Chapter XXV (25)- Spellsense
Kizu took a page from Ione’s book and napped through History F. Krimpit completely ignored his presence so long as he didn’t interrupt the class. And the room was so warm and humid. Kizu didn’t remember anything beyond that for the entirety of the class.
Harvey woke him up when class ended, and they left together. Harvey smiled and waved at everyone they passed in the corridors.
“Why are you always so nice to everyone?” Kizu asked after a couple of girls scowled and told Harvey to beat it. “Most of the students here don’t want anything to do with anyone else. Don’t you think it’s a waste of time?”
Harvey tilted his head and thought for a minute while they walked.
“I suppose,” he said. “But when you grow up in a small town like mine, you can’t afford to burn bridges. There are only so many people to be friends with. I think maybe people in small towns are nicer by necessity.”
“You’re from a small town?” Kizu asked. He realized he didn’t know anything about Harvey’s life back home.
“Yeah, on the west coast. Pretty much as far from civilization as you can get. Guess you can’t tell from my accent because of your earring, but I’m not exactly from the prestigious Edgeland cities of my other kinfolk here. Certainly no beaches like the ones here, let me tell you. We have an abundance of cliffs and jagged rocks. Trying to swim out in that ocean is a death sentence more often than not.”
“But now you’re here,” Kizu said leadingly.
“A cousin owed me a favor. He’s an alumnus who graduated with honors. Managed to pull a few strings and get my first year’s fees waived. Hopefully my family will have found the money by the start of next year though. I think they’ve already started saving. Luckily, business has been really good this summer.”
“What kind of business?”
“Wool. We’ve got sheep coming out our ears. Absolute abundance of the beasts. My family trades the wool all across Edgeland. We do good for ourselves. Just not Shinzou Academy good.” Harvey glanced sidelong at him. “What about you? What do your folks do?”
“They’re silk traders,” Kizu said. “I don’t know who or where they sell to, or really anything about the business beyond the fact that they trade silk. And that they’re pretty successful.”
Harvey whistled. “Silk, huh? Now that’s lucrative. Back home I could probably trade a dozen sheep for a single silk shirt. And that's the whole sheep, mind you, not just the wool.”
“I guess so.”
They split up after that, Kizu heading off to Combat F. As he sat, watching the students again running around the courtyard, he wondered about each of their backgrounds. Were the majority from trade families like him and Harvey? Or did he attend alongside actual nobility? It was a nice distraction from thinking about his sister.
But, of course, as soon as the thought occurred to him, his mind snapped back to her letter. The cryptic message bothered him. What deal could end with her expelled and disowned? What had she gotten herself into on his behalf? Where did she go? He felt so helpless.
“What are you thinking about?” Arclight asked him.
“My sister,” Kizu said honestly.
“Ah, the one that got expelled?” Arclight chuckled as he gave her an incredulous look. “No need to look at me like that! I never met the girl. Left before my tenure - Oasaji and I only arrived a few years back. But she’s a bit of an infamous legend amongst the student body. Less now that most of her peers have graduated, but still. All the professors are extremely hush-hush on the subject.”
Kizu wanted to pry more about his sister, but something else she’d said caught his attention. “I didn’t know you and Professor Oasaji arrived at the same time.”
“Only makes sense for the academy to hire both of us! Incentivizes us both to stay on the island and devote ourselves to our work. If they only hired one, then we’d spend half our time and resources meeting with the other! Absolute waste of time and money! Of course, there’s always a risk that we’d fight or, gods forbid, divorce. But the academy assessed our relationship and judged it stable. I’m inclined to agree, of course.”
Kizu blinked. Divorce? That would mean they were…married. Well, suddenly his Awakened animal theory felt a lot less plausible.
Arclight’s laughter boomed across the courtyard, causing several of the students running to turn their heads and glare enviously at him.
“You didn’t know? After all of Oasaji’s moaning about the students gossiping behind our backs! Ha!”
Arclight appeared extremely smug about his ignorance.
“But…he’s a turkey,” Kizu said carefully.
“And a damn fine one at that!”
He tried to tactfully pry a few more times, but the boisterous women only laughed his questions off, so Kizu gave up. He and Ione would get to the bottom of the mystery. They just needed a bit of time.
Kizu tried to steer the conversation back to his sister, but that proved equally fruitless. Arclight claimed to know even less about the situation than he did, and actually turned the conversation back on him, asking pointed questions about his sister. To his shame, he couldn’t answer most of them.
The bell rang and the students of Combat F collapsed in the dirt, panting. Kizu’s heart went out to them. Even just sitting on the sidelines watching, the heat from the sun sapped his energy away. He dreaded the thought of trying to run in their thick academy uniform during heat like this. Evie, though, walked up to him. At first, she looked like she wanted to say something, but then her large chestnut eyes dropped to scan the dirt at his feet.
