Five more minutes had passed in the still festering realization that their issues wouldn't be solved so easily, festering as in for Thomas who's thoughts seemed bewildered by the reality that the door they entered wasn't double hinged. As for herself, the brief moment of happiness at seeing her body still a body and everything else including her life still the way it was had mostly passed over as the complications settled in. There was no better feeling than being alive, don't get it wrong, but if thrust into a perilous pit of ravenous beasts, rescued and then finding yourself cuffed or thrown in the dessert for nature to take its course you start to wonder whether death was the more merciful option.
She took a deep breath and further sunk into the leather seats, the incessant passing chatter and speeding cars didn't help in advancing thought. They were stuck here, for an unknown, unwarranted and undesirable amount of time. Her thoughts floundered at the prospect, noted by the genre that likened the event as endlessly exhilarating there was never the actual tip toeing process of the fear behind it. Many seemed to gloss over the actual enormity of the ordeal, whilst they could count themselves lucky as having transmigrated far enough into the industrial era without a language barrier to get around with, there was still the added vacancy of cultural knowledge, local habits, the do's and don't's, all of which a history book wasn't going to tell you and actually having lived in the place would. The weight of the situation was slowly yet methodically and rather sadistically bearing down on them like a sledgehammer brought with perversive, torturous force.
After another moment of the still grating silence, she heard the sound of shuffling and crunching paper as Thomas shoved the aged note somewhere into the depths of his many coat pockets and turned to the window. There was no denying the burning irritation and boiling anger, perhaps the all more apparent..fear. Her eyes glanced nervously and cautiously his way, she took in a deep breath and softly spoke, "So it didn't work, that happens.."
There wasn't an immediate answer, from the corners of her eye she could make out the fact that he hadn't glanced back, barely acknowledged the sentence or ignored it altogether, she couldn't know but she most definitely did care.
"Look, it's still as simple as it looks, the paper right? Brentley's paper has a bunch of magical things written on it, there's definitely a spell that takes us back home; if not..a way to find it.." She voiced, half convincing herself at the matter than the more realistic reality of how overly simplified that sounded. The advanced arrays and alien symbols riddled in runes littering its surface like a crazed veil was by no means simple from understanding, even with their own knowledge taken from earth. The matter would've indeed still been as simple as their initial thought of reenacting the moments that brought them here if even a fraction of what was written on the paper made some kind of sense or invoked a feeling of familiarity, none of it did however.
She sat, stock still and just as silent. There was little more encouragement one could give when wallowing in their own similarly bottomless pits, her hands unconsciously landed in her pockets and produced a tired watch void in the strap posed for her wrist. The contraption had stopped working ages ago when they'd ended up here, the thought of it passed through her thoughts now and the desire to even look at it spurred from the fact of having no words to console either of them any further. A mindless thumb caressed the thin glass above its still hands, far from a rapidly approaching death though, there was a short reminiscence of the past and a regret of a few actions; most notably, if they hadn't chosen Brentley as their latest target, none of this would've happened.
Brentley…
Her eyes widened, turning towards him with added fervor "Brentley! Brentley's back on earth, right?"
He still didn't answer nor did he fidget in at least a showing of slight interest, "Oh, come on, Tommy! If her father had her there, or here, or wherever the hell he's from at this point then how would Brentley have found herself on earth?"
An answer didn't come her way immediately but there was at least the fact that he moved, glanced back at her once, turned back towards the window followed by a moment of further annoying silence till an answer escaped his tight lips.
"A way back.."
Regardless of where, when or why, Brentley's life had spent its entirety on earth; the machinations of which revolved around the fact that her father had to have had either a way back from earth or the other, either which entailed a way back from whichever two worlds they found themselves in.
"We understand the paper or take it to someone who can, there, a way back home in no time at all!" His body shifted, glancing back like a lazily roused sloth from slumber. Though the exuberance of the matter was lost on him, there was hope.
"So we..study these things?" he asked, sceptical or at least wading the directions of their soon-to-be plan. Though the former was, embarrassing as it sounded, a latent interest of hers, the latter was at least the most realistic and perhaps the easiest approach towards solving their issue.
"We'll have someone else do that for us"
"And this person is?"
The steel door creaked open once again, met at its entrance by the same enthralling beauty staring between the two with shimmering emerald slits like sparkling gemstones. Surprise, amusement, Lust or a weirdly imbalanced mixture of all three? One couldn't quite tell, the most apparent however was a great deal of unbridled joy. Little efforts were taken into shuffling them inside like greatly expected guests as she made her way towards the counter, "A room or a service, Nya?"
