What We Do to Survive

Despite the dread I’d initially felt, the meeting with Janna passed with no major hiccups. She noticed of course that I was a little out of sorts, her talent in magic might be less impressive than I’d assumed but she was still a very perceptive person, but I waved away her concerns and she didn’t mention it again.

In general, she was improving at a slightly slower pace than I would have liked but much faster than my worst case prediction. If nothing else, it was good to have a new baseline to compare against if I ever decided to take on other students. Depending on how my future plans went, I might have to train up some minions to keep them from failing out of Avalon. For now however, I estimated it would take about another week before she was ready to make the circulation work.

Otherwise, the only other point of interest came right at the end of the lesson, as I was packing my things to leave.

“Oh, Orion, I almost forgot!”

I looked up from my bag to find Janna standing half way out the door, head turned back to look at me. I raised an eyebrow and she blushed faintly. She straightened her back, falling into a more formal tone than she’d used for most of our lesson.

“I wanted to inform you that I’ve sourced all the materials you were looking for, they should arrive over the weekend, Tuesday at the latest. I am content that you are following your side of the contract as we agreed, so I am willing to deliver everything before we are finished with my training. Should I bring what has already arrived to our meeting on Sunday or hold off with everything till Tuesday?”

Oh! That was good news, faster than she’d promised, even. I still needed to finish the pumps and the tank system, but that shouldn’t take long at all. I’d found the designs used on commercial farms months ago so it was just a matter of assembling everything and making some minor tweaks to account for breasts and not udders. I made a quick note, another task for the weekend then.

“That's great to hear, thank you Janna. Just bring everything on Tuesday I think, I assume you can keep everything in good condition for a few days?”

“Yes, certainly.” She nodded briskly, then paused and awkwardly adjusted the hem of her wide skirts. “That is all.”

“Great, good doing business with you?” She nodded again, then bit her lip and fled from the room, leaving me staring after her in confusion. Every time I thought I was getting a handle on her character, she went and did something strange like this. Things like this is why I kept Miranda around, though I wished I’d started asking for her advice and suggestions earlier. Her bonds kept her loyal and obedient, but she didn’t provide anything I didn’t explicitly ask for.

Unfortunately, the rest of the day did not prove nearly as fruitful. I arrived back in my room in high spirits and resumed my work on the ritual, only to run into the exact issue I’d been confronted with earlier after barely an hour. Without knowing what I was sacrificing or what I was trying to gain, it was all but impossible to continue. I’d worked out the framework that adapted the ritual magic to myself, that had been the first focus of our class, but past that I needed to know what I wanted before I continue.

It seemed my dreams of an immediate power boost would have to be just that for a while longer. Now that the moment had passed, I was feeling much less enthusiastic about rushing head first into enhancement rituals anyway. Magic was dangerous, ritual magic even more so, and trying to take shortcuts typically resulted in a one way trip to the afterlife. There was even a saying about it, ‘shortcuts get you a head cut short’. I liked my head exactly where it was now.

Setting that aside, I spent a few hours alternating between fabricating the pumps and tanks I would need and flipping through the increasingly unsettling grimoire. The crafting didn’t take particularly long, not that I’d expected that it would. I’d started to keep a stock of the large stone bricks that were a pretty standard starting point for many alchemical transmutations, and I already had most of the spells I needed prepared.

The only time consuming part was getting all the runes done properly, but even that wasn’t much of an issue. The biggest hurdle was adapting them to run off of Mistletoe’s magic instead of an external power source, and I’d already designed runes for exactly that purpose for her other restraints. After all, most farm animals were not as mana rich as my lovely pet.

A few tests also showed that she seemed to really like the new devices, wriggling and moaning even more than usual while they were active. That was probably good, though I would once again have to increase her liquids intake. Elves did not actually require nearly as many calories or fluids as they should given regular biology, but if I had her producing bucketloads of milk and other liquids with her current water intake, that would stretch even her species’ unnatural abilities.

Comparatively, my studying was not nearly as successful, though it was certainly educational. The thick book was dense, filled with hundreds of spells, rituals, and theoretical musings on various aspects of magic and spellcasting. It was fascinating stuff, but much of it was above my current level of understanding and somewhat distasteful besides. I hadn’t seen anything worse than the ninety-nine pre-teen sacrifice, but the authors (there were at least three distinct writers I could identify) clearly placed very little value on morality and human life. I had no doubt this book would have been widely burned and banned had the authors ever decided to publish.

