Azura Was quite pleased. He had already gone to all of the classes for the day, and he had fully recovered from his battle with Kaiser. The prize was a little different than he was expecting though. Katy must be seething about it. He chuckled, she never did much like reading. Even he was a little unsure about this particular book. It had a few useful tips and tricks for magic, but it mostly just seemed like a fairy tail. Albeit one much darker than what would typically be told to children.
The story was of a girl that was crushed by the pressure placed on her by each person she saved, and even more by each person she failed to save. It was a loop of self destruction that could only have 1 possible end. Yet oddly enough the book seemed to end halfway through the story. Just as the weight began to overwhelm the protagonist the book abruptly ends. The book had no title, and he hadn’t been able to find anything out about it at the library. Despite his complete lack of evidence, he couldn’t help but feel like the book was important somehow.
He eventually decided that re-reading the book over and over wasn’t going to yield him any new results and put it away. He checked the time, and sighed. He still had another 2 hours before the others were finished with their courses for the day. Now what should he do in the meantime. Well he had been meaning to deepen his recently acquired contract, and now would probably be a good time for that. He sat down in the middle of his room with crossed legs.
He let his mana flow, and focused on the subtle connection he could feel from his spirit contract. It didn’t take long before he was once more in a familiar forest, with the majestic wolf spirit standing in front of him. “Hello again little one. If I’m being honest I didn’t expect to see you again so soon.” Alaya’s voice was oddly soothing, as if she already knew his news wasn’t good. Not a hard guess for an ancient spirit probably.
“I probably wouldn’t have tried for a while yet, but things didn’t exactly go to plan, and I was wondering if you might be able to help?” It was a long shot really, but if he could find some way to make it so this contract couldn’t be severed then his time limit for finding a way to protect his sister would go way up. Not that he was any closer to an idea on how to prevent his father from offering her hand. Protecting her from hundreds of power hungry nobles from various kingdoms would be impossible. No matter how much he thought about it or how optimistic he was about his power growth in that time frame, there was just no viable way to do it.
“Of course I have no intention of refusing you aid, but what is it that you would need my help for? Unfortunately spirits have many rules about limiting our interference with the physical world.” He almost chuckled, but didn’t want to risk offending the giant wolf spirit. If she could interfere with the natural world without any consequences, then he would have just asked her to attack anyone that went for his sister. Alaya had more than enough power for a task like that.
“I know that, I came to ask if you knew of a way to protect our contract? My father intends to dissolve it, and while it will take him some time to gather the materials I have no doubt that he will. He has something dear to me hostage, so I will have to play along, but if the contract doesn’t break even if I do everything he asks of me then he can’t blame me for it.” It would be a thin defense, his father would of course know that he did something. But his father wouldn’t act on it, a threat only holds value before it’s been enacted, and while he knew that his father would make good on his threat if he ever outright disobeyed the man, his father wasn’t petty enough to lose his leverage over something like that.
“I see. Hmmm there is one way I know, but you are not yet ready for such a thing. Alaya closed her eyes, and stilled. He couldn’t tell if she was actively doing something or just thinking. “Yet I swore to help you if I could.” A sigh was released from the spirit. “Very well, your attunement to the spirit world is excellent, but in order to accomplish what you ask you will need more than that. You will need a tether, a line that will bind you to both the natural world and the spirit world. If the ritual is attempted without proper binding you will be lost in the in between.”
He shivered. The in between was a rather popular research topic. The spirits knew a lot more about it than the humans did, or at least they claimed to. How they could know so much when it was claimed that nothing has ever returned from the in between he didn’t know. According to the spirits though the in between was… not a pleasant place to say the least. “Well I’d rather not end up there, so how do I go about making this tether?”
He suddenly got the feeling Alaya wasn’t particularly happy with this topic. Not angry but.. worried? He had a bad feeling he was going to like the answer even less than she did. “There are few places one could go to form such a tether, and I’m afraid the only one you’d be able to successfully form a tether at is the most dangerous.” He wasn’t surprised, that was par for the course in his life. “The pool of rebirth at world’s end. It will grant you what you seek, but be warned power always comes with a cost. You will be lucky if that cost is just the blood spilled along the way to your destination.”
