What We Do to Survive

On my way to my next class, I passed through the ruined corridor that I had avoided on my way to lunch. The formerly blood splattered walls were blackened and even melted in some places. A large crater in the middle of the hallway had been bordered off my floating ribbons and two staff members I didn’t recognize were rapidly repairing the damage.

I was somewhat interested in what the result of the fight had been, but from just the damage I really wasn’t sure. I shrugged it off for now, I was certain I would hear about it eventually.

My next class was Evocation Fundamentals 3, taught by Professor Shrike. He was a stout, grizzled man with greying hair and one eye. A shimmering gemstone had replaced the ruined remains of his other eye, half hidden by a long fringe.

I wasn’t a huge fan of his class, no matter how useful the material was. He wasn’t a bad teacher by any means, but EF3 was one of the few classes required for all students and had a very detailed curriculum that he had to follow. The combination of a packed classroom and a professor who didn’t want to teach some of the course material but had to was rather irritating.

On the other hand, the class also had a three hour practical once a week, also with professor Shrike. That part was an absolute joy and almost made the mountains of homework worth it.

After submitting my assignments, I took a seat at the very back of the large lecture hall where the class was situated. Unlike in the smaller classes, the professor didn’t take questions until the end, and the massive illusion display he used rendered any difference in seating moot.

I was unfortunately joined several minutes later by Brenda Goodwitch, or as I’d heard several people refer to her behind her back, Brenda Trashwitch. Unlike most of the rest of us, the girl had gotten into Avalon on the back of pedigree alone. Her grandmother and mother were both horrifyingly powerful spellcasters, and her family had spawned dozens of skilled casters over the years.

Brenda… wasn’t one of them. She had little drive to improve, her spellcasting was subpar, and she wasn’t even especially good at the theory end either. Unfortunately, she was her mother’s little sweetheart and everyone knew it. Sure no one would stop someone from offing her, but that person would definitely not enjoy the consequences of their actions. The girl was just good enough as a caster to keep passing her classes and the myriad of magic items she wore ensured that what mistakes she made were not lethal ones.

To add insult to injury, she was also an annoying bitch with a whiny voice and the personality of a dead fish. I had no idea why her mother had allowed her to join Avalon, but I was just waiting for the day someone with enough influence to do it finally got fed up with the girl.

For now however, I had to deal with her. Sometime in our first year, the girl had decided that she was my friend, and nothing I’d done over the years had disabused her of that notion. She loved following me around and always sat next to me during any classes we shared.

“Hi Orion!” she squealed, squeezing my arm tightly against her side. “Where have you been? I haven’t seen you all weekend?”

“Good afternoon to you as well, Bren.” I replied, trying to keep the irritation out of my voice.

If not for her attitude, she would have been a passable friend. She was attractive in a sort of girlish way and had the resources I so sorely lacked. Unfortunately, she was a brat and someone had trained her not to go giving out her riches to her friends.

“I’ve been a bit busy with some personal research!”

“Oooooh exciting!” she whispered loudly enough that I was sure they could hear her clear across the hall, “What's it about?”

I smiled through pursed lips, “It wouldn’t be personal research if I told you, now would it?”

“You can tell me! I can keep a secret!”

I quirked an eyebrow at her, staring in silence until she blushed and looked away. Despite her faults, she was at least somewhat self aware.

“Ok, maybe I can’t, but you should still tell me!”

I sighed tiredly. “Maybe when I’m ready to show it off, it's still a work in progress.”

I had no actual intention of revealing my current project to her, or anyone for that matter. Igor might be able to get away with enslaving and experimenting on elves, but I certainly couldn’t.

Igor was something of a special case. For one, I doubted they could kill him even if they tried. The man had been ‘killed’ no less than three times that I knew of, but none of them had stuck. He was also a terrifyingly powerful archmage with enough allies and servants to cow nations into submission.

The Triumvirate, the alliance between the three major elf nations of the world, took a very harsh stance on experimentation on their citizens. They knew very well how valuable their species was and were happy to kill indiscriminately to protect them.

