When Dean Aquam made it back to the Academy, he sent Jeb a note asking him to meet as soon as possible. Jeb shrugged, set down the book on Glyph Magic he was reading, and went to the Dean’s office.
“Jeb,” Dean Aquam began as soon as Jeb entered the room, “does your hometown,” he looked down at his notes, “Humdrumville, have any legends of Magical creatures?”
Jeb cocked his head. “None that I have heard of,” he replied. Before he could continue, Aquam asked another question.
“Do you know of anyone who has received a Quest related to Magical creatures?”
Jeb’s heart sank. A part of him had truly hoped that he would be able to pretend that he had never gotten the Major Quest. His time at the Academy was clearly coming to an end. “Umm,” he began, and Dean Aquam pounced on the hesitation.
“What was the Quest?” he demanded, tone ice cold.
“When I became a Classholder,” Jeb said slowly, “I was given a Major Quest to kill the Dragon of the East.”
Dean Aquam sighed, collapsing into his seat. “I do not suppose that the Dragon was a metaphor for some sort of swarm,” he half mumbled.
“I don’t think so,” Jeb replied, “the Quest and Paragons made it seem like a literal Dragon. The reading that I did afterwards suggested the same thing. Why do you ask, though?”
Aquam took a moment to respond to the question. “I suppose that there is no reason,” he answered, then under his breath continued, “they have not actually caused any harm as yet.”
The two sat in silence for a long moment before Aquam cleared his throat. “Enough about that. How has your work on the Ritual progressed?”
“On the bright side,” Jeb began, “I have managed to figure out the steps of the Ritual, and I understand why it only requires a single person.”
“And on the less bright side?” Aquam prompted, a hint of his generally affable demeanor slipping back in.
“I think that I need to somewhat split my soul,” Jeb said, “and while trying to do so, I felt something tear inside of me.”
Aquam nodded, lightness once again leaving his eyes. “That is a common enough occurrence. Please tell me that you at least took a break after feeling the tear?”
Jeb nodded.
“What Primer were you following to learn how to separate your soul?” Dean Aquam asked.
Jeb grimaced. “I didn’t see anything about it in the Ritual book, so I assumed that it was just something I was supposed to figure out on my own.”
Aquam put his head in his hands and let out a long sigh. “I told the Headmistress that something like this would happen,” he muttered, so quietly that Jeb almost missed it. “Ask Philip or Margaret for a Primer.”
“Yes sir,” Jeb replied. Aquam spent a few more minutes slowly defrosting and asking Jeb general life questions. When their conversation finished, Jeb returned to the Stacks and saw that Margaret had apparently already left him a Primer. Opening the cover, though, Jeb realized that it was the tome that had disappeared on him during his research, “Rituals of Domination and Power”. He set it aside and walked away, expecting it to disappear.
After wandering through the Stacks for a full bell, Jeb gave up on trying to find one of the Librarians. He returned to his desk and saw that the book was still there, giving off a menacing energy. As he approached it, the tome opened to a section whose title was simply “Souls.” Repressing the urge to slam the book shut and give up on the entire Ritual, Jeb started to read.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Every word on the page seemed to burrow into his mind as he read it. The chapter began by claiming that Soul Magic was the most powerful School for a young Mage. Even as he tried to skim the introduction, Jeb found that he had a perfect recollection of each word and exactly what the author meant by it. A few pages in, he found exercises to help with soul bilocation. The book still made Jeb’s skin crawl, but he could not deny that the information within it was both informative and helpful. Not only did it explain what it meant for his soul to bilocate, but it went on to describe a number of methods for healing it more quickly in the event of a small tear.
Jeb stopped reading after the third detailed exsanguination was described. Even if it was the slowest method of healing his soul, working on a Skill that he enjoyed was the only method the book described that he felt comfortable with. Closing his eyes, Jeb found the metaphorical muscle he had strained a few days before. It seemed healed, and he started stretching it as the book advised.
The book advised thinking of the part of his soul as a string. When it pulled fully taut, Jeb was supposed to grasp for more fiber from the ether around him and use it to continue lengthening the thread. Even though it was generally filled with information, the tome was shockingly sparse on describing how Jeb would know when he had finished with bilocation. The thread kept growing, inch by excruciating inch, until Jeb suddenly felt his lute. Even though it was in his room, Jeb felt as though his lute was right there with him.
Jeb sat up, hardly noticing that he had lain down with the book open on his chest while Meditating, and ran to his room. After quickly picking up his lute, he rushed to his field and set the lute down in the center of the circle. Delving deeply into himself, Jeb found the string of his soul and carefully tied it around the lute, acting more on instinct than anything else. When he finished tying the knot, the thread seemed to melt into itself, and Jeb could feel himself both at the lute and in his own feet.
It was more than a little awkward dancing, shaping the magic with his movement, and controlling the Ritual from the lute position, but Jeb felt his ability improve with each pass of the dance. As the first rays of dawn broke the horizon, Jeb completed the Ritual. The lute appeared in his hand. How, exactly, it had covered the intervening space, Jeb was unsure.
Setting it down, he opened the book of Ritual Magic back up. If he always had to have the lute in the middle of the circle he danced, it would not be particularly useful for summoning to him. Looking at the book, Jeb found a new page where he was certain that there hadn’t been before. It described how, once the Ritual was completed a single time, the dancer would be able to summon any Bound object by following a second Ritual. Shrugging, Jeb set the lute down and decided to try it out.
The new Ritual was far faster and easier, requiring only twenty seconds of movement. When Jeb finished dancing in a small circle, he felt the leash he had made around his lute suddenly flare into existence for a moment, and then the lute was in his hands. Jeb was tempted to try summoning one of his bees, but worried about the fact that he had no way to send them back once they appeared in front of him. Turning back to the first Ritual, Jeb noticed that there was now a commentary describing how the Ritual had been constructed.
Jeb slung his lute over his shoulder and retreated to the Stacks to continue researching. When “Rituals of Domination and Power” was gone from his desk, he did not mind in the slightest. Jeb set the Ritual book down and began taking notes on what each step in the dance did.
To his surprise, the Ritual did not cause the teleportation. What it did, apparently, was split his soul and teach it to connect to other objects. It was apparently common for High Tier Mages to spar with each other by setting their souls in opposition over an object. The Ritual ended with the Summoning Ritual that he had found on the next page, however.
Jeb turned to it, hoping that it would be as well annotated. To his disappointment, however, the Ritual remained a list of directions. Jeb dug into his soul and found his Magic Skill ready to work. He focused on it and the Ritual, trying to tease apart exactly what had happened in the teleportation.
Bells tolled as Jeb worked, though he did not hear them. When he reached over to grab a new sheet of paper for notes, only to find the wood of the desk, Jeb frowned. He knew that he had set plenty of pages down for note taking. Looking at the desk, however, Jeb realized that he had been working for far longer than he had intended.
A veritable tome of unbound pages sat in front of him. It described the flow of Magic through the entire teleportation Ritual, along with diagrams showing the places where it stopped behaving as something physical. Jeb stood up, vision disappearing for a moment as he realized that he had not eaten, drunk, or slept in likely days. After a quick trip to the cafeteria, Jeb returned to his room, set the lute gingerly in its case, and collapsed in his bed.
Jeb dreamed.
Jeb dreamed of music.
Jeb dreamed of power.