The term 'Dark Magic' is a misnomer. There is no good magic or evil magic as it is but a tool. The morality hangs to the caster. Of course the throng of the ignorant and those that benefit from denouncing magic beg to differ. As we delve into this matter a pattern can be seen. The more a person can understand magic the easier they can see it as the tool it is. Setting apart magic that has no harmful effects like healing magic, and it does if anyone wondered, a fire spell is a staple of this end of the spectrum. Nobody would classify a fireball as an universally evil magic. Even if they can't understand how it was cast, everyone knows what fire is and what it is supposed to do. Go to the other side and look at mind magic and soul magic. These are the classic evil magics. The mundane has no idea how it works and it terrifies them.
All in all, the enemy of magic is ignorance.
Excerpt from the Yutis Royal Academy inauguration speech given by Archmage Astromelicus, headmaster.
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After their little accident, Pearl retreated to her room. She seemed distressed but the maids just shrugged. It seems she lost some coordination as yet another side effect of the summon and she will be back on her feet soon enough.
Dawn and Sora decided to follow suit and leave the common room after eating their fill.
Aidan was appalled with what Shinji did. He took a whole week to merge the spells, but Shinji not only learned the spell in the blink of an eye but also improved it.
"Sora, can you imagine the destruction those otherworlders can cause if they get inside the restricted library of the academy?"
"But those Skill Points should be limited. He said 'since it is important', remember."
"I hope you are right."
"But how are you after he used the spell?"
"Checking right now." Dawn touched her solar plexus and drew the glyphs in the air.
"Soul Reveal."
Once again the half of a man showed in the image, the four orbs the same. However, the holes seemed smaller and the wisps of energy trailing off into nothing were fewer.
"I feel better. By his measurements, Shinji used a quarter of the maximum amount of my mana pool to heal my soul this much. I think it is a little less than the amount of energy left in the circle. I have high hopes for this, Sora."
"How should I help, your Highness?"
She was wary of someone spying on them. Dawn rang the bell and Deb appeared almost instantly. One could wonder if she was glued to the door.
"Have the servants bring the boy to the ritual room." He commanded.
"As you will, milady." Deb bowed and left.
While Aidan's body didn't arrive Dawn and Sora went to the ritual room first to raise a privacy ward and check the circle once again. Another reason he charged it before going down for embarrassment and a meal was to avoid tampering. If anyone tampered with a magic circle powered by this much mana the resulting explosion would kill anyone nearby. Or at least make a big noise.
After his boy body arrived, he had Sora prepare his body while he charged the circle once more with half his mana pool. Aidan then drank one of Shinji's MP potions to cap his mana. Cherry flavored.
'Even their potions don't taste like shit', something inside Aidan stirred with indignation.
"Can you explain to me why you believe it is impossible to put Lumina back in her body?" Sora asked to break the tension. Aidan loved to go on professor mode and overexplain things. She knew that giving a lecture about his situation would help his psyche.
"The soul fragment I put in Lumina's body was a placeholder. It was never meant to grow this much. But her body was completely destroyed, and because the side-effect of Undying Resilience is a reduction on healing effects, it took that long to restore it. As the body healed, it slowly pulled on the resident soul to match its shape. This is the same effect some theories say the infant body goes through while growing in the mother's womb. But as the soul was kneaded along the body into its shape, it also fused.
"Maybe this method can be used to create artificial lifeforms or chimeras." Sora creased her eyebrows in an 'oh, really?' way "I won't, don't worry. I got my fill of dark magic already...
"But to sum it up, my soul grew into this body and fused with it as if I was born in it. In a way, that is what happened. And now the same was supposed to happen on the other side, but at the same time, the Undying Resilience was drawing its sustenance from our combined energies. Now we must repair my other side before it is too late."
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Sora could only hold back her feelings and give the other girl a tight hug. A couple of tears escaped but she had enough crying the last days.
"I am here for you." She reassured him with a whisper.
"Thanks." They separated and Dawn approached Aidan's body. "And now the moment of truth. I'm scared, Sora."
"Whatever is meant to be will be. Go ahead."
Dawn touched the boy's chest and drew the glyphs once more.
"Soul Reveal!"
And despaired.
An image representing the soul in his true body appeared surrounded by the orbs of Aidan's elements, a bit less defined than the others. The image had two sides of different colors. One brown representing himself, half a person, worse than what he first saw inside Lumina's body. It was mangled, full of holes, undefined. A wretched display of a human being. There was almost no glow. It oozed and dripped brown motes of energy. Between the image floating over Aidan's male body and the image in front of Lumina's body a thin thread of brown linked both.
