“The first misconception about magic you need to disabuse yourself of is the idea that it is at all mystical or inscrutable,” Orville lectures, pacing around with his hands clasped behind him. “Magic is as much part of the world as the things it affects. It is real in the same way that heat is real, or sound is real, or you are real. What makes magic special is how deceptively easy it is to control.”

“Easy?” I ask, surprised. “I thought magic was like, super hard.”

“Magic is super precise,” Orville corrects. “It’s so heavily restricted because, once you know the basic principles of its control, any old fool can cast a spell. The problem isn’t that it’s hard to cast, the problem is that it’s hard to cast what you intend to cast. The slightest mistake when preparing a magical formula has consequences that range from painful to outright catastrophic. Try to channel too much magic? Kablooie. Mess up the formula and cast anyway? Kablooie. Get interrupted during a cast? Kablooie! Chaos magic happens, and chaos magic tends to explode or worse.”

“So, how are all mages not dead?”

“Some clever metamancer hundreds of years ago discovered the cancel commands. They’re spell components you can add that abort and undo an in-progress spell, dissipating your gathered mana harmlessly. Before you learn anything else, you need to be able to perform the motions and vocals of the cancel commands flawlessly and with one hundred percent consistency.”

“Vocals?” I ask, tilting my head. “I’ve never heard anyone say things when casting magic.”

“Yeah, you generally don’t. The basic primer is this: people cast spells by gathering mana into their soul, then shaping that mana into the form they desire. Mana released into the world in specific shapes causes specific effects. However, shaping mana is… complicated, to say the least. Think of casting a spell like crafting a puzzle box; you can’t see the inside of the box while you’re working on it, you just have to know, by memory, where all the parts are and how they’ll move. Mana shapes itself in response to almost any kind of force, and the one most people find easiest to use is motion. That’s why you see people twiddling their fingers when they cast. It’s just as possible to cast spells by using sound or hypothetically something like heat, but you’d need to have such fine control that it’s impractical. Most people don’t have a voice like that. Still, every once in a while you meet someone that casts with sound, and I’ve heard extremely advanced mages use both at once in order to shape mana more quickly.”

“Huh, okay. And I need to be able to use the cancels commands with both in case I can’t wiggle my fingers for some reason?”

“Pretty much, yeah.” Orville confirms.

“So how do I pull mana into my soul?”

“Well, you don’t. Like I said, you need to learn the cancel commands first. Only after that will I teach you to practice channeling mana. People like Penelope get that easy; being a natural mage makes you, well, a natural at it. You’ll have to learn the hard way, like me. It’ll take a while until your soul has enough mana capacity to cast any actual spells.”

I try not to wince. Telling him would be a terrible idea, but it feels so bad leading him on. I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it, I suppose.

I spend the next few hours in the corner of the training yard, practicing hand drills with Orville. I can see why this kind of thing might take a while to get the hang of; half the time I can’t even tell the difference between the right hand movement and a slightly different but apparently very wrong one. Penelope just sits and waits as we practice, seemingly slightly bored but not complaining even a single time as the hours ticked by. Every once in a while she gives a little advice, but for the most part it was just Orville and I.

As time drags on, it gets more and more difficult for me to practice. Pretty soon, I’m doing worse with the exercises than I had been an hour ago, and Orville tells me to stop.

“I think that’s all we’re getting today,” he says. “You look run ragged, Vita. Is everything all right?”

“M’fine. Just tired,” I answer.

“It’s hardly a surprise,” Penelope comments. “She was up all last night keeping an eye on me.”

“What? Vita! No wonder you can’t focus!” Orville protests.

“S’fine. I’m fine.”

“No you’re not! You hardly got any sleep on the mission, and now you’re still up?”

“Parasite. Had to watch.”

“Vita, you need sleep,” Orville insists. “I can watch Penelope for a while.”

“You can’t see the parasite,” I protest.

“Then we’ll stick close to you and wake you up if Penelope starts acting strange.”

I glance over at Penelope. She smiles and gives me a thumbs-up.

“...M’not gonna get any sleep in that case,” I comment dryly. Since when has she given thumbs-ups?

Orville rolls his eyes.

“Come on, Vita. It’ll be fine. Trust me.”

Except that it might not be. Literally no one else can do what I can do. If I fall asleep and something happens, I’ll never forgive myself. I feel like I’m missing something obvious, some piece of the slime puzzle that I’m going to kick myself for later. Yet at the same time, I can’t deny that I’m nearly unconscious. I have to sleep at some point. I have to trust someone else at some point.

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"...Fine," I groan, getting up off the ground. "I'll go sleep. Just... keep an eye on her, okay? Please? And wake me up if Remus comes back, too."

I trudge on up the stairs, Orville and Penelope following. I pretend not to hear their whispered conversation behind me.

"You feel fine, right?" Orville asks.

"Yes, I'm completely okay. At least as far as I can tell."

"You trust her on this parasite thing, though?"

"She's just doing as Remus instructed. Besides, it seems wiser to assume an emergency than to assume everything is fine. Do you know the casualty rate for hunter expeditions?"

"...Isn't it around forty percent?"

"For new teams, yes. I'm not going to turn up my nose at a bit of caution here."

Well they don’t think I’m outright crazy, at least. Perhaps my paranoia is just sleep deprivation, but… unless I’m outright hallucinating, the slime soul just keeps getting bigger...