Towards the end of the night, I found the rituals I was pretty sure Elpha wanted me to use on her niece. There was a short section detailing several high level slave bindings, the sort that were never publicly distributed and highly regulated in most nations. Compared to the clunky mess I had used on Miranda, it was like night and day. I wasn’t sure about casting some of them, but several options seemed rather appealing.

I was tentatively leaning towards what the book referred to as ‘the officiant’s collar’. It was an eigth circle binding ritual, but the mana manipulation required was only of the fifth circle. That was still somewhat beyond my current means, but I was sure I would be able to figure it out by the deadline Elpha had set for me.

It was an extremely powerful yet subtle sort of binding that had originated as a trap for unsuspecting spouses. Instead of the straightforward loyalty and obedience that most oaths compelled in their targets, this one camouflaged itself with devotion, twisting the targets mind to make them think that what they were doing was their own idea. Beyond that, the binding was incredibly difficult to detect or remove, but that wasn’t all.

The truly devious part of the ritual was that it could sidestep the ‘willing’ nature that all oaths fundamentally required. The casting could be slipped seamlessly into a wedding ceremony or similar, requiring only some minor modifications to the typical vows. If the target was even marginally accepting of the relationship, the ritual could use that gap to dig in and slowly bind its victim over the course of a few days or weeks. Optimally, the victim wouldn’t even know they were under an oath in the first place.

It wasn’t quite what Elpha had requested, but I felt it would be good enough. It was by far the most subtle binding spell I could feasibly cast, and thus minimized the risk of death-by-Goodwitch. Her family might get suspicious of how devoted and obedient she was towards me, but if she was already telling her family about me it wouldn’t seem so out of place.

I’d also found a much more straightforward binding ritual that I thought would be a good choice for my more immediate plans. It was a powerful but barebones binding, forcing the target to obey their master’s orders in both word and spirit and little else. It didn’t inspire loyalty or have any more subtle effects, but it was a seventh circle ritual and was supposedly very hard to detect or remove. It wasn’t nearly as subtle as the binding I planned for Brenda, particularly if you forgot to order the target not to tell anyone about the oath, but it didn’t have to be. As long as I worded my initial orders correctly, it would more than do the trick.

That binding also had the advantage that I was pretty sure I could cast it with a few days to prepare. The ritual components would be a little tricky, but once again it seemed Mistletoe would come through for me there. The main ingredient was several liters of blood from a powerful magical creature, and elves were even listed as one of the best options. The spell component was also not particularly concerning, it looked tricky for a fourth circle spell, but that shouldn’t be a problem. I would have plenty of time to prepare by the time I got my new ‘associates’ ready for the ritual.

At the very least, every option in the book was so much better than the jury-rigged abomination that I’d used with Miranda. I would have to do some more research and some minor tests, but I was hopeful I would be able to replace her current bindings with something better soon. That would be a huge weight off my mind, since well, her current bindings were not exactly meant for people and wouldn’t hold for more than a few more years at most.

Since I hadn’t had access to rare and restricted materials like this grimoire, I’d ended up putting together something out of several other rituals, primarily ones meant to bind animal familiars. In hindsight, it was a miracle the mess hadn’t just killed her, though I was worried it might have had a detrimental effect on her mental health.

Beyond that, though I hadn’t told her, I’d already noticed that the binding was breaking down. By the time Miranda had enough mana to cast fifth circle spells, the framework would no longer be able to influence her at all, and the first signs of the weakening would appear sooner. Before, that had meant I would have to have a permanent solution ready for her before I could no longer ensure her obedience, but if I could rebind her that gave me more breathing room.

There were still some issues to consider, bindings tended to interfere with one another so I would have to figure out a way to sidestep or otherwise avoid that issue. Hopefully, I could just use something powerful enough that it would just cancel out the current oath, but there were other workarounds I’d been considering.

I also wasn’t sure that Miranda would be able to remain at Avalon for much longer even if I wanted to keep her around. She was a skilled and powerful caster, but I didn’t think she could keep up with the curriculum past the fifth or sixth year. Fortunately for her, her sponsor had paid her tuition so she had the option to withdraw, but with her bindings at the current state I couldn’t have allowed that to happen. Too much risk of her slipping away and then looking for revenge.

This definitely opened up my options a lot. It would have been a shame to have to kill her, I had grown moderately fond of her over the years and hadn’t been looking forward to rending her down into ingredients. Unless she proved herself more useful dead than alive, this book had increased her life expectancy greatly. I laughed quietly, I’d have to tell her she owed her life to one of the most brutal and feared mages in the world sometime. Her reaction was sure to be priceless.

