It took Zora a few hours to teach the girls on the second-floor study how to enunciate the ‘magic words’ properly, so it was around noon that he let them run down the infirmary beds, teaching the other kids how to say the words in turn—after all, the best and most relaxing form of teaching was one where he didn’t have to lift a single finger, and he could always use a bit of relaxing.
While Zora peeked over the railings to see the kids studying diligently, Julius struggled to work the portable stove he’d placed onto his study desk, his delicate fingers shaking too much to light a match properly. Emilia immediately figured out what he was trying to do and hopped over to help him—evidently excited to bring ‘fire’ into existence—but she ended up lighting the gas stove and placing a small pot onto the stove, essentially doing all the hard work for the physician now rummaging inside his messy drawers for ingredients to cook with.
“... What are you looking for, Mister Weird Man?” Emilia asked, staring up at Julius with her arms clasped behind her back. He shuddered and reeled away a little, giving her a nervous laugh as he pulled out a small drawstring pouch from the drawers.
“Just some… herbal ingredients, yes, yes,” he mumbled, making awkward gestures as though trying to get Emilia to back away from the stove a little; she was too enamoured with the heat from the little orange flame, though, so Zora had to sigh and walk over, pulling her gently back for Julius to do his thing. “Marcus and Cecilia will wake up feeling like crap, so I’m combining… four pinches of elderblossom petals, two chunks of brightbane mushrooms, and then a spoonful of mashed moonroot bulbs and nettle pods to make a medicinal soup. If I feed them the soup now, they’ll be able to walk in… I dunno, twelve hours? Yes, yes. They’ll be feeling superhuman tomorrow morning.”
Zora frowned. He was about to comment on the terribly strange smell coming from the bag of herbs when Julius looked at him with shifty eyes, shaking the herbs into the heating pot.
“You two can drink it… as well,” Julius continued, reaching into the drawers for a second bag of herbs. “It doesn't just relieve fatigue and promote blood recovery. Zora. You've been eating too much bug meat for points, r-right?” He emptied the second bag into the pot as well, and Emilia gagged as a cloud of pungent aroma exploded off the water. “This soup will… uh, it’ll help with digestion. So you can eat more and get more points. I’m also tossing in some… goldroot ginseng flakes. They’ll keep you from getting poisoned by the longhorn beetle if you get cut by its antennae.”
…
On second thought, Zora decided to keep quiet and just let the scrawny man brew his medicine. There was a whole world of difference between Julius when he was teaching and Julius when he was holed up in his second-floor study, allowed to cook up pills and drugs the likes of which even the well-travelled academy mages had never seen before—letting him do his own thing, undisturbed, was the best way for him to help them out now.
Of course, Emilia didn’t get the memo. While Zora sat back down on the foot of the bed, glancing back at the snoring fitness and music teacher, she continued swerving around Julius and his stove; Zora had no idea if the soup smelled different to her, because he didn’t even want to be within a hundred strides of that pot of death.
“Are you very smart, Mister Weird Man?” Emilia asked, tapping at her chin as she stood on her tiptoes, trying to peek into the bubbling pot so she could feel the heat on her face. “Is this soup going to be that good?”
Julius couldn’t resist a scoff, covering his reddening cheeks with the back of his hand. “O-Of course! I’m the physician of the academy! Everyone comes to me when they’re sick, and I always kick them out within the day because my medicines are just that good–”
“They certainly don’t taste half as good as they look, and even then, they don’t look that good to begin with,” Zora muttered, frowning as Marcus and Cecilia started grumbling in their sleep; they were steadily regaining consciousness. “Move to Julius, bowls. The soup’s done, right? Start filling them. Preferably, we don’t wait until nightfall to leave—the bugs are probably more active at night than they are during the day.”
He didn’t use his wand, but instead spoke in the general direction of the stack of bowls sitting next to the stove. It was an experiment, really, and one he got the idea from after hearing Julius try to cast ‘get out’ earlier—the result was readily apparent. His spell passed through Emilia, Julius, and everything on the study desk except for the stack of bowls, at which point the spell dragged it closer towards Julius, making the man yelp and jump at the sudden movement.
So the spells really can be simple phrases, too, he mused, as Emilia picked up a ladle and started filling the bowls with Julius’ help. Then again, Marcus had already proved it with his ‘boom’—intent and visualisation matters when it comes to casting spells.
