the two girls didn’t bring much in their luggage, since they didn’t come to the village of Lancaster for holidays or tourism, they wore the same outfit as the previous day. The two girls went down to the hotel’s lobby where they would usually find the old man receptionist, but at their own astonishment, the gentleman was missing and a woman in her 35s was standing at his usual post.

“My apologies for disturbing you! May we ask where did the gentleman who received us went?”, politely asked Sonya while addressing her concern to the woman at the reception.

“Oh~ you are talking about our dear Wilhelm? He didn’t feel really good last night, so he is on his day off today.”, replied the receptionist.

“I understand! Actually, we wanted to inform him that today will be the last day we would stay in the Regency Manor, as we will make our leave tomorrow. Please show him our most sincere sympathies as we wish him a quick recovery!”, informed Sonya.

“Your business at Bellemort is done then? Well, you will surely be missed!”

“You can say it’s almost done. And we hope our efforts will be fruitful!”, declared Alyss. “With that being said, we will be on our way!”

Then again, the two girls left the manor as the woman receptionist waved them goodbye. Leaving all doubts and hesitations behind, they advanced towards Bellemort with the conviction of solving the witch trial issue that day without any delay.

Just after setting their feet outside, Alyss was struck by a vision of the future.

In the Bible, Vision could take different forms, but they mostly would show either a glimpse of the past or the future, just like how God revealed his ‘back’ to Moses (and by extension the events of Creation and History as God revealed His Glory) in the book of Exodus 33 and how God revealed the End of Time and the Judgment Day to the Apostle John in the book of Revelation 20.

The vision displayed two girls smiling whimsically, but their face could not be perceived as the upper half of their visages lay shrouded in shadow. The same girls were laughing as they watched two familiar silhouettes being burned on a bonfire, crying and screaming in agony as their skin was melting in the fire of madness.

During the middle age, fire was believed to purify, so burning at the stake was the fate reserved to anyone guilty of practicing witchcraft. That punishment was seen as a way to purify the community from perceived evil and to prevent the witch's soul from reaching the hereafter, ensuring the devil couldn't reclaim them.

That traumatizing scene was happening in the middle of the village where a platform has been built to host the public execution. Not only the two people were burned alive, but the citizens of Carnforth were throwing rocks at them. It was fully a display of human cruelty, serving as a reminder that humans could turn into monsters in order to protect their life or that of their loved ones.

The extension of the vision ended with those images. Christian theology was implying that when God revealed a prophecy, it was either to avoid it, if the prophecy spoke of a bad omen, or to guide his people walking down the path of obedience in order to reach successfully the promise at the end of it. But what was a vision, if no one could interpret it? According to the book of 1 Corinthians 14, The Gift of Foretelling was meant to help build the body of Christ, which in theology emphasized the Church as a symbol of Unity of the believers. But what of it? In the book of Romans 12, it was implied that God gave different gifts to each member of the body, so that it could serve each other and help each other.

If the prophecy was narrated to Alyss, then the interpretation would be told to Sonya, just like how it happened before.

So right after getting those flash of images, Alyss shared with her friend what was shown to her. But before the girl with glasses could give an interpretation under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, they were interrupted by Eldritch who likely was waiting for them for quite a while.

“What’s up Girls? Seems like you’ve seen a ghost or what?”, said the witch boy after witnessing Alyss’s pale face.

“It’s nothing!”, answered the young girl. “We didn’t expect to see you here!”

“Well, since we share the same route, I just thought that I could accompany you two on your way to Bellemort.”

“The date has not been approved yet!”, suddenly highlighted Sonya as she was teasing her friend Alyss.

“Oh~ shut up or I will end you myself!”, retorted Alyss.

They were advancing in the direction of the college while exchanging those words, and Eldritch, who was walking between the two christian girls, suddenly came to stop after hearing those words.

“Don’t fight over me girls, I am fine taking on both of you!”, jokingly declared the warlock with a bit of overconfidence on his face.

The two girls halted their pace, their face no longer visible as if the shadow of darkness had covered it entirely. Eldritch Silverstar was standing 2 steps behind, still carefree. Less did he expect what would come next.

Sonya and Alyss synchronized their movements and punched him respectively on each side of his face, sending the witch boy flying to the ground.

“Who the hell do you think we are?”, shouted both girls in unison.

As the witch boy was beaten by a combo of a double punch, from afar, a silhouette was observing them discreetly.

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A few moments later, the three of them arrived at their destination. And like the day before, the security guard was stationed in front of the gate, next to his booth. It was still the same guard as the previous day, so it was likely that he didn’t get fired despite the menace from the rich kid he chased away for forgetting his ID card.

Time was close to 9:00 am, and so, very few was the number of college students who still didn’t make it to their classes yet. The three of them were most likely the only students left behind, if one could say so.

