Chapter 259: Finals and Final Preparations

“And there they go,” Alex said as the ship disappeared into the horizon. “I hope they get back alright.”

“Let’s just say they will,” Theresa said. “And not invite trouble.”

“I’ve been praying to The Traveller that their trip’ll be easy,” Selina said. “…I hope it’s a lot easier than ours was.”

“I hope so as well,” Khalik said. “I will pray to Zat-Ashtar that their journey will be quick, easy and comfortable, and that all they find at home is pleasant: as they left it, or better.”

“Thanks, Khalik,” Theresa said. “Let’s hope that all the gods listen, and that no harm comes to my parents. Come on, let’s get back to campus: if I stay here any longer, I’ll just keep worrying myself half-crazy.”

They turned away from the sea and left the harbour behind. On their way back to the sky-pier, Selina came up beside Alex.

“Can we talk when we get home?” she asked.

“Oh yeah,” he said. “I’ve got some time before it’s back to blood-magic.”

“Thanks,” she said.

“What are we going to do when you finish school?” Selina asked her brother.

He paused, surprised by the question. The two of them had taken Claygon and Brutus for a walk, while Theresa was doing her morning meditations, and Khalik had gone home to catch some sleep before getting back to cramming facts about magical plant characteristics into his brain.

All around campus there was a frantic feeling filling the air that happened just before finals. Even though there were less students on campus than there would be in fall, winter or spring, there was still a lot of activity going on.

“What brought on your question?” Alex asked.

“Mr. and Mrs. Lu leaving,” Selina said. “They won’t be able to see us very much anymore, and we used to see them everyday. So, I was thinking that when The Ravener’s finally gone, we’ll see them even less, like we talked about.”

“Yeah, but like I said, I’m going to learn teleportation spells then we can see them every day if we want.”

“Yeah, but…from where?” she asked. “Are we going to stay in Generasi? Are we going to the Rhinean Empire, will we go back to Thameland if The Ravener’s gone?”

“You’re really thinking far ahead, aren’t you?” Alex said. “Well, for one thing, since you want to learn to be a wizard too, there’s no way you’re going anywhere until you finish your four years of university. After that, you’ll be grown and can go wherever you want.”

He glanced over his shoulder at the castle, imagining Selina—being around his age—and attending the university with her own group of friends and schoolmates. Her own Khaliks, Isoldes and Thundars…but, hopefully no Dereks.

“I might be doing graduate studies too so we’d be here at the same time,” he said. “Won’t that be cool? Maybe I’ll be a teacher’s assistant for one of your labs.”

Selina made a face. “You’d torture me.”

“Oh yes, I’d be the hardest marker you’ll ever have,” Alex grinned. “…unless you take Force Magic with Professor Ram, then I’ll probably be in second place.”

“I’ll just avoid all the classes you help in!”

“And I’ll lie about the ones I help with.”

She rolled her green eyes. “I’m trying to be serious, Alex. What happens when you and I graduate?”

“Well, then, that’s going to be something we’ll have to deal with as time goes on,” he said. “Look at this.” He gestured around them to the stately buildings of campus and the students bustling about. After his performance at The Games, he’d noticed a growing trend of students carrying their books and supplies around using forceball-hung baskets, forcedisks, or even Wizard’s Hands. It was kind of amusing to see some of his habits spreading.

“Look at him,” Alex pointed back at Claygon. “If you told me a year ago that our lives would be so completely different, I would’ve called you crazy. And it’s only been like…a year. Who knows what’s going to happen in four years? More than eight, for you. Take some advice from your big brother, just worry about what’s ahead of you. Time changes things. You can’t do anything about what’s happening in the next country, but you can do something about what’s happening over the next hill.”

Selina looked at him sceptically. “I don’t think Isolde would say that.”

“Yeah, but Isolde has the next sixty years of her life planned out. Look, maybe we’ll stay here, maybe we won’t. But for now, we just need to focus on what’s next. You know, maybe as you grow up, you might find you want to plan the next sixty years like Isolde. Then, you can do that, it’ll be your choice. But one thing I do know for the future, is that we won’t need to worry about where we are, because with teleportation spells, we could go anywhere we want. We could travel some place, then teleport back to Thameland or Generasi, or wherever, and turn in for the night. That’s the kind of future plan I’m pretty sure about.”

“That sounds really cool,” Selina said.

“Well, one day it’ll be our reality. Just wait and see.”

In the days following the Lus departure for the Rhinean Empire, time seemed to fly by.

