Chapter 22: Sympathy & Defense

Chapter 22: Sympathy & Defense

SebastienUpdated from novelbIn.(c)om

Month 11, Day 2, Monday 3:25 p.m.

Sebastien changed her mind halfway to the library and instead took the box of magical exercise supplies Lacer had given her to her room and locked them in the trunk at the base of her bed. ‘It wouldn’t do to have someone sabotage my ability to meet Professor Lacer’s expectations.’ Then, she went to the library and got to work.

She had an astounding amount to accomplish, and not very much time to do it in. Even a mind like hers couldn’t coast through what lay ahead. ‘Five days of classes per week. Six classes, four of which meet two times, and two which meet three times, for a total of twenty-one hours sitting in class per week. Say I study six hours per week for every class but Practical Casting, which I must spend more than two hours per day on if I wish to catch up. Another four hours per day for meals, hygiene, walking between classes, and other unavoidable transition time. It might be possible to keep working at a lower efficiency during those times, but I also need time for my mind to relax, or I might start having Will problems. Additionally, if I want to repay my debt before the interest drowns me, I need to get started with the alchemy Katerin and the Verdant Stag need. I can do that on the weekends.’

She looked down at the number she had scribbled on the edge of her new leather notebook. ‘That’s almost as many hours as most people are awake every week. Speaking of, I will probably need to increase my total hours of sleep. Perhaps I can take naps in the late afternoon.’ She was thankful that Professor Lacer had warned her not to take on more than six classes. If she had taken Artificery as well, she would probably collapse under the workload.

She read from the list of books recommended by Professor Gnorrish for a couple of hours, then started Professor Lacer’s homework. It took her longer than she had expected, and the dinner hour was almost over by the time she finished creating ten different fully realized spell arrays that could move the ball around the Circle. She rushed off to eat, then returned to her dorm, where most of the other students were already gathered. Many of them were chatting or working on schoolwork, creating a dull murmur of undistinguishable sound.

Sebastien pulled the pillow off her bed and sat on it cross-legged on the floor, drawing a simple spell array in front of her. She lit her small oil lamp to act as the source of heat energy. By the time she had pushed the steel ball around for thirty minutes, her head was aching and she had trouble concentrating—early signs of Will-strain. If she continued, she wouldn’t be able to cast her dreamless sleep and alarm spells, so she pulled her curtains and went to bed early.

The familiar feel of her heart pounding brought her from sleep into wakefulness. She stood with carefully controlled movements and drew back the curtain to press herself against the cool glass of the window beside her bed. The condensation of her breath fogged up the glass, and she drew a little sad face on it.

The sad face faded away, and she found herself looking at her own faint reflection. Dark eyes, sharp jaw, and shockingly pale hair framing it all. The only things she recognized were the eyes. ‘Those are still mine. My eyes staring out of this mask.’

As silently as possible, she returned to her locked chest and removed the sand wheel. This time, she used a different set of glyphs than the day before, and mentally redesigned the method of movement. While researching the different spell arrays the evening before, she had come up with some more innovative ways to accomplish the goal. Before, she had been directly controlling the ball as it moved around, guiding it with a mental hand. There were other ways to approach the problem, though, a couple of which she found particularly interesting.

She practiced for almost an hour by the light and power of the oil lamp, finding that the magic calmed her faster than she had expected. The steady, soothing whisper of disturbed sand was audible in the stillness.

Shifting from the bed across from her drew Sebastien’s attention, as the girl threw off her covers and stood up.

“Oh, I’m sorry, did I wake y—”

The girl waved her arm at Sebastien clumsily and stumbled off toward the bathrooms, her eyes still unfocused with sleep. When she returned a few minutes later, she seemed a little more awake. “Practicing for Professor Lacer?” she asked.

Sebastien nodded. “I apologize if I disturbed your rest, Miss...?”

“Anastasia Gervin,” the girl said, sitting at the foot of her own bed with her legs crossed, her long, loose hair catching the light of the lamp’s flame artlessly.

“Pleased to meet you, Miss Gervin.” Sebastien bowed slightly from her seated position.

“Please, call me Ana. There are a few too many Gervins enrolled here to be so formal. It causes confusion. And I know your name already. We met a while ago, when my cousin Alec was being such a braying ass.”