“Want to grab some lunch?” he asked her.
She nodded, and the two of them left the courtyard.
“Are you okay?” she finally asked him as they walked to the cafeteria. Her voice was barely more than a whisper.
“Why wouldn’t I be?” His mind went through half a dozen reasons why he might not be okay. Being attacked in the dungeon under the academy. Not being able to locate his sister. The frustrating fact that his brother tried to get him sent to prison. Being signed up for the combat test at the end of the week. The mysterious artifacts he’d been led to in the middle of the night. Or perhaps just the fact that he ranked as the second lowest overall student in the entire academy.
“Everyone says you sat out for medical reasons.” Evie sounded uncomfortable as she spoke.
“Oh, that. I overdid it on a divination spell. It sucked too much blood out of my system, so I have to sit out of practical classes for the week. But I’m fine. Just need to recuperate for another day or two.”
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“Oh good,” she said softly, sounding genuinely relieved. After a moment of silence, she continued. “Next week we’re supposed to go back to shield training.”
“I didn’t hear Arclight tell us that,” Kizu said. “How do you know?”
“Someone in administration told me.”
“Oh yeah, you also run errands for Roba. Sorry, I forgot.”
“Roba? Do you mean Ms. Jackal?”
“I think so,” Kizu said. “Old lady who works for the headmaster, right?”
Evie nodded and then the cafeteria’s noise drowned out anything she might have said.
They sat at the end of a table that was slightly less packed than the others. He spotted a few other people he knew from his classes, but they all looked preoccupied. Then he noticed Emilia walking by with her two usual friends. Kizu met her eye and gave a little wave. Her eyes darted to Evie, and she frowned before continuing on her way.
That surprised him. Emilia had been friendly in every previous interaction. Kizu wondered if Evie was somehow unpopular. But that seemed bizarre. The girl had only just joined the academy two weeks ago, and she’d kept to herself every time he saw her. Maybe there was some prior baggage there.
“Where are you from, Evie?” he asked her.
She looked startled by his question.
“Tross,” she said. He barely heard her over the cafeteria noise, but that was the equivalent of shouting for Evie.
Not Edgeland like Emilia, then. He wondered what relationship they had, then, to warrant such a glare from the laid-back Tainted girl. Maybe a racial dispute of some kind?
He was still thinking about it as they parted ways and he headed to the painting entrance for Enchanting C.
A random student plopped down in the seat next to him and Kizu knew without even glancing at him that it was Basil. This time he recognized the shapechanger’s perfume. He’d worn it a few days back. It smelled like melons. A sideways glance showed him to be a striking young man with smoldering eyes, long lashes and a chiseled jaw. Kizu couldn’t help but think Basil was overdoing it with this particular guise. He looked like an idealized painting a noble would have commissioned for themself, not a real person.
Class began, but Professor Kateshi looked half-dead as she addressed them. She told them to work in groups of two or three and practice vocabulary.
“You know,” Basil said, “I’m no expert, but your uniform looks a bit off.”
“No need to act humble,” Kizu said with a sigh. “You know clothes better than anyone I’ve ever met. If you’re not an expert, nobody is. What is it? Is my collar messed up?”
“No, it’s not the fabric itself….” Basil stared at him. “Ah! You got rid of the cooling enchantment. That’s it.”
“Cooling enchantment?” Kizu said, perplexed. “I didn’t undo anything like that off.”
“Here, allow me.” Basil pressed a hand against his back. A shiver went up Kizu’s spine at the touch. Sure enough, when he took his hand away, the uniform immediately began to cool. It felt like a winter breeze had been caught under the cloth, soothing his clammy skin.
“Thank you,” Kizu said. He already felt significantly more alert. He hadn’t realized just how much the heat and humidity were draining his energy.
“Yeah, no worries. Weird you didn’t notice it yourself. You know how to use your spellsense, right?”
“Spellsense?” Kizu asked.
“Seriously? You don’t even know what it is? That’s honestly impressive, making it this far without it.” The shapechanger ticked off his fingers one by one. “It’s like sight, touch, smell. A sense. It’s the first thing most mages learn. Usually when we’re children, long before ever casting our first real spell. Though it's technically an enhancement spell, it’s extraordinarily simple.”
“No. Nobody ever taught me that.” The crone had skipped past the teaching part of magical instruction and just jumped straight to ordering him around. Everything he had learned was from watching her and reading her books.
“You must be the only one in the entire academy who can’t use your spellsense. Here, close your eyes.”
Kizu did so. He hated being blind to everything around him, but it was fine so long as he knew he could open his eyes whenever he wanted.
