Professor Nimitz dismissed me soon after that hug. Although unspoken, it would forever be something that would remain between the two of us. I would never reveal to anyone that moment of weakness from a man who was so strong, who carried the world on his shoulders laughing.
Since Professor Nimitz was going to have the sack of tektites delivered for me, I had nothing left to do for the next thirty minutes. I needed to get back to Thaumaturge Hall to check in with my boss.
Professor Morton should be there at this time.
The walk to Thaumaturge Hall was thankfully short. There was only a dry creek that ran between the two buildings with a battered wooden foot bridge that connected the two areas.
Since the creek was dry, I did not even bother to walk all the way to the bridge to make my crossing. The bottom of the dry creek was filled with yellow and brown stones worn smooth by aeons of water rushing through during the wet season.
I picked my way across the dusty bottom of the creek with care. Although I had on canvas sneakers today, it would just be my luck to twist an ankle crossing over something that the average mage would just levitate across.
Along the way, I marveled at the difference between the two schools of magik. There was a direct correlation between the heads of the schools and the grounds themselves. It was as if they absorbed the energies of each Head of Discipline.
On the Necromancy Mansion side, the grounds were pristine. Every blade of grass, every magnolia tree, each individual bird of paradise was placed with care by Professor Nimitz himself.
On the side of Thaumaturge Hall there was a large stretch of lawn that extended from Garamond Circle all the way to the front door of the Hall.
The lawn itself wasn't the eyesore. The eyesore was the mottled dead patches of grass everywhere due to lack of adequate irrigation. There was not a single tree on the property except for a single half-dead oak that sprawled on the side that abutted against the mountainside.
"Inanna!"
I turned towards the sound. It was Professor Morton. The man did not usually look that good even on good days. Today, he looked far worse.
To be fair, it wasn't so much that Professor Morton was physically ugly. It was simply the way he scowled all the time. It made his dark swarthy face look even more like a dumpy dark mole.
His shoulder-length greasy black hair had been combed and tied back with a band, but that was the extent of his attempt at hygiene. I could see sweat stains under the armpits of his mage robe. It looked to be the same robe he had worn yesterday to the Council of Mages meeting.
What could he possibly be doing that he could not go home and change into fresh clean clothes? Even from where I stood, he stank of three-day-old funk. The man seriously needed a shower.
"Please come to my office. We need to speak."
Uh oh. It sounded like I was in trouble. I clutched my crossbody messenger bag and followed him into the crumbling building.
We walked down the large hallway with its stretch of faded blue carpeting and stopped at a door that had the seal of the Thaumaturge First Class on the front. With a wave of his hand, Professor Morton canceled the seal and opened the door.
His office was small and cluttered. There were stacks and stacks of papers and books everywhere that was covered in a layer of dust. Aside from his chair and the one immediately in front of his messy desk, there was no other empty space.
He walked in ahead and then pointed to the chair in front of his desk.
"Sit."
"Yes sir." I followed behind him and dropped into the seat.
Professor Morton began rummaging around his office, disrupting the dust layer which began blowing around him. "We are having serious issues with the great apes. Since you are the best Overlord we have, I need for you to go there and see what the issue is. I don't care what it takes and how you solve it, just get it done."
"What is the problem, Professor Morton?"
"The apes are not following the orders from the Overlords. They are fighting back, not just in random personal confrontations. They have organized themselves into small tight squadrons, as if they are part of a tactical fighting force."
The alarm bells began ringing in my ears. This was serious. "Which sectors of great apes are the Overlords having trouble with?"
"All of them!" He waved his hands in frustration. "It's as if they just woke up one morning and decided to stage a mutiny!"
"What did the Overlords do that was different from before?"
Professor Morton looked at me for a moment, as if to determine how much to tell me. "We had been having a rash of great apes primates misbehaving in front of visiting dignitaries. Someone taught them a multitude of curse words and had them target the verbal abuses at the Mage Elites. I had them crack down hard on those great apes."
I shook my head. The apes would never attack an Overlord over a simple request to limit human speech. It took effort for them to speak in the human tongue due to their limited vocal cords. The fact that they were disobeying orders and continuing with this unnatural behavior meant that they had decided as a group to do so.
"That was when they mutinied?"
Professor Morton nodded curtly.
I grimaced with distaste. I knew exactly how the Overlords 'cracked down hard on the great apes'. No wonder they fought back!
"I can retrain the Overlords so they know how to handle the great apes better."
"That is not your job!" Professor Morton snapped. He continued to poke through his mess of supplies and books.
