Pretending To Be Gilead's Prince and Master Wizard

Alex prohibited me from going with him to his place for him to see what really happened with his grandmother since it is already dark outside and he says that girls my age shouldn't be seen outside at this hour.

However, since I somehow possessed and inherited my mother's very persuasive nature, I was able to convince him to come along as long as I was dressed as the fake prince.

Teleportation is very mana-consuming. And with all that fight he had with the spy earlier, it would take time for Alex to regain all of his mana. Thus, we had no other choice but to walk than to entrust our trip to my "not-so-efficient teleporting skills" like what he described earlier.

During the ride towards his house, Alex has been silent all the way. Even when he seems to be thinking, he has gone silent again. I don't even know how to start a conversation with all that's gone on since this afternoon.

So it really surprised me when he was the one who initiated the conversation after a couple of minutes of refraining himself from talking.

"Do you know anything about dream walking?" he suddenly asks, which also got me into thinking.

I remember Mr. Pumpkin telling us something about dream walking and the wizards called dream walkers. According to our class adviser, this skill is a form of black magic that can only be executed by highly trained and highly ranked wizards. Therefore, it is strictly forbidden to use by the royal magic council and anyone who uses it is punished by execution.

Because this particular spell is difficult to accomplish, Mr. Pumpkin listed only the two most powerful magicians of all time as a result of their unique skill and capability to control black magic. One of those is none other than Salazar, Raven's brother whom he is trying to awaken.

Setting these thoughts aside for a while, I decided to answer Alex's question, "Yes, I have heard of it during our class with Mr. Pumpkin. Wait, so do you think it was a dream walker who killed your grandmother in her sleep?"

They could alter anyone's dreams to give him a nightmare and then slay the person in the nightmare. Once the person is unable to survive that and dies in the nightmare, he or she will also die in real life.

That makes them worthy of the title as the deadliest assassins of all time.

Alex didn't answer me but only gave me a brief nod as his response.

I tried to imagine Rica, grandma Lucy's servant, to be one of those dream walkers. I have only been in Alex's house twice or thrice, probably, but I came to know Rica as a sweet, caring and lovable person. Alex had already mentioned that he had replaced his grandma's maids numerous times already that he lost count of it. But Rica managed to stay beside grandma Lucy for almost two years because she adores her so much.

That is why it truly bewilders me now to hear Alex's theories about his grandma's death and the fact that Rica has something to do with this surprises me more than ever.

"What you're telling me is that you suspect Rica to be a dream walker?" I asked once more while my forehead wrinkles. 

"Yes. Dream walking can only be made possible if the dream walker is within the 10 meter radius from its target. No one is closer to grandma all the time but her alone. Who else could have done that horrible thing to her, huh?" 

Now I regret digging in further to this topic with him. I see that Alex is starting to lose his temper once more and will probably send me home if he is annoyed further.

"We'll figure out who did this thing to her as soon as we arrived into your house," I crooned as softly as I could. He didn't say anything about it and silence filled the air once more.

Once we arrived in the house, the very first thing that we did was to go straight ahead towards grandma Lucy's bedroom. All the things that are present here, from the furniture down to the sheets of the bed are all well-arranged. No signs of struggle.

The advantage of dream walking is that you can kill a person while they are dreaming without it looking like a crime at all. Traditionally, those who die as a result are assumed to have died a natural death, like what happened with grandma Lucy. Now that everything has been made clear to us, we wish to stop the person involved once and for all.

Alex has gone to other parts of the house while I remained here in grandma Lucy's room. In just a short while, Alex returned with a disappointed look upon his face.

"Of course that woman has already left the house. What am I thinking," he mutters more to himself than to me. "She must have sensed already that we would have the slightest idea of what happened to grandma so she chose to pack away as soon as the funeral's over."

No matter how much I look at it, Rica really doesn't look like the dream walker that I was expecting to see. Maybe, I deemed it to be a bit more daring, more evil-looking. These traits are the opposite of what Rica looks like.

"Or maybe she packed up her things already because her job here is finished. So she has no reason to stay in this place, right?" I asked. But Alex seemed to already be committing to his decision. He wouldn't budge.

"Don't let a person's appearance deceive you," he musters in a firm tone. "Even the kindest face you've ever seen could turn out to be the one who betrays you later."

That stunned me for a bit. Maybe because I am indeed too naive to notice a person's true color. Or maybe because I am the kind of person who trusts so easily, it's leading me to face danger at such occasional times. Anyway, I shrugged these negative thoughts away and looked at him once more.

"So, what are you going to do about it now?" I asked. "Are you going to hunt down Rica for this?"

He looks at me as if I've gone dumb or something like that. "Obviously, yes. I will track her no matter what it takes. I bet that she must have returned to her hometown back in Berbrooke."

Alex pauses after walking near his grandma's bed for a bit, and continues, "Grandma deserves justice after all."

---

After minutes of staying in his house, he dropped me off once more back to the castle while he drove the courage outside of the castle and into the heart of the city to gather his evidence. 

With all the things that's happened to me since this afternoon, I nearly forgot to do my homework that Mr. Wimbshaw had assigned for us to do. Therefore I went straight for the prince's chamber, grabbed my backpack that was safely hidden at the top of the wardrobe, and proceeded to go to the royal library to do my research once more.

I quickly spotted the book I needed using the unique arrangement system here where books of different fields are placed neatly on shelves by shelf numbers and started writing down my answers in my notebook and did not forget to write down the date as when it was made. That annoying teacher doesn't want us to miss putting the date, and would deduct our points for that alone. I

After my homework was done and seeing that I have nothing else to do for that matter, I began rummaging for other books… books about magic, specifically to gather information regarding dream walking.

Since it's a form of black magic (and black magic is a sort of a taboo subject here in Citadel and any other places), I only found one, thin notebook for that topic alone. It's like a feature magazine that features some of the magic spells that have been rarely used by wizards, in which, to my surprise, dream walking was included as well.

I started going through the pages that said something about it. There hasn't been much written for it, but I luckily found something useful and began reading that part of the article.

"It was believed that a dream walker can trap a person into a certain dimension that he or she created using his or her own mind. It's like the dream walker's way to slowly torture the target without having to kill him or her instantly. But no evidence has shown yet that could prove it to be true." I read it aloud.

A random thought occurred inside my head that instantly froze me into my place.

This may sound absurd but… what if the real prince was actually kidnapped and imprisoned by a certain dream walker all this time?!