GPCiMW Chapter 20 (Patreon)

Merry Christmas to anyone who celebrates, happy holidays to everyone else. Trying to get a few more chapters out before the end of the year, here's one of those.

“You wanted to see me, Professor?”

Professor Alex didn’t bother to look up from the thick, leather bound journal he was writing in, the glass tip of his dip pen gliding with deceptive speed across the fine parchment. Severin couldn’t make out a word of what the man was writing––it just looked like a bunch of up-and-down scribbles broken into vaguely word-sized chunks, like what a child might think cursive looked like––but presumably the Professor could read his own handwriting. There was little point in writing things down if he couldn’t. 

“I did. Sit down,” the man ordered curtly. 

He paused to dip his pen into his inkwell, an elaborate construction of multicolored glass inside of which was trapped a naked faerie with her arms raised above her head and her wings fluttering weakly. Her legs were folded beneath her and encased fully in the glass up to the middle of her thighs, and the ink in the well rose up to just below her belly button. Her hair––the same vivid blue as the ink––was braided into an intricate seven-strand pattern and would have hung down deep into the ink if it weren’t pulled taut and hooked to a small metal pin far above her head. Her arms, breasts, and face were all splattered with droplets of ink, but she kept her hands meticulously clean with a tiny rag hanging at the top of the construct just barely within her reach. 

He wiped the excess ink off on the faerie’s shoulder, further staining her pale skin blue, then swiftly wrote out several more lines. A tap of his finger dried the ink on the page and he closed the journal with a harsh snap. Without really looking, he deposited his pen in the inkwell, the faerie scrambling to catch it with her clean hands before it could slide into the ink. 

She all but sagged in relief when she managed to do so in time and then held it gingerly in front of her, the tip just barely suspended above the surface of the ink and the glass handle kept away from her skin. The pen was nearly as tall as she was and her arms strained under its weight, but she held firm. 

He finally looked up, then followed my gaze down to the inkwell. “Ah, I see you’ve noticed my little ink faerie. A gift from a former student.” He reached over and stroked the faerie’s cheek with his pointer finger. She leaned into his touch, her eyes dropping shut and the quiver of her arms settling. 

“It's truly an ingenious work of artifice. The fuckmeat’s magic is used to keep the ink topped up and stop it from drying out, and its mind has been partially hollowed out for use as a sort of memory storage device without damaging its ability to react to basic stimulus.” He turned back to me, smiling narrowly, “Far cruder work than what someone did to you, but the magic needed to permanently and stably align such a foreign mind with wizarding thought patterns is impressive nonetheless.”

I stiffened involuntarily. It had been glaringly obvious Professor Alex had noticed that something was up––he’d pulled me out of the memory I’d accidentally fallen into so he must have––but that was a much more specific observation than I’d been hoping for. My father’s memories were my ace, something that only I should have known about, but first Daphne and now Professor Alex had both found out about them within hours of meeting me. 

Daphne knowing was…fine. She was as much a part of my strength as those memories were. Bound to me as she was, her loyalty was unquestionable and her sight was, while not infallible, an extremely valuable tool that had already proven its worth. Even if she hadn’t known on her own, I probably would have told her about my memories eventually. She was my first witch, the heart of my coven. If I couldn’t trust her, I couldn’t trust anyone.

Professor Alex on the other hand…

I barely knew anything about the man. I had no control over his actions, no control over who he spoke to and what he told them. I didn’t know what he wanted, where his views and aspirations lay, nor even what exactly he’d deduced from his brief exposure to the memories my dad had left me with. How much had he seen? How much did he know? And what was he going to do with that information?

For a moment I had the utterly ridiculous urge to attack the man, to silence him before he had a chance to spread my secret around. I balled my hands into fists, my nails digging painfully into my palms. That was a terrible idea. I doubted anything I could do would so much as inconvenience the man, my limited magic utterly impotent against the much older mage, and if he didn’t kill me for the offence it would only give him more reason to act against me. 

Professor Alex leaned back in his chair and watched me curiously with dark eyes, his arms folded over his chest.

I cleared my throat and tried to relax. I glanced back at the inkwell. “It's a…princely gift. Your teaching must have meant a lot to him.” I looked back at the Professor, who was still staring directly at me. “Uh, I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about.” It sounded hollow even to my own ears and I regretted saying it a moment after the words left my lips. 

Professor Alex snorted in amusement. He raised a single well-kempt eyebrow. “Is that so,” he deadpanned. It wasn’t a question.

