Confessions of the Magpie Wizard Book 3: Dissolution (Chapters 52 & 53) (Patreon)

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Chapter 52

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” The lie came automatically, as did a layer of sweat on my forehead. Had Maggie exposed us, or had I said something without meaning to?

Rei crossed her arms under her chest. “Please don’t waste our time lying to me. I want to join, not turn you in.”

“That’s an interesting assumption you have there,” I said. “What’s it based on?” I had learned my lesson already; don’t admit to any crime you aren’t accused of.

“Ms. Edwards has always been the only teacher to take a real interest in me,” she said. “I always wondered why. Then I noticed that we spent as much time talking politics as we did my affinity. She was always very critical of the Anti-Demonic League, and soft on the Holy Brotherhood. She stopped mentioning them quite so much after Taiwan, though.”

“Blast it all, she has all the subtlety of a brick thrown through a window,” I snarled.

Rei shook her head. “It’s not that, really. It took me a long time, and I never saw the harm in her having those beliefs. It didn’t stop her from being a good teacher or from helping me as much as she could.”

“How tolerant of you,” I said.

“I appreciate results,” she replied. “After the Brotherhood interrupted that propaganda film the other day, it’s obvious that we aren’t being told the facts. If they aren’t telling us cadets the truth, the war must really be going badly.”

“My d-” I cut myself off. Perhaps I did say that too often. “You have a good head on your shoulders, Ms. Yamaguchi. I can assure you, things are much worse off for humanity than you know. Now I know why you suspected her, but what gave me away?”

A smug grin crossed her face. “It was just logic. I figured that if the last man out of England was hanging out with Ms. Edwards as much as you do, you’d be on her side.”

I jabbed my finger at her. “You got lucky this time, but don’t make any leaps like that again! There are very few of us about, and you’ll expose us if you talk nonsense.”

“I’ll make note of that. Now, will you answer my question?”

I stroked my chin as I contemplated Rei. I didn’t technically have the authority to invite her, but she didn’t need to know that. It would be nice to have underlings again. “You took a step forward today in controlling your powers, but you’re days away from real control. How are you at casting spells?”

“I ace every test,” she said with obvious pride. “I would not be a remedial student if I had a firm grasp on my Faraday Wave.”

“You show a lot of promise,” I said. “I’ll report that to Ms. Edwards, don’t you worry.”

“Excellent,” she said. “Can we try again?”

“You’re certainly eager,” I said.

“I haven’t been able to go online since I was sixteen,” she said. “Do you know what life without the internet is like?”

“I can imagine,” I said. It was my default state, after all.

We sat again. “I’ve noticed that you aren’t magnetized all the time. What makes your affinity flare up?”

“It’s usually when I get annoyed,” she said.

“What irritates you?” I asked.

“Oh no,” she said, crossing her arms in front of her in an X. “I’m not giving you ammo. I see you making fun of Ms. Yamada all day.”

“My, you don’t miss much from your perch, do you?”

“I don’t have any neighbors to talk with,” she said. “And Mr. Maki’s war stories get so dull.”

“Well, I’ll have you know Mariko teases right back. It’s a verbal dance we do.”

“I don’t want to dance with you. That isn’t my strength,” she replied, fidgeting awkwardly.

“I promise, I’ll only use it for g- for go- for educational purposes. You can trust me.”

She sized me up for a moment. After a moment of deep thought, her shoulders relaxed. “I really don’t like music. Especially singing.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. “And you call me strange! Where are you from, Mars?”

“I feel that way sometimes,” replied Rei, her brow furrowing.

“Well, I won’t invite you to any concerts.” I held my pen flat in my hand. “Do you have any requests? We’ll see if you can keep your power under wraps before I finish a song.”

“Something short,” she said. I had wondered if she had been pulling my leg, but that was real apprehension in her eyes. I think I’d looked calmer when they hauled me into prison back in Pandemonium.

I thought through my repertoire of songs. That was one benefit of coming from a society without easy music recording; most everyone I grew up with could sing decently, and most could play an instrument. I had focused on vocals and I was pretty damn good, if I could judge. I couldn’t sing anything in High or Low Demonic, of course. That would give the whole game away. I didn’t know any suitable songs in English, except for some rather bawdy bar songs we used to practice the language. I was utterly hopeless in Japanese. Kiyo’s taste in music tended towards instrumental video game soundtracks.

So, I settled on a Ukrainian folk song Mother had taught me when she had been in one of her rare maternal moods. “Have you ever heard Plyve Kacha po Tysyni before?”

Rei looked dumbfounded. “Plivy what?”

“It means ‘The Duckling Swims over the Tysyni.’”

“Why didn’t you just say so?”

I shrugged. “The translator must have decided I meant the title and not the literal meaning. Listen up, and try to keep your irritation under control.”