I make it to my room, not bothering to wait for modesty before pulling off my overclothes. I’m about to toss the dress onto my bed before I remember that it's probably worth more than I am. Embarrassment coloring my face, I look back to Penelope and a politely-turned-around Orville, silently asking what to do with the damn thing. Penelope smiles and retrieves the dress, letting me slip under the covers without further embarrassment.

I really, really hope I’m not going to wake up tomorrow with a slime in my head. I grab Rosco and squeeze him tight, curling up around my bird-friend as sleep very quickly claims me.

-----------

"Vita is asleep."

Penelope's indignant claim is ironically what wakes me up. I blink in irritation, looking around. It had been light out when I went to bed and it's light out now, but it feels like I’ve been asleep for ages. I probably zonked out right through the last island passing over and then some.

"Wake her up, then," Remus's voice replied, and suddenly his order was no longer needed. I’m awake and then some.

I feel him there, just outside the door. His parasite is almost as large-souled as he was... and now there are two parasites inside him. Shit. Shit! I jump out of bed, throwing on armor and making sure my spear and knife are nearby. Just in case.

"Oh, that woke her up, actually," Penelope comments.

"Good. We need to go, and we're bringing her with us."

"Er... okay?"

I finish getting dressed and suited up without further interruption, having everything on in record time. It smelled like someone had cleaned my stuff while I slept, then put it all back where I’d left it. That’s nice of them. Remus stays politely outside the girl's dorm room while I quickly check that I have everything. Holy shit, this is so sudden. Where had he been?

"Dressed and ready, sir! What do you need?" I report.

"Vita, do you feel anything different?" Remus demands.

"There's two of them in you now, sir," I say, quickly looking inward.

Oh, shit! There's one in me as— no, wait. That's just the soul I picked up from the slime Remus killed back in the forest. False alarm. I move it around a little inside my body, popping it outside my skin to make sure. Yep, all the slime-souls in me are very, very dead. Safe for now. Remus, however, has no such luck. He curses.

"I thought as much. Something feels wrong."

"Yeah, one of them feels almost as strong as you now," I confirm.

Shit, shit, shit, are there any more parasites nearby...? My heart is racing out of my chest. No, not yet. I don’t feel anything. Just two in Remus and one in Penelope. I make a mental note to scan everyone I come across.

"That settles it, then. Vita, Penelope, we're heading out. We can't wait for the specialist I called to reach Skyhope, we're going to go meet them on the road."

"I hope you have a cart of some sort...?" Penelope hedges.

"I'll carry you, Penelope. Vita, consider this stamina training."

Oh, goddamn it. He’s going to make me run?

"The roads are fairly safe, we have hunter teams on them every day," Remus continues. "Still, keep your feelers out, Vita. We need to go now before whatever the parasites are doing happens, and we need you to alert us if they start doing anything on the road. Can you handle that?"

Do I have a choice? I put on as serious a face as I can muster, hoping beyond hope that the screaming I feel inside isn't showing in my expression.

"Yes, sir. I'll alert you the moment I sense anything."

I hope this is above-board. I hope everything is as it seems. I hope there isn't something I’m missing. I hope, I hope, I hope.

Opening the door, Remus grabs an embarrassed Penelope and hoists her into a piggyback, then runs down the stairs. I follow as fast as I’m able, and Remus slows down to match my pace. Before long, we’re outside the city. My lungs and legs are already burning as I try not to seem weak in front of my boss. Partly to keep my stamina up, partly in case something horrible happens, and partly because I’ll take any excuse to do so, I start surreptitiously swallowing chunks of my soul stock, feeling that beautiful feeling of unraveling raw power and adding it to my being. The run pace doesn’t get easier, but it stops getting harder and I feel like that’s basically the same thing.

Minutes tick by in silence. Then an hour. The dirt road hugs Skyhope Crater for a ways, avoiding the forest in which all this began before finally setting off between cultivated farmlands which sit adjacent to most sides of the city. Passing through the beautiful fields is somewhat relaxing, though the hammering heartbeat in my chest reminds me that this is a rather poor time to be relaxed. Eventually, the farms break way into more wilderness, the road cutting through the middle of a partially-culled jungle, shrubs and saplings growing around or through stumps as if in a constant war to take the territory back from humans. My soul sense goes bananas, detecting all sorts of terrifying things just on the fringes of my awareness, yet thankfully they seemed uninterested in harassing us for now.

After nearly an hour and a half of constant running, Penelope speaks. Her voice sounds frightened, hollow, confused, and her words send a chill down my spine.

"Remus, do we really have to do this?" she asks.

"Seek medical attention? Yes, obviously," Remus snaps back.

"Not that. I mean Vita."

I don't like the sound of that. I don’t like the sound of that at all. I start to slow down, start to ready myself. This whole thing has been suspicious for a while.

"Penelope," Remus warns, slowing down in step with me. I look at him. He meets my gaze, eyes calculating.

Yeah, this is bad. There’s clearly something going on, it’s clearly parasite-related, and I walked into it. I should have listened to my fucking paranoia! What can I do here? Remus is beyond me, but if I surprise him then maybe I can touch him just long enough to kill the slime. But he’s faster than me... how can I surprise him?

"I like her, Remus," Penelope continues. "Don't you think we could try just talking to her before—"

As I glance around looking for bits of the environment to use, confusion settles over me. Remus is... gone. I had kept him in sight, but he vanished. I never blinked. Where did—

The pommel of a sword strikes me in the temple. Pain shoots through my body for the briefest of moments, and I pass unconscious before even falling on the road.