“Your ID Cards please!”, asked the guard as the three of them stood in front of him in line. No time for chitchat, he applied directly the protocol.

The first one to go this time was Eldritch. The middle-aged guard verified the ID cards the young warlock passed him, then proceeded to compare the identity of the boy with the names in his register.

“The registration number is matching correctly! You may pass Mister Eldritch!”, declared the guard after verifying thoroughly the ID card of the witch boy. “Next in the queue please!”

This time, Sonya staid on standby while Alyss went second. The young girl blessed by The Gift of Prophecy passed her fake ID card to be verified and the guard glared at it for some time.

He checked on the register and compared the name of her fake ID card to those in the records.

“Miss Lola, it seems I can’t find your name in the register here. Can you please stand over there please!”, said the guards as he was pointing to where Alyss should stand. “Next please”

(Lola? Wait a minute, don’t tell me the spell on the fake ID card is starting to fade)

It was Sonya’s turn so she handed to the guard her fake ID card.

“Mmmmmh, it seems it’s the same case for you too, Miss Helena! Please stand next to her till we can confirm your identity!”

Eldritch, who was waiting inside the campus for the two girls, noticed the situation and approached the security guard.

“May I ask what might be the issue?”

“I can’t find a match of their name in the register.”

“It’s weird because yesterday, you checked their ID and there was nothing wrong. May I?”

The security guard handed the fake ID cards to Eldritch and the witch boy verified if the identity created by the illusionary spell was still persistent.

On each card, the spell was starting to fade away, which made the identity created by it unstable.

Lola Bishop,

Helena Steinfield,

Those were the names displayed by the fake ID cards now. Normally, even if the displayed name has changed, the spell was supposed to make the security guard believe he saw the exact match in the register, but the effect of the spell started to decrease. Facing such a situation, there was only one option left and Eldritch knew exactly what it was.

“Let me verify the register as well!”

In a normal situation, the security guard wouldn’t allow any of his requests, but without even understanding it, he allowed the witch boy to verify the ID cards, and now the register as well. It was as if he was enchanted by the warlock’s words.

And so, Eldritch took a pair of glasses from his pocket then put them on to do the verification. He made it look like he was carefully checking through the register. The witch boy then took a tissue from his other pocket and cleaned the glasses with it. He continued his so-called verification before coming to a halt.

“Ah ha~ You can see their name here!”, declared the young boy as he was pointing at specific lines in the register. “Maybe you should clean your glasses too and verify again!”

The security guard was usually wearing glasses, and so the young warlock handed to him the tissue he had used a moment ago. Still not understanding why, the guard took off his glasses and cleaned them with the tissue he just got from the young boy Eldritch.

Then after that, he reverified the register, more specifically he rechecked their name on the specific lines the young boy pointed at.

“My apologies Miss Lola, Miss Helena! It seems I overlooked these lines and failed to correctly notice your name in the register.”, said the security guard as he presented his excuses. “I won’t retain you further. You may take your leave!”

The three of them finally crossed the gate to enter the premises of Bellemort Campus.

“As we thought, the spell imbued upon these fake ID cards are starting to wear off!”, declared Sonya as they were getting close to the main building. “But we didn’t expect it would happen this soon!”

“We definitely have to solve this case today! By the way, what did you do to convince the security about our fake identity this time?”, said Alyss as she was addressing herself to the witch boy Eldritch.

“Well, since the spell was starting to wear off, I had to apply reinforcement magic on it. I am not sure you two would fully understand the details as it’s the domain of a witch, but basically I had to strengthen the spell by using the ‘Placebo effect’ to trick him into believing your fake identities were actually registered in his book.”, explained the witch boy. “In other words, since the security guards expected to find your fake names in the register, I used that belief to increase the spell’s efficacy. A focused intention acts as a blueprint for magic. And so, with my refined spiritual energy and by using the tissue I handed to him as an anchor, I suggested his mind to see what he believed he would!”

“If Dedicatus was present at that time, she would have guessed without a doubt what he did!”, suddenly commented Sonya.

“Well, from what I saw yesterday, that girl knows her stuff but constantly having someone, like her, who knows too much then explains everything spoils all the fun! ‘Mastery requires lots of practice. But the more you practice something, the more boring and routing it becomes.’ There is a charm in the unknown, at least that is how I see it.”

“She wouldn’t agree with that point! Dedicatus is the kind of person to believe in the adage: ‘The more knowledge you gain, the more you realize you don’t know.’ For her, knowledge is as vast as the infinite universe and hers is but a small light in the oceans of stars. ‘The lights in the sky are stars’, after all."

“You are talking like someone who knows her intimately!”, jokingly replied the witch boy.

“There she is! Defending her beloved Human encyclopedia with a fully resolved heart... Nyahaha~”, said Alyss to that Eldritch boy while teasing her friend Sonya before she could even reply.

“Can you please stop implying weird assumptions as if there was anything between me and that degenerate Big Sister of yours before I literally start to beat the s**t out of you?”