Thomas' gaze shifted back at Nera's calmly stricken expression of slight amusement and glowered though there was enough sense in her to brandish the piece of aged paper rather than tease a less important issue, "Thanks, it's another kind of problem today as well though"
The cat woman's expression sullened, playfully so though still jovially in hosting character as she sauntered towards the brandished paper and gently took it into her hands. A minute passed of quiet analysis, strikingly although half expectantly, the paper's contents weren't that surprising to her, let alone derisively psychotic. It was all of a vivid confirmation that magic's existence was all well and true, she half wondered if Ravinia could perform any herself, were there ranks and affinities like in the books she'd read before? Unnecessary questions filtered through the the brief silence overtaken by excessive thought as not a moments later did her eyes lift back from the paper and shift between the two of them, befuddled.
"You're..dark magicians?" She suddenly asked, Nera's brow's furrowing at the question.
"Dark magicians?" She asked her, surprise and a little bit of wonder with added hesitant suspicion was evident in the bewildered gaze she motioned between them, "This is dark magic, my late cousin was once one, that's—well it's not like it's a secret or anything but I—"
"Slow it down, Ravinia!" Thomas held up a hand, "Look, we're..very foreign individuals with little experience in these matters and someone's given us that paper for us to find them—"
"Why would they give you a letter you can't read?" She interrupted.
"Err—"
"We don't know either" Nera cut in to give a simple answer, the most convincing lies and the easiest to follow through with were those riddled in half truths. It wasn't a lie that the paper had been given to them by Ms Brentley who'd in turn had it given to her by her late father, nor was it a lie that they didn't know why the paper had been given to them when they themselves couldn't read it; or perhaps Brentley had tried deciphering it sometime in the past and found zero progress and left it to those she thought would be able to do so.
A tentative glance didn't go unnoticed, Ravinia's gaze seemed to sift over their body's a second time since their meeting as her dark slits for pupils narrowed in seemingly hesitant realization of something, "Are you two.. undercover—"
""No"" They answered in unison, oddly perceptive of where the question was going, "We're jobless at the moment"
The suspicions hadn't left her at all, hesitant still to give a proper answer to their question and even more cautious of where they were standing. She smiled nervously though not entirely out of helping, "If it's business like this, I'd contact the mage association"
They raised a brow, the term was familiar. Mage associations were a thing in quite a few fantasy books they'd read before, though mostly taking up secretive positions of power in keeping magical knowledge away from prying—magicless eyes like a sort of secret intelligence agency; for the fanatical of course. Half of them wanted to ask what kind of role, how, when and why this mage association existed though there was only so much they felt they could ask before their identity as foreigners was put under serious scrutiny.
"There should be one present around the academy somewhere"
Nera frowned, "They put those things next to schools?"
"Definitely! Encouragement is what I'd heard. It's a child's dream to work for the association, pays well and gets you connected with the nobility" She handed the paper back, making her way towards the counter as the wooden door leading into the hallways ahead opened with the ragged figure of a man still half sorting out his pants whilst gently handing over the keys to the room he'd occupied before leaving, "Too competitive for the head though," she continued, turning back towards them after hanging the pair of keys, "You'd see a child hang themselves over it and that's when I knew it wasn't for me, Honestly I don't know why you wouldn't have gone to them first, The mage association is knowledgeable on a bunch of magic types, the illegal ones too.."
She didn't bother to remind her that they'd done so because of their current 'foreign' status and instead focused on a part of the sentence that had caught her by surprise, "Dark magic is illegal?"
She nodded, barely perturbed by their lack of knowledge this time, "Course it is, though I wouldn't expect you to know..being..erm..foreigners and whatnot. It was outlawed a decade ago, exclusive to the country. Others still allow it..Oh! Like the Feyrith empire!"
The paper in her hands suddenly held a new feeling to it, was Brentley's father a criminal mixed along being an actual mage? Wait, more importantly; "Why was it outlawed here?"
Her bubbly expression took a sudden turn for the worst, replaced by an expression of burning contempt. Catching the fact that it was a sensitive issue for the people here, she swiftly waved the topic off though it did place a sizable wariness towards the contents of Brentley's paper, "So, the academy is…—"
"Not far from the city library, close to old Sandra actually!" Her expression brightened to the sudden change in topic, smiling wryly when the two looked at her in confusion. "The clock tower. Actually, the mage association might be based there but I haven't been around in twelve years"
They at least knew their way towards the library, perhaps even seen a few students inside if uniforms weren't a thing or the current day was this world's equivalent of a weekend. Too tentative to ask for anything more that might dangerously veer into worldly common knowledge, Nera turned to leave, with this they could go around and ask an association member(granted with a well grounded reason why they'd want information on outlawed magic but at least it was a start).
"On another note, are there ways to test a person's magical affinity?" Nera paused, swerving on her heels to stare at him in shock, he couldn't be serious!