GPCiMW Chapter 18 (Patreon)

“...head on in, Jack. You have fifteen minutes.”

I bowed my head to the wizard. “Thank you for the advice, professor.”

He smiled back at me. “Happy to help. It's not every day you see someone like you win one of these things. I know how hard it can be to train up a wizard’s first witch, and you’ve done a great job with her.”

I ignored the first part of his comment––it was nothing personal, just an insult born of the culture he’d grown up in––and grinned. Elise was the best witch a wizard could hope for. “Thank you!”

The man laughed. “Just saying how I saw it. Now, hurry along. Your time is ticking!”

“Right!” I hurried through the open gate and it snapped shut behind me. 

My mouth fell open a little and my eyes widened as I looked around. I’d sort of known what to expect, but there was a big difference in reading or hearing about something, and seeing it for yourself. This room…well, I probably could have read a dozen more books and pamphlets about how this whole process worked, but I didn’t think my mind would ever have been able to picture the real thing without seeing it for myself.

Calling it a room was a bit of a misnomer. It was more of a long hallway, stretching for what must have been two or three hundred feet. It was about ten feet wide and eight feet tall, and lit by a series of glowing orbs set in the ceiling. 

None of that was what I was staring at though. Instead, my attention was captured by the cages. Column after column and column of cages lining the walls from floor to ceiling and stretching all the way down to the end of the hallway. They were small, barely bigger than those fancy folding box things people used to transport their cats, but instead of animals each one contained a person.

No, no. I shook my head. Not a person. A witch. Just a witch. I squeezed my eyes tightly shut, counted to ten, then opened them. Witches weren’t people, they were things. And I really needed to get that through my head soon because a slip up at the wrong moment could ruin my already meager reputation. 

I refocused on the room. How long did I have left? Thirteen minutes? Twelve? Probably more than twelve, but I’d plan around twelve. 

I scanned the wall on my left, my eyes drifting up and down the rows of cages. Each one contained a naked, uncollared witch, their nubile bodies squeezed tightly into the cramped confines of the metal cages. The ones who could see me were doing their best to show off their assets, a task made rather difficult by their near total inability to move. They frantically shoved their breasts against the bars, spread their knees as wide as they could go to show hints of their maidenhoods, and otherwise posed ‘seductively’.

It was a rather pathetic sight, all things considered. There was only so much they could do, and it mostly just looked like wiggling from where I was standing. Plus, the witches were sorted primarily by appearance, and I could see little difference between the forty or so large-chested, black-haired, and olive-skinned witches.

Once again, I squeezed my eyes shut and counted, though only to five this time. I didn’t have time for more than that. I needed to focus.

Appearance didn’t matter right now, not really. Aglakok didn’t have ugly witches. Thousands of years of selective breeding had resulted in all sorts of different ‘varieties’, but they were all gorgeous in their own rights. Sure, I’d probably prefer some of them over others, but any of them were probably fine.

No, what I needed was magnitude and compatibility, preferable both. And for that, I had something a lot better than sight. 

I dug into my robe and pulled out two different spellrods that I really wasn’t supposed to have. I’d swiped them from that braggart idiot Jebediah and he hadn’t even noticed! Sure he’d probably figure it out eventually, but as long as I kept them in my room whenever possible and in a bag spelled against divination the rest of the time, I should be fine. 

Taking the first rod, I held it firmly in my hand the way I’d seen others do it and focused. I carefully pushed some magic into the rod, doing my best to make sure it went down the little grooves carved into the fancy crystal stick. 

It took a few attempts––this was harder than it looked––but soon enough I felt the spellrod begin to wobble in my hand. I let my wrist move freely and it twisted to point further down the hallway. 

I hurried forward, continuing to pour magic into the stick and letting it point me forward. When I was about halfway down the hall, it jerked suddenly to the side, pointing to a cluster of witches with grayish-black skin, bright eyes, and silvery white hair. 

I walked towards them carefully looking back and forth between the tip of the rod and the cages until I could pick out which one in particular it was pointing at. It was a younger-looking specimen in the bottom row. She was stuffed into the cage backwards and on her side––not really unusual, but probably uncomfortable. Her face no doubt pressed right up against the back wall and her butt was squeezed right up against the bars leaving criss-crossing red lines all over her skin.