“It helps if you’re floating in water,” Basil continued. “That’s how I learned. If you let go of your other senses, it will be easier to locate the inborn sense in you. Every living creature has it. Some just innately grasp it better than others. Like how a dog can smell things you’d never notice naturally. You just need to enhance it.”
“What does it feel like?” Kizu asked. He had no idea what to look for.
“Describe color to a blind man for me. Or what a sound is like to a deaf man. The closest you’ll get are the emotions they provoke. Now I’m going to keep talking, but you need to block me out. Block out all sound.”
If he said more, Kizu didn’t notice. He removed his earring and let the noise all become an incomprehensible buzz. Then he pushed even that away, trying to reach out mentally, to touch something beyond the wooden seat. As he did, he touched his bond with Mort. The owl monkey was napping under his pillow in the medical wing. He stirred under the weight of Kizu’s perception and Kizu received a brief impression of his dreams. Bananas. Of course, the monkey was dreaming about bananas. Kizu pulled himself back and tried to ignore his familiar’s presence. Then he felt it. Emitting a speck of energy, he zeroed in on it. An earring. It must have been a student’s translation earring, based on the size.
He opened his eyes to tell Basil about it and immediately became disoriented. As if blinking and transporting somewhere else entirely. Suddenly, the entire room erupted with energy, dozens of specks like that of the earring springing up from every surface. After a moment of confusion, he realized he had detected that first bit of magic not here in the classroom, but up in the medical wing with Mort.
“Overwhelmed?” Basil asked. “Whoops, that’s my bad. I should have thought of that. Usually, you start with just a tiny bit of magic present. Then, as you get better, you can filter more out.”
Kizu resolved to practice that later. At the very least, he could practice the sense with the antimagic bracelet on. Basil called it an enhancement spell, but it must not rely on his blood like the others. Then, after a moment of consideration, he realized that didn’t make any sense. What else would it use? After pondering the question, he thought of how he first connected with Mort, before activating the sense. If his theory was right, he might have been using their bond to cast the spell using Mort’s resources. That bypassed the bracelet’s enchantment.
Cautiously, he practiced a bit more while also keeping close attention to Mort’s wellbeing. He noticed people also left behind a specific trace through the spellsense. It reminded him of how people had specific smells associated with them. Likely, the uniqueness had to do with the individual’s blood. The longer he “looked”, the more he suspected it was the blood of his classmates that he was sensing, not the actual body or soul.
That night, he explored his new sixth sense in the medical wing, just turning it off and on like he was blinking. When he really focused, he could “see” areas that had magic. Whether as a stain on a student’s robes or etched in the tools the assistants used. He could even sense the students themselves through their bed curtains. It was a sense that didn’t rely on line of sight. He wondered how he might be able to use that.
He decided to test out what he’d done earlier as well. He sent Mort off to explore the academy hallways. Then he reached out through their bond. He activated his spellsense and could see the paintings glowing with magic. It was still disorienting, but after some practice, he felt like he had a pretty good grasp on the technique.
When the morning bell rang and woke him up, he dragged himself off to class. He kept telling himself he just needed to get through that day before the weekend. But the thought wasn’t as comforting when he remembered that tomorrow he would have to retake all his tests, and the day after that he’d have to compete in what amounted to a gladiatorial pit fight. In fact, Kizu was so lost in his thoughts that it wasn’t until after class that he realized Harvey had hardly said a word to him in Astronomy E. An oddity for the Tainted boy. Kizu had his own problems to worry about, though.
The rest of the day wasn’t much better. He spent most of it going over strategies on how he might be able to scrape by in the combat test without utterly embarrassing himself like the other low-level combatants. He had a few aces up his sleeve, but that didn’t stop him from worrying. He wished they’d at least told him who he would be competing against ahead of time. But they withheld that information until the day of the competition for obvious reasons.
After his last two classes, he returned to the medical wing to find Kateshi waiting for him. She performed a few final tests on him, including a blood sample, much to Kizu’s discomfort. But she informed him his blood level was almost back to a safe amount. Even still, she told him to eat more of the lackluster diet for dinner and recommended that he continue it after his release as well.
Kizu nodded along, internally looking forward to indulging in the vast variety of food offered in the cafeteria. Then, while gnawing on one of the food bars assigned to him, the bracelet finally unlocked. It popped off and fell into his lap. He let out a sigh of relief.
Once back in his dorm, he unceremoniously dumped his stuff at the foot of his bed. He looked under the bed and found the wooden box, unmoved from where he had shoved it before. Opening it, he looked through the things inside. The necklace gave off no hint of magic which Kizu supposed meant it was doing its job of thwarting magical detection. The book and the knife, on the other hand, shone like beacons to his new awareness. He wished his spellsense could tell him what they did. Anything beyond just saying ‘magic.’
Kizu set the translated letter in the box and then picked up the necklace. He decided it was time to test out its limits.