So, if I could imagine myself creating fire with my bare hands, then I could probably cast ‘fire’ directly.
But ‘Fire’ would be something akin to a ‘real' magic spell. Ordinary humans couldn’t just envision themselves creating fire with their bare hands, so it was unlikely he could ever cast a spell like that. He'd no idea how to rewire his brain to think he could. If he had mutations that allowed him to create fire, though, it’d be a completely different story altogether—whether or not he could cast 'real' magic spells depended entirely on how his mutations would biologically transform his body.
In the same way that Julius could cast ‘extract venom’ and ‘heal’ because of his unique background and biology, if Zora’s body had something unique as well, he could probably cast a few 'real' magic spells.
Funnily enough, Julius is the closest of all four of us to being able to cast 'real' magic spells.
Even though my 'silence' is... quite unusual as well.
Zora accepted two bowls of sloshing, greenish-reddish soup from Emilia and held them to the rousing teachers’ lips, making sure Cecilia drank hers properly before slamming the other bowl into Marcus’ face. The pungent herbal taste made Cecilia cough, and the heat of the soup splashing onto his face made Marcus jolt upright, his fist swinging instinctively at Julius’ spine to knock the scrawny man down onto the bed.
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While Zora continued helping Cecilia drink her soup as she slowly sat upright on the headboard, Marcus began clobbering Julius at the foot of the bed, not allowing the physician to defend himself by saying ‘it wasn’t me’. Of course, Zora had already hidden Marcus’ empty bowl under the bed, so he whistled and winked at Emilia as Cecilia sputtered and coughed through the rest of her bowl.
“... You’re all… very good friends,” Emilia murmured, standing by the railings as she squirmed in place. “Mister Marcus can just… hit Mister Weird Man like that, and Mister Weird Man isn’t trying to kill Mister Marcus in response.”
Zora chuckled, though he tried not to shake his hand too much lest more steaming-hot soup dribbled down Cecilia’s chin. “Well, of course. Once upon a time, just like you, we were students of Amadeus Academy.” Then he glanced back at the drowsy Cecilia, who was nodding absentmindedly and slurring her words as she sipped her soup. “Miss Sarius was the first one who talked to me when I first came here, and then I met Mister Evander and Mister Tadius because they were her friends. I’ll have you know that Mister Evander has been loud since the day he was born. He always used to bully me and Mister Tadius because we were physically weak, so in a sense, me and Mister Tadius are partners in suffering–”
Marcus swung a half-hearted backfist at Zora’s head, still keeping the squirming and shouting Julius in a headlock. “I did nooooo such thing,” Marcus slurred, eyelids fluttering open and close. “And if I did, it was because you and… Crystalblood… were easy to bully. You’re weak. Both of you. All three of you. You all… need exercise.”
“Z-Zora,” Julius wheezed, tapping Marcus’ muscled arms frantically, “help me, man. I can’t… breathe–”
“Just apologise to him for spilling the soup all over his face,” Zora said, sticking his tongue at Julius as he winked at Emilia again. “I’m sure he’s already grateful you reattached his arm and extracted the venom from him. He’ll forgive you if you apologise.”
“O-Okay. Muscleman. I’m sorry–”
Cecilia kicked Julius on the top of his head, making the scrawny man yelp again. “Don’t apologise, you dolt,” she murmured drunkenly, head cocking to the side as she jabbed an accusatory finger at Zora. “It was… you. You’re the culprit. I saw you dunk Marcus with the bowl.”
For the briefest of moments, Zora saw Marcus’ other arm reaching for his head, and he could do nothing about it but scowl at Cecilia.
“I carried… well, I covered Emilia as she carried both of you into this greenhouse, and this is how you repay me?” he wheezed, struggling to get out of the headlock alongside Julius as Marcus seemed ready to doze off again; the newly awoken had yet to fully recover, so they were probably going to fall back asleep in a bit. “I thought we were friends, Miss Sarius. How could you betray me? But please help me out here. Please.”
Perhaps it was better if the injured continued resting and the not-injured checked on the kids below, but for the first time in three days, it was like a nail had been yanked out of Zora’s chest. That the four of them, in this disaster, could still be messing around was a testament to their fortune—and now they had to get back to the dorm so class 2-D could regroup with their friends in the other classes as well.
