SWNOVELS Chapter A Common Room
Leaving the register’s office, I walked out and decided to head to find my room next. The trip out the back gates and to the ‘Eagle House’ dorm only took a few minutes to make, and the building itself didn’t stand out compared to the others around it. It was an old stone building, five floors tall, with stairs located on each end of the building. I took the first set of steps that I came to and went up to the second floor until I found room number four and unlocked it with my key.
Going inside, the room was much smaller than what I was used to – after all, I’d been raised with my own private room that had its own bath, study, and walk-in closets. This room was tiny compared to that, with just enough room to hold two sets of bunk beds, and a single dresser with four large drawers. There weren’t any chairs, couches, tubs, tables, or desks in here at all. When the school assigns a ‘bedroom’, it’s basically a bed in a room, it seems.
Going over and trying the drawers on the dresser, I was surprised to see that they had built in locks, and the top three drawers were already locked. The drawer closest to the floor was unlocked and pulled open easily for me, and inside was two smaller chests (they reminded me of cigar boxes back from Earth) and a plain silver key. Looking in the small chests, they were empty, so I was assuming that this drawer must be available, so I took unpacked my hobo-sack and, since no one was currently around, used my magic to clean the dirt and grime away before packing my stuff in the drawer.
Once everything was tucked away as I wanted it, I shut the drawer and turned the key in the lock to secure it. Out of curiosity, I tried my new silver key on the other three drawers and was relieved to see that it wouldn’t open them. There might not be much space that a person could claim as their own in these common rooms, but at least it did seem as if the school was trying to make it possible to feel secure in leaving our things here.
Content now that I’d packed and stored my gear all away; I walked over and tested out the bottom bunk bed near the door. It was slightly hard and lumpy, but it was better than the hard ground – or at least I thought so at first before I actually laid down and tried to rest upon it for a bit. It didn’t take but a few moments of stretching and trying to relax before I felt some small insect crawling on me. Slapping it away only gave me a few moments respite, as soon there was another little bug happily crawling up my arm. Inspecting it closer, I could tell it was fleas!
The beds were flea infested!
What type of place kept flea-infested bedding for people to sleep on?! I guess when you ask for a ‘common’ room, you get a really common room!
Disgusted, I got up and flicked a wave of fire magic across my body to eliminate any little bugs that might be on me. Then, a touch of earth magic to warp the wooden floor at the door, to keep it from opening if one of my roommates showed up while I was dealing with the problem. And finally, a touch of fire magic to pull all the heat out of the room. In moments, the windows were frosted over, ice covered the ceiling, walls, and floor; and the temperature in the room dropped hundreds of degrees. If it wasn’t for my magic keeping the air around me warm, as a buffer against the cold, the moisture in my lungs would’ve frozen and I would’ve died within moments.
Not content to simply make it slightly cold, I continued to use my magic to drain the heat from the room until I was certain that any living beastie in here with me would be frozen solid. I don’t know how durable a flea is against the cold, but I figure even they will die if I drop the temperature a few dozen times lower than freezing. If their blood freezes, they die. Right?
I think I’d heard somewhere that fleas can survive cold temperatures. How cold? Damned if I know! To be safe, I let the cold air linger for a few moments, utilized my air magic to create static electricity, and ran currents of flash lightning all around the room. Since there wasn’t anything electronic in this world, like there was back on Earth, all I had to worry about was not catching anything on fire. And, just in case fleas are somehow lightning resistant, I then reversed my fire magic and rapidly increased the temperature of the room up to the point where I felt things might be close to spontaneously combusting.
I figure flash freezing, electrocuting, and then flash heating the room almost to the point where things would combust should kill all the pests in here. At least, I hope so…
After several long moments of holding the heat to the point that it would almost blister the lungs to breathe it, I finally settled the environment in the room back to normal. The whole process had taken me about fifteen minutes from start to finish, and I was thankful that nobody had shown up to test the door in that time. With a last little tweak of earth magic, I straightened the wooden floorboards back down so the door would open and then I lay back down on the bed.
This time, much to my relief, I was happy to find that there weren’t any friendly visitors trying to share my bed with me. Content, I finally closed my eyes and took a nap for the evening.
Talk about a common room; life here certainly was much different than what I’d experienced so far back home on the island!