Chapter 147: Harry Harold Had no Hands

Chapter 147: Harry Harold Had no Hands

Damien

Month 3, Day 25, Thursday 9:45am

As the shield went up around Sebastien, who stood with his hands raised while Professor Fekten threatened him, Damien’s vision swam and his knees almost buckled. He was hyperventilating. Wrapping both of his hands loosely over his mouth, he blinked rapidly as he tried to force himself to take slow, even breaths despite his lung screaming that they lacked for air.

Why. Why? Why? This exam wasn’t even important. It was just a test! Even if they hadn’t made it to the tower, they still probably would have gotten some points for those they had helped to rescue. Sebastien had no need to risk his life for this.

“Get back, Westbay!” Fekten barked at him. “Back!”

Between one moment and the next, Damien had lost something so precious. He knew the true gravity of the situation, the depth of the consequences, hadn’t hit him yet. It had been like that when his mother died, too. It had taken weeks for him to truly accept the fact that she no longer existed, and even years later he still had moments of metaphorical vertigo when he remembered she was gone.

Sebastien was saying something, his voice scratchy with fear and muffled by the semi-opaque barrier, and Damien forced himself to focus.

“I realize it might have looked bad, but I didn’t channel magic through my own body. I’m not in any danger of a break event. I don’t even have Will-strain,” Sebastien said.

Damien stared at his friend, who for the first time since the exam started actually looked apprehensive.

As if reading Damien’s mind, Sebastien turned to meet his gaze and repeated, “I’m fine. This is a misunderstanding.”

Damien’s breathing began to slow, and he pulled his hands away from his open mouth, a string of saliva trailing between his palm and his mouth. He had apparently started crying at some point. His face and hands were covered in tears, and salt was getting into his mouth. “A mis—misunderstanding?” Damien asked, his breath hitching. He didn’t understand how that could be, but Sebastien’s calmness was contagious.

Fekten wasn’t listening, screaming back to the tower to evacuate the area and let them pass through.

Sebastien drew a deep breath and yelled through the barrier, causing Fekten to flinch and his hand to tighten around his battle wand. “I did not cast through my own flesh! Damien’s Conduit fell out of his pocket, and I borrowed it.”

Fekten’s eyes narrowed. “I know what I saw, Siverling. You were casting with empty hands. I watched as Westbay returned your Conduit to you, and he didn’t pick up his own off the ground until you were already standing.”

“I was casting with my leg. My pant leg is torn, so I was able to press my skin against Damien’s Conduit where it rested on the ground,” Sebastien insisted, enunciating every syllable. He lifted his leg, displaying the long rip in the grey fabric, reaching up to his knee. The pale skin of his leg was plainly visible, and though it was hard to see clearly through the barrier, it looked like there was a red mark where he might have pressed against the faceted edges of Damien’s Conduit.

It was a ridiculous, unbelievable explanation, but something inside of Damien still unclenched. “It—It’s true,” he croaked, drawing Fekten’s attention. Damien swallowed to clear his throat and tried again, holding up his Conduit for Fekten to see. “It had fallen out of my pocket when we got hit by that soft concussive blast spell. I didn’t see it until after Sebastien stood up. It makes sense that he would have been laying on it.”

The area around them had already emptied of other students, but a few members of the faculty were slowly approaching, battle wands and other artifacts out and ready.

Professor Fekten narrowed his eyes, and the tip of his wand remained unwaveringly focused on Sebastien. “You expect me to believe that you, in a moment of panic, learned to cast through your leg,” he said, his tone completely deadpan.

Sebastien huffed. “Let me reiterate, I did not cast through my leg. I cast through Damien’s Conduit. I just...gripped it with my leg. Skin contact is all you need, not actual fingers. It’s not like it’s the first time I’ve ever done such a thing. It might be slightly harder, but it’s far from impossible. Please, be reasonable. There’s no way I would have put all the students around me in such danger just to win a mock battle. Hells, I wouldn’t put myself in such danger just for the results of a test. I’m not anywhere close to failing, and if I thought the Defense elective was going to be the thing to hold me back, I could simply drop it from my schedule this coming term.”

Damien leaned over, pressing his hands to his knees and taking a couple more deep breaths. He wiped the snot and tears from his face with the rough grey fabric of his sleeve.

The other faculty members had arrived, and Fekten shared a look with a couple of them. “The boy claims he didn’t cast through his flesh, but through a Conduit touching his leg,” he explained, his skepticism clear.

“Is there any way to test it?” Sebastien asked. “I’m telling the truth, and I’m not experiencing any uncontrollable urges to cast through my flesh, but how am I supposed to prove that?”

“Put him under observation in one of the rogue magic shelters,” suggested one of the professors. “Three days should be long enough to be sure.”

“Three days!?” Sebastien echoed, outraged. “I’m slotted to be in the Practical Casting exhibition later today. I can’t miss that.”

At the reminder of who he was apprenticed to, several of the professors shared glances again.

“Have him examined by a healer and give a statement to one of our Masters of divination,” someone else suggested.

Fekten agreed reluctantly, lowering his wand just slightly. “We’ll do it in the shelter under the sim room.” He reached into his pocket and fiddled with something, and the opaque barrier around Sebastien withdrew into the golden artifact at his feet. “I’m warning you, Siverling. If you’re lying, casting through your own flesh again is likely to cause a break event, in which case I will do my absolute best to kill you before you can complete the transformation.” He turned to Damien. “Didn’t I tell you to step back, Westbay? It’s not safe. You need to evacuate the area with the rest of the students.”

As soon as the three of them were alone, Damien couldn’t hold it in any longer. “How long have you been able to control a Conduit through your leg!?”

