Chapter 74: Confronting The Truth
"My eyes," Aiden said, pointing toward his face. "Not this one, the other one."
Laela had a brief surprised expression, then smiled softly. "You’re constantly full of surprises."
"Maybe, but you do believe what I say, right?" Aiden asked.
"Without a single doubt, but what shall we do next?"
As if the system was answering Laela’s question, a new quest appeared before Aiden:
[Special Quest: Find Out Why Another Soul inhabits Arianna’s Body]
[Rewards: ??]
[Bonus Reward: ??]
[Quest Duration: ??]
Now Aiden had extra motivation to deal with the soul problem; those experience points!
"I can’t say for sure, not until I understand why Arianna is in that situation," Aiden said.
"You might need to talk to Kayden," Laela suggested, knowing he’d be the best person to answer questions about any sudden changes in Arianna.
Aiden sighed because even while he hated the idea of seeking reasonable discourse with Kayden, it was still a good suggestion.
"Alright," Aiden replied, and now he had to find the young lord. Though he seemed to have an idea where Kayden might have gone after storming off.
Aiden led the way with Laela behind him, and they made their way toward the training room. As expected, Kayden was there. He always came here to practice magic whenever he felt enraged about his performance compared to other mages.
"What are you both doing here?" Kayden asked with that angry tone as he saw Aiden walk closer to him.
"Always the—" Aiden stopped himself. He was about to retort with a comment that would have prompted another argument from Kayden but decided to let it be.
Laela offered no words and simply let Aiden do the talking.
"I want to talk to you about Arianna," Aiden said instead.
"What about her?" Kayden asked, now with arms folded and giving his full attention to Aiden.
"I know you two spend more time together than most, so have you by any chance noticed a change in her? Perhaps different behavior?" Aiden asked, sounding serious so that Kayden would know this wasn’t just taunts or insults.
"What sort of silly question is that?" Kayden replied, failing at first to understand Aiden.
Aiden sighed, then said, "What I’m trying to say here is, Arianna is possessed by something else. I don’t know when or how long it’s been, but I saw it today."
"Possessed? What are you saying? How did you know she was possessed?"
"My eyes," Aiden said, pointing upward to his sight as his eyes took on that peculiar draconian transformation, then immediately went back to normal. "It’s hard to explain, but trust me when I say I can see when a body is being possessed."
Kayden looked at him for moments. This definitely didn’t sound like a joke or taunt. Up until now, he had always thought Aiden’s eye sight was for seeing things at farther distances and behind walls—he didn’t think it could go this far.
"Well? Have you noticed anything?" Aiden asked again, waiting for Kayden to speak up.
"There was a change, but a very slight one. I would hardly call it being possessed by some spirit," Kayden replied.
"When?" Aiden asked.
"Right after our Magic Assessment. Make no mistake, she’s a Greystone and naturally has ambitions, but it was never about the title of Grand Magus, gathering the right team, and whatnot. Her ambitions were usually about her family’s legacy, then all of a sudden it became about the Academy," Kayden explained.
Aiden gave it thought as well. With what Kayden had just said, there was a possibility that the Arianna he’d known all this while wasn’t actually the real one.
"So if she is truly possessed, what now?" Kayden asked, actually very bothered about the situation.
"Now, we ask her ourselves," Aiden said with a smile appearing on his face.
...
All three of them had returned to the guild not long after. They took their places around a table in the corner while waiting for Arianna. Earlier, she had gone with them to inspect the rankings board.
Thankfully, most other members of the guild were also leaving one by one. They wanted to get busy doing other relevant things so as not to be the slackers when the new initiates of their guild were pulling their weight.
Then Arianna came back into the guild room and saw the rest of her teammates. She went toward the seat where they sat and said to Aiden and Laela, "One minute you both were close to me, and the next minute you were gone."
Kayden storming off had been pretty obvious to everyone, so she didn’t bother asking after him.
"Oh, um..." Laela began nervously, looking for words to say with a sheepish smile on her face.
Then the captain stepped out from her chambers into the main room, and behind her was Piers, who had just given a full dungeon report to her.
She had with her four gold pouches;these were rewards for their dungeon clearing earlier.
"Piers has given me a report of the dungeon. I can’t say I’m not impressed. That was great work!" she commended them and then passed the little pouch of gold one by one to each of them.
There were 120 gold coins in each pouch, which was the reward for each party member for the dungeon clearing mission.
"Thank you, Captain," they said at different intervals. Then she made her way out of the guild room with Piers following behind her.
Arianna then raised her pouch of gold and said, "Well, I’m going upstairs to keep this safe. You coming, Laela?"
Laela nodded affirmatively and followed behind Arianna as they both walked upstairs. Right before Laela walked into the corridor, she turned toward Aiden, who nodded at her.
Then Aiden turned toward Kayden and said, "Let’s go upstairs too."
Everyone was upstairs in their rooms when suddenly Aiden knocked on the door leading to the girls’ room.
"Come in," Arianna said, and then Aiden walked in slightly and said, "Can you both come over to our room for a moment, please? It’s important."
Arianna squinted her eyes a bit, though not out of suspicion of being lured in, but just because the situation seemed weird.
Laela, however, said, "Yeah, we’ll come."
She understood why Aiden made that request. It was time they found out about this other soul.