78 - The Dean's Test (Patreon)

Dean Octavius had a full aerial view of the Helleron Forest from one of the sky caves. 

The cold draft had the hair on his skin standing, brushing against the fabric of his robe. Insects crawled over and into his boots, searching for warmth. The elevations also caused his nostrils to crack and bleed, but the discomfort didn't bother him. 

He needed to stay perfectly still. 

His birds constantly surveyed the area, ready to intercede at any moment. He had set several safety mechanisms in the forest ready to detonate and end the exercise at the slightest command. 

There were also a few more reserves that he had enlisted for the task, as well as the Keeper of the Forest, who was watching everything unfold and keeping it contained. The man owed him a pretty sizable favor in the past, and now, with this and his permission to have his memory of this incident erased afterward, he would fulfill it. 

They had spent yesterday going over the plan, plugging all possible loopholes, ensuring that nothing could go wrong. 

Because if anything went wrong, the Dean would not forgive himself. 

Not that he would even have time to. 

Because he would be a dead man. 

Elric was mild-mannered, but he was not a weakling, and he had years of pent-up rage against the system, that he kept leashed.

On rare occasions, Octavius saw the vengeance bubbling beneath the surface, but he had a good handle on it. However, Arielle getting hurt might loosen his hold. 

Already, what Octavius was doing skirted on the edge of a betrayal. Elric would undoubtedly see it as one when Octavius explained it to him later, given how sensitive he was to such a thing. And Elric wasn’t entirely rational when it came to Arielle. 

Their last initial conversation in his office, about Arielle’s test and her indifference to danger, had been brief but elucidating. 

“Vittoria told me much of the same,” Elric had said when the dean had explained Arielle’s issue. “Look, I understand that she’s a little too innocent, but that’s not necessarily going to be too much of a problem right now, and it might not be a problem in the future either. I don’t anticipate a combat build for her anyway.”

“Is that so?” Dean Octavius had cocked his head. “Did you know she wants a Vacu-Calor lean?”

“Yes, but that’s only because of me. She’s young. I’m sure she’ll change her mind once she sees the reality of things, which the academy will show her soon enough.”

Octavius remained quiet because that was an extraordinarily short-sighted take from Elric. He wondered if Elric actually saw Arielle as she was or if he was just projecting his former self on her. 

Elric himself had wanted to be a combat mage in his first year. Nearly all first years did, as that was the easiest way to gain acclaim and climb levels to become an Archmage.

However, Elric had quickly pivoted after his third severance trials, realizing that he’d be better in a support-focused role. His field internships in his third year had confirmed it, and perhaps he envisioned this same path for Arielle. 

But Elric and Arielle were fundamentally different people. 

They had similar backgrounds, raised by Mundanes and thrust into the cutthroat society of ascendants with little warning. However, Elric’s welcome had been much colder, his academy life much harsher, and his exploration of magic much more cautious. He was faced with discrimination and constant reminders of his own limitations. There had been really no one to stand up for him, to guard him from the occasional cruelty of Ascendancy, and he'd had to learn the rules quickly on his own without any special skillset to help him.  

And while things had gotten better in his latter years, and Elric likely appreciated everything the Academy taught him, he also had a deep distrust of administrators or anyone in a significant position of power. 

Octavius had only been hired after the previous dean's death, during Elric’s final year, and by that point, the damage had been done. He’d read Elric’s files and understood his fundamental distrust.

So, of course, Elric figured that what Arielle needed was someone to shield her from everything he'd had to face. 

However, that experience was blinding the archmage to certain things. 

His own relative power, for one. 

In many ways, Elric still saw himself as the same powerless boy who was thrust into the vast ocean amongst deadly sharks. In fact, he probably clung to that identity as a way to differentiate himself from the rest of the sharks and to maintain his loyalty to those he viewed as his real family.

But that also gave him a jadedness and an unwillingness to push against the status quo, just from how hopeless his experience with it had been early on.

He instead focused on small changes to make the lives of the mundanes better, not seeing how ultimately pointless that was if the larger world didn’t change. 

Octavius never blamed Erlic for his complacency. He was simply the product of his environment.

Arielle was the product of her own. 

Which was entirely different from Elric's. 

She wasn’t thrust into this magical society the same as he'd been. There had been changes made over the years, thanks to the efforts of the dean and several others, and the magic academy wasn't as unhinged as it once was. Yes, there were still things he could not control, classism that was emblematic of the wider society. But every year, they accepted more applicants from non-prestigious families, and this year was the highest number they had ever taken in. The nobles complained that it ruined the sanctity of the academy to do so, and some professors complained that this was the weakest class they'd ever had.

However, it was necessary.  Power should never be consolidated on just one side. The children of mundanes and the less powerful sect leaders brought a fresh perspective that often served the wider populace, and made them all better people. 

