The only good thing about the next two weeks was that Thenio mostly slept through them. The medical evaluation at the Magic Stability Center confirmed that he had extensive damage to his magic circuit, and after staying overnight for observation, he was sent home wearing suppression bands set to seventy percent. The point was to keep him from using any magic, but they made him physically weak and groggy enough that he couldn't do much of anything else, either.
After a few days, Thenio discovered that several bags had appeared in his room containing his academy uniforms and textbooks. The school had apparently sent over all the belongings he'd left in his dormitory room. Once he realized what they were, Thenio spent a while staring blankly at the bags containing the remnants of his former life before shoving the whole lot into the back of his closet.
Then he went back to sleep, exhausted by the effort.
At one point, he woke up to the familiar scent of wood shavings and knew Eteon must have been there. He didn't see anyone when he looked around the room, but after a minute, he noticed a carved figure on his bedside table that hadn't been there before.
What was that? A hippogryph? No. It was similar, but it didn't have a bird head. He blinked at it sleepily, trying to puzzle it out. It was a deer-like creature with large, feathered wings. It was painted a deep indigo color with white markings, and there was a single, pronged horn on its forehead. It was carved with the wings stretching out and curving around in front of the creature, as though it were protecting something near its feet.
It was obviously some kind of magic beast, but Thenio didn't remember seeing a creature like that in any of his books. He had always liked drawing animals and magic beasts, so he had quite a few books with pictures of them. Eteon had given him a lot of them. Thenio's parents didn't think picture books were useful for his magic studies, so it was hard to persuade them to buy him very many, and his monthly allowance could only stretch so far.
Strange. He was sure he'd never seen a magic beast like that before. But at the same time...it felt so familiar....
He spent a while lying there and staring at the figurine, trying to think what it reminded him of. But it was difficult when he kept drifting in and out of sleep.
Eventually, he was distracted from both sleep and the figurine by the sound of the bedroom door opening.
"Oh, you're awake. I brought your dinner. Should I put it on the desk? Or do you want to eat in bed?"
Thenio raised his head. Kleyo, his youngest brother, had just entered the room, carrying a tray of food. Thenio's bedroom was in the attic, and in his current state, it was difficult for him to navigate two flights of stairs down to the dining room and back, so his family had been bringing meals up to him. Seven-year-old Kleyo had been doing the majority of this. He was the only one in the family that Thenio really had a close relationship with. For some reason, Kleyo didn't seem to feel the same aversion to his presence that the others did.
Thenio's parents were treating him more kindly than he'd expected, though. He was sure they were hugely disappointed by him dropping out of school, but they didn't seem to be blaming him for the situation, at least not on the surface.
Lem, as always, simply avoided him.
"Put it on the desk. I'm going to fall asleep in the middle if I try to eat here." Thenio really wanted sleep more than he wanted food. But he knew that he'd have even less energy the longer he went without eating, so it was better to get it over with.
He slowly pushed himself up into a sitting position. Just doing that much took most of his strength, and he had to sit and recover for a minute before moving any further. He needed another rest after he managed to stumble over to his desk. And he had to pause frequently while he was eating, too. Fortunately, his meal had been prepared with slow eating in mind, with bite-sized pieces of foods that didn't need to be eaten hot or cold. The Stability Center had given Thenio's parents an entire booklet on how to care for someone who was under high-level magic suppression.
It was a little scary to think about why they were such experts on the subject....
While Thenio ate, Kleyo sat in the chair by the window, looking through a book he'd taken from the bookshelf next to the desk. It was one of Thenio's sketchbooks. Kleyo had always been fascinated by his older brother's drawings. He probably knew the contents of that shelf full of sketchbooks better than Thenio himself did.
"Hey, was Eteon here earlier?" Thenio asked during one of his breaks.
Kleyo looked up. "Oh, yeah, he was. I went to the park to visit him on my way home from school. He said he wanted to see you, so he walked back with me. You were asleep, and he didn't want to wake you up. He just sat here and carved for a little while. Then he left. He said he'd come again in a few days."
Kleyo had also become friends with the elderly woodcarver. He loved the toys Eteon made, especially the jointed animal dolls. He said he wanted to learn to make animal golems when he got older.