I held the rod right up against the cage, nearly touching her plump butt with its tip. Several symbols lit up but I didn’t really know how to interpret most of them. Still, I was pretty sure I recognized a few of them as good signs to look out for. This witch had by far the highest magnitude in the room. Probably.

I hastily shoved the rod back into my robe and dug out the second one. Please be good. Please be compatible. 

It took three attempts to get the mana flowing just right, but when I did I frantically jabbed it at the witch. This one was much easier to interpret, a small circle lighting up right above where my thumb was. It quickly began to fill up like a pie chart until it was about eighty percent full at which point it stopped. 

I closed my eyes, trying to do the math. Eighty percent compatibility, and hopefully, probably a magnitude of nineteen or twenty. Elise and I were only fifteen points above that, and she was magnitude sixteen. Good enough. More than good enough, even. I was pretty sure I’d gotten lucky––she looked like a new addition to the room. Most of the good witches were either given to new students, quickly snatched up, or reserved for students that placed higher than third. 

I looked at the small label attached to the cage. Buns, identification number AX75437Y. I wasn’t too sure how to interpret that, but judging by the fact that the witch on her left, right, and above her were all also named Buns, I had a feeling that that at least was done in batches. 

I tore the end off the label and rose to my feet, tucking the second rod back under my robe. I got back to the gate with at least a few minutes to spare and knocked. 

The professor looked surprised to see me. “Done already?” he asked. “You still have a few minutes left before I need to let the new person in.”

“I think I’ve chosen the one I want.” I presented the tag and he bent over to read it. “AX75437Y,” he read out symbol by symbol, carefully jotting it down in the notebook he was holding. Then he read it back to me and I confirmed that it was all good. “Well, I hope you’re happy with your choice. I’ll make sure she’s delivered to your room by the end of the day. You just run alon––”

The world lurched and something grabbed me by the scruff of my neck and jerked me sharply to the side. I was torn free of the memory, out of the water, out of my mind, and into my body by an impossibly strong hand. I spasmed, my head slamming back against the beanbag I was lying on and my hands jerking wildly.

A wave of almost violent tranquility washed over me and my body froze for a moment before slumping back, my eyes closing almost of their own volition. The tranquility passed as quickly as it had appeared and I blinked rapidly to clear the fog from my eyes

I looked around frantically. Everyone else was still in their spots, eyes closed as they focused on the exercise Shella was running. Professor Alex was crouching beside me, a hand hovering just above my forehead and an odd look on his face. 

“Back with us, Severin?” he asked, his lips not moving and his voice echoing inside my skull. 

I nodded, not trusting my voice and not wanting to disrupt my classmates.

“Good. It seems you have a good grasp of the basic exercise, but there is a lot more for you to learn yet. I encourage you to continue practicing, though perhaps you could exercise a bit more caution when you do so.”

I nodded again.

Professor Alex sighed audibly before returning to his silent, mind-to-mind speech. “And Severin, see me in my office hours next week.”

I nodded a third time and Professor Alex clapped me on the shoulder. “Excellent. Carry on.”

And then he simply stood up and walked away. A moment later, Shella’s voice reappeared. “There is only a few minutes left in the exercise, Wizard Victus. This Shella encourages you to spend your time productively.”

My mind flashed briefly to the memory I’d just seen. It was a familiar one, though not a memory I revisited often. The day my father had acquired the second member of his coven.

I hadn’t meant to access it. In fact, I hadn’t meant to view any of dad’s memories. My control had slipped up and I’d been sucked in, something that hadn’t happened in years. It was rather embarrassing, actually, and, considerably worse, it had happened in the presence of at least one highly skilled mind mage, who’d clearly noticed that something was wrong. 

I closed my mind and steadied my breathing, but wasn’t able to properly focus on continuing the exercise. What had Shella and Professor Alex seen? Well, Shella probably hadn’t seen anything. She’d said she couldn’t look into the minds of wizards, and sidhe couldn’t lie. Or wait. She’d said that she wasn’t allowed to look into the minds of wizards. That was a…significant difference. 

