Jem jolted awake, his body screaming in protest. “Ow. What the fuck Karim?”

Karim shrugged. “Nessa told me to wake you up.”

Jem turned to Nessa, she grinned down at him. “How’s my second favourite idiot doing today? I hear you used your bloodline after I told you not to.”

“I didn’t have any choice–”

Nessa cut him off and listed four different options. “You should have prepared better.”

“I get it. I get it.” Jem curled his fists in frustration. “I’m an idiot. What I did was stupid. But I did it because it was the choice I could make.”

“Whoa, Jem calm down.” Nessa held her hands up placatingly.

“I’m not just sitting around waiting to die. I’m not just some kid that–” Jem tried to push himself upright but his abs screamed in protest “–you need to take pity on and lie to. Everyone thinks I’m going to die anyway.”

Nessa flicked him in the forehead. “How did you get that dumb idea in your thick skull?”

“Well Sebastian Blackthorn said–”

“Sebastian blackthorn–” Nessa cut him off. “–knows nothing. He is basically a child. Just like you.

“What I assume happened is he noticed your attributes make no sense and then lept to the idea you didn’t meet the class requirements. I’m sure the duchess is going to chew him out over oversight.”

Nessa sounded… correct. “That doesn’t explain why you’re treating him like a kid you’re only like ten years older than us.”

“That’s my wife.” Karim leaned in and gave Nessa a kiss. “Doesn’t look a day past 40.”

She shooed him off. “Try 110 years Jem. I'm 140 in three months.”

Jem’s mind churned.

“Wait, Sebastian's 30?”

At that moment Aoife pushed a side door open, a bowl in one hand. “You should know. You’re the one that took out a dossier on him from the library.”

Warmth spread across his face. If my muscles weren’t dead I could at least bury myself. The glee painted across Nessa and Karim’s faces didn’t make it any better. I can’t believe they’re so old.

Before they could comment Jem spoke up. “Can we just skip to healing me already?”

“That brings us to the topic of this little meeting. You’re actually just incredibly weak. Not wounded,” said Nessa.

Karim helped Jem sit up. “All that fun training you’ll have to do.”

“No,” Jem whispered.

“Yes. Now eat this.” Aoife thrust the bowl at Jem.

Wait. Is this? Jem looked down at the bowl of cheesy chips.

“You’ve been hiding fried food from me this whole time?”

“It’s not real noble food Jem.” Karim playfully shoved him. Jem, far too weak to resist, tipped to the side, only to be rescued a moment later by a Karim sporting a sheepish grin.

“What, so we aren’t allowed to eat nice junk food because it's not posh enough?”

Nessa reached forward and swiped one of his chips. “Yeah it does taste nice, sure, but it looks bad for us to eat it.”

“You’re the empress I’m pretty sure they can’t stop you from eating fried food? If you all think so, old age has addled your minds, you’re bonkers.” Jem shook his head and quickly stuffed in another mouthful of chips. “As long as you aren’t hurting people it doesn’t matter how things look.”

“It’s about the game we talked about before. There are rules that we follow. It keeps things safe and consistent.”

Jem groaned and shoved another mouthful in. So it’s fine as long as it’s in private.

“You’re lucky Jem. You can eat fried food with friends while you’re at university because no one will know who you are.” Karim sighed wistfully. “I miss university.”

Nessa swiped another chip. “Let’s just get back on topic. But first, Karim, apologise to Jem.

“Sorry, Jem. I should have paid better attention while you were fighting,” said Karim. He sounded as though he was reading off a sheet of paper.

Before Jem could reply Karim legged it for the outer door.

Bastard.

I wasn’t going to blame you, but you definitely seem to think I should.

When Karim opened the door, wards all around the room shattered into purple light. “Oops.” Then he was gone.

Nessa let out a long-suffering sigh. “Mum please replace the wards.”

Aoife silently got to work.

