Chapter 140: A Mistake Amended

I won't lie. I think I probably spent more time trying to understand the things they were saying to me than I did actually listening to the things they were saying to me.

It's not as if I didn't have the mental capacity to nor was I deliberately not paying attention. 

Though the first explanation might actually have some merit to it… the second one's just plain stupid, don't even consider it.

My opinion? I think I'm just not cut out for this whole abracadabra alakazam thing, which is funny, really… magic and fantasy and all that good stuff, I was essentially living in an eleven-year-old's daydream, so why the hell does it feel more like a never-ending nightmare?

Regardless, it doesn't mean I was gonna stop trying though. As a wise man that never existed at all once said - 'fighting the battle is just as important as understanding it'.

Not sure exactly how that correlates with the issue at hand, but let's just say for the sake of profoundness that it does. 

My understanding over the cause that brought on my little episode as I understood it was simply me once again trifling with things that were way beyond me.

Callus Sempra

That magical pretentious-sounding term was, as Ash so eloquently placed it, the act of sensing the magic in others too much to the point that you knew too much - or at least someone who had mastered would be able to do. Little ol' me on the other hand was still tripping on his training wheels.

'Course that was just me paraphrasing and abridging there… Irene was a much better definer than I ever will be.

"You sense us… you feel like a breeze. Well, that's just how your mind interprets it. See, you're not sensing just magic, you're sensing what makes us, us… our nature, our very essence. That's what that wind is - for now, it's just wind… but once you're truly able to grasp it, honestly, I've no clue what you'll see."

Unlike being a Speaker which admittedly just simply came down to picking a random ticket in the genetical lottery, Callus Sempra on the other hand was an ability to be learned, not inherited… something so very few possessed the potential to do and something even fewer actually strive to achieve only to end up failing all the same.

Ash probably put it best when she claimed it a myth that scholars of her era would murmur to each other in the hallways of stone and torches. 

Prompting the question - why was it that someone of my caliber is capable of enacting a feat that many devoted entire lifetimes to accomplish in a literal blink of an eye?

Oh, I'm not even gonna kid myself, the answer to that question was so painfully obvious, it wasn't even funny. Everyone is born equal, as the expression goes. I guess, apparently in my case, I was just more equal than most.

Such a grand display of magic came at a cost, however, and I certainly did end up paying the price for it. One time was fine, two times I was still in the green, three times was pushing it, four, five - I was practically begging for death's embrace.

Total magical deprivation was what they both diagnosed me with, meaning to say that not a single ounce of magic was left within my system and my body did not like that one bit. 

So it reacted accordingly... by imploding on itself from within. Not exactly a prospect I was relishing.

"You could have died. You should have died," Irene said, doing her customary pace about the room. "So long as you still have magic left in you, you can regenerate it… but you've completely emptied the tank, there's nothing left to regenerate. By all means, you shouldn't even be breathing right now."

I watched her, from left to right, I was frowning, raising a brow, "So how come I still am?" I asked.

Turns out, it's because Ash was a literal angel sent from above. It was the same trick used last time I was knocking on death's door. The obligations of an Elf-Knight to her Master…

But instead of me usurping her of her vitality like before… this time I simply scooped up some of her mana and made it into my own. And since it was just mana being loaned to me, and not her vitality, we had no need of a mediator in between, it was just me, her… and the bathroom floor.

I was unconscious for the whole process, so I didn't really get to see how it worked, I just know that it did, otherwise well… that's the end of this story, I guess.

So what have we learned?

"No more magic from you," Irene sternly said. "Least not until you're properly educated. When this is all done, I'll… I'll oversee that process myself, understood?"

I smirked as soon as the aching stopped. "Ah, okay, so this is where your 'private tutoring' comes into play, I'm guessing?"

She closed her eyes, and she kept her close for a long amount of time. "Had I known you were gonna continue playing the clown with your new leash in life, I'd have just left your body to forensics instead."

"Leaving me for dead?"

"Better dead than annoying."

"Necrophilia's a crime, Irene."

"I'm going to slap you."

Irene was glaring, and I wasn't sure whether her face was flushing a bright red from anger or from something else entirely, either way, it was just the levity I needed to release the tension, my smile growing even wider.

