The Serpent and the Siren (Patreon)

So I'm on vacation right now, but this story came to me as I was falling asleep, and so I spent... today... writing it. Whoops!
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Ian was bored. 

That happened quite a lot, unfortunately. It was an underlying symptom of his nature. 

When he’d been a kid, he’d mainly gotten out of his boredom by doing something stupid. 

He’d run down the smooth, polished marble halls until he inevitably fell and smacked himself onto the floor because he was trying to cast a speed spell on himself. He’d leap off of the gilded banister and try to fly. He’d try to burn down the neatly manicured gardens around the manor with his mind.

The fact that he hadn’t awakened even his ungated mana yet didn't really seem like that much of a problem for him when he was five or six, but as he aged up, he’d started to realize that wasn’t really possible, and had moved on to other kinds of trouble. 

Mainly, that had involved organizing the other kids – at least, the ones whose parents had purchased them mind shielding artifacts, and thus could stand being around him for a while – to go and do something while their parents sat around and talked about business. The fact every plan he came up with coincidentally involved him getting out of the horrendous dresses that his parents bought him, and into jeans and a t-shirt in order to sneak out of the manor, was merely that. A coincidence. Probably an early sign of what was to come, but there had been plenty of those. 

But he’d constantly been plagued by boredom and a lack of attention, all throughout his childhood, and even into adulthood. Running away to attend a college on the other side of the continent had been a decent escape from the stuffiness… Mostly. 

Sure, he was able to wander around town however he wanted, since he didn’t have a suite of private security hovering around the edges of his home at all times, and that was a great help, since he could walk and see different parts of the city. 

But it didn’t help him at all with the actual classes that he was taking. 

Ian did enjoy the culinary arts, that wasn’t the problem. In fact, the cooking courses he took were amazing, and even some of the ones that were a little more out there, like the Anthropological History and Impact of Assorted Grain Dishes had been cool, since it had included trying out all sorts of different recipes from now-defunct cultures, empires, nation-states, and sects. 

The problem was the classes that weren’t related to cooking. 

Why in the name of all the sealed primes did he need to take so many things that were completely unrelated? Math and natural science, mana manipulation and spell construction, history and art, literature and geography…

It made him want to bash his head against the wall with boredom. 

Initially, his solution had been simple. If he didn’t care about a class, he just didn’t go to it. By the third time he was forced to retake Introductory Art, however, his parents started noticing, and he’d had to suffer through a long, painful call over the way-too-nice communication mirror they’d made sure he brought with him. 

Which is what led to his current predicament. Practical Mathematics for Business wasn’t the worst offender, but the professor? Ugh. He was in his seventies, and had a dry, sandpapery voice that wasn’t quite monotone enough to pass out to, but was too boring to keep Ian engaged. The fact he just lectured off of premade illusion spells that looked a half century out of date… Didn’t help. 

He might only be two weeks into the class, but Ian could already tell he was going to hate it. 

Ian’s eyes skipped over the room, and landed on a few people. Sarah was asleep in the corner, the woman having a legacy that allowed her to fall asleep on command, while still appearing awake and alert. It even gave her some limited ability to sleepwalk and sleeptalk.

Some people had all the luck.

Waking her up could be fun, since sometimes when she woke up, she’d be really obvious, and get in trouble with the teachers, and he did owe her for dousing him in a bucket full of blueshade extract… 

But no, she was too far awake to poke or throw things at discreetly. 

He vaguely recognized a few other people from classes he’d had last year, but he didn’t really know any of them well enough to bother. After all, he was bored, not a prick. He didn’t want to actually get someone else in trouble.

He glanced at the empty seats around him and sighed, trying to pull his aura tighter around him, but failing, as per usual. 

Ian had almost resigned himself to falling asleep, despite the lecturer’s grating voice and the fact he knew he should be paying attention when the door to the classroom clicked open. 

