It had been a week since a couple of students had accidentally combined two creatures into one with spirit magick, and Namu had to help Mr. Vero separate them. Mr. Vero usually didn’t need Namu’s help with things like that, but that incident had been such a mess that he needed some assistance.
The image was still burned into Namu’s brain. It was something Mr. Vero had apparently regretfully seen on various occasions, but it had been a first for Namu and one he never wanted to see again.
After they had separated the two souls, Namu and Mr. Vero had dove into research on combining two living things in general at Namu’s request. That research had consumed him, more than his school work and the door. It was taking everything to hold himself together, especially when he felt he was close to possibly being whole again. If only he could wrap his head around being combined with an animal spirit.
They had found in their research that the animal had to be on the brink of death but still have the want to stay alive for it to possibly work. The animal needed to have will power and be willing to bestow their soul on someone who hadn’t been responsible for setting it on the path to death.
Namu wasn’t manipulative or conniving. He couldn’t kill an animal for his own gain, even if it resulted in him becoming whole again.
And the chances of them running into some animal like that, on the edge of death, especially in the school, was slim. And he didn’t have time to scour the woods constantly and have all the materials he needed ready, along with Mr. Vero, to do the spell.
Not only that, but what if it was some magickal creature that they ran into that did not mesh with his soul, or the animal had a conflicting reaction to him? Or what if their spirit was too big to fit? Although Mr. Vero had said that he knew symbols and runes used together that could condense a spirit’s form and make it smaller….
Still… The chances. All of it was just chances. And no hope.
Ugh! He was so frustrated.
“Man, I feel the anger steaming off you,” Lily said, taking a bite of their cucumber sandwich. “Why aren’t you eating?”
Namu pushed his tray away where his hamburger sat with a single angry bite taken out of it. “I’m not hungry.”
“Worried about the exam again?” Lily fished.
“Of course.”
Dropping their sandwich, Lily put their hands up. “Hey. Just asking. I’m worried about you, and I just don’t get it. This last week, you have been more than distracted. You are barely even talking to me anymore.”
“I’m just busy, Lily….”
“With an exam… an exam for an apprenticeship in a magickal division? When you didn’t even want to come to a magickal school? You wanted to be a construction worker like your dad, Namu! Maybe even own your own company one day. Do something like that, and I’ll fund you.”
Lily would fund him? They would give him money to get him to stop trying to heal himself? No. That wasn’t fair. They didn’t know. They didn’t understand what he was doing. But couldn’t they just back off?
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“Lily, I appreciate it! I do. But just let me do what’s best for me. Please! I know what I need.”
“You know what’s best for you? Are you serious? You’re falling apart!”
“I’m working on putting myself back together!”
“If you were doing that, you would be following your dream.”
“If you wanted me to follow my dream so bad, why did you let me come here?”
It took a moment for his hazy vision to clear and for him to see that Lily was breathing heavily in the silence.
Finally, Lily answered, “Honestly, I didn’t want to be alone, and I didn’t want to lose our friendship. But seriously, I thought maybe it could give you a one-up in the construction world if you learned something on this side. If you pushed yourself a little more. Got a little uncomfortable.” They shrugged, then got up, pushing their chair back with their thighs. “Prove yourself, and I’ll give you the money you need to help your dreams come true, Namu. By then, hopefully, I’ll have proven myself too.”
“I am not a charity case!” Namu yelled as Lily walked away.
He was sick of feeling like he was wasting everyone’s time, including his own. He was sick of not knowing what the right thing to do was.
With a big sigh, he got up and threw the rest of his food away before putting his tray on the belt. The last person he wanted to see again was Mr. Vero but he didn’t know where else to go or what else to do.
He walked himself to Mr. Vero’s classroom to see if he was there. He opened the door without knocking or caring if it was locked.
It wasn’t.
Mr. Vero jumped and then narrowed his eyes at Namu with a shake of his head. “You wouldn’t think so, but I do enjoy my privacy, Namu.”
Namu shut the door. Mr. Vero was standing at a long black desk with a cauldron that had the symbol of heat written on it with chalk. There was a liquid bubbling inside. Namu couldn’t see the color because of the cauldron’s dark walls.
“Did you have any close friends?” Namu asked Mr. Vero who rubbed the symbol off the cauldron with his long dark sleeve.
“After the incident? Of course not.”
Mr. Vero went to a cabinet. The clinking of small glass vials pierced through the silence. He brought them to the desk.
“If you are going to interrupt me, why don’t you help?” Mr. Vero walked to the other side of the room and pulled out a small white-speckled ladle made of granite. A nonporous rock so it wouldn’t absorb what was needed to be transferred from the cauldron to the glass vials. He handed it to Namu.
Namu picked up one of the flat-bottomed vials and dipped the ladle into the warm mixture. He poured it carefully into the vial, which he learned to do in Transformation Drinks and Remedies. The liquid was a thin purple.
It was an astral-transformation spell.
Mr. Vero was gathering the supplies he had used to make it and putting them away in the same cabinet he had taken out the vials. Namu caught a glimpse of Alteress powder, an ultra-fine golden powder that teachers treated like gold.
Namu poured another spoonful into a vial. “Why are you making these?”
“I want to introduce my students to the theory of spirit altering with a focus on transfiguration at the beginning of this year. I know they will learn how to make an astral-transformation spell in Transformation Drinks and Remedies Three. But I want them to feel how it displaces the soul and how hard or long it may take a soul to mold itself back into its original form, if it can do so completely at all. I figured doing an astral transformation spell is easier and quicker than the students turning into animals. Also, a little less annoying.”
Namu didn’t know about that. If he was a teacher, he would be annoyed if there were a bunch of mists floating around the room. But he would probably be annoyed with anything. It was smart though to have the students test that within themselves so they knew what they were comfortable with or how much their soul could take on before attempting too much. Namu had done an astral transformation spell before with Mr. Vero. It was the least invasive, although maybe the most disorientating. The soul felt a little out of place afterwards, but it wasn’t that bad. It reminded Namu of when he had been on a boat all day and still felt the movement of the water beneath him even when he was on land. It took a while, but that feeling always faded.
It was his belief that after transforming into something else, a soul could completely fix itself back into its original form, but it all depended on the person. If the soul or person was strong enough.
And if the transformation didn’t tear a soul apart.