Sebastien rolled his eyes. “I don’t even know, Damien. As long as I remember, I suppose. Using a Conduit touching other parts of the body is actually not that difficult. I suspect that most people just have some mental block they never attempt to overcome. As Professor Lacer might say, they get into a rut. I had no idea it would be such a big deal.”

“How could you not realize?” Damien asked. “Do you see people going around casting with their wrists, or their belly buttons?”

“Do you remember that children’s rhyme about Harry Harold who had no hands? He wore jeweled shoes so he could cast through his feet.”

Damien blinked twice. “Yes. I remember that nonsensical rhyme for children. I also remember other similar stories about children walking into a dragon’s mouth and being transported to another world, then climbing out of the dragon’s nose years later, unharmed. Or about a girl who could transform at will into a pegasus. Or the one about the one-inch boy who might come to live with you if you built an appropriately detailed miniature house for him and filled it with all of your baby teeth.”

Sebastien crossed his arms. “Well, that’s not the same thing at all.”

“Yes, yes it is. For normal people, it is. Normal people cast magic through their hands, or maybe sometimes their foreheads.” He turned to Professor Lacer for help, but the man was just watching them with something that might have been amusement. Damien threw up his hands with exasperation. “Let me be clear, the reason the coppers search peoples’ crevices is not because they’re afraid criminals will start channeling spells through the Conduit shoved up their assholes!”

Sebastien raised one eyebrow in challenge, an expression that was eerily reminiscent of Professor Lacer, and drawled, “I know I’m impressive, but I’m sure you could do it too with a little bit of practice, if you weren’t so close-minded. Myrddin never would have been able to create Carnagore or sneak into the secret realm of the fey and marry their princess if he was so pessimistic.”

Damien reached up to tug at his hair in frustration, but Sebastien laughed. Whatever tension had remained in the other young man’s frame was gone as he grinned smugly at Damien. Damien squinted at him suspiciously, keeping the warm glow of relief that had bloomed in his chest from showing on his face. “You’re poking fun at me.”

Sebastien gave him a one-shouldered shrug, turning to walk toward the shelter’s exit. “Only partially. Right?” she asked, turning to Professor Lacer.

The man hummed, looking Sebastien over speculatively. “I suppose you may be correct. I can cast with a Conduit touching other parts of my body, but I still find using my hands much easier. I cannot free-cast without them, and even some of the more difficult spells would be beyond me. I am surprised you managed to distance your spell’s output under such restrictions. However, I did not start developing the ability until I was in my thirties. Perhaps if I had started younger, I would have progressed with similar ease.”

Sebastien seemed surprised by this, and then thoughtful, his dark eyes staring into the distance as he frowned.

After they closed the shelter door behind them, Professor Lacer returned to his duties, but Damien insisted on accompanying Sebastien to the infirmary, where Ana and her little sister Nat were already waiting for them.

“We saw what happened on the big mirrors,” Nat announced immediately, her eyes searching Sebastien’s face with an endearingly sincere worry. “Are you alright? We tried to read people’s lips when you were talking with Fekten, but I’m not very good at it yet, and it was hard to see you clearly inside of that bubble.”

Damien flushed, realizing that it was likely his response—the tears and his complete loss of composure—had been shown in great detail, duplicated from the small mirrors in the arena onto the much larger ones erected for the audience to watch the most interesting events of the mock battle. The practical part of the Defensive Magic exam was automatically displayed as part of the exhibition, and one of the biggest lures of the entire event.

Sebastien reached out to take Nat’s hand, squeezing it reassuringly and making the girl’s cheeks flush pink. Once again, he quickly explained the misunderstanding that had caused so much pandemonium.

“Of course you would be able to do that. Doesn’t anyone here know you’re going to be a free-caster soon?” Nat asked, blowing out her cheeks with frustration.

Ana nodded sagely, the only sign of her own worry the wrinkled spots on her blouse where she must have clutched it in white-knuckled fear, which no amount of smoothing with her fingers could totally hide. “That is a good point, Nat. One that I think everyone should hear before too much gossip that might be undesirable spreads. As they say, a lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on.”

Nat pressed her lips together and patted the back of Sebastien’s hand, which was still holding her own. “Don’t worry. We’ll make sure people don’t think badly of you just because that idiot professor got so frightened.”

“He’s a respected man,” Ana chided. “We can’t call him an idiot. Just...overly anxious about the safety of his students. He fought through a lot of horrible battles. Perhaps there is some lingering trauma from the Haze War.” She turned to Sebastien, gave him a brief, tight hug, releasing him before his surprise could fully take hold.

Damien smiled at her. “Thank you, Ana.”

“Think nothing of it,” she replied, taking out a small mirror from her pocket and checking her appearance, slipping on a sweet smile like a general arming himself for battle. When she finished, she passed the mirror down to Nat, who tried out several different expressions, muttering to herself as if she was talking to someone, or rehearsing a speech.

Sebastien looked between them with bemusement. “Yes...thank you.”

Nat tossed a lock of hair over her shoulder nonchalantly, but couldn’t hide her excitement. “Think nothing of it. We’re Gervins, you know. This is nothing we can’t handle.”

After they had gone to influence public opinion in Sebastien’s favor, one of the healers took Sebastien into a private room for another checkup. Sufficiently alone but assured that plenty of healers would be around to help him if he needed it, Damien tried to cast the simplest spark-shooting spell on a piece of paper, with his Conduit held in the crook of his forearm.

He did not find it nearly so effortless as Sebastien and Thaddeus Lacer had made it seem.

He felt barely any connection to the magical energy that should have been—needed to be—within his grasp. Frightened that he would lose control of the insignificant spell entirely, Damien released the energy, retracted his Will, and gripped his Conduit in his hand as he waited for his racing heartbeat to slow.