– – – – – –

Before Aoife reactivated the runes she got another bowl and told him to ‘Eat up’. Jem did as he was told and Nessa and Aoife spent the next twenty minutes reassuring Jem that he would be okay. He tried to wave them off but secretly he was glad because he still felt pretty shaken up.

The cocktail of anger, anxiety, fear and frustration, abated. Hope slowly supplanting it.

If he wanted things to go the best possible way he would have to work hard and avoid slacking, not that he was planning to slack. In the worst-case scenario, a soul mage could scour the class from his being and then he could pick [The Black Spot]. It would just be very very expensive.

“The problem is Jem. I’m not sure if you’re strong enough to attend university now. I don’t think you can walk.” Nessa looked at him with assessing eyes.

“Of course, I can.” Jem grabbed the edge of the blanket and pulled it off. His arms shook with the strain.

“Yeah, no.” Nessa shook her head. “We aren’t out of options. Just ones that you’re going to like.”

“I want to attend. I want to go.” Jem had just been told that his problems were manageable, but that wouldn’t necessarily be true if he started a whole term late.

Nessa pulled a small box out of her pocket. “In the long term, we need you to regain your strength and that will take time. But…”

Nessa paused dramatically. “ … we can try this if you’re up to it.”

She slid the top of the box open and tipped it over. A small metal brooch inscribed with a myriad of tiny runes fell out. She handed it to Jem.

Jem looked it over. “What is it?”

Looking up he saw that Aoife had a concerned look on her face while Nessa had a small grin. “Why don’t you test it out?”

Aoife shot a venomous glare at her daughter. “Jem it will infuse your body with Kol in specific ways to temporarily make it stronger.

“Only its flows won’t be matched to yours.”

“What does that mean exactly?”

Aoife looked conflicted. “The best way to know would be to try it. Though you don’t have to. We can just have you start at university next term instead.”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

Nessa was grinning. She already knew there was no way Jem would give up before he even started. “Hold it against a piece of skin and push some Kol into it. It will take over from there.”

In shaky movements, Jem laid the brooch just under his right collarbone and fed a line of Kol into it. The brooch clung to his chest, attracted like a magnet.

Ten seconds later there was a change. The brooch drew Kol from Jem, by itself, and for just a moment he felt a long winding stream with loops and eddies, a completed circuit wrapping around his limbs and back into the brooch. Then his perception faded. I really need to improve my perception of Kol. Jem added it to his growing mental checklist.

Jem lifted his arms. They neither shook nor wavered and his whole body felt lighter. “What’s the problem, this is ama–”

Stabbing pains erupted in his chest like a dozen ice-cold knives repeatedly plunged in and wrenched out.

Jem clawed at his chest. “I think I’m having a heart attack.”

A moment later the pains disappeared. Leaving as fast as they had come.

“What the fuck was that?” Jem gasped. He looked down at his chest, in the brief moment he’d clawed at his chest his shirt had been torn to pieces and his skin hadn’t fared much better. He’d need to get that healed.

As the thought struck him Aoife’s warm healing magic flowed into him. As it did there were a few momentary stabbing pains from all over his body. But they lacked the ferocity of the previous attack.

“What the hell?”

“Think of it like a set of magical muscles, they need a supply of power so they make a path. Only when that path clashes with the natural flows of your own body–” Nessa gestured at Jem’s chest, a grin plastered on her face. “–there are some side effects.”

Jem glared at her.

“Stop teasing your brother, “Aoife said to Nessa. “Jem, Nessie here instantly begged to remove it the moment she felt it, so I’d say you’re winning already. You don’t ha–”

Jem lost track of Aoife’s sentence as another round of stabbing pains, this time on the inside of his thigh, stole his breath. Jem gritted his teeth and gasped out, “Does. It. Get. Better. At. Least?”

“Nope.”

The pain lasted longer than the last time, but it eventually abated. Fuck you Nessa, you don’t have to sound so smug.

Aoife reached over and squeezed Jem’s calf. “You’re doing well Jem. I’m sure you’ll get used to it.”