I nervously wet my lips. “I mean, technically speaking I don’t think anything was done to my mind, necessarily?”

Professor Alex rolled his eyes. “Perhaps not, but I am…quite confident you know precisely that to which I am referring too.” He smiled, a much more open and honest expression than his previous one, and it made him look a decade younger. “For future reference, Mr. Victus, I much prefer honest silence to…polite mistruths, so to speak.”

“I’ll keep that in mind, Professor.”

“Very good. Now, would you like to try again?”

I considered my words carefully. Professor Alex thankfully didn’t seem to be offended by my earlier ill-thought out comment, but I didn’t want to press my luck. Nor did I want to say anything that gave away too much. Eventually, I settled on simply not answering the question at all. “Good afternoon, Professor. You said you wanted to see me this week?”

This time Professor Alex actually laughed, deep and resonant. It might have just been my imagination, but I almost felt like I could hear bells ringing at the very edges of my hearing, the sound all but lost amidst his laughter. “Ah, very good, Mr. Victus, very good. I did indeed say that, and here you are!” He slapped his thigh and shook his head ruefully. “Delightful. A good answer. Now then,” he composed himself in an instant, sitting up and leaning forward. “Can I offer you something to drink? Tea? Coffee?” He winked. “Something stronger?”

Professor Alex wasn’t acting like I’d expected him to, and I wasn’t sure if that was a good or bad thing yet. Daphne, who was kneeling at my feet, was still and silent, which was hopefully a good sign. She’d told me she’d try to signal if I was about to do something inadvisable, though she’d admitted her sight was much more reliable for long-term planning than such short term action. 

“Tea would be lovely.”

I nearly jumped out of my seat when Shella was just suddenly right there. One moment there was nothing, the next she was standing at the foot of the desk, a tray with two porcelain cups, a matching tea pot, and a crystal decanter filled with steaming water balanced on one hand. I watched her wearily as she carefully set a cup down beside each of us, then filled it about a third of the way with very strong-looking dark red tea from the pot and the rest of the way with boiling water. Then she withdrew to stand behind Professor Alex’s chair as though she’d been there the whole time, the tea tray vanishing behind her back and not reappearing. 

Professor Alex picked up his teacup and raised it to his lips. He took a deep breath, his eyes closed as he savored the smell of the tea, then gently blew across its surface before taking a sip. “Ah, wonderful as ever.”

I picked up my cup and tried it as well. It was still a little hot for me, but not so bad that it burned my tongue. I wasn’t much of a tea connoisseur––I mostly drank it for the caffeine since the smell of coffee had always made me slightly nauseous––but it tasted good and I could tell that it was probably a lot more expensive than any tea I’d ever bought for myself. 

“Excellent tea,” I commented, “thank you, Professor.” I set my cup down, content to let it cool a little more before I continued drinking. “Was there something you wanted to discuss?”

“There was indeed,” he confirmed. He turned his head and Shella took a step forward into the spot he was looking at. “Shella, why don’t you go and keep Mr. Victus’s witch company in the classroom.” The sidhe nodded sharply and I shifted in my seat. I wasn’t sure I wanted to leave Daphne alone with that thing. Professor Alex turned back to me and gave me a reassuring look. “Don’t worry, my Shella will not harm your witch, nor allow any harm to come to her. I still remember how attached I was to my first, and I find that some conversations are best had without any sources of distraction.”

I reluctantly agreed, and Shella led Daphne back through the door I’d come through and into the classroom beyond, leaving me alone with the Professor. We sat in silence for nearly a minute, Professor Alex watching me silently over the lip of his half-empty tea cup. Eventually, he drained the last of the still-steaming drink and set his cup aside. 

“I’d heard Jack Victus was a talented wizard, but I see that his skills were sorely underrepresented. This is your father’s work, yes? I can’t imagine who else’s it might be. I only got a glimpse of it, but I don’t know many wizards that were capable of such delicate manipulations of the soul at his age.”

I didn’t mean to say anything, but at his words the question just slipped out, my voice pathetically shakey. “You knew my father?” 

Something flashed in his dark eyes as he shook his head sadly. “Only by reputation, I’m afraid. I started teaching a few years after his death. A great talent lost many years before his time.”

“Oh.”