What they’d do afterwards wasn’t important right now, and Emilia certainly didn’t seem to care; she sat down cross-legged, back against the railings, and smiled wistfully at all of them.
Marcus was half-asleep, Cecilia was basically asleep, and Julius and Zora were still stuck in the muscleman’s headlock, but they all noticed her yearning expression nonetheless… so for his part, Julius immediately cast ‘strike’ on Marcus’ torso and squirmed out of his headlock, patting himself down from head to toe.
Everyone went quiet. Zora had half a mind to tell the scrawny man off, but before he knew it, Julius walked right in front of Emilia, stopped, and crouched so they could meet each other eye-to-eye.
Emilia gulped and immediately looked elsewhere—adamant on trying to hide her most apparent moth mutations from Julius.
“... Mister Zora says you’re the only one in the academy who can stop me from turning into a moth,” she whispered, a sliver of unease creeping into her voice; she was pushing her words forward though it hurt her to do so. “But you can’t… take my wings and claws and antennae from me, right? You can only stop me from getting any worse, right?”
Zora pursed his lips. He reached for the back of Julius’ collar, ready to pull him back if he said anything out of line–
“Will I… spend the rest of my life… as a monster?” she asked, her voice tight with fear and anxiety as she looked up at Julius. “Can I really… make any friends… like the four of you–”
“Yes.”
Both Zora and Marcus’ hands were about to yank on Julius’ collar when he replied, soft and steady.
His firm answer certainly took Emilia off-guard for a second, her eyes wide and blinking straight at him—but then she shook her head and pouted, face puffing in a way that made her look like a marshmallow.
“You lie, Mister Weird Man,” she muttered. “You… looked at me and screamed at me. Because of my… wings. And arms. You’re just like everyone else. You’re scared of me. You think I’ll go mad and… and eat you–”
“O-Of course I’m scared,” Julius stuttered, scratching the back of his head quite awkwardly as he did. “But that has nothing to do with the fact that you… are strong.” He tilted his head back at Marcus and Cecilia, a small, quivering smile tugging on the corner of his lips. “You carried them in by yourself. You can talk… by yourself. You learned how to speak our tongue within two weeks. I know you haven’t been to my classes before, but I hear… that you’re super curious in Zora’s classes. Aren’t you actually a whole lot stronger… than me?”
Then he thumped his chest, doing his best to look as dignified and teacher-like as possible.
“If even someone like me… has people like Zora and Cecilia and muscleman looking out for me, then strong people like you will definitely be able to make friends,” he finished, gulping aloud and holding out a shaky, trembling hand. “In fact, since I assume you’ll be coming to my classes after this, why don’t we be… friends? I’m Mister Tadius. I teach things about… plants and human bodies and even bug bodies and stuff. I think my classes are pretty fun.”
A moment of awkward silence passed as Emilia stared down at his gloved hand, her eyes blank and still as a pond's surface on a windless night—and then a cheeky grin crawled over her face, all four hands grabbing onto Julius’ to shake it up and down.
… Marcus and Cecilia are still down, Zora thought, clenching his jaw as he watched Julius and Emilia shake hands; Emilia was very much the one in control. They won’t be able to recover and walk by themselves until late tonight at the earliest, but we have to get out of the greenhouse before the wall of poisonous flames extinguishes in… a few hours?
That Mutant will be the biggest of our troubles, huh?
It wasn’t going to be easy getting back to the dorm, and it had never been easy—but Zora wondered, as he stared at Julius’ back, whether or not there was a way they could actually take down the Mutant along the way.
“... Julius,” he said, catching the man’s attention as he glanced at the study desk. “Six years ago, during Mister Evander’s graduation ceremony. Remember how we reverse-swept him out from under his feet for the first and only time in our lives while he tried to wrap us in a big group hug?”
“Uh-huh?”
“Do you think ‘Operation Backstab’ will work on the Mutant?”
Julius’ face blanched.
“I’m not doing ‘Operation Backstab’ on the Mutant.”
“But do you think it’ll work?”
“M-Maybe?”
“Then get your drugs ready,” Zora said plainly, pointing at the glowing syringes pulsing faintly green in the open drawers of the study desk. “If we run into the Mutant, we’re doing ‘Operation Backstab’ again.”