The other half was barely recognizable as female, golden in color but without luster or shine. It had no legs or arms, the head was missing most of it, only the mouth and the lower part of the left ear, a hole where the rest should be. A big hole where the heart should be and the abdomen was open, the inside exposed the lack of everything. It looked broken and wounded, gashes running around the golden surface revealing blackness beneath. Around her the faint silhouettes of other orbs than Aidan's, barely noticeable and without any light.
They seemed irrevocably jumbled together, a travesty of a human figure. The half that was inside Lumina's body was way better than these two fragments together. But one thing was certain. The golden part was not enough to sustain a living body.
"Lumina!"
Dawn shouted and reached for the image. His fingers went through, it was but a figment. The real soul was inside the body, rotting and fading.
Sora didn't know what to say. She bit the bridge of her thumb hard to avoid screaming.
They stood there gaze locked in the dread effigy for a while.
"Is this all that is left of Lumina?" Sora finally got the courage to ask.
"This body is dying, Sora. If we do nothing, I am going to die." Dawn's hands and voice were trembling. "Get the herbs and other ritual materials. We need to prepare my bodies. "
"Aidan, the incomplete spell, the one from your dream. Do you think if you..." She missed the courage to finish her sentence.
'If I finished that spell?' Aidan was not confident he could finish a seventh or eight circle spell in a decade, much less test and correct flaws in something that is meant to rip apart the caster's own soul. That is the province of the madmen and the desperate. He was the latter once, but no more gambling with his life.
"No, Sora. We need to act now. I think Lumina is lost, but there may be hope that her fragments may live as part of me. I know I will be in her body for the rest of my life and I vow to care and cherish for it. I owe her this much."
"Yes." She knew that Aidan would not be speaking in such dire terms if there was any hope of fixing it. In fact, she cared little for Lumina because all the bullying they suffered, but it was a burden she didn't want for Aidan. Being the princess.
"Put the body in its designated place. Help me undress me and while you apply the catalysts to him I'll do the same on this one. Clothes interfere with the delicate flow of energies."
Sora undressed Aidan's body and after drawing the diagrams with the catalyst made of herbs and other materials carried it to the center of the ritual circle. Dawn also took off her clothes and after applying the same mixture on herself walked naked to the center. They placed Aidan's body sitting on the ground and Dawn sat right in front of it, legs crisscrossed and torsos joined.
After making sure it wouldn't fall backward, Sora retreated to a corner of the room.
Dawn began the long chant to cast the ritual form of the spell. She drew glyphs on his male body's back with mana. The circle's glow increased and shone inside the room. Aidan kept carefully following the steps of the ritual for his own sake and the princess.
And then dumped little by little his entire mana pool into the ritual circle. Aidan lost track of time.
"Soul Restoration!"
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Aidan opened his eyes and got dizzy. He was seeing walls, walls spinning, Sora, Lumina and Aidan himself. He could barely think in that dimly lit room, the energy and glow of the ritual circle gone, the materials spent and the drawings erased. Sora was talking, touching him. Touching her. It felt like he was deep underwater. Sluggish, slurry. He moved a hand and felt the hand grazing his skin. He closed his eyes and focused on the sound.
He felt exhausted. His mana was extremly low and his body felt like he had run for days.
"Aidan! Dawn! Talk to me!"
Eyes still closed, he assessed his body. He could feel his legs, his hands. He could feel his head pressed against his left breast, the stubble of a beard pricking his delicate skin and his legs passing over his legs. He could feel his hands holding his back and his hands just lying to the sides. He moved them and touched himself.
"Aidan? What are you doing?" His hearing improved a little.
"I am only checking myself, Sora. To see if the spell worked. But I am very confused. I can't think right. And my voice is strange."
"The spell worked," said the beastkin. "I can see your male body moving."
"And what about Dawn?"
"She just does the same thing you do and speaks the same thing you do."
"What?" He couldn't formulate coherent thoughts. His mind drifted, overstimulated by sensory input. It was worse if he opened his eyes soo he shut them.
Aidan couldn't fathom what was going on. He pinched Lumina's mouth, he pinched his mouth. And he spoke even though his mouth was pinched.
"Better like this?"
"Aidan, please raise your right hand." He did. "Please raise your left hand." He did.
"Sora, what is going on?" He spoke with drowsiness.
"I think it is better for you to sleep and recover your energies. You spent ten hours doing this ritual, it is almost morning. But I have a hunch about what happened, don't worry. Sleep."
Comforted by the deep trust in his companion, he did as she asked.
Aidan let himself drift off into sleep.