Jeb, like the rest of his class, left the room feeling dissatisfied at the end of the day. No matter how carefully they phrased their questions, Dean Aquam did not answer them. It did not matter how pointed they were, either. All that their Professor was willing to say is that the Ritual manifested a fraction of the soul.
Why, exactly, their souls had immediately taken the form of different animals and started fighting was left as a question for them to answer on their own. The students in the course, of course, worked with each other as soon as they had finished eating. Jeb, along with the two people he had chatted with before class began, went to the Library. When he walked directly past the help desk, however, he noticed that the other two were not following him.
“Where are you going?” the male student asked.
Jeb looked around, unsure what they were asking. “The Stacks are in this direction,” he said.
“Right,” Steven, Jeb finally remembered his name, replied, nodding slowly.
The two stared at each other in silent impasse. Out of the corner of his eye, Jeb noticed that Kaitlyn had started gathering the other Librarians. What, exactly, they were watching for, he was unsure.
“Jeb,” Amelia broke in, “are you trying to say that you use the Stacks on your own?”
Understanding dawned on Jeb. Spending time in the Stacks had become so normal to him that he had forgotten that not everyone felt so comfortable in the constantly shifting towers of knowledge. The reason for the Librarians gathering had become equally clear. As he looked, he saw small notes passing between them. The meaning behind those remained opaque to Jeb.
“So,” Jeb said, trying to sound as casual as he had been a few moments before, “are you two comfortable coming into the Stacks with me, or would you rather we split up to each look for books ourselves?”
Steven’s eyes widened slightly. “Are those the two most reasonable options to you?” he asked, voice more than a little incredulous.
Jeb furrowed his brows, tracing other potential routes. “I cannot think of anything better,” he said after a few moments. “Do you have a better idea?”
His classmates shrugged and split off to go to the help desk. Jeb kept walking to the Stacks, confused by the slight clinking sounds that came from the catalogue of Librarians. He resisted the urge to turn around, concerned that Amelia and Steven might read it as hesitation to enter the Stacks.
Inside the Stacks, Jeb started wandering somewhat aimlessly, trusting the vague feeling in his gut to lead him towards the right section of books. After a few hours of searching, he let out an involuntary yawn. There was a chance that he had missed some aside in one of the books he hadn’t opened, but Jeb thought it was unlikely. Half a dozen treatises on souls, five on Ritual, and a full dozen on the intersection of the two had not yielded anything useful.
Well, that was not entirely accurate or fair, Jeb corrected himself. He had seen more than a few references to the way that Bound objects could be called to the Binder with the appropriate Ritual. Three of the books referred to it as a well known fact, a baker’s dozen had referred to it as a myth. Six of them referenced their claim from the same treatise, which was the last one that Jeb had been able to find.
As he cracked open the tome, he reminded himself not to be too hopeful. There were so many times that a citation only turned up an unsubstantiated claim, and Jeb had no doubt that this occasion would be no different. Flipping through its thin pages, he sighed. There was not a single Ritual described in sufficient detail for him to recreate it, only mentions of their effects and where the author had allegedly seen them performed.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
Just before he gave up, he found the section titled “Rituals and Bindings.” Unlike the other portions of the book, which were more travelogue than Ritual, this section seemed to be entirely novel research. Jeb still did not know enough about Ritual Magic to construct the Ritual from the information on the page, but he felt confident that Dean Aquam would be able to. The brief wave of nausea at the idea of creating a new Magic again that pulsed through him stopped Jeb from taking the book directly to the Dean’s office. Instead, he set it on his desk, making a note to himself that he should face his fears eventually. Realizing that he had forgotten about his classmates, Jeb hurried back to the Library’s entrance.
Neither of his classmates had found anything more useful, however. The next morning, the whole class gathered together to discuss what they had found the previous night. When Dean Aquam came in, he was immediately bombarded with questions from every member of the course at once. He ignored them, instead going directly into the day’s lesson: reading Ritual notation. By the end of the day, Jeb had started to believe that he could construct a Ritual from the information within the book. The strange symbols all over the page had meaning, to his slight surprise. He had honestly just thought that they were doodles from some previous reader.
As the semester continued, Jeb learned more and more about Ritual Magic. The class never did manage to get an answer as to what, exactly, the soul Ritual had done, and unlike the other Rituals they learned in the course, the Dean did not have them repeat it. By the time that the term ended, Jeb had come to terms with his trauma related to the farm. His healing was aided immensely by the fact that the land was no longer barred from him, even if he was still told that it was dangerous to spend long amounts of time there. There were apparently Rituals, Enchantments, and Alchemicals that could help speed the healing even more, but Jeb had been told in no uncertain terms that he would not be the one to craft them.
When the term break began, Jeb waited for Dean Aquam to set up a meeting to plan his next term. After a few days of waiting, however, he sought the Dean out himself.
“Good morning Jeb,” Dean Aquam said when he knocked on the door. “How can I help you today?”
“Do I not need to set up my schedule for next term?” Jeb asked.
Dean Aquam looked at him with no small amount of confusion. “Every course you enrolled in last term was a two term course. I suppose that you could drop one of them if you really wish to, though I cannot imagine why you would.”
“Oh,” Jeb replied. A smile growing on his face, he continued, “so that means we have another term to convince you to tell us what happened in the soul Ritual?”
Dean Aquam chuckled slightly. “If you are willing to keep it secret,” he prompted, which caused Jeb to nod vigorously, “I will explain the Ritual in full at the end of the second term of the course.”
Seeing Jeb’s look of surprise, he continued, “we will even repeat the Ritual, though I have not yet decided whether we will do so before or after I explain how it works.”
Jeb sat with that for a few minutes. “While I’m here,” he finally said, “I was wondering if you would be willing to help me with another project.”
“Oh?” Dean Aquam asked, attention suddenly fixing on Jeb. Jeb felt reminded once again of how much water was inside of him. It was not a pleasant feeling, even if it was far better than being reminded of the earth beneath his feet.
After a long moment, Dean Aquam nodded. “What is the project?”
Jeb pulled the tome out of his sack. “This book describes a solo Ritual which would call a Bound object to me.”
Dean Aquam glanced at the page, nodding. “Hmm,” he murmured, “I thought that I had asked the Librarians not to distribute this book to students without my approval.”
“They didn’t,” Jeb responded.
Aquam looked up, eyes sharp.
Jeb swallowed and continued, “I found it in the Stacks on the first night that the class was all searching for information about the Ritual we did.”
The Dean’s expression calmed. “I suppose that makes sense. Is the project performing this Ritual?”
Jeb bobbed his head back and forth, debating how best to answer. “Yes and no,” he hedged. “I would be interested in learning this Ritual, if only because it would be fun to never be more than a dance away from my lute. However, I really want to know if I can use the Ritual in reverse.”
The Dean’s eyes widened in realization. “Did you leave something Bound to yourself behind at your home?”
Jeb nodded.
“I cannot promise that it will be possible, and I can almost guarantee that it will take at least a few terms of work, but I do believe that this project has merit.”
“Is it-” Jeb began, but Aquam cut him off.
“This is far safer than the other experimentation you have done. It is not without any risks, but I will be constantly on watch for them.”
“Thank you,” Jeb replied, flushing slightly. A part of him still grated at the fact that he needed to be coddled like this, even as the rest of him was grateful for the Dean. Before leaving, he and Dean Aquam caught up on what else had happened to Jeb in the previous term.