I went to bed tired but overall content with how the day had gone. I’d managed to keep myself busy for the entire evening without thinking too hard about my most recent near death experience, and I was tired enough that I didn’t lie in bed agonizing about it either.

The next day, I saw Miranda for the first time since our poorly thought out meeting earlier in the week. She visibly paled when I waved her over to sit down beside me and I internally cursed how stupid I’d been. I spent months agonizing about keeping our relationship mostly cordial and then I managed to blow it all away in a week.

I gave her my most encouraging smile and whispered, “I’m sorry, we should talk after class,” but she had arrived too late to discuss things beforehand. The class passed quickly, though I noticed that Miranda took no notes and had been as stiff as a board the entire time. Once again, my best intentions had clearly only made things worse. Still, I tried to put it out of my mind as Professor Meadows continued to lecture about the composition and structure of various types of materials.

A quiet, “Come along,” had her scrambling after me when I left the room, but I tried not to give her too much time to stew in her fears before I turned into the closest practice room. We stood in silence as I sealed the door behind us. She meekly obeyed when I gestured to one of the chairs, sitting down with her hands folded in her lap and her eyes downcast.

“Miranda. Look at me.”

She looked up, and I was shocked to see tears in the corners of her eyes. She was shaking now, and I realized I winced internally at how this all must look to her. Gods above, even when I was trying to be reassuring I only made things worse. For fucks sake, this was already such a disaster.

She swallowed loudly and I finally noticed that I’d just been staring at her for several long seconds. Fuck! Right, reassuring people. How did a normal person reassure someone… Hugs? Hugs were good, I remembered hugs. I opened my arms, then put them down as my mind caught up to me. No. Hugs seemed like the opposite of a good idea right now.

“Miranda. Look, it’s ok. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.” No, that wouldn’t do it. Maybe something like this? “You’re ok. You’re safe. I’m not going to touch you right now.”

That seemed to do something, though I wasn’t sure if it was a good thing. She continued to stare at me unblinking, but she’d sort of hunched in on herself. No, that probably wasn’t a good sign.

“I wanted to apologize for what I made you do on Wednesday. I didn’t mean for it to be so traumatic for you. It wasn’t a punishment, nor a warning. I just… got a little over zealous. I doubt that's what you want to hear, but it's the truth. If I was going to punish you, I wouldn’t make it a surprise.”

Hmm… Maybe I shouldn’t have added that last part. Still, it was the truth. Punishment for the sake of pain was just… petty. If I was going to torture someone, I didn’t want it to be an accident. I would do it, even if they didn’t really deserve it, if it forwarded my goals, but needless cruelty was just that. Needless.

After a pause, she finally opened her mouth and weakly asked, “That… potion you made me drink. What was it? It was so rich, but it tasted of pain and silence and so much endless pleasure.” She closed her eyes and shuddered, but I realized that this time it wasn’t in fear. “It was… so dark but it hurt oh so good…” she all but moaned out the last part and I had to reinforce my mental defenses when I felt her aura momentarily spike. Interesting, that was very interesting.

“It's a secret. The kind you don’t want me to tell you.”

She nodded shakily, but didn’t press the issue. She pulled her knees up against her chest and wrapped her arms around them, rocking slowly in her seat. “You promise?”

“What?”

“You promise, you didn’t mean for it to be that bad. You just… didn’t realize. Didn’t realize how I’d react.”

“Yes, I promise. You didn’t deserve that, especially not by accident. You’ve done everything I’ve asked of you and more.” Despite some minor hiccups, she had been an excellent subordinate. It would be an utter shame to have to get rid of her prematurely.

We sat in silence for another long minute. “Can I go?”

“I won’t stop you if you want to leave. Even when I’m trying for the opposite, I always seem to make things worse between us. For as little as it probably helps, I have no plans to get rid of you in the near future. You are much more useful to me like this than in pieces or locked up in a cage somewhere.”

She nodded slowly. Then, without another word, she stood up and rushed out of the room. I sighed loudly when she was gone. Damn it. Well, maybe that helped a little? For once, I didn’t seem to have made things worse. That had to count for something.

We had a regular teacher in Mana Theory this week. My classmates seemed a little bummed when the Myrddin did not take over the class again, but no one was particularly surprised. Liam told me that he apparently did that occasionally, just taking over for one or two lectures at random, but that he rarely stuck around for longer than that. It was just a shame this happened to be a one lecture experience instead of something slightly longer.