Well that was ominous. He went to thank the spirit for her assistance, but before he could he found himself once more sitting on his floor. He sighed and laid on his back in the middle of his room. He sighed. World’s end was deep in the wild lands, and it was surrounded by dangerous predators. His usual habit of researching everything that interested him was coming in really handy right now, because now he knew what Alaya had meant when she said a tether. Everyone knew of sacred springs. Each pool was said to cleanse a different sin.
Humility cleanses pride, frugality cleanses greed, restraint cleanses gluttony, will cleanses sloth, satisfaction cleanses envy, control cleanses lust, and serenity cleanses wrath. Each pool was in sacred grounds dotted throughout the world, but there was 1 spring very few dared to wade through. The spring at World’s end was not only extremely dangerous, but the pool of rebirth didn’t work like the others. Supposedly it cleansed one of darkness in all of its forms. He now knew the cost Alaya warned him about. According to legend if one steeped in darkness stepped into the pool the cleansing would leave them with nothing left. An empty husk without any will of its own.
It was well documented that if people bathed in the pool best suited for them they came out different. Better and stronger, usually with a new lease on life. Of course the only spring that could cause death of the spirit was the one that would be his match. Not to say the others were without consequence if the person who went through them wasn’t worthy, but the consequences were much less severe. He really shouldn’t be surprised.
Oddly enough his biggest concern wasn’t even the dangers of the pool, not much point worrying about that when even reaching it was unlikely. No magic vehicles would go out that far, they were incredibly expensive and the amount of monsters out there would be more than enough to down even the toughest of vehicles. If he was lucky he could charter a ride to the halfway point. After that the rest would have to be done on foot. Which would take at least a month, even if he kept a good pace. Of course after that assuming he survived the trip and the cleansing he’d still have to make it all the way back.
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On top of all that he would of course be missing several months worth of classes. Even if he took a major risk and left 2 copies here to insure he could still do every class, there was still the fact that they didn’t regenerate mana naturally, so they would have to conserve it since meditating to regain mana was rather time consuming and not something they could do while moving or focusing on anything else. Of course that would also limit him to only 2 copies in the field, and 2 copies could very easily be the difference between life and death.
The worst part would be that his friends would all volunteer to come with him, but he couldn’t let them. Not because he didn’t think they could help, their presence would be a major boon, but rather because they had worked their asses off to make it into the academy, and he couldn’t be the reason they missed out on months of their education. They deserved better than to risk their dreams to help him with a problem he caused himself because he didn’t want to be under his father’s rule anymore.
They wouldn’t accept that answer though, and they would never let him live it down if he just snuck away. At least it would seem even if he hadn’t realized it till just then he had already decided to go. Since the question on whether or not it was worth it never even entered his mind.He decided to put planning on hold for the moment. He wouldn’t be leaving right away anyway. He didn’t want to take too long, but it was best to give it a month or 2 at least. He had lots of preparations to make after all.
***
“I still can’t believe the prize was a stupid book.” Katy whined, waving said book around as she complained. “I mean if it was at least a book that taught some cool spells I’d at least understand, but it’s some stupid fairy tale.” Her only consolation was that she hadn’t really worked very hard to get it. She was surprised Azura wasn’t upset, she had heard the story after the fact, and it sounded like he went through a lot only for the prize to be some stupid book that according to him wasn’t even properly finished. Not that she had actually read it but still.
“It is a rather unusual choice. I thought it would be something extremely valuable to motivate people to participate despite how overwhelming the odds. I don’t really care much for the reward though, I had plenty of fun in this last one!” She scowled of course Roran didn’t care about the reward, but most people did. She knew she wasn’t feeling very motivated to participate in the next one.
“It’s actually probably the opposite. They want to see who actually cares enough about improvement to put the work in. We came here to learn and get stronger not to win a few random prizes.” She winced. Azura as usual had a point. The prize shouldn’t really matter, the real prize is the experience. Or at least that’s the school’s view on it. It made sense, but that didn’t mean she had to like it. “Although I’m still convinced the book holds some significance. They gave all of us the same one. If it didn’t matter, wouldn't they have given us all different ones? Especially considering this book isn’t mass produced.”
