When I finally made it back to my room several hours later, I barely managed to step inside and shut the door behind me before my legs simply gave out. Only Miranda’s quick reflexes saved me from face planting into the ground and instead I slumped onto my side, head lolling to rest against her bare thigh.
My bones were like lead weights and my muscles had the structural stability of overcooked noodles. The moment my control finally lapsed, my circulations collapsed into a tangled mess of loose threads that would take hours to unravel safely and my over-drained core wobbled and quaked like a bowl of pudding.
My stomach violently rejected the bread and simple vegetable stew I’d eaten for lunch and I wretched, spewing half-digested food across the stone floor. Miranda just barely managed to turn my head to the side in time, sparing both of us from getting coated in the disgusting mess, but I was in no position to thank her for it.
My stomach heaved again and Miranda gently held my head in place as I further emptied my stomach across the bare stone floor. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Rea rushing towards us and I momentarily felt bad for the mess I was making. These past few months my room had been cleaner than I’d ever managed to keep it on my own. Then that thought was wiped away by the overwhelming pain flooding my body.
I can barely remember what happened next. These days I rarely forget anything, but with my mental enhancements in disarray and my body doing an excellent impression of actively rebelling against my mind, I can only recall snippets of the next two days.
It turns out that not letting your body properly adapt to a massive infusion of foreign magic was a rather terrible idea. When I had woken up in the morning I’d felt slightly off, but it had been manageable. Then I’d gone and gotten myself in a fight where I spent nearly all my mana in the span of less than ten minutes.
Suddenly, the equilibrium that had formed within my body overnight was utterly destroyed. I’d managed to keep things stable for several hours as I spoke with Camille and went to my other class, but that only served to drain the last dregs of my reserves and exhaust me both physically and mentally.
Thus, instead of gradually letting my body shift to adapt to the changes over the coming weeks like Professor Williams and I had planned, everything began to happen nearly all at once. And it hurt. A lot.
My mind swam in and out of consciousness. One moment I was in the shower, Miranda holding me gently under the hot water as Rea ran a soft sponge along my back. Then I was in my bed, familiar voices whispering in hushed tones somewhere in the distance.
I ate and drank when I could, sleeping in short bursts filled with strange, psychedelic dreams. Each time I woke up I could feel the changes inside me progressing rapidly. Sometimes my vision felt weirdly blurry, others my tongue was on fire and I couldn’t stop shivering and burning up at the same time.
My body was yellow and blue, mana and something else flowing and mixing to form reddish hues and slick oily chrome across my fluttering eyelashes. Miranda’s strikingly red skin danced in front of my eyes and she dripped fire and life down my throat as her tail brushed across my shoulders.
There was something whispering in the darkness just beneath the walls. It was far away, separated from me by both an infinite void and a gossamer-thin sheet of golden ravens. The sun rose and set and rose and set and rose and set and everything was wet and cold and hot and dry and hungry. So, so, very hungry. I screamed at a swollen caterpillar and it ran away.
I begged for food, tears burning bright paths down my cheeks, and an angel fed me pain tinged with her work and colored with gold. She was kind and beautiful and I could feel her work as I slept, forging and shaping a vessel already touched by grace. The screams, though muted and hidden, were filled with light and color. One worm hated it, one root craved it, and a third was filled with fear and love in equal measure.
Sometimes when I stared into the sun I thought I could just make out countless shapes, echoes of something that once were and had long since moved on, but they were faint and beautiful like stained glass windows on a dark and foggy morning. Several stood out, bigger and brighter, but missing something.
Time and knowledge looked back and I closed my eyes. They knew me, I knew I was safe. A bird landed on my windowsill and placed its beak against my heart. Behind my eyelids a familiar shape walked down a familiar street surrounded by familiar people. It missed me. It was lost. A bird ate it. I closed my eyes again and a mother’s forgotten love dripped slowly down my throat like a blind woman’s kiss.
And then I finally opened my eyes again and the dark stone ceiling swam slowly into focus. Miranda was lying next to me, head propped up on one arm as she stared down at me with worry in her eyes. She looked as perfect as always, but I could feel the deep touch of exhaustion just behind the smooth facade. Rea snored softly on the floor beside my bed, her head slumped against the bedframe and one hand stretched out to just barely brush against my wrist.
“Orion?” Miranda asked hopefully, her voice barely more than a whisper, “Are you…”
I nodded a fraction of an inch, not trusting my voice. My throat felt dry and raw and there was a foul taste in my mouth. I could see a half-full cup of something on my bedside table but my arms felt too weak to grab it.
“Oh, thank goodness,” she said, sounding relieved and exhausted in equal measure. “How are you feeling?”
I coughed dryly and tried to sit up, but my muscles decided that was a terrible idea and I collapsed back down onto the pillows a moment later.
“Ah. Well, at least you’re awake?”
I nodded again, this time trying to jerk my head towards the cup on the table. I didn’t know if Miranda actually saw what I was doing or if she just understood what I needed, but it worked out either way.
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Miranda scrambled off the bed, carefully stepping around Rea’s limp body, and raised the cup to rest lightly against my lips. I managed two small sips of heaven before I began to cough again and she quickly pulled the cup away before it could spill all over me.
Without needing any prompting, Miranda quickly began to fill me in on the situation. It was the early afternoon of Sunday, a little less than two days since I’d collapsed. I’d spent most of the first day thrashing uncontrollably, then the next babbling incomprehensibly in between long stretches of motionless sleep.
Miranda and Rea had taken turns watching over me, with Miranda spending both nights in the room with me in case something happened. Thankfully, we’d somewhat prepared for a potential situation like this, though I’d expected it would happen the night after the ritual instead of after nearly a full day, so the girls had known what to do. They’d made sure to feed me the potions I’d prepared ahead of time, along with a diet of heavily diluted elven milk to keep my mana levels up and ensure I had all the nutrients I might need.