Something strange happened as I began to sing. I barely spoke a lick of my mother’s tongue. Aleksandra had been the only Ukrainian I had ever met, and when I had asked her what the song meant, she said it was about some duck swimming, and to not ask too many questions or I’d get a good swat. She was insistent that I learn her songs word for word, but didn’t much care that I knew their import. That was the kind of woman Mother was.

However, it’s a soulful song, and the school’s translation fabricata brought that to my attention as I went through. I realized, for the first time, that it was the story of a young man about to go to war talking with his mother, wondering who will bury him if he dies, and her admitting that he would have to be buried by strangers. I didn’t quite grasp where the duck came in, unless the duck crossing the river was some sort of metaphor? The translation magic wasn’t perfect, but the meaning hit home.

Yes, I teared up a little. What orphan boy wouldn’t, thousands of miles from home and beset by enemies on all sides? Death was around every corner, and unlike the young man in the song, I wouldn’t have my mother there to mourn me. Hell, Aleksandra wouldn’t have ever done that for me, even if I hadn’t watched her choke to death in front of me a nearly decade before. I sure as Hell wouldn’t get any sort of proper burial if the Anti-Demonic League or the Holy Brotherhood found out who I was. I was alone, as always.

“Soren?” Rei crouched before me and waved her hand in front of my eyes. “Are you done? You trailed off in the middle there.”

“The pen is still in my hand, isn’t it?” I had a hard time seeing just then. Damn allergies, making me tear up.

“Yes,” she said. “I don’t know if that was a good test, though. Your singing wasn’t as annoying as other people.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.” I stood, pocketing the pen again. “Well, you have your test. Get a magnetic item you can pull to yourself without much effort, find something that irritates you and see if you can go without activating your powers needlessly.”

“Are we already done?” she asked. “We went longer with the first test.”

I rubbed the moisture out of my eyes. Damned allergens. “Yes, we are. Tell Maggie you passed, but you’ll need more work. She can take care of you from here.” I had enough plates to keep spinning as it was.

A satisfied smirk crossed Rei’s face. “Humanity first,” she said far too loudly.

I glanced around in panic as her voice echoed in my ears. There was nobody in earshot, thank the Dark Lord. My frustration with the damn song boiled over and I got right up in her face. “Never say that in public again, or you’ll regret it! You could doom us all!”

Rei’s eyes widened. “Are you threatening me?”

“Not threatening. Informing,” I replied nonchalantly. “Ask Haru Obe what being a loose end gets you in this organization.”

Rei’s jaw dropped. “On the news, they said he died of an infection. Was that another lie?”

“Of course,” I said. “The powers that be can’t be trusted. We are in a mortal fight with the League, and you must take it seriously to be a Holy Sister. Let that be my third lesson to you today.” I gave her a theatrical bow. “And with that, I have other matters to attend to.”

I spun around and stalked away without waiting for a response. I decided to let Rei report the lessons to Maggie herself. A little power play did wonders for making me feel like a real devil, but my traitorous eyes were still leaking. Mother always had the ability to bring out the worst in me.

Chapter 53

Sewing Club couldn’t have started fast enough for me. I needed something to do besides think about damn songs about ducklings. Having a little time with Kiyo could only help my mood.

I arrived after a quick shower to wash off my accumulated sweat and grime. Magical training can be surprisingly dirty, though why working your soul’s energy should make you sweat is a question best left to the philosophers. I found I was the last to arrive; Hiro, Mariko, and Kiyo were already working around the table. To my surprise, Mrs. Perera wasn’t napping away in her rocking chair. Instead, she sat with them at the center of the room with a spool of wire and a tool I didn’t immediately recognize. The rest were doing something with short strips of the selfsame wire and some of the scarves we had produced.

“What do we have here?” I put a hand on either of Kiyo’s shoulders and gave her a loving squeeze.

She let out a surprised squeak and dropped her needlepoint. I found myself caught in a surprisingly strong embrace as she hopped up and embraced me. “Magpie!”

I felt a genuine smile coming on. “Good evening, my… my dear.” Dash it all, who cared if Rei thought it strange? Kiyo ate it up.

Mariko and Hiro pretended not to notice, though Ms. Yamada’s face reddened a bit.

“Took you long enough,” said Mrs. Perera without looking up from her work. “I think you all have enough mittens and scarves laying around. I decided to put you to work making something useful. Take a seat. And Ms. Jones, Mr. Marlowe is not your seat.”

Kiyo muttered something uncharitable I couldn’t quite make out.

“What’s the wire for?” I asked as I pulled up a seat as close to Kiyo as propriety allowed.

“Oh, that? I think a smart cookie like you could figure it out, if you put your mind to it. Take a closer look.” Mrs. Perera held up the device in her right hand. It resembled a holepunch combined with a rotary wheel that was covered in small impressions of magical runes.