Ian’s eyes shot over, and he took in the guy who’d just entered the classroom. He was cute, in a wholesome, soft kind of way. Way paler than Ian, almost pale enough that Ian thought him or his family might be from Mossford or Aergarde, with soft cheeks, smooth skin, and wavy snow white hair that fell just past his orange eyes. He looked like he was maybe a year or two younger than Ian himself, twenty or twenty-one, probably.

“Ah,” the professor said. “You must be…” 

The professor picked up a clipboard from the desk and flipped around. 

“Emery Gataki, right?” 

The guy nodded, and the professor sighed. 

“Yes, well, take a seat. You’re a few minutes late, but I suppose that can’t be helped.” 

Emery nodded to the professor, glanced around the room, then started approaching Ian, who mentally braced himself. 

This always happened.

People spotted the empty chairs around him, figured that they could slot in there and be fine, walked over, got blasted in the face with a wave of fear aura, and then found a seat elsewhere, since they didn’t want to sit near a creep who radiated negative vibes like that. If they didn’t have any sort of mental protection, it was even worse. Ian had made at least two people faint on the spot. 

Emery hit the edge of Ian’s aura, and Ian gave the man a worn out, apologetic smile as Emery frowned. 

Then Emery tilted his head slightly, and pushed through the aura, taking a seat directly across from Ian. 

Ian’s eyebrows shot up. His aura was strong – too strong, in fact. It would punch through the standard spellbinder-grade mind shield ring enough to creep most people out, even when he was keeping it restrained. 

So who was this dude, to just… Shrug it off? 

Ian shoved his mana senses at the other man, not really caring that it was rude or taboo. He expected that the man had to be a mental mage, maybe a spellbinder who’d put up a full-gate permanent mental shield or something like that. It was either that, or Emery had some seriously powerful gear.

He found neither. Emery’ power was either nonexistent, or so tightly veiled that Ian couldn’t pick up on it, and in terms of magic items, there wasn’t much. There was the standard mana-regeneration boosting belt that all members of the college were given and a pair of boots that he thought might be enchanted to make less sound. The boots weren’t strong at all, though, little more than an ungated spell worked into the leather. 

Huh. 

Maybe the guy had some sort of mental defense legacy? That would make sense. Maybe it was strong enough that he barely even noticed the aura, and so it had made him pause for only a second. 

Emery glanced at Ian and tilted his head again. When that did nothing, Emery raised an eyebrow. 

“What?” Ian asked, and a moment later, Emery shoved his own mana senses at Ian and raised his eyebrows again. 

“Just wanted to see why you weren’t… bothered,” Ian said with a defensive shrug. “Why aren’t you, by the way? Most people would be booking it for the other side of the classroom by now.” 

Emery shrugged and twitched his fingers towards the front of the class. There was a pulse of knowledge mana as he cast a spell that reminded Ian a lot of the magic that ran through a recording crystal. 

“C’mon,” Ian said, his voice pitching up a little bit into a whisper-whine. “That’s just not fair!” 

Emery exhaled sharply from his nose in what was almost a laugh, and then flicked his fingers over to Ian, who felt a slow, but steady, stream of mana press into him. 

Ian considered it for a second. 

On one hand, there was a chance that this guy was going to try and blackmail him for money or something. A few people had been stupid enough to try that. 

On the other hand… 

Ian was really, really bored. 

Ian allowed the spell through, and watched as a golden circle of light bloomed in his vision. With an effort of will, Ian reversed the image in the circle, going all the way back to when Emery had cast the initial recording spell. The image in the circle was absurdly crisp, better than Ian’s normal vision.

Ian let out a low whistle, and the professor paused, then looked at him. 

“Mister Walker, do you have anything to add to the lecture?” 

“Sorry prof,” Ian said with a snarky grin. “Just was impressed by the new guy’s recording spell.” 

“Hmm, yes, well try not to be such a disruption in the future?” 