Once she was done, and I’d drunk another two cups of milk and water, I took stock of how I was feeling. Overall I felt… rather terrible, but less so than I had before. My body felt distinctly strange and the mess of fractured circulations strewn throughout my body had only grown more tangled, but my mana was mostly full and my core felt dense and stable.
All in all, while I could still feel some changes continuing to propagate throughout my body, the bulk of the ritual’s alterations had fully stabilized while I was mostly unconscious. What exactly those changes were I wasn’t yet sure, it would take a lot of exploration to determine exactly what I managed to extract from the outsider, but even just a preliminary examination felt very promising.
I felt… strong in a way that was hard to explain. Even as unwell as I was, my body felt responsive and flexible in a way it never had before. There was something different about my mana as well, a hint of foreign color that was quickly integrating into my core and throughout my body. There was a lot of extensive testing in my future, particularly in the month-long recess between semesters, but that would have to wait for now.
After all, I had class tomorrow. Just one thankfully, but it was my last lesson with Professor Meadows before our exam on Friday and there was no way I could afford to miss it. That meant I had to be up and about in less then a day, ready to defend myself against any sudden ambushes or attacks.
I also still had exams to prepare for, spells to practice, and people to talk to. I had promised Camille that we would talk more soon, she had been very dissatisfied with our brief conversation over lunch, I needed to make sure Brenda wasn’t doing anything stupid, and Lea was probably worried about why I hadn’t come and visited her this weekend.
After about fifteen minutes I decided to try to get out of bed again. I sat up, groaning in pain as sore muscles stretched uncomfortably, and then Miranda gently pushed me back down onto the mattress.
“Please Orion, just rest for now. You told us yourself, stretching yourself too far may set back your recovery and you only have so much time.”
I wanted to protest, but she was right. I’d even ordered Miranda to make sure I didn’t over exert my mana in the days after the ritual, only to go and do so anyway less than a day later. I sighed and closed my eyes. “Six hours,” I muttered, already feeling sleep’s warm embrace reaching up to pull me into a slumber, “make sure I’m up.”
“Of course, Orion. Sleep ti…”
----------------------------------------
Camille stepped confidently into her room and slammed the door shut with a muted bang. Then her nerves finally failed her and she slumped against the doorframe. Sliding down to the floor, she hugged her knees against her chest and let her face fall to rest on top of her legs. The cold of the stone was soothing against her back, but all she could focus on was the way her hands would not stop shaking.
It had been so close. The shards of ice had flown mere inches over her head and the force of their impact against the wall had turned them into nothing but fine powder. They would have cut right through her without slowing down, with or without the durability enchantments on her clothing. If Orion had been a moment slower pushing her to the ground or if he hadn’t noticed the attack in time, she would have died, bleeding out in a forgotten, empty corner of the Acadamy.
Her breath came in short, shuddering gasps and something heavy was pressed against the back of her throat. Her vision grew blurry and the jitter of her hands faded into a vaguely whitish-pink blur cut through with streaks of her dark blue painted nails. The thumping of her heart was oh-so loud in her ears, a rapid drum beat that drowned out everything but her slowly rising sobs.
She was going to die. It was a thought that had always lurked at the edges of her mind and haunted her on dreamless nights, but now it was the only thing she could think of. She was going to die and nothing she did was going to matter. Perhaps today, perhaps tomorrow, perhaps in a month, but she was going to die. It was inevitable. The sun would rise, the tide’s would come in, and she would die.
She could see it in her mind’s eye, stark colors painted across the insides of her eyelids. Matilda Armin’s bisected body was sprawled across the floor, blood and viscera pooling in the gap between where the two halves of her still-warm corpse had fallen. The other three bodies were all but unrecognizable, burnt and blackened by fire and lightning, but Matilda’s face was all but untouched by the fighting.
Camille had shared two classes with the fourth year. They’d even studied together once, Matilda took excellent color-coded notes and Camille had traded the answers to a dozen homework assignments for an annotated copy of their textbook. Now she was dead, and when Camille looked down at her pale body, it was Camille’s own face that looked back up at her.
It had been so… easy. She’d followed Miranda’s lead, launching powerful spells to batter down the duo’s defenses. She’d only ever cast that spell at static targets during class, enchanted wooden dummies designed to take spell after spell and come out no worse for wear. She hadn’t thought it would be so… effective.
Burnt humans smelled just like any other meat. She wished she could have gone her entire life not knowing that. Well, maybe it was better to learn like this than… when it was her own meat burning.
Tears dripped slowly down her cheeks and soaked into her leggings. She wondered which one she would be. The boy with the hole through his chest had died in agony and Matilda had bled out on the ground. Perhaps frying really was the way to go, enough lightning and the mind had no time to feel pain.
She just didn’t understand why. Why, why, why? They’d attacked out of nowhere with overwhelming force, and then they’d died. Orion had been perfectly cool throughout the entire fight, completely unaffected by the sudden attack. To him it was barely an inconvenience, something to be dealt with and then pushed aside in favor of a hearty lunch.
She didn’t know how she’d managed to avoid crying over lunch. He’d been so… casual. Him and Miranda had been all smiles and laughs, as though they hadn’t just killed five people in as many minutes. She didn’t belong here. She never had. She’d just tricked herself into thinking she did and now the act was all falling apart at the seams.
She wanted to do something, needed to move, to run, to think and plan. Instead she cried and shook, hugging her knees tighter and tighter against her chest until her ribs ached and her knuckles were white with strain. Everything was fine. She was fine. She was alive. She wasn’t going to die.
Maybe if she kept saying it over and over she would even trick herself.