GPCiMW Chapter 22 (Patreon)

Welp, apparently this is the story my muse has latched onto this week! Wrote and edited an entire chapter and a not insignificant portion of the next one in....1/30th of the time it took to finish the previous one. Hopefully it lasts, because the rest of January has not been great. 

Despite Wyll’s constant nagging and obvious impatience, we couldn’t just head out right away. June, his witch, was carrying what looked like all of his school things—books, notes, loose papers, and even a balled-up spare uniform—and Teveus and Kazuma both had their supplies for the day with them as well. It wouldn’t exactly slow any of them down, they all had their witches carrying everything for them, but things could easily get lost or ruined outside.

I was less loaded down—I’d stowed most of my things before heading over to meet with Professor Alex—but I still wanted to drop off what I did have with me and change into a different pair of shoes. Or well, that was what I told them. What I actually wanted to do was pin Daphne up against a wall and shake her until everything came out. I wasn’t going to do so—not now, definitely not today—but I did need to know what the hell this was about.

We split up in the stairwell with a promise to meet back there in a couple of minutes. I did my best to act nonchalant as I made my way up to my room, silently cursing how much further it was from our arranged meeting point than Taevus, Kazuma, and Wyll’s rooms were. The moment the door closed however, I rounded on Daphne.

Thankfully she didn’t need any encouragement. She spoke quickly, words spilling from her lips as though a dam had blown open. “I’ve seen this before, that exact moment. A couple of times. A bunch of times, even. Well, mostly. You weren’t usually there, but I Saw it again a few days ago and you were there this time so I knew we were getting close. I should have told you earlier—“ she paused, stumbling over herself, “no, no, I would have told you earlier but I thought it wasn’t till later and I’ve been focused on the meeting with Professor Alexander and I—“

I pressed a finger gently against her lips and she closed her mouth with a click of teeth. “We can play the blame game later,” and we absolutely would, though whether it would be the fun kind of game Daphne would enjoy or the…less pleasant version depended a lot on what exactly happened. For now though, “What do I need to know?”

Daphne took a deep breath, then yelped as I picked her up and deposited her on the bed. I turned my back to her and knelt down to unlace my shoes. I did actually need to change into something more suitable for the outdoors. “Talk,” I ordered over my shoulder.

“Right. Um, okay. You guys should find the ab…I mean, something. Or well, Wyll will. I don’t think I should say what it is because it would be suspicious if it wasn’t a surprise, but it’s…big. Maybe very big. It could really help us—you—going forward. Especially if I can, um…” she trailed off and I watched her out of the corner of my eye as she fidgeted with  a lock of hair, wrapping and unwrapping it from around her fingers.

“Okay sorry I’m not making sense. The really important part is that you need to let Wyll lead the way. Even when it feels really stupid. At least until you find…the place. And then umm…if I disappear for a few minutes, don’t make a big deal of it. I’ll be fine. Better than fine.”

I pulled the laces of my boots tight, my ankle held snuggly by the padded interior. “And it’s safe?” I questioned. 

“It…should be?” she said a lot more hesitantly than I would have liked. She was quiet for a second, then continued confidently. “Yeah. Yeah it should be safe. No one got hurt in the ep—I mean I didn’t see anyone getting hurt”

I stood up and turned to face Daphne. Sitting on the big bed with her knees bent and her legs splooshed out on either side of her to form a w shape, she looked positively tiny, the effect further magnified by the hunch of her shoulders and the nervous way she was gnawing on her lower lip. 

I didn’t like it. “Sit up,” I ordered, and her back straightened, her head rising until she was looking at my chest rather than my feet. Better.

“And is that everything I need to know, or everything I should know?” I questioned, already knowing the answer.

“Need…” Daphne whispered.

I nodded sharply. “Good enough. Anything you need from the room?” 

She shook her head.

“Then up, let’s go. Don’t want to keep the others waiting.” I turned around and began towards the door, Daphne’s soft footfalls . After a few steps I stopped and looked back at my first witch. “And Daphne?”

“Yes Severin?” she answered hesitantly.

I smiled tightly. “Last chance. If I’m not happy with how this goes…” I let the words hang in the air, Daphne’s imagination more than enough to fill in the blanks. 

Whatever happened today, Daphne and I would be having a long talk the next time we returned to my room. The topic of that talk—and whether or not it would involve some of the tools and techniques I was learning about in my Coven Management class—depended on her.

She met my eyes squarely, the way a witch trained at a world-renowned facility like Aglakok’s breeding hall really, really shouldn’t have. “You won’t be.” 

I felt the truth in her words. I considered her for a moment, searching her face for any trace of fear or unease and finding none, not even a remnant from her encounter with Shella. She, at the very least, believed what she was saying. 