Despite that, the class was still thoroughly interesting, though not as productive as the prior week of course. Professor Manton, the one that Lord Ambrosius had stood in for the week before, gave a fascinating demonstration on animating pure mana constructs, summoning a translucent humanoid figure that brushed off all the attack spells we threw at it and then demolished several desks with powerful sweeps of its arms and legs.

The lecture that followed was both informative and somewhat disheartening, the technique he demonstrated was something he had spent decades working up too and for good reason, but it gave me some ideas for the mana shield I kept meaning to work on. I didn’t think I would be able to make something as durable as that construct, but some of the principles seemed very manageable.

I was particularly interested in his technique of shaping the mana into tiny ringlets reminiscent of chain mail in order to reinforce the structure. It reminded me of the circulations I’d seen in Mistletoe’s bones and seemed like it could have some interesting uses in the future. If I could put something like that together just under the surface of my skin… Well, that certainly warranted future consideration.

I had planned to head directly to the library after classes, I wanted to pick up a few books and the class had finally inspired me to go and seriously look into proper pure mana shielding, but to my surprise Liam invited me to come grab an early dinner with him and a ‘friend’. It seemed like a somewhat strange offer, but I was about to accept anyway when he added a detail I had not seen coming.

“There are a couple of great restaurants out in Port Anangala and Avalon is moving the portal in just a few days. It’ll be a good time and I’d like you to meet one of the people I work with outside the Academy.” He clapped a large hand onto my shoulder, “In our field, it's always good to have connections and Orin has always been good at finding the resources I need.”

It took me a moment to process what he’d said, but when I did I turned to look at him in confusion, a bead of fear welling up in the pit of my stomach.

“You want me to leave the Academy with you… for a fancy dinner?”

Increasingly horrifying ideas raced through my mind as I thought back to every interaction I’d had with the older student. Was this some sort of trick to get me outside the Academy’s protections? Avalon’s policies technically extended outside the bounds of the pocket world, but they were certainly harder to enforce outside. Perhaps someone else was targeting me, someone outside the Academy? It was a risk to attack a member of Avalon, even a student, but if they were careful I would be dead and no one would be the wiser.

Liam, seemingly oblivious to my hidden panic, grinned widely, “Yeah, exactly! There's a great seafood place just a few minutes walk from the portal, what do you think? My treat!”

He seemed earnest about it at least, maybe it… wasn’t a trap? Liam had been nothing but friendly over the time I’ve known him. In theory, as a more senior member of Avalon, he was bound by the charter to protect me if someone outside the organization tried to do me harm.

I bit my lip. I did need to improve my social skills and Liam was offering to introduce me to some merchant associate of his. That could prove to be a useful link sometime in the future. On the other hand, well, it had been a while since I’d left Avalon. I knew it was always an option, as long as you showed up to classes no one cared what you did on your own time, but it had never seemed like a good time. I hadn’t even left once over the past summer, choosing instead to spend the month-long break studying while many students left to visit family or whatever else.

“Um, well-”

“Great!” he interrupted my hesitant reply, face lighting up in a broad smile, “I’ll go get changed into something a bit lighter, it's really hot out there this time of year. I’ll meet you by the portal in thirty?”

Right. Lighter clothes. Changed. I looked down at my long pants and the long jacket I tended to wear around campus. Avalon had a temperate climate most of the year, but it got cold inside the long stone hallways and cavernous underground areas. Ever since I’d worked out circulations for temperature control, I’d stopped taking the jacket off entirely. It was some of the only enchanted clothing I owned and the deep pockets made it particularly convenient.

I opened my mouth to ask him some more questions, but he was already gone. For a moment I was tempted to just bail on him, I hadn’t said I was going, even if he’d clearly interpreted my response as an agreement. It felt… too risky, to just leave the relative safety of Avalon’s strict rules and policies for the dangers of the outside world. I barely even know where Port Anangala, much less the city’s laws, who the important people were, what sort of things not to do, all those little details that were crucial to not attract unwanted attention.

I weighed my options for a moment longer, then squared my shoulders and took a deep breath. I could do this, everything was going to be fine. Liam was going to be with me. I liked Liam, he was just about the closest thing to a friend I had made over the years. Worst came to worst, he was a seventh circle mage and the Avalon portal would be just a few minutes away. We would be fine. It was going to be fine.