Once I inspected it more closely, I thought I could guess its function, but I opted to let her explain it. I always got in trouble when I volunteered information. I shrugged and tried to look as clueless as I could.

The disappointment in her eyes made me regret playing dumb. “I guess not. Did you ever wonder how we work runes into our uniforms?”

That confirmed my suspicion, but I was committed to ignorance. “I can’t say I ever thought of it.”

She let out an annoyed sigh. “I just finished explaining it to everyone else. Ms. Jones, you’re up.”

Kiyo had been halfheartedly tending to her scarf and another tool, but she shot up straight at the mention of her name. “I’m up what?”

“You’re lucky I’m not Asahi. I don’t like wasting time with laps,” she said. “Tell Soren what my tool is, and what we’re doing with it.”

“O-oh. Yes, ma’am. It’s a fabricata press. You spin the wheel around and you can stamp the rune in the wire.” Kiyo held up her own tool, which had a feed of the soft metal fabricata wire on the top and a spool of thread on the bottom. “Then we can use this transfer fabricata-”

“What’s the proper term, Kiyo?” asked Mrs. Perera.

“The Perera Device,” she replied.

Mrs. Perera smirked proudly. “I spent two years on it, I want to hear my name when you describe it.”

“Yes, ma’am,” replied Kiyo, sounding only a tad irate at being interrupted. “Anyway, the Perera Device magically transfers the runes from the wire to the thread.” She bit her lip and worked a small crank on it while charging the fabricata with magic. Miniscule runes built into the imprinter lit up, and the wire that came through was completely smooth again. I could just make out that the thread was no longer uniform. The natural blue color was periodically distorted with golden bits.

“It’s pretty neat stuff,” said Hiro, holding up his own thread and holding up one of the longer blue sections. “You cut it off here, weave it in and you can enchant all of the fabric.”

I saw he didn’t have a Perera Device like Kiyo. Instead, he was wrapping the string around a spool. His magical reserves were probably on the low side after a long day of affinity training, so I doubted he wanted to risk Wizard’s Desolation for club time.

“That does make sense,” I said, trying to recover my standing with Mrs. Perera. “Yarn and thread conduct magic better than metal.”

“That, and metal wiring running through your uniform is as uncomfortable as hell,” said Mrs. Perera. She earned a shocked look from the others, but she had long ago explained she didn’t care about keeping a civil tongue in her mouth.

I nodded. We had much the same thing back in occupied Europe. Low caste devils (the lowest rung of society that was taught any magic) would make the enchanted fabric and run the transfer fabricata, though ours tended to be larger. It was a cottage industry, and, like most cottage industries, it was as vital as it was poorly paid. My nobledevil’s pride felt a sting at doing the work of my inferiors, but Soren Marlowe wouldn’t have had any such compunctions.

“What’s this spell going to be?” I asked as I threaded the string and wire into my own imprinter.

Mrs. Perera didn’t look up as she kept up her work with the imprinter. “Ms. Yamada, please show him.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Mariko held up one of the finished scarves and a blue glow spread through the length of fabric. She had been working with a needle and thread, and had two of the scarves finished. As the president of the club, it made sense for her to be the one to work the string into the scarves.

That was a fine theory, anyway. The adhesive bandages on her fingers told another story. There were three, and I couldn’t have been more than fifteen minutes late for club time. I wished I could unsee the tremor in Mariko’s hand. It seemed as clear as day to me, and I wondered how the others hadn’t noticed it.

Rather than dwell on something else that could only depress me, I studied the scarf. The folds smoothed out and the scarf seemed to grow as she held it. The parts that were compressed by her grip remained soft, but the rest was an almost perfectly flat, red and black plaid sheet.

Mariko grinned, clearly pleased with herself. “It’s a shield. Mrs. Perera says one of these could stop a bullet. Watch out, though. The edges are surprisingly sharp.” Mariko waved it a few times and it flexed, which struck me as odd behavior for a shield.

“A shield, you say?” I raised an eyebrow and looked at Mrs. Perera suspiciously. “It seems a tad narrow for that.”

The aged teacher gave me a knowing grin. “Yes, it’s a shield, and nothing else. I think they’ll come in handy soon enough.”

“We didn’t make these scarves with the spell in mind,” said Mariko. “It’s good practice, though.” She held up some scraps of spare fabric. “If you added some straps, you could make an excellent shield with a blanket or cape.”

I thought I recognized the spell from England. If I was right… “May I?” When Mariko’s hand left the newly minted fabricata, it went limp again. I turned away from my older classmate and grabbed the scarf by its end, compressing it in my hand. I willed magical energy into it, and like I had thought, the part past my hand went rigid. An energy envelope surrounded the makeshift handle, and just like I’d guessed, the rest of it formed a shape like a broadsword, minus the tip. I suspected that the long end would be plenty sharp, though.