“Unhappy, I mean,” she added quickly, breaking the tension of the moment. She ducked her head, hair sliding past her ear to hide her face. “I’m sorry I didn’t realize it was going to be today I swear I meant to tell you, I will tell you, everyt—“

I shoved the leather strip from her ponywitch uniform, the one that magically styled her hair up in a ponytail, into her hands. “Put your hair up and let’s go. We don’t want it getting caught on anything while we’re bumbling after Wyll.”

Daphne stared dumbly down at it for a moment, then hurried to obey.

I was the last person to arrive at our meeting point, but only by a few short minutes easily explained away by the distance involved. Even with space expansion magic, five floors of the enormous tower were needed to house all one-hundred (now ninety-nine) students in our year and my room was on the highest of the five. 

I honestly didn’t really mind the extra distance (most of the time) but the first time I’d mentioned it around Wyll he’d looked utterly horrified by the idea of five more flights of stairs added onto the already too-many flights between his room and the great hall. Apparently he’d somehow completely missed the other floors and the students who lived on them for the first two weeks of the school year. 

Wyll led the way as we headed down towards the ground floor, Kazuma behind him and Teveus and I bringing up the rear a few steps further back. After a few flights, Teveus gestured towards my feet. “Nice boots,” he commented lightly. He waved down at his own feet, still clad in the leather derby-style shoes that were a part of our everyday uniform. “Wish I’d thought to bring something like that. All I’ve got are these and my slippers.”

“Thanks.” I shrugged. “Though this is actually the first time I’ve worn them since I got here. I thought about using them for dueling class, but they’re a bit too heavy for that sort of thing from what I’ve read. I don’t think you’re really missing out on much.”

Teveus hummed noncommittally. “Perhaps not,” he allowed. He was silent for two more flights, then out of the blue said, “They are of mundane make, are they not.” It wasn’t a question.

I hadn’t expected it, but it wasn’t so strange a comment that it would instantly put me on guard. Especially since he had just said he liked them. I nodded, “Yup. They make good boots.”

Teveus nodded severely, the motion briefly adding decades to his face. It was a learned movement, not a natural one. Something he’d perhaps picked up from his father or grandfather. He once again fell silent, though this time we only passed a single landing before he spoke up again. “You possess a large number of objects of mundane make. Not just common things—pens, notebooks…shoes—but other things. Casual clothing. Accessories. The water bottle you bring to dueling class.”

This time he was quiet for only a few moments, just long enough to make it clear I wasn’t going to say anything. He changed direction. “I understand it is the High Lord’s responsibility to bring those raised beyond the veil home and provide a place for them, both lost wizards and the occasional feral witch.”

My lips quirked up into a ghost of a smile. My father had been deeply amused by that terminology, and while I wasn’t quite sure why he’d thought it was so funny, the impression of his laughter had imprinted on my mind alongside the associated memories.  

There was no such thing as a real ‘mundane-born’ witch or wizard. Despite the remarkable physical resemblance, witches were no more related to mundane women than they were to any other kind of fuckmeat. Mundanes men could not have children with a witch any more than they could with a horse, and any child born of a wizard and a mundane woman would be a fully mundane woman as well. 

By the standards of wizarding taxonomy, mundanes were a type of fuckmeat, if one that was capable of reproducing without our aid or intervention. There had been plenty of proposals over the centuries to do away with the veil that hid wizards and our thralls from the mundanes and bring their kind fully under our purview, but all had been firmly and brutally shut down by High Lord Utnapishtim, first and greatest of the High Lords

. 

No one was quite sure why Utnapishtim was so opposed to the idea, but his stance had not changed in at least five thousand years, and probably wasn’t going to at this point. He was the reason wizards as a whole were so hands off with the mundanes, even though the veil left them all but defenseless against us. Sure there was the occasional kidnapping, theft, or minor atrocity, but anyone who pushed even a step too far were very quickly (and often fatally) shown the error of their ways.

In any case, despite the colloquial use of the term ‘mundane-born’, neither wizards nor witches could really be born among mundanes. However, baby wizards and witches looked just like regular babies. A child could get misplaced or get lost and get taken in by mundanes. A runaway witch could have a child in the mundane world that was missed when she was invariably recaptured soon after. A particularly stupid or poor wizard could take his witch to a mundane hospital to give birth and get his newly born switched with another by a nurse. 

In other words, sometimes accidents happened, and you ended up with a magical child raised among mundanes. A lost wizard or a feral witch.

Sometimes that wasn’t a problem. Plenty such wizards had gone on to do great things, and at least one of the High Lords (though no one could quite agree which one or ones) had been raised under just such circumstances. They were, one and all, invited to attend the nearest school of wizardry, provided with a witch to call their own, and taken care of until they could take care of themselves and give back to the coming.