“Sure prof,” Ian agreed, then paused. The video feature was pretty good. Maybe he should start bringing some recording crystals to class, so he could ignore the professor during the lecture, and go through it on his own time. It would be way easier to try and figure out balancing an operational budget while he was working out. 

As the boredom started to creep in again, Ian glanced at Emery and lowered his voice. 

“Is the clarity because you just have really good eyesight or something? Or is that a part of the spell? I’ve seen some really nice recording crystals – my uncle is a huge cinephile, has this huge collection – and this is nicer than most of the ones I’ve seen.” 

Emery bit his lip, nodded, then shook his head, then held up his hand and made a so-so gesture. 

“Yes, no, kinda? What in the world does that even mean? Can’t you just… ya know… tell me?” 

Emery let out a huff and made several strange motions with his hands, then when it was obvious that Ian had no idea what those motions meant, simply shook his head and pointed to his mouth. 

Ian… immediately regretted his word choice. 

“Oh, primes,” he said. “Sorry, I… Yeah. Sorry, I didn’t know.”

Emery shrugged and reached into his backpack, then retrieved a small notecard and wrote out ‘it happens’ on it. 

“Still,” Ian said. “I didn’t mean to–” 

“Mister Walker!” the professor said sharply. “If you don’t want to be here, fine, don’t be. But I’ll not have you distracting other students who wish to learn.” 

“Sorry, sorry,” Ian said, holding up his hands and sighing. “Just… spell resolution?” 

“Discuss that on your own time,” the professor said, then turned back to his lecture. 

Ian dug out some paper and wrote a note that said ‘How long will the recording stay in my head?’, and passed it over to Emery. A moment later, the other man pushed over a note that said ‘Six hours after class’. 

Ian grinned and gave Emery a wink and a thumbs up. Emery flushed slightly, turning back to pay full attention to the front and continuing taking notes. 

Ian laid back and closed his eyes, trying to pass out again. He was tempted to mess with Emery more, but he’d already annoyed the professor twice already, and he didn’t want to get Emery in trouble.

xxx

Emery wasn’t entirely sure why he’d picked the spot next to the handsome guy. 

Okay, sure, the guy was handsome, that much was obvious to anyone with eyes. Tall, with dark skin and long black hair and single braid, and deep brown eyes, as well as a casual, almost uncaring attitude. 

He’d been thrown a bit by the powerful, nearly suffocating power of the fear aura that had whistled around the man, and Emery had even used Analyze Magic to try and figure out what exactly was going on with it – loads of mental mana, obviously, but also strong elements of lunar, tempest, death, and telluric. More interestingly, at least to Emery, was the fact that the power’s largely energetic composition indicated that it was almost certainly the result of a non-human bloodline.

He wondered idly if the other man knew about that. Lots of people got… weird… about non-human bloodlines, which was utterly ridiculous, as far as Emery was concerned. About half of the people who Emery had seen with an inhuman heritage had gotten really upset by it, which was ridiculous. If you traced any bloodline back far enough, you’d eventually find someone who wasn’t human. Primes, human wasn’t even a super distinct term. Sure, there were a few cursed ones, like Hexed Heritage, where getting upset was reasonable and rational, but most of the time, it was just… A person. 

The other half were weirdly attracted to it. He suppressed a shiver at that thought – too many people had propositioned him for his own legacy. He could still distinctly remember coming home to one of the only mind mage Arcanists in Delitone asking to use him to breed a stronger heir. 

Ugh.

No, the best thing to do was to ignore it as best he could, and only tell the handsome man if he asked. 

After figuring out that it was likely some sort of beast legacy, Emery had shrugged off the effects and taken a seat. He had far, far too much experience throwing off mental compulsions to get squicked out by a simple fear aura.

The tall man’s obvious shock at that fact had made Emery nearly snicker, but it wouldn’t do for him to let out any noise, even an innocuous sound like that.