Jem wasn’t so sure.

Aoife frowned at Nessa. “Not that I’m sure it’s necessary. I still don’t see why we can’t take him to a flesh mage.”

“Stop being difficult. You know why,” said Nessa, frowning back. “Any flesh mage who sees Jem in the next few weeks will know exactly what his bloodline does.”

“Why does that matter? Wait. Couldn’t I just swap into an Alcan form now and then go see the flesh mage anyway?”

“No for so many reasons, but most pressingly because your identity will be obvious to them.”

Jem didn’t fight her on it. He didn’t know enough about it and despite Nessa’s teasing and willingness to cause him physical pain, he didn’t actually think she would be cruel.

An idea struck him. “Wait, couldn't I just make my new body try to fit better with the Kol flows?”

Nessa nodded. “Those were my thoughts too. It won’t be a perfect match of course, but the closer you are the less pain you’ll be in. I was going to have you and Haywood work on that tonight, while you both get your cover stories straight.”

Throughout the day Jem kept eating and at Nessa’s instruction, he diverted most of the energy into the bloodline core. She had also made him promise to keep a surplus of energy in it going forward so there wasn’t a repeat occurrence. Jem had been planning to do so anyway and he’d thought it obvious. But maybe she wasn’t feeling too confident in his judgement just then.

Jem sure wasn’t. After all, who’d sign themself up for pain like this?

In the evening he and Haywood met together in the library. The first thing Haywood told Jem they’d be doing was meticulously noting down Jem’s body structure so that when he wanted to resume his form he’d have a template to go off.

That left only a small issue. “How exactly are we supposed to do tha–”

Stabbing pain appeared in his right elbow. The pain was coupled with the sense of wrongness that always comes if you catch your elbow in just the wrong way. Jem focused through the pain.

“Jem take that thing off. Any long-term improvements you’d get from it are being overshadowed by the Kol clashes.”

“Wait, there's long-term benefits?”

“Don’t you listen? I just said there’s not as it stands.” Haywood snorted. “Though that’s the right attitude, seize power however you can.”

Jem pulled the brooch away and he sagged, half in relief and half because his strength had disappeared. Haywood caught him before his head slammed into the table.

“Let's relocate to somewhere you aren’t going to fall over.” Haywood, still holding onto Jem, blipped them.

They appeared on a sofa. Haywood quickly moved a pile of books out of the way and lay Jem down.

The novelty of people helping him was very quickly wearing off.

Some kind of spell diagram was hovering in the air above him. “Okay Jem, I need you to go into your bloodline and pay close attention to everything. I’m going to skim your surface thoughts and use what I pick up on to build up an artificial bioform of your body.”

“You’re going to read my thoughts. Just like that?” said Jem. “Without asking first?”

Haywood swacked Jem on the top of the head. “You’re surface thoughts Jem. Just don’t think of anything you don’t want me to know. Or use Attention Regulation and make it so you just think about your bloodline until I tell you to stop.”

“Okay, whatever. Go ahead.” Jem used attention regulation on one of his threads and had it follow the directions of the other.

The next three hours were spent with Haywood making a painstakingly accurate model and Jem had nothing to do other than wait.

After that ‘the fun’ began. Haywood handed Jem a completed bioform of an Alcan and had Jem copy it across to his bloodline. This time Jem set the second thread to double-check his work.

“Alright Jem, if you get undressed then you can swap into your new form and fine-tune it until we get minimal issues with your internal Kol flow when the brooch is on.”

Jem didn’t even bother to argue. He was tired and bored. He just reattached the brooch to his chest and once the strength had returned to him he stripped off, telling himself that it was no different than any of the times he’d changed at the dance gym.

Haywood made a hurry-up gesture and Jem reached into his bloodline core. He activated it and a wave of change rippled through him.

Moments later Jem was far taller. Disorientingly so. He reached forward and grabbed a hold of Haywood’s shoulder to steady himself.