"I saw he left a carving. Did he tell you what it was? I don't remember ever seeing a magic beast like that before."
"He said it's a dream beast. They can go into people's dreams and keep them from having nightmares."
Thenio frowned. "I've never heard of them. Are they real?"
"No idea. Probably not? Eteon said that he heard stories about them when he lived in Ket'qe, and it was pretty common for little kids there to keep figurines like that one by their beds so that they wouldn't have bad dreams. Nobody had ever actually seen one, though. The Forest People seem to believe they're real, but most humans think they're just stories." Kleyo shrugged. "But anyways, Eteon said that since you had to sleep so much for a while, maybe you could use some help having good dreams."
"Yeah, I probably could...." Thenio sighed. He did appreciate the thought, but he wasn't sure how much it would help to just avoid bad dreams while he was asleep.
All the real nightmares came when he was awake.
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"Good. Now try channeling some power into this. Remember to take it slowly."
The doctor handed Thenio a device that was shaped vaguely like a rabbit head—an oval base with two rods sticking out of the top. This week's doctor was a youngish man with curly brown hair and no apparent sorcerer's stigma, but Thenio suspected he was just wearing an illusion accessory to hide it. Doctors seemed to like using those for some reason. And Thenio had been seeing plenty of doctors lately. The Stability Center had him meet with different people each time he came. They said it was because they didn't have any established methods for dealing with a chaos affinity, and they wanted different experts to take a look at him and give their opinions before deciding how to proceed.
Thenio took the crystal synthesis tool from the doctor and set it on his lap. He held on to the collector rods and cautiously started infusing his magic power into them. The device collected raw magic power and converted it into a crystal form. It was something that sorcerers could do on their own, but lower-level magic users needed to use tools like this. The crystals weren't much use without further processing, but you could sell them to magic workshops, and some workshops even set up synthesis areas where people could come in to convert and sell their magic. But doing it too much wasn't good for you, and for most affinities, you wouldn't earn enough to really make it worth the trouble. So it was mostly something that magic school students did to get a little extra spending money.
Thenio's magic crystals, however, were currently in high demand. So he'd been using synthesis tools a lot lately. He didn't get paid for the resulting crystals, but they were being passed on to researchers who were hopefully going to use them to figure out a way to keep him alive, so he couldn't complain.
Having Thenio use the synthesis tool was also a convenient way for the doctor to check on his magic flow, so he was wearing a number of monitoring devices. He'd been a little surprised the first time they'd asked him to wear them, since Ariom and Professor Nistren had easily been able to do the same thing without using any equipment. But apparently wizards who were that skilled in magesight were quite rare. Even the Stability Center only had a few. And they usually used the monitoring equipment anyway to keep their records more consistent.
It was too bad. The monitoring devices were irritating. But Thenio did his best to ignore them, focusing on his breathing and the trickle of magic power he was sending into the synthesis device. After a few weeks of rest to help his magic circuit heal, his power was noticeably easier to control than it had been, but he still needed to pay close attention to his emotional state to make sure it didn't disrupt his magic use.
"All right, that's enough. Your stability's dropping a bit. Let's not overdo it."
Thenio stopped his magic and handed the device back to the doctor, who checked the display on the side, wrote a note on Thenio's chart, and then opened a compartment in the base of the device to remove the crystal.
"It really does keep changing, doesn't it?" The doctor held up the small crystal for Thenio to see. It was a translucent sea green color with bits of orange in it. Magic crystals came in all colors, but most people would produce the same color consistently unless they'd had special training to adjust the frequency of their magic power. For Thenio, however, the color seemed to change randomly, just like the results from the magic affinity tester had. "There are still a lot of irregularities in the structure, but it's improved since your last check-up. Let's move you down to forty percent suppression this week. That will give you some more energy, so try to increase your physical activity a little. Nothing strenuous, though. And keep your magic training the same. A set of basic exercises, once a day. Nothing else. Make sure to keep avoiding external sources of magic as well."