Other times you ended up with dead children. Or fools like Christopher. Or poor, ‘feral’ witches who didn’t understand what was happening and typically ended up in a breeding barn, as a tortured novelty in some wizard’s coven, or simply rendered down into alchemical reagents if they were already too old and wild to be worth the trouble. After all, a witch didn’t live long without a coven, and who would want an untrained witch that thought of herself as a person rather than one raised from birth to serve  her betters?

Teveus cleared his throat and I realized that, despite not having asked an actual question, he was nonetheless waiting for an answer.

I turned to look at him, studying his face intently. I hadn’t known Teveus for long, but between our interactions and a number of things Daphne had said or implied over the past few weeks, I felt I had a relatively good read on him. He wasn’t the gossiping sort, and my witch had repeatedly suggested that he was a very good…friend to have. 

Perhaps it would be good to extend a hand of trust, particularly in regards to something that was ultimately both minor and easy enough to figure out independently.

“You’re mostly right,” I confirmed. “By the council’s standards I do qualify as lost beyond the veil.”

Teveus hummed thoughtfully. “One of four, now three, in our year, as best I can tell. But you most certainly do not act like one who was lost.”

I smiled. “Do I not?” I twisted my face into an exaggerated look of wide-eyed surprise. “Oh wow, Mr. Wizard. Magic is real? Golly gee!”

He snorted and raised a single eyebrow, which was about as close to a laugh as I’d ever heard from him. 

I let my smile fade. “More seriously, I really did grow up among mundanes. Went to a mundane school and everything. But I knew the truth all along, so it wasn’t a surprise when the offer came. Dad didn’t lose me, he just died when I was little and I had nowhere else to go.”

“Ah,” Teveus said heavily. “I see. I apologize for pressing. My condolences.”

I shrugged, though internally I wasn’t nearly so at ease. “It’s fine. You’ve been a good friend. You deserve to know.”

Teveus looked genuinely touched. “Thank you, Severin. I will not betray the trust you’ve shown me today.”

I caught a glimpse of Daphne’s face in the reflection of a window, the bright-eyed shadow of a grin brushing the corners of her lips. “I know you won’t.”

Nearly two hours later, I was really starting to question Daphne’s assertion about just following Wyll’s lead. If that idiot knew where he was going, he certainly didn’t show it! It was a good thing I’d had time to get at least a few details from her, because otherwise I would have turned around and tried to make my way back to Aglakok after the first twenty minutes. 

Even with her assurances, I was starting to regret not doing just that. I wished we were alone so I could confirm that we were on the right track, but Daphne’s sight was one secret that I refused to compromise in such a fashion. She’d said that everything would turn out alright and so far hadn’t given me any reason to think the situation had changed. Hopefully she was right.

It was getting dark, the sun slowly dipping beneath the horizon and painting the sky in a riot of brilliant colors. It was the sort of view best appreciated from a hilltop or high tower, preferably with a good drink and better company. My room happened to offer a fantastic view of the setting sun, one I’d appreciated a number of times from the comfort of my own bed with Grace and Daphne in my arms or on their knees. 

Instead, we were in the middle of a ravine, or possibly just a steep-sided valley, some distance from the school. I wasn’t exactly sure how far—the trail, if it could even be called that, we were following was a tiny, winding thing that rarely had us walking in a straight line for more than a few steps at a time—but it must have been at least an hour at a brisk pace.

The ice cream we’d originally brought with us was long gone, four thoroughly cleaned bowls stored away in a makeshift bag Teveus’s witch was carrying. I was very glad I actually had changed into boots and not just said I would because the ground was rocky in some places and muddy in others, knobby roots hid beneath every patch of dead leaves and wild shrub, and the sad excuse of a path was half-overgrown in places and blocked by fallen trees in others.

I was a little bit worried about Daphne—she wore no shoes to protect her feet from sharp rocks nor clothing to guard her skin from lashing branches and prickly shrubs—but she actually seemed to be having a splendid time of it. She was a little bit dirty and needed a thorough cleaning when we returned to the school, mud coating her feet and bits of dirt streaked all up and down her legs, but otherwise looked much better off than any of us wizards and was clearly enjoying herself immensely. She put on an excellent show of just meekly trailing after me like a good witch, but I could feel her delight as she occasionally stopped to wiggle her toes in the mud, ran her fingers along the bark of trees, and drank in the sounds of rustling leaves and birdsong. 

