Tea Time

Decay let Secca prepare the tea. He put some dried leaves, and a few flower petals, into a strainer. He put the strainer into their teapot, which already had hot water, and let it steep.

It wasn’t like Decay literally couldn’t prepare tea. He was sitting at his desk, and neither the desk nor chair were rotting. Nor was the floor, which was good, seeing as they were on the second floor of the building. If he touched the tea leaves, they wouldn’t literally crumble into dust. He had better control than that. But cooking, preparing food or drink, was still creating something. And while he was interested in learning, seeing other people do that, his own attempts were a bit lackluster. You could be bad, or mediocre, at cooking even without magic that made everything decompose.

“Tea should have steeped for long enough,” Secca said.

Secca poured some of the tea into one of their cups. The tea set was an intricate thing. The teapot had a painting of a balloon cactus, yellow flower blooming, on it. There were three tea cups. They didn’t have the flower, but their swirling patterns were either green or yellow, matching the pot.

Secca drank first. It shouldn’t matter. They could both taste what they ate or drank, regardless of who was in charge of the body. Decay knew the tea was good. Seemed strong, but the petals added a bit of sweetness to it. But there was something being in control added.

Secca sank back after the first sip, letting Decay take control of the body they both inhabited.

Decay lifted the fragile cup, and took a sip. The cup was still tilted towards his mouth when the door opened. He slowly lowered it back to the desk.

One of his students was standing there. A human girl, with skinned tanned from the desert sun, and brown hair a little frizzy. She usually made the questionable choice of wearing white underneath her brown cloak.

“Lya,” he greeted.

“You’re Decay, aren’t you?” she asked, standing up a little straighter and gripping the cloak’s clasp near the chest. “One of the Omens of Strife.”

Well, that seemed a little blunt and abrupt. But he could do blunt and abrupt.

“How did you know?”

Lya looked a little surprised he’d responded like that, but she recovered. “Well, for one, your fake name is Damon Keyes. That makes your initials D.K. And it makes your first name demon. It’s not very subtle.”

“I wasn’t trying to be.”

When he first became a teacher at this school, when he was first trusted with that, he was required to use a different name. Revealing himself as Decay might distress the students. And there would be people who responded with violence, people who wanted to destroy either him, the school, or both. But Decay hadn’t been particularly worried about that, or interested in keeping his identity secret. He’d put in minimal effort to appease the headmaster.

He didn’t think he was technically a demon, in the exact way the word was usually used. But he and his siblings had been created by an evil God to make things harder for living people, or to bring out the worst in them, and he did bear a few other resemblances.

“Is that all?” he asked.

“Of course not. Your magic makes things decay,” she added. She put up her hands like he was going to cut her off. “And that’s not, like, impossible for other people to learn. I know that. But for normal people to cast magic, they need to say a spell, or draw a symbol. I guess if you’re really skilled, you could just do some hand movements.” She moved a hand like she was trying to swat flies, really slowly. “But you don’t even blink. You just stand there, and suddenly something that was in your hand had crumbled to dust.”

Lya stared at him. He waited.

“You’re not denying it?” Lya asked.

“I already confirmed it when you came in.”

“You realize, I have to kill you.”

“Why?”

“You’re being awfully calm about this,” Secca thought at him, his own panic coming through quite well.

If she kills this body, my spirit won’t die, Decay thought back. I’ll just be able to drift into a new body. One that can leave school grounds.

“I’ll die,” Secca pointed out.

“Because you are evil. And I am training to be a cleric of Eoron.”

Huh.

There were three goods, so far as Decay knew. They were loosely considered to be the good one, the neutral one, and the evil one. Decay was created by the evil one, named Lonon. The neutral one was Ethie. And the good was Eoron.

“I have to help wherever I am,” Lya said. “In whatever way I can. And that means defeating you.”

“Perhaps,” Decay said.

“Stop casually playing with my life! Or what’s left of it.”

Decay continued. “But let me ask you something first. Do you know how Discord was defeated?”

Discord had been one of his siblings. All of them had been defeated. So had Decay himself, but he could still operate around the school, and could potentially be set free, eventually.

“He was defeated by two clerics,” Lya answered. “One belonging to Eoron, and one from Ethie.”

Decay reminded himself he should respond, and gave a single nod. “Rare that a cleric of Ethie’s would get involved isn’t it?”

Lya nodded, and looked him up and down. “Where are you going with this?”

“If I’m a danger to the world that needs to be killed, why are you the first to come here? No clerics from Ethie have, but even more telling, no clerics from Eoron have either. It’s just you, and you’re still in training.”

Lya shifted her weight, gripping her cloak’s clasp tighter. “Eoron believes in hard work. He doesn't like to just hand people the solution.”

“How about we talk this over?”

Decay gestured to the empty chair on the other side of the desk, and poured another cup of tea.

Lya just looked between it and him. She shifted a bit again.

Decay leaned forward, clasping his hands on the desk. “If you want to kill me, you’re welcome to try. But if you really wanted to, I think you would’ve tried already. There’s no harm in talking first. I’m powerful enough, I wouldn’t bother setting up an elaborate trap. If I wanted to kill you, I just would. Don’t you agree?”

He could. Far too easily he could. All she had to do was step close enough. Then he could activate his circle of magic, and anything in the bubble of space around him would rot and decompose around him. He didn’t want to do that to her. He really, really didn’t want to.

She slowly lowered herself into the chair. She didn’t have any tea.

He took a sip from his own cup. He was pretty sure the pot and cup had some sort of magic that kept the tea hot. Good thing too, they could be there a while.

***

The door to his office clicked open. Decay looked up to see Lya walking in, bag in her hand.

“The turmeric tea, I assume?” he asked.