"The Overlords have been flawlessly trained by me and my associate professors. What I need for you to do is retrain the great apes so they follow our instructions to the letter."
"Professor Morton. Sometimes, there needs to be a bit of give and take on each side—"
"They are mere animals. When you are training them, if you give them an inch they will think they are the dominant alphas."
He paused his foraging and glared at me. "This can cause very serious injuries to the Overlords if the great apes decide that the Overlords are their underlings. You should know this. You have gone through my classes."
"But I have also seen the Overlords brutally beating the great apes with the Mage Staff. That is a magik channeling device. It is not supposed to be used as a cudgel."
"They have every right to use the Mage Staff as they see fit. I will repeat myself one more time. Your job is not to teach the Overlords, it is to teach the great apes. Do you understand?"
"Yes sir."
"Ah. Here it is." Professor Morton fished out from under a large pile of miscellaneous junk, a brand new Mage Staff. It was a black sceptre roughly three feet in length with a fist-sized knob of clear glass at the top.
He hefted it in his hand to test out the weight ratio and then swung it as if it was a bat. "Good, good. Well balanced, good weight. Take this and make sure you use it." He handed it to me.
"I don't need it. I have one." I waved it away in protest.
"You mean the one I gave you years ago that I have never seen you use?"
He shoved the Mage Staff at me. "Take it. It is imbued with magik to help you with the very difficult job of communicating with those large apes. They are a dim lot so anything you have that will help to make them understand you is a good thing."
As I reached out to take the Mage Staff, he held onto the scepter for a moment longer.
"One other thing." He shot a tiny stream of electricity into the Mage Staff. It touched my fingers, shocking my arm. I yanked my hand back.
"Do not forget you are part of the Thaumaturge Discipline. As such, you are not allowed to represent another Discipline, be it for extra-curricular activities, sports, or 'proxy-voting'." He ground out the last word with a vengeance.
My face froze. What an a**hole. One of these days, I would make him regret bullying me.
But today was not that day…
"Yes sir."
"If this happens again in the future, I will revoke your Thaumaturge pass to gain access to Thaumaturge Hall, and you will no longer be allowed to do any kind of work for this Thaumaturge Discipline. Do I make myself clear?"
"Yes sir."
He dropped the Mage Staff onto the table. It gave a loud metal clang, jolting my nerves.
"Go. The great apes are acting up right now in the dining hall kitchens. Clean that area up and then go check with the gardening staff. They are having problems there too." He turned and left the office as if he had to get somewhere in a hurry.
I waited for a moment and then reached out for the cudgel aka Mage Staff.
I hated the thing! It was useless as a communication device. The only thing it communicated was that it was a torture device and it made the great apes fearful.
The knob was a heavy piece of glass that could crack a skull or break a rib. The handle of the staff was metal and was quite often used to deliver painful shocks in the same manner as Professor Morton had just done to me.
Heaving a big sigh, I slowly made my way out of the Thaumaturge Hall. Until I was able to save enough magefunds to move on with my life, I was stuck working with Professor Morton. I truly loved working here, just not with this man.
I grabbed onto the round glass ball of the obnoxious Mage Staff and stabbed the other end into the ground. It was only good enough to be used as a walking stick.
It took another ten minutes to get to the dining hall. Located at the center of the commons area, the dinning hall was a four-story stucco structure with red tile roof and black wrought iron balustrades around the balconies hanging off the building's face.
It was breakfast time so the students who had early classes had begun congregating around the front doors of the dinning hall. Avoiding the throng, I made my way around the back of the dining hall and entered the kitchen through the large delivery doors.
Immediately to my left was one of the large apes.
"Hi Maggie," I called out to the ape.
She turned to me with a frightened look.
'Is everything ok?' I touched her mind with the mental image of concern.
Maggie shook her head. Her eyes grew more frightened and she began pulling at her fur in distress.
'Stick man beat Juju. Juju die.'
I gasped, clutching the Mage Staff with barely suppressed anger and revulsion.
Juju was an old female ape who mostly did what she was told. The only time she ever gave an attitude was if someone within her group had been injured by an Overlord displaying too much excessive force.
The stick man that Maggie was referring to was the Overlord who had just displayed too much excessive force and holding a Mage Staff.
The bastard!
'Where is Juju?' I projected the question into her mind.
Maggie pointed to the freezer behind her.
'They stuffed her into the freezer?'
Maggie nodded.
I went to the freezer and pulled the door open.
Immediately, Juju's frozen body fell out, landing on the floor with a heavy thud.