After Thenio finished receiving his instructions for the week and was unstrapped from all the monitoring equipment, the doctor walked him out to where his mother was waiting for him in order to give her a written copy of the same instructions. This was another area where their vast experience with magically suppressed patients showed. They always took the time to give Thenio clear explanations and never underestimated his intelligence, but they also never assumed that he would remember everything, since the suppression bands made him chronically fuzzy-headed.
When they reached the waiting room, Thenio saw his mother sitting at a small table with papers spread out in front of her. This was presumably job-related paperwork. Thenio's parents were currently working from home on alternate days so that one of them was always on hand to keep an eye on him. This was one of the requirements that the Stability Center had for allowing him to live at home while his magic circuit recovered. Thenio knew his parents weren't really happy about this arrangement, since they were both very committed to their jobs. The Perinith Workshop had been surprisingly cooperative about the whole thing, though. No one had complained about Thenio canceling his contract or his parents needing their schedules rearranged.
It would be nice to think that they were simply considerate. But Thenio strongly suspected that most of their 'consideration' was due to the fact that they'd been promised some of his chaos magic crystals to do research on.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Sitting across from his mother was an elderly man in a doctor's uniform who bore a strong resemblance to a wrinkled old tortoise. He turned his head as they approached and looked over Thenio with what seemed to be a casual glance. But Thenio knew the old man was probably evaluating him even more thoroughly than all the fancy equipment they'd used on him earlier. This was Focilo Sephior, and despite his old and frail appearance, he was the head doctor at the Stability Center and was one of only a handful of wizards in the world who had grandmaster level certifications in both healing magic and necromancy. He was the one overseeing Thenio's treatment.
"Good, good." Grandmaster Sephior nodded his head, giving Thenio a pleasant smile. "Still a ways to go, but you're looking much better than you were a few weeks ago. Good." He nodded again. "I was just telling your mother that you've improved enough for us to start working on your stability training plan. We've scheduled a meeting with the relevant parties to discuss what to do with you from now on."
"Relevant parties?" Thenio asked, puzzled. "Is there someone besides my parents and people from the Stability Center?"
"Oh yes, boy. Yes." Grandmaster Sephior gave a dry chuckle. "You're quite a popular fellow, you know? A lot of people are interested in taking you under their wing. Most of them aren't really up to the task, of course. They're just hoping to profit from researching your magic. But we've vetted out a few possible candidates. Not that we're giving up our responsibility for you, mind. Whoever ends up looking after you will be doing so in cooperation with us. We just want to give you all the options we can so that you and your family can decide on the approach that suits you best."
"And can any of those options actually help me?" Thenio asked, rather cynically. His mother made an uncomfortable expression when she heard him, but he ignored her. It was something he needed to know, even if asking so directly was a bit rude.
"I don't know that, boy," Grandmaster Sephior said gently. "No one knows that yet. That's not the kind of place this is. We never really know how things will turn out, for any of our patients. So we'll do the same thing for you that we do for the others—take care of you the best we know how, one day at a time. That's all we can ever do."
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Ariom frowned at the enchantment diagram he was working on. Another mistake? He erased the runes he'd just written and wrote in the correct ones. Then he sighed and ran a hand through his hair.
He'd been having a lot of trouble focusing on his work recently.
Some of the reasons for that were obvious: He'd taken time from his other projects in order to investigate Thenio and teach that guest lecture—to a first-year class, no less, which required preparing almost entirely new materials. That was followed by a few days of being contacted by people from the academy and the Magic Stability Center. And then there were the incessant questions from Iggy, wondering how Thenio was doing and when they were going to see him next.
But all of that died down within a week, and life went back to normal. And yet Ariom still couldn't push the ill-fated boy out of his mind. He wasn't sure why. Maybe it was because Thenio was close to the same age as his cousin Seyli. Or maybe it was because he was only a couple of years older than Ariom himself had been when he'd encountered a life-changing disappointment of his own.
He sighed and shook his head, refocusing his attention on the diagram. He was designing a customized storage enchantment for the Duke of Sciedan, one of his regular clients. He was one of the few nobles that Ariom actually liked, since he was a conscientious leader who actively worked to improve life for the people in his territory. This particular project was to figure out a better preservation method for the silkbell mushroom, which was a specialty product of Sciedan and a valuable alchemical material but was difficult to transport because it deteriorated quickly after harvesting. Fortunately, the job didn't have an urgent deadline, but if he didn't start making progress soon, he was eventually going to have a real problem on his hands.