Lya nodded.

“I better prepare some hot water.”

Decay had told her, the day she figured out his identity, about how his body was magically bound to this area, about how the edge of the school grounds was as far as he could go. He wasn’t sure she believed he wasn’t a threat. One of the reasons she was here was because she was still keeping an eye on him, analyzing him. But she did believe that killing his body would essentially be setting him free, the opposite of what she wanted to do.

And the other reason for her visit was so he could try turmeric tea, very different from the black tea they’d had last time.

They prepared the tea, Secca subtly taking over at one point, and then both sat at the desk, teapot steeping between them.

“Decay, can I ask you something?” Lya asked.

“I thought that was why you were here?”

“Okay, I know you’re genuinely confused, but that did not come across in your tone,” Secca told him. “You just sound like an ass.”

Sure enough, Lya sighed like he’d annoyed her. “If you're not evil, and don't want to do much harm, why did Lonon create you like this? Surely he could’ve created someone more malicious. Or someone who couldn’t turn their decay magic off. Or-or something.”

Decay poured the tea into both of their cups and took a sip. He had to admit, it was good. Strong in a way that was different from the black tea, without the need for anything sweet to offset it. He didn’t think a flavor like turmeric should’ve worked in boiling water, but it did somehow.

“Do you know what Lonon is the God of?” Decay asked.

“He’s the evil God.”

Decay frowned. “I was hoping for something a bit more specific than that.”

Lya frowned, her nose wrinkled and brow furrowed. She looked at her tea like it might have the answers, or like she was too ashamed to look at him.

Decay answered for her. “Lonon is the God of self-interest. Of going after what you want even if it’s bad for other people, or even if it’s bad for yourself in the long-term. This is . . . just a theory. I haven’t met Lonon any more than you have. But I assume it’s why my siblings and I existed the way we did. He had very specific ideas about what he wanted us to be like in terms of abilities, and maybe personality. And once he had those ideas, he wouldn’t compromise on them, even if they might not work out in the long-term.”

Lya nodded. “Evil is always self-defeating,” she said.

He hadn't meant to say anything profound when he explained it to her, but you could interpret it that way. “Something like that.”

She took a sip from her own cup.

***

Decay wandered the halls of the school. They were empty, even the large main hall near the entrance. It was dark unless you were walking along an outer wall, where the windows were. It was quiet. He could hear his own footsteps. He could hear the fountain in the middle of the school.

It was summer. The students were gone. A lot of the teachers were gone too. They had homes in nearest towns, and they could be there full-time this time of year. There were still some guards, and sometimes people would come in to renew some of the magic, or make sure no one had placed any malicious magic that would hurt the students. But other than that, it was empty.

Which was why he could hear footsteps long before someone came into view, and wasn’t surprised when they did. He was surprised by who it was.

“Decay!” She ran towards him.

“Lya. What are you doing here?” He remembered to put some actual confusion in his tone, and not sound like an ass. Lya had graduated last year. He hadn’t seen her in a little over a year.

Lya paused right in front of him. She dropped her head and bit her lip. Her eyes looked . . . different than usual.

Oh dear.

He wasn’t very good at this.

“Let’s go back to my office and have some tea, yes?” he offered.

She nodded.

They went up the stairs and he started heating a pot of water. He looked in his cabinets and frowned. He only had green tea. Green tea reminded him of a friend of sorts, that he’d made before he became imprisoned on school grounds. They hadn’t been very close. He hadn’t been very close to anyone before he’d become imprisoned. But one of his siblings had killed her and. . .

Well, if it was the only tea he had, it was the only tea he had. He let Secca prepare it, then took over.

“Now, can you tell me what’s wrong?”

Lya chewed the inside of her mouth for a moment. “I haven’t become a cleric. And, I don’t think I’m going to. The nearest church of Eoron has all the clerics it needs. The quota's filled. I’d have to wait for one of them to die before I get the chance again. I know I could try at a different town, but if Eoron wanted me to be a cleric, surely he would’ve picked me here, where I’ve always lived. I’d just be wasting time and money trying to go somewhere else.”

Oh, Decay was not good at this.

He took a sip of his tea, and instantly frowned. It was warm in his hands and his throat. It had been steeped for the perfect amount of time. It tasted rich, and smelled like plants. But it didn’t bring him any comfort. He set it down, and hoped Lya had better luck with her cup.

“It’s not-I don’t know why I wasn’t chosen,” Lya continued. “I’ve been working towards it most of my life. I served the church and worked to help people in town. I took magic classes here at the school so I could do more than the normal human even before I became a cleric. And it wasn’t enough.”

“Maybe that’s why you didn’t become one.” Lya looked up. “You already know magic. And you already help people without cleric powers. Maybe cleric powers would be better for someone who hasn’t done that, and needs a bit of help.”

Decay wasn’t sure if he believed what he was saying at all. He just thought it might be reassuring.

Lya snorted. “If I'd known that was the case, maybe I wouldn’t have gone to this school.”

“Well that’s a bit rude.” Another surprised look. “It might not be the best idea to say you never wanted to go to a school with one of your teachers. And I know you made friends here you wouldn’t have met otherwise. Are you saying you regret that?”

Lya looked around like she had never seen the inside of his office before. “Is summer always like this?” she asked.

“More or less.”

“Well then, there’s nothing for it.” She took a large swig of her tea, only having half a cup left when she set it down. “I’ll have to come back next week.”

“What?”

“Come on now. You might not have said it, but you obviously want to be one of those friends.” She stood up. “I have other duties and responsibilities, but obviously summers are empty, so I’ll have to visit you during them. And we can try a new tea then. I admittedly don’t know any other types of tea. But I’m sure there’s some out there.”