“Sonya is in love! Sonya is in love!”, the girl in her 20s was acting like a child, humming those words repeatedly while whistling .

The young maiden named Sonya Neville finally snapped out and started to chase her friend, just like that time when they first arrived in Lancaster village. In order to avoid being caught, Alyss Liddel was trying to get the Girl with glasses tired by running in a circle around Eldritch Silverstar. The witch boy, who was able to read the atmosphere, was playing along with them and prevented the second daughter of the Liddel family from getting the beating of her life. If one was to observe them from afar, it would have seemed as if they were without any doubt very close friends.

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A few seconds after acting childishly, the three of them entered the main building. The corridor was empty, no soul could be seen in an angle of 360 degrees, even the janitors who were taking care of cleaning the property. It was already 9:12 am. They wasted some time because of the complication with the security guard. Classes already started, and so, they would once again go their separate ways till the sun reached its peak. Eldritch would go attend his classes while Alyss and Sonya, who were now known as Lola and Helena, would one more time make their way to and rot in the Library.

‘Better safe than sorry.’

That expression described perfectly every step they have taken so far.

But now that time was racing against them, they couldn’t afford to play it safe anymore. Safety was no longer an option but it didn’t mean they would act carelessly. Whereas they looked like regular girls you could find anywhere, the two of them were blessed by the Grace of God, having respectively been bestowed one of the Nine Gifts of The Spirit. And common sense taught people that gifts can only be used correctly if sharpened on a daily basis. Not using your gift can result in a stagnating state for the said gift. And what would serve as nutrients to nurture the Gifts of The Spirit aside from using them!? The only other answer was through prayer, i.e Communion with God.

‘My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.’, as stated in the book of John 10:27, The Holy Spirit was speaking to Christians, and they would hear his voice. That was why, even if Alyss and Sonya stopped playing it safe, they were never careless. Having the voice of The Holy Spirit guiding them was like a Cheat code that will prevent them from taking the wrong decision while walking down an unsafe path.

If exploring the Scandinavian Mythology, they had the close example of the head god Odin who had the two ravens Huginn and Muninn, whom etymologically speaking encompassed ‘mind’ and ‘will’ or in this case the mind and the will of the raven-god himself, speaking and whispering to him from his shoulders. Three but One, Many but the same, rather than separate entities, they were aspects of Odin’s Own Consciousness . In parallel to that, depicted in the alliterative verse poem ‘The Heliand’, which was a lost adaptation of the New Testament from the 9th Century in Old Saxon, had it explicitly referenced a dove (which in the New Testament was a representation of The Holy Spirit) sitting on the shoulder of Christ, and not just above him. The Author portrayed Christ not only as the Son of the Most High, but also as a new Woden due to Syncretic Parallels between the Two.

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‘The best defense is a good offense.’

It was time for them to apply that strategy. On their way to the Library, the two maidens exchanged some words about their next step.

“If what she theorized comes to be true, then we are on the right track!”, said Alyss while referring to what her twin sister told the two of them. “The culprits won’t drop their guards down easily, so we have to keep playing this ‘Hide and Seek’ game while pushing them to come out with their own free will.”

“To be honest with you, this is more of a case that she would easily handle! The two of us are more useful when the target is on the side of the supernatural!”, declared Sonya. “What I wanna say is that she is a far better detective than us! Or at least, it would have been great to have her present. But we couldn’t afford to wait for a day off in her agenda. Time was never her ally!”

“Yeah, don’t worry, I totally relate! She excels in her fields just the way we excel in ours. In the end, we are complementary. It’s just like what is written in 1 Corinthians 12:17-20 that ‘If the whole body were an eye, where were the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where were the smelling? But now hath God set the members every one of them in the body, as it hath pleased Him. And if they were all one member, where were the body? But now are they many members, yet but one body.’ No matter how different we are, we serve the same goal, that is to strengthen the body for it to fulfill the work of Christ!”

“We have to finish all the preparations in Lord’s Lot for this afternoon, so I guess we can directly go there in 1 hour at most.”

In Christian Belief, the church was regarded as a symbolism of the Body of Christ. Each member of the Congregation was equally important, that there should never be a schism in the body, for if a member of the body was sick, the whole body would suffer back flash from it and if a body part achieved honorable deeds , the whole body would be praised for it. It was made so that even those deemed as less presentable part of the body, in the eyes of Society, would not be devalued.

As the two girls were walking through the corridor, the voices of many professors from different classes could be heard as they passed next to many doors. Molecular Biology... History... Chemistry... Maths... Citizenship... The further they got, the closer they were to the door of the Library and without the two girls noticing it, the same silhouette as before were observing them carefully from afar. Nevertheless, they displayed a smirk on their respective faces, as if they felt the presence of an observer.

The final stage was already set and all players were planning their next move.