It was an ingenious spell. Svalinn’s Wrath was a fine bit of magic, but the all-energy daggers and swords I made were a bit draining for the average human mage. Plus, this wouldn’t require a spell to be cast; one simply had to remove the scarf and hold it just so. One of these babies would make a decent enough backup blade. It was a damn lousy shield, though.

Which is why I immediately let the sword go limp before Mariko noticed that Mrs. Perera had duped her into making fabricata weapons. The pacifistic woman would have been outraged, and I didn’t want to be there when she found out. Holy Sister Macaw really didn’t care who she offended, did she?

I grabbed one of the Perera Devices and set to work. While the work was beneath me, I had to admit that it was relaxing. It was nice to have something productive but mindless to work on.

“How were classes today?” I asked Kiyo.

“Kinda lame,” she said. Mrs. Perera cleared her throat. “Except homeroom and Races of the Horde,” she added hastily.

Mrs. Perera wore a satisfied smirk. “I’m really kidding,” she said. “There’s too much sugarcoating in this world. Tell it like it is or things will never improve.”

Mariko looked up from her sewing. “Then can I ask why we put all of our energy in class into learning how to kill the peoples of the Horde? Wouldn’t we be better off understanding them and how they think?”

Mrs. Perera burst out laughing. “You sweet summer child. You still think we can get along, don’t you?”

“We certainly won’t if we don’t try,” she said.

“I think Mariko has a point,” said Hiro. “At least we could fight the Horde better if we could think like them.” I could just see Mariko’s face fall as he added that on.

Mrs. Perera went back to work. “That’s a good point, Mr. Takehara. I’ll look over my materials and see what we’ve been able to work out on the different races’ psychology. Demons aren’t too complex, but maybe there’s a pattern I’ve missed. Thank you for the feedback, Ms. Yamada.”

Mariko nodded quietly. Judging by the look on her face once Mrs. Perera looked away, I think she preferred when Mrs. Perera napped in her rocking chair. If only she had known what she was sewing. Ah, well. Ignorance is bliss.

“Kiyo, you were saying about classes?” I wanted to banish my sympathy for Mariko’s situation.

“Oh, yeah,” she replied, sounding as relieved as me. “Just the normal. I’m getting used to the homework. Oh, I got to a new level in Underland Tales. There’s this boss that teleports in this pattern that everyone online said was randomized, but I think I figured out the logic behind it, so I’m going to try to speedrun it.”

“Speed what?”

Kiyo sighed. “Another thing you don’t know about. I feel like we speak different languages sometimes.”

“I like hearing you speak it, though,” I said.

That perked her up a little. “It’s when you try and get through a level as fast as possible. The world record’s three minutes and four seconds. I think I can beat it.”

“Do you have time for that with the War Games and finals coming up?” asked Hiro. “We don’t want a repeat of first quarter.”

“What happened in the first quarter?” I asked.

“Nothing good,” she muttered. “And yeah, I’m fine, man. I learned my lesson. No all-nighters.”

“That’s the right answer with your homeroom teacher sitting right here,” Mrs. Perera said.

“That’s always the right answer,” said Mariko.

Mrs. Perera shook her head. “No, that’s too far the other way. Live it up a little bit. Just don’t let me catch you, and don’t let it affect your performance.”

Kiyo groaned. “Where were you when the Headmaster… never mind.” Her face flushed crimson as she just about let slip the truth of our “sleepovers” out in mixed company. I suspected Mrs. Perera already knew, and Mariko had figured it out on her own, but I didn’t think Yukiko would have let slip to Hiro.

Why in Our Father Below’s name was I the only one who wanted to talk about something besides serious business? It was time to steer things onto a reliable track.

“Hiro, I hear the Tigers won for once last night.”

Hiro’s eyes brightened. “Did you watch the game? I caught it on TV with Yukiko.”

“No,” I replied. “Please, tell us all about it.”

Using the Perera device was relaxing enough. It almost reminded me of knitting itself, with its regular motions that required just the right amount of focus to be engaging, while leaving you free enough to have a chat. Not that I had to contribute much. Hiro was a good little Hanshin Tigers fanatic.

Before I knew it, we were cleaning up for the night, having turned twelve of our woolen scarves into backup weapons.

“What was your plan there?” I whispered to Mrs. Perera. She had retrieved her book bag from her rocking chair while I put away our excess thread on the shelf next to here.

“Now we have a dozen untraceable fabricata swords,” she replied. “And you all learned a useful lesson. That’s killing two birds with one stone.”

I added those fabricata to my mental list of resources, like the energy batteries that Rose had filled up and Rei. I didn’t have a full plan just yet, but I had time to think and discuss things with Maggie and Neci.

Though, it wasn’t quite as much time as I thought. I almost wish I hadn’t gone to check my mail the next morning…

***************

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