In one hand Haywood held the bioform and in the other, he held a pane of glass etched with runes. He pointed the glass at different parts of Jem’s body, his eyes following the Kol flows.

“Okay Jem, we’re going to have to do a little trial and error.”

What Jem had hoped would be only a little while turned into another three hours. Only made bearable by the fact that over time and as Jem shifted through iteration after iteration the stabbing pains grew less frequent and less severe. It was really awkward to stand naked in front of someone examining your body for three hours.

Though at least he felt more like a lab rat than livestock.

By the time they were done, Haywood had asked countless questions, most of which seemed irrelevant to Jem, but unable to discern which were real he answered them anyway. He just didn’t see how Haywood knowing which hand Jem held a book with was at all relevant.

The frequency of the stabbing pains had decreased tenfold and the pain was probably a fifth as bad as it had been at the start. It was far more manageable.

“Do you have any clothes I can wear? Or will I just have to go around naked for the rest of the day?”

“Oh, sorry Jem. I’d completely forgotten.”

Jem frowned at him, he wasn’t sure if Haywood had forgotten or if he just thought it was funny for Jem to squirm. Both would have been entirely in character.

But when Haywood came out of a side room with a freshly laundered dressing gown Jem was just grateful that he didn’t have to feel like a lab rat anymore.

That was when his gratefulness came to an end as Haywood informed him that they needed to spend the night getting their cover stories together because they would be leaving in the morning.

When Jem asked why they were leaving so soon, Haywood let him know that he’d been unconscious for four days. Why no one had thought to mention that to him sooner was a mystery, but Jem was a little pissed off.

– – – – –

Jem rode in the back of the carriage, his face pressed against the glass as he stared out the window. Manoeuvring his antlers so that he could actually do so had been a task all of its own. Just as he’d felt he was getting a hang of his new body a new one came along.

Jem wondered if as you used more and more forms if acclimatising to them became easier. He hoped so.

Once they arrived in Kuna he would no longer be Jem Asterion, but Bronson Berkley the nephew of Tyrus Linthwin, the ex-head of a respectable if small merchant company and the new professor of economics at the empire’s foremost university.

Will Kuna be like this?

It was monsoon season in this part of the empire. Thousands of miles away from the dry arid capital. Moving walls of water crashed into the carriage turning it into a drum and the smell of damp wood was a constant companion.

Jem– Bronson did not envy the guards riding outside the carriage on domesticated monsters. He did not envy them at all.

His thoughts drifted from the guards to a more familiar rut, Sebastian Blackthorn. He still wasn’t sure how he felt about the whole thing. They’d been getting along well together. Or he’d thought so, but how much of that was actually real? If Sebastian had really been there to learn more about the newest member of the imperial family, was his sudden change of heart just an excuse and because it seemed like Jem wouldn’t be of any use to them?

It didn’t really matter either way. The Sebastian chapter of his life was closed. Anyway, Bronson would have far more freedom than Jem would have. Once he got to university he could make some friends that liked him for him. And if he just so happened to find someone he liked while there then that was just a bonus.

He’d already talked about it with Haywood. Bronson the C-grade mage was from the middle of nowhere and thrust on Tyrus at 15 after his mother died in a monster attack. It made sense for Bronson to not know too much about things and for him to not know things about the family business would be entirely in character.

He really hoped they’d get to Kuna soon. Without the brooch travelling was impossible, he’d tried taking it off and he’d been jostled around so much that Tyrus made him turn it back on, it wouldn’t look good for Bronson to turn up gaunt and bruised.

Instead, he had to suffer through the stabbing pains, even if they were greatly reduced in severity. One benefit of the frequent Kol clashes was that he felt like he was getting a better feeling for the Kol inside his body. Before the clashes, there was a touch of pressure, building so slowly it was barely noticeable.

In his head, Jem thought of it like two tectonic plates pushing up against each other. Gradually the pressure and friction would build before it was all released in one gigantic rush.