She rolled her eyes. She was convinced Azura was overthinking it, but once he got an idea in his head it was like a dog with a bone. “Not everything is a secret clue. It’s probably like you said the prize is just something stupid so they can see who stops coming to the events when they find out the prizes are crap.” He hummed in acknowledgement, but she could see he was still unconvinced. Although now that she was looking closer at him she noticed something she hadn’t before. Her ear twitched as it became clear that Azura was nervous about something. Her eyes shifted into a concerned look. “Hey are you ok?”
He chuckled half heartedly. “Yes and no. Nothing wrong at the moment, but something is going to come up pretty soon, and I’m still debating on how exactly I want to handle it.” He didn’t tell them what was wrong, but he admitted something was wrong, and that was a pretty big step for him.
“Well let us know if we can help, we owe you at least that much.” Luna beat her to it, but she nodded along with everyone else agreeing to the sentiment. Azura smiled at them and nodded. Her concern only grew. She had spent enough time with him to know the difference between his fake smile and his real one. Whatever this problem he was going to have was he specifically didn’t want them involved. Which made her even more worried, because Azura usually made a point of forcing himself to accept help just to be different from his father.
“On another note, what did you guys think of that separate enhancement class?! I didn’t even realize it was possible to use enhancement magic on somebody else!” It wasn’t too surprising that Roran was smarter than he let on. He had the most life experience out of any of them, and while he acted like a child most of the time, there were definitely times where his actual maturity shined through.
“It definitely felt odd, having someone else’s mana boosting me feels a lot different than my enchantments doing it. Still it will be an extremely valuable skill going forward.” She had actually rather enjoyed the class. She was pretty good at boosting someone else, but it was way more fun to have someone else boosting her. She had gotten to beat up most of her friends. Except for Luna, she had barely managed a draw against Luna, and even that was mostly just running away until the clock ran out.
“Oh yeah, me and Luna with an extra physical boost are unstoppable.” She stuck out her palm which luna high fived with a chuckle.
Azura rolled his eyes. “Only because I wasn’t allowed to use my enchantments.” He wasn’t even talking about the ones on his body. His weapons only functioned due to a wide array of enchantments on them, and he had needed to change clothes to even participate in the sparring. Just cause it was true doesn’t mean she wasn’t going to tease him for it.
“Oh sure, make your excuses.” His eyes narrowed at her, but to her surprise he didn’t snipe back at her, only getting a relaxed smile on his face. Which she of course knew was way worse. That was his ‘I know something you don’t’ face, and when he was that smug about it she knew whatever he was thinking wasn’t going to be good for her.
“So you’re saying that even if I’d had my weapons and armor it wouldn’t have made a difference right?” Her own eyes narrowed. This trap was too obvious, there was something else. Not for the first time she considered that maybe she should have paid a little bit better attention to some of Azura’s political lessons.
“No I’m saying if you’re using the fact you didn’t have them to excuse the loss.” She was pretty proud of that reply. She didn’t think he’d be able to twist it, and she had only paused for a few seconds to come up with it. She took his raised eyebrow as him being impressed, and pride filled her chest. Only to be immediately followed by dread as the smirk returned to his face. ‘Good, but not good enough.’
“So would you like to try the fight in reverse then? Surely if the loss was deserved regardless of the fact you were armed and I wasn’t then you wouldn’t mind fighting me while you’re unarmed right?” She winced. The worst part was she knew he actually agreed with her, he was always saying the conditions don’t matter, if you lose once find a way to win next time, no matter the fighting conditions. This was just him returning fire for her comments. To be fair she knew there were 2 lessons here. 1 about humility, and the other would come from her accepting his challenge and doing her best with a rather severe handicap.
She sighed. “No but I will, it will be a good learning experience.” His eyes glinting with pride made her feel a lot better about the no doubt humiliating duel she had just agreed to. In terms of physical abilities they were more or less even, but Azura was definitely more versatile in his skillset. Her hand to hand skills weren’t terrible, but they definitely weren’t as good as his, much less his skill with his weapon. She knew he would probably use a regular sword and shield for this spar to make it at least sort of fair, but she was still going to end up with a lot of bruises after.