I’d heard a lot about how witches were much physically tougher than wizards and mundanes, but this was the first time it had really sunk in what that meant. Without my uniform, I would probably have been covered in scratches and I could feel how rough the ground was even through the thick souls of my boots. Teveus, Kazuma, and Wyll with their much flimsier shoes meant for polished floors of wood or stone had quickly learned to avoid the worst bits of the trail, but Daphne and the witches walked over them with no real trouble.

I was, to put it mildly, starting to get rather fed up. This was time I could be using to study and hone my magic. Time Daphne could be training for her race. Time that could be used far better than to wander aimlessly through the closest thing I’d ever seen to untamed wilderness. 

I wasn’t the only one. We’d been talking for the first hour or so, gossiping about our classmates and telling each other stories. That had tapered off as we all started to get tired and out of breath, and the twenty minutes had passed in near total silence. I was still slightly surprised when Kazuma was the first one to break. He was usually the most easygoing of the three of us, and liked Wyll the most.

He stopped in the middle of the path and threw his hands up in the air. “Alright I’m done with this.” He jabbed a finger towards Wyll “You are completely lost, aren’t you!” 

Wyll stopped as well, turning to face Kazuma and then quailing at the look on the blue-haired boy’s face. “W-what do you mean?” he asked glibly. “I know ex-exactly where we are!” 

It was a blatant lie and we all knew it, but  Wyll was too embarrassed and self conscious to admit it. It had been his idea to follow the little trail we’d found leading deeper into the untamed parts of Aglakok’s vast lands, his idea to follow the little stream we’d come across, and his ‘brilliant shortcut’ that had gotten us even more hopelessly lost.

Teveus crossed his arms over his chest. “And where’s that?” he asked sharply.

“Uhhh…In the forest around Aglakok?”

Kazuma closed his eyes and took a deep breath, and I saw June running her hand down her face. 

You could have cut the tension in the air with a knife. I considered stepping in to try and diffuse the situation, but a glance at Daphne found her watching the exchange with bright-eyed intensity, her pearly white teeth just barely visible between her slightly parted lips. 

I turned back towards the other wizards in time to see Kazuma take an aggressive step towards Wyll. “Well, I think I’ve had enough of our gander,” he spat the word Wyll had used back in the great hall like a curse, “around the grounds for today. How about you lead us back to the school, hmm?”

Wyll’s eyes darted between Teveus, Kazuma, and I, and he took a half-step back. “Um, yeah. Of course. It is getting kind of late.” He let out a short, nervous laugh. “Its um…” he looked around, turning in a slow circle as he took in the sea of trees and undergrowth that extended away from us in every direction, then stopped and pointed in a seemingly random direction almost perpendicular to the trail we’d been following. “It’s that way!”

I frowned and discretely drew on my magic. What I did wasn’t really a spell, but more of an exercise used to help familiarize young wizards with the feeling of using magic. Something even someone without a single bound witch could manage with enough practice. I knew a couple such ‘spells’—they were often called cantrips—and this one pointed me towards where north was.

I followed Wyll’s arm and frowned. He was pointing nearly due south. I’d gotten a little turned around over the past two hours of wandering, but I’d used this cantrip enough times during that time to judge that Aglakok was somewhere to our east. 

I opened my mouth to say something, then remembered Daphne’s warning and closed it. Even if Wyll didn’t actually know where he was going, he would theoretically take us where we were supposed to end up. 

I shaped another spark of power and learned that it was almost eight o’clock. We’d all eaten recently, both Teveus and I had brought bottles of water, and we weren’t really all that far from the school. It was probably fine to let this farce continue a while longer.

Though I was pretty sure I was the only one of us that knew the north-finding cantrip—most wizards only ever learned a few and it was not a common one—Teveus looked nearly as skeptical about Wyll’s sense of direction as I felt.

“Oh yeah?” he drawled.

“Yeah!” Wyll confirmed enthusiastically. He jabbed his finger in that same direction again. “It’s just a bit further that way! It shouldn’t be very far.”

Kazuma stared at Wyll for several long moments, then spun around and marched over towards where Haimi was standing. The little witch squeaked as he roughly squeezed one of her oversized breasts, massaging it roughly like a stress ball. He bent down and hissed something in her ear that made her freeze in place, then lightly pushed her away, leaving bright red marks on her bronze skin.

He turned back towards Wyll, who was watching him wearily. “Fine. Let’s go then. It’s starting to get dark and it’s hard enough picking our way through this mess when I can see where I’m going.”

Teveus didn’t look convinced, but he fell in behind Kazuma as he and Wyll turned off the path again and began pushing their way through the brush, dead leaves and other detritus loud beneath their feet. After a moment, I followed suit, the air around us sharp with tension. 

I hoped we found whatever Daphne thought we would soon. I doubted that Kazuma would be content in taking his frustration out on Haimi again. It was probably a good thing that we were all first years with no real spells to our names…