As a member of Avalon, even if only a students, I was somewhat shielded from reprisal. I doubted they would risk trying to act against me while I was here, but they very well would slaughter me if I ever left the safety of the pocket dimension. If I was too blatant, they might even put a secret bounty on my head and let my fellow students hunt me down.

Sure Avalon would extort concessions or even get revenge for my death, but I would still be dead.

“Ok!” she contented herself in leaning heavily against me, using my shoulder as a makeshift pillow. I’d initially tried to make her stop, but she just kept at it and I eventually decided it was futile.

It made me distinctly uncomfortable to have someone not under my control this close to me, but there was nothing I could do about it. At the very least I made sure she only did it in designated safe zones like classrooms, the library, or the cafeteria. Even she wasn’t dumb enough to risk the wrath of the Administration.

Class began as usual, with Professor Shrike rapidly going over the homework problems on his illusion board. He wrote quickly and fired off explanations at a rapid-fire pace, making it clear that he really didn’t care if we followed along or not.

I checked the answers he gave against a copy of the assignment that I’d held onto, making minor corrections to the few problems I hadn’t analyzed correctly. After the first exam, where I’d realized more than half the questions came from the homeworks, I’d started making duplicates of my assignments before I handed them in. I expected they would also make a decent bargaining chip with one of the younger students if I ever needed something from them.

With that out of the way, Professor Shrike clapped his hands together and cleared the board. He cleared his throat loudly, the megaphone enchantment he always used making it clearly audible even from up here.

“Well then, with that all out of the way, we can get started. As you can probably tell from your homework, we’re going to be talking about elemental evocations today, and how to adjust them on the fly.”

Raising a hand into the air, he conjured a tiny ball of fire in his palm, barely more than a candle flame. The flame flickered, then swelled in size until a pillar of roiling flames rested on his palm. Another flicker and the flames turned a deep orange and then a blazing white, radiating enough heat that I could feel it through my constantly running mana circulation.

He brandished his hand through the air, the flames lashing over our heads like a whip before collapsing back into a tiny white candle flame, then vanishing entirely.

“Now, I’m sure some of you may not understand the purpose of that little demonstration. I’m a battlemage, of course I can wield a measly fire whip. What you may have noticed however is that everything I did was just a single spell. It was candlelight in fact, one of the first elemental spells you all should have learned in your first semester. All I did was modify it on the fly to manifest a variety of effects.”

Impressed murmuring greeted that admission, and I had to agree. That was an incredible display of skill, to the point I had no idea how he’d managed it at all.

“Now, I don’t expect any of you to do what I just did anytime soon. It takes a lifetime of practice to modify a spell to that extent while it's active. However, I do expect you to manage something like this. I’m going to cast candlelight again with three different modifications, see if you can spot them.”

He raised his hand again and a small but very hot and bright flame appeared above his hand. It was clearly a candlelight spell, just hot enough that I was sure the front few rows were really feeling the heat.

The light winked out and he cast again. This time, a much larger flame appeared above his hand. It retained the teardrop shape of a candlelight spell, but was an order of magnitude larger.

He let it sit for a moment, then recast the spell a third time. Now instead of appearing above his hand, the little light orbited slowly around his hand.

I watched the demonstration with interest, much more engaged then I typically was in this class. I’d understood the theory of what we were preparing for, but seeing it in practice was an entirely different experience. I had been somewhat doubtful of the use of such spell modification, thinking it would be easier to just learn more spells, but I was quickly coming around on that issue. This seemed deeply useful.

“Enough with that, we’re going to go more in depth on what I just demonstrated in our practical tomorrow. For now, we’re going to talk about theory and really break down the fundamentals of the candlelight spell. I know it's not the most engaging of topics, but this is actually important.”

I temporarily shelved my excitement, realizing that the demonstrations were over for the day. At my side, Brenda squeezed my upper arm tightly, but I could tell that even she was paying more attention than usual.

“So first of all, let's consider the upper portion of the spell matrix. As you can see in this two dimensional projection, the key portion of the framework is this bit here…”

Despite my typically preference to wait until the halls had cleared, I left the classroom at a near run, defensive enchantments whirling around me and mana rushing through my body.