When the man had poked and prodded at Emery, he’d decided to let the whole thing play out, and had impulsively cast Share Knowledge at him when he’d complained about the recording spell being unfair. The second gate spell didn’t cost all that much mana, though when the guy had asked him how long it would last, Emery had discreetly fed some more into its structure to make sure it wouldn’t break apart too quickly. 

If he’d put a Network Point on the dark haired man, then he might have been able to form a stable core and keep it there essentially forever, but he wasn’t eager to waste that much mana for a class recording. 

The guy seemed to get bored midway through class and decided to zone out, or maybe fall asleep, and Emery just went back to taking notes. This kind of lecturer wasn’t the best, but at least he was fluent enough in signing to answer Emery’s questions. The previous professor… hadn’t been, despite listing it as a skill on the signup sheet for classes.  

After the class ended, Emery stood up, and the guy stood up as well. He was tall – way too tall, over six feet, maybe even six and a half feet – and he put his hand on Emery’s head and ruffled his hair. Emery scrunched up his nose in annoyance, and the guy laughed. 

“Thanks for the recording. Primes, you’re tiny. How tall are you?” 

Emery stared at him. 

“Five foot five?” the guy guessed, and Emery pointed down. 

“Five foot three?” 

Emery pointed up. 

“Ah, five four?” 

Emery nodded, and the dark haired guy snickered. 

“Yeah, like I said. Tiny.” 

Emery gave the man a very rude gesture, and the guy just laughed. 

“Mister Gataki!” scolded the professor, and Emery sighed. They weren’t in highschool now, why did it matter? 

“C’mon,” the tall guy said, walking out. “Guess I should introduce myself, huh? I know your name, Mister Emery Gataki. I’m Ian, Ian Walker.” 

Emery signed that it was nice to meet him. Even though it was pretty clear that Ian didn’t understand, he didn’t want to be rude.

They started walking down the corridor, and Emery was a little surprised to find that the guy was still walking with him, despite the fact that class was over. 

“You know,” Ian said as they walked. “Why doesn’t the monolinguistic spell translate sign language? It can translate written language, and that’s got some really crazy differences.”

Emery scrabbled around in his bag, looking for a pen and paper, but Ian handed some over to him, presumably from the storage ring on his finger. 

With a grateful nod, Emery scrawled out the basic explanation on the paper – the spell had been designed by a really ancient Occultist called the Knowledge King, over two thousand years ago, and had been used to fundamentally alter language… But a two thousand year old spell had plenty of gaps in its spellwork, even if the power of the spellcasting had ensured that it would work in perpetuity. 

It didn’t just translate ideas directly, since that would have been way too power intensive, instead implementing a worldwide pidgin language, and translating things that were more complex than the pidgin could handle. That was why things like code didn’t just magically decipher themselves.

When the Knowledge King had built the spell, he’d built it around how he understood language, which was, in essence, reading, writing, and speaking. The King hadn’t thought about signs, and many kingdoms in that era didn’t even have a standardized written language, let alone sign language. Pocket communities with signs existed, but the Knowledge King hadn’t had much interaction with them. 

While the spellcraft had been built with the ability to grow and adapt, it was still struggling to make such a large jump. It had grown to the point where it was capable of translating sign to sign, which was a huge jump – up until about a half-century ago, those who used Delitone Standard couldn’t communicate with anyone who used a different sign language, like Elohian National Sign, and vice versa. 

Emery handed the paper over to Ian, who started reading it, but it had taken him so long to write that Emery was already at his next class, Applications of Divination. He had a minute or two before class started, though, and he didn’t even really like this class. He should have, the content was exactly what he wanted to learn, but… the other people in it were rude. 

So he waited for Ian to read his note. 

“That’s messed up,” Ian said, and Emery just shrugged. There had been a time where he’d gotten really upset about the Knowledge King not including sign, but honestly, it was tiring to stay as a tiny ball of anger all the time. 

That was just the way the world was. 

“So… What, you’re going to talk with your knowledge mana? I know that’s how communication mirrors and stuff works. I think that there’s a third gate spell that can do it, though mental can do it at first.” 

