Shadow Author



When I woke up in the morning I felt a warm light breath on my chest.

Moving the covers I looked down at the bright golden hair that hid the girl that was peacefully sleeping.

Although I was quite comfortable in our current position there was so much I had to do and time was running out.

As I slowly awoke and came to my senses a headache throbbed in my mind but I ignored it as I gently shook Charlotte awake.

Rubbing her bare shoulders I whispered:

"Wake up sleepyhead, it's time to go back to the academy."

Shuffling around Charlotte lightly whispered:

"I don't wanna."

I chuckled.

"I thought you liked having all the attention on you. The sooner we get back the sooner people will swarm you to ask questions."

Charlotte huffed.

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"I don't care about them, all I need is your attention."

I fell quiet for a second before patting her head and sliding her off me.

"Come on we can't skip another day, my attendance is already terrible."

Charlotte only groaned before curling up into a ball under the covers trying to retain the heat from our bodies.

Meanwhile, I sat at the edge of the bed and took one last glance at her before moving into the bathroom to take a quick shower.

When I was done I changed into a spare uniform and came out to see that Charlotte had taken a pill while sipping on some water.

"Ready?"

She nodded and left the bed.

Noticing that she put clothes on while I was gone a mischievous smile appeared on her face.

"I can take them back off."

I held myself back and only turned around to leave.

"We can't be late, let's go."

Although I wanted to engage with Charlotte there was simply far too much to do and I only had today to deal with it.

The smile on Charlotte's face disappeared but she quickly caught up to me and we checked out of the hotel.

Finding her car parked some distance away the two of us got inside and Charlotte started driving away.

The entire ride back to the academy was spent in silence as the moment I got into the car I closed my eyes and seemingly ignored my surroundings.

I could feel Charlotte's gaze on me a couple of times but I paid it no mind as I had something much more important to do.

If one were to look high into the sky one would see a peculiar black line that was swiftly following after the car while on occasion a black dot would branch off.

Currently, I was giving out hundreds of mental commands and switching between visions of countless monsters.

They were none other than the terror birds that managed to escape from Miss Smith.

When I first entered the dungeon my link with them was disconnected and I couldn't do anything with them but as soon as I left, the connection was restored.

Since I came back, I called the terror birds back to the city and had them dispersed throughout it.

The reason I did this was so that I would always have eyes on the most important places.

The terror birds would remain hidden in plain sight by blending in with the other birds while also serving as my informants.

As I sent a new bird to different parts of the city eventually every block was under my watchful eyes and the black line in the sky slowly faded out.

Although I wanted to bring some of the terror birds back to the academy the risk was too high.

After all the students, teachers, and dean were far from ordinary and definitely would be able to sense if there were monsters nearby.

Plus the birds wouldn't be as effective as they would be in the city since most of the academy was indoors.

Giving out all the commands and setting up checkpoints with the birds was incredibly taxing on my mind and the already light headache turned into a full-on migraine.

But I could only deal with the pain as it was something necessary for me to do if I wanted information.

Even though I was the author of the world I was still missing a lot of the basic concepts as these were automatically filled in without my understanding.

Knowing big events was incredibly helpful as I realized by killing the kelpie but little things were just as important.

A big example of this was the time I didn't break the lie-detecting spell when the council put me under it.

With all the terror birds dispersed to important locations I slowly opened my eyes and let out a sigh.

Charlotte looked over at me but didn't say anything.

Rather than engaging with her I leaned back in the seat and stared up at the roof of the car trying to reduce the pain in my head while going over all that I knew about Puppeteer.

I was still learning about the effects of the curse but there were a few things I could say for sure.

The bigger the monsters I turned into puppets the more strain it would put on my mind.

This also included the number of puppets, as having hundreds of terror birds would most likely be the equivalent of ten or so creatures from the swamp.

Another thing was how I made use of the puppets. Simple commands wouldn't do much to me but more complex ones took more focus and in turn, gave me bigger headaches.

Some interesting things to make note of was that there was no recourse if the puppet died.

In addition the further I was away from the puppet the more effort it would take to form a connection. Yet if I entered a dungeon and possibly a tower that connects would be severed.

Having a better understanding of the curse I wanted to continue experiments and find out the real reason as to why I was given a warning when receiving the powers.

But that would have to wait as the car slowly came to a stop and Charlotte put it in park… we made it back to the academy.