Professor Alex tilted his head to the side, slowly tapping his finger against the desk in front of him. He seemed lost in thought, his eyes unfocused and seemingly staring through me. I wondered what he was thinking about. I hoped Daphne was okay. Shella creeped me out and as a bound fuckmeat, she couldn’t actually hurt a wizard like me. Witches were far less protected, though Professor Alex had told me she’d be alright. 

This time I was the one who broke the ensuing silence. “So…” I said leadingly.

Professor Alex blinked. “Ah yes, my apologies. In anycase, I take it your father left you some manner of message beyond the grave? I can vaguely feel the edges of the memory packet wrapped within your soul, though little more than that. He must have created it when you were very young, just a little bundle of cells within your dam’s womb, for it to be so deeply entwined within the fabric of your soul.”

Some of the tension in my back and shoulders loosened. That wasn’t so bad, assuming he was telling the truth. “Something like that, yes,” I confirmed.

His eyes flashed as he leaned forward. “Did the associated notes survive his death?” 

Oh. Oh. That was much less bad than I’d feared. 

I shook my head. “No, sorry Professor. My mother managed to preserve a few of his things, but most of his research was destroyed with his lab. I know it was done in stage across several weeks, but that's about it.”

Professor Alex cursed in a language I didn’t know. “Bah!” he mumbled, “As always, barely educated buffoons destroy treasures beyond their ken.”

“Is what he did really that impressive?” I asked, genuinely curious. He sounded quite upset, and he didn’t know the half of it. 

“Impressive? Mr. Victus, you have two minds. I’ve never seen the like in all my years!”

I blinked. “I do?”

“Indeed!” He paused, wiggling his fingers in the air. “Well, perhaps it is too far to say that you have two minds, but you have something like a second mind. Not a single mind split in twain, that is elementary work, but two distinct mind-like constructs both attached to a single soul. It's hard to say what exactly will come of it, but the potential routes of investigation opened by this discovery…Limitless. At least for a mage like me.”

And the tension was back. I really didn’t like the intensity in Professor Alex’s gaze when he’d said ‘routes of investigation’. He seemed to notice, because he waved his hand at me dismissively. “Do not fear, Mr. Victus. Just the knowledge that such a thing is possible is more than enough for me. And your secret is your own. I will not go spreading it around if you do not plan to do so.”

I released a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. “Thank you, Professor.”

“Of course. It is my role as a professor to guide and educate, not endanger my charges. I do hope that, once your understanding in the magics of the mind has grown, you will share whatever findings you make with me. And perhaps I’d be interested in mentoring a mind mage of such fascinating potential in the future.”

The conversation didn’t last much longer after that. I left Professor Alex’s office lost in thought, my mind racing a mile a minute as I considered what I’d learned. I’d always thought the value of what my dad had left me came from the memories within my soul, but now I had to wonder if the container that held them was not even more valuable than what it held. Professor Alex certainly thought so, though he clearly didn’t know just how extensive the memories I’d been left were.

A second mind. I’d never thought about it in quite that way, but it sort of fit. I didn’t know enough about mind magic to confirm one way or another, nor make any use of it beyond what I was doing now, but wasn’t that precisely the reason I’d signed up for this class? 

We’d spent a good deal of our first two classes talking about what exactly the mind was. It was the bridge between the body and the soul, and what allowed a mage to give spells purpose. Perhaps a second mind would let me…offload some of that work to make my spells more powerful? Or maybe I could use it to cast multiple spells at the same time by sort of splitting my focus? I honestly didn’t know. 

But I was really, really looking forward to finding out. 

I stepped into the classroom and stopped mid-step. “Daphne,” I asked, “What are you doing up there?”

From her perch at the very top of the pile of couches, mattresses, pillows, and other soft things, Daphne stared down at me with wide, terrified eyes. She swallowed, then pointed at me. 

No, I realized. Not at me. Behind me. 

I sighed. “Shella. What did your master tell me before I allowed you to escort my witch out of my presence?

Her breath tickled my ear as she spoke in his voice “My Shella will not harm your witch, nor allow any harm to come to her.” She paused and continued in her own tinkling whisper. “Your witch is unharmed.”

I looked at Daphne. I was pretty sure I’d left that meeting with a greatly improved relationship with Professor Alex. This was a class I really cared about doing well in, especially now. I really didn’t want to turn around and confront him about his fuckmeat’s idea of what did and didn’t qualify as harm.

I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and started walking towards the door. “Your master will hear about this, fuckmeat,” I told her. “Daphne, let's go.”

I hoped she really was ‘unharmed’. Otherwise…

I’d burn that bridge if and when I got to it.