Since the summer semester was extended, final exams were later than they normally would have been, which added to the confusion of first and upper year students arriving back on campus, while preparations for final exams were going on. There was a rush of students studying in the library, on campus grounds, practising their labs in the Cells while at the same time, there was the controlled chaos of move-ins and course selections.

Alex had made sure to pick his three choices early: compulsory second year magic lore, second year summoning, and first year blood magic with a plan to work hard enough to challenge the exam for credit, and get into second year blood magic in second semester. He’d been careful to choose courses so that his three classes would fall on the same days that he worked at Shale’s to avoid schedule conflicts, and the need to juggle his time with the expedition. He’d learned that any student member of the expedition team could withdraw from classes for a year, but that would’ve meant graduating later, and probably losing his job at Shales, neither of which Alex wanted.

Expedition preparations were really becoming solid now.

After a few more meetings—during one it had been announced that the professors on the expedition team were entitled to use the time away from campus as a sabbatical year, and students would also be permitted to withdraw from classes for a year without penalty— a new compound was erected on campus. It was called the ‘Headquarters of Thameish Expeditionary Forces’ and had been magically built on an area of the university’s property near the sea. The area was surrounded by glyphed walls some twelve feet high.

The compound housed a laboratory, a storage building, meeting rooms, an infirmary, washrooms, and a small armoury. A detachment of Watchers had been assigned there while equipment, food, medical supplies and alchemical supplies were brought in over a period of days. Even though The Watchers were there permanently and the compound was never left unguarded, every member of the expeditionary team was provided with a unique circular card to allow them entry through the front gates, and into most buildings. Some areas were high security and heavily patrolled, barring access to anyone who wasn’t a high ranking team member. The Watchers’ duty also included questioning, checking and recording identities, and time and purpose of anyone wanting entry to, or exit from, the compound.

After the demon summoner, Baelin had insisted that the expedition be absolutely secure, even if some folks felt inconvenienced. But no one complained since the memory of the demon assault was still raw.

As the mountain of equipment grew, the surveying teams—including Alex and his friends—spent hours training and being drilled in proper sample collection practises, proper documentation, and proper communication. In many ways, it felt like they were taking another summer course, one that was driving some of his cabal members half-crazy.

“Well, at least much of it is review,” Khalik groaned after emerging from a long, dull training session one day. “Salinger has already taught us a great deal about sample collection.”

“Well, you’re both luckier than me,” Thundar grunted. “I’m learning all that stuff from scratch. Feels like my head’s spinning.”

“We’ll have to burn all of it into memory guys,” Alex said. “Where we’re going, we’ll need to have all this stuff down cold.”

He remembered his, Theresa’s, Selina’s and Brutus’ experience with the Silence-Spiders. It might be tempting to think—since their group had come through the demon fight—that they’d be alright with any danger Thameland could throw at them.

…but dangers had a way of letting one know they’d been taking them far too lightly.

The training sessions at the compound were actually a good review for Alex and Khalik’s Magical Botany final, at least.

Salinger’s exam was part massive written test, part displaying and being quizzed on plants the class grew during the semester, and a final part centering on oral identification of poorly potted magical plants, then re-potting them with the appropriately amended soil.

Alex felt comfortable that he’d done well when he and Khalik were on their way out of the botanical gardens clutching their re-potted plants. Professor Salinger had insisted each student take their plant home with them and, “take care of them like you would a newborn.” Alex wasn’t really interested in having a ‘newborn’, plant or otherwise right now, but there was no arguing with Salinger.

Professor Mangal’s final summoning exam was nowhere near as benign as Magical Botany’s.

First, there was the written test that involved defining the three types of summoning, an analysis of hypothetical word problems of summoners calling otherworldly beings, and then a final section involving translating names from otherworldly languages to the common tongue.

For the word problems section, the class had to break down the written examples, explain what the summoners might have done right from a theoretical perspective, and what they might have done wrong. Then—using a mix of theory and personal experience—discuss what they themselves might have done differently, then explain their thought processes behind those ideas.

After the written exam, there was a break, then the practical exam took place on the following day.

Professor Mangal instructed the class to summon an elemental beetle, an elemental beetle swarm, and then finally, a Bu’Bu. In the case of the demon, they had to communicate with it using words they’d learned in that particular demon’s language.

Alex had done rather well on that part of the exam—between studying and getting some insight from Baelin about when he’d summoned and questioned the Bu’Bu about Burn-Saw—he’d picked up a comfortable introduction to some of the demonic languages. Baelin had emphasised that summoned creatures were beings of chaos and the languages they spoke were very precise. Almost every nuance in pronunciation, speed, audio-prestidigitation and tone, could completely change the meaning of words and sentences. The Mark had really helped him in getting the fine points down.