Sebastien couldn’t help the twitch of a smile at the description, though she didn’t allow it to disarm her. ‘She might commiserate with me in private and then do the same with others behind my back.’ Aloud, she said, “I remember. I wasn’t sure you would.”

The girl gave her that same crooked smile she had the day of the entrance application. “You may be more memorable than you think.” Before Sebastien could try to figure out what she meant by that, she continued. “You have quite the dedication, to wake up in the middle of the night just to practice. No wonder Professor Lacer picked you.”

Sebastien knew the girl was mistaken, but didn’t want to say so. “I find it best to be prepared.”

Ana gave a little smirk. “It is a good policy, but do you not need to sleep?”

“I have trouble sleeping,” Sebastien admitted. “I’ll lie down again in a while, when I’ve grown tired.”

Ana hummed noncommittally, returning to her bed and closing her eyes.

Drawing her curtains again to help shield the light of the lamp, Sebastien did the same. Thicker curtains would be useful to keep from disturbing the other dorm residents, if she wanted to continue practicing magic at her bed while they slept.

With two sessions of sleep, Sebastien again woke feeling more refreshed than she normally did, despite the strain she had been putting on her mind.

As she left the room, Damien Westbay fell into step beside her. Apparently he had been waiting outside the classroom for her to exit. “Pecanty is incurious,” the boy said without preamble, letting the statement sound like a devastating judgment. “Professor Lacer says failing to hold an opinion on a matter says one of two things. Either, ‘I do not wish to invest the resources to understand the matter,’ or, ‘I understand the matter and the evidence is weighted toward only one answer, and that answer is neutrality, at least until more evidence is presented.’” The boy spoke in the articulate, clipped tones of Thaddeus Lacer as he quoted.

“He says most people don’t understand that, however, and what they really mean is, ‘I am above all this,’ ‘I am wise,’ or ‘I am lazy.’ And they are likely deceiving themselves about which of the three it is.” He turned his head toward Sebastien, gauging her response to this.

“Professor Lacer is not incurious,” Sebastien said, forming the certainty even as she said the words. Westbay had pronounced the word as if it were a slur, and she found herself agreeing with him. ‘How dull, to never wonder. How unambitious. One does not become great by only accepting what is given to them and never reaching for more.’

Westbay gave her a small smirk. “He is not. And neither am I. I hope you didn’t think you were the only one given extra exercises.” Before she could respond, he sped up and turned the corner into a classroom, his expression saying better than any words that she was dismissed from his attention.

‘Observe, a wild example of the contraceptive personality, in its natural habitat.’ She resisted the urge to glare. Glaring would mean that he had affected her, something she refused to allow to be true.

After a quick lunch and another visit to the library, she checked her map, confirming that she was meant to leave the building altogether for Defensive Magic. She made her way to the north side of the University grounds, walking fast so the fifteen minutes between classes would be enough to arrive on time.

Green grass and trees gave way to bare, white ground by the time she arrived. The Flats, contrary to their name, were not flat at all. In fact, some of the white stone buttes seemed to have been deliberately molded with large platforms, squat walls, and even a few hoops. She did a double-take as she passed what seemed to be a pit of spikes, a faint sense of alarm rising in her. There was a building in the distance, but their professor met them out on the grounds.

She recognized this professor from the entrance examination. He was the one with the muscles and the armor, who had asked her about fighting the Blood Emperor.

He had them line up, then paced before them while speaking in a loud voice that carried far and bounced off the surrounding stone. “My name is Elwood Fekten. I served in the army during the border skirmishes, and the Haze War before that. I have no need for titles. You will call me Fekten. The man who taught this subject before me did so in a classroom, with a textbook. He was very knowledgeable, and his students became knowledgeable. They understood that a banshee’s wail is deadly from five meters, and will burst your eardrums and knock you unconscious from ten. They had learned that the best way to avoid this is to cast a vibration-cancelling spell and send up distress sparks, since any call for help would not make it out of the bounds of the vibration-canceller. Can anyone tell me why following these instructions would lead to your death?”

Fekten stopped pacing, spinning to face to the woman closest to him. “You. Speak.”

The woman’s eyes were wide. “Umm...because as long as you’re holding the vibration-cancelling spell, you cannot cast anything else? Well, unless you have an artifact.”

He shook his head and continued walking. “While that is technically correct, it misses the point.” He stopped in front of Sebastien. “What about you? Tell me why the accepted response will get you killed.”