But what about Professor Alex? He’d definitely noticed something. I knew what it felt like to exit a memory naturally, and it wasn’t that. Plus it typically took a lot longer for me to intentionally pull myself free unless I’d gone in prepared to pull out on a moment’s notice like I had while trying to learn a spell last week. 

No, that had been something that Professor Alex had done. Some kind of spell. He’d noticed something was wrong and deliberately pulled me out of it. The real question was what he noticed. Had he seen my dad’s memories through me? Had he just thought I’d made some sort of common mistake and the spell had just happened to work out anyway? Somewhere in between?

His words afterward suggested the former more so than the latter. He’d said I had a good grasp of the exercise but needed to be a bit more careful. Actually that could just mean it was some common pitfall, but then he’d also told me to come see him in his office. Not asked, but ordered. It had been phrased politely, but it had clearly been a command. 

I started to gnaw on my bottom lip before quickly stopping to keep up my breathing pattern. I didn’t like that. I didn’t like that one bit. Ideally, I would have preferred for no one except me––and apparently Daphne, but she didn’t count––to ever know that I was anything but a perfectly ordinary wizard. Legally speaking, a wizard’s secrets were their own, but that sort of thing could get dangerously flexible when the interested party was a member of a House and their victim wasn’t. 

Not going wasn’t really an option. Even if I switched to a different elective, it would only make the professor more curious, and I really was interested in the course material. It was one of the fields of magic that dad hadn’t really gone into until his last year at Aglakok, something he’d regretted. Even if I never really focused on it too much after this year, it offered a lot of small but cumulative boosts that could add up over the coming years. Better memory and focus went a long way when it came to learning and casting spells. 

Well. It was what it was. Hopefully I was worried about nothing. Otherwise, there wasn’t much I could do about it. I trusted that, at the very least, the Professor wasn’t going to try and do something to me during his office hours. The sanctity of a wizard’s education was something that all of the High Lords were said to take very seriously.

It was one of the core tenets on which the Council had been built. Magic was a wizard’s birthright. It was why even the poorest, stupidest wizard would be freely given a compatible witch and a basic education. Certainly not everyone would be invited to study at an Academy or receive someone as well matched to me as Daphne was, but a witch and an education was available to everyone. Even those to stupid to accept it like the Idiot had been, 

Shella’s voice suddenly echoed in my head again, breaking me out of my reverie. “This Shella regretfully informs you that we are just about out of time.”

Right. I was still in class. Worrying about what Professor Alex wanted could come later. There was no use working myself up into a panic when it was entirely possible that Daphne could tell me that everything was going to be okay in a couple of hours. 

I opened my eyes and sat up, blinking rapidly as a ray of sunlight fell across my face. Around me, my classmates were also slowly rousing themselves, many of them stretching or shielding their eyes from the sun. 

Professor Alex was standing still as a statue with his hands folded behind his back in the exact same spot as he had been previously. If I hadn’t known he’d been moving around during our meditation, I would have thought he’d been there the entire time. 

Seeming to notice my gaze, he turned his head a fraction of an inch and our eyes met. His lips twitched in a semblance of a smile and then he panned his gaze across the room. 

“A fine start,” he declared suddenly, everyone quickly turned to look at him. “The lesson will continue in five minutes with another lecture. I expect everyone to be in their seats and ready to learn at that time. I also expect everyone to practice this exercise on their own time. If you struggled with any part of it, see me or Shella in my office hours. I expect for everyone to be ready to move onto the next step by our next class. Understood?”

There was a chorus of, “Yes, Professor,” and the man nodded sharply.

“Good. Make sure to return your chosen furniture to its places.” Then he whirled around and marched to the front of the room, Shella trailing after him. I glanced over at the briefly visible sidhe and found her staring directly back at me, her blue eyes fixed on my chest. Her head turned slightly as she walked past where I was sitting, her unblinking gaze never leaving me.

I blinked and she was gone, my eyes no longer quite able to focus on her presence. 

Jesus fuck, I really hoped Daphne would have some sort of reassurance for me.