One of his classmates had made the same mistake he’d made the first time he’d tried Elemental Bettle—she was nervous from exam pressure and mispronounced a name. But, instead of stopping, she panicked and repeatedly tried to correct her pronunciation. The result was chaos. Her summoning circle soon contained the Bu’Bu she was supposed to be calling, plus two other creatures from different planes. They proceeded to attack each other while trying to escape the circle to get at the students. Everyone began to panic and Alex moved beside Claygon, prepared for whatever might happen. Professor Mangal quickly intervened and dismissed the hostile entities. She then used the incident to highlight the importance of not being distracted, of using calm and proper pronunciation of names, and never giving in to panic: then repeating words which hadn’t been mastered since doing so could be deadly. Alex figured his classmate wouldn’t do well on that part of the exam, but Mangal talked to the petrified young woman about learning techniques to calm her mind if she wanted to continue with summoning. He doubted he would ever forget his own mistake, which reminded him of Amir.

His mistake had aged him a thousand years, but he’d learned a lot about being precise from it, and he imagined Amir was learning a lot from his own mistakes as the days passed in prison.

After the summoning finals were finished, he got back to learning the rest of Life-to-Mana.

Alex didn’t have much more of the spell to learn so he focused hard on practising it, until, a few days later, he could cast 100% of it. His feelings were mixed on Life-to-Mana. It was a good spell to know, but he disliked the unpleasant feelings that came with casting it. That sensation of his lifeforce being funnelled into his mana pool wasn’t something he wanted to experience too often but, the upside was that Life-to-Mana was foundational for the next blood magic spell he planned on learning.

Mana-to-Life.

At first look, the spell seemed to be simply the reverse of Life-to-Mana, in that it funnelled his mana out of his mana pool and converted it into lifeforce. There were differences though, since there were extra sections of the magic circuit that made sure the converted mana wouldn’t unbalance his life force: unbalanced life energies could cause long term, often debilitating health problems.

It was another spell to be careful with, but it would give him the ability to accelerate healing—which’d be really valuable. Now that he’d gotten his first blood-magic spell down, Alex began working on a new second-tier summoning spell: Summon Aervespertillo.

Aervespertillos were creatures from the elemental plane of air bearing a strong resemblance to a large bat in every way but one. Their wings were massive, as were their ears, but they had no eyes. Instead, they navigated and communicated completely by sound and by feeling vibrations in the air.

They could also let out a startling sonic screech that stunned enemies and—if enough of them screeched at the same time—even deafen them. So, for scouting, they’d be very useful in the Thameish wilderness—especially at night—and since they could fly, Najyah and any of the team using flight magic wouldn't have to take to the skies and patrol them alone.

Alex was pleased his preparations were coming along nicely.

He’d also started making use of both his alchemy kit, and his connection to Kybas. Sourcing mushrooms from the goblin-wizard—which Kybas had let him have free of charge since he considered Alex his and Harmless’ friend—he’d started his own alchemical ingredients garden. For now, he was only going to grow a couple of ingredients for two potions: Potion of Haste altered to do the exact opposite and slow opponents down, and a Sleep Potion that would send creatures off to dreamland. So, he’d have two more aerosol potions for his arsenal.

“A sleeping potion’ll be super handy if we have to capture beasts and bring them back,” Alex said to Isolde as he worked the soil in his potion garden. The young woman had come along with Khalik to see how things were progressing.

“I agree wholeheartedly,” Isolde said.

“Indeed,” Khalik said. “Better a deceived or unconscious foe than a fighting one. Thundar has also been working on his illusions, inspired by Wolud’s skill, no doubt. Having more deception on our side will put us in an even better position. I have to say, I like the direction our preparations are taking.”

“Yeah, so do I,” Alex agreed.

He’d also started working with Thundar to come up with an illusion spell to hide The Mark on his shoulder. When they managed to perfect the spell, it’d be a nice bit of spell-work to add to his spellcraft, and he could also stop worrying about The Mark being seen by curious, or problematic eyes in Thameland, or Generasi.

“I suppose we shall soon see if all of our preparations are enough,” Isolde said. “We should be getting the call to proceed any day now.”

Less than twenty four hours later, they got news from the higher ups: their team, along with other survey teams, would be heading to Thameland during the week before school began. They’d be meeting with the locals, getting an introduction to the location, and starting to scout the area.

Generasi’s expedition to Thameland was a go.