It was an absolute waste to spend mana at such a rate, I wouldn’t be able to practice as much as I typically did tonight, but needs must and all that. I had a third class today after all, and it was scheduled for only ten minutes after EP3.

Typically I would be able to make my way to my next class quickly but without the need to dispense with my usual cautious movement. However, today the class was not happening in its normal room just a few moments walk down the hallway from the large lecture hall that housed EP3, but in one of the massive ritual halls that Avalon maintained.

Advanced Enhancement Rituals was both my hardest and most important class. I’d discovered even as a freshman that my talents lay primarily in the fields of internal mana manipulation and self modification, and I had dived deeply into those fields in the years since.

I’d taken Introductory Enhancement Rituals, taught by the same professor in fact, the previous semester but hadn’t felt sufficiently prepared to actually try any on myself. That sort of magic was horrifically dangerous and the introductory class was purely theoretical.

This semester, I planned to finally take the plunge. That was actually the entire point of the class, to prepare students to undergo such a ritual. The only requirement to pass was the completion of such a work of magic.

Today we would be watching one of Professor Williams’ proteges going through a ritual of her own and I was incredibly excited for it. Fortunately we had been told about the upcoming ritual weeks in advance, so I’d had time to make all the needed preparations before all my time had been taken up by my new pet.

I had a half dozen magic items I’d made or otherwise acquired ready to go, all intended to help me better observe the magic at work. Professor Williams had in fact encouraged us to prepare in such a way, wanting us to get as much as possible out of the experience.

After all, it was rare to be allowed to witness another mage’s rituals. Only the fact that this was not a particularly unique enhancement and that the mage in question worked closely with our professor had made today’s class possible.

I made it down with plenty of time, thankful that no one had tried to test my protections as I rushed down. That would have been thoroughly irritating.

The ritual room we were using was one of the larger ones, a wide open perfectly cubic hall with smooth stone walls. At the center of the room floated a spherical chamber of clear crystal, both the outside and inside covered in freshly painted symbols drawn in bloody ink.

Most of the class was already here, Professor Williams herself standing just below the sphere and speaking with her protege. The young woman in question stood in nothing but a light cloak to ward off the chill of the stone hall. Her body was also covered in painted symbols, the blood kept from drying due to several additives in the mixture.

The rest of us were gathered along the walls, sitting on small stools that had been provided and fiddling with various magic items. I joined them, nodding a greeting to those I knew as I sat down on a free stool and dove into my own bag.

I started by withdrawing three small vials, each containing a different potion meant to enhance my senses and magical sensitivity. Next, I donned a necklace and headband both enchanted with similar effects.

Finally, I carefully set up the object I had spent the most time on of the lot. It was an old project, though one I had originally put aside due to lack of expertise, only returning to it because of this opportunity. I’d used one of my few academic advisement sessions to meet with Master Halmon, one of the Academy’s foremost artificers, and burned several favors to acquire the needed materials.

I slipped the heavily modified jeweler's loupe over my eyes, carefully flipping down five of the eight lenses over each eye. I planned to continuously change which subset of the lenses I was using throughout the ritual to get the best possible experience of the process.

Each lens was enchanted to filter out specific wavelengths of magic. When combined with the incredibly powerful magesight enchantment on the primarily lenses, along with the other potions and items I was using, I should be able to narrow down and observe the exact elements of the process I was most interested in.

The item had been costly in the extreme and had strained my skills to the limit to create. It would have been a huge waste just for this one event. However, I had high hopes the device would help me in a lot of other places over the next few years, so I had decided it was worth the price.

So far, I had been very pleased with the results, but this would be the first real test run.

Unfortunately, it was too fragile and disruptive to wear in my day to day life, otherwise I doubted I would ever give up the incredible amount of data it gave me about everything I lay my eyes on.

Perhaps in the future, when I was older, stronger, better, I would make a more compact version. Maybe something like those ‘contact lenses’ I’d heard the dwarves were experimenting with. I’d stolen the loupe design from those greedy creatures already, why not their next innovation too?