Therefore, Arielle had not come in with the same guardedness and hesitation as Elric. Instead, she has an inherent openness to learning magic and high levels of trust in the system that she has been put in.

Given that, she would make an ideal tool for the establishment, an unquestioning, easily moulded soldier. 

And that would be terrible for her. 

She was not made to be a soldier. She was brilliant, made for far more than that.  

Her existence challenged the status quo, and it was naive of Elric to think that, even with his best effort, Arielle could keep her talents hidden for long. 

“The thing at Khor," the Dean said after a long silence. "What do you think will happen if it occurs again?"

Elric froze. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Elric, you insist on insulting my intelligence so often that I’m starting to become quite offended with it,” he said. “Even before you insisted on seeing Arielle for your ‘investigation,’ I knew that she was the Raven Girl from Khor. I knew almost immediately when I heard the news. I understand why you do not trust me with the truth. Her powers are beyond anything you’ve disclosed so far, and they’re so terrifying that they make you nervous about her future and those who seek to use her. And you think the key is to hide her. Except someone like Arielle is not going to stay hidden. Lord Wesley has already acknowledged how special she is, and they only met once. What will happen when she meets the other Lords? Or when she meets the Supreme himself. What will happen if she is reckless again?”

Elric’s face had paled then, telling Octavius that he'd hit the nail on the head. 

“Your attempt to hide her away from the world and pretend that her powers are anything resembling normal is valiant but flawed. Arielle will not play along. She doesn't even know how to, and forcing her to do so would be stifling her in the same way you were stifled."

"That's not–"

"Rather," he said. "Should you not train her to be able to defend herself? Turn her into a force that cannot be discarded or used in the ways you fear, and simultaneously teach her dangers associated with her exposure.”

"No. Training her in such a way…she’s too young and this is all too new–"

"She is naive but not stupid," he said. "She can learn if we impress upon her the dangers of her new existence and how to detect deceit." From the little he'd observed of Arielle, he knew that she would likely never intuitively read social cues nor understand subtler body language. However, he could teach her systems, patterns, rules, and threat indicators, perhaps even spells...after he taught her to view herself as finite and not all-powerful as she thought she was. She would ignore those lessons otherwise. "She should be suspicious of authority and aware that there are people who could try to harm her or use her. Including people like me."

"I did tell her that."

"Telling her and showing her are two different things. She doesn't have a sense of danger, Elric. She does not fear dying. Combine that with her inexperience, and we have a recipe for disaster. We've seen that happen, over and over again." There was a saying in their society that the most obedient and loyal archmages were always the first to die. 

The most useful soldier on every battlefield was the dead one. 

Elric looked conflicted. "Yes, but surely there are better ways than to have her play these games with you."

"This is the best way we can do it. She'll be having combat with a trained professional, who knows how to awaken her primal drive without hurting her. Then, a hunting session. She will not get hurt, I assure you of that."

Elric still hesitated.

Dean Octavius pushed. "If your goal is to hide her power for now, sessions like this will also teach her how to do it under pressure. If it's exposure you're worried about, you need not be. Everyone who participates in the testing submits to having the event erased from their mind. Except me, of course.”

“Unsanctioned mind alteration is illegal.”

The Dean smiled. “That’s why you’re not doing it. I am."

Elric seemed surprised. “You would take on that responsibility for her.”

"Yes.”

“Why?”

Because she is an asset. Any blind man could see that, and Elric's reactive rather than proactive method was endangering her even more. 

Arielle was an unvarnished gem and the wrong type of polish would chip her or turn her into something entirely different. 

Octavius wasn’t suggesting throwing her to the political vultures, not at all. But they shouldn't just stand around and wait for her to be found out. She should be preparing, training for the inevitable. 

Their world ate up the innocent and trusting, and spat them out. Arielle didn’t have time to be naive. She needed to gain awareness soon. 

It was likely more important than just about everything else she could learn at the academy. 

Arielle’s problem was on several fronts. She was clever, and her inability to read people instinctively wasn't the reason she didn't understand danger. 

She had gained a distinct arrogance thanks to her immense magical power, social inexperience, and being from a culture largely built on honesty. It made her careless in some regards, assuming that people were always honest and logical and assuming that even if they weren’t, they couldn’t hurt her anyway. 

So her major problems stemmed from the fact that Mossbornes were straightforward, and Arielle believed she was invincible. She believed there was no harm in accidentally trusting the wrong person, so she gave her trust freely. 

That was dangerous. 

However, he didn't want her to be entirely untrusting either. He didn't want her to be fearful, only cautious and observant. It was a delicate balance he was trying to strike here, one that would not traumatize her but would impress the right lessons on her: that magical power would not solve all her problems and the possible cost of blind trust.

It was fine for her to be trusting of Elric. He was a good man, one who would never intentionally take advantage of her. 

