Another addition to the “why do I keep having YA/romantasy-style dreams when I don’t read those books?” collection.
These four are friends who attend a boarding school/uni together, which is a mixed human x elves institution meant to foster friendship between the races. Both girls are named Joanne, but people started calling one girl Anne and the other Jo (despite being great friends, Jo was a bit resentful about that. Her family had called her Anne most of her life. Why was this detail in my dream? No idea).
The two elven boys, princes of their respective regions, both have a crush on Anne. Jo has a crush on Arren, and they have been friends since childhood. Anne likes Yahn, but also finds him extremely annoying, and the two enjoy bickering with each other. Yahn constantly flirts with her and says the stupidest stuff while also dying on the inside at how cringe he is being. He’s a slightly pompous and silly idiot, while paradoxically quite smart and emotionally intelligent.
Arren on the other hand is quiet and stoic, but also has a very dry sense of humor and great comedic timing. Jo is super smart and on a scholarship, and is bitingly sarcastic with a monotone kind of voice (reckon she was inspired by Mira from kpdh). Anne is mostly kind, sweet, and thoughtful, but can have a fiery temper.
The actual story of the dream progressed thus; one day a human girl turns up dead, with residual magic energy found on and in her. Everyone believes she was killed by an elf, and tensions in the school become very high. Our 4 protags start trying to investigate the murder, and end up stumbling upon a group of students using dark magic, but they’re all wearing masks and hoods and escape without being caught. Nasty accidents and close calls keep happening to all 4 of our protagonists, who manage to survive all these attempts to stop them.
Finally, one night there is a moment when the 2 Princes suddenly turn on each other, starting a vicious duel with intent to kill. Anne tries to stop them and is stabbed by Yahn, who seems horrified but unable to stop, and the fight continues. Jo desperately tries to help Anne, who is bleeding heavily. Anne, her hand bloody from holding her wound, reaches out towards the fight suddenly and releases a massive burst of magic. It breaks the spell over the boys, who immediately stop and rush over. Anne isn’t breathing, but Yahn uses his magic to heal her. Even healed she’s exhausted and in pain, and so is he. It took a lot of power, and he’d already used a lot in the duel.
The 4 then hear a bunch of shouting and noise coming closer, and a trio of students come running out. They tell them that after the magic blast the teachers found a bunch of human students very sick, some dead, obviously in the middle of some evil magic ritual. The human students, some of the top scoring students of the school, had been doing dangerous forbidden spells and experiments to gain magic, that humans in this world don’t naturally possess. It was the sudden removal of the magic, cause by Anne’s spell, that made them become sick or die. The original girl that died had been part of their conspiracy and had not been able to cope with the magic, which killed her.
The group confessed to hating elves, and had just decided on a plan to get the princes to kill each other, in order to restart an ancient war between their two elvish provinces so that elves would be forced out of human society. Thankfully, having been thwarted, they get removed from the school.
In the end it turns out that Anne had elvish ancestry all along and that her family had kept it quiet out of the stigma attached to being part elvish.
Predictably, Yahn and Anne end up together, and Arren realises his love for Jo. Happy ending.
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Oh and also both guys were shirtless during their duel. For no reason. Which made me, the omniscient viewer, drop my head in my hands and groan in exasperation 🙄😂