There was a sudden, loud thump to his left. Ariom started a little but then relaxed as he recognized the sound.
It wasn't exactly the first time a dragon had crash landed on his desk.
"Iggy, what are you—?" Ariom broke off as he saw what had caused the rough landing. "What are those?"
Iggy was carrying a sheaf of papers in his mouth. Or rather, he was dragging them by one corner, since the papers were bigger than he was. He pulled them across the desk and dropped them in front of Ariom. Then he puffed out his chest and waved his tail, obviously pleased with himself. He looked like a cat who'd just brought back a dead mouse and expected to be praised for it.
"They're Thenio's papers! They're the papers you gave him to work on when we went to teach his class."
"What?" Ariom was taken aback. "Why do you have those?"
"I sneaked them!" Iggy said proudly. "I sneaked them out of Thenio's bag and into my pocket!"
There was a space pocket installed into the dragon's harness. It was just a small one, but it was enough to carry some snacks and a toy or two, plus any small objects that Iggy found while they were out and insisted on bringing home, like oddly-shaped pebbles or interesting leaves.
Or a stack of stolen school papers, apparently.
"Iggy, you can't just take people's things like that," Ariom scolded him. "These belong to Thenio." He looked at the papers and sighed. "Well, not that he's going to need them, at this point.... But that doesn't mean it's okay to steal them."
"I wasn't trying to steal them!" Iggy protested. "I was going to give them back to Thenio, okay? I just wanted you to look at them first!"
"And how exactly were you planning to give them back?"
"We'll give them back the next time we go visit Thenio," Iggy said promptly, as though that were obvious.
"Iggy...." Ariom rubbed his hand over his face. He could feel a headache coming on.
"You need to see Thenio's pictures," the dragon insisted. "Thenio can draw really good pictures! You didn't get to see them when we were still at the school, so I sneaked them for you, okay? You need to see them!"
Ariom let out a long sigh. "Fine." He pushed his work papers to one side and started looking through the stack Iggy had brought him.
He did his best to ignore the teeth marks on the corner....
Iggy didn't really understand enchanting from an academic standpoint. But he was remarkably sensitive to magic and was somehow able to understand the magic flow of an inscription just by looking at the shape of the lines. This allowed him to 'read' an enchantment diagram, even if he didn't understand the theory behind it. Ariom had never quite worked out how the little dragon managed it. Of course, he could do something very similar himself. But that was only because he had twenty years of experience and had studied and created thousands of enchanting inscriptions. It really wasn't a skill that a three-year-old dragon ought to be able to replicate.
But even if he couldn't fully explain it, he acknowledged that Iggy had good judgment. He was honestly curious about Thenio's work, after hearing the little dragon praise it like that.
The workroom fell silent, apart from the occasional rustling of paper. Iggy, understanding that Ariom needed to concentrate, pulled a small stuffed octopus out of the basket of dragon toys on the desk and started playing with it quietly.
After about half an hour, Ariom sighed again and leaned back in his chair.
"You looked at all the pictures, right?" Iggy asked eagerly, jumping off the desk onto Ariom's lap. "They're really good, huh?"
"Yeah," Ariom said, scratching Iggy's ears and staring vacantly at the ceiling. "Yeah, they're really good."
Thenio had only spent about an hour working on that packet, but he'd finished more than half of the reconstructions. And done an excellent job on them, too. He was a bit lacking in knowledge about Pre-War techniques, but he obviously had a solid foundation in modern enchanting methods. His work was better than most of the senior students that Ariom had taught. With that kind of skill, if he'd just been able to use magic properly....
What a waste....
"We should ask Thenio to come live with us!" Iggy's bright voice interrupted Ariom's musings. "He can help you draw magic pictures!"
"Wait, what?" Ariom sat up and looked down at Iggy incredulously. "We can't do that."
Iggy cocked his head to one side. "How come? You said you might hire somebody to come help, right? Because Toflyn and Sundog left? And Thenio's really good at drawing magic pictures, right? So why can't you hire Thenio?"