To the side, Ash instead had a frown on her face. "I'm afraid I'm not understanding…"

Couldn't think of a reason to impure a mind so pure, so I decided to drop it to the wayside with a wave of an arm. "You'll get it when you're older."

"Actually, I'm afraid I'm not understanding something here as well," Irene said, the narrowing of her eyes suggesting something awry. "You've entered delirium… you exhausted your magic, yes… but why was it so fast? Inexperience as you are, regardless, you still very nearly died at record pace… why is that?"

"My patheticness, incompetence," I suggested, throwing the obvious into her face. "Uh… stupidity?"

"Stupidity is right," She muttered, stroking her chin. "I'm thinking you've thought too much… and it blew right back in your face, taking a majority of you along with it."

"That's a rather convoluted way of telling me I'm an idiot."

She crossed her arms again, looking very unimpressed. "I'm not. I'm saying… you might have bitten off more than you can chew at one point. You tried to understand it, but you couldn't… as a result, it knocked the wind right out of your sails."

Her theory-crafting session was sounding more and more familiar to me with every word, unnervingly familiar, and I did not like that one bit at all.

"You said you felt a windy sensation every time you sensed somebody's presence, yes?" 

Here comes that tense feeling again. "Yeah…"

"Was there an exception at an instance or two? Someone who didn't feel like wind… someone you sense that ended up feeling... different?"

I could tell from her eyes that everything that she was saying was just speculations, surmises not worth any grain of salt, hypothesis without basis, she wasn't taking it all that serious as I was because she couldn't possibly know what I knew.

And I knew she was right on the money. That detective badge of hers definitely wasn't just for show.

Someone that felt different, someone that knocked the wind right out of my sails at an instance or two. Of course I knew that someone, she was sitting literally right beside me.

And in a strange twist of fate, that one instance also took place in a bathroom quite like this one, though not as expansive and pretty. Funny how that works, huh?

Y'know I could verify her theory, tell her 'yes, that I did', but I get the feeling that this was one of those times where I should really keep my mouth shut. Because if proven right, and if that really was the case… that if Ash herself was indirectly responsible for what had happened to me. 

If I say yes now… Yeah, I don't wanna think about the fallout of that one either.

Thankfully I didn't have to answer for anything, for at that moment in time, the bathroom door suddenly swung wide open. In unison, we all turned, and we all looked.

Someone was standing frozen at the doorway. A little missus, with a folded laptop tucked underneath an arm, that look and that stance, immediately I recognized it from one of our many twists and turns down the hallway. 

Sound director, if I'm remembering Jay's words right. Didn't think we'd be meeting here again, especially in such a place. 

Briefly, I wondered if she entered the wrong place by mistake, then I wanted to slap myself immediately after as it dawned on me that, no idiot, she's not in the wrong place… you are.

Can't believe it took me until another woman stumbling in to realize I was in the girl's bathroom all this time. Explains the lack of urinals, I suppose.

Anyway, this staring contest persisted for a few more seconds, before the reverberating echo of her clearing her throat began to bounce across the walls.

"I think, uh… I'll think I'll go find another bathroom."

Apparently, the sight of her and the laptop she clutched close kickstarted something in Irene for she began to give chase after her as the door flap to a close.

"Wait, Ma'am. Ma'am! Few questions, please!"

Suppose to be finding a Magus, right… we gotta get on that, don't we?

"Guess we better go after her, huh?" I said, turning to Ash.

"I suppose so."

Still aching a bit, but oh well… 

"Mind helping me up here?"

Ash smiled, standing up first, before extending a hand towards me to which I promptly took to hoist myself upright to my feet. 

Knees felt like jelly, feet were even worse - like I was standing on needles or something. 

Took a moment for some light stretching, just to get my spring back in my step, all the while Ash stood monitoring close by in case I collapsed again.

"Are you feeling well?" She asked, clasping her hands together. "I hope what I have given would prove substantial enough to maintain your vigor."

"More than enough…" I assured her. "Don't worry yourself about it."

"I only wish I could have done more for you."

"Saved my life again," I smiled at her. "You want more? How greedy can you get?"

"Until I've made up for nearly taking your life, I suppose..."

I felt my smile freeze on my lips. "What?"

"Master… let us not hide behind willful ignorance," Ash stepped closer, too close for comfort. "It was my nature you sense back then, wasn't it, Master?"