None of the five teachers had ever heard of Centros Middlefort before, so it was natural for them to ask what it was. The response they received, however, wasn’t quite as predictable.
“You do not know what Centros Middlefort is? Preposterous! You must not be from around here.”
“Well, of course not,” Olson replied. “If we were, would you have said ‘Welcome to Centros Middlefort’?”
The strange man fell silent.
“Okay, this isn’t interesting me; I’m going to go somewhere else,” an impatient O’Neill said, brushing aside the strange man and walking into the hallway.
After O’Neill had walked out of earshot, the man spoke again. “My name is Veril. I do not know how you got here; for only Arath had predicted your arrival. He sent me here to welcome you…”
—
As Veril spoke, O’Neill walked along the passageways of Centros Middlefort, noting its striking similarities the middle school where he taught Health.
His concentration was so deep that he didn’t notice a man walking towards him. The man appeared not to notice him, either. “Stupid Department of Middlefort Decoration,” he muttered. “They could do without placing statues in the middle of hallways. If I were running the place, this wouldn’t be happening, but noooo, everyone’s all like, ‘I don’t trust your judgment, Laras; you’re too absentminded.’ As if that had ever impeded me…”
It was at approximately this point in Laras’s rant when O’Neill realized that the “statue” that Laras was talking about was, in fact, himself. “Why does he think I’m a statue?” O’Neill wondered out loud.
Laras made no movement to acknowledge him, but continued to mutter to himself. “…What were they thinking, putting one of Arath’s talking statues in the middle of a hallway? Someone could get a heart attack from it! This is one of the annoying things about monarchies… they may be good at making some decisions, but they’re terrible at making others, and they always exclude me from their middlefort decoration committees…”
At this point in Laras’s speech, he turned a corner.
O’Neill shook his head and continued walking, now up the great stairs. He had no idea where he was going, but if Centros had the same floor plan as the school he had come from, this hallway should lead him to the exit.
—
In the meantime, Veril was still in the process of imparting the history of Centros Middlefort.
“And when Arathner slew all four hundred dragons that Enrilgast summoned with the longsword Dragonbane, Enrilgast retaliated with ants.” Veril continued. He did not speak monotonously like some teachers did, but he did not speak all that interestingly, either, especially after an hour of lecturing. “He summoned seven million, two hundred fifty-eight thousand, five hundred eighty and a half ants. The exact number is disputed by historians, but it is generally agreed upon to be somewhere between negative five and twelve vigintillion. Enrilgast had made the assumption that Arathner could not possibly overpower so many ants. Arathner, however, was prepared. He took out the warhammer Bugsmasher, which could burn a large number ants each smash, and smote them all…”
Falls couldn’t be less interested. He surmised Veril was showing off the fact that he had memorized everything Enrilgast summoned, and Arathner killed, and how many, and with what weapon, and a myriad other things, but he couldn’t care less.
He looked over at Meinke. Unsurprisingly, Meinke was staring intently at Veril and looked as if he was absorbing everything he had to say. He evidently thought that this information would come in handy. Fortunately, Falls was much more realistic, and would save his memory for much more important things than the complete, unabridged history of some strange place everyone would probably forget about once they found a way to return home.
—
As O’Neill walked past yet another door that was frighteningly similar to doors in Central, he heard voices coming from inside. Usually, he wouldn’t care, but being instantaneously transported to strange lands had changed him somewhat. He leaned close to the door and tried to hear what they were saying.
—
“Preposterous!” King Stevis Rutus declared, on the other side of the door O’Neill was eavesdropping at.
“No, not preposterous, Sire,” Arath responded. “For the fifth time this week, my calculations have shown quite clearly that out of the five people that have mysteriously appeared, one of them will destroy us all one day.”
This caused a relatively large commotion in the Centros Middlefort Meeting Room where Stevis and Arath were. The seven advisors talked among themselves, some incredulous, some doubtful, some as if they had know this all along.
Stevis Rutus, King of Centros Middlefort, sighed. Of all the tasks he had to handle, this was certainly the most peculiar. This, unfortunately, made it the hardest to deal with. Although he knew with much certainty that Arath, as usual, would have a solution, he also knew Arath was somehow trying to take advantage of the situation. Besides, the number of situations that required spending large sums of money to deal with had increased dramatically since Arath’s arrival, and these sums of money correlated suspiciously with Arath’s expenditures on lavish–
“Sire, could I suggest a plan?”
Stevis sighed again. Somehow, the fact that his prediction was accurate didn’t make him feel much better.
Arath took Stevis’s silence as consent. “The others don’t know about this yet. In fact, I’m not even sure the one destined to destroy us knows about this. We should separate them and teach the others all they need to know. When the time comes, we can simply leave them to sort it out by themselves.”
Stevis sighed yet again, but this time, it was a sigh of relief. There was no possible way Arath could make money off this situation. “Excellent. Do so. Now.” He noticed Arath acted as if he still had something important to say. “It couldn’t possibly be… Arath, do you somehow know which one of them is destined to destroy us?”
Arath smiled. “Of course, Sire. In fact, I know where he is right now.”
Stevis raised an eyebrow, asking skeptically, “Where?”
“Why, Sire, he is right outside this door.”