Emery paused and then shook his head. Ian’s eyes shot up and Emery didn’t really feel like explaining that there was too much risk of his legacy triggering through the Communication spell. It worked through communication mirrors, after all. Emery was just glad it didn’t work through written language. 

“I guess you’ve got class now, though, huh?” Ian asked. “Don’t suppose I could convince you to skip?” 

Emery hesitated. He really didn’t like the people in his class… but it was needed, if he wanted to eventually own his own private investigations agency. 

He hesitantly shook his head and Ian sighed. 

“See ya around, Emery,” Ian said with a wave, and Emery waved back before heading into class.

As he headed inside, four more people followed him in, having been pushed to the edges of Ian’s aura and unwilling to pass through it to enter. 

What a bunch of pansies. 

“So,” one of them said, sidling up next to him. “You and the Walker kid, huh? Shouldn’t be surprised. He’s a creep. You’re a creep. It’s a match made in the pits of Mymoth.” 

“Hardly,” the other one said as she stepped on Emery’s other side. “Mymoth cave is a national park. Two creeps would get kicked out if they tried to do it there.” 

Emery shut his eyes and blocked them out. That was the best way to deal with idiots like this. He’d had to deal with that kind of behavior all throughout high school, and had long ago learned that ignoring it was better than fighting it. 

Frankly, he didn’t really see what was so creepy about not talking. If they knew what he could do with his legacy, that would be creepy. 

When the professor arrived, things got better. She ran the class normally, which meant they couldn’t get too many jabs in, mainly throwing things out whenever she used verbage they could jump on, like if she was saying ‘when you tell people’, then one of them would point out that he couldn’t speak. The professor would glare at them or mutter something, and then move on. 

As the class dragged on, Emery found himself wondering about Ian. 

It was clear that the tall man was quite lonely. He probably had some friends, and a mind shielding ring could definitely mitigate the effects of the aura, but the aura had been really strong, and that probably wasn’t enough to completely remove it, which would definitely limit his options.

The professor started talking about extending the range of divination spells with simple enchantments, and Emery did the best he could to pay attention. 

Two days later, when Emery had the math class again, he sat next to Ian again. Ian seemed surprised, but happy, and Emery tossed him the recording again, while pulling out his notebook and a stack of notecards. He wrote ‘how are you doing?’ on one of the cards and passed it over. Ian picked it up and grinned, then started writing a reply. 

When the pair headed to his divination class, Ian commented. 

“You know, I don’t have a class for another hour. I could sit in with you, if you wanted. I doubt the professor’s going to care.” 

Emery paused, then nodded, and walked in with Ian. 

That day, his terrible classmates didn’t bother him too much, one of them protesting that Ian was sitting in, but the tall man just shrugged. 

“I’m his interpreter. He says to go find a really long pole, and shove it–” 

Emery whacked the other man on the arm. Not hard, but enough to cut him off mid-sentence. 

After class, Emery walked with Ian to Ian’s next class, and was surprised to see that it was Introduction to Pastry. When he cracked a smile, Ian crossed his arms over his chest. 

“Got some– uh, got a problem with it?” 

Emery shook his head no, then went for a card and pen, only to be handed one by Ian. Emery paused, worrying about what he was going to write next. He would tell the truth either way, it was just… How much. 

He scrawled ‘no problem, you just look too much like a tough guy type, I didn’t expect it.’, then a moment later decided… screw it.

He added one more line, saying ‘I think it’s cute’. 

Ian took the card and read it, then put it in his pocket with a grin. 

“Yeah, I’ve worked really hard on cultivating that persona. Shame you just ignored it.” 

He waved to Emery. 

“See you later, dork.” 

Emery smiled and waved, then turned. 

On a payday two weeks later, as Emery and Ian walked from the divination class to the pastry class, Ian glanced at Emery. 

“Hey, we’ve been hanging out for a while. Want to grab dinner tonight? My treat.”