"Because Thenio's too young, and he doesn't have a magic assistant's license. And he can barely use magic. And he's unstable and could explode and hurt himself at any time. Plus, the military's already gotten involved. Thenio's a valuable research subject. I really doubt they'll be willing to hand him over. And even if they did, that would make us in charge of keeping his magic under control and monitoring his training program. And...well...he was pretty upset with us the last time we saw him, remember? He might not even want...." Ariom trailed off, looking at Iggy's expression.
The little dragon's ears had drooped lower and lower as Ariom listed off reasons he wouldn't be able to hire Thenio. He was starting to resemble a melting candle.
"But...can't we just ask?" Iggy said in a faltering voice. "Thenio might want to come live with us.... And the military people might say it's okay...right? So we could ask, right?"
Ariom made an awkward expression and didn't say anything.
"I just...I really like Thenio, you know? His magic smells really, really nice. And he's smart. And good at drawing pictures. And I wanted to draw pictures together with him, okay? And I wanted to show him my tree. And sing songs together. And play in the sandbox. And...and...." Iggy hesitated. "And I just...I just...I think it would be really good for Thenio to live with us, okay? And maybe...I think...Thenio would be happy living with us, you know? I think he really would...."
Ariom stared at him, conflicted. It was true that he'd been considering hiring an assistant. His last apprentice, Toflyn, had advanced in rank a few months ago, and there was a noticeable difference in the amount of work he was able to get done without a helper around. And when Toflyn had moved out, so had his dragon, Sundog. It was Iggy's first time not having another dragon around regularly, and Ariom knew he'd been feeling lonely.
He wanted to make Iggy happy, of course. And it did leave a bit of a sour taste in his mouth to just leave Thenio the way they had. It was true that they couldn't know for sure that it was impossible to take the boy in unless they tried. And...well...it was also true that Ariom was uniquely qualified to deal with someone like Thenio, given his knowledge of magic stabilization and his ability to use void magic to help prevent explosions.
But it would basically mean taking custody of a disabled and potentially explosive teenager. It would be a lot of work...a lot of responsibility....
"I don't know, little guy...." Ariom sighed and patted Iggy's back. "I just...need to think about it...."
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Ariom spent the evening shooting targets.
Physical conditioning had a significant impact on magic control, so it was common for wizards to have some kind of training room in their homes. Though there probably weren't many who had a full archery range in their basements. That was a perk of being a wizard who was certified in both elementalism and enchanting. Ariom could more or less design his house any way he wanted, since he was able to build and reinforce the structure himself.
He had been practicing archery ever since he was a child. It was good for mental focus and discipline. Aiming at a target required the same kind of concentration that high-level scribing work did.
But more than anything, it helped him calm down and think.
He stood in the center of the large, open room, with a bow in one hand. A container full of arrows stood on the floor next to him. By operating the controls built into one side of the arrow holder, he caused a large number of round targets to appear, scattered around the room. The target creation enchantment built into the training room was one that Ariom had designed himself, and it had a variety of options for different targets, including moving objects and realistic illusions of various types of demons. But for clearing his thoughts, simple target practice was best.
Pick up an arrow. Nock. Draw. Aim. Release. Repeat it all again. And again. And again. The rhythmic pattern was familiar and soothing.
A few minutes later, the arrows were gone. Ariom lowered his bow and let out a long breath. Fifty arrows fired. Fifty targets shot cleanly through the center.
He used the controls to make all the targets fly back toward him. They converged and formed a neat line, each one depositing the arrow it held back into the container before it disappeared.
Ariom sighed and rotated his shoulders. He'd been at this for several hours already, and his muscles were getting tired.
He looked down at the bow in his hand. It was one of a number of practice bows that he owned—a simple flatbow made from creamy white wood. He always used light-colored bows. It was a rule he'd made for himself as a teenager. There was no purpose to it, really, except as a silly display of bitterness. A pointless act of rebellion against a situation he'd been powerless to change.
As he ran a finger over the pale wood, Thenio's face came to his mind once again. Life...really was unfair. There wasn't anything you could do about that.
But that didn't mean you should just do nothing.