Sebastien’s eyelids flared slightly wider before she got her face under control, hiding the burst of apprehension being singled out had caused her. “If you knew ahead of time that you were dealing with a banshee, you would go into the altercation with a vibration-cancelling spell already cast, preferably in artifact form so you’d be free to cast other magic personally. However, banshees rarely make straightforward attacks. What if you don’t know you are about to be targeted by one? Rather than scream, they are more likely to sing. Their song has a quality that encourages loss of focus, so by the time you realize something is wrong, they’re probably already close enough to slit your throat. Also, your banshee can scream on half a second’s notice, but most sorcerers cannot cast a spell that quickly. If you do manage to cast the vibration-canceller after she starts singing—say if you had an artifact able to cast it, perhaps—you still have to deal with the actual banshee—who is not in fact completely helpless—while you are inside a field that is either dampening vibration so well that your own movement is hindered, or which is allowing through some vibration, which means maybe the banshee can still affect you with her voice while she tries to stab you with a kitchen knife.” Her grandfather had told her just such a story when she was young.

Fekten didn’t immediately shake his head and walk away. “So what would you do, if you suspected you were being stalked by a banshee?”

“Ideally, if you were traveling through lands where such a thing seemed likely, or a town where people kept going missing, you would have prepared in advance for various types of danger, including a banshee. Wards, an artifact or two, that sort of thing.”

Fekten nodded slowly, then looked around at the other students to ensure they were paying attention. “And are you prepared thus, Siverling?”

“No,” she admitted, thinking even as she said it that, ‘Perhaps I should be so equipped.’ Aloud, she said, “So, when I suspected I was being stalked by a banshee, if possible I would cast a deafening hex on myself, then try to slip from her sight without noticeably panicking, and from there either run away altogether or wait in ambush to attack her from a distance.”

Fekten snorted and walked on. “Better. Still not perfect. Preparing you to think of the correct response as well as giving you the ability to carry it out is the purpose of this class. I am here to teach you how to avoid being killed by malicious parties. I cannot stop you from killing yourselves through stupidity or negligence, though some of you will undoubtedly meet your ends that way. This class is not about safe casting practices, it is about defeating or, more realistically for you lot, escaping an enemy. If you were hoping to get to attack something in this class, to let out some pent up aggression with destructive spells, you will be disappointed for quite a while. I do not have enough time to teach you both what you need to know to defend yourself and how to act on that information, so we will be doing our best to learn both at once, and it will be unpleasant.”

He stopped pacing and turned to the Flats. “A strong body is a strong mind. At your level of skill, if you cannot escape properly, you will just die, since I doubt that you can kill anything larger than a pixie. No, we will start with running, and then move to strength training. I will explain the dangers of the world as we do so, and you will pay attention and remember what I say, or there will be even more training.”

“Training” sounded more like he meant “torture,” and though there was some nervous shuffling and a few mutters of discontent, as soon as he turned around and glared at them, everyone shut their mouths.

“Your training clothes are in the sim room. Follow me, and do not dawdle. We have little enough time as it is.” He led them to the distant building at a quick jog, assigned them loose-fitting clothes, and shooed them into the changing rooms.

The next forty-five minutes were some of the most grueling of Sebastien’s life, as Fekten led them through exercises while lecturing on the dangers of pixies and how best to deal with them, without ever seeming to grow tired or out of breath.

Sebastien hated physical exertion, and despite a certain stamina gained from being forced to carry all her worldly belongings and walk for miles when they couldn’t find a wagon to ride in the back of, she wasn’t very good at it, either. Running, tossing, and pulling herself about required a very different kind of fitness. Luckily, she was not prone to holding excess weight, but she had never been one for physical labor, either, and her male form didn’t seem an improvement in that aspect. However, she consoled herself that if she ever had to sprint away from the coppers again, this would be good training.

A few minutes into the training, she gave up simply powering through on her own and surreptitiously cast an esoteric spell on herself. It muffled her pain slightly and allowed her thoughts to detach from it rather than focus constantly on the burning discomfort. It helped a little. Of course, it was difficult to keep the spell active while still paying attention to Fekten’s lecture and completing the exercises, but the effort was worth it, in her opinion.

The last thirty minutes of class were spent stretching and answering questions about the lecture Fekten had given.

Finally, he let them leave, with an admonition to arrive already dressed for class the day after next if they did not want to perform unspecified punishments.