But her default in this society for now had to be doubt and deep, careful observation. 

It was why he started rethinking their original plan, about whether it went far enough. He didn't think it did. 

Illusions didn't work with Arielle, nor did surface-level lectures. He could not simply tell her to be careful of everyone and to observe them. She would ignore those warnings when it was convenient for her to. She was already aware of her own shortcomings, but also overlooked them often because she did not have a sense of danger. She may at this point not even feel she can be hurt.

He had gone through scenario after scenario until he had come to this one.  

Unless she felt powerless, she would likely never feel in true danger. 

It had to sink in. He had to ensure that whatever happened, he secured that seed in her. 

At the same time, she had to be safe and not traumatized. It was why he'd gone through many measures to ensure that the exercise stopped before it went too far. Then, he would come out and explain everything to her in detail. 

For now, he had used his power [Arithmetic Foresight] in observing the most likely pathways that Arielle will take. He was measuring in real time the accuracy of each one and had a few seconds between his analysis and the actual event to react. 

This predictive skill was the only Archmage tier skill that he’d had trained, and it had near-perfect accuracy while active.

Arielle wasn’t in any true danger.  He had made sure of it. The trick here was to make her feel like she might be for only for a moment. 

He didn't enjoy this. In fact, he hated it, but it was necessary. 

A tendril of worry still crawled into his brain. What if something went wrong? What if she surprised him by opening up a path he hadn’t predicted?  

Well, it was why the Keeper of the Forest was close by.

After all, the young girl was always full of surprises.

***

When Arielle’s EPUQ malfunctioned, she immediately switched to her reserve from the elves. The problem with the reserve was that she was down to about 400 units of each essence except for Massa and Luxa, which were considerably higher.  

She had wanted to save that for more experimentation, but she needed to survive whatever was coming first. 

[Levitation] took her a few feet into the air, but the darkness shot after her anyway, encompassing her and scattering her orbs. 

The spell broke. 

She landed on her feet, with her heart racing. 

The darkness didn't just cause EPUQ’s to malfunction. 

It broke spells, too. 

It was surrounding her now, and she shifted back as existential dread trickled in. She tried two more times to create spells, but each time they broke before she could complete them.  

If she couldn't cast spells, then she was in serious trouble. 

Just like with the hybrid.

At least this time, she could still feel her core, so there was some comfort in that. But she began to hear whispering out of the darkness, the voices of souls that had probably been lost to it, after they had been snatched out of bodies just like hers. Cold prickles trailed the back of her neck, shivers setting in. She could almost see the distinct shapes in the darkness now, the yawning mouths of the ghouls coming for her. 

She turned around and ran. 

There was nowhere to really run to. The darkness seemed to be encroaching from all angles, surrounding her. She couldn't escape. But she ran anyway, anxiety driving her, fear of the unknown, of what she didn't see yet, whispers she couldn't really understand. 

Yet her brain still worked, trying to make sense of things, trying to understand why this was happening. 

They said the Shadelings only came out at night, yet it was daytime. 

They said that the EPUQ's only malfunctioned close to the ruins yet, they had malfunctioned anyway.

Had her professors misunderstood?

Was something else happening?

Had they lied to her?

No, why would they?

Better yet, how did she get out of this predicament? She didn't know why the Shadelings hadn't attacked her yet, but if she spent long enough in the darkness, her soul would get taken or suppressed, right? She didn't want her soul suppressed.

If her soul got suppressed, then she would not see Lyra or Maus or her family, and she would not even get the chance to say goodbye.

Is that so?

The voice that spoke was in her mind, but it felt almost separate from her thoughts. The unforgotten presence had her glancing toward the ruins. 

They glowed like a beacon. The only place without the darkness, only mist. 

The darkness hissed it’s garbled threats, telling her that they would rip her apart if they caught her. The shadowlings would rip the soul from her body and consume it. 

The ruin became her beacon. 

She ran toward it, her feet kicking up stone. The darkness grew thicker around, clinging to her body, offering more aerodynamic resistance to prevent her advance.

Every step felt heavier the closer she got. Every thought took more effort. 

She refused to stop. She refused to die. 

Her brother's training came back to mind even as her stamina flagged.

"Arielle!" She heard something that sounded far away, but familiar. 

Professor Graham?

"Arielle? Come to my voice."

She couldn't hear what direction his voice was coming from, and even if she could, it was much farther away than the ruins, which were right in front of her. 

She needed to reach it. 

She ran to the ruins and laid her hand on the stone. Only then did she look behind her to see the darkness clearing rapidly, as though wind was blowing it away. 

Huh?

Professor Graham was there, arguing with another, much larger man, who was wearing only a loincloth. 

Who was that?

However, before she could call out to any of them, a different darkness had already swallowed her vision.